First off let me tell you that I am not looking to sway anyone's opinions.  I am looking to learn from you all.  I get that the forgiveness of student loans would be beneficial economically by relieving debt and spreading more money around.  But how does that go with financial responsibility?  Larry Winget had some comment of charge card debt.  Two people entered a contract and the credit card company is only upholding their end of the bargain.  Isn't it the same with the student loan situation?  You took the loan, now pay it?  It seems really literal.

Second thing I don't get.  Is the debt just gone?  Or do the taxpayers have to pay for the loan debt?

Should definitely probably be older than 18 to be allowed to sign up for debt/a loan.

Considering they teach zero fiscal responsibility concepts in grade school.

Feels a lot like being able to peddle tobacco to kids without having to disclose lung cancer warnings.

Yes, the government will fund the buyout through taxes (and other sources of revenue).

Student Loans have a few issues. There is a predatory nature to the way they are delivered and the lack of transparency. It’s not a fair fight between an 18 year old and a room of lawyers that drafted the contract, as much as people like to say it is.

More importantly, colleges have become a profit center instead of a service. The cost of college has become absurd, and the easy access to loans has allowed that to happen. Both need to be curbed as opposed to just singling our student loans.

I’m for some type of relief program - not outright ending loans - but I’m more on the side of restructuring what higher ed looks like and costs.

I struggle a bit with it being all of our responsibility to pay for something that lacked oversight. Or am I missing more? Can we screw the loan companies?

Feb 24, 2020 16:37:05 GMT theend said:

I struggle a bit with it being all of our responsibility to pay for something that lacked oversight. Or am I missing more? Can we screw the loan companies?

I think everyone can screw everyone, right? Isn't that the basis of human nature?

I wonder what the "real" cost of higher education actually is? Like if you strip away the predatory bloat that has presumably been baked into tuition over the years.

I am so glad to you have all as a resource to discuss stuff that I do not know about.

Feb 24, 2020 17:17:49 GMT 🤯 said:

Feb 24, 2020 16:37:05 GMT theend said:

I struggle a bit with it being all of our responsibility to pay for something that lacked oversight. Or am I missing more? Can we screw the loan companies?

I think everyone can screw everyone, right? Isn't that the basis of human nature?

I wonder what the "real" cost of higher education actually is? Like if you strip away the predatory bloat that has presumably been baked into tuition over the years.

Sadly there is little bloat.  Students do not go to college to learn.  They go for the experience.  College bloat is usually related to providing this experience to the consumers.  

The other source of bloat is special interest department and compliance departments.  These are also needed as the college lawsuit industry is also booming with lawsuits settling for millions.  While people were celebrating that girl turned porn actress who dragged her mattress around Columbia, the school settled with the person she accused for millions.  Implicit racism, sexism and other isms see daily lawsuits being filed based on nothing more than the belief that students were treated a certain way because of discrimination.  While the suits never plan to see the light of day in court, the schools need to spend money to defend themselves.  Policy experts are hired, compliance offices created to document that policy is followed and legal experts added to the payroll so should a suit go to court, the college is not on the hook for millions of dollars because someone got a C on a term paper and assumes it is because of discrimination.  Hell I only taught two classes and someone accused our department of failing her not because she never showed up for class and failed every in class test but because myself, the other TA and our lead professor were all white men.  60 students I taught and one threatened a suit.  That should tell you how bad it is.  Departmental meeting was interesting as the student was not aware that our department head was a black woman.  Or I had proof she employed a ghost writer for her final paper by doing a federalist paper analysis on it.  This student was removed from the college but should she has retained legal services prior to the meeting, it may have been a different story.

I hope this never happens otherwise guys like me might have to start working out and develop a personality if we want to get laid.

But I'd of course be down for a clean slate if I had debt.

theend,🤯,KJ,c,@ness,Lookout Boomer coming through!

I have little sympathy for people with college debt.
Now I am 42 but I started work at 17 and had to pay for my fuel, trade school fees, tools, board etc and I made $207 per week.

It's a strange world where people want to claim they are mature and responsible enough to drive a motor car or own a gun, but this finance business is totally beyond them.
In Australia we have a system where the Government loans the college fees and you don't pay a cent back until you are earning at least 45k per year.
Problem is the number of idiots doing stupid degrees or having no work ethic with their loans never being repaid.

When I am emperor of the world I will abolish all Government assistance for student loans.
If you want to take a loan at the prevailing rate on interest, it is your right, but the risk is your own.
Instead I would offer tax credits to industry and government sectors to employ people out of Highschools and offer them cadetships where they are like internships with a mix of formal education and on the job training with proper degrees at the end, but courses that run a year longer based on the workplace component.
In this way we can right-size the college places to places that exist in industry.
We can fit candidates better to jobs that come from the degrees.
We kill the useless college degrees that provide no real world benefit.

College education is not a right, pay for it or go get a job.

Feb 25, 2020 2:40:33 GMT iNCY said:

theend,🤯,KJ,c,@ness,Lookout Boomer coming through!

I have little sympathy for people with college debt.
Now I am 42 but I started work at 17 and had to pay for my fuel, trade school fees, tools, board etc and I made $207 per week.

It's a strange world where people want to claim they are mature and responsible enough to drive a motor car or own a gun, but this finance business is totally beyond them.
In Australia we have a system where the Government loans the college fees and you don't pay a cent back until you are earning at least 45k per year.
Problem is the number of idiots doing stupid degrees or having no work ethic with their loans never being repaid.

When I am emperor of the world I will abolish all Government assistance for student loans.
If you want to take a loan at the prevailing rate on interest, it is your right, but the risk is your own.
Instead I would offer tax credits to industry and government sectors to employ people out of Highschools and offer them cadetships where they are like internships with a mix of formal education and on the job training with proper degrees at the end, but courses that run a year longer based on the workplace component.
In this way we can right-size the college places to places that exist in industry.
We can fit candidates better to jobs that come from the degrees.
We kill the useless college degrees that provide no real world benefit.

College education is not a right, pay for it or go get a job.

I definitely vote for Emperor iNCY!

Although, to be fair, gun and car ownership are much more straightforward and clear cut concepts than financing and career planning.

The other reality of student loans is that frequently you don’t start college knowing what it will cost at the end, so you can’t exactly plan for the debt cliff you’re about to fall into. I know tuition freezes are becoming more popular, but I’m sure I’m not alone in being a student who started college with a full ride on scholarships only to watch college triple in price over the next three years. Once you’re knee deep into the debt, the only logical options are to either quit college with nothing to show for it or just keep digging deeper.

And career planning? Forget about it. I was taught to get your degree and then get a job. No one told me the kind of degree mattered. Because it didn’t matter to the generation teaching us to go to college, they made it out with small loans and jobs with limited degrees. Colleges sell you on “placement”, even when you’re a sociology major you’re practically guaranteed a job out of college. It wasn’t until my last year they told me the only successful people with sociology bachelor degrees were professional football players, but if I want to triple my debt I could become a therapist.


I’m sure there are some interesting papers out there on what a free public college for all model would look like, but it’s my favorite question. Would public colleges drop research and let the free market take it? Would professors have to start teaching three or four times as much? Would colleges do what is right and start offering labor market dependent studies or would they just lean into the psychs and political sciences that are popular with limited outcomes?

Feb 25, 2020 2:51:38 GMT 🤯 said:

Feb 25, 2020 2:40:33 GMT iNCY said:

theend ,🤯 ,KJ ,c ,@ness ,Lookout Boomer coming through!

I have little sympathy for people with college debt.
Now I am 42 but I started work at 17 and had to pay for my fuel, trade school fees, tools, board etc and I made $207 per week.

It's a strange world where people want to claim they are mature and responsible enough to drive a motor car or own a gun, but this finance business is totally beyond them.
In Australia we have a system where the Government loans the college fees and you don't pay a cent back until you are earning at least 45k per year.
Problem is the number of idiots doing stupid degrees or having no work ethic with their loans never being repaid.

When I am emperor of the world I will abolish all Government assistance for student loans.
If you want to take a loan at the prevailing rate on interest, it is your right, but the risk is your own.
Instead I would offer tax credits to industry and government sectors to employ people out of Highschools and offer them cadetships where they are like internships with a mix of formal education and on the job training with proper degrees at the end, but courses that run a year longer based on the workplace component.
In this way we can right-size the college places to places that exist in industry.
We can fit candidates better to jobs that come from the degrees.
We kill the useless college degrees that provide no real world benefit.

College education is not a right, pay for it or go get a job.

I definitely vote for Emperor iNCY !

Although, to be fair, gun and car ownership are much more straightforward and clear cut concepts than financing and career planning.

So someone is more trustworthy to control a ton of steel down a road that parents are walking their children on either side of, than they are taking out a loan? 

Paying interest isn't a hard concept to understand, neither is the concept of nothing being free, it is just the casual manner that people don't really give any thought to tomorrow if they are happy today.

If people want to go to college, switch majors, get pissed up every night, not turn up to classes and emerge after 6 years with a ton of debt and a useless degree if any degree at all... That's fine, just don't expect someone else to foot the bill for your stupidity.
Of course you could just be a Bernie-Bro, have a dead end job and vote in a way that someone else pays for all your mistakes.
Let's all grab onto the lifeguard until he drowns.
Socialism is the approaching death of Western civilization.

I will say this easily, private section will never pay to train people to handle innovation.  Right now you can get a PhD student to do research at their edge of field for 15k a year.  No equally educated person will do full time research for that price.  Nor will corporations pay the competitive 100k for a researcher of that calibre, let alone a ten of 10 for a million to tackle a single issue as college teams can.  But almost all innovation comes from students working for nearly nothing giving away their work freely.  This is ultimately what the US will now be paying for.  The undergraduate nonsense will be a cost to be absorbed for a pool of extremely expensive knowledge we are generating for less than minimum wage. 

China is a few years away from being on par with the US in terms of scientific output and innovation.  Soon they will surpass us in terms of research and our researchers will go over there, as already it is cheaper to do research there and with less legal restraints.  US colleges are facing a growing backlash from anti-science and anti-college attitudes which will only increase this.  Free education will at least slow this turnover by increasing our potential pool of grad workers who may stay on to lead research with the systems they are familiar with.

Finally, we know that college educated people are simply better at processing propaganda and are more likely to verify information.  Given the US has concerns over the information that is leading people to decide who should lead us and we have no way of stopping exposure to the propaganda itself, this may be the best way for the US to preserve what little respect the world has for our democracy.  Or the world can enjoy the US re-electing Trump, then Don and the rest of his family.   Remember it is all fun and games until nukes are used to end a trade dispute.  More and more people in the US also believe the world is flat.  How easy will it be for them to simply ignore atrocities committed by the US in the future by telling them it is just fake news.

Feb 25, 2020 5:19:27 GMT c said:

I will say this easily, private section will never pay to train people to handle innovation.  Right now you can get a PhD student to do research at their edge of field for 15k a year.  No equally educated person will do full time research for that price.  Nor will corporations pay the competitive 100k for a researcher of that calibre, let alone a ten of 10 for a million to tackle a single issue as college teams can.  But almost all innovation comes from students working for nearly nothing giving away their work freely.  This is ultimately what the US will now be paying for.  The undergraduate nonsense will be a cost to be absorbed for a pool of extremely expensive knowledge we are generating for less than minimum wage. 

China is a few years away from being on par with the US in terms of scientific output and innovation.  Soon they will surpass us in terms of research and our researchers will go over there, as already it is cheaper to do research there and with less legal restraints.  US colleges are facing a growing backlash from anti-science and anti-college attitudes which will only increase this.  Free education will at least slow this turnover by increasing our potential pool of grad workers who may stay on to lead research with the systems they are familiar with.

Finally, we know that college educated people are simply better at processing propaganda and are more likely to verify information.  Given the US has concerns over the information that is leading people to decide who should lead us and we have no way of stopping exposure to the propaganda itself, this may be the best way for the US to preserve what little respect the world has for our democracy.  Or the world can enjoy the US re-electing Trump, then Don and the rest of his family.   Remember it is all fun and games until nukes are used to end a trade dispute.  More and more people in the US also believe the world is flat.  How easy will it be for them to simply ignore atrocities committed by the US in the future by telling them it is just fake news.

Have you got any data that verifies that all innovation comes from students that are PhD candidates?
Maybe some good research is done by these cutting edge researchers but the majority of college graduates are embarrassing in their skill levels.
There is very little critical thinking and a tendency to turn out group-think drones with very little ability to deduct and reason.
If you're employing an operations manager, you get an Engineer or Accountant with an MBA, it doesn't really matter which one because they are all clones.

To color the viewpoint as "bias" that is "anti-college" is grossly oversimplifying the argument.
Colleges simply aren't training their students to critically think, because they learn very quickly that it is a degree factory and if you parrot the teachers viewpoint back you can sail through.
I'm big time into Programming and automation and I see projects that are done as Master's thesis on my browsing, that I could have cobbled together out of github projects in a weekend or two...

Honestly, I don't know if a Bachelor's degree is worth it these days for $80k and 4 years of your life.
Maybe it is if your dream job requires a degree, otherwise when you add up the lost earnings of those 4 years, it is probably a 240k differential.

Feb 25, 2020 4:22:23 GMT iNCY said:

Feb 25, 2020 2:51:38 GMT 🤯 said:

I definitely vote for Emperor iNCY !

Although, to be fair, gun and car ownership are much more straightforward and clear cut concepts than financing and career planning.

So someone is more trustworthy to control a ton of steel down a road that parents are walking their children on either side of, than they are taking out a loan? 

Paying interest isn't a hard concept to understand, neither is the concept of nothing being free, it is just the casual manner that people don't really give any thought to tomorrow if they are happy today.

If people want to go to college, switch majors, get pissed up every night, not turn up to classes and emerge after 6 years with a ton of debt and a useless degree if any degree at all... That's fine, just don't expect someone else to foot the bill for your stupidity.
Of course you could just be a Bernie-Bro, have a dead end job and vote in a way that someone else pays for all your mistakes.
Let's all grab onto the lifeguard until he drowns.
Socialism is the approaching death of Western civilization.

Whoa, trustworthiness is a whole 'nother ball o' wax, bro.

I was talking about easy to grasp-ness of concept.

BUT! That said, I probably do trust people with driving more than finance considering we at least got SOME education in that in high school via driver's ed and have essentially been practicing since youth, and observing before then as well as kids. So the concepts are way more ingrained.

Same too for guns depending on upbringing.

I assume the only kids who get similar access to such early practice with finance are the children of accountants.

I'm not arguing whether shit should be free or not. Rather, just how complex concepts of finance can be (spoken as an adult working finance) and how dumb it is that there's ZERO required education in the topic in grade school.

By the end of elementary school, kids should be required to know how set to a budget and balance a check book. By the end of middle school/junior high, kids should know at least the basics of what interest is and how it works. Through high school, kids should learn about compounding and dividends and graduate with an savings investment plan to start implementing immediately.

Also, kids should be required to apply for loans themselves. No parents doing it on their behalf. If you pull the trigger, you're responsible for the bullet. If you're a parent who wants or needs to take a loan out for your kids to go to school, that debt is on you... Not the ignorant, potentially entitled Kid.

Fuck money, man. Getting all worked up thinking about it. Now I'm all in on KITN's plan to just burn the world to the ground.

Damn, this thread gets me thinking of those Sgt. Slaughter "I want my country back" vignettes.

America feels so fucked.

Feb 25, 2020 5:54:55 GMT iNCY said:

Feb 25, 2020 5:19:27 GMT c said:

I will say this easily, private section will never pay to train people to handle innovation.  Right now you can get a PhD student to do research at their edge of field for 15k a year.  No equally educated person will do full time research for that price.  Nor will corporations pay the competitive 100k for a researcher of that calibre, let alone a ten of 10 for a million to tackle a single issue as college teams can.  But almost all innovation comes from students working for nearly nothing giving away their work freely.  This is ultimately what the US will now be paying for.  The undergraduate nonsense will be a cost to be absorbed for a pool of extremely expensive knowledge we are generating for less than minimum wage. 

China is a few years away from being on par with the US in terms of scientific output and innovation.  Soon they will surpass us in terms of research and our researchers will go over there, as already it is cheaper to do research there and with less legal restraints.  US colleges are facing a growing backlash from anti-science and anti-college attitudes which will only increase this.  Free education will at least slow this turnover by increasing our potential pool of grad workers who may stay on to lead research with the systems they are familiar with.

Finally, we know that college educated people are simply better at processing propaganda and are more likely to verify information.  Given the US has concerns over the information that is leading people to decide who should lead us and we have no way of stopping exposure to the propaganda itself, this may be the best way for the US to preserve what little respect the world has for our democracy.  Or the world can enjoy the US re-electing Trump, then Don and the rest of his family.   Remember it is all fun and games until nukes are used to end a trade dispute.  More and more people in the US also believe the world is flat.  How easy will it be for them to simply ignore atrocities committed by the US in the future by telling them it is just fake news.

Have you got any data that verifies that all innovation comes from students that are PhD candidates?
Maybe some good research is done by these cutting edge researchers but the majority of college graduates are embarrassing in their skill levels.
There is very little critical thinking and a tendency to turn out group-think drones with very little ability to deduct and reason.
If you're employing an operations manager, you get an Engineer or Accountant with an MBA, it doesn't really matter which one because they are all clones.

To color the viewpoint as "bias" that is "anti-college" is grossly oversimplifying the argument.
Colleges simply aren't training their students to critically think, because they learn very quickly that it is a degree factory and if you parrot the teachers viewpoint back you can sail through.
I'm big time into Programming and automation and I see projects that are done as Master's thesis on my browsing, that I could have cobbled together out of github projects in a weekend or two...

Honestly, I don't know if a Bachelor's degree is worth it these days for $80k and 4 years of your life.
Maybe it is if your dream job requires a degree, otherwise when you add up the lost earnings of those 4 years, it is probably a 240k differential.

There are a few sources on innovation and who does the work (too lazy to look, but info should be around if you read into the Cali strike) but as a researcher who was a PhD candidate at one point it is easy to see.  As a student you are given a problem and a rough idea of where to start looking and you solve it to get your PhD.  Your advisor is your supervisor who is working on a handful of projects as a supervisor.  But the students put together the papers, so the labs and generally problem solve.  Problem solving is ultimately what advances theory and leads to innovation.  So here it becomes a simple number game.  Each researcher has a team of 4 to 12 under him working on problems.  Whereas that researcher is making breakthroughs as well, simply put he is outnumbered and with other tasks.  When you are a student your job is research.  That is it.  Your advisor also has administration duties to perform that suck up most of his time.

As for master thesis, the purpose of a master thesis is to prove research competency.  These are typically done without training or one year of training.  The goal of the master thesis is not to innovate, but demonstrate you have basic research skills and can produce a work product.  PhD thesis are where you will find innovation.  Generally you have five years of training, and a master thesis as training for a PhD thesis.

The anticollege stuff is US based as many are feeling colleges are simple liberal brainwashing cults and turning away from liberal science in the US.  It is not a cost based issue that fuels this problem but a problem with science not agreeing with political or religious beliefs.  I mean, people who believe the earth is flat do not have a good time in college.

As for critical thinking it is hard to teach because there is no defination of it.  It usually becomes think like I want you to think and do things that we do not have theory to support the existence of.  My thesis was on learning to learn, which is a more targeted area, but there is huge backlash on teaching students directly to learn how to learn, as learning skill is not the same as applying the skill.  Then many fail to general the skill to novel problems.  And no one seems to have the time of day to directly teach transfer based problem solving.  We are told there is no room to teach these skills as they frankly are not valued by students or educators.  In the US there is no special interest group promoting things like learning logic (the foundation of formal thought), problem solving methodology, cognitive skills or metacognitive skills.  It is assumed students will passively learn these through normal education better than directly learning them, despite research indicating otherwise. 

Another major problem is teaching problem solving involves the concept of truth.  Thinking in the US has moved to postmodernism, which believes there is no reliable truth, only perceptions of it.  However, most concepts of critical thinking involve a more rational concept of an objective truth.  The move to post-positivism, then the more extreme postmodernism many research people still rally against, but we are gravely outnumbered by those who promote it and those who do not care enough to see the issues with reality relying on perception.  Look into the Sokal affair and Fashionable Nonsense for more on this.  They successfully published an article in a top tier peer reviewed journal arguing gravity was a social construct based on liberal ideology.  This was replicated amazingly in the Grievance studies affair, where a team of troll researchers got articles published saying dogs engage in rape culture, that use of anal toys by men and other crazy things.  Their masterpiece was they were in revision with Feminist Theory journal for an article that was a part of Mein Kampf on the superiority of Aryan race rewritten in feminist language.  If you want to see hilariously bad science follow realpeerreview on twitter.  Group of academics who expose bad postmodernism in academic journals.  
 

c , I cannot tell if you are agreeing with me or disagreeing with me.
If there is a real thought that all you need from a Masters degree is the ability to prove research competency, that is frightening... If it is not just your PhD snobbery 
6 years worth of schooling to establish research competency?

If someone can attend school for 6 years and not be taught critical thinking or innovation, then what is the point??

So, what about paying for non productive majors?

Feb 24, 2020 20:29:26 GMT c said:

Feb 24, 2020 17:17:49 GMT 🤯 said:

I think everyone can screw everyone, right? Isn't that the basis of human nature?

I wonder what the "real" cost of higher education actually is? Like if you strip away the predatory bloat that has presumably been baked into tuition over the years.

Sadly there is little bloat.  Students do not go to college to learn.  They go for the experience.  College bloat is usually related to providing this experience to the consumers.  

The other source of bloat is special interest department and compliance departments.  These are also needed as the college lawsuit industry is also booming with lawsuits settling for millions.  While people were celebrating that girl turned porn actress who dragged her mattress around Columbia, the school settled with the person she accused for millions.  Implicit racism, sexism and other isms see daily lawsuits being filed based on nothing more than the belief that students were treated a certain way because of discrimination.  While the suits never plan to see the light of day in court, the schools need to spend money to defend themselves.  Policy experts are hired, compliance offices created to document that policy is followed and legal experts added to the payroll so should a suit go to court, the college is not on the hook for millions of dollars because someone got a C on a term paper and assumes it is because of discrimination.  Hell I only taught two classes and someone accused our department of failing her not because she never showed up for class and failed every in class test but because myself, the other TA and our lead professor were all white men.  60 students I taught and one threatened a suit.  That should tell you how bad it is.  Departmental meeting was interesting as the student was not aware that our department head was a black woman.  Or I had proof she employed a ghost writer for her final paper by doing a federalist paper analysis on it.  This student was removed from the college but should she has retained legal services prior to the meeting, it may have been a different story.

It's honestly unbelievable and unfair how people throw the words 'racism' and 'sexism' around like it's free money.

First of all, besides MAJORITY of it being absolute bullshit, the WORST part is that it's creating a victim. Not of the one doing the accusing, but the accused. You can ruin someones life for that shit AND even if you are proven to be a liar, it's too late. Look at the George Zimmerman case. Look at the more recent Miles Garrett/Mason Rudolph NFL Fiasco. They literally walk around screaming 'racist' every single time the other race is involved in any way. Do they care about ruining that persons life? Absolutely not. Why? Because THERE ARE NO CONSEQUENCES! Look at the Smolett case for example.

And then there's the 'sexist' bullshit. I'd love to go on a rant about all these women who had sex willingly with Weinstein and Cosby, but I'll just keep it short. You fuck to get where you are and once you get to that fancy house with the fancy clothes and the fancy lifestyle, you decide you are going to be a martyr and say you were raped. Sexism against men is just as bad as sexism is against women. ESPECIALLY when the boss is a woman. A woman can claim rape even if it was consensual and ruin your life. Then there's the whole divorce court and child support nonsense. Tell me what's more sexist? The fact that a man goes into those cases with a small chance of winning custody of their kid or the fact that the woman has the upperhand in it?

And the worst part is that it becomes so over-used, abused that even the REAL VICTIMS stop getting believed. It's like the 'boy who cried wolf'. Eventually they cry 'wolf' so much that people stop listening and then the wolf actually comes and rips their fucking souls out and everyone says, 'ohhhhhh, fucking wolves' AKA straight men.

It's all fucking bullshit. This fucking country has become a fucking joke. People don't know how to live normal lives. Everyone wants a quick way out, even these kids who owe money on student loans think they deserve a break now. Fuck out of here. You don't get a break once you sign the contract, young or not. If you drink and drive and hurt someone at 18, do you get a break? Well, actually, maybe since there is a new No Bail Reform, but you see how that's going. I don't feel bad for people in student loan stress. It's a part of life, welcome to being a fucking adult.

There's a reason why majority of car accidents have the person hit claiming neck and back pain with slight paralysis. MONEY. FREE MONEY! 

Everyone is such a pussy lately!


AH!



/rant.

Feb 26, 2020 11:20:36 GMT iNCY said:

c , I cannot tell if you are agreeing with me or disagreeing with me.
If there is a real thought that all you need from a Masters degree is the ability to prove research competency, that is frightening... If it is not just your PhD snobbery 
6 years worth of schooling to establish research competency?

If someone can attend school for 6 years and not be taught critical thinking or innovation, then what is the point??

A master's degree is just to prove mastery of a subject essentially.  To go beyond the known limits of a subject is the goal the of a PhD.  Not snobbery as much as the standards.  For a PhD student it is assumed you mastered the subject, so your work not only just show mastery but be novel.  You cannot answer a question that is known.

You cannot teach someone to innovate.  You can teach them to tackle novel problems, with novel solutions but innovation sometimes requires a bit of luck.  Generally innovation also requires far transfer, and far transfer (the ability to transfer knowledge outside of the application it is learned in) is fairly hard and educators are still debating if it is teachable and even if it is exists within the educational research paradigm (bit complex on the theory side as to what the exact debate is).  

For critical thinking, again, it depends on what is critical thinking.  This is a blanket term for a lot of stuff but ultimate critical thinking itself is a hollow term that means nothing.  I was utterly shocked when I had the same argument you are making and my advisor showed me the current research.  How the fuck do we not know what critical thinking is?  

Will clarify my stance on this all with the next reply.

Feb 26, 2020 13:41:32 GMT theend said:

So, what about paying for non productive majors?

Society will bare that cost.  It is the cost of knowledge.  People however do not see that free college is not without a hidden cost however.  If society is paying this cost, society should then have a say on what is taught.  And I see a gutting of the bloat.  Most college classes are hobbies at best.  I like to learn about history, love to read and talk about horror and do some art, but these are hobbies.  I see most of the liberal arts classes getting gutted from publicly funded education.  If the public is funding college, then they will want to see a return on their investment, so college should focus on job preparation, discovering new knowledge and contributing to the public good.  Everyone agrees we need STEM skills, so science should be the backbone of study.  So no more pseudoscience.  If you wish to study racism and or sexism you study it objectively and not with biased methods as it is currently done.  The focus should be on real impact, and not perceived impact.  We need to push back on subjective reality and promote there is a reality that we are all part of and interact with and this is the only reality that we can collectively discuss.  The reality people make in their own minds is their own unique construction and no one else can objectively understand it, so we need to stop accepting personalized realities as truth.  Start to swap out classes.  Instead of needing an art class, require a basic philosophy class to discuss concepts such as truth and logic. 

To tackle the critical thinking skills we say colleges need we need to directly teach people.  Instead of a diversity class, require a classes on how we as humans learn and solve problems.  Ask people how they were taught to think or solve problems and so few have an answer.  Only CS majors ever learn algorithms, but everyone uses them every day and we expect all critical thinkers to be experts at designing them, despite never teaching them.  It is madness.  Most people have no idea how their minds work at all, so concepts like what exactly does IQ measure is are utterly foreign to them (it measures working memory). 

Finally, directly teach in writing classes epistemic cognition.  Teach students what is truth, how people make truth claims and how we verify them.  Relates back to the last two topics, but few people ever think about what sources of information are truthful and in particular, how the degree of reliability varies based on the goals of the author.  If I am making a forum post for instance, my motivation to verify everything I write is low.  Thus people who read this also should place a low value on truth claims I make.  Following this logic, the lowest levels of source validity should be given to memes.  But memes determine what most people believe is truth as in general people believe the memes they see on social media as truthful despite most being outright propaganda.  Teach students how to identify what propaganda, advertisement, persuasion and educational information looks like and how to quickly verify the truth claims being presented.

Should we retain liberal arts majors, even just teaching these basic thinking skills to all students makes the cost worthwhile to society. It makes the US resilient to foreign and domestic propaganda, allows voters to inform themselves of issues regardless of party, stabilizes the stock market (baseless speculation can be ignored) and even increases the economy as money saved on items without values (fake healing items) is more money to invest. 

And there is the catch.  People do not want Americans to be resistant to propaganda, they want them to believe the propaganda that they are told.  They do not want people to know how to be able to determine truth as you can then no longer lie to them.  They do not want people to know algorithms as they can then independently solves problems and not need leaders to do it.  In general we do not want Americans thinking, as they are more easily controlled and more easily manipulated to vote against their own self-interests (poor people supporting tax cuts for the super wealthy for instance that increase inequality that make the poor, poorer).  So instead corporate interests that college boards are fine letting students study nonsense as it suits their needs.  Get the students to focus on interpersonal identity problems so they ignore the systematic issues in society that cause them.  Teach them truth is subjective so you can then later question the truths you do not agree with.  Focus them on the trees so they ignore the forest basically.  The last thing colleges want is for students to learn enough to realize that the college itself is lying to them about its own value.  There is big business is not promoting thinking skills from students.

Feb 26, 2020 14:10:15 GMT KING KID said:

And then there's the 'sexist' bullshit. I'd love to go on a rant about all these women who had sex willingly with Weinstein and Cosby, but I'll just keep it short. You fuck to get where you are and once you get to that fancy house with the fancy clothes and the fancy lifestyle, you decide you are going to be a martyr and say you were raped.

Do you have any basis for your claims, or are you just talking out of your ass and assuming the women are lying for no good reason?

Feb 26, 2020 14:10:15 GMT KING KID said:

Everyone wants a quick way out, even these kids who owe money on student loans think they deserve a break now.

That's human nature. Everyone will take the easy way out, take the short term gain even if it hurts them in the long run.

False accusation rate for rape is about 15%. That means 85% are truthful. Amazing how that number gets twisted into all women are lying and not HOLY SHIT how many people were raped?

15 is still a big fucking number lol.

Feb 26, 2020 17:58:41 GMT Emperor said:

Feb 26, 2020 14:10:15 GMT KING KID said:

And then there's the 'sexist' bullshit. I'd love to go on a rant about all these women who had sex willingly with Weinstein and Cosby, but I'll just keep it short. You fuck to get where you are and once you get to that fancy house with the fancy clothes and the fancy lifestyle, you decide you are going to be a martyr and say you were raped.

Do you have any basis for your claims, or are you just talking out of your ass and assuming the women are lying for no good reason?

Feb 26, 2020 14:10:15 GMT KING KID said:

Everyone wants a quick way out, even these kids who owe money on student loans think they deserve a break now.

That's human nature. Everyone will take the easy way out, take the short term gain even if it hurts them in the long run.

I have a lot of basis to my claims. The question that people always ask is 'why now?' and you know what majority of their answers are? They were scared for their careers and their lives. I repeat.... THEIR CAREERS! "He would've ruined our careers." Well now you wanna be rich and famous and all that fancy shit so you sleep with the morbidly obese guy and claim he raped you a decade later. Listen, I'm sure there was some he touched against their will but this whole thing is a fucking sham. He didn't rape them. He didn't make them come to his hotel room. He didn't make them suck his cock. Were they tied up with a gun to their head? No. But they wanted the fame and money so they did it and now that they got it they want to come out like martyrs. It's all bullshit.

AND you know how I know that? Because as a supervisor in the field I am in, I have had MULTIPLE females try and use their tits and throats to get what they want from me. It's human nature I guess.

So both situations are the same. Weinsteins girls and college tuition kids; both made stupid mistakes and wanted to take take take but when they had to give give give, it became a problem.

Feb 26, 2020 18:20:47 GMT c said:

False accusation rate for rape is about 15%. That means 85% are truthful. Amazing how that number gets twisted into all women are lying and not HOLY SHIT how many people were raped?

Like @ness said, 15% is a huge fucking number when we are talking about FAKE ACCUSATIONS OF RAPE. And that 15% creates people like ME who needs extreme proof to believe that they were legitimately raped.

And say what you want, but I don't think drunk fucking is rape. You got drunk like an adult and if your drink wasnt roofied, then you fucked up and made a bad decision by drinking so much so the sex is consensual whether you want to blame liquor or not.

I still find it interesting that 15% is focuses on the false accusations and places the burden on the majority to prove they were raped. Also I find it interesting that people assume we have no way of knowing real accusations from false ones despite this so not being the case and often it being very clear which are real cases and which are not.

Also willing to put money on the same people who say being drunk is not an excuse for rape swapping sides within a decade as more people engage in transgender sex then accuse the trans person of rape when they sober up.

It's futile to try and change your mind, but I can have fun with this.

Feb 26, 2020 18:38:57 GMT KING KID said:

Listen, I'm sure there was some he touched against their will but this whole thing is a fucking sham. He didn't rape them. He didn't make them come to his hotel room. He didn't make them suck his cock. Were they tied up with a gun to their head? No. But they wanted the fame and money so they did it and now that they got it they want to come out like martyrs. It's all bullshit.

AND you know how I know that? Because as a supervisor in the field I am in, I have had MULTIPLE females try and use their tits and throats to get what they want from me. It's human nature I guess.

God damn, this is a revelation! You should have been the key witness for the defense, you would have got Weinstein off the hook, no problem. If the members of the jury ever read this post, they'd be facepalming for the rest of their lives. Kid's almost baseless anecdotes versus testimony of multiple women who have been sexually assaulted, or worse, by Weinstein. Testimony that convinced a jury beyond reasonable doubt that Weinstein is guilty (not on all charges, by the way). All that goes out the window because The Kid was a supervisor once.

Feb 26, 2020 18:38:57 GMT KING KID said:

AND you know how I know that? Because as a supervisor in the field I am in, I have had MULTIPLE females try and use their tits and throats to get what they want from me. It's human nature I guess.

So you unquestionably accept that females will use sex appeal to get what they want at any opportunity, but you won't entertain the possibility that a male wouldn't use his position, power, influence, and authority to manipulate women into committing sexual acts? Men are above all that, right?