Colleges act like Scientology in the states. Equating education with how much money you’ve handed them.
Meanwhile anything can be learned online, but it counts for nothing because corporations treat purchases credentials as the only legitimate form of “education”.
Ah yes, I’m sure the formal training received by doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers, and engineers is just an over-hyped “education” that can all be replaced by online MOOCs.
There are real problems with education, especially with the costs, but “anything can be learned online” is the worst take I’ve heard in a long while.
For one, you can have a second screen and Google the answers. It’s a little bit harder in person.
I’d really like to see a system of online learning where extension offices are built out into testing center networks. This still disenfranchises people sadly, but staves off some existential questions about what passing an exam even means now.
Just because you can get part of your education remotely or through self-learning didn’t mean “anything can be learned online”.
And if you were hiring a math tutor for your kid, would you prefer a self-proclaimed expert from watching YouTube videos or would you want someone who got a degree from a credentialed university? And even if you don’t care, why are you surprised that others would be skeptical of the YouTube expert?
Remote learning can be fine for some things, and self learning through informal channels are also fine, but it’s not a full on replacement for formal education in all cases.
Lmao. Nope. I’ve done both. Online classes are a fucking joke. Maybe some schools do it well, but most treat online classes like a correspondence course.
Because math and science are large interconnected fields that you simply cannot learn from a textbook study. You must speak with other people about many different topics so you can broaden your understanding of where your education fits in the world around you.
Have you ever studied a particular subject and wondered “OK… I can solve that problem now. Why did I learn it?” Textbooks are notoriously bad at explaining the why.
No sorry, that’s just fundamentally false. You can’t just learn titration techniques from watching a video. You can’t learn phlebotomy without an instructor watching you do it to a patient. Hell, you aren’t learning how to drive a car from playing a video game.
And I’m not sure where you are pulling the “if you are that powerful” from. You really have an ax to grind don’t you.
Honestly, I think higher ed is more at risk because the people on the top keep skimming for more funds, leaving everyone below struggling. Pay your faculty, staff, and working students (grads and undergrads) well.
Very few faculty and staff make high salaries. But the facilities costs are insane. Universities could do just fine without building another $50 Million dollar building. Growth for the sake of growth needs to stop. If that happens, then suddenly tuition costs would be under control.
I finished my PhD in 2016. Since then I have shifted to industry, a move largely prompted by seeing the absolute shit state of academia at the moment (in the US).
It’s no longer a meritocracy. It’s all about who you know (or who you don’t), and in that sense, it’s no different from industry. But salaries are looking inflated given the differential between industry and academic workloads. It’s only a matter of time for academic institutions to enshittify as if they were private-sector entities, because most are effectively run like private-sector entities at this point.
I did my graduate work at a top-tier public university in the US. Most of its funding is now from ridiculous tuition rates and other ways to nickel and dime its students. Its administrators make money like a private c-suite.
Yeah, but the pain isn’t going to be universal. For profit universities aren’t doing well already and I expect them to do worse over time. I expect a lot of non-profit private liberal arts universities to go bankrupt unless they turn into foreign student visa centers. There will probably be some consolidation of public universities, but nothing really bad.
I expect college to get a lot cheaper as the available student pool doesn’t recover from the millennial echo boom.
I expect college to get a lot cheaper as the available student pool doesn’t recover from the millennial echo boom.
“The market will self-correct,” I tell myself, despite all evidence to the contrary (the total lack of an incentive for monopoly capital to lower prices in a bourgeois dictatorship). “The market will self-correct. The market cannot fail us. Only we can fail the market.”
We are going through a demographic transition, a pinch in the hourglass. It will be temporary but painful, and the other side of the pinch might not be as big as it once was. Our population is aging.
It’s kind of crazy that our research apparatus is tied to how many students happen to be enrolling. World class universities is what makes the US economy so strong. From the tech to the biomedical industries, it’s not “the free market” that has boosted the economy, but being leaders in publicly available government funded research.
It’s the facilities costs that have truly exploded in the past couple of decades. Every university is in an arms race to build the biggest, most advanced campus possible. They’ve forgotten that their goal is to be a place of study and instead they’re trying to have world-class architecture so they can woo students. Students would go there so long as the damn programs are well run and they have a good reputation.
Just stop the gigantic capital projects and suddenly you’ve got plenty of capital. Hmm.
The economics aren’t really that tied. A lot of universities have research arms that are not tied to their undergraduate population. It might need a graduate student population to oppress, but undergrads are rather worthless.
Grant money from researchers is a drop in the bucket. That money mostly goes to flesh out laboratories with fancy equipment and pay for research assistants.
Higher Ed in red states is at risk. Of course, that’s the outcome that red states vote for. Oh no! It’s the completely predictable consequences of our very own actions!
“Left-wing” is pretty vague. I’ve seen people say things like “now I’m as leftwing as they come, which is why I support sending tens of billions of dollars to Ukrainian Nazis! Slava Ukraini!” Under the capitalist mode of production, there are communists, liberals, and fascists. That’s pretty much it.
Not really. You either support capitalism or you don’t. And if you do support it, you’re either comfortable with its nastier aspects (genocide, slavery, the annihilation of the human species via climate change), as fascists are, or you find those aspects uncomfortable, as liberals do, though they aren’t an issue for you if they’re kept out of sight. Is there some other group I’m missing here?
Ah, okay, capitalism. I can’t doxx myself because that’s fed shit, but the thousands of comments I’ve made on this subject on hexbear should strongly suggest that I am quite dedicated to the destruction of capitalism. Do you even believe that destroying capitalism is possible or desirable?
Sorry, can’t tell ya all the people I’ve killed, cause that’s fed shit. 🙄 Real convincing.
Do I think it’s possible to destroy capitalism entirely? No. People don’t give up power and property. Also, humans are greedy and corrupt—but that’s a different topic.
Do I think we can get to the point where there is significantly less suffering and class gap? I think it’s possible.
I never said I excused it. I’m just not deluded enough to think that people, as a whole, WILL actually change even if I want them too. And I don’t go around pretending I’m a badass fighting capitalism, when all I do is shitpost in my echo chamber and lump people into two categories: good and bad.
But, you keep fighting the good fight, my keyboard warrior comrade. Eventually those memes will capture the youth and pretty soon we will all be communists.
I think you’re confusing my disappointment in humanity as acceptance of their behavior.
Like I said, “good” or “bad.”
Do you have anything that was produced in a sweatshop? Of course you do. You’re typing on it. So, don’t be all high and mighty now. A real communist would reject such things. I guess you’re just making excuses for capitalism too, liberal.
As for the feudal, lords… I’m pretty sure we still have a group of rich people making decisions for all of us, and we just think things have changed—but they really haven’t and most of us are still forced to work to live. Not terribly far from indentured servitude.
I think you’re confusing my disappointment in humanity as acceptance of their behavior.
I assume you believe that human nature is an omnipotent and unchanging concept that influences the material world without being influenced by it. If I am correct, how is your conception of human nature different from the Christian conception of God? And if I am incorrect—if you believe that human nature can change—doesn’t that mean that communism is therefore possible and that we should do everything we can in order to achieve it?
Do you have anything that was produced in a sweatshop? Of course you do. You’re typing on it. So, don’t be all high and mighty now. A real communist would reject such things. I guess you’re just making excuses for capitalism too, liberal.
Did capitalism randomly originate one day out of the void? Or was it created by feudalism’s collapse? Were the first capitalists hypocrites for using feudalism (long-term rents, for instance) to destroy feudalism itself? Do you think that any of them cared?
As for the feudal, lords… I’m pretty sure we still have a group of rich people making decisions for all of us, and we just think things have changed—but they really haven’t and most of us are still forced to work to live. Not terribly far from indentured servitude.
Do you live on a manor and are you a peasant, like 90% of feudal people? Do you pay half your annual harvest in kind to your lord and to the church? Are you forbidden to leave this manor by law? Are you able to access the commons for your own material sustenance (food, firewood, construction materials)? If you answered no to any of these questions, then you aren’t actually living under feudalism and there is actually a difference between good and bad things!
And you’re rather disappointingly refusing to answer pretty basic questions. Losing ideological battles online is a prelude to losing them in the real world 😉
I haven’t lost anything. You claim to be a communist, and criticize others. Then when you’re called out for—and admit to—living the life of a liberal, you just make excuses for your liberal behavior.
If you don’t practice what you preach, you’re the same as everyone else.
Should I reiterate the questions I already asked which you refused to answer? Just remember that it was a Marxist who defeated you, and that if you can’t beat us, you should consider joining us. Start by reading The Communist Manifesto online. It’s the last thing your boss wants you to do 😉
I love it when people declare themselves the winner because they’ve talked the other party into disinterest. If you feel like you’ve won, that’s all that matters. Good for you! Here’s your certificate of participation and my further disinterest.
However—You’re not a communist. You’re a poseur, a hypocrite, and a troll. And if you represent the fight for communism, it’s dead in the water.
If I’m poor and I fight for communism, I’m not a real communist, I just want to be rich. If I’m rich and I fight for communism, I’m a hypocrite. Who is a real communist? Do real communists exist? Please keep telling yourself that we aren’t real. It’ll make it easier for us to save the planet from bourgeois scum like yourself who are trying to destroy it.
Liberals already make it very clear that they aren’t left wing, do you think barely-regulated capitalism is a left wing position? Do you think constant warmongering is a left wing position? They’re garbage at actually doing anything concrete besides spending money on weapons.
Sounds like you like cheering for blue team though.
So tell me something that someone else has done that you didn’t do but maybe would give me an idea of the kind of things you might have done but certainly aren’t admitting to…
West Virginia was a reliable blue state until the 2000 election. Maybe if democrats focused on helping workers instead of bourgeois scum, they wouldn’t constantly be terrified (or even at risk) of losing elections?
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