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Old 08-12-2012, 11:15 PM
gg gg started this thread
 
Location: Pittsburgh
26,137 posts, read 25,875,925 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by eccotecc View Post
h_curtis,

Most of my son's professors came from CMU or got their graduate degrees from CMU. Currently the UC's are collaborating with CMU on many research projects.
This is great news. I think our children need better education. These schools like Penn State, Pitt and the like are not enough for our kids and certainly not providing enough for the cost. They are raping them and enslaving them. That isn't a good way to start life. This needs to gain momentum and readjust what this is supposed to be all about. Educating our future leaders, not beating them to death with debt to line pockets of a few. It is sick and must be stopped. GO BERKLEY!!! GO MIT!!!! No more Penn State scandals, football crap and all that jazz. More education, less scamming.
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Old 08-12-2012, 11:45 PM
 
Location: North by Northwest
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A few things:

1) Pitt's selectivity, prestige, and quality of education have all skyrocketed over the past 15 years.

Before the mid-late nineties, Pitt was a lot like Temple--a solid, but commuter-heavy, more super-regional than national university that was "middle-of-the-road" in most academic departments, although it always had some top-shelf "bright spots" like philosophy, creative writing, and nursing. Since then, Pitt has propelled itself to the Penn State/Maryland/OSU/etc. tier of public research universities and similarly compares to good privates like Syracuse/BU/GW.

2) Pitt is expensive as far as public universities go, but it is still a steal compared to most similarly good private colleges.

Make no mistake about it; Pitt's, along with Penn State and Temple's in-state tuition is pricey compared to other public universities of similar caliber. But it's still a hell of a lot cheaper than its private cousins. For families caught in the middle/upper middle class donut hole (too rich to receive much in the way of need-based aid, but not rich enough to pay sticker/near-sticker at most private universities, which is a situation I suspect you will end up in, Curt), schools like Pitt are a godsend, because as far as raw academics as a whole go, a BU doesn't really offer anything a Pitt does not.

3) For students not looking to enter the working world straight out of undergrad, a cheap Pitt degree often makes more financial sense than an expensive CMU degree.

Let me say that for those seeking work straight out of undergrad, your school's prestige can definitely make a difference. Though no one should go into heavy debt for a bachelor's at any college, for the business or engineering student who plans on going into the working world right away, a CMU is often worth a bit more money than a Pitt.

But if you are reasonably sure you want to attend grad school first, the cheaper Pitt degree becomes a lot more attractive. Let's go back to our middle/upper middle class donut hole kids, who make up a very significant proportion of college-bound students. Those who can get into both Pitt and CMU (but not a Harvard or Yale) will likely be awarded a ton of merit (non-need based) aid at the former but very little, if any, at the latter. My freshman year honors housing hall at Pitt was filled to the brim with students picking between the Pitts and CMUs of America, with some even gaining acceptance to the Ivies or their equivalents. But the vast majority of them chose Pitt because as planned prospective law, medicine, PhD, etc. students, the prestige factor starts to matter much less (and quite often it becomes a negligible factor). To name a few examples, my roommate went on to a physics PhD program at Harvard, a friend down the hall is now at Johns Hopkins med, and I'm attending Penn Law. Countless other scholarship students are scattered at "best of the best" grad school programs across the nation. None of us were even remotely "raped," "enslaved," or "scammed" by our undergraduate alma mater. Pitt is certainly not on the raw academic level of Princeton, but the qualify of education there is still above the "good enough" threshold, where if you take advantage of your opportunities, get good marks, and ace the prerequisite standardized tests, you will end up in the exact same place as your similarly intelligent peers with more prestigious undergraduate pedigrees.

My advice to any/all prospective college students is to apply broadly now and compare financial packages later. Financial aid can be quite unpredictable, and depending on the school/your particular situation, a prestigious private university you get accepted to may end up close to the same price as a school like Pitt. But if Pitt and its peers do end up being significantly cheaper, I would highly recommend avoiding debt. If you put in the effort, you will ultimately end up in the same place.

One last thing:
I don't know how far off your kids are from attending college, Curt, but I would think long and hard before blindly paying $200k+ per child for their bachelors degrees on the basis of prestige. Otherwise, you/they may very well be on the road to rape/enslavement/scamming.

Last edited by ElijahAstin; 08-12-2012 at 11:56 PM..
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Old 08-13-2012, 06:51 AM
 
Location: A coal patch in Pennsyltucky
10,325 posts, read 10,584,256 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by barneyg View Post
That's an interesting topic. My thoughts/comments:

1) for any university, the link between total employment and the number of students is tenuous at best. as an outsider, you may think all those employees are there to support classes, but the truth is that they are mostly supporting research, which is roughly independent from the actual number of students (undergraduate at least).

2) you link to an AP article so the doomsday newspaper analogy is predictable, but it is also wrong. the same information taught in MIT courses is already taught at community colleges and lower-tier universities all over the world, and a lot of times the information is already free, on the web. the reason people take MIT classes is to get an MIT degree. if you read the article carefully, you'll notice that you can take that MIT course, pass the final exam (assuredly 100% multiple choice), and be happy about it, but MIT still doesn't recognize it. the article says the University of Washington might, but we'll see about that. the current best-case scenario is the University of Helsinki.

3) as with every technological innovation of the past 25 years (computer-adaptive testing, powerpoint, the internet itself), good on-line platforms are going to marginally change the way classes are taught, especially undergraduate classes. but distance learning isn't for everyone and it's not a coincidence that it usually caters more heavily to mature people who have the self-discipline to do what they have to do. most 18-year-old kids won't just sit through those on-line lectures.

a note on tuition and loans -- regardless of how outrageous full-time tuition is at Pitt, it still only accounts for roughly 25% of Pitt's total revenue. the federal government's policy toward university research and the return on endowment investments are a lot more critical for Pitt's revenues, and therefore employment.
Excellent points. Just because elite universities are "offering their most popular courses on-line for no charge," does not mean they are offering degrees on-line. I doubt they have any intention of competing with the University of Phoenix.

I have taken undergraduate and graduate classes on-line. Most were not worth the cost. It is one thing to provide on-line videos of all of the lectures of a course, and a completely different thing to develop a class that will be taught completely on-line. Most college professors are fine with the first option and fall on their face with the second option. What it appears MIT, Stanford, Harvard and others are doing is videotaping lectures, providing aces on-line and then providing multiple choice tests to test your understanding of the material. None of the on-line classes I took where taught this way. At one extreme, the on-line classes consisted of reading a textbook and taking an on-line test every week. I never saw a lecture or participated in a discussion or did any kind of project or paper. These tests were multiple choice and true/false. You took the test from home and they had a time limit.

Other on-line courses used a combination of discussion boards and projects. Some programs use proctored tests where you either have to go to the school to take tests at a testing center or they have designated locations such as university libraries. Pitt has a testing center CIDDE Academic Testing Services | CIDDE. The on-line graduate program that I was enrolled in, used essay tests and projects. They were time consuming but really did not show that I had mastered any of the subjects.

I agree that colleges and universities will have to change. The college debt burden is becoming a major problem and is not sustainable in the long run especially when job prospects are so dismal in most fields. I think there is potential for on-line learning but the field is still in its infancy. The upfront work that has to go into a good on-line course is much more than what a good college professor has to prepare before he walks in the door the first day of class.

My bottom line is that after taking on-line courses, I would be skeptical of hiring someone with an on-line degree, assuming I knew it was an on-line degree.
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Old 08-13-2012, 07:00 AM
 
Location: Wilkinsburg
1,657 posts, read 2,684,250 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HeavenWood View Post
2) Pitt is expensive as far as public universities go, but it is still a steal compared to most similarly good private colleges.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HeavenWood View Post
But it's still a hell of a lot cheaper than its private cousins.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HeavenWood View Post
Let me say that for those seeking work straight out of undergrad, your school's prestige can definitely make a difference. Though no one should go into heavy debt for a bachelor's at any college, for the business or engineering student who plans on going into the working world right away, a CMU is often worth a bit more money than a Pitt.
I thought this was a good post, HeavenWood. As a Pitt alum, I share similar sentiments. Your comments about Pitt being a great alternative to expensive private schools are spot on.

I think the "prestige" of many private universities and colleges is grossly misrepresented. Excluding the best rated private schools (e.g. top research schools, ivies, CMU, MIT), a lot of really expensive and supposedly prestigious private universities provide perfectly mediocre instruction and surprisingly meager post-graduation employment opportunities. Friends who have paid a significant premium to attend schools like Allegheny College, Grove City, and Saint Vincent University have had difficultly getting interviews, have spent longer periods of time searching for employment, and have been offered far less money than friends who attended public research schools like Penn State, Pitt, UT, and Virginia Tech. Particularly in engineering and business, many of the public school alums who I know were offered significantly higher starting salaries (like 20k to 30k more) than private school peers, while owing significantly less money to Sallie Mae.
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Old 08-13-2012, 08:30 AM
 
Location: North by Northwest
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ML North View Post
I thought this was a good post, HeavenWood. As a Pitt alum, I share similar sentiments. Your comments about Pitt being a great alternative to expensive private schools are spot on.

I think the "prestige" of many private universities and colleges is grossly misrepresented. Excluding the best rated private schools (e.g. top research schools, ivies, CMU, MIT), a lot of really expensive and supposedly prestigious private universities provide perfectly mediocre instruction and surprisingly meager post-graduation employment opportunities. Friends who have paid a significant premium to attend schools like Allegheny College, Grove City, and Saint Vincent University have had difficultly getting interviews, have spent longer periods of time searching for employment, and have been offered far less money than friends who attended public research schools like Penn State, Pitt, UT, and Virginia Tech. Particularly in engineering and business, many of the public school alums who I know were offered significantly higher starting salaries (like 20k to 30k more) than private school peers, while owing significantly less money to Sallie Mae.
Pitt is definitely better than all those private colleges you listed. To be clear, I was not implying that private necessarily equals prestigious.
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Old 08-13-2012, 08:38 AM
 
Location: Charlotte
1,763 posts, read 3,282,281 times
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If parents were more responsible, more kids would be able to afford college. Instead of spending an extra $100 per month on a data plan/smartphone you don't really need (and/or cable tv), put that into a college fund. If you do this from birth on, your student may not need any loans.
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Old 08-13-2012, 08:40 AM
 
Location: Wilkinsburg
1,657 posts, read 2,684,250 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HeavenWood View Post
Pitt is definitely better than all those private colleges you listed. To be clear, I was not implying that private necessarily equals prestigious.
Right, right. I was just augmenting.
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Old 08-13-2012, 09:04 AM
 
Location: Pittsburgh, PA (Morningside)
14,362 posts, read 16,949,095 times
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All of the studies I have seen have suggested the first colleges to suffer due to online classes will be low-prestige private schools, along with public second tier universities and community colleges. Top tier private schools will survive due to the prestige of their name (rich people will still spend on college as a luxury good, and want to social network), while flagship state-affiliated universities have enough of a research focus that they have outside revenue sources.

Based upon this, I think CMU is in no danger at all, and Pitt is probably not going to be in major trouble. Physical enrollment in Pitt may actually rise as the number of other physical college options decline. There will undoubtedly be some readjustment as distance learning encompasses more of the curriculum however.

What I'd really be concerned about are the other area colleges. Chatham, Duquense, Carlow, Point Park, CCAC, and Robert Morris are all in various degrees of trouble in the long run. While CCAC will probably migrate many of its classes to online and survive fine (since it's a commuter school, probably with little job impact), I wouldn't be surprised if at least two of the private schools vanished within the next 10-20 years.

I'd be a lot more concerned about the long-term prospects of Health Care in the region than education in general though. One way or another, we're going start seeing a contraction in health care jobs nationwide in the next decade, and UPMC has a lot of fat which could be trimmed.
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Old 08-13-2012, 09:33 AM
 
606 posts, read 942,156 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ex-burgher View Post
If parents were more responsible, more kids would be able to afford college. Instead of spending an extra $100 per month on a data plan/smartphone you don't really need (and/or cable tv), put that into a college fund. If you do this from birth on, your student may not need any loans.
That's a total of $21,600, which for most universities public or private wouldn't cover the total cost of attendance (i.e., including room and board) for even one year, if you're looking at your kid having the stereotypical total college experience. You can maybe expect some interest on your contributions but that's not guaranteed; my child's college fund lost almost 1/3 of its value from 2007-2009. If you want to be one of these folks who says, "I want my child to be able to attend their dream school, price be damned!", and you want to have that full cost saved up by the time the kid's 18, you're talking more like $1,000 a month, on top of retirement savings and any other savings you might have as a priority. For some families that's doable, but not for everyone.

I'm not disagreeing with your main point--that people should save more--only that I think you're making it look a lot easier than it is.
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Old 08-13-2012, 09:38 AM
 
Location: North by Northwest
9,322 posts, read 12,955,609 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Stijl Council View Post
That's a total of $21,600, which for most universities public or private wouldn't cover the total cost of attendance (i.e., including room and board) for even one year, if you're looking at your kid having the stereotypical total college experience. You can maybe expect some interest on your contributions but that's not guaranteed; my child's college fund lost almost 1/3 of its value from 2007-2009. If you want to be one of these folks who says, "I want my child to be able to attend their dream school, price be damned!", and you want to have that full cost saved up by the time the kid's 18, you're talking more like $1,000 a month, on top of retirement savings and any other savings you might have as a priority. For some families that's doable, but not for everyone.

I'm not disagreeing with your main point--that people should save more--only that I think you're making it look a lot easier than it is.
This. A family of four living on $250k a year would be hard-pressed to responsibly pay the full sticker they'd be saddled with at a top private university for one child, let alone two.
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