Thread: The prize for education

For profit colleges and universities in the US are striking more and more attention of charging extremely high fees for average or poor education that doesn't qualify for high level paid jobs.

Frontline about for profit colleges

>Even in lean times, the $400 billion business of higher education is booming. Nowhere is this more true than in one of the fastest-growing -- and most controversial -- sectors of the industry: for-profit colleges and universities that cater to non-traditional students, often confer degrees over the Internet, and, along the way, successfully capture billions of federal financial aid dollars.

>Graduates of another for-profit school -- a college nursing program in California -- tell FRONTLINE that they received their diplomas without ever setting foot in a hospital. Graduates at other for-profit schools report being unable to find a job, or make their student loan payments, because their degree was perceived to be of little worth by prospective employers. One woman who enrolled in a for-profit doctorate program in Dallas later learned that the school never acquired the proper accreditation she would need to get the job she trained for. She is now sinking in over $200,000 in student debt.

After some negative news, colleges and universites started a program of positive PR to hide the disaster of the private educational system.

Guest Post: For-Profit Colleges Are Spending Millions to Sow Confusion and Fear

For-Profit Schools Whistle Blower Tells Tales

>She also provided examples of some of these allegedly dubious placements. These include:

>A Game Art and Design Bachelor’s Student (one who learns how to create video games) with 100K in student debt is working at Toys R Us in the video game department earning $8.90 an hour. I was told to “place” him as employed in his field because his work was with video games. "He needs to know the knowledge he learned to be able to help his customers decide which games to purchase."

>I had Graphic Design students working in places like Starbucks whom were expected to agree they were using their ‘skills learned’ within their employment by making signs for daily specials and menus.

>A co-worker had a Residential Planning Graduate who was working in a gas station convenience store. He was expected to convince her that she was ‘using her skills’ by arranging the displays of candy bars!

People in the US should really think about why they should support this system that will burden with high costs for centuries of their lifetime when there's no guarantee today anymore to get a high paid job in the current economic situtation.
Europe for example, is the opposite example. You get high education for free and can benefit from the reputation as well...



tl;dr :

Hurr, murrican idiots paying too much money for shitty education that doesn't pay off.

I don't even know if such a study has been done in the UK. Either way there are still way too many mickey mouse courses in UK universities.

Also the Labour government really fucked over our education system by giving all the power to the kids, instilling a liberal ideology whereby there are no bad or problem kids, just kids who need to express themselves in different ways or have special needs (which in turn brings in extra funding for the school board, which in turn leads to unnecessary labelling). Lowering test standards, creating vocational subjects with no substance (like skate boarding) that carry the same weight in terms of GCSE grades as a real academic subject. Meanwhile literacy and numeracy rates are plummeting.

All so that they can cook the books and turn to the idiots in the leftist media and say: "Look at our results. Everybody in education and doing well. GREAT SUCCESS!"

Hmmmm, sounds pretty close to the US method.

you have your success stories and your failure stories. It really depends not only on the college but what degree you get, what other experience you have, who you know, as well as what period of time.

I have friends who are still working as a waiter despite having a bachelor's degree. I have other friends who made figures starting at 70K. Both went to the same school.

I take those studies as a grain of salt. Probably the worse part is the price of tuition in constantly rising for many different factors. They can charge outrageous prices cause of their reputation, their high demand, and of course... cause everyone else is raising prices too! 40 years ago, a good education cost maybe about 15K max per year. Now, it can go all the way up to 65K per year. I'm scared to think what another 10 years would do.

Education in the US is as ridiculous as healthcare... it keeps rising but the quality isn't rising proportionally.

Do costs rise above inflation?

tuition is definitely not proportional to quality of education. but part of what you pay for when you go to a well known school is image and status. people would rather introduce themselves as harvard graduates than tell everyone they went to a state school. part of that image is associating with a certain type of people as well, not just anybody can get into those top schools.

Originally Posted by 98abaile

Do costs rise above inflation?

exponentially.

This reminds me of some friends I met last semester. 2 Americans and 2 Scandinavians.

One of the American guys had all his costs paid by her parents, because they had, apparently, a lot of money. The other one, had a rather tough economic situation, but he really wanted to come to Japan. He received a grant from the American government, but that wasn't nearly enough to stay in Japan for 6 months. So, he had to apply for a loan. In addition to that one, he told me he also had several other loans in order to be able to pay his tuition in the US, and that he thought it'd be rather hard to repay these loans once he started working. The funny thing is, the Japanese government tends to give some foreign students a rather good scholarship and many of these are given to American students, yet none of their Universities helped them to get it (and this is something they couldn't do on their own, since it is required for the University to request it for them).

On the opposite side were the Scandinavian guys. One was a girl from Sweden and another was a guy from Finland. Both of them were receiving money for tuition from their respective governments (which they don't have to pay back) and, in addition to that, their Universities requested the Japanese scholarship for them. So, they seriously weren't lacking money. In fact, they had even money to spare. Funny enough, none of them seemed to like wasting their money.

I should probably try to learn one Scandinavian language, but fuck... I'm too old.

There are a lot of mismatched, often years too late, in the education offer and the actual job demand availability in my country. Even one need to pursue education oversea if they want to further their study in a certain course, and not anyone can afford that. Of course, there are scholarship schemes if you know where and which government agencies to get it from, and the catch from these are to have a 3 to 5 years of bond -- these people have to work for them for that period once they complete their education. As for the rest that stay in the country and going for the civil services, education, luck and connection is the magic ingredient. There was once an article in the local newspaper years ago for those vying for a place in the government jobs titled: It's not what you know, it's who you know.

in my experience, companies go to reputable schools for recruiting - i'd say it'd be infinitely harder getting a job without a diploma than with one. so in that respect, the tuition is worth it. also, it's a good time to get to know a bunch of people (something i didn't really do myself)