Comment by blhack | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blhack | Hacker News Reader

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Perhaps the problem is that they're spending too much on the education.

BLASPHEMY! You may be thinking, education is PARAMOUNT to any civilization! We musn't cut spending on education!

Does anyone here live in the Phoenix, AZ area? If so, take a tour of ASU's recent campus renovations. The new dorms look like luxury-condos. The buildings around campus match. ASU has gotten into the habit of buying up the most expensive property available, and developing high-end real-estate on top of it.

Do we really need that?

What we need are desks, blackboards, and good professors. I could not care any less what the building I'm studying inside of looks like. Are campus aesthetics really that important, or even relevant at all, to higher education?

No. The answer is that no, they are not.

It seems cliche' for a geek to get bent out of shape about it, but lets also look at the sports teams. How much money is spent on this educationally fruitless endeavour? What is the return on it? How does it effect education?

Suggesting that post-secondary education should cost what it currently does is insane.

Private institutions can do whatever they please, in my opinion, but the state schools need to get back to their roots. That is: intellectual pursuits, not physical ones.

"BLASPHEMY! You may be thinking, education is PARAMOUNT to any civilization! We musn't cut spending on education!"

This logic is running rampant right now and is a major player not in the economic collapse, but our inability to convince our governments to deal with economic collapse. When the answer to "Are we spending enough on education?" is simply hard-coded to "No", you get very stupid budget behaviors.

In point of fact, there must be a point where we are spending enough on education, enough on police, enough on health care, enough on welfare, enough on anything. There must even come a point where we are spending enough on educating the disadvantaged, enough on health care for the elderly, enough on programs for poor children. Because the alternative is, frankly, absurd... yet that is where we've gotten to, politically.

Actually I live in Chandler, went to ASU as a graduate. I like what ASU is doing to urbanize Tempe and even Phoenix downtown. It is growing too big probably but it does drive lots of technology. The engineering 'brickyard' at ASU right there in a highly trafficked part of town is a good message to send to people. The ASU Research Park for instance has many high-tech companies there and it is also a park for people to come to and play. This is similar to what Intel does around their locations in Chandler, AZ.

Anyways, as long as it doesn't harm the educational experience then it may actually help the area as a whole. I feel I got what I needed out of my education but that is really up to the student in the end.

Also, on the sports teams, most of the time this funds a large part of the school so in the end it is a necessary evil. Much like how defense brings the most innovative technologies, even this here internet.

I agree that schools need to focus on quality education experiences and get better professors. I think that the internet and universities that open up to that can share the best professors with the world.

We will see an enormous change in this regard in our lifetime, the University as we know it will be much different. It has taken some time, but the internet and cost reducing measures to information and education are shaking harder at the pillars of these college institutions.

BLASPHEMY! You may be thinking, education is PARAMOUNT to any civilization! We musn't cut spending on education!

Yeah, and it's unfortunate that "education" often has a capital E and is viewed as being something that only formalized schools, Big Education, can provide.

Spending money on things like internet access, libraries, encouraging greater literacy and reading, and not banning "educational toys" just because they may be perceived of as dangerous (I'm thinking of things like chemistry sets here, which were a lot more fun and educational back in the day) could end up going a long way to increasing the minimum education level without actually requiring people to throw money at schools to have to attend them.

"BLASPHEMY! You may be thinking, education is PARAMOUNT to any civilization! We musn't cut spending on education!"

Don't confuse education with learning.

if this continues, 'college dropout' will be replaced by 'high school graduate' -- simply because s/he takes high ed as cost-saving bootstrap strategy

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