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Comment by Mirioron | Hacker News Reader

How can universities afford things like this, when, at the same time, there seems to be a big student loan problem in the US?

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In a monetary sense, universities can afford this shit exactly because of the huge loans taken up by students. In an ethical sense, they can afford it because people don't care enough to dump them over it.

So far. Perhaps it's my imagination, but I'm detecting a noticeable decline in the quality of recent graduates, as compared to ten or twenty years ago. You can't water down the booze indefinitely without people noticing.

It is your imagination. And now I'm going to make a wild claim with no citations because I'm on mobile, but. . .

Graduate quality and skill has increased since 1990 [citation here] for each school individually. What you're seeing is an increase in the variety of institutions you are seeing graduates from.

Not everywhere is created equal. Universities and graduates are all mostly getting better, but they're not all as good as one another.

Well, there's two wild claims--one of 'em must be wrong. :-)

For context, I'm comparing graduates from a local name-ish school with my no-name school back in the day. Back then, there was a lot of theory, math, proofs, etc. These days it seems more like websites, apps, etc. Some ML, though more because it's trendy, I suspect, and I don't think linear algebra is required.

And most average graduates aren't using theory, math proof etc in every day employment. Websites and apps however are bread and butter of the majority of developers out there. Good schools still build a lot of fundamentals though, and I'd argue people are better with data structures and algorithms mainly due to their increase of usage in interviews.

I'm somewhat sympathetic to the "college should be trade school" approach, and I think there should be some of this. Yet, you'll spend your entire career learning new practical tech like "websites and apps". In my experience, if you don't do the theory in school, you probably never will. It usually doesn't matter, but it seems like engineers that lack this often have blind spots that sometimes do matter, and they don't even realize it.

Beyond that, I spent a ferocious amount of time in the computer labs getting the "trade school" part of my education on my own while I was taking the theoretical coursework. Kind of two curricula for the price of one. I think this is the best path for someone who really wants to be at the top of the field.

I think one follows the other.

Get more money out of students, put more money into these programs with nice kickbacks to administrators. Win-win, at least if you're in an administration position.

You seem to have answered your own question. :-)

Where do you think all that student loan money is going? Universities are flush.

Which universities are you talking about? State schools are not flush by any stretch. Yes, tuition money is up, but funds from state legislatures are down significantly. Some state universities get less than 10% of their revenues from the state government, down from 60+% in the 1950s through 70s. That is a fundamental change in the role of a university in the country, and in who it serves.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-m...

I dunno, maybe the one being talked about in the article we're commenting on? That's not a state university.

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