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A university president makes a case against cowardice

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450 points pseudolus | 3 comments | 03 Apr 25 12:29 UTC | HN request time: 0.673s | source
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sequoia ◴[03 Apr 25 13:52 UTC] No.43569673[source]▶
A lot of Americans support these attacks on universities. Why do people harbour this much animosity towards these institutions? Is there anything they could have done differently in the past decade or two to have broader sympathy now, or is people's ambivalence towards elite universities 100% irrational?
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disambiguation ◴[03 Apr 25 14:42 UTC] No.43570446[source]▶
The political and ideological divide speaks for itself, but on behalf of the common folk universities have been failing their core mission - to provide the people with a quality education. The inversion and disconnect between the cost of tuition and economic outcomes is stunning. Too many kids who don't know better are pressured into pursuing higher education and taking on massive debt, only to graduate without any job prospects or reasonable hopes of paying off their loans. The salt in the wounds is that universities are flush with cash, yet its spent on anything and everything except for the welfare of the students.
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1. harimau777 ◴[03 Apr 25 20:13 UTC] No.43574779[source]▶
It feels to me like part of the disconnect is that education and job training isn't necessarily the same thing. For many majors improving economic outcomes is not the core mission.
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2. disambiguation ◴[03 Apr 25 21:37 UTC] No.43575777[source]▶
Its an implicit promise, and we can already see the pendulum swinging back in the form of lower enrollment as more people catch on.
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3. lurk2 ◴[04 Apr 25 12:20 UTC] No.43581181[source]▶
> Its an implicit promise

It's an inferred promise, not an implicit promise. Lots of schools do try to make it an explicit, qualified promise (e.g. "80% of grads work in their field!"), and even more are shifting towards becoming what are effectively vocational schools, but this was never the intended purpose of a liberal arts education.