I'm looking to leverage my software developer background in order to make school (higher education) more affordable. Are there any groups/projects already going on to help this cause?
I'm not looking to be paid, but am looking for volunteer work.
My take. I think the main reason for increasing costs is loans. Loans that cannot be escaped through bankruptcy. Colleges can raise tuition at rates much faster than inflation because everyone has access to unlimited student loan money. They name a price, all students can access money to pay it.
One way to bring prices down is to allow prices to grow so high that people balk. Even when provided access to unlimited loan money to pay it. Waiting for this to happen doesn't require any special activism or groups though. But it might just be the actual way it plays out. A natural bubble pop.
If you don't want to sit on the sidelines and wait for things to pop naturally, you could raise awareness about loans. Try to make people balk at the prices sooner? Or try to promote a change in the law allowing bankruptcy to be an escape from loans. Once bankruptcy is introduced you will see access to money plummet sharply and college tuition prices along with it.
The longer this goes on, the more people unwittingly commit themselves into life long indentured servitude.
TOO LONG DIDN'T READ: I don't think you will successfully leverage your skills as a programmer to reduce college tuition costs. Even if you optimize a piece of the puzzle (online MOOC reducing the need for staff/land/buildings)
I will think how to approach this if I choose to do. I do not feel motivated to go into the political space - which is why I prefer a technology-focused approach. I will sit on these thoughts and see if I can come up with something I am comfortable taking on - thanks again!
The other one might be disrupting colleges. Find a better way to educate people. Online courses and bootcamps are doing a good job, but don't quite have the "college experience". But with the pandemic going on, and today's bandwidth, this might be a good time.
Is America so expensive that this is reasonable? Many countries that are cheap (or even free) for local students charge significant fees for international students.
The problem is quite like the post above you said. It's loans. Students, with very little information or guidance are handed tens of thousands of US dollars a year to "pay for school". They can do any program, pay for any housing, pay for any food (my son in his first semester racked up a $7000 food bill, because cafe's took student food cards). Schools take advantage of the monstrous amount of debt students can get into.
There is no reason why a student needs to be tied down if they make smart decisions. The problem is the same today as when I was 18. 18 year old college students aren't always making smart decisions.
There are technical positions that pay better than many jobs that require a degree (auto mechanic, diesel-electric mechanic, electrician, construction, police, etc). The opportunities provided by technical schools are being systematically suppressed by the overwhelming message from teachers that one needs a degree to be successful. I don't think I've ever witnessed a more evident example of institutionalized bias.
On a side note, I know a guy that is a diesel-electric mechanic. He had little debt and was able to graduate to start making money sooner. He has awesome benefits and made a starting salary that is higher than I make now (I'm in software dev, 8 years in, one promotion, and a MSIS). I also know a guy who two years into a construction position and will make more than me (lower rate, but he's overtime eligible).
That's has been the reason why, even someone like myself, we've had to relent to the gatekeepers. What's fascinated me is how quick the race to the bottom has happened since COVID sent most programs into an Online only format, a BSc in Comp Sci from the College of London can be had for 10k GBP, and a MSc from CU Boulder in Electrical Engineering can be had for 20k, a Bsc and MSc for a total of ~35k USD, which is nearly half of what I paid for my BSc in Biology in 2009 in what is supposed to be the most affordable University system in the US (CSU/UC) as a local CA resident/student. And it's entirely online, which if we had UBI, would be to totally doable for just about any family and would allow for PT work and community volunteering/tutoring as well.
It's a noble thing to be able to dedicate your time and labour towards this end, so here are some software roles listed on their Coursera's website [1].
If you want to chat about end-user feedback, and some possible improvements, I'd be open to set that up as I think this is the new model we should usher in to disrupt the monoliths in Academia.
I suspect that if there were a demonstrably more reliable way to quickly judge employee quality from a resume than looking at alma mater, employers would eventually switch to using that, but it's not clear to me what that would be.
The key is to figure out how to provide the thing people _are_ paying 4x for at a cheaper cost. IMO, what is paid for is prestige, in the form of admission selectivity, and the privilege of making connections with people who also passed the screening filter. That prestige is what you put on your resume, even after the GPA becomes irrelevant. It's why students transfer credits from CCs and don't list any affiliation.
From that POV, the most useful thing you could do is convince employers that community college grads are worth hiring, and convince students that the associate's degree isnt' a black mark on a resume.
A way for the government to invest for the future is to fund large projects for those jobs like sustainable energy, and then make the education required for those jobs to be very low cost or no cost.
Just last week the project was invited to participate in Mozilla Builders Open Lab. Let me know if you want to join me in making education completely free and at the same time increase income of education institutions and its staff. This is not very easy to achieve, it will take a very along time and lots of efforts. But with technology it can be achieved. The stakeholders in this project are government(education policymakers, politicans), education institutions, students and businesses.
You don't need to pay monthly fixed salary - you can have everybody on hourly rate. There are many educators which would like to have additional money by doing 2hrs open online office and up to 4 exams onsite.
IMO the for any education level online school (higher edu is easier to do online) it's a neat idea!
Sign me up
I think we can break higher "education" down into three roles:
1. Getting someone from skill state A to skill state B in a time efficient way
2. Verification and credentialing for skill state B
3. Providing a safe environment to meet like-minded, intellectual folks and have fun
The hardest part to automate is #3, but there are plenty of challenges in #1 and #2. One idea is to create a system that can break down a syllabus of information into bite sized chunks that are automatically ordered appropriately for the user based on some profile or assessment data. This will likely involve some NLP.
I am working on a non-profit and open source idea at the moment[0]. I have directly replied to OP with the details. Let me know what you think.
Higher education is already affordable. The problem is that people aren't looking in the right places for it
Great question. Public education should be free everywhere, and so should public transport.
I. Staffing
2,608 Academic staff
1775 non-academic staff
28,500 students
annual spending of $100,000 per staff or $14,000 per student.
(All numbers are excluding medical school/medical students).
Now let's look at a US university: Penn State.
5946 FTE academic staff
24422 FTE non-academic staff
76,219 FTE students
spending $32,406 per student or about $100,000 per staff.
So both Penn State and Heidelberg spend the same per employee (roughly), but Penn State costs twice as much because they have so many more non-academic staff per student.
What do these 24,000 non-academic staff do?
Well you have 48 executives, (the president earns over a million per year in salary) all the way down to armies of bureaucrats.
If you want to know what those bureaucrats do, look at their jobs page (https://psu.jobs/jobs).
I found some gems: (All full time jobs)
* Military Marketing Manager
* Workforce Education Outreach Coordinator
* Student Advocacy Specialist
* Proposal and Award Generalist
* Coordinator for Academic Success
Night and day difference.
II. Years to completion
In Germany you finish in 3 years. That cuts costs in half over a 6 year time horizon. There are fewer electives outside of your main area of study, fewer optional courses, etc.
III Stricter Entrance Requirements
So these three tips is why in Germany you can provide an undergrad education for about 30-40K total, and it takes 3 years, whereas in the US it costs 30-40K per year and can take 4-6 years.
So those are some things you can do to cut costs.