tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post8811970783136673698..comments2024-03-12T22:31:46.500-04:00Comments on What Would Phoebe Do?: Not under my roofPhoebe Maltz Bovyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-48982367922644726842012-07-22T02:58:11.832-04:002012-07-22T02:58:11.832-04:00No, online education wouldn't be the same - no...No, online education wouldn't be the same - not according to the article you've linked to:<br /><br />"A large lecture class can also create genuine intellectual community. Students will always be running across others who are also enrolled, and they’ll break the ice with a chat about it and maybe they’ll go on from there."<br /><br />Which is how it works. It's not that without a massive, well-funded social/extracurricular infrastructure, students have no social/extracurricular lives. They still go out, play sports, etc. <br /><br />I think we might not picture this so easily, because our (Americans') impression of a no-frills college experience involves older students with jobs and families, or unusually burdened 18-year-olds with full-time jobs and huge family responsibilities. If the kids are 18-22 and give-or-take middle class, they don't act like modern-day monks.Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-67763223371533025972012-07-22T01:09:03.220-04:002012-07-22T01:09:03.220-04:00A college that's really just classes - and hug...<i>A college that's really just classes - and huge, impersonal lecture classes followed by an exam, at that - would be a whole lot cheaper to run. </i><br /><br />Sure, but then you might as well go to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/opinion/the-trouble-with-online-education.html" rel="nofollow">online education</a> so there isn't even the no-frills dorm room to have to rent, or the college auditoriums and lecture halls to maintain -- at least for any course that doesn't require labs.<br /><br />I wonder if American college education ever was like that. On-campus socializing and organizations seem to have been important at least by the postbellum era, if not even earlier. Important at the British colleges from which ours were descended, as well, maybe partly because some of them were in relatively sleepy towns like Cambridge. From what I know, most of the major Continental centers of learning were in cities. Less connected to monks preserving manuscripts and then to preparing young men for the clergy, perhaps.PGhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-77921148902359607792012-07-20T10:09:24.617-04:002012-07-20T10:09:24.617-04:00No way I could answer all of it, so going with som...No way I could answer all of it, so going with some...<br /><br />Yes, more students live at or near home. It's a small country, though, so even "far" is a short trip away. But even students who live in student housing - and here it's the French case I'm more familiar with - are just living in a tiny room with no frills. And it's not just that there aren't luxury suites with A/C or whatever - there isn't organized on-campus anything, no dorm social life, no extracurriculars, no sports teams. I mean, people still socialize and work out, but it isn't something done at college. A college that's really just classes - and huge, impersonal lecture classes followed by an exam, at that - would be a whole lot cheaper to run. <br /><br />"Does Belgium have a big group of people go into college pre-med, then get wiped out by higher level organic chemistry and end up a history major instead?"<br /><br />I believe something like that is the case, but no Belgian here at the moment to confirm. You do pick a major early on, but might fail out of it, which doesn't mean you get a job bagging groceries instead, so presumably switching majors is possible. <br /><br />"I think it would be a significant switch in higher ed in the U.S. for people to have to know what they want to do when they start college and to be fairly certain of sticking to it." and "On the other hand, I suppose an expectation of knowing what you want by the time you go to college might also diminish some of the American tendency toward extended adolescence." <br /><br />I think a great deal more is decided by age 18 in the States than we might imagine. By the time you start college, you probably already know if you have the math skills for something incredibly math-intensive. If you want to major in a foreign language/foreign literature, the courses will be structured to allow you to start from 101, but prior knowledge (or already knowing you're good with languages) is incredibly helpful. Studio art, creative writing, you probably have to make the cut to even be in the major. Much is decided for you, effectively. True, you might find yourself torn between history and polisci, but I'm not sure what terrible damage would be done if one had to decide at 17 and not 20 which of the two to go with.Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-33141342627154703952012-07-20T09:48:47.599-04:002012-07-20T09:48:47.599-04:00There are different tracks, some vocational, but t...<i>There are different tracks, some vocational, but to go to the academic one as a first-generation college student doesn't, as I understand it, have the same earth-shattering significance as doing so in the States, precisely because college is free.</i><br /><br />But is college the default expectation the way it is in the U.S. today? My high school didn't even manage to graduate more than 3/4 of my freshman class on time, but of those who did graduate, they claimed 2/3 were going to college (albeit community college for many). Are full-time tenured professors paid a lot less in Belgium? American colleges already seem to be relying pretty heavily on low-paid, no-benefits adjuncts to teach the first and second year courses. If taxpayers were going to pay for the same number of people who currently go to college to keep doing so. Also, do people go away to college as much there, or are they more likely to go to college near home and live at home?<br /><br />It just seems like sending even half of your entire population of 18-year-olds (and I vaguely assume Belgium has better high school graduation rates than Texas) to college, wholly on the taxpayer's dime, would be an expensive proposition. I suppose it's cheaper if not every college is expected to offer everything and students don't take a core curriculum but instead take all their courses in one subject. (I know the British model is not general-ed; is the Continental one?) Then the humanities-oriented college doesn't have to pay for science labs, and the science-oriented college doesn't have to pay for literature professors.<br /><br />I think it would be a significant switch in higher ed in the U.S. for people to have to know what they want to do when they start college and to be fairly certain of sticking to it. Does Belgium have a big group of people go into college pre-med, then get wiped out by higher level organic chemistry and end up a history major instead? I think I was a little more focused than the average, and even I didn't know I wanted to study bioethics until I saw the course descriptions, or major in economics until I enjoyed a summer school course in it. (My high school econ class was ridiculous; it was squashed in with U.S. government and the Reagan-worshipping teacher only taught us supply-side economics, which is nonsense in itself.) On the other hand, I suppose an expectation of knowing what you want by the time you go to college might also diminish some of the American tendency toward extended adolescence.PGhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-55255114445202044532012-07-19T02:48:50.109-04:002012-07-19T02:48:50.109-04:00PG,
Yes, as I said in the post, this doesn't ...PG,<br /><br />Yes, as I said in the post, this doesn't apply to everyone. And you make a good point re: the overrepresentation among confessional-essay writers. But my sense is that these days, more than when I'd just graduated, unpaid internships are common even in NGO-ish fields, i.e. not just fashion magazines.<br /><br />"Of the only two people I can remember from college who are now full-time writers [...]"<br /><br />These sound like two incredibly successful and ambitious people whose careers are not remotely representative of humanities grads, or even those who are professional writers. Poetry especially - if this person never even taught to pay the bills, that's unusual. <br /><br />"What does college look like in countries where this is true?"<br /><br />In Belgium, which probably has more in common with the U.S. than does India, it seems to work out OK. There are different tracks, some vocational, but to go to the academic one as a first-generation college student doesn't, as I understand it, have the same earth-shattering significance as doing so in the States, precisely because college is free.<br /><br />"Also, I don't know if any countries with mostly tax-supported higher education have the U.S. model of a liberal four-year education before getting a professional degree."<br /><br />Again, in Belgium, no - law school is part of college. And I'm not sure why that's such a problem, or why a compromise couldn't be struck that would throw a few general-ed courses in as well, in exchange for college being free/tax-supported/take your pick.Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-55428346298771589712012-07-18T22:55:45.469-04:002012-07-18T22:55:45.469-04:00The presumption of parental support into adulthood...<i>The presumption of parental support into adulthood ends up trickling down to those who have no such option, but who've bought into the idea that one simply must move to Brooklyn after college, do unpaid internships, etc.</i><br /><br />Surely this is somewhat peculiar to people in particular fields, though -- the fields that tend to correlate heavily with writing confessional essays, perhaps. When I didn't get into Teach for America, it didn't even occur to me to cast about for an unpaid internship. I probably could have gotten my parents to pay my rent if they'd been satisfied with the internship, but I don't think that's what anyone pointed me toward. Like, when employers were coming to campus, I don't remember any of them saying they were offering unpaid internships. Even the low-paying nonprofit and government job offers I got still paid at least minimum wage. (Though what the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics offered me to live in San Francisco probably would have necessitated either food stamps or living under an overpass.) <br /><br />Is it that the college job recruitment has changed so much and employers offering unpaid internship are more welcomed? (If so, just since the beginning of this recession?) Or was it always different for people who had committed to working in arts/ literature/ fashion, so that if I'd been paying more attention I'd have noticed that some of my classmates were neither going to grad school nor getting actual paying jobs? Of the only two people I can remember from college who are now full-time writers, one has been grinding out actual journalism (as in going to war zones) for the past decade; and the other had a paid editorial position for a scholarly magazine at first, and then has been living on a series of poetry fellowships, prizes and royalties.<br /><br /><i>What could change is, college could be funded by tax dollars, not tuition. </i><br /><br />What does college look like in countries where this is true? The only college campus I've even briefly lived on outside the U.S. was in the UK, and they're transitioning to a much heavier student contribution model of higher education. <br /><br />India's public universities don't require much tuition, but they're demonically competitive to get into. Parents might not have to pay college tuition, but those who can pay plenty beforehand to produce a kid who can get into the college: for private school tuition, tutors, exam cramming sessions, etc. <br /><br />Obviously America is a much richer country, but I think if college were wholly tax supported, there would be many fewer "seats," as they say in India, and obtaining those seats would become more competitive -- and as in India, there'd inevitably be private colleges springing up to take those who weren't smart enough for IIT but whose parents can afford to pay. (Given America's preexisting set of private colleges, probably a few at the top with massive endowments like Harvard could afford to skim the cream off the kids who could get into the state schools and still offer them a full ride.) And the shortages would make other social battles like affirmative action even more bitter. You haven't really seen someone decry affirmative action until you've seen a Brahmin get going on caste reservations in state universities.<br /><br />Also, I don't know if any countries with mostly tax-supported higher education have the U.S. model of a liberal four-year education before getting a professional degree. It's easier to get taxpayers to pay for college if you can say, "Out of this will come all your doctors, lawyers, teachers, et al."PGhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com