traditional B&M degrees: a waste of time?

ham · #1 07-03-2009, 03:46 PM

AS POSTED ELSEWHERE

http://www.nypost.com/seven/06282009...ee__176545.htm

Quote:

A student who secures a degree is increasingly unlikely to make up its cost, despite higher pay -...-. Consider two childhood friends, Ernie and Bill. Hard workers with helpful families, each saves exactly $16,594 for college. Ernie doesn't get accepted to a school he likes. Instead, he starts work at 18 and invests his college savings in a mutual fund that tracks the broad stock market.

Throughout his life, he makes average yearly pay for a high school graduate with no college, starting at $15,901 after taxes and peaking at $32,538. Each month, he adds to his stock fund 5% of his after-tax income, close to the nation's current savings rate. It returns 8% a year, typical for stock investors.

Bill has a typical college experience. He gets into a public college and after two years transfers to a private one. He spends $49,286 on tuition and required fees, the average for such a track. I'm not counting room and board, since Bill must pay for his keep whether he goes to college or not. Bill gets average-size grants, adjusted for average probabilities of receiving them, and so pays $34,044 for college.

He leaves school with an average-size student loan and a good interest rate: $17,450 at 5%. The $16,594 he has saved for college, you see, is precisely enough to pay what his loans don't cover.

Bill will have higher pay than Ernie his whole life, starting at $23,505 after taxes and peaking at $56,808. Like Ernie, he sets aside 5%. At that rate, it will take him 12 years to pay off his loan. Debt-free at 34, he starts adding to the same index fund as Ernie, making bigger monthly contributions with his higher pay. But when the two reunite at 65 for a retirement party, Ernie will have grown his savings to nearly $1.3 million. Bill will have less than a third of that.

SKYBIRD · #2 07-05-2009, 02:24 AM

The longer you are on campus the more the school makes. Someone has to pay the
Administration, overhead etc. Some courses are best completed at B&M universities which require lab work. Distance learning generally allows you to
Pace your learning. B&M universities have too many distractions, activists and time wasters to the serious learner. Exams and assignments are often given strict difficult deadline with severe penalties. Final exams carry too much weight in the final grade. We pay for a service to help us
learn instead the system tries to weed
people out. My experience with B&M was
very negative. I did one year and it wasn't
for me. I value my time and money. B&M
didn't offer that for me. There are too many eccentic angry people on many campuses, that is my opinion.

ham · #3 07-05-2009, 03:56 AM

There are many eccentric and colorful phenotypes, often overlapping, on the B&M scene.
As posted elsewhere:

Quote:

I don't see that my learning experience would be improved at all if I first had to fight traffic, try to find a parking place, wonder if thieves or vandals will select my vehicle for their attention today, dodge proselytes and perverts on the way to class, involuntarily listen to some deviant's political indoctrination disguised as part of the class, sit at a desk designed for a midget, rub elbows and make small talk with people to whom I wouldn't give the time of day otherwise, etc. etc.

Those with the multi-billion dollar endowments and owners of said bricks & mortar would have us believe that only the latter above-described experience constitutes the full measure of a true and valid education. I think not.

The fact is that when people cannot be herded, confined and detained they are less amenable to indoctrination, peer pressure and threats.

I say this: it's like visiting a five stars restaurant. You receive two balls of ice creams in glamorous settings with crystal lamps, chalk countertops etc, served on silverware by a fully attired lackey and pay say 50$ for that. Conversely, you can visit an ice cream parlour or supermarket and buy the finest ice cream for $10 or 15 the kilogram.
The same applies to the DL/B&M divide...

Gender studies, la raza studies, queer studies, genocide studies, Afro-american studies...who needs that crap?
I understand there is a billionaire industry to feed and some clowns who'd be lost without their "$80.000 a speech" ala Tony Blair, selling utopias that some analysts have tracked down as the poor man's copy of utopias early XIX century reformers devised...
PFFT!

Make no mistake...
There are as many *******es enrolled in distance learning as in B&M, but you are at least allowed to never see them and to mostly ignore them...it is much easier to moderate interactions at a distance (EX blocking users ).

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