Prospects of free online college education looking up!

"Here is a sample of free courses offered.

Foundations of Computer graphics
Circuits and electronics
Artificial intelligence
Software as a service
Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Computation
Introduction to Solid State Chemistry"
Granted - nothing in gender studies or puppetry - but just maybe that will catch on as well.

An optimistic piece by Mish Shedlock

A college finally finds a way to reduce their tuition costs.

Good for Belmont Abbey College.  A college finally finds a way to reduce their tuition costs.  

Get started early as an entrepeneur

Why wait until after college to become an entrepreneur?  A good example of taking chances
while you are young.

Student Loan Debt Grows Delinquent

Of the $956 billion in student-loan debt outstanding as of September, 11 percent was delinquent — up from less than 9 percent in the second quarter, and higher than the 10.5 percent of credit-card debt, which was delinquent in the third quarter. By comparison, delinquency rates on mortgages, home-equity lines of credit and auto loans stood at 5.9 percent, 4.9 percent, and 4.3 percent respectively as of September. 

43 TROUBLING FACTS ABOUT THE YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT CRISIS

These numbers are very troubling not only for the youth of America but also for those baby boomers that are counting on the younger generations being able to afford the prior generations public debt and promised health care and public pensions.

Perhaps we might try some rethinking of what high school grads do with their time and energy right after high school?

Another argument for more online education

Excellent piece about why we are moving too slowly towards online education and stuck in the mud
with too much of the traditional teaching methods.

How do we get the learning without spending $65,00 per year?

The first question to ask is how do we give access to the learning, information and debate of a typical university without spending $65,000 per year per student?

40 Alternatives to College

Here is another one that everyone considering attending college or paying for someone else's college should read.  James Altucher's 40 Alternatives to College.  Highly recommended.  You can buy the ebook for just $.99 on Amazon or if you go to his website at jamesaltucher.com and join his free insider's list you can download a pdf copy for free.

Young college grads are not faring well!

“About 1.5 million, or 53.6 percent, of bachelor’s degree-holders under the age of 25 last year were jobless or underemployed, the highest share in at least 11 years. In 2000, the share was at a low of 41 percent, before the dot-com bust erased job gains for college graduates in the telecommunications and IT fields."  From John Mauldin's newsletter today.

I would love to see the breakdown by degree - what are the numbers for grads in recreational management and sociology versus those in various engineering disciplines.

College Majors with the Biggest Gender Bias

Just came across a blog post 10 College Majors with the Biggest Gender Gap. This is a fascinating depiction about the bias of the types of degrees that men (on average) are pursuing versus women (on average).

Today more women attend and graduate from college than men. And yet feminists decry the pay gap between women and men (frequently stating the women make on average only 74 cents for every dollar that men earn). Note the gender bias depicted in the article that shows that 95% of Fashion majors and 90% of Interior Design majors are women. On the other hand 92% of Mechanical Engineering majors and 91% of Electrical Engineering majors are men.

I for one think there is very little discrimination against women today and rather attribute the differences to two key factors: 1) women on average are not pursuing the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects nearly as frequently as men are and 2) women take more time off on their career to raise children (on average). Interestingly, childless women on average today earn as much as childless men.

Not all college studies will produce the same results. If one studies a “fun” major with little demand you are likely to end up back at the local grocery store trying to get a job after graduating from college. But if you earn a degree in Petroleum Engineering (especially if you are a women) you will start out earning as much as 3-4 times as much as your friends that majored in Social Work.

We need more STEM graduates in America (men, women, minorities) and those that are pursuing these difficult subjects will on average have more choices after graduation. My granddaughter starts High School in the Fall and right now she is quite interested in Science and Math. I will do everything I can (which has only limited impact) to encourage her to pursue these interests.

http://blogmaverick.com/2012/05/13/the-coming-meltdown-in-college-education-why-the-economy-wont-get-better-any-time-soon/

Mark Cuban on college loans

Skip to point #3.

Here is great advice about student loans from Mark Cuban. The general public doesn't understand that the subsidies for college today go to the institutions, the professors and the head football coaches. The subsidies do not benefit the students.

An excellent piece about what students are majoring in

"In 2009 the United States graduated 89,140 students in the visual and performing arts, more than in computer science, math, and chemical engineering combined and more than double the number of visual-and-performing-arts graduates in 1985."

Why College Aid makes College More Expensive?

An interesting article. Let’s forget how expensive college is or is it worth the cost today. That is not the point of this post.

This is a discussion about the unintended consequences of subsidies. Politicians can’t help themselves when prices move against their voters so they always want to subsidize their voters – especially for “important” things like college education, solar energy, milk and ethanol.

Unfortunately the subsidies not only fail to work they usually make the problem worse.

In the case of subsidized college education the subsides given via college loans allow the college institutions including their faculty and administration to raise their prices (and salaries) to adjust for the subsidies. College presidents and professors end up with this largess - not college students.

Most college students only consider where the cash is coming from (or is it?) in considering their college options. Very little attention goes into how much debt will be accumulated and how expensive it will eventually be to pay off the college loans. If a 45 year old politician thinks this way what are the chances that 18 year old high school graduates will think with any more maturely?

And once subsidies are established (even when they are called temporary) they are almost impossible to eliminate. The reason is the beneficiaries of subsidies fight much harder to keep them that the average tax payer that only loses a few dollars a month to foot the bill.

Find Lucky and Good: Risks, Decisions and Bets for Investors, Traders and Entrepreneurs at Amazon.

Which colleges are high school seniors most likely to choose?

A list compiled by College Magazine rates the campuses around the country where students are most likely to be sexually active. The magazine researched “the party scenes, hookup culture, sexual health resources and even streaking incidents” to create the list of “colleges where everything goes and nothing stays on.”

You don't think that this factor might influence what campus a high school senior might select? Get real. Everything but post-college job prospects seem to determine where high school seniors are choosing to attend.

The share of American workers in the science and engineering professions fell

“The share of American workers in the science and engineering professions fell slightly in the past decade, ending what had been a steady upward trend in the proportion of workers in fields associated with technological innovation and economic growth.”

Many of the science and engineering college grads today leave the US. They used to stay here (and it was very profitable for the country). Today we make it very tough for them to stay in the US because we have to make room for illegal workers with no education to sneak across the border.

“Before 2000, the share of these knowledge workers had increased in every 10-year Census since 1950, according to the Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit demographic research group in Washington that conducted the study.“

The problem is that 1) the general media makes no distinction between a degree in Gender Studies and Chemical Engineering and 2) the US subsidize “going to college” without regard to what these kids are studying and 3) a college students can borrow bundles of money from the Federal government to pay for their college education and they charge the same interest rate whether you are studying mechanical engineering or Sociology.

You Get What You Measure

You get what you measure. This article discusses cheating by some prestigious colleges on how they are ranked. When you allow folks to measure themselves and there is big money at stake, you can count on cheating. This has happened in the evaluation of US colleges as well and teacher compensation in our elementary and high schools.

But more importantly why does a higher average SAT score for incoming freshmen rank a college more favorably? The job of the college is to impart an education not recruit the most educated. I can understand measuring test scores for graduates compared to test scores of incoming students – but that is not the case.

A few colleges are reducing their tuition

Finally a few colleges are reducing their tuition. A step in the right direction.