university funding / how do your universities work

[Ben]

i was THINKING today about a common political promise- free college. i thought- a cool idea, but maybe there should be a requirement (scores or what-have-you) to make sure not just aaaanyone can take government money and going to college? or is that what a college application is for? but would colleges relax their requirements so that more people get in and fuel them, knowing it's government backed and they arent necessarily taking a risk? what interested me is my answer is usually, look to examples- and i heard that canada works this way (something like, < 125k income families can get it free) but i didnt know exactly how it worked

so tell me, canadians and yoo-rops in particular, how does your "university" work? you probably have both public and private universities- what proportions are they to the total population of universities? what do you know about your university system? what is your own specific university experience (if any)? was it "worth" it? would it have been worth it under some other conditions?


do you believe that a college education should be guaranteed by the government? what stipulations would you have in place? what do you think of a college education in general?

[Ben]

for me-

my experience was in completing a four year degree at a public university. it was paid for in part by me, in part by scholarships, and in part by aid provided by the university (a public loan through the government, essentially). this means that approximately 0% of my school was just granted to me (i had to do well/qualify for the scholarships, work a job to pay my own money, and im required to pay back the loans given to me in some time) and, more or less, im kind of okay with that. i do not come from an upper class family

in the US, as is typical of our federalist system, "public" means part of the state. there arent really public federal universities, are there? maybe military ones. anyway- a lot of private universities in the US are for-profit, religious, or otherwise scams. many of the very high class and well known universities are also private, though (and very expensive). there are about three times as many private as public, though honestly i bet a bulk of the private falls under the "agenda-driven" or "scam" category

i felt like my education in particular was good and relevant (i studied astronomy) but i can easily see the arguments hidden in jokes about liberal arts majors and so on. it may be a cynical part of me, but i wonder if people will take advantage of a free education in order to pursue things because they can rather than because they have a conviction. i definitely met many people that did not take advantage of their time at all and i makes me wince to think about it

as for the political aspect- like i said, i think that it would be great if there was more support for highly academic, substantive students to be granted scholarships or funding. of course, this is already in place- people who do incredibly well are already getting into college and being paid for but im talking about lowering the bar a little. im usually a "stop throwing money at things" person, but as far as throwing money at things go, i think that nurturing this stuff is pretty worthwhile. i understand that academia is an Institution and breeds all kind of weird shit but, that is hardly always bad

[fat lesbian]

why shouldn't "just anyone" be allowed to get an education ben

[fat lesbian]

also did you not get pell grants? weird. and you said yourself there's already no shortage of people wasting their time or having a stupid major just because they have money to throw away. i doubt making education accessible would change that either way.

[Ben]

why shouldn't "just anyone" be allowed to get an education ben

from my perspective- it's because if you make everything equal, it means nothing to have accomplished something. im not interested in arguing this point, really, mostly because its a gut feeling that im still thinking about here and there and am not ready to defend it fervently. if you try to argue it with me i will not respond.

also did you not get pell grants? weird. and you said yourself there's already no shortage of people wasting their time or having a stupid major just because they have money to throw away. i doubt making education accessible would change that either way.

i think i may have for the first year but they dropped off, i had a weird relationship with the aid office and i dont consider it necessary or interesting to give the details but yes thats an example of something that isn't necessarily dependent on academic excellence (though obviously they wont renew it if you start to suck)

"i definitely met people" =/= "there is no shortage of people". there were some and that made me sad. i worry that there would be many more. how do i know there will be? i dont, and thats why i called myself cynical for saying as much. i think that it is common sense that making something easier to do means that more people will do it

[risbolla]

there no private college in this socialist democratic paradise wish is the constitutional monarchy of norway !! there funded on tax payer mony nd basically no tution fees nd u get scholarship nd super reasonable loans for up to 8 year of higher education,,,,,,,in result u have tons of scum fuck students piling up useless masters degrees in social scineses living as welfare queens

[risbolla]

the good shit u can study like medicine theres smth like 10 times as many applicants as theres positions for students cos this kind of education is costly nd its cheaper to import doctors from developing countrys,,,,,,classic explodation of the less fortunate nations !! neway its still good solution for ppl how want to get higher education but if ur serious about getting higher education u should also be able to put ur financical security on the line as a trade so u cant study garbage that wont get u a real job it would get rid of alot of the parasite so called ''students'' from the schools

[fat lesbian]

you don't have to respond but the idea of education having to be something one "accomplishes" and not something that should be accessible to everyone to better themselves and everyone around them is a supremely fucked up one and a symptom of a supremely fucked up system of higher education and academia. people who are lucky enough to be able to go to college aren't better people and haven't accomplished more than people who can't. you have to be really insecure to feel like education being openly accessible somehow invalidates what you've done.

i don't think the proportion of people wasting time on useless degrees would be any higher even if every person in the country went to college. there are just as many people who would want to get into stem fields or teaching or other things considered more practical but can't afford the degrees as they are people who would want to do like. art history or some shit. id say there's probably MORE people who want to get into stem but can't afford it than want to get into liberal arts and can't afford it due to the historic tendency of art and education and analysis surrounding it being unavailable to the working class while stem fields offer careers that could drastically improve their lives

[fat lesbian]

also risbolla ppl do that here. i live 20 minutes from one of the best medical schools in the county and the second best dental school in the world n there are tons of ppl who are paying out the ass for stupid art degrees

[risbolla]

mmmm its mony from there own pocket in that case not mony from tax payer but maybe ur right that ppl will do higher education for smth like self fulfilment nd thats hard to put a mony value on from sococonomic pov ! for me i think education has more with career qualifications thats much more easy to put mony value on but maybe society also is responsible to make sure all ppl have opportunitys for self actualizing,,,,,,even if its by doing 8 years of there potential work life on tax payer bill for a degree that wont get them a job ? but than where do u draw the line at what point is ppls opportunity to better themselfs to costly for society

[risbolla]

oops typo meant ''socioeconomic'' hehe

[fat lesbian]

not necessarily. people who get grants and federal loans will still get shit art degrees

[fat lesbian]

the possible solution is to increase student aid based on field but then there comes the inherent ethical problems with trying to ascribe value to fields that are equally valuable but in different ways. like an arts degree won't get you much as a career but art is very valuable culturally to society so one can't necessarily call it "less valuable" than a stem degree just bc the value lies somewhere else

[risbolla]

agree cultures important to societys but cultures alot more then arts nd entertainment nd bye enlarge culture will develop itself especailly the type of culture everyday ppl like myself get exposed to so u dont need highly educated culture experts to i guess ''make'' culture ! i know only few example of this like many years back their was seatbelt campaign from norwegian public roads administration thats was a highly succesful in making ppl wear seatbelts,,,,,,but this cultural shift was planned nd put into action by technicians nd civil engineers in the npra ? i think if u want to make a positive cultural change in ppls behaviors first of all u must know whats a real cultural problem nd have a clear method to influence this culture.but i think u learn about culture most of all from being the part of a culture urself not so much a thing u can learn in school but someone whos been in a ''culture school'' i guess must have to disagree with that

[grue]

we have a balance between private and public universities. but only like one or two "true private" universities are any good. most of them are just places where you can buy your degree with a lot of money, and they are funded on tuition money and deals with companies.

the real challenge is at public and semi-public universities. those provide the best courses and teaching. the funding is through taxes, tuition and also deals with companies (sponsorships investments etc). all of this alongside your standard conferences/publishing cash cows. recently there has been a push to turn faculties into foundations, because that would open the legal ground for donations by special interests which has its advantages and disadvantages.

the major advantage of going into public university is the quality, of course, those are the best courses in like 95% of times (shit like MBA's being the exception) and the reduced tuition. it used to be 100% free likee 20 years ago but they pushed the tuition and won despite major nation-wide, sometimes violent, protests. it's still considerably cheap, depending on the course and university. my phd, for example, is incredibly cheap, im paying 1.2k € a year, which is just a little over the standard tuition for majors. there are many other price lines, though, ascending to the 10k or more in some cases, depending on a variety of factors.

we have a minimum schooling requirement for all the population. it used to be 9th grade but it's 11th grade right now i think. if you want to go to college you need to go through school first, that's mandatory, and then there are national exams at specific disciplines to access courses - ie you wanna enroll in medicine, you need to have a very high grade in biology and chemistry (i think). there's an average between your school grades and your exam grade, and entry is determined by that, meaning that if you don't score high enough you fall below the cut and you won't make it in.

there is always room for everyone but obviously the highes sought courses will be much more difficult to enroll in. for example, though i had a very high grade coming in, anthropology in my year had people coming in with 10s (out of 20, barely failing the minimum requirements of 9.5), and because noone cares about this subject it didnt even meet the minimum quorum.

needless to say a lot of these people don't make it through to the end, or they major with a very low grade which means they will never ammount to anything on that job line.

ideally i would remove quotas altogether. i think you should enroll in whatever course you want, provided you meet some minimum requirements. i dont feel it's right that you're cut off from your passion just because you scored 18,67 rather than 18,69. I also feel like university should be challenging, I feel like professors are often pressured to be lenient on their students in fear of losing them to other courses - classes under 12(?) students or something may lose the justification to exist at all., leading professors to paint them in a better light so that students dont give up.

so ideally imo college should be free and unrestricted in entry. courses administered and judged internally by scientific consensus and under a plan for the university ethos, and then attendance could be an extra factor but not necessarily. being admitted into a course isnt having a free pass to finish it, though, and there are minimum requirements added on top of schooling to weed out the lazy (but not a limited NUMBER, is what im saying). and i guess for economy sake, free attendance could be limited in time? say you have like 7 years of free college, after that you'll pay tuition. so you finish your course free of charge, if you wanna enroll again while working that's fine but now you pay.

also i dont agree with risbolla at all. incidentally i also dont see university as a "prepare yourself for work" phase where you'r honing skills. i mean, it can be that surely, but also education is a value itself. go major in psychology and then end up serving tables, i dont see a problem with that, work is work and being surrounded by educated people makes for a better society

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this is all excluding the research part of uni, people often jumble the two together but it's a speparate thing with its own distinct internal workings and funding