The state of education:

[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.

[Aquila]

Well, erm, I'm a professor at a mid-size comprehensive (that is, not a Research I) university.

I'm sorry to hear you've had bad experiences with professors. As with other professions, sometimes people are jerks and sometimes they tire out. And certainly, none of us is perfect.

I think most professors work pretty hard, but much of our work is invisible to the public and maybe doesn't seem important. And we don't do a very good job explaining what we do.

When I was a student, in the late 70s, the taxpayers of the state of California provided about 70% of the cost of my education at a UC school. Now, I'm guessing the state contributes something more like 25-30% of the cost of a student's education at a UC school. Some of the rest is made up by corporate stuff, but mostly the difference is paid by students. When I was a student, people who needed financial aid often got grants; now students with the same level of need get loans so they're starting out with serious debt. The same trend has happened in a lot of states.

The public used to perceive universities and colleges as a public good, the idea being that a well educated citizenry would contribute more to the economy and so forth. Think about the growth of public education in the GI bill era after WWII, and how significantly that growth was echoed in economic prosperity in the 50s and 60s.

That perception started changing in the 80s; now the public perceives higher education as a private good, and wants individuals to pay for it. To me that seems a huge mistake. And the unwillingness to pay for education is echoed at the elementary and secondary levels; our schools are badly strapped for cash.

In the state where I work now (Wisconsin), the prison system has grown in state funding while the university budget has shrunk. If you chart the money out for both institutions, the graphs are heartbreaking. We're willing to pay for jails, but not for education and programs that will help people contribute to their communities and not end up in jails. When you think about the 80s, the whole "tough on crime" movement paralleled the move away from funding education well. Now our prisons are more and more crowded, and our students are hurting. Personally, I'd rather put my tax money towards school funding at all levels, and I vote accordingly, but there are a lot of people who think differently and vote accordingly.

Wisconsin state employees have taken a 3.06 or so percent pay cut this year (called "furloughs" in hopes that it won't be permanent). But we have it good compared to California employees, who are looking at 6% plus. On the other hand, we're among the lowest paid faculty in the upper midwest, and we haven't had a raise in like 5 years (our promised raise last year, 2%, was cut in addition to the 3% cut).

Education is expensive and you can't really outsource it. Even if you pay instructors modest wages, you're still paying ever increasing health and benefits costs. It's hard to make educational productivity grow in the same way that industries have made productivity increase through greater automation and such. Students aren't widgets. (Our cost increases are somewhat similar to those in medicine and for some of the same reasons, though their salaries tend to be a whole lot better.)

And now, I have to get back to grading. Sorry for writing such a long response.

[eofelis]

I feel like I graduated just in time. Well, just in time for an employment bust, but also before it all hits the fan here in Colorado in terms of higher education.

I was a very non-trad student (41, 42 in a few days!) and I just got a BS in geology, minor in GIS from a small, cheap, kind-of-mediocre state college.

I breathe a sigh of relief everyday that I was able to get enough "free" money every semester that I didn't have to take out any loans. Every year I applied for every grant and scholarship that I could. I kept my GPA (3.8) up to get the good scholarships. I got enough money most every semester to pay f/t tuition ($2000-2500) and some living expenses. I usually worked p/t on campus.

The Boy graduated with the same degrees from the same college in 2006. His 4.0 GPA helped get him plenty of scholarships also.

We have been working as sub-contractors lately, kind of p/t. We continue to live cheap and we won't starve.

We are starting to consider grad school. We'd like to go somewhere where can both go and coordinate our schedules.

[Aquila]

SurlyPacer,

Congrats!

Before you head for grad school, make sure you get a really good sense of how long your degree will actually take (what's the time to degree for your actual program) and what the employment opportunities are like. For PhDs who want to go into academics in most fields, the employment opportunities are really lousy.

For example, the average time to degree for a PhD in English (after a BA) is 8.4 years.

1/3 of people who start PhDs in the humanities don't finish.

And of those who finish, in English, almost 1/3 will never get a tenure track job.

That means there's a huge opportunity cost for pursuing a PhD in English. It's not a bad thing to do, but you should go in with your eyes wide open.