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College Conspiracy


Clockwork

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holy ****.

just watched 6 minutes, but it seems really interesting.

i agree with what they've said so far, about us wanting simply to get a college degree, doing this and that for college.

and i was amazed to see the government expenditure on recovering jobs. that's some huge figure. i'll definitely watch the vid once i finish my math exam -_-

as much as i agree with what i've seen and heard so far, i'd like to add that my friends were telling me about something like that, which has been in india for years.

there's a technology institute whose degrees people die to get. there's like 100,000's of people taking the college exams, whose preparations require more than a year (from what i've heard) and many, many people fail. (2 of my acquaintances failed last month)

so what these kids do is, they drop out of school after 10th grade and do this thing called dummy school, where they prepare you for this college thing, and it's called dummy school because they go and get their presence marked in class and leave school and go to their coaching classes. one of those acquaintances did this, and he failed.

i personally find it very dumb. because you're into books all day, and they say you have to cram/mug **** up. that's bull****. i don't mean to offend anyone who does this or knows someone who does, but i find it dumb wasting 2 of the most important years of your school life for this, which is a 'possibility'

what's worse, my friends were telling me that if some people mess up the exam, they're ready to study something completely different just to get that degree. so they were saying that they know so many people who switched professions, IT/engineering guys, who completely went on changing their fields just for the degree.

there's much more to this, but i don't know more.

anyway, that's what i've heard from my friends and that's about india.

but about the US, i suppose it's similar for many, many people. to some extent i'd include myself in it. i mean, i have goals and big plans for later, but for now all i want to do is get into a good college. i'm not saying that the reputation is what matters, but given my current family conditions, i really want to get into a prestigious one.

but again, i don't think that the reputation of the college your in defines your future, because my brother is in community college right now, and he's doing great.

i think what matters more is how you perform where you are, with your given (and created) opportunities.

to a great extent this is true. back in the day our parents, many of whom didn't complete college (including both of my parents. heck, my mom couldn't even complete high school), managed to become very successful.

i'm not saying that education doesn't matter, it certainly does, and should. but people shouldn't go all crazy about it, ignoring other talents and things like that.

okay, i'm sure there wasn't enough connection between what i've said so far, but i just typed what came into my mind :P

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Well my comment is that like most American documentaries it is entirely polarised and one-sided - there's nothing included in it to give a view from the other side or give any context as to how unusual or extreme these facts and experiences are, so I find it hard to watch because although ironically it talks about propaganda, it is ITSELF propaganda! And it's made itself completely impossible to evaluate, which suggests perhaps it wouldn't stand up well to evaluation.

The main speaker (the guy with creepy eyes) talks a lot about how people have a perception that jobs 'expect' you to have got a college degree, but his only real point is "I don't expect it"... soooo hard to know what to think about that one, just the one opinion of a guy who clearly has a downer on current college degrees is not going to represent anyone else. His argument basically seems to boil down to the fact that 'back in my day' it was cheaper. Which okay is true, but it's not really helpful at all unless he's expecting all the colleges to watch it and bring down their tuition fees because they feel like they need to price match to this guy back in the 1970s or whatever.

The debt bit is quite interesting. The woman who's been shafted by her dentistry course seems to have tremendously large loans, but it's hard to know what to say about it without knowing how she accrued those loans, what happened to her peers who had the same levels of loans (why are hers particularly bad, there must be a reason?) so although I feel sorry for her and outraged that the course could have given her such false predictions of her future earnings, that's about it.

Movement of loans from private banks into government loans is viewed quite negatively in the programme, but actually I think it's probably quite a good thing. Because it's a completely one sided documentary there is no information as to WHY this happened or what benefits there might be, even though they alluded to some of them themselves - such as the woman saying there was no sympathy with her loans or understanding of her position, but actually when you have central government loans they do cap things and make allowances in ways that private banks who are trying to turn a profit obviously have no inclination to do. That's how the student loans system works in the UK and I have a lot of gripes with it, but at the end of the day because it's government backed (...for now...) they control for things e.g. all the insane interest that's pushed the loans of the woman in the video sky high from around $140,000 to over $400,000. Interest is kept at the level of inflation only, so people like this poor woman would never be in the position that they're in.

That 'no reason why the taxpayers should be paying college education' guy is mad in that sense because he's saying there's too much interest on the debt - but that the government shouldn't intervene to keep interest down. I mean, what is he on about?! Then they're blaming inflated student tuition fees on the government 'subsidising' student loans, despite themselves saying on the programme that it's only a recent thing that came into being with the new Health Act and that previously it was private companies giving out loans. So they're basically blaming the government for something that chronologically couldn't possibly have had anything to do with them.

...and then the rest of the thing seems to become a polemic about the government who actually seem relatively blameless until recently, in which case as the system has been 'broken' for much longer than just recently, is clearly a load of nonsense. Like the 90:10 rule - instead of blaming the colleges for failing to seek funding elsewhere and instead raising fees, they blame the government! That's clearly not what the rule is for and raising fees instead of seeking external funding is obviously just ethically a totally wrong move on the behalf of the colleges.

Also, blaming students for using loans to pay for 'food' (...??!) and suggesting that they're lazy and stealing the money without giving any facts or figures whatsoever is just total bull**** slander, you can't make allegations like that and poison the minds of suggestible people watching this documentary without providing any evidence for what you're saying. The wife of one man who worked for some company had a college shut down on her and couldn't pay the loans back, so got them written off. Wow, so much evidence.... @_@

Anyway. I've given up watching this now because it's not so much a documentary as a one-sided (Republican political??) rant. Honestly, I despair watching programming like this, it's hard to know if they even have a decent point to make because it's lost amongst a sea of allegations and scare-mongering.

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Well my comment is that like most American documentaries it is entirely polarised and one-sided - there's nothing included in it to give a view from the other side or give any context as to how unusual or extreme these facts and experiences are, so I find it hard to watch because although ironically it talks about propaganda, it is ITSELF propaganda! And it's made itself completely impossible to evaluate, which suggests perhaps it wouldn't stand up well to evaluation.

so you don't recommend watching the whole thing? every hour is precious during exam time :P

i had only watched the first 6 mins but those seemed to interest me. is the rest really not worth watching?

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Personally I think it was very interesting in terms of knowledge about college degrees in the US. I do agree with some parts of the documentary, but not entirely especially towards the middle and end of the documentary. This documentary makes me question if there are other colleges in other countries that have this so called "college conspiracy" as the US does. Although I'm still definitely going to college for a degree(of course), since having a degree is crucial and important to achieve my dream job.

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Education in the US is a highly complex and controversial issue, and most documentaries on the subject are highly polarized. Having said that, one needs to look deeper at the underlying causes of a rise in college tuition (demand from employers), decline in quality, and relations to the federal government. A little piece if found online (http://www.newfoundations.com/Clabaugh/CuttingEdge/Reagan.html) reminds us of who started all of this. I recognize that this piece is also politically motivated, and is easily critcized, but to ignore the role that the political right in the US has played a big role in the making of the modern system, and it has not been a good one.

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