university funding / how do your universities work

[grue]

HOWEVER let me just say that even though i dont agree with risb on a theoretical standpoint it is mighty irresponsible to lure students into dead-end Gender Studies courses on the promise of a Revolutionary Tomorrow and then kicking them to the curb once the course is done and the tuition is payed. it's borderline scummy how some social studies courses are run, and even if the subject matter is interesting/important, it is rarely advertised as education for education's sake, and it's mostly syphoning money and CV into the pockets of a select few that took the teaching and research jobs to begin with.

within this particular reality it's fair game to point to the validity of these courses BUT and that's where i distance myself here, it's a problem that shouldnt be adressed by a) removing education-for-education courses/research from college altogether and b) glorifying the technocratic line of thought that aims to use education as a means to prepare high-skilled but low-divergent students for work.

[risbolla]

idk about psychology but in extreme example can u say in all honesty u think its fine if someone will study professional medicine for 6 yrs nd then not work with a medical profession ? cos in my eye this is ridiculous waste of resources when he has not only took alot of the school resources that is needed for a medical education but also deny highly desired tuition from a student maybe will have used his education in a professional way ! can u explain how u think education in itself is valuable if its not applied in a constructive way,,,,,from how u say it in ur opinion are ppl with better education also ''better'' ppl if i understand u right

[Zomber_Jesus]

Nicely said, Grue. I find it disturbing when people instantly dismiss some areas as worthless. It's outright dehumanizing to portray people who study art history or anthropology as opportunistic slobs who go through with their education due to nothing but laziness and a will to exploit others. No being possesed of motivation or self respect would ever take that line.
Also, the view that education is only there to turn people into benefits for their community is one that I haven't really encountered a lot. Are you saying that people who study medicine should be forced into medical proffesions or that people who get a degree in it and go "nah, imma be a babysitter" are a legitimate problem?

[grue]

if they are coming into the course with that understanding, i dont see the problem. the problem that i see is people going into courses with the expectation of becoming professionals at something, and then not getting that realized because it's impossible.

many people start out as something and move on to something else - how many doctors turned writers, politicians, businessmen or moved to a different field entirely? how many people start out the course only to find that it isn't for them, and end up dropping out? how many people simply fail? the problem with your argument isn't the fact that people would do that - I happen to believe that very few people would go through a highly demanding 6 years course to just drop it at the end, it doesn't make much sense - but that currently, the people who Can do that are the people with the financial and social conditions to do so. it doesnt sound fair to me that only the rich get to do that, why should the poor take the burden of waste management while the rich just do what they want? and for no better reason than cutting out other people from the course who weren't quite as high up in the ladder as everyone else was, but they may be twice as enthusiastic. who knows?

as for resource management, it can happen, one thing does not exclude the other. like i said, minimum requirements must be met (for example, in medicine, you shouldnt come in without solid knowledge in biology etc). and courses have stages, right? first year is theory stuff. you dont really waste resources other than a seat and textbooks. is it the teaching? again, being demanding allows you to weed out the lazy and/or incapable. you could end up with one or two students who are just there for no reason, but really, how long would they hold out? and at that point, wdoes it really impact that much?

i dont think it would. i think the stratification in access does nothing but create pointless elitism.

[fat lesbian]

grue so ur saying something like seven free years and then you have to pay? what if someone is in a discipline that would require a doctorate but has work/kids/other obligations that prevent them from taking like 25 credit hours a semester and they can't get it done in 7 years? is there an exception for people who take less credits or is it a better idea to have x many credits for free rather than x many years

[fat lesbian]

also if you're doing testing straight from school to weed people out what about people who wait before going to college after school? would you allow them to take refresher classes before subjecting them to these tests? the idea of testing and getting a minimum grade to qualify for a field is not a good one the class material/failing the first round of classes should be what weeds out people initially

[grue]

nah testing is p common for example in art schools, where you prove meeting basic requirements, and you can do that anytime you apply. it's like, you wanna seek a higher education in music, but you can barely tell a guitar from a lute, so go learn that before taking up something higher. i think it's reasonable to expect your first year students to have a grasp on the basic concepts that you're gonna use.

as for the 7 years thing i just threw the number out ther idk but there are good reasons for asking you to finish the course within a limited timeframe, if only because of the relevance of your studies - if you start studying medicine today, your basic lessons may not be applicable ten years down the line, for example. i guess the demands would be on a course-by-course basis? anthropology is much slower than engineering for example. and adapting it to the time you can dedicate to your course sounds fine. but it's good, i think, at least speaking for myself, to have a timeframe, setting goals and saying "ok this is what you must do to achieve x, and you need y ammount of time".

[Zomber_Jesus]

On that note; since I guess most of us agree that simple numerical test scores aren't the ideal way of deciding who gets in and who doesn't, what substitutes do you think would do a better job? My university has a pretty cool approach. Because it's an art school, during the final stage after portfolio selection the exam is divided into two days for making a piece and one day for interviews. The interview is constantly emphasised as the most important part of the whole thing, yet when you get to it it turns out that you're the one who's supposed to be asking the questions. The reason why I like it as a twist is that sometime during the two days you get for making something, a professor will aproach you without warning and start chatting to you, making that the effective interview.
This accomplishes a couple of things I think are neat:
1. It makes sure you're authentic and unprotected during the interview
2. It shows how well you do under unexpected pressure
3. The jury can judge you based on your reaction and question when you learn that they pulled a fast one on you

Obviously this wouldn't work for medicine, but as far as art schools go it's top notch in my oppinion

[fat lesbian]

well yeah grue but that's not what im asking. im saying that if students need refresher courses to meet that minimum requirement how do those fit in your plan
i still think credit based is better than time based. if you want it to depend on field that's fine but not everyone can be a full time student free or not

[grue]

I dont know, hand out the info they need through bibliography and stuff? our current system of national exams + specific tests (for the arts) sounds fine to me, anyone can sign up for highschool (day or night schedules) and take the exam as an adult student

[fat lesbian]

im not talking about the arts though im talking about things you actually have to know stuff for ie stem fields

[Ben]

let us also not ignore that credit based and time based are not necessarily different- you could easily take grue's argument and say "okay so instead of, you have 8 years taking 20 credits/year, you now have 160 credits. if you have used up your credits dawdling and havent fulfilled the requirements of your major then we consider this a problem". in this way, niki's concern that you need to slow down for personal reasons is addressed as long as theyre focused well enough on the object and have the stamina for it (im not saying this is a solution id enact personally, just thinkin along the lines of you people discussing it) (note: by the time i finished writing this, niki said essentially this i think but im not gonna delete it)

i think another thing not being mentioned with respect to art degrees is that, it is very true that those more abstract things are just as important and hold different, not lesser, value to us- but i also think that it is simply much harder to have an autodidactical career in engineering than it is to have one in the arts. im talking very specifically about studio art, writing, film, etc. i would go as far as to say that academia as an institution can strangle beauty and individuality and creativity in a way that would be unhealthy to people whose focus is these things. my reticence to give them the same ground comes from this discrepancy

grue makes a good point about people "wasting" their education- we want people to be educated, whether they choose to fix cars with it or be an actor or jump off a cliff in the end.

i think the issue that he is touching on is that, if an education really is this 4, 6, 8-year thing and you stop in the middle of it... what does that make you? arent the "degrees" defined by the completion of these requirements? are we funding you (in this scenario where university is funded publicly) to not accomplish? i mean, the economic idea here is just risk, right. you take a risk investing in these people so that they will produce something for society (be it art, engineering, teaching, a finely tuned automobile, a rad cliff jump) or for themselves. if they go "actually i was just here because i was pressured so im leaving" or "actually i was here to learn something that lead nowhere" or "actually im literally incapable of accomplishing what is necessary" and leave... then there is an issue that would not necessarily be detectable by whatever entrance conditions are in place

[grue]

im not talking about the arts though im talking about things you actually have to know stuff for ie stem fields

yeah school sounds like the way to do that, then

adult courses and whatnot

[fat lesbian]

yeah, thats kind of what i was going for. you're allotted a certain amount of credits and if you don't finish your program within that amount of credits, you pay out of pocket. it just seems like it makes more sense to me than a time based thing. someone who works full time just really cant pull more than 12-18 credits a semester and make it work with their work schedule and i don't think that means they should be denied education, which would happen if you were to do the whole "get your degree in x amount of years based on how many credit hours i feel you should be taking"

i think that like. maybe he has a point for fields like medicine? in that the field can change while you're in school. but then again he kind of doesnt... current doctors also need training and education in recent changes relevant to medicine.

and ben i guess you could say its "harder" to have a career in engineering but it isnt really an easy/hard dichotomy that only applies to arts and stem. certain stem fields are WAY harder than others. is it the same level of difficulty to do astrophysics than it is to do like... computer science? throw them into a differential equations class and let me know. thats fair about academia as an institution stifling any real creativity but is that a problem with the fields themselves or does academia need to be reformed along those (and like, tons of other) lines? id say probably the latter

i don't think any education is necessarily wasted. idk if this is true or not but dont art students still have to take gen ed shit? like every university requires at least a calculus class for like every degree i think so they're still smarter for it.

i guess if you stop in the middle you could just owe some restitution? idk how to really deal with that. is it someone just quitting to quit? or was there a legitimate life event that caused it? it would have to be situational to be at all ethical imo. if someone got into a bad car accident and was no longer able to attend school or had to miss a very significant portion for example its not ok to penalize them for that

[fat lesbian]

im not talking about the arts though im talking about things you actually have to know stuff for ie stem fields

yeah school sounds like the way to do that, then

adult courses and whatnot

mmm now that i think about it i think thats where community colleges vs universities come in 
bc like what im doing is doing all the transfer credits (and getting an associates degree at the same time bc im smart and broke lol) for university of michigans astrophysics program bc its WAY cheaper to do it here