For the college folks

[Obed]

... I also believe that four year degrees are becoming overpriced.

Ditto! The price of 4 year degrees has gotten ridiculous. When I was in school, the price of tuition doubled by the time I graduated. The cost of college has increased much faster than the rate of inflation. When I walk around my state school alma mater, there seems to be no end to the building projects going on. I'm not very sympathetic when the university cries about its budget crisis. It seems to have a "budget crisis" every year.

Also, it is becoming rarer and rarer for students to graduate in 4 years. It seems that the colleges have financial incentives to keep the kids in school as long as possible and don't try very hard to help the students finish a 4 year degree in 4 years. I've known students who couldn't get registered for the classes they needed because the classes were full. Having to wait to take certain courses can guarantee you will not complete school in 4 years at no fault of you own.

Obed

 

[aczlan]

drgill, that's a solid plan. Community colleges tend to be much less expensive than the 4 year schools and with proper planning the courses will all transfer to the 4 year school.

One thing that will help with transferring to a 4 year school is getting an AS degree, NOT an AAS or any other similar degree.
Transferring in with an AS degree puts you in the "degree transfer students" group and it is easier to get in than if you were transferring in all of your classes one by one.

Aaron Z

 

[Chuck52]

I agree that the cost of a four year degree can get ridiculous, but there are ways to minimize the damage. Missouri as a state is pretty generous with help for both financial aid students and for high performing students. I don't know the numbers, but Missouri high school graduates with high class standing and good ACT scores can get full scholarships to any state university. I would imagine the same is true for many other state's colleges and universities. That is a pretty good incentive to do well in high school.

One of the real deals in higher education that US students do not take enough advantage of is graduate school in the sciences and engineering. Graduate students in Chemistry, Biochemistry, Physics, etc, can basically be paid to get their degrees. They teach lab courses and the like, and get free tuition and enough money to live decently...more than decently at some of the better paying schools. Yet, to fill those positions, most universities accept high percentages of foreign students because there are too few American students applying. Why is that?

Chuck

 

[Rob-D]

Those are tough curriculums.
My theory is that high schools aren't preparing students for the math and sciences like foreign schools.
I read somewhere that the US is 27th in the world in education. That's most likely high school as our colleges are desired around the world. I live in Upstate NY and Binghamton and Syracuse SUNY's (state university of NY) are considered top notch engineering schools. I knew a kid who breezed through high school and one of the easier two year colleges and then went to Binghamton thinking he'd do pre-med. He couldn't cut the math and science and now is doing political science.
We don't test right and our teaching methods need some real revamping. We're not teaching students to understand problems, just plug in formulas. It's critical thinking and it's lacking in our schools. We're now starting to realize it and hopefully we'll gear up to the rest of the world. Until then we'll lag behind in the sciences. When I was a kid we were at the forefront of the world and going to the moon made a lot of engineers! Really good engineers.

Rob

 

[user.69169]

You know there Rob you just made an intresting point. Seems like I been hearing for a whole lot of years how we need NEW this or that in schoolhouses, and the more NEW we get the dopier the kids come out holding their diplomas.

We got big problems in the schools from about 1st grade on. I see the little kids who can barely read carrying calculators I can't understand, and so called teachers bullsnottin the parents on how smart their little darling is cause he can use the calculator. Well its nice to be calculator smart, but it ain't going to help you one dang bit when there ain't a calculator around, and fact is if you can't do basic math without one you're flat dumb. The kids in school ain't being taught, they are being entertained.

I got a sister who was born with screwed up eyes in 1948. Back when she was trying to learn to read she didn't have the words to explain what she saw on the page, so nobody really knew what her problem was. The expert from the State wanted to send her off to some asylum claiming she was retarded. Mom & Dad flat told the State to shove it. Rest of us who could read did with her, and that girl had all the brains she needed to hold onto what was read to her. Math was a problem for her too cause she saw the numbers different, and even though she memorized all her math, she couldn't do it on paper. She can't use a calculator to save her life. When she was about 10 a fellow gave her this contraption with a bunch of rows of beads on wires that came from China, and she learned how to use it. Got so Zee could flip her beads faster than an adding machine could crank numbers out, and she always got the right answer. Just a matter of somebody taking the time to figure out how to help a kid who needed a little different help and getting her going no thanks to the schoolhouse. That girl has more good sense than most, and can pretty much think her way out of any problem she runs into, but most all her life people put her down and pushed her aside cause of her eye problem. Thing was Zee kind of got her head set to how people treated her, and decided she would make it on her own. Lot of years have come and gone and today Zee & husband got everything they want let alone need, cause she was born with a gift for baking, and she's sold one heck of a lot of bread to smart people too lazy to learn.

We weren't but little kids when we built moms first oven in the back yard, and when Zee maried and bought her first house we got together and built a oven in her back yard. A couple years later we built a second oven next to the first one and got her one of them hobart mixers you bolt to the floor. Husband had to take the back seat out of his car to haul Zee's bread to work and sell it.

We don't need a single dang NEW thing in education, we need to go back to when kids were educated and teachers knew how to teach. Something is dang wrong when somebody needs a fancy degree and special certificate to teach 1st grade, and college classes are being taught by students a cople years ahead of the class they teach. Seems sort of backwards to me. Like you said we used to be able to make up our minds and accomplish things. Today even when the mind gets made up nothing gets accomplished, but a heck of a lot of educated experts get paid.

 

[Transit]

Obed, sounds as if your sister may have a case of dyslexia, nothing wrong with her eyes it is the way her vision center interprets what she sees. Often dyslexics see numbers and letters out of place from what they really are.
Your calculator analogy runs along my pet peeve about PCs in schools. The kids do not learn how to research when they can just point and click, just enough to answer the question. If you have to read the book to get the answer than by the time you reach the answer on page 423, you should have learned a few things on the way. Pull the PC plug and it is useless. Iv´e tutored many kids, and they are a lot smarter that given credit for although sometimes a bit lazy.
BSEE, MSEE, BS applied math. And i like corndogs and beer to.

 

[Bird]

a fellow gave her this contraption with a bunch of rows of beads on wires

We still use abacuses to keep score in dominoes and a few other games, and yes, they are very handy adding machines.

 

[Rob-D]

I'm not sure calculators and computers are the problem. We used slide rules in the 60's and they only assisted in getting answers. If a course is taught with learning the reasoning behind a resultant answer, what instruments we use to arrive at that answer isn't a problem.
Try to take away my HP RPN (reverse polish notation) calculator and you might just have a war on your hands!

Rob

 

[irvingj]

Absolutely, Rob! RPN calculators taught me more about how to teach operations with integers to my students than anything else!! I always tell them, "Remember-- for the rest of your life... all numbers have TWO parts: a value, and a sign!!"

The biggest detriment I see to calculators is the surprising number of 8th graders who never learned the multiplication tables. Big stumbling block there! (I'm noted for grabbing a kid's calc and taking it away, telling them to use the one in their head....)

 

[Rob-D]

Absolutely, Rob! RPN calculators taught me more about how to teach operations with integers to my students than anything else!! I always tell them, "Remember-- for the rest of your life... all numbers have TWO parts: a value, and a sign!!"

The biggest detriment I see to calculators is the surprising number of 8th graders who never learned the multiplication tables. Big stumbling block there! (I'm noted for grabbing a kid's calc and taking it away, telling them to use the one in their head....)

Irving,
I think that goes with how we teach. If we teach them the why of what's going on and not just the rote of it then I don't see a problem. I'm heavy into what computers can do, CAD, CAM, CNC, etc. I have electronic design software that simulates my designs and saves me hours on the bench. It lays out my boards which I run through my CNC to drill the prototypes. I can make changes in minutes and when I'm done I can send a file out to my board house and have circuit boards that work perfectly in a couple of days. This was unheard of 20 years ago. I'm not a worse engineer because of calculators and computers, I'm the same engineer getting a lot more work done with a better final product. I can get up on the net, pass notes and talk directly to people who design the chips I use and find the best application for my designs.
Computers, the net and calculators aren't making us dumber, not wanting to put forth the effort to learn complex subjects and wanting to be spoon fed answers and life is. Yes, revamp our high schools and how we teach but don't blame the tools, blame the methods being taught on how to use those tools.

my two cents,
Rob