Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Free tuition at US public Universities?

This is unlikely, but states are trying to inform students of outcomes by college major so that they can make better decisions.

Texas Takes On Student Outcomes
Inside Higher Education
January 17, 2014
By Doug Lederman
The University of Texas System on Thursday unveiled an ambitious data tool that gives current and prospective students a wealth of information about how recent graduates like them have fared in the job market.
The website, SeekUT (search + earnings + employment = knowledge), links with records from the Texas Workforce Commission to track 68,000 alumni of the system's 15 universities into the work force, providing earnings and loan debt levels one year and five years after graduation by institution and major.
The website and a related app also provide data on the time to degree by undergraduate major, the proportion of graduates in a major who go on to graduate study and the job and salary outlook in by occupation, educational level and region of the state.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/...ck-graduates-earnings-debt#ixzz2qfJ54Qqc

I can't agree with this at all. First of all, the reasons for going to college reflect the values of the students making the decision to attend, and can be as varied as they are. Secondly, this selling point is rather vague. Perhaps most importantly, I expect focusing on this aspect of college would lead to disappointment for a majority of students. At least we have statistics on the financial aspect of college attendance. This intangible benefit can't even be quantified. Honestly it strikes me as being a little bit religious/cultish, as if attending college constitutes some form of pilgrimage.

Yes, but the point the author is making is that those values are not entirely their own. The students are subjected to a conditioning aspect from society, and from educators in particular.

Basically, the author is describing Maslow's hierarchy. Those from affluent backgrounds are encouraged to seek actualization in college, while those with more basic needs are encouraged to fulfill those, instead.

The main benefit is that gains in the account are not taxed when used for higher education. If I owned stocks in a taxable account I'd have to pay taxes on the dividends each year and pay capital gains taxes when I sold the stocks to pay tuition.

I was aiming more for spiritual enlightenment to the extent that I was aiming for anything.

Darned west coast time difference! I was going to post this here this morning.


I thought the article COULD have made some good points-- but it jumped the shark midway through with this zinger--


Okay, I think I see your problem right here...

ALL students??

Maybe some of them can't be awakened this way. {sigh}


Assuming that ALL students are college material is the problem.

This thread really seems to have touched a nerve with parents.

My point of view is that university exploits gifted students and gives them little in return. Even if tuition were free, going to university will interfere with real success. The big-name schools got their reputations not by exceptional teaching but by admitting and graduating bright students. Less able students have some of that prestige rub off on them, but the top students would have learned as much in lower-ranked schools, or more by studying on their own.

The long-term goal of most parents and kids is for the kids to form their own flourishing families in due time. The resources needed to do that fall into three principal types: financial, social, and emotional. The financial resources are more often a consequence of the social resources than the cause, and likewise the emotional resources are a precondition for the social resources.

Intellectual resources can help support all three, but contrary to the usual supposition, intellectual resources are not so easily affected as the other three. The raw amount a person learns is largely set by their innate capacity, but the particulars of the selection of what to learn and in what order are somewhat free – though limited by one's degrees of interest in various subjects, and interest is a form of emotional resource.

The emotional resources give the impetus to set goals and to allow persistence, confidence and persuasiveness in the face of rejection, failure, and conflict. One crucial emotional resource is the ability to act in one's own interest without undue moral anxiety, in particular: to not be squeamish about business, to regard persuading and directing people as worthy methods and making a modest profit for time and trouble as being only proper (and a high profit, even better). Despite the fact that these are core tenets of our economic system, it doesn't come naturally to most people today to really believe them, as shown by the scarcity and free-thinking character of entrepreneurs compared to the glut of conformist job-seekers. It wasn't always so. Self-employment, sole proprietorships, and small trading were once the norm in the US. Why the change?

Conventional school has as its unstated primary reason for being the desire of adults to reduce youth's competition with adults for money and mates. By teaching certain attitudes and norms in the form of unquestioned assumptions, such as “school is education”, “keeping you apart from the real word is to your benefit”, “profit is wrong”, “you can't succeed except by school” and “school is more respectable than parenthood or any business”, this competition with adults can be prevented even after leaving school. This sets the interests of the students at odds with adults, including their parents.

Natural allegiance is to one's family rather than to one's generation or sex. Setting women against men and children against parents, breaking up these crucial social bonds that existed long before governments – this alienation is not accomplished by chance, but to enable would-be authorities to interpose themselves as intermediaries in every human relation. This alienation starts with schools alienating children from themselves -- their thoughts, their labor, their time, their knowledge, their standards, their goals -- they are taught that nothing is theirs, all depends solely upon the system's judgements.

You can plan a different path for your children, one that has a better chance of arriving at the real goal than schools' empty promises. Plan for them starting independent businesses and think about how they will find and attract good spouses. What do they need to know? What actions, what projects can they do? I have some definite ideas, but this is getting long.

Here is an article on a new study of the earnings trajectories of people who major in various subjects. I wonder if the body of this article backs up the title.

Liberal Arts Grads Win Long-Term
January 22, 2014
By Allie Grasgreen
Inside Higher Ed

...

At peak earning ages (56-60), graduates with a baccalaureate degree in a humanities or social science field are making $40,000 more than they were as recent graduates (21-25). And while in the years following graduation they earn $5,000 less than people with professional or pre-professional degrees, liberal arts majors earn $2,000 more at peak earning ages, when they make about $66,000. (Salaries in both fields still lag behind engineering and math and sciences graduates, who in their late 50s make about $98,000 and $87,000, respectively.)

Liberal arts graduates don’t fare quite as well when they possess just an undergraduate degree, though. The workers with advanced degrees in any field of study – who make up about 40 percent of all liberal arts graduates, and earn about $20,000 a year more for it -- push the earnings averages up significantly. Among graduates with a baccalaureate degree only, those with humanities and social sciences degrees consistently earn less than anyone else, peaking at about $58,000 a year.

And while 5.2 percent of liberal arts degree-holders are unemployed from the ages of 21-30, that rate drops to 3.5 percent among 41- to 50-year-olds. Though they come close, liberal arts graduates never quite close the unemployment gap between themselves and professional or pre-professional graduates, whose rate drops from 4.2 to 3.1 percent among the same age groups.

Part of the salary difference may be explained by another finding that the report authors highlight: liberal arts graduates are far more likely to wind up on lower-paying -- if no less important -- career paths. Liberal arts degree-holders fill half of all social services jobs (including counselors, social and human/community service workers, religious workers and “similar categories”), compared to 26 percent in both the education and “all” professions.

It’s unclear whether liberal arts graduates are pursuing social service jobs because they’re more drawn to them, because they’re suited to a wider breadth of possible fields (which also contributes to a slow start salary-wise) or because that’s simply what’s left after all the other jobs are taken.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/...rt-examines-long-term-data#ixzz2r8Lb9Om7

Holy toledo, what a dog's breakfast of statistics and correlation fallacy THAT is.

"Unclear?" Is that ever a polite euphemism. Unclear what any of it means, from that.

Though I suppose the high unemployment numbers at the outset (and from what cohort is this, anyway?? Times are far different than they were 30+ years back); that probably has a profound impact on lifetime earnings. Hey-- there's a thought. Maybe LIFETIME earnings is the right comparison.

How about apples to apples? Maybe a table with some data in it would have been clearer.

This doesn't even begin to address the problems inherent in the semantics in this-- where at some institutions "Liberal Arts" means anything that is a BA degree and includes a gen-ed core, and at others, comprises a balanced and thoughtful, intentional course of instruction. "Humanities" is "Liberal Arts" at a good number of institutions, as well. At some public undergraduate colleges, Social Sciences doesn't even have its own division/college, and could be counted as either of the above.

Where is this data even FROM?? Who is reporting the values?

There are TWO concepts using the word "liberal" in education, which is confusing. I'm a graduate of a liberal arts college and didn't even get the distinction until very recently.

Liberal Arts: really, a liberal arts college. This is a college (typically undergraduate or with minimal graduate programs, and smallish). The college emphasizes a broad education. At my college, this meant that you had to take at least two 300-level (junior/senior level) classes outside your major (several 300-level classes required). See the Wikipedia. The education you get is not trivial. Examples of these colleges include the Seven Sisters, the Little Ivies, and Harvey Mudd.

Liberal Studies: A bogus (IMO) "major" that can involve little more than spending four years taking introductory-level courses, putting them in a package with a nice ribbon on it, and calling it a degree. A choice for future teachers (ouch). Here's an example. My opinion is that this major is trivial because it doesn't require students to dig into something in depth.