BF2S Forums DAST Chat

Dilbert_X wrote:

Jay wrote:

Subsidies drive up tuition costs.
Easy student loan money drives up tuition costs.
Acting as a marketing mouthpiece for the college industry and telling everyone at every opportunity that everyone absolutely needs a college education drives up tuition costs.
Allowing universities access to eminent domain so they can go on vanity building sprees drives up tuition costs.

Unless fees are capped, or the govt runs the Universities, or both.

I don't see the problem in tying the interest rates to market rates, I knew enough kids who took out student loans as it was cheaper than car finance, or just took the low rate loan and put it in the bank at a higher rate - why should the govt subsidise that?

Well lots of uni students in america decided that it was a pretty good idea to spend 30-40k a year on uni fees.

i like how jay talks about 'hard math' arguments but then basically berates macbeth on a personal level for going to rutgers and studying political science. he then makes appeals to people's "widespread depression" and "the way debt makes graduates feel". this is all after saying macbeth cannot do basic math so he makes 'emotional arguments'. half of jay's word count so far has been about berating political science and reaching for that tired, bullshit argument that "you can educate yourself by going to a library or buying the books off amazon" (like jay evidently thinks he has, to a college-level, with his petty ambitions to someday effortlessly transfer over into 'history teaching').

jay your posts still have the stale smell of insecurity.

and hey man, if you're going to raise this spurious 'misery index' thing, and berate people like macbeth for "tying themselves down" with loans (i.e. being financially responsible and accepting the full cost for their education, whatever that may cost to go to a quality institution), then you need to have a little more self-reflexivity about your own life. a good college education in america obviously costs money; it has consequences. if graduates getting depressed is something that can be built into a quantitative evaluation of college tuition loans (as you are trying to make it in your 'hard math' arguments...) then you need to realize, all you've done in your own life is off-set that misery to someone else. if you want to quantify the amount of hurt caused by college loans, what's worse: the graduate struggling with their financial burden through their 20's, taking the brunt for the heavy cost that the american university system asks for a college degree; or the military vet who thought it was okay to prostitute themselves and spread death and misery in someone else's homeland, so they could get a discount and a grant? all you've done is offload the 'college misery' onto some other goat farmer, 6700 miles away. i bet you feel really swell about that. i like how you make yourself out perversely to be the more randian, individually-empowered one: let's laugh at the college kids who accept the fees for their education and take personal loans, because you're the arch-individual, who 'saw through' a phoney war and could manipulate the state gravy-train for some financial help, eh?

what shall we call this 'hard math' theory of possible graduate-depression, anyway? the misery index? financial homeostasis? it's a good one. seems to have you down.

Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-07-08 05:28:26)

i'd like to see the govt give free college education to everyone, why not, like most other european states seem to be able to do just fine (even denmark, germany, france, who happily encourage half of their students to pursue technical or polytechnic qualifications, often to post-graduate level). i'd like to see the government enforce a realistic expectation of university attendance/attainment and then provide funding for this contingent - say, 20% of all youngsters to attend a 'proper' university for traditional courses of academic instruction, with 20% more to do technical/polytechnic degrees that are kept separate. don't confuse each type of qualification (degree/diploma) and fund/channel each set of students onto their own career paths, with realistic expectations of those paths. with a manageable and realistic number of students going into full-tuition university education (20% at the £9k a year), this would be much easier to apportion funds to, rather than encouraging a vague mass of new labour specified "50% of all youths into university", which creates a situation where the vast majority of students are doing shit courses at shit universities but are still taking full-whack loans. this doesn't profit anyone: the individual student, the government, nor employers who will throw away their application.

free university education is entirely possible. all you have to do is become a little firmer with what the definition of a 'degree education' really is (read: actual standards of admission, only intaking actually studious and intellectual types to 'real' universities). right now degree-level education has been held up as a bit of a new labour era ideal, something ideal in that it was precisely vague and not thought out, encouraging everyone to trot along and get a degree - of any sort - so long as that degree would 'automatically' somehow translate into middle-class socialization and professional-level employment (it patently does not). free university education is fundable so long as it doesn't have to involve funding any idiot that can get 2 D's at a-level to attend any bunk college. restrict the numbers, fund the ones who are actually going to learn something and then have the realistic potential of joining a 'degree-educated' class of citizen/workers. that way you can start talking about government funding of higher-education in terms of 'future investment' again, with it actually meaning something, rather than a cash-sink where a bunch of dim people study catering at a post-1992 midlands polytechnic for 4 years, with no hope of ever remunerating the government or economy with their career prospects.

of course all that involves the reformation of pre-university education, so that everyone has the same hypothetical chance of attaining the level of education and knowledge to gain admission to 'more rigorous' universities. something the UK seems singularly incapable of right now, with the tory ideologue educational ministers all intent on 'reforming' the system so that it becomes more victorian and class-stratified than ever. even taking two steps back from the former grammar school system, which at least promoted some social mobility and access. disgraceful. though those tory idiots should have no problem getting over the labour-era whimsy of conflating 'universities' with 'polytechnics'; gove et al should have no shame about re-separating the two types of institution, and getting over the labour-era embarrassment that a polytechnic is not a university, and never will be - and should never even manage itself or aim to be like one.

Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-07-08 08:03:31)

luckily those things don't really exist in europe. that's basically just a ponzi scheme. in my opinion the US and UK could both probably operate on 1/3rd of their current higher-education institutions (the 'very-high' or 'research-intensive' universities, nominally). everything else could be re-graded into an institution aimed more towards general education, or technical/polytechnic style learning, with much closer ties to business and industry - equipping students with directly relevant skills, rather than abstract traditional academic education (which, let's face it, in the very-high research universities is first and foremost a training for the academic/research profession; the idea that their reputations lead to high-employability is secondary to their primary mission and devised curricula).

the problem, in the UK at least, and it seems to me in the US too with its constant stress on everyone being 'middle-class', is that people for some reason feel ashamed to not be college educated. completely false and spurious. let's just call a spade a spade: 70% of current UK university students are at shit institutions, properly ex-polytechnics, being given a second-rate 'academic' education, all because the managerial and political class in charge decided that everyone should have a 'degree', and that the idea of training people with actual trade/craft skills has somehow become declassé. it's silly. it's a delusion. you can't have a society where 50% of young workers are 'properly' or meaningfully university educated and academic: no country has a graduate job sector of that size. as a result there's a huge proportion of misled students who fit into neither category: neither well-educated or well-trained for a workplace, ripped off by one of the many generic 'new universities' that provide them with neither the skills to progress in the academic-research world, nor the prestige and esteem to get a good graduate job.

that's the structural shift that has gone on in western universities since the 1950's onwards - the first basic 'scam' that has facilitated the financial ripping off of students through a rapacious loaning system. the first problem is the assumption that 50% of the young populace should have a (meaningless) 'degree'; after that, once this fake sense of necessity has been established, you can charge everyone as much as you like, and the inelastic socially-entrenched demand will keep on providing. in europe, you notice the countries that have had no qualms about setting up strong 'technical schools' or suchlike since ww2 all have very well functioning youth-employment (for e.g. the scandinavian states and germany). that's because they're not all struggling under the vain pretension that everyone needs a formal 'degree' to be in some way 'successful' or middle-class.

Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-07-08 08:47:55)

false argument that 'real' universities only have a benefit in "the social". no one is dissing online courses as a method of instruction. a component of my own university education was online and virtual (i.e. uploading and sharing of resources, a forum-style discussion board, etc.) the argument is against an online university that basically enrols anyone, takes their cash, and hands out degrees with very little rigour or enforcement. that's clearly different from someone taking a summer course from yale, or doing a distance-learning module via an e-learning facility. that's an entire degree qualification where you never have to step inside a library, lecture theatre, or professor's office. that's kind of not a university education anymore (especially when the standards are so lax and worrying). real graduates have a right to be pissed off when a graduate workplace is being spammed by private establishments - whose profit-motive is foremost - that 'graduate' 50k+ grads a year. some students actually had to do real work and go through the real business of a university education in order to be in that workplace. they have a right to be pissed off.

don't confuse new emerging technologies of education (an area where they are many pros and cons) with 'virtual' institutions that basically sell junk degrees to gullible idiots. there are a lot of 'universities' and 'colleges' in the UK as well, which only actually exist as a few shabby offices above a chinese takeaway, that promise 'diplomas and degrees' via distance-learning. this is a sector of private institutions that are essentially parasites. it has very little to do with the potential of online learning or internet lectures as a method of instruction.

the UK's open university is a great system for people of non-traditional backgrounds and conditions to get a degree. it obviously isn't as prestigious as a traditional institution, but it's an organisation with a clear mission and purpose, and it does it relatively well. i don't have a problem with that, because it comes with a different set of values and expectations to normal universities. it's great for mature learners and people whose living/working arrangements mean a full-time university course isn't for them. it's also cheap and provides a decent quality education to anyone, of any means (often people looking to get a second-degree later in life, out of personal interest). all to be lauded.

i have more of a problem with the ex-polys that pose as new universities, actually have physical campuses/lectures/lessons etc. but just provide something so sub-standard and casual in comparison to the usual degree study. at the end of the day they still award 'degrees' formally, and the job market becomes confused and crammed as a result. it was a political shortcut: aim to get 50% of the young population degree-educated. hmm, how can we achieve this widespread levering of the educational standard? easy: reclassify an extant body of institutions - technical polytechnics - as degree-awarding institutions. in the space of a decade you have 'degree attainment' (on paper) going from 11% of the population to more like 25%. political victory... educational farce. many of these institutions had to be managerially reshuffled overnight to go from providing plumbing and woodwork courses to dishing out philosophy and astrophysics degrees. they're a sham, and get completely overlooked when the government assigns its annual research funding. it's almost like everyone knows these institutions aren't really 'proper' - everyone except the poor misinformed 18yo who pays £9k a year to go to a university which, surprisingly omg!, accepts their entry with mediocre exam grades.

Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-07-08 09:30:00)

$500 billion in student loan debt is thanks to those for profit universities. That is half of the overall total which means that they produce more debt than community colleges, state schools, and private universities combined. I think that 20% default rate Jay mentioned probably mostly comes from those loans.

Martin Dempsey: Edward Snowden Has Hurt U.S. Ties With Other Countries

Along with everything else I keep hearing the state say about Snowden, he is now magically hurting "U.S. ties with other countries." Now if there is some element of truth to it, perhaps U.S. policymakers could take that into consideration before enacting domestic security protocols that would make Germany hold its nose.

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

Martin Dempsey: Edward Snowden Has Hurt U.S. Ties With Other Countries

Along with everything else I keep hearing the state say about Snowden, he is now magically hurting "U.S. ties with other countries." Now if there is some element of truth to it, perhaps U.S. policymakers could take that into consideration before enacting domestic security protocols that would make Germany hold its nose.

protip: spying on allies is hurting american relations with other states. a guy telling them about it is not 'doing' anything, it's uncovering an harmful act that is already being committed.

the same goes for all examples, macb. i think people are capable of vouching for snowden's points regardless of their nationality. it's not an anti-american thing - not where i read about the ongoing furor anyway (e.g. the guardian).  i also think you need to distinguish between the operations of the intelligence community in diplomatic 'spying', which seems to be a political side-show, and the original 'scoop', which was wholesale indiscriminate monitoring of all citizens. that's what really got the newspapers braying. the spy-games thing is mostly just amusing to read about. and no rational person would assume for a second that these sort of operations haven't been ongoing for almost as long as intelligence and state-craft have existed.

Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-07-08 15:03:35)

Some idiot is arguing on my friends wall that we should provide people who major in math/science with a free college education in exchange for being forced to stay in the US for the next ten years. I told him he was a fucking moron.

Jay wrote:

Some idiot is arguing on my friends wall that we should provide people who major in math/science with a free college education in exchange for being forced to stay in the US for the next ten years. I told him he was a fucking moron.

Is he also dating your cousin and play basketball?

Uzique The Lesser wrote:

i'd like to see the govt give free college education to everyone.....free university education is entirely possible. all you have to do is become a little firmer with what the definition of a 'degree education' really is (read: actual standards of admission, only intaking actually studious and intellectual types to 'real' universities).

Right, free education to everyone, as long as you redefine 'everyone' to mean the 'already monied elite who have put their kids through private school' and everyone else gets excluded - ie the current Oxbridge system.

I would simply put a low cap on fees, give living grants barely above the dole - as was the case when I went to Uni - and leave it there.