Why I’m Giving $1.8B for College Financial Aid
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Together, the federal and state governments should make a new commitment to improving access to college and reducing the often prohibitive burdens debt places on so many students and families.
There may be no better investment that we can make in the future of the American dream — and the promise of equal opportunity for all.
At the moment, zero incentivizes colleges to reduce costs. If they can get a student in the door, the federal government will ensure that student loans are available and that the college gets paid no matter what happens to the student. Regulators, in the meantime, work hard to ensure that colleges and especially universities face little competition.
So we get an array of problems: we are all, in a way, paying for the party: https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party-eliz.... Already prestigious schools like Hopkins compete primarily to raise their own prestige, rather than improve access. Why do most such schools admit fewer students per capita than they did in 1950? Why are they so interested in discriminatory children-of-alumni admissions?
While I don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, I've been involved in post-secondary education for too long, and read too many books on it (Tyler Cowen's The Great Stagnation is recommended, as is his book The Complacent Class), to think that "more money, same system" is the answer. We need comprehensive, systemic reform, starting with the accreditation bodies, before we pour more money in.
It's PC to say "everybody gets a degree." The reality is, that's a very expensive empty promise.
Given where AI is headed the higher edu route is not going to improve. Yet BHO, who knows better, kept beating the "higher edu for all" drum.
Once you see people opting for the trades, then you will know they are getting proper compensation.
Yet, the fact is, knowing this, we as a culture continue to insist square pegs force themselves into round holes. Drugs use is up? Depression / mental illness is up? Perhaps we open our eyes (and minds) to helping young adults becomes something that's meaningful - and career worthy - to them instead of forcing them down a path they don't want to go.
The fact that a fair percentage of people end up __not__ working in their major 10 years down the road seems to be saying something as well.
It's not being entitled to success, it's terror at being a complete and utter loser, because we spend eighteen years drumming "if you don't go to college you'll be dirt poor, live in a van down by the river, and flip burgers" in to their heads.
You're told constantly that if you don't go to college you're utter scum.
Of course, the implication that flipping burgers is shameful is something we should address. We might also consider telling kids about all the successful career paths that don't require college - if my kid were looking at US levels of student debt I'd be suggesting plumbing, metal fabrication, etc. like crazy. You don't need to go to college to learn CNC, and the debt incurred going to college can destroy your life and robs the world of a creative, risk-taking individual. How many people would be making great things or solving the big problems of our time but instead are doing bullshit jobs because they have an enormous mountain of debt?
No one should want their child to be buried in a six-figure debt. But the answer, at least on the median HN reader's salary, is to save and invest 4-5 figures over each of your child's 18 years. That is what universities will expect when deciding what to charge you, and what the government endorsed when creating tax-advantaged accounts for that purpose.
I guess you could say "Not fair!" but the families that do this outperform the ones that don't, by wider and wider margins, and that right there is "rising inequality."
Just a few years out, my parents' investment has paid off handsomely. They don't want it back. They want it paid forward to my own kids. Morality notwithstanding, this particular belief system seems to be a winning a strategy.
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/233301/median-household-...
I'm doing fine, and am not really worried about my kid affording college.
But too many of my friends are _not_ doing fine, and I have a strong suspicion college was not a good ROI for them. The combination of :
* "You MUST do this to be a successful adult"
* "Oh btw it costs several years' worth of your future income"
* "But guess what! Here's a big pile of debt that you can never discharge no matter what" (aside from death and some very, very extreme tax circumstances)
* "And because we're responsible adults who care about the next generation we made sure you attended horrible schools through your youth and have no cultural appreciation for mathematics giving you none of the tools you'd need to accurately determine if this is a good decision"
Finally, as covered in Duckworth's book "Grit" brains / education isn't the key.
They are entitled in the sense they insist on going to some overly expensive exotic school to get that degree, because a state school isn't good for their ego. Because dad said I can do whatever I want with my life.
They are entitled in the sense they make these decisions without any sense of the debt they're going to take on. I hate to sound blunt but if you can't figure out (e.g.) 100k in debt isn't easy when you make 35k y/p (and insist on an apt with all mod cons, a new car, etc.) then perhaps you're not yet college material.
True story: I recently suggested to an average academic HS senior that he consider a year at the local community college to get the ball rolling. I explained he could transfer. I explained first year courses didn't matter. I explained it would save a __ton__ of money. I don't think he heard anything I said.
This has been the standard for a while now. Why does higher edu charge more? Because they can!!!
The market has been injected with cheap money and relatively under qualified candidates. The edus make out. The lenders make out. The students loose. And the public is completely clueless as to why. Most actuallt believe more / even cheaper loans are the solution.
Partially true but there are many other reasons why. Personally, I always thought it was administrative bloat which in turn put higher costs on the students. A 2015 study[0] shows that the real culprit could be as simple as less state support per research institution.[1]
>more than half of core educational expenses at “public” 4-year universities are now funded through tuition, a private source of capital, they have effectively become subsidized private institutions.
[0] https://www.demos.org/publication/pulling-higher-ed-ladder-m...
[1] https://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/imce/Pulling%20Up%...
But that's still a "because they can" reason.
At the same time, as the father of a high school senior, you quickly find very few kids pay the sticker price.
Increase demand via cheap / easy student loans, as well as social "norms" and the cost of limited supply will increase.
The gov's role in edu prices and student debt is not different tthan the housing bubble. Same scam. Different market.
No, as there are already numerous Hopkins things bearing Bloomberg's name for many years -- including a 7-story physics/astronomy building, and the entire graduate public health school. The new $1.8B is in addition to previous total gifts of $1.5B.
Bloomberg previously established a scholarship program for high-achieving incoming undergrads, but it was limited in size to a few dozen students a year. It sounds like the new money will allow this to expand to all students in need. Some universities like Harvard already did this, but Hopkins never did, due to its endowment being smaller than its peer institutions.
This could be very good for the future of Baltimore. Many decades ago, a decent percentage of Hopkins undergrads came from Baltimore public schools, and that percentage has plummeted precipitously as Baltimore's fortunes declined.
I do understand your overall point, but it's Bloomberg's money, and it's his decision how to spend it. I'd also suspect he gives money to other causes, although perhaps not on this scale.
A large chunk of that money is subsidized by tax payers, as he would not keep the 1.8 Billion if he had bought a sports team or other vanity project that was not tax deductible.
I am not saying spending taxpayer money to promote giving is a bad idea, but it is an expensive one that’s generally forgotten about.
And what do you think the current difference in tax is?
Companies also get tax deductions. Should or should not is a different issue, but currently they do.
Perhaps it will eliminate his personal tax bill for 2018, but his yearly income is far less than $1.8B, and his tax bill is only a portion of his yearly income... the tax implications of this gift are only a small portion of the amount.
Even if he had 1.8 Billion in cash and ‘only’ got to deduct from his current tax bill that still means the US population is giving up money to support his cause.
Taxes are not about the government. They are a shared burden by tax payers and anyone paying less is increasing that burden for everyone else. The only way to reduce it is for the government to sped less money.
We hand out money to people buying a Tesla Model S’s, or paying a mortgage payment. Agree or disagree with the idea, just understand it’s not free.
So, legally they are the same thing.
PS: Though with various caviots as the law is never that simple.
He would need to pay tax on the capital gains. We have no way of knowing what the stock's cost basis is.
For sake of example, let's say the $1.8B had a cost basis of $1B. In theory the tax bill would be $160M. While that's a decent chunk of change, I definitely wouldn't describe it as "a large chunk" of the $1.8B being "subsidized by tax payers".
Also keep in mind the ultra-wealthy have all sorts of tax avoidance schemes anyway, and regardless of what he spent this money on, he is likely paying a much lower taxation rate than you or I (or the example above). That's a separate topic though.
Also, I would call 0.16 billion a large chunk of 1.8Billion as it would drop that down to 1.64 billion.
Anyway I would not call a basis of 1B out of 1.8B a highly appreciated assets. If he wants to keep a more appreciated asset with a basis of say 1/2 or 1/10th it's current price as a better long term investment you can still do this. Donate the highly appreciated stock, sell some less appreciated stock and use the proceeds to buy the stock you want which now has a much higher basis.
Then if the stock you buy tanks you can at least take a deduction when you sell it.
Also you probably need to factor in living allowance if supporting underprivileged and once you give a scholarship you're looking at a 3-6 year commitment to that person.
Plus if you want the scholarships to run in perpetuity you can only spend at a rate that keeps the endowment at certain payout rate that does not reduce its value + inflation
So at say 6% being spent a year, divided by $80k to cover tuition and living cost, average 4 year course commitment your looking at 338 new scholarships a year.
That whittles down fast doesn't it....
[1] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/03/the-personal-...
Had it been spread to low-cost universities and community colleges, those numbers could have easily been 10x. And wouldn't require the son of a farmer to relocate to one of the highest COL states in the US. Or a daughter from someone in Detroit (went back to find the details of that anecdote and got locked out from paywall).
There’s a good article on unintended consequences here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences A lot of debate in philanthropy policy deals with these, so it’s important to understand how someone can disagree with something no one has explicitly advocated for, but could happen if the advocated course is taken.
Sure, I get that it might have undesirable consequences, like creating a harmful habit or addiction, but also 'such a donation to a state school' would mean (obviously) a relatively poor school gets a lot of money, which seems to me a good thing. No?! It almost seems like people are saying....that all mega-donations should go to schools that already have lots of money. Which does seem going overboard a bit.
I could see trouble if a state school doesn’t effectively manage endowments and receives too much money to handle, but as long as proper governance exists elsewhere, I don’t see how concentrated donor influence could hurt the school more than the money would help, even if the money weren’t allocated as well as it could’ve been.
Thanks for raising these issues, as a well-evidenced contrast to the "usual" complaint that our society provides too much access to higher education.
I largely agree with your analysis. The question isn't too much or too little. It's: who gets how much of what? If some students are deprived of vocational opportunities while others are stuck in understaffed, lower-tier institutions than their abilities warrant, society is leaving productivity and human well-being on the table in both cases.
> Why do most such schools admit fewer students per capita than they did in 1950?
This is just one data point, but I'm a Hopkins alum, and the current freshman class is 30% larger than my freshman class was in 2001. That exceeds the growth rate of the US population over the same time period, although I'm not sure about the equivalent growth rate of college-freshman-aged population specifically.
Admissions growth requires new dorm construction, which typically involves a large donation for naming rights.
> Why are they so interested in discriminatory children-of-alumni admissions?
I think this effect is more pronounced in the Ivy League, partially due to the schools being much older. I only ever met a handful of legacy students at Hopkins.
Related to legacy admissions, from what I remember, the JHU alumni giving rate is a bit sub-par, which is a contributing factor to its endowment being smaller than peer schools'. There are even several cases of campus buildings going nameless for decades while awaiting a donor. One example, a building constructed in 1988 was called "New Engineering Building" until a donor was found in 2012. Another example, two dorms built in the early 80s are still called "Building A" and "Building B". (All the other dorms are named after alums...)
I don't think there's any doubt that I think he outline his own thinking pretty well. He wants elite colleges to stay as they are now, but more meritocratic in their admissions. Same elite institution, students from lower income backgrounds.
It's an establishment-oriented donation, not a startup idea. He explains it pretty clearly.
I think he outlined his own thinking pretty well. He wants elite colleges to stay as they are now, but more meritocratic in their admissions. Same elite institution, but with students from lower income backgrounds.
It's obviously an establishment-oriented donation, not a "radically transform education" idea or an "effective altruism" oriented idea. He explains his own thinking pretty clearly.
Unless you're going to enter a field that requires the pedigree that starts with college (i.e. medicine, law, engineering), it's arguable that college isn't even worth the tuition you pay for it. Like another commenter says, they have no incentive to do anything that will reduce costs.
The quality of the education seems to be on the decline too.
It feels like colleges are turning into breeding grounds for social justice warriors more than they're turning out folks who are prepared to enter the workforce.
It feels like the onus should be on the colleges to make costs more reasonable, rather than getting another handout from a rich benefactor (which will not last long).
A truly liberal (in the John Stuart Mill / Enlightenment sense of the word) education gives you the tools you need to engage with the world. How can you ever change society if you are only able to see the world in what makes money, and are never given the time and resources to think beyond what is today towards what could be?
It is true that some people can learn some of these things on their own, but having 4 years to think surrounded by an environment where everyone else is focused on that same goal can really make a difference.
If a pragmatic man like Bloomberg believes in the value of a liberal education (again the old sense of the word), you can bet it's not total hooey.
(although see my other comment for what I believe is behind at least the timing of this announcement)
But the current education system doesn't give you either.
You don't get tools to be useful - IE STEM related, engineering, math, etc.
You also don't get the tools to "engage" with the world. Blocking traffic, needing safe places and being triggered by anything you disagree with isn't "engaging" the world.
Of course that later circumstance was only applicable in an era when major scientific advancements were slow and costly to disseminate. Thats why it required the infrastructure of a university to supply it. I feel like that might not be quite as much of a barrier today, and nobody is expected to stay current on all news - there is simply too much, too fast, even of the purely scholarly variety.
While I don't think your average 18 year old is of "mature" character or often fit to participate in normative adult culture it also isn't a danger to them to have to learn how in the moment. The worst that happens is they lose a job or two and rebound - it isn't a lifelong disgrace in an insular society anymore.
The media has really painted college students in a bad light. There's such a wide variety of students and personalities. It's a great place to share ideas and form networks.
Trigger warnings are just that. Warnings.
We watched A Star is Born, and having my spouse go back on almost a years worth of progress and treatment when a single “trigger warning” could have avoided that is beyond enraging.
And what’s most hypocritical is the people who are complaining about trigger warnings are people who are complaining that a little paragraph of text describing certain known triggers may be contained in the text or movie before. So people who suffer from a variety of potentially harmful diseases such as depression and PTSD are pussies because they need a trigger warning to help them avoid media that may be harmful to them, but you’re a strong reasonable and logical person to protest the inclusion of a minor warning that you are under no obligation to read and can easily skip.
For example, if your wife has over a year of progress on the line, and there isn't a culture of mainstream trigger warnings, why did you play it so loose by wandering blindly into a movie?
And then you lash out at the world for when your gamble doesn't pay off?
I think this is what people roll their eyes at when they think of trigger warnings: the abolition of personal responsibility and effort, that you have any number of personal issues yet expect the world to read your mind instead of, say, watching a movie before your mentally diseased (your words) wife watches it to ensure her safety.
Can you explain what exactly a trigger warning would even contain that somehow helps here? It seems that if a single movie can unwind a "years worth of progress" then the situation is rather critical and movies are the least of your concerns. How do you label everyday life with such warnings?
Just alot of this country views them with disdain which is unfortunate. It's been branded as weak to have a mental disorder. Meanwhile beliveing in Q-Anon is perfectly ok to them.
Yeah, sure, one in a thousand Arabic person is a terrorist...
ISIS already fills up 35,000 of that 100,000. You still have Hamas, al Queda, and many more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_designated_terrorist_g...
Are you of the opinion that this is the primary topic studied at American universities nowadays? I’m having a hard time squaring away your obviously propagandized portrayal with reality.
While it still exists, good LA programs are rare, and largely dismissed by society as not worth it.
See all the parents and friends asking... "How are you possibly going to make a living with a Liberal Arts degree?!"
I wonder what American society would look like if this were flipped on its head? Make liberal arts the central piece of a college education, and leave vocational training largely to employers.
I'm not sure if it's realistic to think that'd ever happen, but I wonder what it would look like if it did?
re: sjws This is just a vocal minority demonized by certain political groups to stir up anger. Sad to see it's convincing people.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/11/leftist-academia-demo... is a decent recent-ish article on the topic. Note the offhand comments about blatant discrimination in hiring, which might just be a relevant thing here. And from what I've seen, non-liberals in humanities departments commonly have to deal with what is pretty much the textbook definition of a hostile work environment. It just happens that political affiliation and opinion is not a protected class, so it's not possibly to do anything about it other than leaving. Which is what people do in practice.
You can use that argument to challenge literally any well established fact regardless of it's merits. It is by this argument that increasingly extreme viewpoints have entered the political mainstream. E.g., "It's a problem that everyone in this room so one-sidedly believes the Holocaust is real! It's about time us Holocaust-deniers get a seat at the table, in fact, it'd only be fair for us to have HALF the seats at the table!"
Academia is not a political party, and has all kinds of people, so being so one-sided politically is a valid concern. There's also a big difference between beliefs on issues and historical facts. Facts, by definition, cannot be debated as they are objective truths.
If you've got a problem with beliefs commonly held within academia then debate them on their merits and not on the mere fact that some group of people seem to have consensus on something.
The OP was saying SJWs were a vocal minority where I claimed otherwise. If you're also saying that they're widespread beliefs then it looks like you're just agreeing with me. The actual problems with those beliefs was not the topic of this thread.
I'm not sure why it makes sense to exclude those fields. Bloomberg's investment will help students from low- and middle-income backgrounds enter those fields, just as it will help others earn degrees that provide lower earnings potential.
Speaking of earnings potential, even those with degrees in arts, liberal arts, and the humanities - who only make up 13.4% of college graduates, by the way - have median earnings of $51k/year [0], compared to less than $35k/year for high school graduates [1]. An extra $16k/year in earnings - nearly a 50% increase - over a lifetime can justify a lot of upfront tuition and opportunity cost.
The only degrees that are arguably a bad financial investment for the individual are those in education [0], and teachers are important enough to society that I don't think it would be beneficial to discourage students from attaining those degrees. College degrees more generally also have positive spillover effects - see e.g. [2] and [3].
[0] https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/valueofcollegemajors/...
[1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2015/more-education-still-means...
[2] (PDF) https://eml.berkeley.edu//~moretti/socret.pdf
[3] (PDF) https://www.amacad.org/multimedia/pdfs/publications/research...
Friends of mine who have stayed around the university swear that things have only gotten worse since our time, with the rise of more and more online classes and less and less true understanding expected.
I can't provide hard data on whether quality of education is declining, but I can say that large parts of my education were somewhat suspect.
They’re not mutually exclusive. You can be a skilled worker, who also advocates for social justice... I don’t even see how one would obstruct the other.
I’m also wondering how this means that “the quality of education seems to be on the decline.”
As far as I can tell, at this point when people hear "social justice warrior", they hear: (1) the person's interaction with the world is all about status signaling, not achieving actual justice and (2) the "warrior" part is taken seriously, in the sense of perceiving anyone not perfectly aligned with you as an enemy to be destroyed, by any means necessary.
It's obviously still possible to be a skilled worker with a mindset leaning in that direction; I've met some. But it can make someone very hard to work with, for sure.
Obviously the pure form of "social justice warrior" as described above is a caricature that one encounters rarely in practice. Most people grow out of point (2) once they get old enough, for example.
Is this really the case? All colleges probably have a vocal minority of activists, and some colleges have more than others. But I'd guess the vast majority of students are still there to learn and have fun?
> It feels like the onus should be on the colleges to make costs more reasonable, rather than getting another handout from a rich benefactor (which will not last long).
Agreed, this won't do anything to solve the underlying problem. Lately, it seems like throwing money at a problem is all we prepared to do (see also the Proposition 10 homeless tax).
Money usually comes in from various donors with strings attached, so that it must get spent on the donors' pet projects.
College administrators then go "oh no! tuition is so high, look at all these qualified students who won't get to attend," to convince these donors that financial aid is a worthwhile pet project.
Administrators then raise the tuition to compensate for the new financial aid pool they just cooked up. Money earmarked for financial aid then gets "spent" by going right back to the college with the earmark removed. That money can now be spent on the administrators' pet projects, including higher salaries for themselves.
I'm German so my perspective may be biased, but over here you can pick up an apprenticeship, a dual university/work program and still earn comparable wages to college graduates, and if you enter a family business, potentially even more as they are starving for the next generation to take over.
In the US there seems to be a huge gap between prestigious universities degrees and the fear of ending up working for Starbucks your entire life. Expanding access to universities is fine, but a university education is not for everyone, and should not be a prerequisite for a good shot at life.
Higher education is still the ticket to an upper middle class life, partly due to ingrained structures like larger cities lacking affordable housing, a tax system that favors capital classes, and high healthcare costs for the poor and middle classes.
Containing/reducing medical costs, reducing housing costs and a fairer tax system might be the real answer here. The core issue is that, for example, the poor and middle classes can easily be bankrupted by a medical bill, whereas white collar software engineers are likely to have very good and cheap health insurance that covers much more.
A college degree is theoretically supposed to teach one critical thinking and self-didactic skills. I wonder if vocational education is less robust to economic shifts than a college degree?
Certain trades like cooking, plumbing and electrical work are always going to be in demand, but suppose one trained as a machinist and finds oneself unemployed as society deindustrializes. Is it harder for a machinist to retrain than for an English major to pick up basic clerical skills?
I think I will donate 2 billion dollars to my local pay day lender.
There, problem solved.
Now people dont need to be worried about paying it back.
I am sure they wont use this guaranteed income to jack up the rates more.
And it’s true. Recent reports from the Treasury Department show that the US government owns nearly $1.5 trillion in student loans.
That’s pretty sad when you think about it: the US government’s #1 financial asset is debt owed by tens of millions of its young people for university education that didn’t even necessarily qualify them for a real career..."
-- Simon Black
This is an odd metric. Most financial assets held by the U.S. government, broadly defined, are in the hands of the Federal Reserve. The Fed owns close to $4 trillion in securities.
Furthermore, given student loans held by the government aren’t really legally sellable, they’re more akin to federal lands than financial assets. Parcel in federally-owned energy and mineral rights and we’re talking about over $100 trillion [2].
Student debt holdings by the federal government are large. But they aren’t hyperbolically large.
[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/current/h41.htm
[2] http://business.time.com/2013/02/05/the-federal-governments-...
1. Higher income tax across the board
2. Decreased wages for college and University staff. Fewer executive and bureaucratic positions. Just at one CUNY college there are about one hundred positions at or above the level of a department chair. It has fewer than 17k students enrolled.
3. Eliminate all competitive sports across all schools and colleges. This is just noise that nobody needs.
4. Reduce mandate of colleges and universities. No, a college is not supposed to decide whether an assault took place. Also, it makes no sense for a college to have to pay for campus police. Who came up with this nonsense idea?
5. Focus on reducing costs. Reduce if not eliminate most regulations state legislatures have forced on colleges and universities. Consider getting rid of freaking people soft to manage student records. Does it make sense that students have Employee ID numbers (EMPLID)? Who makes these decisions?
Washington State, for example, got state support cut by 50% during the 2008 recession. It's never come back.
This also has an impact on one of HN's other favorite higher ed topics, the state of quality research. With state support cut, the two available levers are tuition and more federal research money. With the latter, the pool of money is - at best - stagnant, and there's increasing pressure to get grants, which means more people cutting corners.
I wouldn't eliminate college sports entirely - it's useful for brand building, keeping alumni (ergo donors) and the local community engaged, school spirit etc. But the "student-athlete" concept seems like complete nonsense. They should pay the players proper wages, give them good health insurance etc. Right now it's scandalous the amount of money everyone makes in college sports, but none goes to players or cheerleaders.
Ideally they'd license the college's image rights to a private organization that runs the team, and the players play on it full-time. Those who choose can study for a degree at the institution concurrently, or after they finish playing. Some players may get drafted into professional leagues and do so well they don't ever get their degree. The coaching staff are employees of the team's organization rather than the uni.
Who should pay for police services on a college campus? I live in the shadow of a big ten university with the population of a small city and a huge number of public events including home football games. They college pays no property taxes. Paying for campus police, ultimately out of the state budget, is a way to cover the cost of that service, which has to come from somewhere. A community of that size needs a certain amount of police service.
It's quite arbitrary and probably not "fair" by any reasonable definition, but it seems to achieve that goal fairly well.
I feel this is essentially why the UK idea of 'chuck 50% of the population in to University' failed.
It created an expectation, in huge numbers of people, that they were going to have the good life.
But our society is structured at a fundamental level around the class system. Our jobs, our homes, our cities, everything.
There will still be millions of unskilled jobs with no respect afforded towards the workers. There will still be millions and millions of crappy prefab houses out there, far away from where the decent jobs are. There will still be sink estates. There will still be dead end towns.
You could evacuate the streets of London and walk around and see, quite easily, that the entire city is built around our class system - even with the intentional mixing we've done geographically.
I think it would take centuries to achieve a sensible level of equality even if such a thing were possible or desirable.
It's something I think about often; social mobility is just shuffling the cards around; ultimately someone has to lose, not everyone gets the drawing room in Knightsbridge and lunches out on the town as they please.
Its a non-zero sum game, why worry about such binary events of completely charitable or not.
Trump has set the precedent that this is not necessary anymore.
Now for the political science: If you want to win brownie points with both the wage slaves and the “orange man bad” crowd that would be elated to see everything the opposite of Trump, you can jubilantly release your tax returns if they look good or relatable.
Bloomberg rejoined the democratic party this year.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/10/michael-bloo...
He also expressed his interest in running for president in 2020.
This is obviously a PR move to win favor amongst the college age people and to gauge his prospects. I'm sure his team is going to poll people, especially students to see how this PR stunt goes and if the numbers look good, he'll declare in a couple of months.
It's no secret that the extremely wealthy tend to have sociopathic tendencies. They don't do anything for charity or out of the goodness of their heart. They always have ulterior and selfish reasons.
To inspire/shame others into doing the same?
Imagine if you had to "keep up with the Joneses" in charitable giving rather than size of house or car or boat.
Yes... $1.8 billion is exactly what everyone pays to "gauge their prospects". It's not like it's like 3x times as much as Obama's entire 2012 campaign.
> It's no secret that the extremely wealthy tend to have sociopathic tendencies.
It's not a secret only in the way that it's not a secret that Elvis is alive.
> They don't do anything for charity or out of the goodness of their heart. They always have ulterior and selfish reasons.
Are we still talking about just "the wealthy" or is there any other specific group you had in mind writing this?
The thing that bothers me is how universities keep raising the cost for students to have an education. Nothing seems to prevent it and everything seems like a joint effort in having the new generation be worse off by having no real spending power for years compared to the previous.
The problem is many kids want a luxurious college lifestyle where they do a little work, play a lot of beer pong, and live in nice dorms. Our student loan structure allows for some bad actors to take advantage of this.
But which came first? Did colleges build the nice dorms because students demanded them, then raise the tuition to pay for them? Or did they build the nice dorms to justify the high tuition they were charging? Students have always wanted to play beer pong and have fun during college - this isn't exactly news. Leaving college with crippling debt seems to be a relatively recent phenomenon though.
I welcome the donation, but I am suspicious of what ensues. Given the mix of public and private tertiary education and the mix of debt and grant funding, It's pretty complicated. If this levels-up Johns Hopkins against the ivy league, remember its still private education. It won't neccessarily redress all the imbalances inherent in university study. It might help, it might hinder. Its not clear
(on an individual level, I am sure it will help enormously. I'm trying to draw a distinction between individual benefit, and societal benefit as a whole)
Edit: HN downvotes tell me I'm supposed to pretend that I'm not supposed to pretend silly things. Neat really.
Having interviewed 500+ people at this point (and screened many many more resumes and github accounts), i'd there are rarely, if ever, meaningful differences in quality of candidate based on where they got their CS degree from.
I see much greater variation in masters/graduate candidates than in undergrad.
Disclaimer: I taught CS classes in both Berkeley and MIT.
Most new grads suck at coding. The self taught are often a little better.
The algorithms and data structures part is a toss up. Maybe they are good at class and bad in interviews, but ... On average I haven't seen the correlation you have.
Don't know if it's more difficult as a fresh grad from a no-brand name institution though - I would imagine so.
> Together, the federal and state governments should make a new commitment to improving access to college and reducing the often prohibitive burdens debt places on so many students and families.
Why are we pushing college? We don't need everyone to have a college degree. We need plumbers, general contractors, electricians. We need the society to not look down on laborers. We need to get high school students into training programs for these careers. We need them to actually think about what they're doing on the job.
I went for a walk the other day. There is a woman on a ladder scrapping away at loose the paint. The house is about 100 years old. The wood was original. Even in places where a siding profile changed, the wood is probably 60 years old. She had no face mask. No 7mm plastic tarp 3 ft from the house. No water spray bottle. No paint remover that keeps the dust down. No low temp IR system to make peeling faster.
I told her it was lead paint. I said if she kept that up, she'd die (perhaps a bit of an exaggeration on one house, but if she does that at all of them, it will add up). I told her to get a P100 face mask. She said she'd tell her boss. This is basic EPA lead abatement training. There are free videos from the EPA and States (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NKJ6zuVvTY). Next day, lead chips on the ground. Her on the ladder as before.
We need to train the next generation of intelligent laborers. We don't need more people walking out with Comm. degrees because society told them to go to college.
The model needs change. Everyone across the world should have access to world-class lectures, books assignments, materials, and eventually, testing centers were students can demonstrate their education.
Thank you, Mr. Bloomberg.
That said, I haven't seen the term "American dream" used unironically in years. I've never been shown it as something worth reviving, insofar as it's deeply intertwined with notions like savage capitalism. For you and ourselves I'd rather have a great American awakening. But maybe I'm arguing semantics.
"So that I can get support (or at least not outright hostility) from the left wing of the democratic party when I'm running for president in 2020, who otherwise would be very unhappy with a billionaire as the candidate"
But it would be interesting if Bloomberg were to win in 2020 - we would have back-to-back businessman turned chief in command. So far, Trump has been pretty good for US economy. Bloomberg might be even better.