Jeff Carter of Points and Figures has an interesting cost/benefit analysis of the recently announced course in the Occupy Movement at Columbia University:
The cost for one year of undergraduate education at Columbia is roughly $53,345 all in. That includes room, board, books, tuition, and fees. Divide that by how many credit hours a normal student takes (32/yr) and you arrive at $1667.03 per credit hour. Masters students pay more per credit hour for their classes.
If you are borrowing money to go to school, the actual cost of the credit hour goes up because it will cost you more when you repay the loan. And if you are on government aid, the American taxpayer gets to pay for it!
Given that the Occupy Wall Street class is a three credit hour class, it costs an undergrad $5001.09 to learn how to camp out in a park and beat a drum while articulating a far left manifesto. I shouldn’t forget to mention that the student ought to consider what a future employer might think when they see that class on a transcript. I suppose if you are going to work for a far left non-government organization it would look favorable. But, I don’t think it will look particularly sharp if you are trying to get a job in a field like consulting.
Maybe if you want to be a stand-up comic…
Any classes on the Tea Party movement?
Didn’t think so.
I never had an employer ask for a transcript that I can recall. However, given the current state of affairs, it sounds like a good idea. It wouldn’t surprise me if that were illegal for some stupid reason, though. Too many snowflakes with their precious Angry Studies degrees might not want potential employers to see what kinds of classes they took. Who wants to bring in a credentialed malcontent into their organization?
I seem to remember resume-writing guides for recent graduates in the early 1990s recommending including titles of courses and grades received if they were relevant to one’s career. Now that I’ve been working for over 20 years, the fact my BA is in Political Science doesn’t inhibit people from hiring me to write software. So, the OWS class won’t matter at all on a transcript as long as they don’t mention it in the interview.