<p>*thank god everybody in cali doesn’t share your views. *</p>
<p>But, maybe that’s why Calif is in debt like it is. It needs to go on a spending diet.</p>
<p>I don’t “have a problem with Cal Grants,” I have a problem with giving private school students about twice as much money as public school kids.</p>
<p>The whole way college financial aid works is ridiculous. At 18 are kids are legally able to enter into contracts, marry, go to war, are adults in the eyes of the law. But they are linked to their parents ability and willingness to pay for their education until age 24 or under certain situations like being a veteran, married, have a dependent. Even those schools that are needblind and meet full need that like to brag how no one is turned down for lack of money, are full of bull. If a parent can’t or won’t fill out the financial aid forms, or has what is considered too much money to pay for college, it’ s no go at the country’s most selective schools and for government aid as well. You can’t even get the danged loans without parental assistance. </p>
<p>The college industry has gotten rich by sucking the money out of parents all too eager to pay for their kids at the expense of those who don’t have such parents.</p>
<p>^Amen.</p>
<p>(10char)</p>
<p>Is it just me or are there many others that think it is unreasonable to pay $50,000 per year for an UG, whether one can afford it or not? If one can easily afford it then that is their luxury, but I really struggle with the idea that a “Harvard” education is really that much better than a good public school education to justify the extra costs. I am not convinced in at all and I lean towards thinking that maybe there is a lot of really good marketing and scamming going on. Maybe if I didn’t know so many, many very successful people who have a more “modest” education.</p>
<p>Harvard would be a good deal for my family. It’s some of those other schools that aren’t. But my kids are not able to get that deal because they can’t get into Harvard. </p>
<p>I know what you mean, Proudmom. There are some things however, that I can see as a plus for the kids. I know my one kid had to GO, get out of the house, away from me, and the option that was least damaging was college. He might have learned something in the process, maybe.</p>
<p>Bluebayou, there have been many debates here about LACs vs universities and TAs vs profs. On individual situations, either one can be better or of no difference to any given student. The problem with having a kid in a big university with mostly TAs during the first two years, is that there is often an inconsistency and lack of experience with TAs. A prof who has been teaching courses for even just a few years, has experience working with college kids and the subject. The TAs really don’t have any control over the lectures, materials and presentation. Many are not even trained minimally by the prof and fly by the seat of their pants in the recitations. They may not have used the book, gone to the lectures, may not be from this country, may hate teaching, may be terrible teaching. These days with rating guides, you can pick a prof that is a decent teacher. A course with a fleet of TAs is completely unpredictable. Also when they are the ones grading the papers and tests, which they almost always are, essays and short answers can be inconsistently graded. I had that experience a number of times in my TA packed college years.</p>
<p>proud_mom – as a parent I really have seen a higher quality of education when I compare my d’s Barnard experience with my own at a UC campus or my son’s CSU experience. I mean to me it is the distinction between eating at fast food outlet v. a fine restaurant.</p>
<p>However, I didn’t pay full fare for Barnard and cannot see paying $60K/year for that. I don’t doubt that the contents of $40 bottle of wine are better quality than the contents of a $7 bottle – but I can’t afford $40 for wine either. I can afford occasional meals out at restaurants that are better than Burger King – for example, a place like Olive Garden where entrees run around $12-$16 – and if I had a coupon that was going to let me buy a $30 entree at a nicer restaurant for $16, I’d probably go for it. If I don’t have that, I’ll stick with Olive Garden… but I’m not going to deny the merits of the other restaurant. I just can’t afford it.</p>
<p>If I earned a 6 figure annual salary, then I’m pretty sure I would be able to afford the better restaurant – and if I had a personal net worth in the millions, I think it would be perfectly reasonable to pay $60K annually for an ivy-caliber education, assuming my kid held up his/her end of the bargain and planned to work hard to make the most of the academic offerings. But I don’t have that kind of money, so it isn’t an option.</p>
<p>cptofthehouse, I don’t know if its a public vs. private school thing, but my daughter ran into TA issues a couple of times along the lines that you describe, and she always just went to the prof. and asked for her paper or assignment to be reviewed. Where there was a clear mistake, the grade was adjusted upward.</p>
<p>cpt:</p>
<p>if only to belabor the point, please point out/list those unis with “mostly TAs during the first two years…” Seriously, I’d love to know who/where they are.</p>
<p>btw: My S, who is a college senior, was a TA at an Ivy this past year. I’d take a post-doc any day.</p>
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<p>Bingo! That was my point.</p>
<p>I did the same thing, Calmom. I took a lot of math and science classes that were staffed heavily with foreign students whose command of English and the American way of teaching the course were poor at times. I don’t blame them. They did not come for the teaching opportunity and had no training and sometimes no idea how the course was being taught, though they knew the material as a whole very well. There should be a requirement that these TAs have to sit through the lectures and read through the assignments so they know what is being covered. They should also be given a training session on how to deal with being a TA for that subject. This rarely happens. So they are trying to figure things out too. </p>
<p>At schools where there are a lot of TAs, the profs are AND the TAs are more focused on research, writing, publishing, fundraising. Teaching the undergrads in the beginner courses is low on the priority and is not going to win them many marks. The TAs rotate courses, are moved around, so there is little consistency in what a kid gets. The profs tend to be less interested in the freshmen and sophomores too. I had one prof who refused to look at tests and papers. You had to work it out with the TA. It was just another Pain in the Neck sort of thing.</p>
<p>Now you can get a bad prof too, but everyone gets that bad prof. In a class with all of those TAs, who you get can make a big difference. Also in LACs, and other schools where the profs main job is to teach, that is what his focus and experience is. There is math professor at a local SUNY here who is absolutely marvelous. Loves working with kids and can make calculus fun and understandable. No TAs there. Plus you can read the rating of the profs and avoid the losers. Can’t do it with TAs because they are not usually rated and the courses where they usually are, tend to be the required or core courses that you have to take.</p>
<p>BlueBayou, in any of the schools with a large doctorate program, there are many TAs with stipends. Any of the state universities have many courses with lecture halls filled with kids and TAs to do the recitations. Cornell, Johns Hopkins and I have heard complaints about Harvard , are schools that can have TAs rather than professors. MIT, CMU, if the profs’ main focus is research, grant writing, publishing, he isn’t going to be doing much teaching of freshmen and sophomores. </p>
<p>Now, there are kids who do fine under that scenario. However, those kids would generally also do fine with the profs, and maybe better. I dont think the reverse works as well. I have a kid who loved his visit at a major state university; loved everything about the school, but my concern is those large classes in the basic subjects with TAs. My close, dear friend works at the uni, and tells me my fears are valid. She gets free tuition for her kids at this school but has opted (since she is able to do so) to encourage them to go to LACs where they get more attention. </p>
<p>I can think of a number of scenarios that the large TA filled school would be a better learning environment, yes. My neighbor who ran out of courses in her discipline from her little undergrad school is an example. She had to transfer to get the expertise in the last two ug years in her discipline. So, yes, I realize there are specific solutions where one or the other school is better for a given student. What I am giving, however, right now are the benefits that some of these more expensive LACs can give over the larger universities that may be a lot less expensive. When it might be beneficial to pay the extra, assume the debt for certain students.</p>
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<p>…but in the world of US higher education many places are selling $7 bottles of wine for $40, or more. Others are selling $100 bottles of wine for $7 and some are actually even giving them away for free. </p>
<p>With education, as with wine, price is often a very bad way to judge quality.</p>
<p>Bluebayou, your example of your SON at an ivy teaching what I mean. Ivies are national universities and for those with graduate programs, that is where the research occurs. I would not like having ug students teaching my kids. However, your son likely having just recently gone through the course, the experience at that school might well be a better teacher than some postdoc who HAS to teach to pay for his research privileges and make ends meet, but is rated by the prof on those research and writing activities. Also some of those postdocs took the course years ago at a different place, under different circumstances, maybe in a different country in a different language.</p>
<p>Calmom, you got that $40 bottle of wine for $7 given where your D went to college and what you paid for it. </p>
<p>Two of my kids turned down ivy league schools because of the large classes and lack of interaction in early terms with the profs. For the one who picked the LAC, it has paid off wonderfully.</p>
<p>“Cornell, Johns Hopkins and I have heard complaints about Harvard , are schools that can have TAs rather than professors.”</p>
<p>My kid who just graduated Harvard never had a TA instead of a professor. She had professors and TA’s who went over problem sets. She herself was a TA her senior year in Orgo.</p>
<p>Son’s gf graduated last year from Harvard. She was used to a private school, teacher very involved with student atmosphere. That first year, she wanted to apply to some program and was horrified to realize that not a single professor really knew here since her courses were lecture style and yes, she had UGs that were TAs. I heard the same complaint from a friend of mine whose son went there. Now, of course, when you are talking about Harvard, the rep and name trumps all, and you go with the program. I would not be happy with a school where UGs were doing teaching and TAs were the rule at the beginning. I prefer the expertise and experience of a professor, and would like my kid to be getting his/her primary attention. When paying $50K a year, that is a big consideration. Now if I am getting something in return for that situation, like a big rep school, or if my kid were so advanced that he could skip over a lot of the basic courses and take advantage of the programs for kids who are so motivated and trained, that might be a different story. But I want more for the type of money that the most expensive schools are charging than the prof in front of a lecture hall followed by a bunch of TAs guessing what he said in the lecture. </p>
<p>I will caveat Harvard since that is a second hand hearing on my part, but I stand by what I say with Cornell and JHU as I know both schools very well. Those are not schools for kids who could do a lot better with smaller classes and professor attention.</p>
<p>i totally agree with u rocketman. </p>
<p>that ‘analogy’ was unnecessarily crass.</p>
<p>Your statement in regards to Harvard is wrong. I’ve talked to lots of students, none of them have ever taken a course where there is not a professor. TA’s teach sections. The professor teaches when all the sections get together.</p>
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No, it’s more like I got the $40 bottle of wine for $16 – a bargain, without a doubt, but still quite a stretch for me.</p>
<p>If my d. had opted for an in-state public after high school, out-of-pocket for the first year would have been around $10K. It was roughly double that for the first year of the elite private, and went up from there during successive years. </p>
<p>But there’s a difference between “stretch” and stupid. My d’s salary for her first job out of college is double the total amount of her student loans (so by my rule of thumb for borrowing, the monthly loan payment should be quite manageable for her); I’m carrying a similar amount of debt in PLUS loans and have spent down my savings, but my limited retirement funds are still intact and I’m still on track with my main retirement goal – to pay off my mortgage by the time I hit retirement age.</p>
<p>Does it still run aout 1 “lecture” to two “sections”?</p>