Ejewkashun

[MasterDex]

I didn't see a thread to discuss general Education topics so here's one now!

 

The reason I went looking for such a thread is that in the "What would you do if you won the Lottery" thread, I see mention of the expense of going to Uni so I'm curious. Here in Ireland, there are a few different schemes available to aid people in going to college. For instance, if you're drawing unemployment benefits, you're probably eligible for Back To Education, which is basically your unemployment benefits plus travelling money. We also have maintenance grants available that cover tuition fees as well as providing some level of income while you're in college. We've got more than that, such as scholarships and so on but that's just the baseline.

 

I'm wondering what other countries have available to help people get a third level education. Does the US, where socialism is a dirty word, have any good schemes for poor parents to put their kids through college? Is University even an option for poorer families? I'm generally just curious how Ireland compares to other countries.

Edited July 11, 2012 by MasterDex

[deanb]

Well for me it was back when it was the low £3000/yr (hehehe). Now £9000/yr. You get that on a loan paid back in your wages at 9% of earnings over £15K (though I think the £15K changes as n when economies shift). You also take a maintenance loan and a maintenance grant, loan is paid back like the tuition loan and the grant is a grant. There's a sort of sliding scale where your parents income goes up, the maintenance grant (and then loan I think) decreases. You can also get a scholarship from the university, and I think that's up to them on how much and the terms. Ours was UCAS of 360 I think and you got £1000/yr.

 

When I went to college they still ran the EMA (Education Maintenance Allowance) of £10/20/30 depending upon parents income. Also if the college is out of a certain radius (And closest college to do that course) then you get travel paid too, though I think that depends on the LEA(Local Education Authority) policies.

 

Oh n college is Further Education and uni is Higher Education.

 

I don't know on how it all acts if you're unemployed, though by the sounds of it there's some grants cos I know some courses colleges are advertising at the moment are free, and my job advisor had mentioned that should there be certain requirements and certifications needed for jobs they can potentially push 18-24's through on those.

[TheMightyEthan]

In the US it really varies by state, but the federal government does provide some assistance, mostly in terms of loans, though there are grants as well. Federal loans can be either subsidized or unsubsidized, which basically means you don't have to pay interest on the subsidized ones until 6 months after you graduate whereas unsubsidized loans interest starts accruing immediately (although usually you don't actually have to start making payments until 6 months after you graduate). Otherwise they're pretty much like normal loans in that you're obligated to pay back a certain amount each month regardless of your income (there is talk of forgiving a whole bunch of federally held student debt, but it's unlikely to happen and would be a special case regardless).

 

Most colleges/universities also offer scholarships and grants, some need-based, some merit-based, and some just based on whatever the person who donated the money to start it wants it to be based on.

 

There isn't really enough money to go around though.

[Mal]

For California there are the Cal Grants which offers some help but with California in such a financial shitter the amount they give out is pretty low. It helps but its not much. It used to to be able to cover like like 80%-70% for your college education. There are also no grants for when you take summer classes so you'll either pay out of pocket or pay with loans which the federal government does supply.

The rest Ethan covered.

 

As for the poor getting a college education. Based on my experience in California, I know you can go to community college and then go the CSU or CU system. It'll be cheaper and if you live with your folks and get fed while you do this, the amount of money you get will easily pay for your community college years. If you save up the surplus and spend wisely (Its hard...) you could have the surplus last for about a 6-12 months at a CU or a CSU school if its not one of the super expensive ones. A transfer student usually gets out in 2-3 years so 6-12 months covered is pretty cool. Just have to play your cards right and don't expect things to fall on your lap.

[Luftwaffles]

As Mal said, CC's are the most common ways of getting a 3rd tier education. I'll toss in a few things I've found interesting as I've "progressed" through the system, though, just because I can't think of any more to explain that Ethan or Mal hasn't said.

 

On the topic of federal financial aid, it doesn't actually take into account how much the school in question costs when handing out payments. Whether or not you're going to a private school costing 50K annually or a community college costing less than 1K, FAFSA is still going to give you around 5K if you're in the lowest income bracket. Then the next year that amount will decrease slightly, and the next year more, and so on. In my case, it's going to result in me getting my 5K and 4K (maybe, not sure yet) in years when I won't actually be going to schools that cost that much. So that's interesting.

 

There's also in-state and out-of-state tuition, which probably perfectly exemplifies (in my eyes) just how fucked up the UC/CSU system is. Long story short, schools charge more/less based on what state you've established residency in, and sometimes it's a lot more for out of state students. In my case, I want to go out-of-state, but it doesn't really make any sense to without moving up there for a year, because I'd be paying about 35K rather than the 12K that resident students pay. What really puts the salt in the wounds is that CSUs (second tier usually, there are a few exceptions) cost about 12K annual, the same price as 1st tier state school if you're a resident. UC's cost about the same as those 1st tier out-of-state schools paying out of state tuition. I'm not sure if any of that made sense, but my main point is that UC's are completely overpriced, as you could go to a comparable out-of-state school and pay less, even if you'd be in the non-resident tuition bracket.

[deanb]

I assume whichever uni you ended up at didn't teach you to use the full acronym first? What's a UC/CSU/CC?

[TheMightyEthan]

UC = University of California. There are a bunch of them, so it's referred to as the "UC system"

 

CSU = California State University. Same as above with the system.

 

CC = Community College. It's probably the most analogous thing we have to what you call "college". You can usually get a 2-year degree at one (as opposed to a 4-year degree), and a lot of your classes will transfer credit to 4-year universities if you end up going to one. They're also a lot cheaper than 4-year universities. A lot of people with less money but who want to go to a university will go to a community college first and knock out as many of the required classes for whatever they want to do as they can and then transfer to a 4-year university to finish up. Sometimes universities will give special tuition rates to transfer students too, so it can help lower the cost of getting your degree quite a bit.

[Luftwaffles]

Pretty much what Ethan said. And I'm currently not at a Uni yet.

 

It's worth noting too that your eventual degree only has one name on it: the name of the school you graduate from. So even if you jump schools over and over and eventually end up at Harvard, your degree is going to look the same as someone who went to Harvard for 4 years.

[MasterDex]

Thanks for the info. It seems there's a fair bit of cross-over in the different financial aids available in the different countries. It seems Ireland is more forgiven in terms of lower-income students as the maintenance grants don't decrease each year and you get around €6,000. We don't have a very good student loan setup though. Student loans here are just regular bank loans with no oversight from government on how they should be structured so they can vary wildly in what they offer and take.

 

I always thought Community College would have been analogous with what we'd call a vocational school here. Though primarily second-level institutions, many offer further education after the leaving certificate; the courses being mostly 1-2 years in length. Then we've got the IT (Institute of Technology) colleges. These are the middle-of-the-road, most common third-level institutions. They offer courses that go from 1-4 years but also offer Masters and PhDs. Our universities then are the elite colleges and offer many of the same types of courses as the IT's do (usually not the lower level ones) but they're better funded, structured and run. Graduates also have a better chance of getting a job based solely on their education.

Edited July 12, 2012 by MasterDex

[TheMightyEthan]

We have vocational schools here (often called vocational or technical colleges), which I assume are more or less the same thing as your vocational schools. They typically offer 1-to-2-year programs and don't usually give you a degree (though I believe some will give you an associates degree), but you get a certificate in some specialized field, like welding or auto repair or computer repair or whatever. They also tend to, but don't always, focus on one specific area.

 

*Edit* - Community colleges, on the other hand, are kind of like mini-universities: they tend to give you more "academic" education, as opposed to the practical education from vocational/technical schools, and offer a wide variety of courses.

Edited July 12, 2012 by TheMightyEthan

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

the US, where socialism is a dirty word

Also where we spend 60% of the 3+ trillion dollar annual budget on providing assistance to the poor, elderly, and disabled.

 

As for education, our country's academic performance has been abysmal for a long time. Bush's "No Child Left Behind" initiative was a monstrosity, and it's only gotten worse. We keep pouring more and more money into the problem, but it's clear that that's not the solution:

 

 

Smaller countries with more homogeneous populations tend to see much better results with their education programs' spending. I just don't think a centralized bureaucracy dictating standards will work for a country as large and diverse as ours; it certainly hasn't so far.

 

As for college aid, the federal student loan bubble is the next one to burst. Rampant lending and thoughtless borrowing are going to lead to some massive blowback when everyone starts defaulting. Sooner or later people are going to come to terms with the fact that they're not getting the $160,000/year engineering jobs they thought they were when they borrowed $60,000/year for college. The problem is people do not look at education as they would any other purchase, by evaluating the benefits weighed against the costs. They just go because they "should", regardless of its value in their particular situations.

 

Other means of assistance, as was mentioned before, include grants and scholarships from the state or the schools themselves. Full rides are not uncommon due to academic performance or sports. Still it's troublesome to me just how much student debt is out there, over $1 trillion by most counts.

[TheRevanchist]

As for education, our country's academic performance has been abysmal for a long time. Bush's "No Child Left Behind" initiative was a monstrosity, and it's only gotten worse. We keep pouring more and more money into the problem, but it's clear that that's not the solution:

 

 

Exactly why my kids go to private school. Sure, I'd rather save the money for retirement or a nice vacation or more than one new pair of pants every year (I tend to save money by not spending unless necessary or on sale, like yesterday at Rite Aid where an entire aisle was 75% off), but the public education system is not up to snuff. With the backbone of the higher paid workforce being an education, I need to give my kids that advantage. Kids first, then everything else.... unless we are talking about the government, who likes to over-regulate the dumbest shit in the world.

[Mal]

Having been in four states and having lived their edumacation systems... I feel that they're pretty much the same save for regional differences. For example, I don't know much about Californian history and folks from California might not know as much Colonial history as I do. English, math and maybe science are or should be the same.

 

Its really not much of a funding issue. Extra fund sure do help and help a lot in cases but I feel its the adminstration and the teachers that might be the issue. Some people are totally teaching for the wrong reasons or bad mix of reasons. Then there is the emphasis on what to teach.

 

With that said. I feel that, on average, private schools are no better or worst than public schools.

[MasterDex]

the US, where socialism is a dirty word

Also where we spend 60% of the 3+ trillion dollar annual budget on providing assistance to the poor, elderly, and disabled.

I hope you didn't take any offence to that comment, I only meant it in jest because I've heard many American's that slam anything that even looks like it could be socialism. It's not something you really see here with Ireland being as socialist as it is.

 

As for education, our country's academic performance has been abysmal for a long time. Bush's "No Child Left Behind" initiative was a monstrosity, and it's only gotten worse. We keep pouring more and more money into the problem, but it's clear that that's not the solution:

 

 

Smaller countries with more homogeneous populations tend to see much better results with their education programs' spending. I just don't think a centralized bureaucracy dictating standards will work for a country as large and diverse as ours; it certainly hasn't so far.

 

Wow! That is a big difference between spending and scores. Are these scores also adjusted as time goes by, like IQ scores? Do they have the Flynn Effect? I think you're right about the inadequacy of a centralized bureaucracy controlling standards in a large country. I think such a system is inadequate for smaller countries too, even though they may seem better able to cope with it.

 

Its really not much of a funding issue. Extra fund sure do help and help a lot in cases but I feel its the adminstration and the teachers that might be the issue. Some people are totally teaching for the wrong reasons or bad mix of reasons. Then there is the emphasis on what to teach.

 

I think that's exactly what's wrong with the Irish education system. There are a lot of teachers here that can't get full-time jobs because of the lack of available positions. Many positions have been taken up by the same people for their entire careers, regardless of their suitability to the school, their ability to educate and their ability to teach.

 

In my secondary school alone, we had an alcoholic that, as nice of a man that he was, cared little for teaching any more and rarely even showed up. He was teaching there since the days when my father was in school and he was there until mandatory retirement forced him out. Our principal at the time was an incompetent nitwit that did little to help improve the school and help students, leaving the few actually decent teachers lumped with his work. When he acted as a teacher, he just went through the motions in the most droll fashion possible, disengaging even the most avid lover of the subjects in question. The list goes on too but I think I got the picture across.

 

Then of course, you've got the Teacher's Union. A union so persistent that their actions caused secondary level students across the country to start their own strike in protest, many of us genuinely angry that we were coming to school to sit in empty classrooms in our final years. The union, constantly looking for salary increases and usually getting them is championed by the same teachers that couldn't teach a class of teenagers how to tie their shoelaces.

 

It seems to me that instead of throwing money at these sorts that the better solution is to open up more positions by getting rid of the blaggards and incompetents and keeping the quality of our educators high through strict continual assessment.

[TheRevanchist]

 

With that said. I feel that, on average, private schools are no better or worst than public schools.

 

Not the school my kids go to. They require a lot of parent involvement. The parents basically run most of the school functions, the teachers are great (we get to know them and see them working with the kids almost daily), most of the faculty have kids going to the school, and the school is small enough where everyone knows each other. So, the classroom setting is unique.

 

I think that the perception of private schools is what you see on TV, where the parent pays money and never sees the kid. In our school, the parent pays the school and then volunteers to help do maintenance at the school, work with the kids in study groups, and has to interact with everyone from the janitor to the principal, even during the summer break.

[fuchikoma]

In the Canadian system, universities can grant degrees, while colleges do certificates and diplomas, often with certain programs counting as credits in university courses with participating universities. We also have technical institutes that grant diplomas and industry tickets/certifications, though certs can be had via colleges as well. I don't really know how it all works behind the scenes in Canada, though I suspect I inspired this thread, griping the most about the cost of university... I do know that foreign students pay significantly more than Cdn. citizens. For the extremely adept, there are various scholarships that typically depend on keeping a high GPA. There are student loans to help out, but of course that just means paying the full amount of tuition plus interest.

 

Here is an article from 2010 about rising tuition costs and averages throughout the country, and another from 2011 - like much of the world(?) rates are shooting upward rather fast. Residents of Quebec are heavily subsidized and pay extremely little for tuition. Lately students have been protesting there because there's a possibility they may have to pay as much as half as much as other parts of the country. Also, natives (Aboriginal peoples) including Metis get educational subsidies and/or grants but I'm not sure of the particulars. I knew a guy in college who technically qualified as Metis and he told me how awesome it was that his textbooks were pretty much free.

 

There are some new grants that can be applied to for assistance for low-income families. Generally though, it comes down to paying the listed prices for tuition, enrollment, student health plans and other various fees, and a widely varying range of prices for textbooks depending on course and school - when I took Computer Systems Technology at my local college, if I remember right, textbooks ranged from about $50 (thin business writing guide) to $200-300 (500+ page current, in-depth technical texts). Also since I mentioned wanting a J.D., I should mention that one cannot even begin study for one until acquiring another degree, so it would be a 6-7 year undertaking at best. However, once one has one, there are professional networks to help find placement and give tips and support to law students.

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

I hope you didn't take any offence to that comment, I only meant it in jest because I've heard many American's that slam anything that even looks like it could be socialism. It's not something you really see here with Ireland being as socialist as it is.

 

No offense taken or intended. Just pointing out that in some areas, we are far more socialist than it can appear from the outside. The left vs. right dichotomy is essentially "less socialist" vs. "more socialist", at least with the major parties' platforms (ie, no one would dare suggest we eliminate Social Security or Medicare).

[TheMightyEthan]

I'd agree that on average private schools are no better than public schools. The advantage of sending your kid to a private school is that you get to select the school though, so you can pick a better one.

 

I think one problem with the education system in the US, particularly as it relates to student debt, is that a lot of people go to college just because it's what you do after high school and ultimately end up working in jobs that don't actually need a degree. Education for its own sake is certainly a worthy cause, and going to college can be a great life experience, but it creates economic problems that I don't know are justified. I think a lot of this though is a product of our parents' and grandparents' generations, when sending your kids to college first became an attainable goal for the average family and everyone knew that sending your kids to college is how they could get the Good Jobs ™ like doctor, lawyer, etc. The problem is, you can't have a society composed entirely of doctors and lawyers, and people go get these expensive degrees and there aren't enough jobs in those fields to go around. (Just using doctor and lawyer as examples, but really it encompasses a lot more than that.)

 

Related to that problem is that it seems that most high schools focus almost exclusively on college prep, and don't provide a practical education. The problem with that is three-fold: one, I believe it encourages drop-outs because kids who know they aren't going to college don't see any benefit in finishing high school; two, the kids who DO finish but don't go to college haven't been taught anything useful; and three, it reinforces the idea that college is just what you do after high school, encouraging people to go who don't need to. High schools should definitely provide college prep, because some people are going to go to college and they need to be prepared, but that shouldn't be all they provide; they should also provide courses to prepare kids for careers that don't involve a college degree. I mentioned welding before: that's a highly skilled task that requires training, but you don't need a college degree to be a welder, and you should be able to learn to weld in high school. Even a middle ground, with better preparation for kids going to technical schools to learn to be auto mechanics or whatever. I don't even think my high school had an auto shop...

 

Anyway, that's my rambling. I'm just going to trail off here cause I've kind of run out of things to say.

[deanb]

Community colleges seem more like (in the attitude they're both spoken of with) seem closer to our ex-Polytechnics. "low end" universities, not as good as established like Oxford, Cambridge, Durham etc which would seem like your Ivy League(p.s what are those, I think there's another. Brown or something?), oh and cheaper too (living costs not uni costs cos as established they're limited by gov't. )

 

Actually: How is tuition dealt with at Oxbridge?

[fuchikoma]

I just wanted to point out - on that US score/spending chart, as I understand it, the scores are percentage change year by year, so for all we know, they could be holding solid at about 95%. Do you have stats for what kind of scores are actually being seen?

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

I just wanted to point out - on that US score/spending chart, as I understand it, the scores are percentage change year by year, so for all we know, they could be holding solid at about 95%. Do you have stats for what kind of scores are actually being seen?

That is a good question. I do not have time to sift through the data right at this moment, but here is the article where it was used, for anyone interested:

 

http://www.cato.org/publications/congressional-testimony/impact-federal-involvement-americas-classrooms

[Mal]

Got to love that the head of the department doesn't give the grad students much freedom. I know that we're not a research institution but holy fuck. The grad students can pour and apply their own damn chemicals. Also how about ordering parts that they need to complete their thesis? The faculty advisor got to order the part. In truth currently everything got to be supervised or go through a faculty advisor. The advisors are not always available.

 

Come on... how about some trust over here? I as an undergrad can go out camping out in the field by myself for my senior project but grad students cant be trusted with higher leveled stuff?

 

So yeah, administrative bullshit. I'm not a grad student so not like I could or is my place to complain to the department head (Who I know somewhat).

[Baconrath]

A transfer student usually gets out in 2-3 years so 6-12 months covered is pretty cool. Just have to play your cards right and don't expect things to fall on your lap.

 

I can vouch for this. I transferred in a ton of credits (like almost 60) from a community college to a four year university. Because of that I only got 3 years of financial aid but I also didn't have to take English and a lot of liberal arts requirements at my university. Technically I had already taken them. This is a cheaper route but you don't have as much time to 'discover yourself.' I had initially declared Communications (Audio/Visual/Cinema/whatever) and a complementary Computer Science major. I discovered that I was behind in Comm. classes that were offered every once in a blue moon and to complete what I had declared I would need around 5 years, so I'm solely a CS major now. I liked CS better than Comm. anyways.

 

So you need to have a better idea what you're going to do if you go this route and know what your school of choice decides what credits transfer and what doesn't. It might save you some quatloos and the pain of taking some of the more tedious liberal-arts stuff.

[TheMightyEthan]

I discovered that I was behind in Comm. classes that were offered every once in a blue moon and to complete what I had declared I would need around 5 years, so I'm solely a CS major now.

 

I hate when they do that.  I never got to take the Aircraft and Missile Propulsion class that I really wanted to because it was only offered in the fall semester of odd years, and the first time around I didn't have the prerequisites I needed and the second I had already graduated.

[Mal]

Hahaha, oh wow. I finally feel loved by my department. My department is called NRES (Natural Resources and Environmental Management) which formed from the merger of the NRM (Natural Resources Management) and the Earth and Soil Science departments. Guess which side took over the most.

 

Now, my concentration is pretty damn new (Started in 2011). I came in around that time and in all this time I don't recall seeing ever one posting about geologist jobs. Until now.

 

Someday, this department will be balanced and that posting by the department head make me feel like we are heading towards the right direction... sort of.