but it's hard to snap your fingers and increase in prestige
The story I heard re: places like Northeastern and George Washington is that, when they decided they wanted to compete on prestige, one of their opening moves was to increase their tuition. "If it's expensive it must be good!"
"With a name like Smuckers Washington, it has to be good."
I admit I looked at those numbers just long enough to see if philosophy was on there or if they'd done that thing where they mash it into a single category with religious studies which they had. Why? Why do they all do this? You don't see entries for "Physics and Criminology" do you?
In many places philosophy and religious studies form one department, unlike physics and criminology.
Oh hey I watched Boyhood last week and that reminded me of Heebie U. Although I'm guessing poor single mothers in serial abusive relationships with alcoholics don't actually teach themselves philosophy and become professors there.
3: But compare to obviously distinct things like "computer and information systems," "computer engineering," "computer science," "information science," and "miscellaneous computer."
On topic:
"Should the state provide small, nurturing public liberal arts colleges for mediocre students, who benefit enormously if they choose to forgo the party scene"
That sounds to me like the role of community colleges? Or are those more vocational focused than liberal arts?
6: That's the local state U in Heebieville, I teach in Small SadTown about 20 minutes away. Although I haven't seen the movie. I really should.
"You don't see entries for "Physics and Criminology" do you?"
While a lot of movies have evil masterminds who steal the moon or whatever I don't think the demographic is big enough to formally offer a joint major.
8: I suppose that's right. Shore up public universities and community colleges, and let private universities live or die on their business model. OH WELL.
In that case, we should really jack up our tuition. The main problem with Heebie U's business model is the sadness of SadTown. It is not an appealing place for undergrads.
It was sort of lacking a plot or even transitions between time periods- I went in misremembering what the premise was, I knew it was filmed over the course of a decade with the kid growing up so I assumed if they did that it must have been because they were at least semi-following a real person's life. Nope, it was all still a script, they just did it... because?
Because it had never been done before and is a much much greater challenge than following a real person's life?
14: Wait, the storyline itself doesn't span a decade? The kid ages faster than the implied calendar? (Don't spoil too much, I plan on seeing it.)
What had never been done before, following actors as they age instead of using one actor for kid and one for teen? Surely some long-running series qualify for this, although since those are filmed continuously maybe it doesn't count- but hey if you throw out all but an episode very few years then it looks similar.
Yes, the story line spans the same time as the aging of the actors.
And the cultural references too- very obvious cultural/political references.
I strongly suspect hg's students are tremendously lucky to have her and as a math teacher! Amazing luck.
4 - Which means that either they're not actually offering degrees in at least one of them (from the places where I've seen this it's usually philosophy that gets the short end of the stick), or they're offering degrees in both and the data is just mashing them together.
There are plenty of schools that don't offer degrees in, I don't know, economics because they're focused on other things. But you don't see them just adding in something unrelated in order to create a category like "economics and air conditioner repair" in order to get more graduates into a category. There are probably related majors that could usefully be fitted together into a useful category, but philosophy and religious studies are really, really not those majors.
Surely some long-running series qualify for this
The Waltons is often cited as an example where kids grew up on the show.
but philosophy and religious studies are really, really not those majors.
Maybe they're following the bookstore model, where Philosophy and Religion are regularly grouped together on the same shelf.
I strongly suspect hg's students are tremendously lucky to have her and as a math teacher!
The reason I like Heebie U so much is in a large part because of the faculty - they're mostly incredibly earnest, hard-working people who are very good teachers and super passionate about teaching.
I think an earlier version of the thing Witt linked was the basis for the last discussion on the value of majors, when I got obsessed with Petroleum Engineering (now in a bust cycle).
The more I think about it, the more I realize that I don't have any fucking idea at all what undergraduate education is for or what it should be. I liked college but it's mostly because I like learning, was drunk all the time, and everyone was pretty cute.
I guess my new hot take is that undergrad education is a tool of class warfare no matter what. If it's very cheap, its' class warfare supporting the poors against the rich; if it's expensive, it's a giant fucking wall designed to keep the poors down while letting enough geniuses filter through to maintain fake-meritocratic credibility. "Make college cheaper" should be the first last and only thing we talk about and everything else is bullshit.
Ideally, college should be cheap enough that the content is driven by the public good - produce intelligent voters who are good enough at reading and writing and have a basic understanding of science that they can now self-educate and communicate as their lives unfold. With massive debt as a reality, I think colleges have an obligation to shift their mission a little and get kids into steady-paying jobs.
Yeah, but I doubt there's much you can do to shift to get kids into steady-paying jobs while still actually being a college. I mean, you could not charge people $100,000 to graduate with a degree in Early Childhood Education, but if you have to charge $100,000 anyway, then the only ethical thing to do is to shut down the Early Childhood Education major completely and train everyone in computer and information systems, computer engineering, computer science, information science, miscellaneous computer (and, on a yearly basis dictated by anticipated petroleum prices, petroleum engineering). Or tell people not to go to college at all and to go to trade school and become mechanics for private jets, or whatever. And, your lower-income students are likely fucked anyway, although in most cases somewhat less fucked than they'd be if they hadn't gone to college at all.
Shorter me: it's a labor market problem and a problem of state funding, not a problem colleges can solve except maybe by being relentelessly pre-professional in training, which (a) colleges aren't really good at and (b) becomes immediately self-defeating if all colleges are doing so.
I think it all boils down to trying to solve the crisis of late capitalism with every tool available to somebody sitting in on of those little desk-chair combos.
If you come to class late, you have to solve the crisis of late capitalism in a little desk-chair combo made for somebody left handed.
I don't see why state universities should subsidize the party life either - require harder classes and actually flunk the metabolically overambitious, but make it easy to try again when you get it together. Private colleges could still be helpful for the last.
I'd like to have 14 years of school free for anyone with good grades, so some people could cram and get a bachelors' free by 20 and others would have two years retraining paid for if they wanted to change as adults.
Back to whether there's room for Heebie U in a world of free State U--well, how expensive is Heebie U? On a per-student basis, how do its operating costs compare to Local Community College or Local State U?
A gentler version is a college with a meaningful career center which works hard to get internships and job interviews for unconnected kids. It's sort of weird to spend tuition money on a career center, and I don't know if a "meaningful career center" is even a thing that exists. How can a career counselor be well-connected? How can anyone in academics be well-connected to those outside academics, top-tier aside?
By which I mean: if the actual operating costs of providing a nurturing environment aren't all that much greater than those of community colleges or non-research universities, why shouldn't we have some public liberal arts colleges?
well, how expensive is Heebie U? On a per-student basis, how do its operating costs compare to Local Community College or Local State U?
I believe we're 20K/year, and the discount rate is more like 13K maybe? Whereas UT Austin is maybe 9K/year (but no idea on their discount rate)? (I didn't look anything up) and I'd guess that a local CC is 1-2K/year, if you're going full time?
require harder classes and actually flunk the metabolically overambitious, but make it easy to try again when you get it together
That's pretty much what Nebraska did when I was there. They flunked out huge numbers of people. Of those I knew who were kicked out for a time, all but one were people who could have done the work if they would have limited their drinking a bit. The other one was my roommate and he was, for college purposes, functionally illiterate. He didn't drink at all.
Given that we're teaching 4/4 and not conducting meaningful research, our operating costs are similar to a public landgrant university, but the output is very different.
I guess we need to start paying career counselors 7 figures to compete with CEO pay packages for the "well-connected."
My current (for a few more days) SLAC sounds very similar to Heebie U, including first-generation students and nurturing and administrators who want to increase the prestige. The president talks about this all the time- how to attract more honors students, improve the honors college, etc. I think it's really a stupid move. The college is good at doing what it is doing now (providing a relatively good college education with lots of handholding for people who aren't great students), with the rich mediocre students' parents subsidizing the education of the poor mediocre students.
But trying to compete with the first-tier SLACs is fundamentally incompatible with this. As well as being basically impossible without a much bigger endowment to attract/pay for much more competetive faculty.
33: Quarter-time job for successful retirees? My dad is doing a bit of that ( formally, tutoring, but the cannier students ask him practical questions).
Fates know I should have taken more of his advice, I hope so.done else does.
33. Keeping in touch with gainfully employed alumni is a start. In the first job I had out of grad school, which was OK but not fantastic, located in the same city, I tried getting in contact with a couple of profs when the place was hiring, but no response. Now, fb or the professional equivalent might be one way to stay in touch, at least superficially.
35: Right, but it's actual operating costs/FT student that matters, not tuition/fees; CCSF got less than 10% of its revenue from the latter. Not sure where to find good stats on actual operating costs per full-time student. I think maybe USNews reports that? I think it used to, which was part of the push to just jack up prices and built expensive stuff. Or maybe I'm misremembering.
37: Isn't the whole point that the classes you're teaching 4/4 are smaller, and hence your 4/4 load reaches fewer students than a State U 4/4 load does? I mean, I'd like to believe that, yes, it's not all that much more expensive to do the liberal arts model. But "classes taught" isn't a fair metric, if the classes are different sizes.
Right, which is why it's apples and oranges. I teach roughly 80 students per semester, my counterpart at UT-Austin with a 2/2 teaches 200 students per semester and gets some papers published. OTOH, under 5 of my 80 students fail the class, whereas maybe a third of the 200 students fail their class. OTOH, there's all sorts of selection bias for these things.
Our failure rates in college algebra are higher than my personal failure rates, I should note. For whatever reason, the grades I assign seem to average around an 80 with a pretty small standard deviation.
My personal failures have very little to do with algebra.
A gentler version is a college welfare state with a meaningful career center which works hard to get internships and job interviews for unconnected kids. It's sort of weird to spend tuition money on a career center, and I don't know if a "meaningful career center" is even a thing that exists.
FTFY.
A number of OECD countries spend more than 1% of GDP on active labor market policies; Denmark spends over 2%. The US? .1%. (Of course, most of the Eurozone countries right now have much worse employment situations, but that's because of terrible macroeconomic issues.)
I'm being a bit glib here, because there are good and bad active labor market policies, and just saying "we should have more of them!" isn't super helpful, but--they do exist, and some countries take them quite seriously.
Are small state Us/colleges not a thing elsewhere? Washington has Evergreen & Western Washington U, and branch campuses of UW at Bothel & Tacoma, which seem to fit the mold. And, a number of the community colleges seem to be quite collegy.
I don't see a model for subsidizing the SLACs you describe any more than we already do (with Pell grants/subsidized loans). I'm not a big fan of the notion that private + public subsidy is a good economic model.
Right, which is why it's apples and oranges.
I don't know if I'd go that far--differently shaped apples, maybe. Or, fine, apples and oranges--but what you say about failures rates and so on point towards how one might be able to construct a decent index of "calories per dollar" even between these apples and oranges. And I think that'd be the place to start in terms of making a serious judgement about whether or not small liberal arts colleges are luxury goods unworthy of subsidy, or an entirely reasonable alternate way to produce educated young adults. I suspect the latter.
You know, probably they should just stop lumping teaching and research into the same job at big public universities. Hire full time teachers and full time researchers, and have joint-appointments if it suits the individual's strengths but not otherwise.
The primary-researchers should function like adjuncts - flexible teachers who can fill a gap or unexpected need in the course schedule.
51: In medicine, it sort of works that way now.
53 to 52 also. But the reverse happens also. There are some people who primarily teach (usually statistics or methods) who fill in a bit on research.
44- I guess the way you manage a 4/4 is by having 3 hands.
48: Most of the PA state system (distinct from PSU) universities have 6-9k students, which is probably too big to count as an SLAC, but Mansfield has 2.8k and considers itself a liberal arts college. I think Cheyney, even smaller at 1.5k, would also count as an SLAC, but it's also an HBCU which has somewhat different goals.
52 and/or the fancy faculty do fancy seminar-style classes, some perhaps complementing the larger-scale prepped lecture and lab classes.
"prestige" is a zero-sum game, right? Like football. Stepping back from zero-sum games ought to be one of the things that centrally-planned institutions ought to be able to do. If you get to the point where Heebie State LAC increases tuition for a "prestige" program designed to attract students from Heebie State Flagship, that's about the point that I would hand the whole system over to Leonid Kantorovich whose linear equations will pick the optimum level of prestige.
I don't know what goes on with the lab people. Somebody said they had a whole bunch of monkeys but when I ask to see them, suddenly it's all quiet.
If football is a zero-sum game to you, I know you never have watched a WAC game.
Is it better to:
(a) go, after a demanding high school experience, to an entirely-publicly-subsidized continental European university, where you have almost nothing like the intense on-campus experience, generally a single major right away, huge impersonal classes, and few to none of the US campus bells and whistles like sport teams, rec centers, on-campus parties, etc., and then graduate with little to no debt into a welfare state that will try, but likely fail to get you a good job at all?
or
(b) go to an American college, take on tens to hundreds of thousands of non-dischargeable debt to do so, have the much more intense US on-campus experience (including, maybe, partying too hard) and then graduate into an economy where you're likely to get some job, but it will probably suck, though suck somewhat less than if you hadn't gone to college at all, but you'll still have the debt?
I think those are the two choices now on offer from the rich industrialized world for higher education for most kids (obviously, there are some geniuses and lucky people who will do super well in both systems). Choice (a) does seem substantially better, but still not great, and it's also futzing around at the margins. At the end of the day it's all a labor market/general economic problem -- if you could have good jobs for young middle class college graduates, then the debt issue wouldn't matter much. But I do think that choice (b), the US system, helps to turn the university system into an affirmative weapon of the rich in a struggle against poor people, since the rich won't be subject to the debt burden.
Because it had never been done before and is a much much greater challenge than following a real person's life?
A friend annoyed me mightily by saying "why the big deal? This movie is no different from watching character grow up on a sitcom." I don't really have a retort that doesn't boil down to "oh COME ON."
Oh and then SP did that in comment 17.
With kids on a sitcom, the audience/popularity machine destroys their innocence and so they are liable to burn out and turn to bottom-tier reality TV. I haven't seen the movie, but it should at least avoid that.
51: I had a professor in my MSW program who was clearly a research hire and she was just this hilariously bad teacher, and it was the first time I was aware that people get hired and have to teach even if they hate it and are terrible at it. God she was the worst.
UT was incredibly cheap when I went there. I wish I had an old tuition statement, as I don't remember quite how much it cost but suspect it was under 1K/semester.
My experience, in a science field, was that some passionate faculty actually liked and excelled at teaching within two major constraints:
1) they don't "have to"
2) the specific course topic (i.e., not "Calculus") is dear to them
3) they have actual (as opposed to academic) communications skills
Gave you one for free. I expect good marks on my end-of-term evaluations.
From what I can tell, maybe someone knows better, if you pay in-state sticker price a good public university now costs about $150,000 total for four years (including living expenses), a good private university $250,000 over four years, including the same expenses, again if you pay sticker price. Is that right?
If you and in-state in a state that hasn't gutted the system, I think you can still expect to get out for under $100,000.
68: A quick look at the University of Maryland gives $81,825 for 4 years with room and board and $38,304 for 4 years without room and board.
The numbers in 70 are for in-state.
Anyway, tuition, fees, dorm, and meal plan at my alma mater are under $20,000 a year. University of Iowa was the same. That would leave $20,000 for books and incidentals. More if you were willing to live off campus in some of the shittier housing.
That website link is what happens when "information designers" get high on their own supply. What I really want from a page like that isn't some state-by-state map, or or a bunch of color-coordinated icons that only show you majors by section, but rather a list of all the majors, in descending order of expected salary. Is that really so difficult?
I was looking at the UCs (I said *good* public university, just kidding), but I was wrong even there. So, if we want to think about a rought metric, it's more like $100,000 vs. $250,000, as a rough point of comparison, and understanding that the private schools are going to ladle out more financial aid.
Surprisingly, the U. Maryland costs haven't gone up that much since 2000. If my numbers are accurate, in-state costs for 4 years with room and board were $68,360 in 2000.
I'm not sure whether that means that Maryland has done a good job at controlling costs or if they just became absurdly expensive before many other public universities.
Is this one of those "you either get it or you don't" movies? If had been a real person growing up or at least roughly followed something real, which is what I initially thought when I was excited to watch it, I can see how that's a cool technique to employ. But it was just a scripted movie, including famous recognizable actors (is that part of the appeal, seeing recognizable people aging?) Albeit loosely scripted according to Wiki, they came up with the specific story each year they went back to film it. And I could even forgive the artificial story if it had a consistent plot other than "look at all the challenges kids at age X, Y, Z have!" But it was just a bunch of scenes of different things in different years happening (and LOOK NOW IT'S 2008 BECAUSE THEY HAVE OBAMA LAWN SIGNS!) where the main thing it was leaning on was look how cool it was how we filmed this. I mean, is it supposed to be a nostalgia film reminding people of each specific time period when different scenes were happening? I remember taking my kids out to canvass when they were little, I believe there's even a picture of it in the pool. We should put together a 10-year movie montage of life based on the unfogged pool! Lots of nipples, baby pictures, and sightseeing.
And now I've ruined it for heebie.
UT was incredibly cheap when I went there. I wish I had an old tuition statement, as I don't remember quite how much it cost but suspect it was under 1K/semester
My memory is that it had gone up to ~2-3K/semester by the time I was there.
All of Hollywood and the entire critical community was fooled by this cheap gimmick, but not SP!
Well I'm glad that we're now required to like movies because the critical community all agree we should.
And I could even forgive the artificial story . . .
What distinguishes an "artificial" story from a natural one? I mean once you're using actors and doing something which isn't a documentary (and the Up Series exists and is great) why does it make a difference if it follows a real person's life or if it's just scripted to tell a story about life changes and the passage of time.
I mean "based on a true story" feature films don't feel like documentaries anyway. Is The Bling Ring a non-artificial story?
What was "artificial" about the story? I thought the *SPOILER* abusive stepdad situation was maybe a little OTT, though not way the fuck outside the realm of lived experience. Whatever you think of Linklater, I'm not sure that "artificial" is the best adjective to use for the attack, there's a pretty hardcore attempt at verisimilitude.
Because it hit a bunch of themes that seemed to me would never happen in a single person's life. I won't list them all to not spoil it but if you think about all the situations how likely is it this all happens to someone? And it's fine if that's what makes a movie interesting because most people's lives are boring, but then why need for the long-term filming to make it seem like it's happening to a real person?
Maybe I'm misremembering, and it either worked for you or it didn't, but weren't the things that happened *SPOILER* basically, Dad leaves, Mom moves to new town to get an education, Mom gets remarried to dude who turns out to be super-abusive asshole, Mom flees asshole and family moves to different town, boy gets girlfriend, girlfriend cheats on him, boy gets decent at photography, leaves home and goes to college where he drops acid. Doesn't really seem like an absurd soap opera plot to me.
And also I'm pissed today because my stupid fitbit wristband smells like campfire smoke from this past weekend and I can't wash it and I'll be randomly talking to people at work and suddenly smell smoke and think I missed washing some clothing or body part that still smells. HOW'S THAT FOR REALITY CINEMA?
SP, which films do you like?
Linklater's not Tarkovski or Terence Malick, but he's moving closer to a slower, understated style of filmmaking than the median Hollywood movie.
I watched Rich Hill recently, liked that a lot. Also meandering, also with abrupt cuts, a documentary about the people living in a decaying place where the filmmakers grew up.
They all seemed like stereotypes. Mom pulls herself up by bootstraps by going back to school and suddenly she's a professor with lots of professor-type friends. Awesome part-time dad who's so cool and isn't afraid to talk openly about birth control and politics. You covered the alcoholic dad. Teacher who has earnest conversation about applying yourself, kid (and even self-consciously says that in 20 years when kid is successful he'll remember this conversation setting him straight.) Various archetype friends, I forget which.
I guess I liked the sister. But not like that. She seemed realistic.
SP, there are lots of films made interesting by the filmmaker rather than the subject.
Linklater's Clerks, pretty much anything by Richard Weir, maybe Nicolas Roeg. He's an acquired taste, but Herzog's movies have "plots" that can usually be summarized in one or two apparently ridiculous sentences.
61 See, I was thinking my kids could get the education in (a) and then work in the economy in (b). No sale, though.
89. Whoops. Thought of Slacker, wrote Clerks.
why need for the long-term filming to make it seem like it's happening to a real person?
Film can depict memory and the passage of time in ways that other art forms can't. Using the same actors in scenes filmed many years apart could be just a stunt like using CGI or an opening scene which is one long take, and you're not obligated either to like the film or to consider this a successful realization. But there's more going on than in something scripted and filmed to show a conventional biography.
Now I'm imagining Linklater's Clerks, and it's a damn sight better than Smith's Bernie.
David Lynch's Clerks would be great.
Linklater's Clerks, pretty much anything by Richard Weir, maybe Nicolas Roeg.
Roeg, really? "Husband and wife head to Venice after tragedy and weird, maybe-supernatural shit starts happening"? "Father abandons children after going crazy in the middle of the Outback"?
Imagine any of the films in 95, especially Outback made by Steven Spielberg.
Or whoever is responsible for Forrest Gump doing Clerks. Mainly I'm trying to respond productively to a critique of that Boyhood is unrealistic or stilted.
1: True, IME. My school is inexpensive compared to others in-state, so we must be worse. If we doubled our tuition we'd be more prestigious.
I mean, is it supposed to be a nostalgia film reminding people of each specific time period when different scenes were happening?
My expectation, and why I am not going to see it, is that it is basically about making one's soul explode with distress about the fleetingness of youth in a way that would be more effective than most things that thematize that fact of life.
Ok 92 makes sense to me but like I said in some cases it was heavy handed- look how we're campaigning for Obama! But I think you still need a compelling story to carry it, otherwise at the other extreme why not just stitch together clips of say years of surveillance footage. The period details would be perfect!
There are some things you couldn't capture through sets and costumes, like large scale architecture. But now the synthetic chemist in me asks, if you could hypothetically perfectly capture every period detail (one of the reasons people liked about Mad Men) would there be any distinction between period filming and replicating a period?
Anyway I don't know crap about the art side of films or directors, probably because I went to some technical school instead of a SLAC. I'm just saying the film didn't do it for me, don't judge me brah.
So is 98 saying that the message of the film is how it took 12 years to film this story and it was over for the viewer in 150 minutes so seize the moment? That seems pretty meta, that the idea of how a film was made affects the final message of what's shown on the screen regardless of whether you could closely replicate the same final product using a different cinematic method.
92 - Have you seen Soderbergh's The Limey? It uses some snippets from a previous Terence Stamp movie (Ken Loach's Poor Cow) as thirty-years-ago flashback. (The movie has merits beyond that little Soderberghian piece of showoffery.) Period details are correct by virtue of having been shot in 1967, not 1998's remembered 1967.
Anyway I don't know crap about the art side of films or directors, probably because I went to some technical school
WAKE UP SHEEPLE, IT'S JUST LIGHT ON A SCREEN
101 - Pretty sure John Carpenter's The Thing uses footage from The Thing From Another World (i.e. the first film adaptation of the story "Who Goes There?") when they watch a VCR of the Norwegians burning through the ice with thermite. That said, IMDB isn't backing me up on this, so I may be wrong.
IMDB does mention one of my favourite facts about the film, which is that the Norwegian at the beginning of the film shouts a massive spoiler, thereby ruining it for any Norwegian speakers.
Period details are correct by virtue of having been shot in 1967, not 1998's remembered 1967.
I bet real 1967 looks a lot less like 1967 than a 1998 art director would make 1967 look. That's the main thing that struck me about the BBC "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" (set in 1970s, filmed in 1970s) vs. the recent film (filmed in 2010, set in That 70s Show).
few to none of the US campus bells and whistles like sport teams, rec centers, on-campus parties,
Eh?
The best period detail is the hair in movies shot in the 1970s and set in the Victorian era. My favorite is Burke & Hare.
Here's a striking photo:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ASpq7W7GYhg/UIZkoJ-YPQI/AAAAAAAB32Y/IPeGEALyH1c/s1600/beatles_06.jpg
That's the Beatles playing their last ever gig, on the roof of the Apple Records building in Soho.
Look at the audience. Those guys standing around. Those guys work for the Beatles' own record company, and this is 1969, in Swinging Soho, One Savile Row, Ground Zero for the entire Summer of Love, the whole decade, and they're up watching the Fab Four gigging. Look at how they're dressed. Look at their haircuts. And think of that next time you see something supposedly set in the Sixties and every other person is dressed like Austin Powers or one of the Freak Brothers.
Yes. Fashion for men has barely changed in 45 years.
In back of that picture, toward the top, you can see that Cedric Diggory.
