The Five Year Party

[drdom]

<p>Interesting article and book: Book</a> review: The Five-Year Party - WSJ.com</p>

[bovertine]

<p>I’m not going to buy the book but one sentence from the articloe stuck out to me. It appears somebody now wants to require college graduates to pass an exam from the CollegeBoard to graduate. So MIT is going to be forced to allow the CollegeBoard to determine who deserves to graduate? Glad to see the author calls this a bad idea.</p>

[BCEagle91]

<p>I had a look at the book review and spotted a few errors that appear to be from the book. I also had a look at the author’s web page on the book. The table of party schools that he compiled were based on subjective feedback and he decided to leave that out of the book. I wonder how much additional material in his book is based on subjective feedback.</p>

<p>The author’s perspective is as a professor at Keene State which is not exactly an academic powerhouse. Median SAT scores look to be around 1,000 (CR+M). That said, there are lots of schools with lower stats where a good education is possible if the student takes the initiative. The author’s statement that only 10% of students are actually seeking an education doesn’t seem correct to me and I’d like to see his reasoning. I understand that graduation rates aren’t the best but there are reasons besides partying for why an undergrad degree can take longer than four years.</p>

<p>I’m a little leery of the sensationalist books and articles on colleges after seeing all of the articles on the relative value of an undergraduate degree based on Payscale data. I guess that it sells books or magazines and gives people something to talk about and I’m sure that these articles have some anecdotal truth to them. How useful are they? I don’t know. I would at least like them to be based on hard data though.</p>

[barrons]

<p>Maybe he feels badly about being a prof at a third tier college and is acting out. Schools have had these aspects since the beginning of time–even very good ones to some extent. There were complaints of drinking and gunplay at UVa back in the 1800’s and an unpopular prof may have been shot by students. Now that’s going too far.</p>

[vinceh]

<p>According to the review the author points to the FERPA regulations of 1974 as being part of the problem - so it’s Nixon’s fault. </p>

<p>He blames administrators for extending the reach of FERPA because they want to keep their jobs - so it’s the colleges’ fault. </p>

<p>He puts no responsibility on the students for their the drinking and partying at the expense of their education - they’re just the victims.</p>

<p>Another grove of trees turned into paper for no useful purpose.</p>

<p>As the great Prof. Foghorn Leghorn once said: “College students drinking! Doing drugs! Having Sex! I say, who would believe such outrageous allegations.”</p>

[drdom]

<p>Maybe you’d prefer this one?</p>

<p>[Book</a> review: Higher Education? - WSJ.com](<a href=“http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748703720504575377140202306852.html]Book”>http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748703720504575377140202306852.html)</p>

[BCEagle91]

<br>

<p>Higher education may be heading for a reckoning.</p>

<br>

<p>That’s a pretty brave statement.</p>

<br>

<p>Recently, though, a new public skepticism has surfaced, with galling
facts to back it up. Over the past 30 years, the average cost of
college tuition and fees has risen 250% for private schools and nearly
300% for public schools (in constant dollars).</p>

<br>

<p>Did that affect yield numbers for 2010?</p>

<br>

<p>The salaries of professors have also risen much faster than those of
other occupations. At Stanford, to take but one example, the salaries
of full professors have leapt 58% in constant dollars since the
mid-1980s.</p>

<br>

<p>Do you think that Stanford full professor salaries are representative
of all universities?</p>

<br>

<p>College presidents do even better. From 1992 to 2008, NYU’s
presidential salary climbed to $1.27 million from $443,000. By 2008, a
dozen presidents had passed the million-dollar mark.</p>

<br>

<p>The job of a college president is that of a fundraiser. If the president
is bringing in far more in donations than he or she costs, then presumbably,
they are doing a good job.</p>

<br>

<p>Meanwhile, tenured and tenure-track professors spend ever less time with
students. In 1975, 43% of college teachers were classified as “contingent”

• that is, they were temporary instructors and graduate students; today that
  rate is 70%. Colleges boast of high faculty-to-student ratios, but in
  practice most courses have a part-timer at the podium.</p>

<br>

<p>Students get to learn material with less hand-holding. Fine with me. Kind of
like the real world.</p>

<br>

<p>Elite colleges justify the light teaching loads of their professors

• Yale requires only three courses a year, with a semester off every
  third year - by claiming that the members of their faculty spend their
  time producing important research. A glance at scholarly journals or
  university-press catalogs might make one wonder how much of this
  “research” is advancing knowledge and how much is part of a guild’s
  need to credentialize its members. In any case, time spent for
  research is time taken away from students. The remoteness of
  professors may help explain why about 30% of enrolling students drop
  out of college only a few months after arriving.</p>

<br>

<p>I’ve glanced at lots of scholarly research in the sciences and
engineering. There’s lots of stuff that’s interesting, useful and
that points to areas of new research.</p>

<p>Now do 30% of enrolling students at Yale drop out after a few months?
I find that hard to believe.</p>

<br>

<p>But some change may still be possible. A lot of criticism of academia
hasn’t stuck in the past, Mr. Hacker and Ms. Dreifus imply, because
people have almost unthinkingly believed in the economic power of the
degree.</p>

<br>

<p>Or many believe that there’s real value.</p>

<br>

<p>Yes, you didn’t learn a lot, and the professors blew you off</p>

<br>

<p>That’s pretty presumptuous.</p>

<br>

<ul>
<li>the reasoning went - but if you got a diploma the job offers would
follow. But that logic may no longer be so compelling. With the
economy tightening and tales of graduates stuck in low-paying jobs</li>
</ul>

<br>

<p>Simple supply and demand forces.</p>

<br>

<p>with $50,000 in student loans, college doesn’t look like an automatic
bargain.</p>

<br>

<p>What’s the average amount that students graduate with? $50,000? Hardly.
I expect better from the WSJ.</p>

[anon94785555]

<p>Privacy rules for adults apply even to HS students for health care. From the brief article and posters it seems as though the book is poorly referenced and/or documented. Also about the type of college parents of average students park their kids at instead of them needing to get a job- ie expensive third tier private schools. Not all HS grads should go to college, decades ago many of these students went to work, traveled or attended some form of finishing school. btw- taking 5 years to graduate does not mean too much partying. Some excellent public schools have working students or those who add majors at an affordable price and so do 5 years.</p>

[pugmadkate]

<p>

As the great Prof. Foghorn Leghorn once said: “College students drinking! Doing drugs! Having Sex! I say, who would believe such outrageous allegations.”

</p>

<p>Now that is a lecture I would pay to attend!</p>

[vinceh]

<p>One of the undeniable signs of middle-age is the conviction that the world is going to Hell in a hand-basket and that the institutions that served the older generation so well have now become corrupt and worthless. When I left for college - back in the mid-'70s (19XX not 18XX), I clearly remember my father muttering about “kids these days” as well as the decrepit state of the economy, politics, morality and education. Oddly enough, I was able to get an education, a job and raise a family of my own, as did nearly all of my contemporaries.</p>

<p>Are college costs out of control? Yes, but they always have been. If you don’t like it, don’t buy, colleges will figure out the problem eventually. </p>

<p>Are too many students immediately going onto college? Probably, but the problem I have with that is: What’s the alternative? The idea that there is a wide open job market for high school graduates but not college grads is non-nonsensical. High school grads used to go into manufacturing jobs (You’ll find most of them in Central America and Southeast Asia now), the military (many did that for the GI Bill college benefits) or straight onto college. Options for under-educated, under-trained high school grads are virtually non-existent. Our society has grown decidedly more complex, at least on the technological front. Even the most basic of positions now requires some sort of computer savvy and much of that training is taking place on college campuses. A college degree is the new high school diploma, it’s as simple and painful as that.</p>

<p>The joke in all of this is that there seems to be some sort of collective amnesia about college majors and money. Pundits talk about the “good old days”, (the '80s), as if those were the glory days for Women’s Studies or Philosophy majors. Really? Maybe they got jobs teaching at $10K a year, or they took entry level administration jobs working next to high school grads or maybe they eventually went onto grad school for an MBA, but I never once ran into an Etruscan Pottery grad pulling down a 100-Grand.</p>

<p>The economy stinks, the worst in 80 years. Prices and expectations are out of whack, but they most certainly will realign. Bad times - like good times - don’t last. But thinking that less education is going to solve the problem is just plain idiotic.</p>

[PayFor]

<p>

Are college costs out of control? Yes, but they always have been.

</p>

<p>College costs dramatically outpacing CPI is a relatively recent phenomenon.
<a href=“http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/TGAAOIlgpNI/AAAAAAAAOJs/P0mAGOlorFI/s1600/college2.jpg[/url]”>http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/TGAAOIlgpNI/AAAAAAAAOJs/P0mAGOlorFI/s1600/college2.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[CheckersMidwest]

<p>I think a 5-year degree is becoming much more common. My S is majoring in Biochemistry - which is part of the Agriculture school. The Ag school requires more credits to graduate than some of the other parts of the university. It divides into 17 credits per semester in order to graduate in 4 years.</p>

<p>17 credits can be a lot when it’s all ‘hard’ classes. (No bowling here…) Or, a lot of kids have to work now days to help pay the bill. They may need to take fewer credits in order to have time to study in addition to work. Also, sometimes it only takes a few more credits to have a double major - might as well if it costs only a reasonable amount more.</p>

<p>I think there are reasons besides just partying.</p>

[anon94785555]

<p>If you’re referring to UW-Madison there are many excellent reasons to be there for 5 years.</p>

[pugmadkate]

<p>My son will be attending Northeastern University for five years, however, tuition is only charged for eight semesters. Students do not pay tuition during their co-ops and unless they chose to live on campus, they do not pay for room and board.</p>