macs and reducing the cost of higher education

[jefhatfield]

as i mentioned in another thread, here are my ideas of reducing the cost of education in today's colleges

1) use macs in computer labs because much of the cost is in repairing gear and macs break down less

2) restructure the most common graduate degree, the mba, to a one year program...since the first year is undergrad courses anyway but currently charged as much more expensive graduate level tuition

3) revert the law degree, a Juris Doctorate, back to its former pre-1970s designation of bachelor of jurisprudence (llb) and charge undergraduate tuition for law school...macrain, help me on this one

4) change the government spending structure to bump up education to a higher priority on the list and make public colleges/universities free again

5) ban all credit card vendors from the campus environment as they like to take advantage of young kids away from home for the first time...many campuses ban alcohol on campus...why not ban the credit card companies?

my 2 cents

 

[eyelikeart]

re: education

1) seems feasible...but would the cost per unit/repair ratio come in favor of the Mac?

2) very agreeable...just another way to rape students for $$$

3) why the hell is law school so much more expensive?!

4) I think this is why universities are already charging a sh*tload of $$$ as it is...and it's true...the community college here is half as expensive as our city's university...not even a state school...

5) u just hit the nail on the head with me!!! it's because of those f***ing credit card companies that put their "student applications" up all over the place and also visit the campuses and draw in unknowing students by giving them free hats & cr@p that so many people come out of school with a huge credit debt hanging over their heads!! trust me...I was one of them...

 

[mcrain]

Re: macs and reducing the cost of higher education

Originally posted by jefhatfield
as i mentioned in another thread, here are my ideas of reducing the cost of education in today's colleges

1) use macs in computer labs because much of the cost is in repairing gear and macs break down less

2) restructure the most common graduate degree, the mba, to a one year program...since the first year is undergrad courses anyway but currently charged as much more expensive graduate level tuition

3) revert the law degree, a Juris Doctorate, back to its former pre-1970s designation of bachelor of jurisprudence (llb) and charge undergraduate tuition for law school...macrain, help me on this one

4) change the government spending structure to bump up education to a higher priority on the list and make public colleges/universities free again

5) ban all credit card vendors from the campus environment as they like to take advantage of young kids away from home for the first time...many campuses ban alcohol on campus...why not ban the credit card companies?

my 2 cents

Ok, let's see here.

1) A computer is merely a tool. In the grand scheme of things, it's a pretty minor percentage of the educational cost. With schools these days requiring laptops, a better fix would be to just limit the numbers of college provided machines to only the high level engineering machines. Let the kids do word processing on their own machines.

2) I don't know much about the MBA, other than to say that the more you take away from the post grad work, the more requirements you put into the undergraduate work. This would severly limit the sea of eligible candidates to only those who took the prerequisite classes. How can an engineering student, art student, etc... ever get into the mba program if they have to take a whole years worth of prereq. classes in addition to all of the requirements for their undergrad degrees.

3) The JD is a doctorate level training program. It isn't a masters, it isn't a bachelors level degree. To get into law school you have to have already attained a bachelors, and after that, law school builds upon that base of knowledge and trains students how to think and reason like a lawyer. (Theoretically, you could call lawyers Dr.) I actually think law school should take on a similar residency type program to medical school. I think we'd be a lot better off as a profession if after 3 years of school we had 1-2 years of on the job residency. Making the JD a bachelors program won't change the cost because it will still require an undergrad degree followed by 3 years of specialized training. You will not be able to reduce tuitions due to the high cost of maintaining facilities and professional staff.

4) Good luck changing the government. Our current administration thinks the way to improve education is to test every student more often so we can have an idea which schools are failing. Then what? The democrats typically want to throw money at education, but what do they really want to spend it on? Usually the two big ticket items are buildings and administration. Unfortunately, the education problem (in my humble opinion) doesn't stem from a lack of buildings or even old buildings. Nor, do I think that it stems from bad administration. I think the problem is far more basic than that. Salaries for teachers are too low by an order of magnitude. Experienced teachers can expect to make around $45000 per year. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less. What sort of candidates would you expect to choose teaching as a career? If you want the computer geniuses, the math geniuses, the physics gurus, the engineers, the english majors (well, not them, they don't have anything better to do anyway, but you get my point) to go into teaching, you have to pay them what their talent is worth to prevent them from going to more lucritive positions. I truly believe if you paid teachers starting salaries that are around 50 grand and then bump pay based not on years of service, but on qualifications and actual teaching ability, you'd get a far better group of people choosing teaching as a profession. (Yes, there are fantastic teachers out there who are more than qualified. Dan Cohen in NYC got me hooked on macs, and NY is lucky to have him as a teacher), but I think great teachers are the exception rather than the rule. Oh, and what in the blue hell is a "teaching degree" good for? If you want to teach math, you should have a math degree. My chemistry teacher in HS (years and years ago) had a teaching degree, and she was basically good for only one thing --> reading the teacher's manual.

5) I'm all for banning CC companies, but I doubt that will do anything to reduce the cost of the education itself.

 

[jefhatfield]

Re: re: education

Originally posted by eyelikeart
1) seems feasible...but would the cost per unit/repair ratio come in favor of the Mac?

a mac is a little more expensive and my fee to fix a pc machine like that would be $50 an hour and i am one of the cheapest guys on the block...really

or they can use their in-house techies but they are only there until they really know how to fix a machine and once they do, they go off to higher paying private industry or self-employment

...this is california and maybe does not relate to other states where a steady job with benefits working for a school's IT department is the ONLY tech job in the area

 

[mcrain]

Re: re: education

Originally posted by eyelikeart

3) why the hell is law school so much more expensive?!

One reason is you can't have TA's teaching the classes. Law professors are lawyers. We lawyers don't typically fall into the starving student or poor teacher role very easily, and in fact demand market rates for our services. In other words, you don't have many 40 grand or less a year teachers in law school.

In addition, it is very easy to secure student loans for law school and medical school because the earnings potential of the graduates is so high.

There are friends of mine who had 6plus figure debts when they came out and weren't too worried about paying the debts off (with their big city 6 figure starting salaries).

My spouses friends (almost all of them) have huge debts, but even with the big student debts, because they are soon to be Dr.'s, banks are willing to throw money at them for houses, cars, whatever.

Other grad schools just don't have the same earnings potential as do law and med schools.

 

[mcrain]

Re: Re: re: education

Originally posted by jefhatfield
a mac is a little more expensive and my fee to fix a pc machine like that would be $50 an hour and i am one of the cheapest guys on the block...really

Add to that the $150-250 per hour fee of the attorney to sue the bast*rds who sold the PC's to the college, and those macs are starting to look cheap.

 

[jefhatfield]

Re: Re: macs and reducing the cost of higher education

Originally posted by mcrain


2) I don't know much about the MBA, other than to say that the more you take away from the post grad work, the more requirements you put into the undergraduate work. This would severly limit the sea of eligible candidates to only those who took the prerequisite classes. How can an engineering student, art student, etc... ever get into the mba program if they have to take a whole years worth of prereq. classes in addition to all of the requirements for their undergrad degrees.

3) The JD is a doctorate level training program. It isn't a masters, it isn't a bachelors level degree. To get into law school you have to have already attained a bachelors, and after that, law school builds upon that base of knowledge and trains students how to think and reason like a lawyer. (Theoretically, you could call lawyers Dr.) I actually think law school should take on a similar residency type program to medical school. I think we'd be a lot better off as a profession if after 3 years of school we had 1-2 years of on the job residency. Making the JD a bachelors program won't change the cost because it will still require an undergrad degree followed by 3 years of specialized training. You will not be able to reduce tuitions due to the high cost of maintaining facilities and professional staff.

so, after playing devils advocate, how do you think we can reduce costs...let's say that governor davis hired you today and that was your job and he said, "give me results"

ok, now i was an mba and law student...the degree after the JD is a llm (a master's degree) and the degree after that is the JSD (the doctorate degree of law)...a law degree has been for three hundred years a second bachelor's degree and for only for the last 30 has it been considered a graduate degree

educational institutions, city, county, and federal government all put a person with a JD in the pay scale as one with two bachelor's degrees, and not at the level of someone who has a master's or PhD ...i also worked for the federal government in human resources and this was the pay scale at the defense department where a person with a JD entered service as a GS-7 , GS-8, or GS-9

a master's degree person always entered at least as a GS-9, but no lower

a PhD, or any person with a doctorate enters as a GS-11, regardless

so why charge doctorate level tuition at law schools...give the law students a break

and as far as the mba, let a non-business student get conditionally accepted into an mba program and let that student take those undergrad level courses at undergrad level tuition...and give those students a break and why charge them full graduate level tuition learning the basics of econ, accounting, finance, marketing, and management

so mr mcrain, you are now appointed by jefhatfield and governor davis to help our great state of california

give me your 2 cents

( btw...i am not angry or bitter at gov davis, but some of the best ideas i have heard for california have come from out of state people who live under a better system of government)

also the reason a JD is not called "Dr." is because that is the title for someone who has a JSD (who has already earned the llm and basic JD)

 

[jefhatfield]

Re: Re: re: education

Originally posted by mcrain


One reason is you can't have TA's teaching the classes. Law professors are lawyers. We lawyers don't typically fall into the starving student or poor teacher role very easily, and in fact demand market rates for our services. In other words, you don't have many 40 grand or less a year teachers in law school.

In addition, it is very easy to secure student loans for law school and medical school because the earnings potential of the graduates is so high.

There are friends of mine who had 6plus figure debts when they came out and weren't too worried about paying the debts off (with their big city 6 figure starting salaries).

My spouses friends (almost all of them) have huge debts, but even with the big student debts, because they are soon to be Dr.'s, banks are willing to throw money at them for houses, cars, whatever.

Other grad schools just don't have the same earnings potential as do law and med schools.

now you are talking about your state, but in california lawyers are a dime a dozen and they can't even begin to expect six digit salaries out of school

doctors and dentists can't even expect that the month after they graduate here

btw...latest salary survey lists dentists as the top here in california...maybe we have great tans but eat a lot of sweets..he he

...that probably explains why so many professionals have already moved out of california...not to mention the high cost of a house

 

[mcrain]

Re: Re: Re: macs and reducing the cost of higher education

Originally posted by jefhatfield
So, after playing devils advocate, how do you think we can reduce costs...let's say that governor davis hired you today and that was your job and he said, "give me results"

ok, now i was an mba and law student...the degree after the JD is a llm (a master's degree) and the degree after that is the JSD (the doctorate degree of law)...a law degree has been for three hundred years a second bachelor's degree and for only for the last 30 has it been considered a graduate degree

educational institutions, city, county, and federal government all put a person with a JD in the pay scale as one with two bachelor's degrees, and not at the level of someone who has a master's or PhD

so why charge doctorate level tuition at law schools...give the law students a break

and as far as the mba, let a non-business student get conditionally accepted into an mba program and let that student take those undergrad level courses at undergrad level tuition...and give those students a break and why charge them full graduate level tuition learning the basics of econ, accounting, finance, marketing, and management

so mr mcrain, you are now appointed by jefhatfield and governor davis to help our great state of california

give me your 2 cents



also the reason a JD is not called "Dr." is because that is the title for someone who has a JSD (who has already earned the llm and basic JD)

I just applied for a federal position, and attorneys go in between GS-11 and GS-14 now.

The LLM is a masters in law, and there is a doctorate in law, so yes, there are advanced degrees beyond the Juris Doctorate, however, that does not mean the JD isn't a doctorate level education. To say so would basically imply that to get a doctorate in the legal profession you have to have more than twice the amount of education anyone else needs to get a doctorate. (That's sort of silly) To get a masters after undergrad, you go to school for a year or so, to get a doctorate, you go to school for 3 years or so, to be an MD, you go to school for 4 years. Law school is 3 years. The only difference is that there isn't anything for an MD or PhD to do after getting their doctorate, while a JD has even more levels of education they can do. (usually, llm's are masters not in law [in general], but in rather a masters in a specific area of the law)

Ok, that was the easy part of the response. You've asked some tough questions.

Honest answer is I have no idea what would work best for California.

That being said, there are a few things I would do. In the pre-college levels, I would work very hard at getting higher quality teachers and somehow paying them what they are worth. Second, in the pre-college years, I would get rid of the idea of throwing all kids in the same classrooms regardless of intelligence or motivation. (If you have to take 30 ritilin a day and disrupt the class, I'm sorry, but you shouldn't be in with the kids who can do calculus in 4th grade)

As for college, the State should, if it has not done so already, provide tax incentives for paying for college educations. The state should also provide scholorships for kids who go into specialties so long as they teach for a few years (5 years?) (sort of like the military).

Post-grad education shouldn't have its costs reduced. If you make it cheap to become a Dr. or easier to become one, you flood the market with people. (see for e.g. your comment about too many lawyers and doctors in cali).

To make post grad available to qualified people, the state could offer scholorships for teaching service (an additional 3-5 years?) or low interest rate specialized loans (at the cost of 1-2 years of teaching service).

As you can see, the biggest educational problem in my mind isn't that people can't afford to get an education (they can get loans), but rather that we are failing the kids who will enter college later. Those kids need the best possible education so that when they get to college, they are straining at the bit to do more, learn more, and do more than the people teaching them. Right now, I don't see that happening.

 

[jefhatfield]

being a teacher, when the llb's upped their credential to a JD, the educational field did not recognize the JD as a true doctorate...the field of higher education finally relented and now they see both the JD and JSD as doctorates with the llm being some sort of "super master's degree"

i have no doubt that all lawyers with JDs worked just as hard as MDs and PhDs so maybe you all deserve the "doctorate" label...it is just that there were hundreds of years of lawyers being llb's (bachelor of law) until 1970

i actually have no position on this issue except that law students, like i once was, should pay only undergraduate tuition

some california state universities will only charge grad students undergrad tuition to be fair...sure all grad professors possess a master's or higher and many undergrad teachers only have a bachelor's in some cases, but some cal state universitites charge the same tuition across the board to help the grad students thru school

i have often wondered what is the best courses of action to bring california back to a free college system like it was in many universities pre-1981 when all you had to pay for was books...and in the 60s and before, many schools were completely free like UC Davis where the books were given to you too as well as room and board...just imagine, free like high school

what happened?

 

[jefhatfield]

keep school cheap for the kids

they are our future