Wall Street protesters: We're in for the long haul

[Admiral Yi]

Yi, do you see similarities with the Occupy guys and the Tea Party movement?

Public demonstrations.

[Admiral Yi]

Ide: how would you feel about changes to the student loan program so that only people in easily marketable majors qualify?  Leave the international human rights, gender studies, and black studies for rich kids.

[garbon]

Ide: how would you feel about changes to the student loan program so that only people in easily marketable majors qualify?  Leave the international human rights, gender studies, and black studies for rich kids.

Perhaps a matrix system that looks at university tier and degree to determine your overall employability after graduation.

[Ed Anger]

Barnes and Nobles needs those art majors to work the registers.

[Admiral Yi]

Barnes and Nobles needs those art majors to work the registers.

I thought they were kaput.

[Ed Anger]

Barnes and Nobles needs those art majors to work the registers.

I thought they were kaput.

You are thinking of Borders.

[DGuller]

Or he's just being a year or two ahead of his time.

[Ed Anger]

Or he's just being a year or two ahead of his time.

The kids who studied puppetry in college are doomed. 

[Ideologue]

The fraud is generally considered worse than the defrauded, however foolish the latter might be; except on the right, where they are celebrated as entrepreneurs.

For a fraud to have occured there had to be a promise by the university that someone with a degree in international human rights would end up with a high paying job.  Do you have any knowledge that any such promise was ever made?

I was not speaking legally.  But, on that front, we'll see how the class action against Cooley, NYLS and others pans out.  I'm not sanguine about the prospects.

The alternative has worked out oh so well in the EU.

The EU's problem is geographical overstretch.  It's comparing apples to a oranges, some of which are diseased.  The American war against taxes was not a good idea.

Ide: how would you feel about changes to the student loan program so that only people in easily marketable majors qualify?  Leave the international human rights, gender studies, and black studies for rich kids.

Well, as I see it, it's not about whether such degrees should be offered at all, but rather that they are offered in numbers that outstrip the demand for graduates of those programs.  Schools need to be less concerned with whether a primary market exists for the degree, and more concerned with the secondary markets for degrees.

So, maybe?

The other problem is the collapse of the public sector coinciding with contraction of the private sector, leading to significant competition even for jobs that involve being shot for a living (I was reading an article yesterday about how even the armed forces have waiting lists).  There is certainly enough for sociologists, administrators, and lawyers () to do, just not a government willing to take on the responsibility of paying for it.

Ultimately, I may be tilting at windmills here.  Garbs might be right.  College degrees may simply be the new H.S.D.s and graduate level education the new associate's, just the basic foundation you need to even engage in the economy.  And perhaps the clock cannot be turned back.  If that's the case, only radically progressive solutions remain.

unless the suggestion is that individuals and their parents are too stupid to make rational decisions for themselves

Of course they are.

Why do you want universities to simply be degree mills where they churn out individuals who will be guaranteed great jobs?

Because at the price, that's what they need to be.

But you do make me pause.  I agree that a liberal arts education can be important for personal self-improvement.  I don't think I'd want to strip gen ed classes out of the cirriculum.  At the same time, it's not like anyone needs a history degree to be educated in history, or an art degree to be educated in art.  Is a history degree an investment or a glorified hobby?  At (let's say) $30,000, it's an expensive hobby.

[Neil]

There is enormous demand for graduates of the liberal arts.  Assorted service jobs will always need to be filled.

[grumbler]

Did they accurately represent that it was a poor investment, indeed a terrible investment? 

Do universities have an obligation to advise students on the "investment" value of their education dollars?  If they do, what makes you think that the university didn't do so?  Charges of fraud seem to me to be hysterical over-reaction.

I'll compromise on mutual fault if it makes you happy,

I am no lawyer, but is mutual fraud even possible?  If the university's half of the fault is due to fraud, what is the student's half?

Methinks you protesteth too much.

[grumbler]

I'm not sure why the only value in a university degree is its supposed potential to make one wonderfully employable.

That's the key, I think.  Once we start to think of education as simply a matter of increasing future employability, we are on our way to trade school universities.

[Admiral Yi]

Shazaam!  I just had a brilliant idea to increase social mobility in the US.

Retroactively remove the tax deductability of donations to universities if one of your children is accepted to that university as a legacy.

[Razgovory]

Yi, do you see similarities with the Occupy guys and the Tea Party movement?

Public demonstrations.

Is that it?

[Admiral Yi]

Is that it?

Human.