Charging engineering students more for their education 23

[SteelPE]

A nice little article:

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013...-students-more/?KEYWORDS=engineering+students

 

[TheTick]

 

[zdas04]

rconnor,
"Let me Google That For you"? Cute. Ill informed, but cute. Ill mannered, but cute. Incredibly pretentious, but cute. I actually watched hundreds of interviews with the people in the tents. I was interested. I watched the ones interviewed by Fox, and felt like I was getting a cherry picked lot of idiots. I watched the ones interviewed by CNN and while the cherry picking was looking for a different result, the people in the tents still came across as idiots. I watched the ones interviewed by CBS and even with their careful editing, the people in the tents still came across as unsure as to why they were there. I watched the ones interviewed by Jon Stewart's staff from the Daily Show and laughed along with the audience. Other than a few "leaders" of the "leaderless" organization, the message coming out from the few who could articulate an opinion was "I've got an important degree and can't find a job and it is the fault of Wall Street". Person after person after person interviewed would say things to the effect that if they had found a job out of college they wouldn't be in the park, and it was someone else's fault that they couldn't find a job.

So, twit, I do not feel a bit uninformed and see no reason to ask for an excuse. I stand by my statements. The "movement", in spite of grandiose statements on Wikipedia and elsewhere of their lofty goals, was populated by entitled twits who had not been able to monetize their liberal arts education.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

"Belief" is the acceptance of an hypotheses in the absence of data.
"Prejudice" is having an opinion not supported by the preponderance of the data.
"Knowledge" is only found through the accumulation and analysis of data.
The plural of anecdote is not "data"

 

[moltenmetal]

I'm going to take the snit over the Occupy movement as an opportunity to post one of my favorite bits of satirical writing.

(Lemony Snicket is the pseudonym of the author of the "Series of Unfortunate Events" children's books, which are themselves worth a bit of an adult read)

Thirteen Observations made by Lemony Snicket while watching Occupy Wall Street from a Discreet Distance

1. If you work hard, and become successful, it does not necessarily mean you are successful because you worked hard, just as if you are tall with long hair it doesn’t mean you would be a midget if you were bald.

2. “Fortune” is a word for having a lot of money and for having a lot of luck, but that does not mean the word has two definitions.

3. Money is like a child—rarely unaccompanied. When it disappears, look to those who were supposed to be keeping an eye on it while you were at the grocery store. You might also look for someone who has a lot of extra children sitting around, with long, suspicious explanations for how they got there.

4. People who say money doesn’t matter are like people who say cake doesn’t matter—it’s probably because they’ve already had a few slices.

5. There may not be a reason to share your cake. It is, after all, yours. You probably baked it yourself, in an oven of your own construction with ingredients you harvested yourself. It may be possible to keep your entire cake while explaining to any nearby hungry people just how reasonable you are.

6. Nobody wants to fall into a safety net, because it means the structure in which they’ve been living is in a state of collapse and they have no choice but to tumble downwards. However, it beats the alternative.

7. Someone feeling wronged is like someone feeling thirsty. Don’t tell them they aren’t. Sit with them and have a drink.

8. Don’t ask yourself if something is fair. Ask someone else—a stranger in the street, for example.

9. People gathering in the streets feeling wronged tend to be loud, as it is difficult to make oneself heard on the other side of an impressive edifice.

10. It is not always the job of people shouting outside impressive buildings to solve problems. It is often the job of the people inside, who have paper, pens, desks, and an impressive view.

11. Historically, a story about people inside impressive buildings ignoring or even taunting people standing outside shouting at them turns out to be a story with an unhappy ending.

12. If you have a large crowd shouting outside your building, there might not be room for a safety net if you’re the one tumbling down when it collapses.

13. 99 percent is a very large percentage. For instance, easily 99 percent of people want a roof over their heads, food on their tables, and the occasional slice of cake for dessert. Surely an arrangement can be made with that niggling 1 percent who disagree.

 

[GregLocock]

" I fail to see why any university would suddenly need to "charge more" for engineering degrees."

Who said "suddenly"? /recognizing/ the true cost of providing a particular degree course may happen suddenly, but the cost was always there. I'm pretty sure the operating costs of my labs was way beyond what any basket weaving degree would cost. Running steam engines, turbines, and internal combustion engine on dynos costs hundreds of dollars an hour in the real world. We had an entire boiler and steam turbine to run in one lab.



Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[beej67]

On the flipside of all this, here's Georgia Tech with a reinvention of the education model in order to offer a masters degree in computer science for under $7000:

http://www.slate.com/articles/techn...ooc_the_super_cheap_master_s_degree_that.html

***

As far as the whole "hard work gets you rich" argument, I think if everyone took a step back and looked at it objectively, the truth is that there are several important elements to getting rich, and you don't need all of them:

- Work hard (getting a real non-fluff degree fits in here, but is not essential)
- Be born intelligent
- Be lucky
- Have rich parents

Those are really the four. If you look at statistics, having only one of those will get you to about the top 30% of earners in the USA. Having two of them will get you to the top 10%. Three gets you to the top 1%. And when you're counting, "Rich Parents" counts twice.



Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[graybeach]

Just a note about OWS. It was about more than student loans. It was also about demanding that the "too big to fail" conditions socialized risk and privatized profits and lead to the great recession be addressed. True OWS was rather hamhanded about it, but that does not mean that they were wrong.

But back to student loans - where were the parents when the children took out the loans? I would have stood in front of a bulldozer to prevent my kids from getting into serious student debt. When my daugher fell in love with a $55,000 a year college, I calculated her projected monthly payments how many pairs of expensive designer jeans she would be foregoing each month. Luckily this changed her mind.

 

[TheTick]

One thing that struck me about OWS is that it showed again how modern "radicals" have lost there grasp of the meaning of civil disobedience. Civil disobedience is a deliberate breaking of a law to make a point. Getting arrested is part of the potential outcomes (and often desirable). It's taking a risk to make a point and assuming responsibility for the consequences.

Now protesters seem to think that legal infractions done in the name civil disobedience should be viewed as free speech and not interfered with.

 

[beej67]

The truth is OWS and the original Tea Party were founded for the same reasons - as a reaction to the proliferation of money buying votes in Washington, since that's what led to the bailouts. Rich failures bought themselves out of their failures, while everyone else got stuck holding the bag. Both were originally established on the same premise.

But both diverged, because the establishment Reds and establishment Blues saw both of them both as a threat and an opportunity. Ailes and the religious right hijacked the Tea Party and turned them basically into the Angry Wing of the Republican party. (although the Ron Paulers are slowly stealing it back) Big Media hijacked OWS and turned it into the Angry Wing of the Democratic Party, until they started behaving like anarchists, and then sorta rubbed them out all together.

I get a real kick out of watching "Americans Against the Tea Party" posts on Facebook which are actually supporting original Tea Party principles without realizing it.



Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[JohnRBaker]

- Work hard (getting a real non-fluff degree fits in here, but is not essential)
- Be born intelligent
- Be lucky
- Have rich parents

Where does 'marry money' fit in, under 'Be lucky' or 'Work hard'?

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[beej67]

Where does 'marry money' fit in, under 'Be lucky' or 'Work hard'?

Honestly, in most cases I'm aware of, "marry money" stems from "have rich parents."



Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[Maui]

A college degree certainly is not a pre-requisite to becoming rich either. Look at Bill Gates. He is the poster child for this, since he is a college drop-out. And he never finished his degree work as far as I know.

Maui

http://www.EngineeringMetallurgy.com

 

[rb1957]

and Steve Jobs ...

but often a degree is a ticket to a ballgame.

i think that somewhere on the list should be ...
have 1 really good idea ... copying what other people are doing usually doesn't get you rich; seeing something new or a new application/opportunity of an existing idea can.

have the personality to back yourself when everyone says you're nuts.

i wonder if intelligence is being over-rated. if you have the flash of insight, the drive to make it real, the luck to have the right factors at the right time, then i think you're a long way there.

somehow, having rich parents sounds so much easier ! closely followed by rich in-laws, or stealing a tonne of money from the mafia.

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

 

[zdas04]

You always hear about Jobs, and Gats, and Edison as examples of why you don't need to go to college. Each of them (and every other non-degreed successful person I've ever heard about) had a very strong entrepreneurial drive. If you have that plus a strong work ethic, then the amount that a degree will contribute to success is pretty small. Without that, a degree is pretty well mandatory for financial success.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

"Belief" is the acceptance of an hypotheses in the absence of data.
"Prejudice" is having an opinion not supported by the preponderance of the data.
"Knowledge" is only found through the accumulation and analysis of data.
The plural of anecdote is not "data"