The state of education:

[Veronica]

I grew up on welfare. I was one of those kids who wore the same thing to school because I had nothing else. My mother wasn't a druggie, she worked a forty hour a week job at minimum wage, took overtime when she could. But with 4 kids at home and no child support, it was tough.

I knew I had to work hard in school and get some scholarships. I was lucky and I did. Then I decided to get married after my freshman year and transfer to a school in CA to be near my husband. Good bye scholarship. And yeah I finished school and my teaching credential owing a lot of money. I don't know why it's too hard for 20 somethings now to deal with that. That's life... We were paying off our debt into our early 30s.

Veronica

[OakLeaf]

And yeah I finished school and my teaching credential owing a lot of money. I don't know why it's too hard for 20 somethings now to deal with that. That's life... We were paying off our debt into our early 30s.

Veronica

Salaries don't even cover student loan payments any more. That's the result of the combination of the increase in loan interest, the decrease in grant money, and the decrease in real wages.

I did a refinancing and got (I think two) extensions, lived very modestly, and still the only reason my loans were paid off before I was 45 was because my second husband helped me out.

It's no wonder educated women defer motherhood... they have to pay off their loans first...

[Veronica]

Salaries don't even cover student loan payments any more. ..

That's scary. My first job paid me 20K a year and Thom's first post Marine job paid about 28K. I guess getting married young was a good thing since his income really paid off my college loans.

We had no money for extras. Our rent was $600 a month.

Veronica

[lph]

In Norway university tuition is free (well, apart from books). You get a student loan and a stipend, which together is enough to live on, frugally. Most students hold a part-time job to have a bit more than that. But the loan has very good terms, so a lot of people choose to take up the full loan. New mothers get a stipend about the size of 6 months loan, if I remember correctly, to be able to stay home with the baby. If you hold a fulltime job when you give birth you're allotted almost a year's paid leave.

Don't shoot me, I just live here.

Oh, and we also have taxes that a lot of Americans would find horrendous. I don't, I pay them willingly.

[malkin]

It's as true today as when Woody Guthrie wrote it:

California is a Garden of Eden
A paradise to live in or see,
but believe it or not,
You won't find it so hot,
If you ain't got that dough-ray-me.

[Crankin]

Very true, Malkin. My DIL doesn't understand this yet, as she has only been there 4 years. My son, on the other hand, has seen what's happened to AZ and it isn't pretty.
Re: the student loan issue. It's just a whole different ball game now. I had 3 loans that were totally cancelled because I went into a field that needed people (special ed). But, they didn't total that much. My older son's girlfriend is a perfect example of what happens today. She has a degree in interior architecture from RISD (supposedly the premier art school in the country). Her parents gave her no help and in fact, didn't even encourage her to go to college (they are both drop outs from BU). She is incredibly talented. She got beat up in the Boston Public Schools and got herself scholarships to a private HS. But, she has not been able to get a decent job in her field. She is turning 30 in a couple of months and owes about 60K. She lived in NYC for 2 years, to get experience in her field, where she was barely paid above minimum wage and treated like a slave. She is now working as a trainee at a locally owned, very socially conscious BBQ place that actually is a huge supporter of the local cycling community. They are going to open another place and hopefully, she will get to design it and manage it. She does some graphic design freelancing on the side, but there are no jobs in her field. She is not lazy by any means. But, that 60K is hanging over her head. It's been deferred a lot. My son is afraid her credit will not allow them to buy a house if they get married. It really sucks! Most of this is because her parents gave her no financial education and the fact that she could have gone to MA College of Art and had the same education for a fraction of the cost.
I am not sure what the answer to all of these problems are, but I don't think we're going to see educational equity in the US in my life time. It takes money and commitment, both of which are lacking.

[Atlas]

In Norway university tuition is free (well, apart from books). You get a student loan and a stipend, which together is enough to live on, frugally. Most students hold a part-time job to have a bit more than that. But the loan has very good terms, so a lot of people choose to take up the full loan. New mothers get a stipend about the size of 6 months loan, if I remember correctly, to be able to stay home with the baby. If you hold a fulltime job when you give birth you're allotted almost a year's paid leave.

Don't shoot me, I just live here.

Oh, and we also have taxes that a lot of Americans would find horrendous. I don't, I pay them willingly.

I tried to see if I could still claim Norwegian citizenship but I think I was one generation too many in the United States

Concerning college, there are so many angles to it. I graduate in December and I'm really happy. Tuition and books keep going up and I and I'm really anxious and nervous to find a job in this market. On the class level, there are a quite a few people who are in college because thats what their parents told them they were doing, or they didn't want to start working full time. I listen to them talk about football scores in class or how drunk they're getting that night. But there are a lot of people who are there for an education, it just took me a while to get to the upper level classes to find them. The saddest part for me is watching professors get budgets slashed and still try to maintain the same level of education. I have a class right now that we didn't get a syllabus in class because the department didn't have enough paper and we had to print it ourselves. Maybe if they cut the football coach's salary we'd be able to afford supplies where they are needed.

[shootingstar]

I have a class right now that we didn't get a syllabus in class because the department didn't have enough paper and we had to print it ourselves. Maybe if they cut the football coach's salary we'd be able to afford supplies where they are needed.

Amazing, a shortage of photocopying paper.
Canadian universities don't have much on the collegiate sports team funding side anyway compared to the US. Community colleges in Canada support their teams (if some have any) even less.

My second university that I went, hugely supported its football team at the time. And annual fall homecoming game, parade, etc. was celebrated by the university and city. Very unusual for a Canadian university football team to have that level of high local support. Even so, at that time, there wasn't much money spent on the football team, etc. Judging from all the alumni propaganda that I get, probably hasn't change much. All the major Canadian universities have been aggressively fundraising by beefing up their full-time prospect research funding team members, renaming their university libraries to mirror the big benefactors, etc.

[Crankin]

You still get a syllabus on paper??
Everything we get is on line, through Blackboard. That way, the onus of printing is on the student. All of the required articles are there, too. I print everything out at home, but some students have to print their stuff at the university and now they have to pay for that (it was free until last year). There is almost no paper handed out by the professors.

[Dogmama]

The saddest part for me is watching professors get budgets slashed and still try to maintain the same level of education. I have a class right now that we didn't get a syllabus in class because the department didn't have enough paper and we had to print it ourselves. Maybe if they cut the football coach's salary we'd be able to afford supplies where they are needed.

Sorry, I have problems feeling sorry for most professors. They b*tch & moan if they have to teach over three classes/year and please, don't ask them to teach any class over 30 students without a teaching assistant to do the grunt work. And, they get tenure which means "job for life." I saw very few professors who really gave a damn about the students.

Collegiate athletics are often supported through donations by big money people. That's how they excuse giving themselves big salaries because the color of money is different. However, recently an ex-college athlete "hero" was vacillating between giving $2M+ to the athletic department or to the department of his major. Since he didn't graduate, it didn't take long for him to quit vacillating and the athletic department is getting a state-of-the-art training facility.

Meanwhile you, dear student, are printing out your own syllabi.

[MartianDestiny]

Sorry, I have problems feeling sorry for most professors. They b*tch & moan if they have to teach over three classes/year and please, don't ask them to teach any class over 30 students without a teaching assistant to do the grunt work. And, they get tenure which means "job for life." I saw very few professors who really gave a damn about the students.

Clearly you've never taught a class and have very little idea of the effort (and time) it takes to do so well. You also clearly have very little understanding of EVERYTHING that is expected of a Professor....here's a hint: teaching classes is less than 1/3 of the responsibility.

I've never seen a professor moan about 2-3 classes a semester (that's 4-6 a year...not 3 a year...) for starters.

Here's an estimate of the time involved: 2-3hrs to prepare a lecture X twice a week, per class. Maybe you've already taught it before, that's still 1-2hrs to go over your notes and recall/update, per lecture, per class. So, if you are teaching 3 classes a semester that's 6-18hrs per week just in preparing lectures. Then there's grading. A 5-10 question multiple choice quiz will take 5 minutes per student to grade; 3 classes at 30 students a piece (forget the large lecture first year/non-major courses that can easily have 50-200 students...) that's 450 minutes or 7.5 hrs. A mathematical or scientific problem set homework of 5-10 questions...easily 30 to 45 minutes per student to grade. 5-10 page essays, an hour per student. Tests, midterms, finals, 45min-1hr per student. You'll have at least one of those a week. Then there's office hours: 3-5 hrs per class per week where you may or may not have time to do something else. O, and you'll be all but expected to hold review sessions as well.

That is a full time job, but remember it's 1/3 of the expected responsibilities. Maybe you have graduate assistants to help with grading, review sessions, office hours, but it's still a significant number of hours.

Then there is research. They want you to publish 1-3 meaningful articles per year in peer reviewed journals (or be writing a book). I can assure you that is a full time job as well, even if you have students doing some of the research.

Then there are committees, admissions boards, new faculty interviews, community service, conferences (which you had BETTER present at...), etc.

If you can't keep up with that FORGET getting Tenure, and MANY MANY professors DO NOT HAVE IT. "Associate" "Assistant" = NON-TENURED.

I've come across a few professors that "didn't care" about students (ONLY a few). Most cared and would do anything in their power if they actually knew you (yea, that meant actually talking with them, showing up at office hours, etc). Most were also completely frazzled. Trying to keep up with all the expectations at work, trying to get tenure (because if you don't within an alloted period you are GONE, not because they wanted a "job for life"), trying to raise a family, trying to actually get home before midnight, dealing with the ridiculous "we don't have enough paper for you to print that test" crap, etc, etc.

Despite that a lot of them actually enjoy their jobs, kudos to them!

And no, I am not a professor and do not want to be.

[ginny]

Sorry, I have problems feeling sorry for most professors. They b*tch & moan if they have to teach over three classes/year and please, don't ask them to teach any class over 30 students without a teaching assistant to do the grunt work. And, they get tenure which means "job for life." I saw very few professors who really gave a damn about the students.

Oh Dogmama! Being a professor (in the sciences - I can't speak to other disciplines) is one of the only jobs that one has to "sing for one's supper". Research professors need to write proposals and get funding to pay for at least some of their salaries, pay for their graduate students, pay for their research. Professors are expected to: maintain a research laboratory performing world class science, mentor and graduate graduate students, teach undergraduate and graduate courses, bring in millions of dollars of funding, sit on many university committees - and if one is a minority, he/she finds herself on more committees than usual - the university likes to parade their minority professors for all to see, and mentor undergraduates.

Aside from the hope that they will, in fact, get to do world class research in a collaborative and supportive community, I do not understand why so many want to go into academia. I feel horribly sorry for my advisor from my MS program; she has traded any sort of personal life for tedious and difficult work with little thanks.

[Grog]

Oh, and we also have taxes that a lot of Americans would find horrendous. I don't, I pay them willingly.

I wish I could say the same. I am appalled at how the Canadian government has been cutting taxes continuously for the past 10 years, while cutting the services that the most needy among us can't live without.

I used to actively fight against this, now I just don't know what to do anymore.

[Crankin]

I don't mind printing my syllabus. I bought a laser printer, just to print the large number of articles I need to read. Much better than spending hundreds on xerox machines, as I did last time I was in grad school in the eighties.
My school is a very small university that used to be a women's college for educators. The grad school has been coed and has other had other majors for many years, but the undergraduate college just went coed a few years ago. There's a few sports teams, but, that is definitely not the focus.
Like Oakleaf, I don't think I've ever had a professor who didn't care. I've had a few who were horrible instructors and I agree with Shooting Star that they need some basic lessons on instructional strategies. I actually did that for my pyschopathology prof last year. He's interesting and I'm sure, a great therapist, but very disorganized and unclear in his written directions/expectations. I showed him how to write a rubric for assessing group projects and he was rather surprised at the whole thing. It made him think, at least.

[Dogmama]

I apologize for painting all professors with a broad brush. I am very aware that there are excellent professors who do cutting edge research and deeply care for their students.

I spent 30 years as a business manager in a research university & I'm very aware of what professor do and don't do.

During budget cuts, my staff was let go. Tenured professors stayed. They didn't demand a less amount of work from my staff; indeed, as budgets were cut, audits were heightened, professors tried to stretch their dollars (and the rules) and we had more work. When I retired, I worked 70 hours/week. So did my (remaining) staff. And that just allowed us to keep up.

This could get into a real P*ssing match and frankly, I don't want to dredge up those memories.

Let me just say that I apologize if I offended anybody. Enough said.