@Publisher I very well could be mis-remembering. I do remember passing something along those lines (from my earlier post) as I walked from town to the Allen Center and it did drive me to that thought at the time. Do you know the name of the building that SESP is located. I’ll look it up on the campus map and see if your scenario is what I’m confused with.
As a degree holder from Northwestern, I do have absolutely no disrespect for the school. My point is much along the lines of the other poster. Why would you pick a degree that has such a low ROI at that institution. I’m really tired of recent grads who complain about their student loan debt when they chose their major and it will never pay them back.
No, but the School of Education & Social Policy is very well regarded by academics & administrators of school systems.
Students do engage in student teaching, but not “social work”.
Harvard University offers a complementary doctorate in Educational Social Policy.
Northwestern does not offer a major in social work to the best of my knowledge.
Educational administrators have praised SESP as granting the most advanced degree of its kind & remarked that the students education equals that of a masters level rather than just a BA.
@publisher I doubt NU has a social work major, I expect most people who pursue social work as a career major in psych or sociology. Again, and I am an NU alum, I was reacting to the post of @brianboiler and process expensive schools and degrees thru an ROI lens. Period. I fully realize others make decisions by different criteria. I was not directly talking about education & social policy degrees/jobs or SESP.
“But then isn’t it the case that in some other countries, “liberal arts general education” is supposed to occur in upper high school rather than lower university?”
Not really. In the UK you also specialize for the last two years of high school (A levels). You then do something that interests you at university. But just like the US, if you go to a tippy top university (e.g. Oxbridge) your choice of subject makes very little difference to your subsequent job opportunities. You do need to be numerate (almost all UK graduate interviews involve a challenging numeracy test), but at the top level that’s usually the case even if you did arts subjects from the age of 16 onwards. In fact the classic job for UK graduates (especially in arts subjects) who don’t know what they want to do is to become an accountant - its effectively a general purpose qualification for corporate life, much like a law degree would be in the US, but you get paid to get the qualification.
Outside of privates (where a good chunk of the student body cone from families with money to burn), you wouldn’t find a large concentration of students majoring in “peace studies” or “women’s studies” anyway. At the vast majority of publics, the vast majority of students pick “practical” majors (with even those majoring in history or English often looking to enter education). The sole exception I can think of to that is psychology.
An example is Cal. They have one of the top classics departments in the country, yet how many undergrads there major in classics?
As soon as I read that athletics mania was the problem I dismissed the article as crap, athletics are not a major contributor to the high cost of tuition…in fact the athletic fee is usually very minor…so now I know the article is biased and not worth reading.
“But just like the US, if you go to a tippy top university (e.g. Oxbridge) your choice of subject makes very little difference to your subsequent job opportunities”
How about at “regular” universities in the UK? Do employers tend to focus on majors or no?
That’s another false assumption I’ve seen on this thread. At the schools that pay their coaches the most money, athletics are actually a net revenue generator, giving back to the school more than they take.
Oh, and many European countries also have easy-to-get educational loans (but unis there are also publics that don’t set tuition at market rates).
However, the growth in support staff is a big reason for the rise in tuition (BTW, net average costs haven’t gone up nearly as fast as the headline figures).
However, while many decry administrative bloat, how many Americans would prefer a college with no or minimal career counseling, interview prepping, study-abroad programs*, counseling centers, writing centers, various centers for entrepreneurship, innovation, etc.?
As an example, Oxbridge doesn't have any programs for their undergrads to study abroad (at least in the US) for a full term (I believe the Cambridge-MIT exchange has ended), LSE only has one exchange program (with Cal), and the other top UK unis have several exchange programs, but outside of Erasmus (I don't know how that works), there are a limited number of slots. Compare to the US where across the whole spectrum of selectivity, pretty much any student at almost any college who wants to could study-abroad.
@ #87. Vocational occupations aside. I don’t know how much times have changed since I graduated but UK employers concentrate more on the grade of degree and where it is from rather than subject.
UCB still has most undergraduates in liberal arts majors, including such majors as biology, economics, political science, etc… However, many of those choosing those majors have more pre-professional reasons for choosing them (e.g. pre-med, business/finance alternative, pre-law, etc.), similar to your examples of English and history majors looking to enter education.
But less selective schools like CSUs tend to have most undergraduates in overtly pre-professional majors like business.
This is also likely the case with private schools – the most selective ones tend to have many liberal arts majors, while the less selective ones tend to have more overtly pre-professional majors.
Not sure if it’s been mentioned in this thread yet, but I’d argue that tenure also locks in fixed, inflating expenses in return for questionable teaching quality. Providing employment and benefits for life is truly an “off balance sheet” liability many universities will struggle with as their teaching population ages. This creates an inefficient cost structure in the budgets of many colleges that compels increases in tuition.
@hgrad2010, if you’ve noticed, American colleges have been rather sparing at adding tenured positions with the vast majority of growth of faculty being non-tenured adjuncts that get paid peanuts.
And faculty compensation hasn’t exactly risen all that much in real terms, either.
“Compare to the US where across the whole spectrum of selectivity, pretty much any student at almost any college who wants to could study-abroad.”
This is a good point, there are so many other extras if you will that private universities provide, speakers, concerts, plays, even the athletic events are free or low-cost, at some point those fees have to get picked up somewhere. These colleges provide more an experience in addition to learning.
College is expensive for the middle class in America.
Out of 500 colleges ranked by the Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education, 143 have an average annual cost of less than $20,000 after receiving financial aid grants. 143 out of 500 =28.6%. Therefore, the cost of a college or university education in America is not unreasonable for those eligible for financial aid grants.
A possible way to mitigate the burden on middle class families would be to make college tuition, or a portion of college tuition, tax deductible OR to offer tax credits towards one’s first post high school degree.