Avoiding a thead hijack

[Ghost]

Nauseating....


http://www.donzi.net/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=40520&stc=1&d=1227268945

I moved this to a new thread in case any discussion arose, I didn't want to disrupt the original.

What's more nauseating--the negotiated overpayment of Big 3 workers or the overpayment of the average college professor? :)

(Boy are those guys going to take a well-deserved hit soon, when people start to make real descisions about the true value of what they buy. Unless of course, they pass a "taxpayers will now have to pay for any ridiculous worthless college costs" law. We're a long way toward that already, and there were plenty of rumblings about adding to it during the campaign. This country is incredibly blind to the natural law that something is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.)

One clarification, as I can see this going off the rails. A modest percentage of the existing college professors should make a lot. Many of the existing college professors should not be in that business as they provide very little if not negative value. Therefore the average college professor is overpaid.

[Rootsy]

Does that bar chart include all perks, bonus' and other compensation such as medical, dental, pension, etc etc?

What many do not realize is that most workers currently being hired by the big 3 and suppliers, in recent years, are actually making in the neighborhood of $14 / hr under new labor contracts. The soon to be new labor contracts that are going to take effect are going to further reduce overhead in terms of employment costs.

It's the existing old contract employees and the retirees reaping legacy costs that are burdening. As well as the inflated wages of the white collar ranks.

Also since any state funded school is subject to FOIA you can find out exactly what any teacher / professor makes. Most universities have a page within their website, yearly, showing compensation of all employees... I know my Alma Mater does.

[chappy]

Paging Gold-N-Rod................Paging Gold-N-Rod.......................:kingme:

:popcorn:

[Ghost]

Also since any state funded school is subject to FOIA you can find out exactly what any teacher / professor makes. Most universities have a page within their website, yearly, showing compensation of all employees... I know my Alma Mater does.

I didn't know that, but it's good info, thanks. Makes sense.

[RedDog]

Well on the professor side of the discussion - I get really disturbed when I talk to my kids about their classes. All to often they get stuck with someone who speaks English so poorly that it impacts the students' learning ability / grades. And tuition has been rising about 10% per year for quite some time.

Through concerted efforts with scheduling of classes I was able to avoid the language issue when I was in school but then that was way back when - many of my peers were not so lucky

[mike o]

Your gonna have to define "value" for me, in your context.:wink:

[zelatore]

Ghost, that's an easy one to answer: The autoworkers' pay is more disgusting!

First, there are far more hourly line workers vs. executives with the autoworkers. I can understand higher pay in the top ranks of these companies, but the number of low-end jobs should have brought the average down. Clearly it didn't.

Second, (and I admit I have not made a study of this, I'm just going off the top of my head) the majority of auto manufacturing plants are located in lower cost of living states like Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, South Carolina, Alabama – this is one of the fundamental reasons for locating plants in these areas. Universities on the other hand cover all locations and are often in higher cost of living areas. Just to use my area as an example, we have (and these are just the big names) UCSF, UC Berkeley, Stanford, UC Davis, and a whole host of other smaller schools most have never heard of on the national level. I’d have no problem hearing that the average professor at one of these universities made $100K+ We do have one auto manufacturing plant in our area – NUMI. Again, considering that the majority of the work force is unskilled labor I’d be disappointed to learn that their average was in the $100K bracket. Even here in one of the most expensive cost of living areas of the country. Makes me think I’m in the wrong business.

Lastly, the average auto plant job requires (maybe) a high school degree. The average professorship requires what? A Doctorate? I'm not sure. I base this on an Aunt who's a professor at Southern Illinois. I seem to recall her not getting a permanent position until she completed her Doctorate. Although this was some time ago and I wasn't that close with her so I may be mistaken in this; it could be that her tenure happened to coincide with her getting the degree or something to that effect.

BTW, I don't know what she makes but judging from how she lives I'm going to say it's either less than the average, or she's living very frugally. Without speaking poorly of her, I would say she probably should make less than the average if only because she's at a smaller school in a low cost of living area.

I don't see $100K as excessive pay for a good job. Sure, it's pretty good money in almost any part of the country and very good in many parts. The $150K level of the big 3 is good anywhere and outstanding in most areas. The problem I have is the average professor takes on a great deal of responsibility, while the average autoworker does little but show up and accrue seniority.

[BUIZILLA]

Well on the professor side of the discussion - I get really disturbed when I talk to my kids about their classes. All to often they get stuck with someone who speaks English so poorly that it impacts the students' learning ability / grades. And tuition has been rising about 10% per year for quite some time.
last semester cost me $11k for my second daughter's Master's paper's, she has one more semester to go... one of the Pakistani instructors spoke so poor English that not one student out of 17 got above a 83 in the class, and her lowest grade of 150 grade hours so far...83 is the lowest to continue in the program and Jenna got that grade, in 6 years of schooling this was the most horrid teacher she had.. 11k x 17 students for 9 weeks is a LOT of $$$$$$$$$$$ to get a mumbling idiot as an instructor...

[Rootsy]

last semester cost me $11k for my second daughter's Master's paper's, she has one more semester to go... one of the Pakistani instructors spoke so poor English that not one student out of 17 got above a 83 in the class, and her lowest grade of 150 grade hours so far...83 is the lowest to continue in the program and Jenna got that grade, in 6 years of schooling this was the most horrid teacher she had.. 11k x 17 students for 9 weeks is a LOT of $$$$$$$$$$$ to get a mumbling idiot as an instructor...

Just because the fellow may not speak clear English does not make him an idiot by any measure...

[Rootsy]

I didn't know that, but it's good info, thanks. Makes sense.


As an example... By doing a simple search at MTU.edu you come up with this...

http://usg.mtu.edu/papers/Salary/2005-06.xls

and this...

http://usg.mtu.edu/usg/userfiles/file/2007-2008%20%20Salary%20Booklet.xls

[Kirbyvv]

The professor with poor english language skills may not be an idiot, but he should not be in a teaching position, if he can't be understood.

[Rootsy]

The professor with poor english language skills may not be an idiot, but he should not be in a teaching position, if he can't be understood.

I've had plenty of foreign professors with so-so English that were much better at conveying the subject matter as well as knowing the subject matter as compared to their fluent, non-accent bearing counterparts... I've had American professors that took great pride in making subject matter so difficult as to fail most of their students and make 30th percentile scores a 4 point grade after a little statistical manipulation...

So Kirby and Jim, what you both are saying, is... Since I can't decipher half of what a person from the deep South says because of their accent and they speak like they have a mouth full of marbles, they should therefore be eliminated from the work place and academia where they must converse with others? Or is it just foreigners you have an issue with?

[Ghost]

Your gonna have to define "value" for me, in your context.:wink:

MY POINT:
Good question. I thought this might come up.

And for anyone who cares to read ths, bear with me a little please--if you think this post is anti-education, you're missing my point entirely. And if you think this means no one should teach or study poetry, you're missing my point also. The point is, people study too much of the wrong things. And also that they are not very scholarly, on the whole. And the reason is that they were not held to either, by anyone, for a long time.

My point is that schools and colleges and academia as we have come to know them have lost their way, and true scholarship is further and further from what they respect or deliver or require, further every day. This is not to say there are not plenty of great professors and teachers--I am thankful for them every day. Thanks Professor Porter, among many others, for helping me understand what I am writing right now.



MY EXPLANATION OF VALUE: For anyone who wants it
Value (usually called "utility" I think, in formal economics) is worth. An easy way to think about it is using living standards, which follow a progression like the old Pyramid of Maslow:

I want to be able to breathe.
Next I want to be warm enough so I don't freeze to death.
Next I want something to eat.
...
Next I want to be able to read and write and do math.
...
Next I want a 60 inch Hi-Def TV.
...
...
Next I want pretty ice sculptures at my wedding.
All of these things have value in context. Individual persons will pay you for them, willingly, based on a fair market price. But when you start prioritizing, the ice sculptures get scratched off pretty quickly by all but a very few of the most affluent people.

The things people do, their jobs, in a real free market economy, are producing goods and services to satisfy individual people's demands. (And those vary--some of us pay dearly for boats when we are able to do so without sacrificing more important things--most would not.)

If your job is not directly providing those things on the list, to willing customers, at a price they are willing to pay, than what are you doing in your job to better help someone whose job it is to provide those things to customers? If the answer is real, you are still providing value. (Like the BASF commercials say, "we don't make the products you buy, we make them better.")

Say you teach fundamental math. People need math to build and design houses, run farms, and almost everything else of value. This has real demand. People who want jobs to provide the stuff on the list above will willingly pay you to teach them fundamental math. (Right now, you can get it in the public schools if you care to, but if you couldn't, LOTS of people would pay you for it.)

Now, say you teach calculus. Nobody will pay you for the joy of seeing you work out calculus problems. And fewer people need it for their jobs, but it is more specialized, and harder, and has broad applications further up the food chain in industries that DO provide all the stuff on the list above. So it has value to large numbers of those people, who like BASF, help the people who directly provide the goods and services. And it pays even more.

Now let's say you teach math, but almost nobody who graduates from your classes can do any math. Few will pay you for that, once they catch on. Because the math you teach doesn't help them do a job that provides a customer any of the goods or services on the list. Unless, of course, if they will (or think they will) get a higher paying job out of it, just by virtue of "having a degree," even if they didn't learn anything valuable in your class.

Now, let's say you teach post-modernist lesbian poetry. Very few people are going to pay you to write it for them, or to read it to them, or to explain it to them. In fact...maybe fewer than that. They might take it, and even get a woodie in class, but only if someone else is paying for it, or if it is rolled into a package deal where, like in the bad math class, somehow they will (or think they will) get a higher paying job out of it.

Now, once you "evolve" to a society where people can actually get higher paying jobs for buying a degree that does not actually help them better provide the goods and services people really need and want, people will line up to pay a lot to be in either class. Further, more colleges will spring up and grow their rolls to take money from these people. And its easy, because you don't have to actually hire professors who have mastered subjects of value, you can hire professors who simply have "credentials". And they sit and jerk-off with students for 4 years, and little useful knowledge is imparted, but a degree is purchased, and then those "students" get their "credentials".

Only problem is, the money they might have used for anything else instead of their phony credentials, to save for a house, buy healthcare, whatever, is wasted. Into the hands of the fraction of useless college professors. (No, no, no, they are not all useless. But many are.) And the graduates are litttle if any better skilled to provide anything on the list of needed goods and services, or to better help someone else provide the needed goods or services.

Of course, it's nice while you can get your "credentials" and then go get a high-paying job. But this cannot last. Because the industries that will hire you are not getting anything. And eventually, people won't pay them for goods and services, and they won't pay you.

Now, if you can convince politicians to take money from everyone who has it, and give it to students to get their "credentials", or to subsidize loans to those students, or to subsidize the universities that hand out those "credentials", or to fund new programs that hire the people with those "credentials", you can prolong the game of musical chairs, but it will just end later and more painfully.

Now, let's say you teach Public Policy, you can create whole legions of people who are trained to convince politicians, and convince the public, and lobby, and vote directly to force the people who earn money by providing real value to give it over. They are forced to give it over to pay people with "credentials" for jobs like revising textbooks to be politically correct. And to give lots of scholarships out to people to study post-modernist lesbian poetry. And for...<insert any of way too many useless things here>. And you can get their government to borrow trillions of dollars to spend on stuff it wants, instead of on the list of goods and services which people need and want, up above.

You can do all of these things.

Until 2009.

[MOP]

Trying to add a point and no have it a Hi Jack!!! I am very friendly with my local Dodge dealer, he has a ton of sales awards and has been to the factory on several occasions. Now my main point!!! He took me out into his shop to show me the under side of a new Dodge, I looked up and shrugged my shoulders like what am I looking at!!!!! He pointed to colored dots on mating parts, I said yeah so!!!! He said that many of the workers were over paid and on drugs so they had to mark parts with the dots to get production speed up a bit as they had a time trying to find where something went DAH!! He said QC inspectors were supposedly clean and checked the cars as careful as they could. So we have high paid workers doing a druggy job!!!!!!! Pretty much sucks!!! Look under and Chrysler corp car and see the pretty dots!!!!!!!!!!

[Ghost]

Trying to add a point and no have it a Hi Jack!!! I am very friendly with my local Dodge dealer, he has a ton of sales awards and has been to the factory on several occasions. Now my main point!!! He took me out into his shop to show me the under side of a new Dodge, I looked up and shrugged my shoulders like what am I looking at!!!!! He pointed to colored dots on mating parts, I said yeah so!!!! He said that many of the workers were over paid and on drugs so they had to mark parts with the dots to get production speed up a bit as they had a time trying to find where something went DAH!! He said QC inspectors were supposedly clean and checked the cars as careful as they could. So we have high paid workers doing a druggy job!!!!!!! Pretty much sucks!!! Look under and Chrysler corp car and see the pretty dots!!!!!!!!!!

Hey MOP--sorry if I was unclear. I posted a new thread here because I was starting a rant on the college mess. I was just saying I didn't want to hijack the thread about the car companies.

I wasn't clear--my bad.

Regards,

Mike

[RedDog]

...
So Kirby and Jim, what you both are saying, is... Since I can't decipher half of what a person from the deep South says because of their accent and they speak like they have a mouth full of marbles, they should therefore be eliminated from the work place and academia where they must converse with others? Or is it just foreigners you have an issue with?

No, following your line we should eliminate the students who can't understand the professor ---

jeez Jamie, why is so hard you you to comprehend?

I don't think anyone said they had problem with foreigners - the problem is with foreigners that can't speak English in an American school full of English speaking students. I had numerous foreign professors from Asia and eastern Europe. They were brilliant - and they spoke English

[BUIZILLA]

So Kirby and Jim, what you both are saying, is... Since I can't decipher half of what a person from the deep South says because of their accent and they speak like they have a mouth full of marbles, they should therefore be eliminated from the work place and academia where they must converse with others? abso****inlutely


Or is it just foreigners you have an issue with? not at all...

[Just Say N20]

So Kirby and Jim, what you both are saying, is... Since I can't decipher half of what a person from the deep South says because of their accent and they speak like they have a mouth full of marbles, they should therefore be eliminated from the work place and academia where they must converse with others? Or is it just foreigners you have an issue with?

Whoa! Slow down a bit. Having also been on the paying end of a son's education, I too will admit to a sense of being cheated by a university that promotes itself because of the level of professorial excellence they have on staff, while neglecting to also tell you that your kids most likely won't have any classes taught by those "Jedi Knights of Teaching" but will get stuck being taught by a person for whom English is not their first language. If I'm paying for an education, at least some of which requires the effective verbal communication of ideas/concepts from the educator to the student, yet because the educator's command of spoken English is so poor that a majority of the class can't understand it, I don't think I'm getting what I paid for. Nor do I think it is inappropriate to raise issue with it. If you can't communitcate understandably, you shouldn't be teaching.

And, having traveled all across this country, I would say there is a huge difference between the intelligability of any of the accents you find, you mentioned southerners, and the intellegability of the foreign teaching assisstants.

[Rootsy]

No, following your line we should eliminate the students who can't understand the professor ---
jeez Jamie, why is so hard you you to comprehend?
I don't think anyone said they had problem with foreigners - the problem is with foreigners that can't speak English in an American school full of English speaking students. I had numerous foreign professors from Asia and eastern Europe. They were brilliant - and they spoke English


I can understand exactly what you are saying... But sometimes it also takes a student with the desire to understand someone who has an accent... It's a two way street.

[Ghost]

I think this one is pretty simple--it is a matter of degrees, no pun intended. There is a trade off between how understandable someone is from his language skills, and how much useful information he has to share. His teachiing skill, is similar to the language skills. Some people know an incredible amount, but can't explain it worth a damn. (If people think you're stupid, I recommend you tell them you are one of these people. :) )

But look at Stephen Hawking. A genius as far as I know, but without a lot of fancy technology to overcome the communication barriers, useless as a teacher.

Virtually everyone stuck in a class with a Prof or TA who speaks poor English doesn't have any such technology to make up for the language barrier. So it is what it is. If it is bad enough that it interferes, then it interferes. That's why you should get to make you own decisions about where to send your money to get your own education...

[mattyboy]

i would love to find a college i could send my kids to for 11k a semester, i am looking at 4 times that for each kid, and the value that one gets for his education i can only hope will come back with the piece of paper when the jobs interviews start, one value i know of is networking especially in the field my son joe is in the university is on the leading edge and he has made contacts with hardware and software suppliers as well as head hunters in the IT field had he gone to a more main stream university i don't think he would have gotten that, my daughter has narrowed down 2 colleges the university of new haven and SUNY south hampton for marine biology. the choice is around 15k a semester difference with new haven being more money but also a guarantee that no TA's or Grad students teach any classes you get the professor's all the time.

not sure I always was of the mind set never gripe about what kind of money people get, they get what they can get.
plus i can think of alot of overpaid people would you like to start in politics ,sports or entertainment???

many jobs have a 4 year degree as a req. i have applied with 25 years of expeirence on the job and a 2 year degree with intricate knowledge of the systems i work on to be told by the co. they need a 4 year degree and would take a young college grad who wouldn't know the system if it bit him in the ass, so i take extra pleasure and billing markups when they have to call me in as an outside contractor to fix their issues.

some time the degree just opens the door i guess so that has some value

[Ghost]

many jobs have a 4 year degree as a req. i have applied with 25 years of expeirence on the job and a 2 year degree with intricate knowledge of the systems i work on to be told by the co. they need a 4 year degree and would take a young college grad who wouldn't know the system if it bit him in the ass, so i take extra pleasure and billing markups when they have to call me in as an outside contractor to fix their issues.

some time the degree just opens the door i guess so that has some value

Man, I am sympathetic to prices like that. It's nuts.

But to your point, I think the days are numbered for the 4 year degree in a lot of places. People won't care about anything but who can get the job done.

The easy test: ask most people with a degree (who work in a field that provides value, per my earlier post), and ask them if they needed their training to do their job. Most will say 'no.' Many will say 'some.' And a few technical types and doctors and others will say 'absolutely, totally impossible without it.'

The ones who don't workk in fields that produce any value that people willingly pay for, well, it doesn't really matter...

[BUIZILLA]

Matty, a semester is 9-12 weeks, 4 times a year :boggled: I've spent 39k so far this year.... cash... this doesn't include the $10,500 in public school taxes I also paid as attached to my property tax bills, which has ZERO to do with the University fee's...

it's not 11k for the entire year...

her degree field requires Masters papers before she is even allowed to be employed in Fla, or most any state for that matter, no negotiations on that...

as far as language barrier, I don't think 17 students should learn a third world language to understand or comprehend a teacher in an American University. One wrong syllable, or pronunciation of a single word the teacher mutters, can change a test answer's results... I feel really bad for the other 16 that didn't make the grade... they have to repeat the course at THEIR expense again, hopefully with a different professor next time.....

[Rootsy]

Actually... there are 2 semesters in a school year (14 - 15 weeks each) with an accelerated summer semester... On the quarter system there are 4 (10 week) quarters. 3 during the regular school year and one summer quarter...

[zelatore]

Ghost,

Regarding you assessment of value-

I can understand fundamentally where you are coming from. At it's most basic level, a man needs food, clothing, and shelter (and I suppose if either the clothing or shelter are good enough, they lessen the need for the other).

Once past that basic level, we start to see the value and usefulness of other rudimentary things like industrial skill (i.e the ability to make something) and mathematical or other education related skills (i.e. the ability to design something from a theoretical start as opposed to from a hands-on experience approach).

Unless you believe we as a country - even as a world - are going to collapse back to a much, much cruder world, we are far beyond that level of society.

While I don't disagree that a good deal of the education we receive is not directly applicable to making things or specifically creating better conditions for people, does not improving culture have a value as well?

What is the value of a Rembrandt?
(or of a local photographer's pictures?)

What is the value of a Frank Lloyd Wright design?
(or of an interesting design from an unknown architect?)

What is the value of a Beethoven symphony?
(or a Kid Rock song?)

Art and cultural improvements don't 'pay the bills' within society; they don’t keep us alive. But they do fill a need within humans. Look back as far in our history as you can and there was art. Cave paintings were more than simply communication - they were a way for that artist to tell a story. There is a strong argument that as a race, humankind has an innate need to create 'art', and the lack of it harms all of us.

Yes, first we need the three basics. We can't survive without them. Then we need that next level of builders and their support structure. But the human condition dictates that we also have a need for art, even if it doesn't directly contribute to our survival.

Short of nuclear holocaust, I can't see society falling back to the level where arts are not in demand.

BTW, my degrees are technical; a couple AS's in electronics. During my second year of school, I was dating a girl who was in her first semester of a child-care program at the same school (I forget the specific name of the program, but it was geared toward teaching people to deal with things like nurseries and day-cares). I recall having an argument at one point - things were pretty much on the outs by this time anyway - where I argued that while I was learning to do something that actually contributed to society, she was going to school to be a babysitter. I'm sure you can figure out where things went from there...but the point I'm trying to make is I'm not some liberal-arts major, so when I argue that there is value in those things I'm looking at it from a technical, hand's-on person's perspective.

(and, I should point out, after ending it with that girl I went back to a girl I had been seeing on and off before...who I'm still with now...who has an engineering degree – wow, that was a close one!:eek:)


I suspect you have anticipated this argument from the start and already have a counter-argument ready to go.

Now the Donzi tie-in: Boat building is a fundamental industrial skill that benefits man-kind; building a good looking boat is purely art and does nothing to better the world in a quantifiable way, but it sure makes us feel better about the world.

[BUIZILLA]

Actually... there are 2 semesters in a school year (14 - 15 weeks each) with an accelerated summer semester... On the quarter system there are 4 (10 week) quarters. 3 during the regular school year and one summer quarter... her Master's program has different requirements than that.... thankfully the next one is the last of my wallet drain.... 2 kids with 21 years of private and Univ schooling and Masters each, will pay for a brand new Nortech, in full...

[dfunde01]

An educators job is communicate information to students in a manner that allows them to learn and grow. The clear flow of information most go both ways. English is a very precise language filled with subtle nuisances. English also conveys more information with fewer words than virtually any other language. If you doubt this just check the sticker on a hotel tub that says tuck shower curtain inside tub in four or five languages.

Especially at the college level it is critical that the professor and student both be adept at standard english. If the student has a poor command of the english language it is not the profesors fault if he fails the course as is true of the reverse. There are obviously exceptions such as higer level math where both student and professor understand a common alternative language together, that of trig, calculus, etc and perhaps advanced second language courses.

Jamie, I can't understand a Bronx or Boston accent very well, but if I concentrate I get it since it is still english. This is why I avoid physicans that are not fluent in english at all costs if we have to rely on a clear two way communication to diagnois my condition. I want to be darn sure we undersand each other. If I'm in a trauma ER let him do his thing because he doesn't need my input. One of my great grandmothers didn't speak a word of English and one grandfather spoke very broken english so believe me when I say I have no problems with immigrants.

Glad this thread did not get hijacked.:)

[dfunde01]

her Master's program has different requirements than that.... thankfully the next one is the last of my wallet drain.... 2 kids with 21 years of private and Univ schooling and Masters each, will pay for a brand new Nortech, in full...
But aren't you glad you kept them out of the government schools. My son graduates from Davidson this May with a BA in Economics. In August he starts his working life with a Global consulting company. The only class he had a problem with was his last year of spanish. The prof was from Madrid. His struggle to do well had nothing to do with her english skills, it was his spanish skills.

[Donzi Vol]

I can understand exactly what you are saying... But sometimes it also takes a student with the desire to understand someone who has an accent... It's a two way street.

Well I've been in the classes that RedDog's kids are in. Let me tell you...it's NOT a two-way street. I graduated from UT not all that long ago, and there were some classes in which I was beating my head against the wall because of a language barrier. I had no qualms with the instructors personally, but if I couldn't understand them I felt cheated. The fact is, the students/parents PAY for instruction, and the students WORK/STUDY for the grade. They should NOT be hindered by the administration hiring an instructor who cannot be understood. And as far as the comparison with the Southern accent. While I find it humorous, it's waaaaaay off. Huge difference in the situations...take my word for it.

As for the chart...yeah...mindblowing! But I'll keep my comments to myself on this one:)

All the best

[Donzi Vol]

But aren't you glad you kept them out of the government schools. My son graduates from Davidson this May with a BA in Economics. In August he starts his working life with a Global consulting company. The only class he had a problem with was his last year of spanish. The prof was from Madrid. His struggle to do well had nothing to do with her english skills, it was his spanish skills.

I went to public schools, graduated from a state university with a business degree in Public Administration and two minors in Economics and Political Science, and I believe I've done pretty darn well for myself since then! Wow...public schools might actually work...

[dfunde01]

I went to public schools, graduated from a state university with a business degree in Public Administration and two minors in Economics and Political Science, and I believe I've done pretty darn well for myself since then! Wow...public schools might actually work...

Depends on the state and the system within that state.

[mattyboy]

Jim,
i hear ya joe is 30k a semester summer fall spring 90k a year and jamie will be 25k-40k a semester fall and spring 50k- 80k a year i can only do so much for them some of this will rest on them so basically they will both have a mortgage to pay off when their done a loan for around 200k


a bronx accent yo wtf i got your accent right here pally boy ;) :)

[Cuda]

last semester cost me $11k for my second daughter's Master's paper's, she has one more semester to go... one of the Pakistani instructors spoke so poor English that not one student out of 17 got above a 83 in the class, and her lowest grade of 150 grade hours so far...83 is the lowest to continue in the program and Jenna got that grade, in 6 years of schooling this was the most horrid teacher she had.. 11k x 17 students for 9 weeks is a LOT of $$$$$$$$$$$ to get a mumbling idiot as an instructor...
I had a sorry teacher like that in college. Not only could I not understand whaqt he was saying, he'd stand right in front of the blackboard while working formulas, which meant not only could I not understand him, although I could still read the formulas, I couldn't see them. I dropped the class, took it the next semester with a good teacher, and aced the course.

[Cuda]

I can understand exactly what you are saying... But sometimes it also takes a student with the desire to understand someone who has an accent... It's a two way street.
A student's ability to understand a foreign language should not have to be taken into account. When I take a course in trig, I didn't sign up to learn Pakastani.

[Cuda]

i
many jobs have a 4 year degree as a req. i have applied with 25 years of expeirence on the job and a 2 year degree with intricate knowledge of the systems i work on to be told by the co. they need a 4 year degree and would take a young college grad who wouldn't know the system if it bit him in the ass, so i take extra pleasure and billing markups when they have to call me in as an outside contractor to fix their issues.
some time the degree just opens the door i guess so that has some value
It's kind of like being in the military. Dad hated for an ensign jg to tell a 20 year chief how to do his job, but he did it anyway, even if it was often the wrong way to do it.

[gcarter]

From someone who DID NOT finish a degree in mechanical engineering, what I ended up doing with a very large part of my working life was to start and operate a business for over 20 years. There wasn't a lot of cross-over in the day to day operations of it. My technical background has been extremely valuable in the execution of the purpose of the business, but not in its operation. I'm not a stupid person and a reasonably quick learner, but much of the advice a person receives from advisors and friends (or methods one might learn from course work toward a business degree) may very well not be the preferred method to fix issues found in a particular business. Much of it learned on a case by case basis.
But knowing what I know now, I'd still have started the business.
You could say that starting, owning, and operating a business is a great equalizer for those who are willing to take the risk.
Even today when earning a lot of money may not be as important as remaining profitable.

[Ghost]

While I don't disagree that a good deal of the education we receive is not directly applicable to making things or specifically creating better conditions for people, does not improving culture have a value as well?

What is the value of a Rembrandt?...


Hey Z, I don't disagree with what you've written--I suspect I failed to be clear enough in explaining my take.

VALUE of ART? IT'S LIKE the VALUE of ANYTHING ELSE
Art is valuable, extremely valuable. It has real, quantifiable value, even if that value is subjective and fluctuates. Just like food.

Also, the items listed in my earlier post do not simply fall into a binary choice of "necessary for survival or not." Rather, they are part of a hierarchy, prioritized on importance. But don't let the vagaries of interests and tastes confuse that. Sure, people have different priorities, but the theoretical aggregate demand of society exists, even if no one person knows enough to spell it out exactly.

By contrast, consider the disgusting "poet laureate" of New Jersey, paid a $10,000 stipend from the taxpayers, who penned the trash "What kind of skeeza is a Conddoleeza" among other things. It is but a small example, yet it illustrates the difference between what you get when people get to choose what they pay for, and what government chooses to pay for with someone else's money.

ACTUAL VALUE VERSUS ARTIFICIAL VALUE
Key here is that the very definition of value is derived from what people will willingly pay for something. A loaf of bread may be worth $2 in the free market. This is actual value, based upon the how much bread is available, how good this loaf is, and how many people want it. With a gun to your head, someone might make you pay $1000/loaf for all of your bread. But this $1000 value is artificial, having nothing to do with the market value of the bread. The artificial value is imposed. It's also worth noting that if dollars were magically raining from the sky, the value of a loaf of bread would artificially go up from the $2 actual value. No one would hand over the bread to you for $2 when he could pick up 2 bucks on the street and keep the bread.

THE DANGER OF ARTIFICIAL VALUE
The danger of artificially imposed values is that they distort the natural market forces. Those forces are vital--they keep the goods and services that people produce, and the amounts of those, matched up with the stuff that people need. If you succeed in artificially raising the value of ice sculptures high enough, for long enough, you will starve a whole society, because too many people will choose to sculpt ice and not enough will bake bread.

OKAY, BUT WTF DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH PROFESSORS' PAY?
First one important nuance. My prior post discussed three separate problems. They actually all have similar effects, and can actually become the same problem when they go far enough.

Teaching and studying the wrong things: things which produce very little or no actual value or negative actual value
Teaching and studying things poorly: the students are not able to perform in the ways intended by the training
Teaching things in the wrong amounts. (think, 100 million classical music majors, all funded or subsidized by taxpayer dollars, at a hundred grand apiece)
Big government distortion of the marketplace causes all three of these problems. In the example of the gunman who makes you pay $1000 for a loaf of bread, big government is the guy with the gun. In the example where the value is artificially increased because dollars are raining down from the sky, government is the one bombing the streets with recklessly printed money. The arbitrary but real requirement of "4-year degree" for so many jobs that do not require such "training" comes from years of a misleading and dangerous illusion of wealth, based on government monetary policy. It doesn't give people useful training, saddles them with debt, and props up a lot of excess professorships that are overpaid and not needed.

(I also suspect it stems from a time when certain circles and jobs were controlled by a social class that could afford expensive colleges and no one else could. Back then, this largely kept their notion of "riff-raff" out of their professions, unless someone walked on water. Further, the far higher scholarly requirements of the much smaller number of college slots back then ensured at least something better than today's typical graduate. Since then, we've allowed government redistribution of wealth to lead to ridiculous numbers of college graduates with huge debt and credentials that won't help them perform a job. Pretty soo that will also mean they cannot convince anyone to hire them, ONCE THE EASY MONEY DRIES UP AND EMPLOYERS START PAYING ATTENTION TO REAL VALUE AGAIN.)

As such, like the Big 3, we have huge excess college capacity. But unlike the Big 3, a good deal of what they produce has no tangible, real value. The college industry is radically overpaid, in that a huge chunk of it should just go away. Also, a huge chunk of it, that has some value, is still overpaid. It will see that adjusted down to something more real, like most other industries will.

[FISHIN SUCKS]

What I found during my 4 years of University is that my domestic profs had grad asst.s instructing the class (not always) and my foreign profs would instruct the class themselves(always). The explanations that I typicall heard were that the gradasses were instructing because the prof was working on another project (writing a book). While I graduated in 1990 with a BS in Marketing, I have to believe not much has changed.

So does one conclude that the domestic profs book is worth reading/buying and the foreign does not write a book because no one would understand/wouldn't buy it anyway? Of course you can shoot holes:uzi::fire: in this, I don't care, whatever. But one conclusion is for sure, domestic people are by and large verbally easier to understand than foreigners, but that does not mean a domestic person is always able to convey a concept better than a foreigner?

[TBroccoli]

Here's one for ya!!

I went to the United States Merchant Marine Academy. It's one of the five United States Service Academies. I had a Professor in Strengths of Materials that no one could understand. I don't even know if he was a US citizen. Perfect. A government run Academy that had professors that couldn't speak English. Many of his students failed.

I believe that a college education (degree) shows a hiring entity that you have the desire and urge to get through the process. Even if you have a professor you cannot understand, you find a way to get through it. As a mechanical engineer I can truly say that during my 18+ years in the manufacturing world I have not had to use much of the trig and differential equations I was taught. The degree did get me in the door. Now I hope the Dr that just repaired my torn meniscus was taught how to do that while obtaining his degree.

[BUIZILLA]

so this language teaching barrier isn't a rare occurance...

[Ghost]

My first class in college had 3 weeks of matrix algebra stapled on the front end, and the lab once a week had a Chinese TA whose English was about as bad as any I ran into in 5+ years. He'd be up at the board drawing matrices for an hour, reciting as he wrote

1 0 0
0 1 0
0 0 1

Only he prounounced 'zero' exactly like a Greek person woud say 'gyro.'

I got so freakin' hungry by the end of that class...

[FISHIN SUCKS]

so this language teaching barrier isn't a rare occurance...
It wasn't when I was in school ('86-'90). I had profs from Africa, India, and Pakistan from what I can remember. Actually, the toughest one to understand was my Econ prof from Africa, Dr. Abera Zegaye. The guy was smart as sh*t and hard to understand at first, but eventually if you paid attention, you could understand him.

[Rootsy]

Put it this way... The practice one gets trying to understand people who do not speak perfect English while in higher education better prepares them for the "real world". Where generally, you deal with those from different parts of the world. After all it is a global economy now...As an example, try working for a Japanese owned company for a while...

They continually rotate in and out, people in management positions, from the mother land... When most arrive they barely speak understandable English and they most likely will be your boss... Sad but true...