Subsidized Post-Secondary Education and Extended Adolescence

[kramerfan86]

Extended adolescence is merely an effect of the changing economy. You cant go out of high school and get a factory job with benefits that pays you a good middle class working wage any more and even getting a higher education is seeing decreasing levels of benefit financially. It isnt surprising then that more and more young adults are staying more attached to the original core family, economically it simply makes sense. Sure you could go work 3 McJobs and scrape by a lower class living and be independent while struggling to look for a proper career, but how many people are going to choose that option when they can keep taking aid from their family?

Also the "college is so expensive because students want nice things" is a crock to try and shift blame onto the students rather than politicians and administrators. Tuition is going up because a wide majority of states are financially struggling now and as such are tightening higher education budgets which in turn leads schools to raise prices to make up the difference.

 

[BvBPL]

This is true, but being a (reasonably) financially secure university student at a young age myself, I find myself very frustrated at the complete lack of financial awareness displayed by many people my age, or even older. My university is even offering free budgeting classes and online budgeting and time-management modules to combat the number of people dropping out because they waste their time and money and can't remain at uni. My girlfriend's sister, as an example, seems to think that playing X-Box and watching Arrested Development is a suitable use of her weekend, even when she has assignments due in the upcoming week.

Yeah, that's close to what my response to ParkCungHee. It isn't just financial independence (although that's part of it), it is a lack of maturity. It is behaving as a child well into adulthood that irks me.

Also the "college is so expensive because students want nice things" is a crock to try and shift blame onto the students rather than politicians and administrators. Tuition is going up because a wide majority of states are financially struggling now and as such are tightening higher education budgets which in turn leads schools to raise prices to make up the difference.

I don't presume to totally agree with what the admins say. I was just reporting what I heard on the Diane Rehm show that day. It is pretty clear to me that this is too simplistic an answer.

However, I also don't accept that plushy dorms, and the like, are necessarily innocent in the determination.

 

[Lord Baal]

Yeah, that's close to what my response to ParkCungHee. It isn't just financial independence (although that's part of it), it is a lack of maturity. It is behaving as a child well into adulthood that irks me.



I don't presume to totally agree with what the admins say. I was just reporting what I heard on the Diane Rehm show that day. It is pretty clear to me that this is too simplistic an answer.

However, I also don't accept that plushy dorms, and the like, are necessarily innocent in the determination.

Very much so. I like sitting back, eating pizza and watching copious amounts of pornography as much as anybody, but I never let it get in the way of my studies or my work, then or now.

Now that I'm a parent, my pizza-eating, porno-watching days are basically over, but that doesn't mean I can't have fun. I just have fun in more mature ways (though posting on these boards might technically be less-mature) such as through playing chess, writing, reading and generally having more wholesome fun around the home. And there's always the option of packing the child off to Grandma's house for the afternoon if I really need my pizza-porno fix.

There is no reason why being mature necessarily means you can't engage in adolescent behaviour from time-to-time. You just need to do so in moderation, as with eating, drinking, fighting bears with your hands and hardcore group sex. The more mature you are the more fun it is to behave in an adolescent fashion from time-to-time.

 

[caketastydelish]

Lord baal, you simultaneously overestimate how much international studies/relations/whatever majors make on average, while underestimate how much history majors make on average.

 

[Lord Baal]

Lord baal, you simultaneously overestimate how much international studies/relations/whatever majors make on average, while underestimate how much history majors make on average.

Of course, in my post where I say absolutely nothing about the earnings potential or average salary of anyone with any of those degrees I clearly got my estimations about the earnings potential and average salaries of people with those respective degrees. Thank you for pointing out my obvious error.

 

[caketastydelish]

Sorry. I guess the point I was making is if you're going to say 'don't major in history, instead major in computer science' would be one thing, but saying major in international studies instead of history is like saying coke is bad for you, instead drink sprite.

 

[Lord Baal]

Sorry. I guess the point I was making is if you're going to say 'don't major in history, instead major in computer science' would be one thing, but saying major in international studies instead of history is like saying coke is bad for you, instead drink sprite.

I said none of those things. I said to maintain flexibility, and offered an example of a close personal friend who maintained that flexibility. I said nothing of his earning potential nor whether he got a job in either field (he ended up becoming an author after all of that, funnily enough) nor did I make any statements about the relative earning potentials of either history or IR. I did not make any of the points you seem to think I made.

 

[caketastydelish]

Well in that case I would agree with you. Personally though, I think people that aren't sure what to do with their lives should just go to a trade school that will take one year tops to complete.

The reason for this is even if they decide later that whatever they're doing for a living with the trade is not what they want to do, it only took a year to complete and they're still young so their life is not over yet, especially considering they always have something to fall back on.

I'm not saying the trade is what they should be doing for the rest of their lives (unless it's genuinely what they want to do), I'm saying doing that is smarter than spending 4 years getting a bachelors and then hating whatever job you get with that just as much as you would have with the 1 year trade school job.

 

[Lord Baal]

Well in that case I would agree with you. Personally though, I think people that aren't sure what to do with their lives should just go to a trade school that will take one year tops to complete.

The reason for this is even if they decide later that whatever they're doing for a living with the trade is not what they want to do, it only took a year to complete and they're still young so their life is not over yet, especially considering they always have something to fall back on.

I'm not saying the trade is what they should be doing for the rest of their lives (unless it's genuinely what they want to do), I'm saying doing that is smarter than spending 4 years getting a bachelors and then hating whatever job you get with that just as much as you would have with the 1 year trade school job.

This presents a false dichotomy, but I'll ignore that for now to focus on the other issues inherent in this post.

That would only work for people who had some interest in a trade. My cousin, for example, wanted to be a hairdresser or a vet. She ended up becoming a hairdresser through an apprenticeship. But for someone like myself, who possesses less handyman abilities than someone who has actually had their hands eaten by crocodiles, a trade school isn't really an option.

I've had many jobs in my life, most of them temp jobs during the period immediately preceding and following my daughter's birth, and I sucked at every single one that didn't involve me sitting on my ever-growing arse and typing. Now, outside of fields that require a lot of typing and/ or research, such as writing, academia and data entry, I'd probably make a damn fine bodybuilding instructor, but that's it. Trade school would have simply wasted a year of my life, rather than contributing anything to it.

You also forget that it's much more difficult to quit your mechanics job and go to university to become a philosopher than it would be to go straight to uni to study philosophy. Presumably you are less likely to get your parents to help you quit your successful job and go back to school than you are to get their help for just going straight to school, and even one year can change your life a lot. Try convincing a wife or girlfriend to support you when you abandon the successful job you had when the two of you met. The best ones will, but they can't all be winners and many won't.

 

[caketastydelish]

This presents a false dichotomy, but I'll ignore that for now to focus on the other issues inherent in this post.

That would only work for people who had some interest in a trade. My cousin, for example, wanted to be a hairdresser or a vet. She ended up becoming a hairdresser through an apprenticeship. But for someone like myself, who possesses less handyman abilities than someone who has actually had their hands eaten by crocodiles, a trade school isn't really an option.

I've had many jobs in my life, most of them temp jobs during the period immediately preceding and following my daughter's birth, and I sucked at every single one that didn't involve me sitting on my ever-growing arse and typing. Now, outside of fields that require a lot of typing and/ or research, such as writing, academia and data entry, I'd probably make a damn fine bodybuilding instructor, but that's it. Trade school would have simply wasted a year of my life, rather than contributing anything to it.

You also forget that it's much more difficult to quit your mechanics job and go to university to become a philosopher than it would be to go straight to uni to study philosophy. Presumably you are less likely to get your parents to help you quit your successful job and go back to school than you are to get their help for just going straight to school, and even one year can change your life a lot. Try convincing a wife or girlfriend to support you when you abandon the successful job you had when the two of you met. The best ones will, but they can't all be winners and many won't.

Well this in itself brings up another point. First of all, philosophy, from my understanding (I could be wrong) is actually a required undergraduate degree for anyone going to divinity school (as you probably know, this is a professional degree required to become a priest. You can't say that's a useless degree fer christs sake).

So obviously for people wanting to become a priest, a philosophy degree is just as valuable as their graduate degree because it's required just as much. Now on the other hand, for people not wanting to become a priest (which is presumably the kind of people you were referring to) that's quite a different story.

A lot of people are very blunt (and frankly rude as well as misinformed) when they 'philosophy', like most other BA degrees are worthless, we should shut them down'. I don't think we should shut them down, but I do think they need revamping. Everyone says with these degrees they learn critical thinking skills, but personally I think they're not learning them near enough, and I say that as a humanities student myself.

For instance, consider that most English majors end up learning more about Shakespeare than modern, technical writing that could actually be used in a business world. The English programs themselves shouldn't be destroyed, just revamped so they're more relevant for the 21st century.

Trade schools are considered 'stable' for the very reason that they (the schools) specifically communicate with employers for what they want out of a worker. Universities (humanities or otherwise) should do the same thing.

 

[Lord Baal]

Well this in itself brings up another point. First of all, philosophy, from my understanding (I could be wrong) is actually a required undergraduate degree for anyone going to divinity school (as you probably know, this is a professional degree required to become a priest. You can't say that's a useless degree fer christs sake).

So obviously for people wanting to become a priest, a philosophy degree is just as valuable as their graduate degree because it's required just as much. Now on the other hand, for people not wanting to become a priest (which is presumably the kind of people you were referring to) that's quite a different story.

A lot of people are very blunt (and frankly rude as well as misinformed) when they 'philosophy', like most other BA degrees are worthless, we should shut them down'. I don't think we should shut them down, but I do think they need revamping. Everyone says with these degrees they learn critical thinking skills, but personally I think they're not learning them near enough, and I say that as a humanities student myself.

For instance, consider that most English majors end up learning more about Shakespeare than modern, technical writing that could actually be used in a business world. The English programs themselves shouldn't be destroyed, just revamped so they're more relevant for the 21st century.

Trade schools are considered 'stable' for the very reason that they (the schools) specifically communicate with employers for what they want out of a worker. Universities (humanities or otherwise) should do the same thing.

Depending on the university, they sometimes do. I agree it should be done more, but at the same time universities should remain more objective than trade schools. Universities don't exist to get people into the workforce, after all, but simply exist as institutes of learning. If what you're learning ends up getting you a job, great! If not, there are alternatives.

Being Jewish, the requirements required for one to become a priest are completely unknown to me. Of course, I don't have a clue how one goes about becoming a rabbi either, so that probably says more about me than my grandparents' religion.

 

[Quackers]

Is it convenient to be Jewish in this post Mr Baal?

 

[Lord Baal]

Is it convenient to be Jewish in this post Mr Baal?

That's Lord Baal, peasant.

 

[Tahuti]

Universities (humanities or otherwise) should do the same thing.

Except that there are no employers for humanities graduates other than cultural institutes and universities themselves. Companies won't be searching for "Historians" or "Cultural 'scientists'" (scare quotes for psycho-analytic Frankfurter pseudo-science!). They may, however be interested in the skills that were necessary to graduate, but that sort of renders the graduation itself a moot point anyway. Economics and hard science graduates may be of more direct use, but that still misses the point of university education, as Commodore already noted: University isn't about finding employment, but about becoming an academic.

Governments, HR departments and students (but especially their parents) alike all mistake a college degree for being equivalent to intelligence and necessary job skills. That has to change. Making education more about employment will worsen the problem only more.

 

[BvBPL]

Also the "college is so expensive because students want nice things" is a crock to try and shift blame onto the students rather than politicians and administrators. Tuition is going up because a wide majority of states are financially struggling now and as such are tightening higher education budgets which in turn leads schools to raise prices to make up the difference.

David Brancaccio discussed this Sen. Angus King today. King said that there's an arms race for universities to put together the best housing experience for prospective students. They mentioned that students now add "how's the food" to their list of criteria for determining a university. King said that the collegiate experience is now the most luxurious time most students will have in their lives.

Again, I don't think that the housing experience, by itself, is necessarily determinative of the rising cost of education, but it does seem to be indicative. Furthermore, the trend towards asking how the food is, rather than asking how the academics, alumni network, or career services are, plays right into the extend adolescence think.

 

[ParkCungHee]

The Universities here don't have housing, and actually sell dining space, and education costs keep going up.

 

[warpus]

How can a university not have housing? Where do students live?

 

[dutchfire]

For your undergraduate studies, the food is probably more important than most indicators of research quality.

 

[ParkCungHee]

How can a university not have housing? Where do students live?

In Apartments or houses. It's a dense urban center, so we commute.

 

[downtown]

Extended adolescence is merely an effect of the changing economy. .

Yeah, I think this is overall the big reason for this phenomenon. High debt load and low employment prospects even for college graduates will cause them to postpone a lot of the life events or lifestyles that we associate with "maturity".

David Brancaccio discussed this Sen. Angus King today. King said that there's an arms race for universities to put together the best housing experience for prospective students. They mentioned that students now add "how's the food" to their list of criteria for determining a university. King said that the collegiate experience is now the most luxurious time most students will have in their lives.

I think there is a lot of truth to that, but I don't think it necisarrily is a major component of "extended adolescence", nor is it something we can really blame schools for. There is heavy competition among schools to attract students, and it's really impossible to compete 100% on academics, partly because a lot of those distinctions functionally don't matter, and partly because 18 year olds, with our typical K12 training, are in no way qualified to make that distinction. Ideally, they'd compete on price, but competing on facilities, (which are still often useful) makes sense.

People should ask more about career services and alumni networking, but I dunno if a school can set the market demand for that.

And yeah, if you're an undergrad, the quality of local food, location of the school, quality of gyms and campus amenities almost certainly matters more than research quality.