8 ms·

A twenty-year professor on starting college this fall: Don’t

141 points by ege_erdogan 6y ago

skybrian 6y ago
I'm not sure this fall would be a great time to work on a political campaign either, since you might not want to be meeting a lot of people in person. I guess you could improve your phone and video conferencing skills, though? Giving online courses a try seems like a good idea.
yial 6y ago
I think this is a great article, however, I think a more tempered approach may be to take online courses from a community college or similar to begin working on at least some gen eds. This frees you up to do some of these other things that article suggests, while still getting credits under your belt.
- kevindong 6y ago
  It's important to note that some colleges restrict the number of credits you can take/earn during the time between high school graduation and college matriculation. My alma mater, Purdue, permits incoming freshmen to take a gap year (but not purely due to Coronavirus [0]). During that year, the would-be freshmen may not take >=12 credit hours of courses or else their admission will be rescinded and the freshmen would be required to reapply as a transfer student [1]. [0]: https://admissions.purdue.edu/faq/ https://admissions.purdue.edu/faq/ [1]: https://www.admissions.purdue.edu/gapyear/index.php https://www.admissions.purdue.edu/gapyear/index.php
  - Robotbeat 6y ago
    Behavior like this and the for-credit/not-for-credit distinction (for the same class!) is some rent-seeking, power-imbalance nonsense. I hope we figure out a better way.
    - soared 6y ago
      I would disagree. If you were accepted, but then had significant changes to your application you should reapply. It makes sense that an acceptance is good for 3 months, and then you’ll need to reapply after that. If you went to a new school, the reapplication process is different.
  - sys_64738 6y ago
    Pick a better college than this one then. There are plenty.
zdragnar 6y ago
I generally detest the large expense of universities given the difference between what they claim to offer and the actual value. That said, the options here seem to not be any better. Get a job? Fresh out of high school kidd are going to have a hard time finding gainful employment for awhile, especially in the hardest hit areas. Volunteer for a political campaign? Meh. That isn't much of a substitute, even if it has its own intrinsic value. Why not encourage kids to instead look for schools that have been doing distance learning for years, or starting at a local community college instead? Its a heck of a lot less expensive (addressing the articles risk of investment point) and they are far less likely to take the money you ponied up for dormitory living while kicking you out.
- ryanmarsh 6y ago
  Get a job? Fresh out of high school kidd are going to have a hard time finding gainful employment In software I feel a strong guild/apprenticeship program could solve this.
  - milquetoastaf 6y ago
    The open source community serves as an ad hoc application of the apprenticeship / guild concept. I have some friends who don't have college degrees but have been hired due to their demonstrable and attested technical skill in serious FOSS projects
    - bosie 6y ago
      Wouldn't working on FOSS projects be closer to an internship rather than apprenticeship? Are they really being mentored and taught while working on the FOSS projects?
      - milquetoastaf 6y ago
        Depends on the project but a lot of times yes, especially if there's a large community
      - 6y ago
xwdv 6y ago
Yup, and if you are already in college don’t enroll in new classes until at least 2021 if you can freeze tuition. It is such a ripoff to be paying for world class education and end up with some basic online courses tossed together in a hurry due to a pandemic. Not to mention missing out on the social networking aspects that college life brings.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
thih9 6y ago
If people follow that, colleges might decide to lower the entry requirements and the amount of students who join this year might be similar to the usual amount. Perhaps a better approach would be to plan safe working conditions instead.
- downerending 6y ago
  If their money is green, you can bet that this will happen.
glofish 6y ago
perhaps a little bit premature advice college students are not at risk to begin with - I'd recommend waiting closer to mid summer it might be the best time to attend college, fewer people enrolled, getting more attention from educators etc
- icedchai 6y ago
  Professors, faculty, and parents are at risk, though. If corona infects a dorm it will rip through like wildfire. You'll have 100's of asymptomatic carriers overnight. Then they go home for break...
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    And staff, likely the largest cohort. And least privileged.
- scott_s 6y ago
  Everyone is at risk from Covid-19. Younger people are at less risk, but they are still at risk, both from suffering a severe case, and from death.
  - glofish 6y ago
    As of April 17, in the age group of 15-24, 13 deaths were attributable to COVID-19, 37 to influenza. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/ https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/ If you are a college student the risk of dying of alcohol poisoning is higher than of COVID-19.
    - scott_s 6y ago
      If school was back in session, that number would probably be much higher. Remember, these are the numbers with the most massive pause on our economy and society that we’ve seen in our lifetime. Young people are not immune.
      - 6y ago
unethical_ban 6y ago
What are the practical, social negatives of this? Will in-demand schools hold a grudge on the thousands or more of students they would have liked to have in fall 2020 and skipped? "You weren't there for us in 2020 so we think you're better off elsewhere." Not that any university should behave this way; I'm asking if any quality ones would be.
- downerending 6y ago
  No. In 2020, students entirely have the upper hand. Colleges can no longer grow and shrink their classes according to the suitability of students. Their finances are dire. (In principle, the rich ones like Harvard could, but they won't either. Falling enrollments just wouldn't look good.)
- krastanov 6y ago
  Large bureaucracies do not have the agency to act in such a childish way.
- chadlavi 6y ago
  No for-profit university will turn away someone they think can pay, and especially not someone who looks like they might turn into a rich donor in the future.
downerending 6y ago
Arguing in the other direction, if you mainly just need the sheepskin, this might be an unusually easy time to get one. Personally, my college experience was mainly useful for discovering that my college experience wasn't going to be very useful for me. (Mildly interesting: The author seems to be this woman. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/02/17/la-verne-seeks-terminate-gadfly-professor-allegedly-threatening-assassinate https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/02/17/la-verne-seek...)
- gentleman11 6y ago
  She’s been run out of her job for political reasons using the excuse she used the term “assassinate” instead of “fire” to describe getting rid of somebody. It’s childish and the school should be liable for slander at this point
  - baud147258 6y ago
    It was a character assassination on the school's part
    - downerending 6y ago
      I see what you did there.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  That article was Tiger-King-esque in that by the end of it I hated pretty much all the characters involved.
- gumby 6y ago
  > , if you mainly just need the sheepskin, this might be an unusually easy time to get one. It’s a good point: this year and next will have an unusually high percentage of pass/fail options, but networking will be quite restricted.
  - 500-degrees 6y ago
Hydraulix989 6y ago
By the time it is fall, this professor's advice will be obsolete. The death rate is already slowing down in NYC and Italy. The curve is flattened in South Korea and China, and there, many are going outside to cafes and the Han River park. San Francisco has had a grand total of 20 deaths. US is already planning to gradually reopen the economy.
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  On the contrary: Reopening before the test and trace infrastructure (like South Korea’s) is in place is likely to cause another wave right about the time when the Fall Semester is starting..
  - Hydraulix989 6y ago
    That sounds like pure speculation. We should be relying on data, instead of fear, for motivating our decisions.
    - Robotbeat 6y ago
      not pure speculation. There's historical precedence in the Spanish Flu for a resurgence of the disease after social distancing orders are ended too early.
      - Hydraulix989 6y ago
        We were already discussing this in the cousin thread. As feedback, I would feel safer if you used the name "1918 Pandemic" rather than naming viruses where they might have came from. I have personally seen and been targeted by daily overt acts of aggression (in San Francisco, no less) because of these kinds of false associations.
        Robotbeat 6y ago
        I'm aware of that, and if there were a risk of acts of hatred against Spanish folk by me using that name today, I'd agree, however we're talking about a pandemic that spanned 1918 and 1919, with the second wave in 1919. Using "Spanish Flu" is, however, clear and well understood. On the topic of how geographic disease names have often been used in racist or at least nationalistic ways, check out this hilarious map of the geographic distribution of names for "syphilis": https://digg.com/2017/syphilis-name-map https://digg.com/2017/syphilis-name-map
frankbreetz 6y ago
As a millennial college graduate, my number one piece of advice to college bound high schoolers is do the first two years at community college. The debt is not worth the experience. Most people spend the first two years figuring stuff out, community college is a great place to do that. I didn't even know this was an option until after college and I feel failed by my high school college advisors. Unless you are very confident in what you want to do and get into a very good college you don't think you can get into again, get a full ride, or have ridiculously rich parents, go to community college. Edit: perhaps full ride is too strict a requirement. If you can save money by going to community college, taking into account lost scholarships, you should go to community college.
- wikibob 6y ago
  Disagree. Graduation rates are drastically lower from community colleges. There is vastly less academic support available. The people around you will be vastly less ambitious. This will rub off on you. Yes 4 year university is now overpriced in America. But if you can, go to a 4 year university. Yes maybe go to an in-state university instead of out of state if that is cheaper, or go where you get the best financial aid.
  - RHSeeger 6y ago
    Also, make sure that the college(s) you want to go to have a plan in place to accept transfers from the one you want to start at. It does you no good to get two years under your belt at college A in preparation for college B, then find out college B is going to make you start over because the credits don't transfer. Also, how hard is it to get a spot in college B as a transfer from college A. You should know this going in.
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    What exactly is the negative consequence you are envisioning from 2 years at community college and 2 years at your in-state 4-year school, vs. all four years at the latter? The typical alternative that people need to be guided away from is one of the for-profit "career" schools that doesn't have transferable credits and is way more expensive than community college.
collegeburner 6y ago
I'm looking at college this fall and seriously wondering about this. I'll have to spend a lot of money if I go to an "elite" school, and the point of doing that is to make connections with my peers and with professors. I don't see the point of paying that kind of money for that sort of experience. That aside, not starting college may not be a good idea, either. Does anyone with more experience have advice on this? I do have a job at a cybersecurity firm where I'm a part-time developer, and my boss would probably convert me to full-time. I've also been working on some interesting side projects to learn stuff and could continue self-teaching. Does anyone with more experience have some advice for me?
- benkuhn 6y ago
  I think this depends a lot on what peers you have access to through your work and whether you'd expect them to be comparably awesome (both in their competence and the depth of relationship you're able to build with them) to whoever you'd meet in college. Even if you do decide to go to college, I think you'd get a lot more out of it after having worked in the real world for some amount of time--in college it really helps to be good at deciding what to spend your time on, and exposure to what non-college life is like will help a lot with that. I know lots of people who got a ton out of gap years and no one who regrets it. (I wrote more advice here: https://www.benkuhn.net/college/ https://www.benkuhn.net/college/ )
- technicaldonut 6y ago
  This really depends on why you want to go to university. Is it just for the knowledge and nothing else? Save the money and self learn. Since you specifically mentioned developer, you can take a look here https://ossu.firebaseapp.com/#/curriculum https://ossu.firebaseapp.com/#/curriculum I've looked at and talked to a lot of different people at different universities in comp sci bachelors. For the most part the curriculum is the same. What sets some schools apart are what you do on the side and general academic environment. Some people might say that going to university just for the sake of a degree might be a waste, but again this depends on you and your circumstances. There are companies that only hire people with a degree. It's a stupid way to make a hiring decision, but here we are. I've actually just finished my masters degree in info systems and can definitely understand your thought process. Let me know if you have any other questions. More than happy to help.
einpoklum 6y ago
> Don’t like any candidates? Then get engaged in issue activism. Recommendations to be politically active regardless of the cause and position sound rather vacuous. Or rather - sound like someone has an opinion, but not the guts to voice their opinion. Anyway, the main problem is the debt issue. If students going into the first year of University (or "college") did not have to pay for it, it wouldn't be such a gamble. So, here's the political cause to pursue: * Occupy your university campuses, state parliaments and governors' offices, together with existing and other incoming students, to * Demand tuition-free higher education and free/discounted housing for students, in both "private" and state/federal-state-owned institutions, effective immediately. And let the federal government do some "quantitative easing" to pay for that - which they seem to have no problem doing ten times over to cover the financiers' losses. Even in regular times, this is not an outlandish demand and not even revolutionary; it's a meaningful but not earth-shattering reform. In these times and with the Corona crisis it is closer than usual to achievability, especially w.r.t. the potential of mobilizing students. PS - If organized labor in the US had not been so week, an alliance on common demands would have been quite relevant, but at the moment it's not a realistic recommendation.
- baggy_trough 6y ago
  Far too many people go to college as it is. More subsidies to go to college only make that problem worse.
  - einpoklum 6y ago
    1. These are (mostly) independent issues. Many countries have free universities, but not many of them. 2. I don't know what US colleges are like; but - higher education is to a great extent its own rewards. Of course, if you're doing it for the diploma and the chance to score a better job, then it's a different kettle of fish.
stevespang 6y ago
University of La Verne puts professor on unpaid leave for alleged threat against colleague 11-26-19 https://www.dailybulletin.com/2020/02/21/university-of-la-verne-puts-professor-on-unpaid-leave-for-alleged-threat-against-colleague/ https://www.dailybulletin.com/2020/02/21/university-of-la-ve...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
chadlavi 6y ago
This seems pretty out of touch. Encouraging people to go right into the jobs market as 18yos without degrees is encouraging them to trap themselves at the (already rapidly expanding) bottom of the economic ladder, unless they're from an already upper/upper-middle-class family. And the same goes double for encouraging degreeless 18yos to skip getting paid entirely and volunteer. That's rich kid stuff.
- jseliger 6y ago
  Most schools will allow you to defer for a year. Consider taking them up on it. And if they won’t let you, well, a school that admitted you once will probably admit you again (or a different one will And: There are other important, worthwhile things to do if you take a semester or even a full year off And: If you defer or postpone, what’s the worst that can happen
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - taylodl 6y ago
    That's generally true unless there's a scholarship involved. Those are take-it or leave-it. If you had 50% of your tuition paid for by a scholarship would you leave it?
- PeterisP 6y ago
  The article is not suggesting these people to avoid college as such, it's suggesting them to skip a year. Your college prospects won't be worse with a year of working experience, if anything, it really helps learning if you have a bit of context working in the direction of your studies.
- taylodl 6y ago
  A gap year would be great if you could work or travel - but travel is heavily restricted and with the historical record number of layoffs working is effectively killed too. And if you have scholarships in hand that may be rescinded if you don't start this Fall - then what are you to do? Yes, it's less than ideal and maybe your Freshman year is less than ideal. But it's a lot better than having your Sophomore, Junior or Senior years getting hit!
m3kw9 6y ago
One thing for sure the all these colleges that was charging rates up to the stars is gonna be in a real shit storm staring now
hanoz 6y ago
There must be a lot of people thinking they won't be getting the full experience if they start this year. I wonder if this will be the pin which pops the credit fueled runaway costs bubble? Anyone who ends up not bothering with it at all will at least have great reason for not having a degree - well I was all set to go to such and such, but then coronavirus, so I started work for a while instead, and just really got into the whole working hard thing...
- rlanday 6y ago
  I don’t see how the college bubble continues as-is after this. What we had before was basically a common knowledge problem. Everyone knows college is a ripoff and, aside from a small number of degrees, the students are mostly just getting subsidized by taxpayers to drink and smoke pot for four years while the rest of us work and pay taxes. But, we didn’t all know that everyone knows that. There was also a coordination problem in that even if everyone is skeptical of the value provided by the experience, the pool of college graduates was still some combination of smarter and more conscientious than the pool of non-college graduates, so there was a signaling effect to going to college. But now a lot of smart, conscientious young people have an excuse to bail out of the system at the same time. I think many of those young people will end up doing something with this time that sounds better to employers than “I spent $80k a year living in my parents’ basement watching ungraded online lecture videos that were inferior to ones I could watch for free on YouTube.”
  - Chyzwar 6y ago
    These kids that drink and smoke pot are paying in personal debt, the taxpayer is not really subsidizing this (at least based on what I was reading). For most career paths outside a small portion of the technology, college is the only way. Part of the problem is that the US is not spending enough taxpayer money into education. If the US spends a portion of it military budget 570B$ to enhance education spending 70B$ problem could be massively reduced. To compare Germany military spending 50B€ and education 130B€.
    - rlanday 6y ago
timkam 6y ago
Observations from overseas (Sweden): possibly because college/university is typically (almost) free of cost and because of Sweden's culture of continuous education, there is an increase in university enrollment applications: https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx. I must say that I like that in times of high unemployment, the "free education" feature allows people to further educate themselves when there are little employment opportunities. IMO, this feature takes the risk burden (that the article is mentioning) off the individual.
ghostpepper 6y ago
Is the best thing a new high school grad can do to become more tech literate really brush up on their "Blackboard skills"?
- angry_cactus 6y ago
  Yeah that was a bit silly, even saying something as basic as PowerPoint or Excel would have been better.
sramsay 6y ago
Another twenty-year professor here. I would just like to point out that this article is articulating -- with absolutely accuracy and lucidity -- every college administrator's worst nightmare. They've all been discussing the possibility (that parents and students will make this very decision) for weeks. It might be the right decision to make, but it would be absolutely catastrophic for most schools.
- contingencies 6y ago
  In Australia many schools are additionally worried because the net effect of government interventionism on visa issuing, international arrivals and quarantine have hit the travel sector so badly that existing international students (their cash cow) have been forced to discontinue studies, and new international students are unable to arrive.
- dopidop 6y ago
  Where is the money going ? Honest question here. Are professor really well payed? Facilities cannot cost that much.
- closeparen 6y ago
  Universities would seem uniquely capable of just going into hibernation for a while. They do it every summer, after all. That tradition is even because of infectious disease risk! What does it really cost to park a campus in "summer mode" a while longer?
  - dubya 6y ago
    Schools, particularly those without large endowments, often have large debts they have to service and rely on tuition for much of that. Building facilities is not cheap, and state governments have been providing less funding.
  - patrickthebold 6y ago
    The people who work there might have been planning on 3 months w/o pay, but are expecting a job in the fall.
sys_64738 6y ago
If lots of smart people decide to not start then it might be easier to get in for the Fall semester if you're less able. That is, it might be to your advantage to start college this Fall.
imtringued 6y ago
Somehow the Americans outdid themselves. Six figure debt is now the norm? Despite being completely over funded colleges still cut their important staff?
diebeforei485 6y ago
Here's my take: if you get into a top engineering/CS program, you should still go.
hindsightbias 6y ago
There was a time when school was about teaching students and not protecting the staff first. Janitors can work at night. Cafeterias can be take out. Profs can be on a screen or given early retirement. I realize it is an inconvience, but how about students first for the first time in a long while. We collectively are safer if the college kids are away at school and not infecting grandma.
noelherrick 6y ago
I just can’t believe these friends, or folks. We can do so much better.
credit_guy 6y ago
What we are going to see this year is a "run on the colleges". Just like there were runs on the banks in the 19th century, we will now have a new phenomenon, of run on the colleges. Right now colleges are preparing for a 20% decreased enrollment for the Fall semester. Due to blog posts like this one, and generally people talking with one another, a lot of students will realize that if schools are budgeting for an 80%-year, it's better to skip the year and come back in Fall 2021. My guess is that we'll actually see a 40% reduction in enrollment. This will not make a difference for institutions like Harvard, Yale, Stanford with huge endowment funds. But it may break the back of many a poorer college. The 2020-21 academic year is going to be very interesting...

141 points by ege_erdogan 6y ago

I'm not sure this fall would be a great time to work on a political campaign either, since you might not want to be meeting a lot of people in person. I guess you could improve your phone and video conferencing skills, though? Giving online courses a try seems like a good idea.

yial 6y ago

I think this is a great article, however, I think a more tempered approach may be to take online courses from a community college or similar to begin working on at least some gen eds. This frees you up to do some of these other things that article suggests, while still getting credits under your belt.

kevindong 6y ago
It's important to note that some colleges restrict the number of credits you can take/earn during the time between high school graduation and college matriculation. My alma mater, Purdue, permits incoming freshmen to take a gap year (but not purely due to Coronavirus [0]). During that year, the would-be freshmen may not take >=12 credit hours of courses or else their admission will be rescinded and the freshmen would be required to reapply as a transfer student [1]. [0]: https://admissions.purdue.edu/faq/ https://admissions.purdue.edu/faq/ [1]: https://www.admissions.purdue.edu/gapyear/index.php https://www.admissions.purdue.edu/gapyear/index.php
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  Behavior like this and the for-credit/not-for-credit distinction (for the same class!) is some rent-seeking, power-imbalance nonsense. I hope we figure out a better way.
  - soared 6y ago
    I would disagree. If you were accepted, but then had significant changes to your application you should reapply. It makes sense that an acceptance is good for 3 months, and then you’ll need to reapply after that. If you went to a new school, the reapplication process is different.
- sys_64738 6y ago
  Pick a better college than this one then. There are plenty.

zdragnar 6y ago

I generally detest the large expense of universities given the difference between what they claim to offer and the actual value. That said, the options here seem to not be any better. Get a job? Fresh out of high school kidd are going to have a hard time finding gainful employment for awhile, especially in the hardest hit areas. Volunteer for a political campaign? Meh. That isn't much of a substitute, even if it has its own intrinsic value. Why not encourage kids to instead look for schools that have been doing distance learning for years, or starting at a local community college instead? Its a heck of a lot less expensive (addressing the articles risk of investment point) and they are far less likely to take the money you ponied up for dormitory living while kicking you out.

ryanmarsh 6y ago
Get a job? Fresh out of high school kidd are going to have a hard time finding gainful employment In software I feel a strong guild/apprenticeship program could solve this.
- milquetoastaf 6y ago
  The open source community serves as an ad hoc application of the apprenticeship / guild concept. I have some friends who don't have college degrees but have been hired due to their demonstrable and attested technical skill in serious FOSS projects
  - bosie 6y ago
    Wouldn't working on FOSS projects be closer to an internship rather than apprenticeship? Are they really being mentored and taught while working on the FOSS projects?
    - milquetoastaf 6y ago
      Depends on the project but a lot of times yes, especially if there's a large community
    - 6y ago

xwdv 6y ago

Yup, and if you are already in college don’t enroll in new classes until at least 2021 if you can freeze tuition. It is such a ripoff to be paying for world class education and end up with some basic online courses tossed together in a hurry due to a pandemic. Not to mention missing out on the social networking aspects that college life brings.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

thih9 6y ago

If people follow that, colleges might decide to lower the entry requirements and the amount of students who join this year might be similar to the usual amount. Perhaps a better approach would be to plan safe working conditions instead.

downerending 6y ago
If their money is green, you can bet that this will happen.

glofish 6y ago

perhaps a little bit premature advice college students are not at risk to begin with - I'd recommend waiting closer to mid summer it might be the best time to attend college, fewer people enrolled, getting more attention from educators etc

icedchai 6y ago
Professors, faculty, and parents are at risk, though. If corona infects a dorm it will rip through like wildfire. You'll have 100's of asymptomatic carriers overnight. Then they go home for break...
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  And staff, likely the largest cohort. And least privileged.
scott_s 6y ago
Everyone is at risk from Covid-19. Younger people are at less risk, but they are still at risk, both from suffering a severe case, and from death.
- glofish 6y ago
  As of April 17, in the age group of 15-24, 13 deaths were attributable to COVID-19, 37 to influenza. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/ https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/ If you are a college student the risk of dying of alcohol poisoning is higher than of COVID-19.
  - scott_s 6y ago
    If school was back in session, that number would probably be much higher. Remember, these are the numbers with the most massive pause on our economy and society that we’ve seen in our lifetime. Young people are not immune.
    - 6y ago

unethical_ban 6y ago

What are the practical, social negatives of this? Will in-demand schools hold a grudge on the thousands or more of students they would have liked to have in fall 2020 and skipped? "You weren't there for us in 2020 so we think you're better off elsewhere." Not that any university should behave this way; I'm asking if any quality ones would be.

downerending 6y ago
No. In 2020, students entirely have the upper hand. Colleges can no longer grow and shrink their classes according to the suitability of students. Their finances are dire. (In principle, the rich ones like Harvard could, but they won't either. Falling enrollments just wouldn't look good.)
krastanov 6y ago
Large bureaucracies do not have the agency to act in such a childish way.
chadlavi 6y ago
No for-profit university will turn away someone they think can pay, and especially not someone who looks like they might turn into a rich donor in the future.

downerending 6y ago

Arguing in the other direction, if you mainly just need the sheepskin, this might be an unusually easy time to get one. Personally, my college experience was mainly useful for discovering that my college experience wasn't going to be very useful for me. (Mildly interesting: The author seems to be this woman. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/02/17/la-verne-seeks-terminate-gadfly-professor-allegedly-threatening-assassinate https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/02/17/la-verne-seek...)

gentleman11 6y ago
She’s been run out of her job for political reasons using the excuse she used the term “assassinate” instead of “fire” to describe getting rid of somebody. It’s childish and the school should be liable for slander at this point
- baud147258 6y ago
  It was a character assassination on the school's part
  - downerending 6y ago
    I see what you did there.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
That article was Tiger-King-esque in that by the end of it I hated pretty much all the characters involved.
gumby 6y ago
> , if you mainly just need the sheepskin, this might be an unusually easy time to get one. It’s a good point: this year and next will have an unusually high percentage of pass/fail options, but networking will be quite restricted.
- 500-degrees 6y ago

Hydraulix989 6y ago

By the time it is fall, this professor's advice will be obsolete. The death rate is already slowing down in NYC and Italy. The curve is flattened in South Korea and China, and there, many are going outside to cafes and the Han River park. San Francisco has had a grand total of 20 deaths. US is already planning to gradually reopen the economy.

Robotbeat 6y ago
On the contrary: Reopening before the test and trace infrastructure (like South Korea’s) is in place is likely to cause another wave right about the time when the Fall Semester is starting..
- Hydraulix989 6y ago
  That sounds like pure speculation. We should be relying on data, instead of fear, for motivating our decisions.
  - Robotbeat 6y ago
    not pure speculation. There's historical precedence in the Spanish Flu for a resurgence of the disease after social distancing orders are ended too early.
    - Hydraulix989 6y ago
      We were already discussing this in the cousin thread. As feedback, I would feel safer if you used the name "1918 Pandemic" rather than naming viruses where they might have came from. I have personally seen and been targeted by daily overt acts of aggression (in San Francisco, no less) because of these kinds of false associations.
      - Robotbeat 6y ago
        I'm aware of that, and if there were a risk of acts of hatred against Spanish folk by me using that name today, I'd agree, however we're talking about a pandemic that spanned 1918 and 1919, with the second wave in 1919. Using "Spanish Flu" is, however, clear and well understood. On the topic of how geographic disease names have often been used in racist or at least nationalistic ways, check out this hilarious map of the geographic distribution of names for "syphilis": https://digg.com/2017/syphilis-name-map https://digg.com/2017/syphilis-name-map

frankbreetz 6y ago

As a millennial college graduate, my number one piece of advice to college bound high schoolers is do the first two years at community college. The debt is not worth the experience. Most people spend the first two years figuring stuff out, community college is a great place to do that. I didn't even know this was an option until after college and I feel failed by my high school college advisors. Unless you are very confident in what you want to do and get into a very good college you don't think you can get into again, get a full ride, or have ridiculously rich parents, go to community college. Edit: perhaps full ride is too strict a requirement. If you can save money by going to community college, taking into account lost scholarships, you should go to community college.

wikibob 6y ago
Disagree. Graduation rates are drastically lower from community colleges. There is vastly less academic support available. The people around you will be vastly less ambitious. This will rub off on you. Yes 4 year university is now overpriced in America. But if you can, go to a 4 year university. Yes maybe go to an in-state university instead of out of state if that is cheaper, or go where you get the best financial aid.
- RHSeeger 6y ago
  Also, make sure that the college(s) you want to go to have a plan in place to accept transfers from the one you want to start at. It does you no good to get two years under your belt at college A in preparation for college B, then find out college B is going to make you start over because the credits don't transfer. Also, how hard is it to get a spot in college B as a transfer from college A. You should know this going in.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  What exactly is the negative consequence you are envisioning from 2 years at community college and 2 years at your in-state 4-year school, vs. all four years at the latter? The typical alternative that people need to be guided away from is one of the for-profit "career" schools that doesn't have transferable credits and is way more expensive than community college.

collegeburner 6y ago

I'm looking at college this fall and seriously wondering about this. I'll have to spend a lot of money if I go to an "elite" school, and the point of doing that is to make connections with my peers and with professors. I don't see the point of paying that kind of money for that sort of experience. That aside, not starting college may not be a good idea, either. Does anyone with more experience have advice on this? I do have a job at a cybersecurity firm where I'm a part-time developer, and my boss would probably convert me to full-time. I've also been working on some interesting side projects to learn stuff and could continue self-teaching. Does anyone with more experience have some advice for me?

benkuhn 6y ago
I think this depends a lot on what peers you have access to through your work and whether you'd expect them to be comparably awesome (both in their competence and the depth of relationship you're able to build with them) to whoever you'd meet in college. Even if you do decide to go to college, I think you'd get a lot more out of it after having worked in the real world for some amount of time--in college it really helps to be good at deciding what to spend your time on, and exposure to what non-college life is like will help a lot with that. I know lots of people who got a ton out of gap years and no one who regrets it. (I wrote more advice here: https://www.benkuhn.net/college/ https://www.benkuhn.net/college/ )
technicaldonut 6y ago
This really depends on why you want to go to university. Is it just for the knowledge and nothing else? Save the money and self learn. Since you specifically mentioned developer, you can take a look here https://ossu.firebaseapp.com/#/curriculum https://ossu.firebaseapp.com/#/curriculum I've looked at and talked to a lot of different people at different universities in comp sci bachelors. For the most part the curriculum is the same. What sets some schools apart are what you do on the side and general academic environment. Some people might say that going to university just for the sake of a degree might be a waste, but again this depends on you and your circumstances. There are companies that only hire people with a degree. It's a stupid way to make a hiring decision, but here we are. I've actually just finished my masters degree in info systems and can definitely understand your thought process. Let me know if you have any other questions. More than happy to help.

einpoklum 6y ago

> Don’t like any candidates? Then get engaged in issue activism. Recommendations to be politically active regardless of the cause and position sound rather vacuous. Or rather - sound like someone has an opinion, but not the guts to voice their opinion. Anyway, the main problem is the debt issue. If students going into the first year of University (or "college") did not have to pay for it, it wouldn't be such a gamble. So, here's the political cause to pursue: * Occupy your university campuses, state parliaments and governors' offices, together with existing and other incoming students, to * Demand tuition-free higher education and free/discounted housing for students, in both "private" and state/federal-state-owned institutions, effective immediately. And let the federal government do some "quantitative easing" to pay for that - which they seem to have no problem doing ten times over to cover the financiers' losses. Even in regular times, this is not an outlandish demand and not even revolutionary; it's a meaningful but not earth-shattering reform. In these times and with the Corona crisis it is closer than usual to achievability, especially w.r.t. the potential of mobilizing students. PS - If organized labor in the US had not been so week, an alliance on common demands would have been quite relevant, but at the moment it's not a realistic recommendation.

baggy_trough 6y ago
Far too many people go to college as it is. More subsidies to go to college only make that problem worse.
- einpoklum 6y ago
  1. These are (mostly) independent issues. Many countries have free universities, but not many of them. 2. I don't know what US colleges are like; but - higher education is to a great extent its own rewards. Of course, if you're doing it for the diploma and the chance to score a better job, then it's a different kettle of fish.

stevespang 6y ago

University of La Verne puts professor on unpaid leave for alleged threat against colleague 11-26-19 https://www.dailybulletin.com/2020/02/21/university-of-la-verne-puts-professor-on-unpaid-leave-for-alleged-threat-against-colleague/ https://www.dailybulletin.com/2020/02/21/university-of-la-ve...

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chadlavi 6y ago

This seems pretty out of touch. Encouraging people to go right into the jobs market as 18yos without degrees is encouraging them to trap themselves at the (already rapidly expanding) bottom of the economic ladder, unless they're from an already upper/upper-middle-class family. And the same goes double for encouraging degreeless 18yos to skip getting paid entirely and volunteer. That's rich kid stuff.

jseliger 6y ago
Most schools will allow you to defer for a year. Consider taking them up on it. And if they won’t let you, well, a school that admitted you once will probably admit you again (or a different one will And: There are other important, worthwhile things to do if you take a semester or even a full year off And: If you defer or postpone, what’s the worst that can happen
- deleted 6y ago
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- taylodl 6y ago
  That's generally true unless there's a scholarship involved. Those are take-it or leave-it. If you had 50% of your tuition paid for by a scholarship would you leave it?
PeterisP 6y ago
The article is not suggesting these people to avoid college as such, it's suggesting them to skip a year. Your college prospects won't be worse with a year of working experience, if anything, it really helps learning if you have a bit of context working in the direction of your studies.
taylodl 6y ago
A gap year would be great if you could work or travel - but travel is heavily restricted and with the historical record number of layoffs working is effectively killed too. And if you have scholarships in hand that may be rescinded if you don't start this Fall - then what are you to do? Yes, it's less than ideal and maybe your Freshman year is less than ideal. But it's a lot better than having your Sophomore, Junior or Senior years getting hit!

m3kw9 6y ago

One thing for sure the all these colleges that was charging rates up to the stars is gonna be in a real shit storm staring now

hanoz 6y ago

There must be a lot of people thinking they won't be getting the full experience if they start this year. I wonder if this will be the pin which pops the credit fueled runaway costs bubble? Anyone who ends up not bothering with it at all will at least have great reason for not having a degree - well I was all set to go to such and such, but then coronavirus, so I started work for a while instead, and just really got into the whole working hard thing...

rlanday 6y ago
I don’t see how the college bubble continues as-is after this. What we had before was basically a common knowledge problem. Everyone knows college is a ripoff and, aside from a small number of degrees, the students are mostly just getting subsidized by taxpayers to drink and smoke pot for four years while the rest of us work and pay taxes. But, we didn’t all know that everyone knows that. There was also a coordination problem in that even if everyone is skeptical of the value provided by the experience, the pool of college graduates was still some combination of smarter and more conscientious than the pool of non-college graduates, so there was a signaling effect to going to college. But now a lot of smart, conscientious young people have an excuse to bail out of the system at the same time. I think many of those young people will end up doing something with this time that sounds better to employers than “I spent $80k a year living in my parents’ basement watching ungraded online lecture videos that were inferior to ones I could watch for free on YouTube.”
- Chyzwar 6y ago
  These kids that drink and smoke pot are paying in personal debt, the taxpayer is not really subsidizing this (at least based on what I was reading). For most career paths outside a small portion of the technology, college is the only way. Part of the problem is that the US is not spending enough taxpayer money into education. If the US spends a portion of it military budget 570B$ to enhance education spending 70B$ problem could be massively reduced. To compare Germany military spending 50B€ and education 130B€.
  - rlanday 6y ago

timkam 6y ago

Observations from overseas (Sweden): possibly because college/university is typically (almost) free of cost and because of Sweden's culture of continuous education, there is an increase in university enrollment applications: https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx. I must say that I like that in times of high unemployment, the "free education" feature allows people to further educate themselves when there are little employment opportunities. IMO, this feature takes the risk burden (that the article is mentioning) off the individual.

ghostpepper 6y ago

Is the best thing a new high school grad can do to become more tech literate really brush up on their "Blackboard skills"?

angry_cactus 6y ago
Yeah that was a bit silly, even saying something as basic as PowerPoint or Excel would have been better.

sramsay 6y ago

Another twenty-year professor here. I would just like to point out that this article is articulating -- with absolutely accuracy and lucidity -- every college administrator's worst nightmare. They've all been discussing the possibility (that parents and students will make this very decision) for weeks. It might be the right decision to make, but it would be absolutely catastrophic for most schools.

contingencies 6y ago
In Australia many schools are additionally worried because the net effect of government interventionism on visa issuing, international arrivals and quarantine have hit the travel sector so badly that existing international students (their cash cow) have been forced to discontinue studies, and new international students are unable to arrive.
dopidop 6y ago
Where is the money going ? Honest question here. Are professor really well payed? Facilities cannot cost that much.
closeparen 6y ago
Universities would seem uniquely capable of just going into hibernation for a while. They do it every summer, after all. That tradition is even because of infectious disease risk! What does it really cost to park a campus in "summer mode" a while longer?
- dubya 6y ago
  Schools, particularly those without large endowments, often have large debts they have to service and rely on tuition for much of that. Building facilities is not cheap, and state governments have been providing less funding.
- patrickthebold 6y ago
  The people who work there might have been planning on 3 months w/o pay, but are expecting a job in the fall.

sys_64738 6y ago

If lots of smart people decide to not start then it might be easier to get in for the Fall semester if you're less able. That is, it might be to your advantage to start college this Fall.

imtringued 6y ago

Somehow the Americans outdid themselves. Six figure debt is now the norm? Despite being completely over funded colleges still cut their important staff?

diebeforei485 6y ago

Here's my take: if you get into a top engineering/CS program, you should still go.

hindsightbias 6y ago

There was a time when school was about teaching students and not protecting the staff first. Janitors can work at night. Cafeterias can be take out. Profs can be on a screen or given early retirement. I realize it is an inconvience, but how about students first for the first time in a long while. We collectively are safer if the college kids are away at school and not infecting grandma.

noelherrick 6y ago

I just can’t believe these friends, or folks. We can do so much better.

credit_guy 6y ago

What we are going to see this year is a "run on the colleges". Just like there were runs on the banks in the 19th century, we will now have a new phenomenon, of run on the colleges. Right now colleges are preparing for a 20% decreased enrollment for the Fall semester. Due to blog posts like this one, and generally people talking with one another, a lot of students will realize that if schools are budgeting for an 80%-year, it's better to skip the year and come back in Fall 2021. My guess is that we'll actually see a 40% reduction in enrollment. This will not make a difference for institutions like Harvard, Yale, Stanford with huge endowment funds. But it may break the back of many a poorer college. The 2020-21 academic year is going to be very interesting...