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http://chronicle.com/article/The-Big-Lie-About-the-Life-of/63937/

I know some of you have been thinking about grad school. Please read and consider.

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Big-Lie-About-the-Life-of/63937/

If you are in one of the lucky categories that benefit from the Big Lie, you will probably continue to offer the attractions of that life to vulnerable students who are trained from birth to trust you, their teacher.

Graduate school in the humanities is a trap. It is designed that way. It is structurally based on limiting the options of students and socializing them into believing that it is shameful to abandon "the life of the mind." That's why most graduate programs resist reducing the numbers of admitted students or providing them with skills and networks that could enable them to do anything but join the ever-growing ranks of impoverished, demoralized, and damaged graduate students and adjuncts for whom most of academe denies any responsibility.

Pretty harsh, but I really have no arguments.

You are paying enormous amounts of money to these institutions, for a stamp. It really isn't much more complicated than that. I have little to no intention of spending upwards of 100k dollars, to further my education, though I am not studying in a particularly underhanded field. There are massive problems that are built into any higher education in the U.S., most of the time at least. You pay exorbitant amounts of money for textbooks, and you do all of the work.

I don't want to start depressing myself, I was having a decent day.

Maybe it's possible for graduate students themselves to start gathering and reporting this information on a Web site.

This does happen, for law school anyway. I spent a lot of time on that website after I took my lsat, and the average debt for schools I expected to attend eventually pushed me into the humanities. Granted, the humanities that I study are government critical, and therefore may not be pertinent to the posted article.

Very true article. I think skilled trades are just as important as any hoighty toighty Grad. School degree. At least with skilled trades you have a sense of knowing that if you get fired or laid off or quit you have a better chance of finding a job related to your expertise in a reasonable amount of time. With alot of college students i have seen they are forced to work at low income job despite rhem having a Masters in Engineering.

Word. I paid 120k for m undergrad education, and I now manage a gym. Granted, I make really good money for doing virtually nothing, but it still wasn't the result of my education.

$120,000?!!? Seriously?

Where did you go to college? The Moon?

I had no idea it was THAT expensive in the States...

The catch 22 of all of this, is how hard it would be to find stable work, without omitting the years of school that would appear to make you a risky employee.

Turnover at low-wage, low-skill jobs (which is the alternative when no work is to be found) has definitely slowed along with the downturn in the economy. Many employers (manipulative or not) want people that won't ask for much of anything, nor ask for about much of anything.

When it comes to the skilled trades (carpentry, etc...) the job market could be considered much worse overall. The ultimate downfall after the housing bubble, lowers opportunities drastically. If you have specialized skills (that would feasibly take around a decade to fully develop), such as specific forms of welding, there is a decent amount of work out there. If you are a mere journeyman, you better have some amazing networking skills, or your no better off that the person with that expensive degree.

The economy sucks right now, anyone disputing that is lacking contact with hard reality.

Albatross wrote:$120,000?!!? Seriously?

Where did you go to college? The Moon?

I had no idea it was THAT expensive in the States...

It is preposterously expensive, and geared towards filtering out all but the most determined individuals. There are arguments that Higher learning outside of the states (Europe specifically), is better overall, but they are really no more substantial overall than asserting the same about the U.S.

School is very expensive, graduate school is extremely expensive. The logic is that you will easily make the money to pay those loans off, but that is rarely the case at first.

Eh, to me the article didn't really shed anything new. It even seemed like a sympathy plea to those who don't research and evaluate the risks and rewards of longterm plans. Grad programs require a lot of money and time to endure and should be planned accordingly. Especially in this age of the internet - communicating to students, alumni, professors, ratemyprofessor.com, etc are all easily accessed and can be invaluable tools.

Thats not to say that there isn't problems in the profession. But there is a problem expecting too much from simply having a certain kind of degree and not researching/respecting the grad-school career path. And in these economic times, more than ever there's simply not enough spots to go around and the ones that are available are relatively gakky by comparison but ya gotta nut up. Doesn't help that there's a lot more people staying or going to school because of this unfortunate economy.

Same deal with flying planes. Costs a fortune to learn, the job market is limited, its filled with old geezers not wanting to budge, has long lists of job candidates waiting to take over, and the initial jobs generally have unfavorable hours and duties like teaching newbies how to fly in order to gain more flight hours for yourself.





The adult world is tough and the zombie invasion hasn't even started!

Albatross wrote:$120,000?!!? Seriously?

Where did you go to college? The Moon?

I had no idea it was THAT expensive in the States...

I was in the worst possible situation:

I'm from a middle class family, with little ability to pay. This was reflected in my financial aid until my father secured a better job, at which point all the aid dried up. Because reputable schools will not transfer more than 2 years of credit (this happened before my senior year), I was forced to pay full tuition and board (60k) my senior year. The alternative was transferring to state school, where requirements would have forced me to spend 3 more years in school, and pay about 90k.

American higher education is a god damned labyrinth.

Cane wrote:If you are weak, prepare to die.

Sorry, I thought I had to clarify a bit. Living in a zombie flick must be pretty tough.

dogma wrote:American higher education is a god damned labyrinth.

And it is purposefully designed to be so. There is an intense filtering process built into the entire institution, without guidance as to alternatives. That is the main problem I have with U.S. education, the axis between high school and adult life, is very poorly supported. You just go to college, end of story, have fun, GTFO. This leads to people that end up in terrible situations, though many can and do find their own way.

It is easy for anyone to say that the weak ones are being tossed to the side, but I could easily argue the opposite, from a different set of definitions of the same terms being used. This is not to say that there are many great minds that are produced through this pressure, just that the system is not designed to help them become great.

Wrexasaur wrote:

Cane wrote:If you are weak, prepare to die.

Sorry, I thought I had to clarify a bit. Living in a zombie flick must be pretty tough.

I am not entirely sure if you were joking, but I guess you were being mildly facetious after all.

Ignore the last bit of my post, I'll drop it.

Well, now I don't feel so bad about not going to college. I would have just majored in drinking anyway.

Albatross wrote:$120,000?!!? Seriously?

Where did you go to college? The Moon?

I had no idea it was THAT expensive in the States...

It depends on where you go. At the state college we went to, my wife got her masters for roughly $15,000 over three years. Not counting dorms and food, our undergrad classes ran a little over a grand a semester. Must not have been that bad of a school, since we had a boatload of foreign students.

ZF-

I was told by a professor, after delivering my undergraduate thesis talk, that I would not last in law school because I needed to live the life of the mind. The article chills me.

Oh, I make no value judgement as to the overall 'quality' of the American education system, I'm sure it's excellent. Same with Healthcare - again, for those who can afford it I would be unsurprised if they recieved a better standard of care than I recieve via the NHS.

But it's the cost that blows my mind - it just seems that it would reduce access to education (or healthcare, not wanting to get into THAT, just drawing a somewhat clumsy parallel) for the sections of society that would benefit most from it.

Zad Fnark wrote:
It depends on where you go. At the state college we went to, my wife got her masters for roughly $15,000 over three years. Not counting dorms and food, our undergrad classes ran a little over a grand a semester. Must not have been that bad of a school, since we had a boatload of foreign students.

ZF-

Wait... When did you both get your education? If I am not mistaken there has been an across the board increase of roughly 30%, in tuition fees, for California colleges (UC's). That is insane to me, so I might be slightly (I do mean slightly) biased in this. Tuition is VERY expensive, I have no idea how your wife managed such an affordable degree.

This article is from two or three years ago, and it appears to be relatively accurate.

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/campus-radicals/2007/04/college-education-students

That was 2-3 years ago... and it has only gotten worse.

Albatross wrote:Oh, I make no value judgement as to the overall 'quality' of the American education system, I'm sure it's excellent. Same with Healthcare - again, for those who can afford it I would be unsurprised if they recieved a better standard of care than I recieve via the NHS.

It really isn't excellent, overall it is decent, maybe good, but not exceptional (or amazing, or fantastic). If you look at what happens with internet content, you can see the process taking place in another form. The things that are popular, become more popular, because they are popular. People check out the places that have already been checked out, because they feel the odds are better overall. This leads to a proliferation of the best students, going to the best branded schools.

The students are doing most, if not ALL of the work to make these schools 'great'.

p.s By way of comparison, if I progress to Phd level - which is my aim because I want to be the first person in the UK to do so in my subject (it's a new field) - the whole process will cost around £40k, including student loans. Course fees are around £20K iirc.

By the time I finish my education, which will terminate in at least one PhD, I will be about 200k in debt. So roughly 100k GBP.

That's mental. You could buy house for that!

Maybe you should stop at one Phd - no-one wants to be the homeless guy with two Phds!

Or... A freaking Bentley. HAH!



Oh... and in the Bay Area, 200k is just a down payment on a 2 br/ 1 bath house. So take that!

Albatross wrote:Maybe you should stop at one Phd - no-one wants to be the homeless guy with two Phds!

Yeah, you would be better off as a homeless guy with a Bentley.

"I smell like garbage, but goddam I have a sweet ride."

...

"Wish I could afford gas... "

Wrexasaur wrote:
Wait... When did you both get your education? If I am not mistaken there has been an across the board increase of roughly 30%, in tuition fees, for California colleges (UC's). That is insane to me, so I might be slightly (I do mean slightly) biased in this. Tuition is VERY expensive, I have no idea how your wife managed such an affordable degree.

This article is from two or three years ago, and it appears to be relatively accurate.

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/campus-radicals/2007/04/college-education-students

That was 2-3 years ago... and it has only gotten worse.

I was in the University of Wisconsin system (UW-Superior to be exact). It has been fourteen years since I graduated. Looking at the current fee schedule, it looks like it's tripled since then...

http://www.uwsuper.edu/bursar/fees/index.cfm#_2_426580

But still, compared to your ivy league schools...

It was still good enough to get me my job.

ZF-

Albatross wrote:That's mental. You could buy house for that!

Maybe you should stop at one Phd - no-one wants to be the homeless guy with two Phds!

Thankfully, most PhDs are treated as employment. The one I'm targeting pays roughly 50k a year. Less than I make now, but still decent.

Just get a job that has tuition reimbursement. My current employer has paid for a BS and I'm wrapping up my MS. Then I plan to go MBA next year. One of the guys I work with is pursuing a PhD all paid for by the company. And believe me all that education will not be wasted because higher education is key to advancing in my area of employment. (Defense)

GG

I realised that vocational learning was superior to an academic education after about 3 months of sixth form, and I was doing a lot of drugs at the time (I eventually got a Bsc). I find it astounding that so many apparently intelligent people have to get an Mh to realise this.

generalgrog wrote:And believe me all that education will not be wasted because higher education is key to advancing in my area of employment. (Defense)

GG

Yep. Pretty much the only reason I see a PhD as valuable.

State school here. Glad for it, though sometimes I wonder how the other half lives...

It has been my experience that the American Educational System has been monumentally expensive, intentionally cluttered, clandestine and confusing, shady in it's accounting practices, outright liars concerning what is/isn't required to graduate and what financial aid I am receiving, and absolutely directionless. Blow tons of money with a very high risk to have it count for nothing, get screwed out of something you planned for (that your advisor signed on) every single semester, and get a piece of paper and no direction to use it in beyond "go to grad school or you aren't a worthwhile human being."

There are good professors, good programs, and I have met many great friends in college. Unfortunately I have encountered so many ludicrous injustices and manipulative practices that it's almost unbearable at times.

I am in the pipe to have to pay $180,000 for my 4 years of college.

Wrexasaur wrote:Wait... When did you both get your education? If I am not mistaken there has been an across the board increase of roughly 30%, in tuition fees, for California colleges (UC's). That is insane to me, so I might be slightly (I do mean slightly) biased in this. Tuition is VERY expensive, I have no idea how your wife managed such an affordable degree.

I work at a university here in Australia, and whenever we do international comparisons where we want to look good we compare oursleves to the Californian system. Value for money from Californian education is terrible - we spend less half the amount per student and are better ranked in every index than all but a few Californian schools.

When I look at how inefficient we are, I cannot begin to imagine how California blows that much money.


Oh, and I finished my degree with about $13k AUD in debt. Paying it off early gave a 15% discount, so by the time I paid it off it cost me around $11k AUD. Policy has changed in the last decade here so the student is expected to pay more towards his education, so now you'll end up with a debt somewhere closer to $30k, more if you're doing medicine, less if you're doing arts.