There is Labor and there is Capital. Labor = University of Phoenix Capital = Harvey Mudd College Would you rather be capital or labor? The choice is yours?
Heh, my calc prof had a great nickname - "Fast Kenny". He'd walk into class and say "Well, we have three chapters to cover today" and bang it out. He'd have a piece of chalk in one hand, an eraser in the other and he'd be writing and talking and erasing all at the same time (I kid you not). Hard to believe that a decent DVD or OL class couldn't beat that.
they were ripped off by their liberal professors. they were sold a bill of goods. then they were indoctrinated with leftist ideology. then they will work for six months and collect unemployment for 2years while guzzling beer. with food stamps they will never starve. with obamacare they will hardly pay for doctors.they will never pay their debts off. then 1 day they will pass legislation creating a student loan moratorium. of course they will vote democratic. they have now ripped off the system + their parents. of course these professors believe in slavery on the plantation. a tenured professomakes $20,000/ course. the adjunct professor makes $3000- to 8000/ course. he accepts the job with the hope that some day he will be part of the elite and then he can rip off the students. professors preach socialism while practicing the most ruthless form of wage slavery.
I'm sure labs are necessary at some point, but the physics and chemistry labs I took were largely a joke. I remember our TA once closing the door and whispering "I'll just give you the data" as no one could get the expected results. Even if some labwork is necessary, the bulk of the coursework can be done online à la Khan Academy. Most brick and mortar universities are too expensive, overly subsidized and not necessary. If any liberal arts colleges remain, it will be the ones that actually teach the classics like they did long ago--not the modern PC indoctrination centers.
Really? I cant go to amazon.com and look up sellers like "Best science supplies" and buy a chemistry lab set for a few hundred bucks? I cant look up sellers like "Alpha Chemicals" and buy all sorts of cheap chemicals from them to do lab experiments? Like it or not Education is being decentralized. Sure its in its awkward phase right now, but the transitioning has already started. All in all it will be better for the people. Half of all college graduates do not end up doing what they went to college for. Instead of someone going to college and finding out they dont like what they are doing, its much easier to change your mind, knowing you only spent $500 on your education so far and not $50,000. Sure alot of teachers will be out of work, but the good news is, that at least it will be cheap for them to learn new skills.
All the assholes that paid big bucks for their "real" degrees are not going to hire people that didn't. Online education might be good for an entrepreneur but in the corporate world it's never going to bring the big bucks.
as the father of 4 I hope these online degrees put downward pressure on tuition. college professors and govt workers have seen their standard of living skyrocket compared to the private sector workers. The loan programs should be used to put downward pressure on prices... not create upward momentum. online classes are fine for motivated people wishing to learn a subject. For instance if you were studying for the bar exam and you had a chance to have the top professor giving you a great series of lectures on trusts and estates... you might wind up knowing trusts and estates better in a week then you would have had you taken the class in law school... however... If you had not been in law school experiencing everything that happens during that first year, you might not really be as good a lawyer as you could be at first. You also might not meet as many friends... which does make a difference for many in the long run.
Today in the US, the greatest predictor of a student's future wages are the wages of her parents. Mobility is actually lower in the US than in other countries, Europe included. Despite that, for the lower class, those who get into college tend to have much higher mobility than those who never went at all. That's often because you learn unquantifiable skills, in addition to work-training, that enable one to function in the higher echelons, and elite institutions tend to make it part of their mission to grant admission to people outside the majority and in the lower class (though that's changed a lot and are once again skewing into the rich only, though ethnically diverse). Highly uniform, scaled classwork is probably good for technical training. It makes sense for those who will enter into regimented work in a knowledge economy, who inevitably will be commoditized. Like programmers who no longer learn how to collaborate creatively, but instead function in a narrowly-defined scope at their cubicles. But if there's less demand among the poor to go to college, the wealthy will further entrench those non-tangible resources -- participating in cultural institutions and gaining connections that usher one into management-level positions -- in elite institutions. A Winklevoss won't skip the private boarding school and guaranteed Harvard admission to get a $7k diploma online. Neither would Andy Kessler, the Ivy League grad who wrote that op-ed. But a poor student who otherwise might have a shot at learning more than just "job training" just may. And be hired to do the grunt work by a Winklevoss. Stuff like this will only accelerate the decline of mobility and further entrench a rigid class system.
Uhm. . . Jem. Loan programs (as they exist today) are a government subsidy. As any economist (even Krugman) will tell you, government subsidies increase demand which raises prices. The only way to have loans not increase the cost of higher education is to take government out of it and allow the free market to set a price. Then the banks will look at students and tell many of them to go pound sand - they aren't going to fund half a mill for a music degree. OTOH, that would make many voters unhappy. They think that people who want music degrees and women's studies and 18th century French poetry (kudos to the first one who gets that . . . repeatable. . . reference) and basket weaving and other inefficient degrees should be just as supported as (say) those who want to study microelectronics and computer programming.