Re: Dave Winer on Silicon Valley, and a Rant on California Education Funding

Robert Cassidy — Mon, 28 Mar 2005 19:06:41 -0000

And higher-ed in the state is ok only because there's a lag between when the money goes away and when the public sees it. I work at a UC and things aren't good. Same problems - too much administration. The premier public institution of the state now gets less than 25% of it's funding from the state. It'd be more accurate to call the UC a private education contractor to the state. That's not helping the education improve, because money doesn't flow in for teaching.

My kids learn more at home than at school. That's fine in my book, but a little more help would be appreciated.

And Prop 13 has to be the nations most f'd up piece of legislation and should be the poster child against voter legislation. It's sufficiently well crafted that I can't imagine it ever being repealed, and the legislators and governor are powerless against it.

The tax bill on our $700K home is about what Warren pays on his $4M home because Warren probably paid $450K for it when he bought it, same as us. The result is that few people here can afford to buy their first home given a starting price of about $500K, so the renters get reamed while the homeowners rake it in. The homeowners keep ramping up property values because they aren't being bled out by taxes, so they can keep buying up and up, further segregating the market. We were fortunate to work our way on the money train when we did.

Re: Is Higher Education the Next Bubble to Burst?

Robert Cassidy — Sat, 30 May 2009 15:01:54 -0000

Higher Education is often approached in a completely backward manner. It's an investment which should be expected to pay itself off in a reasonable period of time. Both the government and the market should be able to solve the problem of extending credit to those that wish to attend, even with the current economic situation.

The bubble doesn't exist in college in general, but in those disciplines that don't provide the needed return on the investment. Engineers have no problem paying off a $200K education, relative to what they could earn without a college degree, but there are far more social science and humanities degrees coming out for the market to support. Instead most of these graduates are going into general purpose careers that don't discriminate on the type of degree earned (and it's debatable if one is even necessary for the job in many cases).

Many students are going into college without the investment in mind but are caught in the mindset that a degree (no matter what it is) is required for most jobs. There's a lot of truth in that and most students and parents see the college degree as little more than a tax to enter the job market. But does a $200K investment make sense for someone to take a $25K per year job, that might take 20+ years to pay off? We really need employers to be more honest with their educational needs, universities to be more honest with the supply of slots in programs with few job prospects, and expand slots in programs where employers have to go overseas simply to fill their positions, such as engineering, and students need to be more considerate of whether the education makes financial sense in the long run.

Treating this like a money supply issue is only going to put more young adults back at home with mom and dad because that first job out of college barely covers the student loan payments, let alone room and board.

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Re: Dave Winer on Silicon Valley, and a Rant on California Education Funding

Re: Is Higher Education the Next Bubble to Burst?