[The Immortal Goon]

I think having a proletarian ideology made up of people who have gone to great lengths to avoid being a part of the proletariat is kind of silly.

Your thoughts on the topic are, of course irrelevant. Your characterization is incorrect too, though since you seem to be having a great deal of difficulty gasping the far simpler notion of modernism and postmodernism, I'll spare you the general conception of vanguardism and materialism.

Ultimately, what we are seeing is that each year, more people fall off the liberal arts bus and ask themselves why they thought it was a good idea to blame other people instead of studying something that's technically useful.

This does well to demonstrate what I was writing about previously. What you personally, "see," especially in a figurative sense, is not necessarily objectively true.

Further, even if you were correct, what these people, "thought," and what they, "ask themselves," is irrelevant in regard to objective reality. It does not, for instance, change the fact that statistically makes more money with a college degree than without. Their feelings about it are irrelevant.

People still post statistics sometimes.

The statistics in the cases you bring up are rarely in dispute. My observation is that terrorist statistics seem to start and end there. The general pattern then becomes a fight about proposed solutions. But in general, facts and objective statistics are good.

[Perkwunos]

>thinking the primary value of education is wage-earning potential

[SpecialOlympian]

Just fucking lol at everything in this thread, from Hong Wu copy/pasting a stupid image he found on reddit that apparently changed his beliefs to the random complaining about how reddit is censoring r/the_donald.

Reddit also prevents r/bitcoin from spamming shit to the top page. There seems to be a common theme on stuff reddit filters out, that being moronic bullshit spammmed by communities of excitable and gullible rubes huffing farts in their vacuum sealed echo chambers.

Lol btw I have an English degree and now I work in a penthouse investment firm it rules.

[Perkwunos]

Further, even if you were correct, what these people, "thought," and what they, "ask themselves," is irrelevant in regard to objective reality. It does not, for instance, change the fact that statistically makes more money with a college degree than without.

Yeah but the causality here isn't fully clear. To be clear, I'm not saying that postsecondary education has absolutely no direct impact on income at all. What I would like to add to that, though, is that successfully completing a degree in a postsecondary institution almost certainly requires one to pass a certain threshold in IQ and probably the Big Five personality trait Conscientiousness as well. There isn't any one single predictor of income that accounts for most of the variance, but IQ accounts for more than parental SES alone, and from what I can tell at a glance, Conscientiousness also plays a substantial role in income. These traits, largely already possessed before admission to a postsecondary school, confound the relation between attaining the degree and the later effect on income.

[The Immortal Goon]

Agreed.

My main argument for the value of education is to understand the world, basically.

[SpecialOlympian]

Agreed.

My main argument for the value of education is to understand the world, basically.

Lol OK go into debt over "learning shit" when the front page of reddit is free.

[The Immortal Goon]

In an ideal situation, college would be free. It's better for the society to have educated people, and it would remove the dumb social stigma of not doing it if one goes to a trade school.

This is not reality in the US, of course. This said, it does not undermine the value of being able to understand and process information

[Perkwunos]

Lol OK go into debt over "learning shit" when the front page of reddit is free.

Not sure if serious

[mikema63]

Given that college is extremely expensive students should be pushed to at least very seriously consider their financial futures with their degree.

Even if college is free we should at least consider a system that ultimately creates more social good than it costs. Though how you'd work that out is going to be a hell of a fight.

[Perkwunos]

One solution for reducing the cost of higher education that I haven't seen entertained very often is reducing the demand by kicking out all the people who manifestly don't belong there. There were quite a few when I attended.

[Hong Wu]

Your thoughts on the topic are, of course irrelevant. Your characterization is incorrect too, though since you seem to be having a great deal of difficulty gasping the far simpler notion of modernism and postmodernism, I'll spare you the general conception of vanguardism and materialism.



This does well to demonstrate what I was writing about previously. What you personally, "see," especially in a figurative sense, is not necessarily objectively true.

Further, even if you were correct, what these people, "thought," and what they, "ask themselves," is irrelevant in regard to objective reality. It does not, for instance, change the fact that statistically makes more money with a college degree than without. Their feelings about it are irrelevant.



The statistics in the cases you bring up are rarely in dispute. My observation is that terrorist statistics seem to start and end there. The general pattern then becomes a fight about proposed solutions. But in general, facts and objective statistics are good.

Just because no one is collecting data about how many people regret their liberal arts degrees and are doing soul-searching right now doesn't mean it isn't a part of objective reality. You may be confusing "objective reality" with "what I can back up with numbers", they aren't the same thing.

One of the reasons places like France have gotten so absurd is they refuse to collect data on things they don't like, then they act as if those things aren't happening or aren't issues and the problems are beginning to stink.

[stephen50right]

College is very important to professors, otherwise they wouldn't be able to find jobs.

[MistyTiger]

People can get higher salaries in part due to what they study but also how they negotiate pay. There is some wiggle room in many cases, I don't know about most cases. It depends on how badly you are wanted at the company and if the 2 companies you interviewed with, know that you can be swayed to join them with a nicer pay offer.

I feel like my education in the arts has made me more sensitive to people's emotions and how they speak. I really pay attention and I notice things I would not notice if I had gone from high school, straight into a STEM field.

I like being able to appreciate a work of literature and then I can turn around and start crunching numbers. It has a nice balance to it.

I like online study. You do not have to go to an actual classroom and you have more flexibility. Plus, you do not have to pay for dormitories, meal plans and recreation fees. So if I go for my Master's degree in Accounting, it will be an online program.

[SolarCross]

In an ideal situation, college would be free. It's better for the society to have educated people, and it would remove the dumb social stigma of not doing it if one goes to a trade school.

This is not reality in the US, of course. This said, it does not undermine the value of being able to understand and process information

How will you get professors to teach for free? You won't get any professionals that way, maybe some of the least talented amateurs would be willing to do that for the vanity of it. Unless of course you enslave them but then the professors still need to be fed and you have to pay the enslavers too. You will have to have the whole thing outdoors too on waste ground no one else wants. Or maybe a sandy beach that way you can use the sand as a writing medium for free.

Honestly free college when examined by a sentient lifeform looks very much less than ideal.

------------

A Tale of Free Icecream by Solar Cross

It was a hot summer day in the suburbs and children were out playing, when rolling down the road came the Ice cream truck playing terrible music. All the children were at once delighted and filled with longing for although it had not occurred to them before, they now realised that there was nothing they could possibly want more than an icecream. Jo known as Scrounge to his friends was first in line and the Icecream salesman said unto him "What do you want kid?".

"I'll have an double whip creamy."

"That will be one shiny pound."

"I has no money."

"Oh well that is too bad. Look I can't give you icecream to you for free for that would hurt me to do that but we could hurt someone else that I don't care about to get the money"

"How can I gets someone else's money?"

"Well there are all sorts of polite ways to do that but we aren't interested in those. See this here?"

"Is it a truncheon?"

"Even better it is a vote. If you want money for icecream just gang up on someone with these votes and take their money. See that little old lady over there sipping tea? She does not want icecream, consequently she is the perfect target for paying for your icecream. All you kids take your votes, knock her out and bring me her handbag. Then free icecream for everyone!"

And it was so.

----------------
Hell No, We Won't Pay!

Faculty and administrators have joined the protests. Advocating a march on Sacramento, Robert Birgeneau, the Berkeley chancellor, has compared the student movement with the civil rights movement. “I hope that this [march] will match the March on Washington,” Birgeneau said. Prof. Ananya Roy has become a particular champion of the protest movement. Addressing students one day, Friend writes, Roy “began to voice … [their] dismay in sharp, sloganeering phrases. … In her piping voice … she repeated, elegaically: ‘We have all become students of color now.’”

We have all become students of color? A march on Sacramento that possesses the same moral dimension as the March on Washington? Let us remind ourselves just what the Berkeley protesters are demanding–not racial equality but money. For the poor and dispossessed? Scarcely. For themselves. To place the protesters’ demand in perspective, a few figures:

–Despite the cuts it made last year, the state of California will spend nearly $3 billion on the University of California this year, an expenditure of around $13,000 per student. Contrast this with the $10,000 per student the state of Illinois spends on the University of Illinois system or the $6,000 per student the state of New York spends on the SUNY system.

–The salary of Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau: $445,716. The salary of a typical full-time professor at Berkeley: $127,300. The average starting salary for the holder of a Berkeley undergraduate degree–I repeat, the average starting salary: $59,900. The median household income in California: $61,154.

–The number of Berkeley professors who have been laid off as a result of budget cuts: zero. The proportion of California workers who are now unemployed: 1 in 10.

Civil rights, economic justice, an end to the war in Vietnam. No doubt many of the student organizations at Berkeley in those days proved naïve. Yet the causes for which they stood all displayed a certain selflessness and idealism. At Berkeley today? The only cause is self-pleading.

[The Immortal Goon]

Just because no one is collecting data about how many people regret their liberal arts degrees and are doing soul-searching right now doesn't mean it isn't a part of objective reality. You may be confusing "objective reality" with "what I can back up with numbers", they aren't the same thing.

Sure. I could also say, "Rightwingers are stupid." And then back that up by saying, "In any group, there's going to be someone that's stupid."

But that would be idiotic. You're stripping the context of what you said in order to try and get a point across. You don't know anything about the students you claim are coming to this conclusion, and the implication is that they are all figuring out that college is bad, and thus you can rely on the bandwagon logical fallacy.

It breaks down pretty quickly.

How will you get professors to teach for free?

Make them adjuncts. It's worked for 80% of professors in the United States.

A Tale of Free Icecream by The Immortal Goon

It was a hot summer day in the suburbs and children were out playing, when rolling down the road came the ice cream truck playing terrible music. All the children were at once delighted and filled with longing for although it had not occurred to them before, they now realised that there was nothing they could possibly want more than an icecream. Jo known as Scrounge to his friends was first in line and the Icecream salesman said unto him "What do you want kid?".

"I'll have an double whip creamy."

"That will be one shiny pound."

"Mr,." Scrounge asked, "Where does this ice cream come from?"

"Well," the Icecream salesman said, "It's mostly chemicals made in a factory owned by a multibillion dollar organization. They've been shown to be harmful, but we use lawyers and other ways to make sure we can continue to produce it. The organic parts of it is produced it in a country far away, where we torture to death anybody that attempts to motivate reforms to production, and we can force people to work for free.

"Then, through a complicated series of events that favours existing multibillion dollar conglomerates, we extract oil from the ocean floor, refine it in Africa where we can kill as many people making it and do as much irreversible damage as possible to save a few bucks; convert this into plastic, which is then shipped over to China, where it is processed by children like you in dangerous conditions, and then this plastic is wrapped over the chemicals we produced and sold to you."

"I don't think I want the ice cream any more," Scourage said.

"What's the matter? Don't you like freedom?"

"That doesn't sound like freedom to me. I think we're just going to go over to my house and make our own ice cream."

"I'm afraid that I can't let you do that," the ice cream dealer said, "I'm going to get on the phone, have your house rezoned as unsafe to make food in, and throw lawsuits at your parents until they lose everything trying to fight it. If you want ice cream, you have to buy it from me. That's what freedom means."

"You can't stop us," Scourage said, "Me and the other kids will band together and make ice cream if we want to do so!"

Then the military came in and murdered Scourage and his friends because they were communists. Walking through the bloody houses on the neighborhood with a double whip creamy, the a member of the mop-up crew really got to enjoy the taste of freedom.

---

Realistically, nothing in the US will be done about the costs. I'm well aware of this. I'm not even sure why people are pointing out something that I've already acknowledged.

[SolarCross]

Make them adjuncts. It's worked for 80% of professors in the United States.

Sounds like an oversupply of professors. That's a contradiction of liberal arts education, you want more customers (students) because more students mean more dollars but further down the line those students will be qualified to be professors themselves but won't have much else they can do with their qualification except compete for the same jobs as teachers which drives the price down.

Still cheap is not free. How does one simultaneously complain that teachers should be paid more while complaining students pay too much? That's another contradiction.

[The Immortal Goon]

Sounds like an oversupply of professors. That's a contradiction of liberal arts education, you want more customers (students) because more students mean more dollars but further down the line those students will be qualified to be professors themselves but won't have much else they can do with their qualification except compete for the same jobs as teachers which drives the price down.

Oh, I was kidding. I know adjuncts aren't free, I am one.

So far as making the students customers, what you propose is exactly what they've done in the US. The same business schools that were popping up now have people come in and run things. And, like any business, the students have never paid higher tuition, and faculty has never been paid less. The free market at work!

But the university is a medieval institution, ultimately. It was always going to change.

What I'm proposing is for universities to become like any other public education institution. I realize that this is not immediately realistic in the US.

How does one simultaneously complain that teachers should be paid more while complaining students pay too much? That's another contradiction.

Just run it like any other public education institution. It's not a contradiction that middle schoolers don't pay their teachers and yet the teachers somehow get money. We decided that we didn't want everybody living in ignorance.

How would I pay for it?

Create councils of workers and servants; arm the workers; disarm the bourgeoisie; use stocks of clothing and other items for immediate and extensive aid to the workers, and especially to the farm labourers and small peasants; Confiscate capitalist factories, farms, and wealth; cancel mortgage, debt, and rent payments; have the wages of farm labourers and unskilled workers get doubled or trebled; have all media be confiscated so as to enable popular shows and newspapers to be printed for the masses; introduce a six-hour working day with two or three-hour instruction in state administration; have the bourgeoisie made to give up surplus housing so that workers can immediately move to comfortable housing; take over all the banks; take hostages from the ranks of the bourgeoisie; introduce rations for the workers from the mouths of the bourgeoisie; and have all the workers mobilised for defence and for ideological propaganda.

[skinster]

postmodernist feelingmongers

[SolarCross]

Oh, I was kidding. I know adjuncts aren't free, I am one.

So far as making the students customers, what you propose is exactly what they've done in the US. The same business schools that were popping up now have people come in and run things. And, like any business, the students have never paid higher tuition, and faculty has never been paid less. The free market at work!

But the university is a medieval institution, ultimately. It was always going to change.

The universities were unsubsidised fee taking businesses long before they starting tapping the government for cash. That is how they worked for the centuries before democracy.

Nevermind the centuries for a few decades they have been soaking up huge subsidies in addition to some fees. However they aren't the only ones queuing for free money from the gov so is everyone else. The gov has two ways to pay all the trillions of liabilities all these scroungers have tricked it into taking on: tax and debt. Nobody likes to pay tax especially the vast quantities required to balance the books of an institution that was sleepwalked into paying for everything. So the gov tends to take less tax than it needs and throw the rest of its liabilities into debt. The problem is that debt isn't an alternative financing option it is just the same financing option, tax, deferred from one generation to the next. So with each passing year the liabilities ratchet up and that isn't indefinitely sustainable. So increasingly you see responsible people try to restore a little sense and sustainability to the government's budgets. They can do this by either raising taxes or reducing expenditure. Either way you make the scroungers cry and they go and pout and protest.

What I'm proposing is for universities to become like any other public education institution. I realize that this is not immediately realistic in the US.

Just run it like any other public education institution. It's not a contradiction that middle schoolers don't pay their teachers and yet the teachers somehow get money. We decided that we didn't want everybody living in ignorance.

That is sort of plausible but there is a big difference between tertiary education and primary and secondary education. Only a minority could or should spend that long in school to also be doing tertiary education whereas basically everyone does primary and secondary. The gov takes money from everyone to pay for the services it provides so that sort of works for services from which everyone (near enough) will benefit not so much where only few will benefit. A relative majority of uneducated people being forced to finance the freebies of a minority of educated people is not going to be popular.

How would I pay for it?

Create councils of workers and servants; arm the workers; disarm the bourgeoisie; use stocks of clothing and other items for immediate and extensive aid to the workers, and especially to the farm labourers and small peasants; Confiscate capitalist factories, farms, and wealth; cancel mortgage, debt, and rent payments; have the wages of farm labourers and unskilled workers get doubled or trebled; have all media be confiscated so as to enable popular shows and newspapers to be printed for the masses; introduce a six-hour working day with two or three-hour instruction in state administration; have the bourgeoisie made to give up surplus housing so that workers can immediately move to comfortable housing; take over all the banks; take hostages from the ranks of the bourgeoisie; introduce rations for the workers from the mouths of the bourgeoisie; and have all the workers mobilised for defence and for ideological propaganda.

Sustainable for about a week. Out of the rubble all that you will find is that you set back civilisation several decades. After you have been finally deposed the new governors will have to spend several decades repairing the damage.

[Suntzu]

Colleges are supposed to educate folks not teach 'em a trade.