Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments fun thought provoking article: home college/tutors

http://marginalrevolution.com/margi...-asked-are-we-read-for-home-college.html

enjoyed the comments almost more than the original article, especially 'who is the best all-time tutor?'

Maybe I'm missing the joke? The premise is flawed: a PhD in one field couldn't possibly be competent to teach an entire college curriculum, even at the 101 level. Would you really want to take, say, English Literature from even the best microeconomics professor you ever had? Different disciplines, training, etc.

I think there may be humanists who could teach both introductory history and literature classes, and that there are scientists who could teach introductory chemistry, physics, calculus, and scientific programming. I don't know if the particular model in the article can work, but I do know that the model of paying, per year, $40K tuition (at the famous private schools) plus room and board to be taught by professors chosen on the basis of research rather than teaching prowess, in large lecture classes, is a system designed for the professors, not the students. The teaching done by graduate students and non-tenure-track faculty is underpaid relative to the teaching done by the tenure-track faculty. Universities exploit this cheap labor but pass on little of the savings to students. There should be a way around the university toll collectors.

"Underpaid" is something of an understatement there.

Public universities in California, including UCLA and UC Berkeley, used to charge no tuition and then charged very little for a long time. Now the UC schools cost over $30,000 per year (in state). Sure, that's less than $60,000 for Yale, but it's still ridiculously overpriced. And it doesn't include giant class sizes and the high probability of needing to 1) do the five-year-plan because some once-a-year course you need for your major is oversubscribed and last year's students have priority or 2) take classes over the summer for the same reasons (thereby decreasing summer earning potential).

Hmm, if the point is primarily to save money, there are respectable online schools now that are far cheaper from which you can still get good classes and access to PhD-grade professors. I did my master's in teaching degree through Western Governor's University that way and it was both high-quality and comparatively inexpensive. Of course, on the downside, you don't develop personal connections or a good social network, but you likely wouldn't get that out of hiring your own personal professor, either.