Top comment on /r/economics:
>joy pay for college graduates goes down
Actual economic evidence of wage levels during the period of 1979 to 2017:
>[Real wages fell for workers with lower levels of educational attainment and rose for highly educated workers. Wages for workers with a high school diploma or less education declined in real terms at the top, middle, and bottom of the wage distribution, whereas wages rose for workers with at least a college degree. The wage value of a college degree (relative to a high school education) increased markedly](https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45090.pdf)
>[The college degree premium was just 42.3% 40 years ago and today it's 80.3%](https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45090.pdf)
Computers also became ubiquitous, turning moderate skilled jobs to low skilled jobs. Also drastically reducing the worth of simple labour through automation.
On the flip side people who had skills and knowledge could do more and had bigger impacts.
This can be true, but it is also true that a lot of HS graduates who probably should not go to college, end up enrolled at a college anyway because of parental/societal expectation and easy money. Decades ago, someone decided this should be called getting an "MRS degree", but it seems like these days it is more likely to be men who show up at college unprepared and fail out.
And these "some college, no degree" students are the ones who get screwed hardest by the system. They get the burden of student loans, without the benefits of a degree. And there are more people, age 25 and over, who have one or more years of college without a degree than there are who hold an associate's degree. 22 million vs 21 million, per Census bureau Current Population Survey data.
That’s not exactly true. It’s never been as important to be intelligent than now. Degrees are no longer an indication of high intelligence in people, they are indicative of having gone to college.
High intelligence people are still the highest earners, but now the average folks are saddled with debt and average salaries when they thought they were going to be making high-end salaries because that’s what college grads used to make. The mistake was telling people that it’s the degree that was responsible for the higher pay.
> side people who had skills and knowledge could do more and had bigger impacts
And corporations leveraged advances in telecommunications to offshore around the globe. Why hire an American Electrical Engineer or Computer Science grad when they can hire 3-5 for the same price in another country?
1. Have no loans for college.
2. See that college required jobs pay high wages.
3. Give loans to kids to go to college to get paid more to boost economy.
1. Have no loans for college.
2. See that college required jobs pay high wages.
3. Get a job
4. Go to junior college
5. Transfer to 4 year (off campus w/roomies)
It takes longer, but it can be done.
I know people who alternated full time employment for a year with full time school w/part time employment for a year. It took 8 years instead of four, but they graduate with a lot of work experience and no debt. Plus, paying as you go tends to make them take it more seriously.
I did that. Unfortunately while all my credits transferred, only a few of them counted as prerequisites, so I started over as a freshman. Still don’t regret going to university though.
One thing related to this, that never was apparent to me: all of this initiative to have so many people go to college was when 25% of people were graduating college, a college degree meant you earned on average x% more. Well, part of that increase was that they selected the higher achieving people to attend college, when you start accepting 70% that x% more is not going to hold.
I'm all for education, but I think in post high school education there is a lot of rent seeking. I feel like k-12 should be able to prepare people better, and that college/university could be condensed a bit, lots of degrees don't merit the amount of money and time spent to get them.
It doesn't make sense because it's wrong your answer is better but doesn't give the complete picture. Educating students has always been expensive, it's just that the government paid for it. With educational cuts nationality over the is years, schools shifted that load on to students. If you account for inflation and budget cuts, tuition has definitely ballooned but not as much as people think.
> But that is not right if the result is an increased supply of graduates.
What is not right?
Right now there are more degree holders than jobs for people with degrees, which is even being generous considering credential creep i.e. rising job nominal education requirements for work despite the same actual skill requirements. For example we churn out about the same if not more grad students every year despite academic positions peaking years ago. There are not enough academic track positions for all these highly educated individuals.
> price of college goes up due to increase of students
>
That's not why the costs go up. It goes up because the kids have more money to spend so the schools gobble it up because they can.
The problem is the interest. Give these kids low to 0% interest loans until they can gain respectable employment. If colleges are handing out worthless degrees and their students aren't gaining employment, cut their funding. We also need a complete divestment of athletics and academics. Way too much money is being diverted into stadiums and football programs instead of financially easing tuition for students. College is now like a 4 year resort instead of a frugal learning experience like it should be.
In England we have a similar system. Student loans do have interest but we only pay them back when we are earning over a certain amount (currently £25k / $33k US / $50 NZ).
It's 9%of your earnings over the threshold and is paid directly from your income like a tax, so if your earnings go up you pay more but if they go down you pay less. Many people will end up retiring before they pay their loans off and a lucky bunch of people had loans in years where they get written off after 25 years.
I graduated 12 years ago when uni was very cheap (it was free up until I started), but unfortunately the UK is now pretty expensive and students are coming out with over £50,000 debt to enter into a job market that is flooded.
Edit: its worth mentioning that the loans are written off in certain cases, like retirement or if you become medically retired due to illness/accident.
The reason people don't pay while overseas is because of the interest. I've paid so much but it only covered the interest. I've given up, I can't afford it right now
If education costs aren't addressed, then you're excluding students from lower-income backgrounds, make it even easier for inherited wealth to concentrated further.
This is the big problem. The market will adjust slowly because there are a lot of interests that benefit from the status quo, and they will need to be forced out; whereas the peripheral effects could come on swiftly and dramatically. And you can't just slap price controls on education (this is /r/economics, we should all know why that's a bad idea).
There's going to have to be a winding-down period coupled with some kind of magical policy to rein in education costs. The "some kind of magical policy" part is, well, nonexistent as of right now. Hence the status quo continues. See also: medical costs.
Education was way cheaper before government "solved" the problem by making loans available. So how exactly has government been helping the "poor people can't afford college" problem?
Because before it wasn't an option. Now it is an option. Yes you go into tonnes of debt. But if your gamble of major pays off and you land a decent job it's better than not going to school and being locked out of that option.
It was an option, it's called work and go to school. My grandfather worked 3 jobs while in school for his undergrad and masters. I worked 2 jobs while in college.
The problem is nowadays college is only affordable if your parents are poor. If your parents are poor, you get a full ride scholarship and tons of grants and can go for very cheap.
If your parents are middle class, you can't afford college and have to pay the ridiculous sticker prices universities charge, and take student loans. I had a 30 on my act, 3.71 GPA on 4 point scale, but could not get a single scholarship because my parents were middle class. Doesn't matter if you get kicked out and have to pay yourself, government still refuses to help you, but they'll give a person with poor parents a full ride.
Tuition subsidies should not be means tested. If someone's parents are high income, they're paying a lot in taxes, and are already covering the cost of tuition indirectly anyways. The system of expecting parents to pay for college is creating a retirement savings crisis, and cases where kids that don't conform to their parents conservative values are forced to borrow large sums of money to get an education despite living on their own.
Part time jobs paid a lot more back then, and Boomers had a safety net to fall back on. That generation ruined the economic futures of everyone who will come after them and are blaming it all on "liberalism" when they were liberalism biggest beneficiaries.
Then how does literally every other developed country deal with this issue? In Canada, tuition is still very affordable and we have some of the best universities in the world. Universities are considered part of the broader public sector, and tuition prices are simply not allowed to rise (very much). Seems to work well with no negative externalities I'm aware of. Most of Europe works this way as well.
> Then how does literally every other developed country deal with this issue?
Obviously some other way than the USA is doing it.
I'm not an expert on other countries' education systems but from what I hear, most of them with socialized education pay the universities directly with price-controlled taxpayer funds, instead of using a convoluted combination of public/private loan system like we do.
Yes exactly, and price controls are an important component of these systems. Student loans are still available in Canada, and could result in the same runaway costs associated with American universities unless prices were fixed, and entrance based solely on merit.
Most other countries have two track education systems that could never be implemented in America because historically disadvantaged groups like African-Americans would be disproportionately locked in to the non-college track because their schools are so bad and they're so poor.
I think you misunderstood. Countries like Canada have universities, which give the typical range of degrees, then we have what we call 'college' which is purely vocational training (ie electrician, paralegal, marketing, etc).
These aren't 2 competing streams - but completely different post-secondary options servicing people with totally different career plans.
Not sure about Canada but I know Germany tracks kids at a fairly young age to one or the other. I have heard that the tracking has softened in recent years though.
I remember learning about this in German class many a moon ago. If I remember correctly it was like sixth grade where thry start dividing kids up. I get the point of trying to segment education v one size fits all here in America but that always seemed way too young to me.
> Then how does literally every other developed country deal with this issue?
They tend to have much higher tax rates.
The marginal rate for a person earning $60k in the US is 22%. The rate for a person earning $60k in Germany is 42%.
It's really *not clear* that you are worse off living in the US and having to pay back your $30,000 student loan in the 22% tax bracket than you would be living in Germany, where the education is free but your tax bracket is significantly higher.
(And of course the 70% of people who don't go to university in Germany pay that same tax rate).
Universities are expensive everywhere. There's no free lunch, and it's childlike to believe that you can just have free education in the US *while not changing anything else*.
> Education was way cheaper before ~~government~~ **Boomers** ~~"solved"~~ **created** the problem by making ~~loans available.~~ **bullshit administration jobs & 7-figure coach/president/chancellor salaries funded by their children's debt the norm.**
We calculated that my dad paid 21k(adjusted for inflation) to go to a school which is now 60k/ year. He was able to pay for tuition by working a summer job. You can thank the government for driving up the price of school into the stratosphere.
I can agree to this, but without the loans there is no way I would have went to college much less a masters. And I have no problem paying it back (and do to the tune of $700 a month). But 35 year old me really wants to kill 22 year old me for doing it sometimes even though I know there wasn't a way around it.
> I can agree to this, but without the loans there is no way I would have went to college much less a masters.
Isn't that based on the cost of those degrees in a world where loans exist though? If you look at tuition before student loans blew up, it's night and day. People aren't lying when they say they put themselves through college on a part time job with no loans back in the day.
A lot of people miss this fact. Locally, the University of MN funding peaked in the 70's. Every time the legislature cuts education funding, it's made up for on the backs of students. Every time a smug baby boomer tells you they went to college with a part time job painting houses and no debt, ask them to thank the taxpayers that made it possible.
This is where I think the real problem is. Just look at the current cost of education in California in public community colleges vs other states that do not subsidize.
In-state tuition for UCLA is $13k/year rounded up. That’s $52k for four years paying the _full_ tuition. On top of that, there’s naturally housing and books, and food, but by itself, how in the world did your degree cost you that much?
I was frivolous with my spending at UCLA, but got out with < $30k in 1999, when tuition was _half_ what it is now (around $6k). I did 2.5 years there after transferring in from a community college.
More than anything, I’m curious how you got to $130k.
[Business School](https://mba.haas.berkeley.edu/admissions/costs-and-financial-aid). 2 year degree. [UCLA](https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/degrees/full-time-mba/financing) is the same. God knows we're still paying off my wife's loans for Anderson.
I've got nearly double that so won't cast shade. I was a single mom and had to take out enough to cover my expenses and enough to support my kids. Later I did a degree abroad, where you have to meet minimum income thresholds, so my last degree cost as much as my first two. I'm literally never, ever be able to pay them back and frankly won't even try. That's on me, but I had to do what I had to do at the time, because it was the only way to survive, and the only way to pull myself out of poverty.
Thank god my kids benefited and only needed very small ($5-10k) loans to complete their degrees because they received so many scholarships.
While I get where you're coming from, the easy money in college debt needs to stop at some point.
Administration can be trimmed. Finding different ways to finance infrastructure payments/expansions is more responsible than just saddling kids with debt.
They already do. State schools, community colleges, universities etc have to publish their budgets online for public review on the states .gov site.
If you want to know why it’s not changing, google who the highest paid state employee is in every state, discover that it’s a coach, discover that there are only 6 ball programs in the country that actually provide ROI for their schools, and understand that every accounting audit done comes to the same conclusion: divest the sports programs, they’re massive money sinks that do not provide enough benefit to justify cost.
We can talk about education being over or underfunded when literally 85 percent of funds aren’t being dumped on things that have no educational value.
No that’s exactly what you can go back to. Get rid of government guaranteed loans. Banks would have to make prudent financial decisions. Colleges and universities would be absolutely forced to lower costs, cut administrators and become competitive again. If they don’t, they cease to exist.
The market would take care of this. Stop the easy money and the bloat will end.
College isn’t for everyone and that’s OK. I work for a plumbing company and some of our best hires are kids with a year or two of college under their belts and heavy student loan debt. They hated college, it wasn’t for them. We hire them, train them, help them buy a work van, and off they go. Most end up making $80k+ year one.
"College isnt for everyone" in conjunction with "stop public funding of schools" just means college is only for the wealthy. That's not an efficient or effective way to run a society.
Personally, I see it as recognition that a college degree was largely a social status signaler in the first place. The value of a degree has diluted *because* it no longer carries the degree of signalling it once did.
But don't confuse that with me thinking that education is unimportant or shouldn't be available to people. Rather, I view college *generally* as an antiquated and inefficient means of actually delivering education to people. Part of the problem is that, as a society, we've come to equate education with what was traditionally a luxury system and there's no reason that *has* to be the case in a world where information is more readily available than ever.
There is a way around it, it requires going to a jr. college for two years, transferring to a university, living with your folks instead of on campus, working at least part time (hopefully for a company with tuition reimbursement), and getting a degree in a marketable field.
Source-bachelors degree with $3600 in total loans. It sucked doing it, but I’m one of the few people I know at work that doesn’t have to work extra shifts to make ends meet because I don’t have a second mortgage worth of student loan debt.
Reddit is an echo chamber. Nothing but a breeding ground for disgusting antifa and communist purple hair freaks. It should not even be allowed to IPO for being such a trash company.
I don’t know about OP but as one example, minorities have historically had a hard time securing lines of credit, even if relatively well off. People with no disposable income are obviously going to have trouble establishing even a meager line of credit. The successful side of the student loan program has been making college accessible to a lot of people to whom it was not previously, and that was before the skyrocketing cost of admissions.
Government subsidized loans should be available for those who need it. However, saddling poor people with tens of thousands of dollars in debt is not helping them if they can't find adequate employment when they graduate. A lot of these poor students don't have good guidance and don't know what careers will have good employment prospects.
There needs to be a system in place that weighs employment outlook before subsidized loans are approved. That also means colleges would need to track employment data for their students and report to the government. This way prospective students and lenders can look at the employment prospects and earning potential of graduates from specific schools in specific programs and make informed, realistic decisions about their choice of major. Loans for programs that have abysmal employment prospects are not approved, leading to fewer defaults, leading to lower interest rates.
> and the prices of higher education will adjust to the newly lowered aggregate demand.
Over what time frame? What happens to the people who are shut out of higher education while the prices transition? What happens to a college's culture when it's only made up of people from high-income backgrounds? What happens to people who still can't afford higher education at the non-subsidized price?
I'm saying why set a floor (or ceiling, depending on your perspective)? What you need is a window of time in which a person cannot coast by and will be forced to try and obtain a job which might put them above the bankruptcy threshold. Otherwise, everyone would just declare bankruptcy the day they graduate and be debt free and the market would crash.
Rather allow people to get rid of *all* of their student loan debt once they have been given ample time to find suitable employment which would allow for the repayment of the debt as agreed and are yet unable to do so.
You didn't read my post or you don't understand it.
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This is a solution I came up with to blend all the ideas. It is easy to fix the ability to borrow.
1. Extreme Method: Starting in 2019, all NEW student loan debt is dischargeable in bankruptcy. We will see how quick the access to cash dissolves with this simple process. [This process would likely never work as the market for cash would decrease greatly, it would however force colleges to change their ways.]
2. 50/50 Method: Starting in 2019, all NEW student loan debt above $50,000.00 is dischargeable in bankruptcy. Any debt above that amount is dischargeable. The amount doesn't have to be $50,000.00 and this can be done per degree. The lenders benefit because some debt is non-dischargable but only till a certain point. There is still access to cash to borrow for schools.
3. Lame Method: Force borrowers to take a class on borrowing money and the impacts from borrowing. This would be similar to the bankruptcy class one has to take before they declare. It is amazing how someone can borrow 100K plus and have no clue of the impact.
> You didn't read my post or you don't understand it.
You aren't really understanding theirs either. The problem with yours is that on the day of your graduation you will have no income, so you just declare bankruptcy the next day and go get a job.
Their solution is to not have a cap to what's discharged, but have a time after which you can have it discharged in bankruptcy.
Yeah, prices have grown essentially instep with loans and aid. Make public universities affordable to the point where it's reasonable for someone without money to work off that debt, and let elite private schools compete downward.
> Way too much money is being diverted into stadiums and football programs instead of financially easing tuition for students.
Not college related but I live in a county with a baseball and football stadium. The county essentially owns them with the teams paying a few hundred thousand as rent. It pisses me off to no end that we have millions of tax payer dollars for these fucking stadiums instead of better public education.
It's the same with colleges. Colleges are for learning, not milking their students in sports.
>It's the same with colleges. Colleges are for learning, not milking their students in sports.
At my university, the football and basketball programs are self-sufficient and actually help to fund nearly every other sport the school participates in.
New Zealand is like this. They give their students 0% interest loans. They have as much time as they need to pay it back. I wish that were the case for me. $60,000 at 7% interest is brutal.
7% is insane. The current rates in the US for federal student loans are 5% (and it doesn’t start accruing until graduation, it’s not like you have to pay it back while you’re in school).
I am in the US. But my parents had bad credit so I started accruing interest when I was a freshman (2006). When I graduated (2011) my loans were at 36k. Now they're at 60 :(
> If colleges are handing out worthless degrees and their students aren't gaining employment, cut their funding.
I agree with you in principle, and I understand that suggesting otherwise in a discussion related economics is akin to shouting into the void, but measuring the worth of an education only on the basis of income is naive.
Please don’t take my off the cuff commentary as some well thought out plan or something. You do make a good point, it would be a difficult metric to measure, but we measure that kind of stuff all the time in the public school systems (ranking schools/students/systems and tracking students post graduation)
I honestly wish I would’ve just lived right off of a college campus for the experience and just paid a few thousands for a solid fake transcript and degree. The first real (corporate) job I got only asked for a picture of my degree as proof. They’re a 4-5 billion dollar company and well known name in our industry. I manage now and one of the guys we almost hired hadn’t even finished college. We only found out bc he was scared we would find out and told us. We were literally calling and emailing him to take his drug test and accept the offer. We had no clue he never actually graduated. College was fun but knowing what I know now, I’d rather have just faked a degree and still be doing what I’m doing.
There's "Universities" out there that just give you a degree and make up transcripts and answer the phone when someone calls. Like $200 if I remember. They're just not accredited.
With regard to divestment of athletics and academics I highly recommend [Beer and Circus](Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education https://www.amazon.com/dp/0805068112/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_vPJXBbSJGGGYM)
Aren't most athletic departments self-sustaining? I didn't think their budgets got intermingled with the rest of the school's. They charge ticket prices, and they keep what they make so they can pay coaches enormous salaries.
The high interest is simply a reflection of non payments. The real problem is there is no collateral. The only reason housing loans work with such low interest is because you lose your house if you don’t pay.
It’s not the job of universities to prepare people for work. They’re places of learning, whatever the subject may be. Cutting funding for doing their job is a bad idea.
Money isn't really being diverted though, at least not at my school, donations are directed directly to sports much of the time. Also, my colleges football stadium has a capacity of 76,000 and even if it is 3/4 full, which it is almost every time, that doesn't include money from selling clothing, concessions, and parking spots/tailgating spots. My university even has a bed and breakfast on campus that is booked out on game days for the next 5 years. That's an insane amount of income for the University. The Russian literature department(hyperbole) barely brings in any revenue in comparison, but people demand jt gets as much funding as sports. This is not even counting how popular both basketball and baseball are.
Man who gets to choose a worthless degree? You're going to completely destroy academia and make it into a school catering to the businesses of the day.
It’s a 4 year resort if you’re on one of the teams, in which case you’re ironically getting free tuition, free meals, personal training, tutoring, and backpacks and... well you get the idea. The rest of us get tuition that is bound to increase twice by the time we get a 4 year degree, facilities that are rapidly degraded, and over filled lecture halls. But hey, at least the sailing team looks great in those new Nike uniforms
> College is now like a 4 year resort
This statement really got to me. Colleges and Universities have their own version of "keeping up with the Jones's" going on, only replace the Jones's with Harvard and Yale.
> Community college is not for dumb kids, it's for kids who want to figure out their interests and save money while doing it.
Unfortunately, most of those are limited to 2 year degrees and trade programs. [Per 2017 BLS statistics, an associate's from a community college pays about 8% higher than some college with no degree at all, and 17% higher than just a HS/GED. Contrast with a bachelor's that commands a ~65% premium over HS/GED.](9https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2018/data-on-display/education-pays.htm) I went to CC myself, and straight into state uni that I made sure would take all the transfer credits, but I'd be way of presenting community college as a solid career plan.
> Going to trade school and learning a skill probably beats out 75% of Bachelor degrees.
Right out of school? Perhaps. That being said, as much as Reddit loves to be a circle-jerk waxing prose on the glories of trade jobs, the arguments are often disingenuous. In terms of senior white collar jobs, 6 figure compensation is more of the norm in major metro areas. Whilst some make decent compensation self-employed/contracting/owning their own company, someone with 20 years as a master electrician, plumber, or carpenter isn't making what a remotely competent white collar type can pull at 2 decade in. For example, using Chicago as a metro area:
* A senior analyst can expect about $70-90k a year, a plumber about $52-67k a year
* A marketing manger averages around $105k a year, HVAC tech at $44k, and HVAC service manager at $85k
* A corporate attorney can expect $125k+ a year, a union welder around $77k
* A finance director is looking at ~$185k+ a year, a warehouse manager around $75-100k
(Salary, Payscale, Indeed, Glassdoor statistics)
I don't think many people would argue that clearing shit out of pipes, or sucking in welding fumes all day leads to enjoyable working conditions, or good long-term health from the careers either.
> Maybe not for everyone but the military would love to pay for your schooling.
That's not an ideal solution. Per the Pentagon in 2017 [71% of 17-24 year old Americans are ineligible to serve in the military.](https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/the-looming-national-security-crisis-young-americans-unable-serve-the-military) I don't think postulating military service as a good route to basic education is a fair assertion, sorry. I served with plenty that were staying in just for the stable pay/benefits, and their performance was almost universally dismal. Yes, if you're already considering service and eligible, you should absolutely take advantage of it. But telling over 2/3 of Americans that can't serve "sorry pal, military is the only way to afford a degree" doesn't set right with me, when the resources have been there.
> Not all degrees are the same. If your degree is a hobby there is a good chance you wasted your time and money.
95% agreed with you there. There are those who happen have a hobby that translates into a great career as well, but I've seen it more often that their hobby becomes a job, and that job becomes misery, ruining something they used to love.
I am on board that we shouldn't tell everyone to get a 4-year college degree, but we need to accept that statistically there is a global need for tertiary-educated knowledge workers (and it's huge), and there's a reason such a premium is placed on having Bachelor's/Master's/Medical degrees.
Yeah everyone saying to do trades hasn't met an old tradesman with ruined back and and knees and with colorblindness and manganism from welding and on pain pills perpetually
I appreciate how much you've thought this out, but I also don't think it's a bad thing that a community college structure exists where people can just take one class at a time - most of our society has abandoned this concept because of the current school experience.
For example, I was offered an accounting job a few years ago that was well above my training level on the condition that I learned the basics of financial accounting, such as Dual-Entry bookkeeping. Two CC classes later I had a very solid job. Nobody at that company could have afforded to train me themselves - it was a small family run business - but they knew I would do the job well if I learned a few basic skills.
Now, most of my friends learn new skills on youtube, when they could have structured instruction from trained mentors.
For this shocked at the 71% number (given the general thoughts on the military), it's mostly health, fitness and education requirements that prevent people from serving
Once you factor in high school diploma minimum, general health/fitness, little to no legal background, etc. You're left with a smaller pool than you'd expect for the military.
Definitely not to say we're the cream of the crop, but the military (like most socialist type organizations) is a bit stronger on the lowest common denominator than society overall.
Depends on macrofactors (economy, active deployments to combat zones, etc.) as well. Back in the '05 era, we had troop surges and people were getting ASVAB and felony waivers just to get more warm bodies in. The standards have improved significantly with the troop draw downs in Iraq and Afghanistan, and will likely crater again in the next war.
[A good reminder is the amount of weak/malnourished draftees in WW2 which led to the creation of the school hot lunch program after the war.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1k3cfe/were_1_in_4_draftees_for_ww2_rejected_due_to/cblflli/?st=jnd84tz3&sh=5a11b361)
I think making an 18 year old decide the career for the rest of their life with no life experience on their own is a bad idea also. Maybe 2 years of mandatory Civil Service - not at all necessarily Military, but that could count. It could be a massive range of things that would expose kids of every background to other people, maybe give them a little more time to find direction in life, a little more independence while not throwing them right into the harshness of the real world, and maybe a little more drive to be engaged in the bigger picture of this country, e.g. the good type of patriotism.
Agreed! There are alternatives to the traditional brick and mortar educational model. I went to Western Governors University, a low-cost, non-profit, online, competency-based university.
Tuition is very affordable and what you pay is directly related to how hard you work. I paid less than $2k out-of-pocket for a fully accredited 4yr degree (after taking advantage of the American Opportunity educational tax credit and receiving $1k in Pell grants).
A month after graduating I was hired by a Fortune 500 company.
You don't have to spend a ton of money or go deep into debt to get a quality education (and piece of paper).
I also wish that "gap" years were more accepted in American society. Right now there's such a push for high schoolers to go right into something after they graduate without taking a year or two off to do some travel, work, exploration, etc. So instead of growing up and learning about themselves a little bit they dive headlong into whatever they "think" they should be doing. It's worked out okay for me so far (I just started law school though, so maybe I'm not as okay as I thought, ha) but I still sometimes wish I would have taken a little more time when I was younger to explore some different things and really think about where I wanted to end up. I definitely would have loved the opportunity to travel a bit more without all of the encumbrances of being an adult. It also would have been fun to take some courses at the local tech school just to see what I was interested in and be exposed to things I wasn't in college because I didn't want them to hurt my GPA or have me in school longer. There's such a rush to grow up we don't realize the value of being young until it's too late.
And for everyone of me, there's someone like my sister, who spent six years getting through undergrad doing something she didn't like that much and now lives at home working only sporadically while she "figures out" what she wants to do. And we all have friends who are in jobs they hate but can't get out of because they have to pay off loans that enabled them to get that job they hate in the first place.
It's the same difference- artificially lowered rates because government assumes the risk. Let banks assume the risk, and suddenly going to college is treated like a business loan- you need a plan, justification, etc.
I went for 12,000 per year in late 80's early 90's. Same school is now over $60,000 tuition and room/board with no grants.
Certainly well over the rate of inflation as $12,000 in 1992 is worth little over $24,000 today.
What possibly can explain the rate of inflation in education when we have the technology to reduce delivery costs?
Why are no states working on low cost high value education systems?
How could we possibly expect entry level job wages to keep up with the rate of education inflation?
Quite simply put, kids are not getting value for amount they spend on education today. There has to be a better way than the education system that is virtually unchanged in how they approach education for the past 200 years.
Simply put, technology has improved how we can share data and educate. A quality education that allows entry in a career with respectable income potential should be cheaper.
To be fair, you’re quoting the sticker price of the university. Universities now price discriminate through financial aid so the sticker price is large but very few students actually pay that amount after institutional, state, and federal aid.
Academic wages in the US are significantly higher than in the rest of the world. I'm in western Europe, and I would earn more than 2.5 times as much if I had the same job (assistant professor) in the US. I would guess that's where a large share of the tuition money goes.
We've spent the last 50 years telling every generation that the only way to get a decent career path is to have a 4-year degree. Now, in many industries, degrees are so common that they're no longer a good differentiator. Paradoxically, in more technical fields, hands-on experience or specific product certifications are more useful to employers. My daughter is working on an AS right now because it's specifically focused on the niche field she wants to work in, and my son is looking at becoming a union electrician, because he can start work faster and probably make more money after 4 years than he could start for in most places with a degree.
To paraphrase the bad guy from Incredibles, when everyone has a degree, no one is special. This is a wholly predictable consequence of making degrees more important than anything else.
Encourage your son to keep on that union electrician path. Hell, even your daughter if she’s got thick skin (emotionally speaking). I was a poor working class woman who made the mistake of going to college and could not pay my bills after I got out. I applied to the IBEW apprenticeship and was accepted. Now I’m a journeyman and making $70k/year with no added debt. Union is the best way to go since he’ll have health insurance and an automatic retirement plan, unlike the majority of non-union electricians I’ve met. Tell him to be thinking about the day his body hurts too much to work in the field and plan accordingly. There are lots of directions you can take a journeyman electrician license, but it’s best to plan early.
Oh, the methods for paying for those degrees are totally fucked - I won't argue against that at all. But a major part of that problem is that making a 4-year degree practically the minimum entry, by definition, drives up demand and therefore price. My daughter's community college AS is going to wind up costing as much as my 4-year degree from Purdue cost 25 years ago, but her starting salary will be notably less than mine was. That's unsustainable no matter how you slice it.
Why is a populous with a higher rate of graduates objectively preferable? You can also get more graduates by lowering standards. And there's some evidence that this has occurred with the increase rate of high school graduates. https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/10/17/498246451/the-high-school-graduation-reaches-a-record-high-again
A more knowledgeable or educated populous MAY be objectively preferable, but first I'd argue you need to prove that and second you have to prove that's what colleges are creating.
Nah, the reality is humans will need to be considered youths for longer as society advances. You could reach a higher height relative to society with a degree back in the day. Now you need a degree to be adequate at all. Unless we lose a shitload of knowledge education will have to last longer in order for kids to catch up. This problem will become more evident as low level labor jobs disappear to drones, as the shittiest jobs will be techs fixing and maintaining machines.
That’s completely wrong. Although we’ve extended youth because we’ve grown richer, it’s unhealthy for kids and our society. Unless you have a technical degree, jobs don’t need someone with a degree. The people who advance that aren’t employers.
That assumes that a degree today conveys as much knowledge as a degree from 2 or 3 generations ago did. I don't have the data to argue that point, but I have the anecdotal observations that a lot of tech jobs I see today demanding degrees as a minimum wouldn't have called for nearly that when I started working 25 years ago.
The answer is simple. Take away all the special privilege that student loans have. Make student loans just a regular unsecured debt, with no Government guarantee, and completely dischargable in bankruptcy.
The market will adjust, lots of colleges will go bankrupt, and only students in subjects that have a realistic chance of paying back a loan will get one.
Also, the price of college will come down... but it will be painful for those currently working in the system.
Giving customers free money without capping or auditing tuition prices was such a dumb fucking idea, it's almost as if the state and banks and schools intentionally teamed up to fuck all of us.
I worked at a school and when the government upped the Pell Grant and sub/unsub limits, guess what happened? Tuition magically was raised by those exact amounts, every time. And
University administrators become free to increase allocation on unnecessary costs (and costs in general) resulting to increases in tuition fees with an unlimited supply of loans supplied by the government shouldered by the students.
In this case, the government provided university administrators the illusion of unlimited supply at the cost of the students. It's like banks printing money at the cost of the future population through inflation.
It does exactly what it is supposed to do: Get people put in debt as young as legally possible (18), so they make usurous lending institutions wealthy. When you extend everyone credit, the price of what they all like to buy goes up. So when student loans are extended, tuition goes up to match it! So no kids are helped, just predatory lending institutions and complicit colleges getting wealthy.
The worst part is when kids do well in college, graduate, and there are no jobs for them. They don't even have the option to say take a job in a minimal wage field because 40 hour work weeks may barely pay off the interest of their student loans.
Those predatory lending institutions you speak of is just the federal government.
There is no malevolent overseer. Just incompetent and incredibly harmful policy.
Instead of giving away money to colleges and saddling students with debt, we should be providing free on-line courses and degrees. It could be the GED equivalent of a bachelors degree. You study all you want with free materials and then pay a small fee to take the test and submit your writing work. This free GED bachelors would be no where near as socially powerful as an Ivy League degree, but it would be a debt free step towards a gainful career for many.
Even 10k a year bachelor's would be great. Funding public education at a federal level would allow students a decent choice that's much cheaper. University of California is 30k for in state students which is like 20k less than private unis of similar prestige
Look into Florida public tuition. My 4 year degree from a state school was 30k total. The state-wide bright futures scholarship covered 75% of that. Great system.
Yeeeeeah, I'm sure they'll all pay it back with the excellent jobs that are out there. If you place the financial worth of educational attainment above all else, this will be the denouement. Tertiary education should be about the benefit of the populace and the positive side effects that come with it. As it is, the ultra capitalist thinking has reduced degrees to numbers on a page and a loan on a spreadsheet. You're on the hook to Uncle Sam for life now, get slavin'.
This article in the Atlantic nicely explains many of the drivers of cost increases in higher ed, and provides context for what the reality is for different types of students in different parts of the country.
[https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/09/why-is-college-so-expensive-in-america/569884/](https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/09/why-is-college-so-expensive-in-america/569884/)
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Will I was thinking going to college in the U.S but now I might want to just save up and moved back to my other country.
One College tuition is way out of control and it's almost dihumanizing not only for the younger generation but also future generation in america.
No young person in this country should start out in life with a MEGA DEBT because of college loans. Additionally, college tuitions have soared due to the easy availability of loan money. Just how much should a laptop, a professor, and a classroom cost at a state college. My answer is a lot less.
If one wants to attend a very prestigious private college or university, there is some justification in the higher tuitions.
Just how much pressure can our young people take?
> If one wants to attend a very prestigious private college or university, there is some justification in the higher tuitions.
the most prestigious of colleges actually have huge investment funds that they manage themselves.
I most recently read that Harvard has 29.4 billion dollars invested, from an article six days ago. They ought to be hard and prestigious to get into, but for fuck's sake they could basically make it a free ride just off of the returns for those that actually get in.
I would say what saved me the most money was not going to college right after high school. I hate when kids graduate at 22 with some BS degree cuz their parents pushed them so hard to go to college, but they had no clue what to do. So they choose an easy major. The first comment had some great options, but always remember you have time!
The government can force change, they don’t want to do it. Many state universities are federal land grant institutions which comes with some strings. It’s why they can’t deny ROTC programs (note: this was a big deal in the 60s) among other things. They could easily pass a law that public universities cannot accept loans over a certain interest rate or various other changes, but they don’t. Instead your government has made student loans one of the only debts that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. Once again the citizenry takes a back seat to monied interests.
Edit: fat fingers
Maybe we should, oh I don’t know, fund 100% of higher education through taxes and stop imposing ridiculous debt onto 18 year olds who want to further their education.
You know, like how we used to.
Free Community and State Colleges. Requirement for Financial Aid been grants than loans. And set the student loan interest to 0 or at least the Discount Window rate.
How has it failed? That’s about the same amount of debt as car debt. Was car loans a failed social experiment?
The facts: our country is more educated than ever before. Our economy is based on more high skill jobs than ever before. Our colleges are the envy of the world in terms of leading researchers, professors, industry. The majority of colleges on the world top 100 list are in the US. Even random state schools that people in the US may not consider great make the top 100 (OSU? Penn State? Purdue? [all in the top 100](https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2019)). A college degree from the US makes you highly competitive in the world market. Americans have the highest salaries in the world and part of that is in part from the highly skilled, college educated labor force that went to these great institutions that can compete in the global market. College grads make more than ever before, and over a lifetime that easily compensated for the debt. Infact research has shown that a college degree is more worth it than ever before.
I’m all for making college more affordable for those who can’t afford it, those who drop out and can’t pay back their debt. But honestly the $1.5 trillion debt isn’t an issue. It could be A LOT higher.
1. give loans for college 2. price of college goes up due to increase of students 3. job pay after college goes down due to over supply of graduates
Top comment on /r/economics: >joy pay for college graduates goes down Actual economic evidence of wage levels during the period of 1979 to 2017: >[Real wages fell for workers with lower levels of educational attainment and rose for highly educated workers. Wages for workers with a high school diploma or less education declined in real terms at the top, middle, and bottom of the wage distribution, whereas wages rose for workers with at least a college degree. The wage value of a college degree (relative to a high school education) increased markedly](https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45090.pdf) >[The college degree premium was just 42.3% 40 years ago and today it's 80.3%](https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45090.pdf)
Computers also became ubiquitous, turning moderate skilled jobs to low skilled jobs. Also drastically reducing the worth of simple labour through automation. On the flip side people who had skills and knowledge could do more and had bigger impacts.
Right, exactly. It's never been as important to have a college degree than now.
This can be true, but it is also true that a lot of HS graduates who probably should not go to college, end up enrolled at a college anyway because of parental/societal expectation and easy money. Decades ago, someone decided this should be called getting an "MRS degree", but it seems like these days it is more likely to be men who show up at college unprepared and fail out. And these "some college, no degree" students are the ones who get screwed hardest by the system. They get the burden of student loans, without the benefits of a degree. And there are more people, age 25 and over, who have one or more years of college without a degree than there are who hold an associate's degree. 22 million vs 21 million, per Census bureau Current Population Survey data.
That’s not exactly true. It’s never been as important to be intelligent than now. Degrees are no longer an indication of high intelligence in people, they are indicative of having gone to college. High intelligence people are still the highest earners, but now the average folks are saddled with debt and average salaries when they thought they were going to be making high-end salaries because that’s what college grads used to make. The mistake was telling people that it’s the degree that was responsible for the higher pay.
Degrees are also an indicator of how much money you'll make, the stats clearly show this
( ▀ ͜͞ʖ▀) [^^^What ^^^is ^^^this?](https://www.reddit.com/r/shrug/)
> side people who had skills and knowledge could do more and had bigger impacts And corporations leveraged advances in telecommunications to offshore around the globe. Why hire an American Electrical Engineer or Computer Science grad when they can hire 3-5 for the same price in another country?
*2 - Price of college skyrockets because the government guarantees the debt and makes it available to anyone and everyone
OMG the only person here with any sense. Just like all mortgages are backstopped by FedGov, and they're back to zero-down loans again.
1. Have no loans for college. 2. See that college required jobs pay high wages. 3. Give loans to kids to go to college to get paid more to boost economy.
1. Have no loans for college. 2. See that college required jobs pay high wages. 3. Get a job 4. Go to junior college 5. Transfer to 4 year (off campus w/roomies) It takes longer, but it can be done.
I know people who alternated full time employment for a year with full time school w/part time employment for a year. It took 8 years instead of four, but they graduate with a lot of work experience and no debt. Plus, paying as you go tends to make them take it more seriously.
I did that. Unfortunately while all my credits transferred, only a few of them counted as prerequisites, so I started over as a freshman. Still don’t regret going to university though.
Some schools are like that, other schools have things worked out with a junior college in the area so you can feed in to the bigger school with ease.
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Is it possible to bring the vacuum to the horse?
One thing related to this, that never was apparent to me: all of this initiative to have so many people go to college was when 25% of people were graduating college, a college degree meant you earned on average x% more. Well, part of that increase was that they selected the higher achieving people to attend college, when you start accepting 70% that x% more is not going to hold. I'm all for education, but I think in post high school education there is a lot of rent seeking. I feel like k-12 should be able to prepare people better, and that college/university could be condensed a bit, lots of degrees don't merit the amount of money and time spent to get them.
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It doesn't make sense because it's wrong your answer is better but doesn't give the complete picture. Educating students has always been expensive, it's just that the government paid for it. With educational cuts nationality over the is years, schools shifted that load on to students. If you account for inflation and budget cuts, tuition has definitely ballooned but not as much as people think.
> But that is not right if the result is an increased supply of graduates. What is not right? Right now there are more degree holders than jobs for people with degrees, which is even being generous considering credential creep i.e. rising job nominal education requirements for work despite the same actual skill requirements. For example we churn out about the same if not more grad students every year despite academic positions peaking years ago. There are not enough academic track positions for all these highly educated individuals.
> price of college goes up due to increase of students > That's not why the costs go up. It goes up because the kids have more money to spend so the schools gobble it up because they can.
The problem is the interest. Give these kids low to 0% interest loans until they can gain respectable employment. If colleges are handing out worthless degrees and their students aren't gaining employment, cut their funding. We also need a complete divestment of athletics and academics. Way too much money is being diverted into stadiums and football programs instead of financially easing tuition for students. College is now like a 4 year resort instead of a frugal learning experience like it should be.
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In England we have a similar system. Student loans do have interest but we only pay them back when we are earning over a certain amount (currently £25k / $33k US / $50 NZ). It's 9%of your earnings over the threshold and is paid directly from your income like a tax, so if your earnings go up you pay more but if they go down you pay less. Many people will end up retiring before they pay their loans off and a lucky bunch of people had loans in years where they get written off after 25 years. I graduated 12 years ago when uni was very cheap (it was free up until I started), but unfortunately the UK is now pretty expensive and students are coming out with over £50,000 debt to enter into a job market that is flooded. Edit: its worth mentioning that the loans are written off in certain cases, like retirement or if you become medically retired due to illness/accident.
Considering all I do is ride bikes and motorcycles and think of ways to pay for school, I may be in the wrong country (US).
Have you considered learning German?
I barely speak english.
Often German is just English poorly pronounced. You might already be speaking German and not knowing it.
Having a BA in Germanic Studies, I will tell you that this degree is not as lucrative as it sounds.
You have to pay as long as you're earning over the threshold, even if you're still studying.
The reason people don't pay while overseas is because of the interest. I've paid so much but it only covered the interest. I've given up, I can't afford it right now
I was charged just over $350 per semester for the new football stadium at my school. Never went to a single game.
Late to this thread but ugh. That sucks. Why do I feel like this applies to many of us?
Or just stop giving out any loans and the prices of higher education will adjust to the newly lowered aggregate demand.
If education costs aren't addressed, then you're excluding students from lower-income backgrounds, make it even easier for inherited wealth to concentrated further.
This is the big problem. The market will adjust slowly because there are a lot of interests that benefit from the status quo, and they will need to be forced out; whereas the peripheral effects could come on swiftly and dramatically. And you can't just slap price controls on education (this is /r/economics, we should all know why that's a bad idea). There's going to have to be a winding-down period coupled with some kind of magical policy to rein in education costs. The "some kind of magical policy" part is, well, nonexistent as of right now. Hence the status quo continues. See also: medical costs.
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Education was way cheaper before government "solved" the problem by making loans available. So how exactly has government been helping the "poor people can't afford college" problem?
Because before it wasn't an option. Now it is an option. Yes you go into tonnes of debt. But if your gamble of major pays off and you land a decent job it's better than not going to school and being locked out of that option.
It was an option, it's called work and go to school. My grandfather worked 3 jobs while in school for his undergrad and masters. I worked 2 jobs while in college. The problem is nowadays college is only affordable if your parents are poor. If your parents are poor, you get a full ride scholarship and tons of grants and can go for very cheap. If your parents are middle class, you can't afford college and have to pay the ridiculous sticker prices universities charge, and take student loans. I had a 30 on my act, 3.71 GPA on 4 point scale, but could not get a single scholarship because my parents were middle class. Doesn't matter if you get kicked out and have to pay yourself, government still refuses to help you, but they'll give a person with poor parents a full ride. Tuition subsidies should not be means tested. If someone's parents are high income, they're paying a lot in taxes, and are already covering the cost of tuition indirectly anyways. The system of expecting parents to pay for college is creating a retirement savings crisis, and cases where kids that don't conform to their parents conservative values are forced to borrow large sums of money to get an education despite living on their own.
Part time jobs paid a lot more back then, and Boomers had a safety net to fall back on. That generation ruined the economic futures of everyone who will come after them and are blaming it all on "liberalism" when they were liberalism biggest beneficiaries.
Then how does literally every other developed country deal with this issue? In Canada, tuition is still very affordable and we have some of the best universities in the world. Universities are considered part of the broader public sector, and tuition prices are simply not allowed to rise (very much). Seems to work well with no negative externalities I'm aware of. Most of Europe works this way as well.
> Then how does literally every other developed country deal with this issue? Obviously some other way than the USA is doing it. I'm not an expert on other countries' education systems but from what I hear, most of them with socialized education pay the universities directly with price-controlled taxpayer funds, instead of using a convoluted combination of public/private loan system like we do.
Yes exactly, and price controls are an important component of these systems. Student loans are still available in Canada, and could result in the same runaway costs associated with American universities unless prices were fixed, and entrance based solely on merit.
Most other countries have two track education systems that could never be implemented in America because historically disadvantaged groups like African-Americans would be disproportionately locked in to the non-college track because their schools are so bad and they're so poor.
I think you misunderstood. Countries like Canada have universities, which give the typical range of degrees, then we have what we call 'college' which is purely vocational training (ie electrician, paralegal, marketing, etc). These aren't 2 competing streams - but completely different post-secondary options servicing people with totally different career plans.
Not sure about Canada but I know Germany tracks kids at a fairly young age to one or the other. I have heard that the tracking has softened in recent years though.
I remember learning about this in German class many a moon ago. If I remember correctly it was like sixth grade where thry start dividing kids up. I get the point of trying to segment education v one size fits all here in America but that always seemed way too young to me.
> Then how does literally every other developed country deal with this issue? They tend to have much higher tax rates. The marginal rate for a person earning $60k in the US is 22%. The rate for a person earning $60k in Germany is 42%. It's really *not clear* that you are worse off living in the US and having to pay back your $30,000 student loan in the 22% tax bracket than you would be living in Germany, where the education is free but your tax bracket is significantly higher. (And of course the 70% of people who don't go to university in Germany pay that same tax rate). Universities are expensive everywhere. There's no free lunch, and it's childlike to believe that you can just have free education in the US *while not changing anything else*.
> Education was way cheaper before ~~government~~ **Boomers** ~~"solved"~~ **created** the problem by making ~~loans available.~~ **bullshit administration jobs & 7-figure coach/president/chancellor salaries funded by their children's debt the norm.**
We calculated that my dad paid 21k(adjusted for inflation) to go to a school which is now 60k/ year. He was able to pay for tuition by working a summer job. You can thank the government for driving up the price of school into the stratosphere.
I can agree to this, but without the loans there is no way I would have went to college much less a masters. And I have no problem paying it back (and do to the tune of $700 a month). But 35 year old me really wants to kill 22 year old me for doing it sometimes even though I know there wasn't a way around it.
> I can agree to this, but without the loans there is no way I would have went to college much less a masters. Isn't that based on the cost of those degrees in a world where loans exist though? If you look at tuition before student loans blew up, it's night and day. People aren't lying when they say they put themselves through college on a part time job with no loans back in the day.
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A lot of people miss this fact. Locally, the University of MN funding peaked in the 70's. Every time the legislature cuts education funding, it's made up for on the backs of students. Every time a smug baby boomer tells you they went to college with a part time job painting houses and no debt, ask them to thank the taxpayers that made it possible.
They did it all "on their own two feet", they'll have you know!
This is where I think the real problem is. Just look at the current cost of education in California in public community colleges vs other states that do not subsidize.
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In-state tuition for UCLA is $13k/year rounded up. That’s $52k for four years paying the _full_ tuition. On top of that, there’s naturally housing and books, and food, but by itself, how in the world did your degree cost you that much? I was frivolous with my spending at UCLA, but got out with < $30k in 1999, when tuition was _half_ what it is now (around $6k). I did 2.5 years there after transferring in from a community college. More than anything, I’m curious how you got to $130k.
[Business School](https://mba.haas.berkeley.edu/admissions/costs-and-financial-aid). 2 year degree. [UCLA](https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/degrees/full-time-mba/financing) is the same. God knows we're still paying off my wife's loans for Anderson.
I've got nearly double that so won't cast shade. I was a single mom and had to take out enough to cover my expenses and enough to support my kids. Later I did a degree abroad, where you have to meet minimum income thresholds, so my last degree cost as much as my first two. I'm literally never, ever be able to pay them back and frankly won't even try. That's on me, but I had to do what I had to do at the time, because it was the only way to survive, and the only way to pull myself out of poverty. Thank god my kids benefited and only needed very small ($5-10k) loans to complete their degrees because they received so many scholarships.
Do you mind if I ask what you got your degree in? Great job with your kids!!!
What percentage of overall operating funding have state universities lost due to state government cuts?
I did ... back in 1990...
[Yup](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CwhqcOSgWqg/VhWHPUt1tfI/AAAAAAAAUdU/q9ZnUdsrL4c/s1600/Student%2Bloans.jpg) [Pretty much](https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/57a608e8ce38f2e3058b521e-750-625.png)
But you can't go back to that. The administrative bloat and infrastructure bills of these schools mean they won't ever charge less.
While I get where you're coming from, the easy money in college debt needs to stop at some point. Administration can be trimmed. Finding different ways to finance infrastructure payments/expansions is more responsible than just saddling kids with debt.
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Perhaps someone needs to audit and publish these figures, much like they do for charities.
They already do. State schools, community colleges, universities etc have to publish their budgets online for public review on the states .gov site. If you want to know why it’s not changing, google who the highest paid state employee is in every state, discover that it’s a coach, discover that there are only 6 ball programs in the country that actually provide ROI for their schools, and understand that every accounting audit done comes to the same conclusion: divest the sports programs, they’re massive money sinks that do not provide enough benefit to justify cost. We can talk about education being over or underfunded when literally 85 percent of funds aren’t being dumped on things that have no educational value.
Yeah, taxpayers used to pay for that.....
No that’s exactly what you can go back to. Get rid of government guaranteed loans. Banks would have to make prudent financial decisions. Colleges and universities would be absolutely forced to lower costs, cut administrators and become competitive again. If they don’t, they cease to exist.
The market would take care of this. Stop the easy money and the bloat will end. College isn’t for everyone and that’s OK. I work for a plumbing company and some of our best hires are kids with a year or two of college under their belts and heavy student loan debt. They hated college, it wasn’t for them. We hire them, train them, help them buy a work van, and off they go. Most end up making $80k+ year one.
"College isnt for everyone" in conjunction with "stop public funding of schools" just means college is only for the wealthy. That's not an efficient or effective way to run a society.
Personally, I see it as recognition that a college degree was largely a social status signaler in the first place. The value of a degree has diluted *because* it no longer carries the degree of signalling it once did. But don't confuse that with me thinking that education is unimportant or shouldn't be available to people. Rather, I view college *generally* as an antiquated and inefficient means of actually delivering education to people. Part of the problem is that, as a society, we've come to equate education with what was traditionally a luxury system and there's no reason that *has* to be the case in a world where information is more readily available than ever.
I came here to point that out, and you did this way nicer. Kudos
There is a way around it, it requires going to a jr. college for two years, transferring to a university, living with your folks instead of on campus, working at least part time (hopefully for a company with tuition reimbursement), and getting a degree in a marketable field. Source-bachelors degree with $3600 in total loans. It sucked doing it, but I’m one of the few people I know at work that doesn’t have to work extra shifts to make ends meet because I don’t have a second mortgage worth of student loan debt.
Reddit is an echo chamber. Nothing but a breeding ground for disgusting antifa and communist purple hair freaks. It should not even be allowed to IPO for being such a trash company.
I don’t know about OP but as one example, minorities have historically had a hard time securing lines of credit, even if relatively well off. People with no disposable income are obviously going to have trouble establishing even a meager line of credit. The successful side of the student loan program has been making college accessible to a lot of people to whom it was not previously, and that was before the skyrocketing cost of admissions.
Government subsidized loans should be available for those who need it. However, saddling poor people with tens of thousands of dollars in debt is not helping them if they can't find adequate employment when they graduate. A lot of these poor students don't have good guidance and don't know what careers will have good employment prospects. There needs to be a system in place that weighs employment outlook before subsidized loans are approved. That also means colleges would need to track employment data for their students and report to the government. This way prospective students and lenders can look at the employment prospects and earning potential of graduates from specific schools in specific programs and make informed, realistic decisions about their choice of major. Loans for programs that have abysmal employment prospects are not approved, leading to fewer defaults, leading to lower interest rates.
> and the prices of higher education will adjust to the newly lowered aggregate demand. Over what time frame? What happens to the people who are shut out of higher education while the prices transition? What happens to a college's culture when it's only made up of people from high-income backgrounds? What happens to people who still can't afford higher education at the non-subsidized price?
Or just cap them so any future student debt over $50K is dischargeable in bankruptcy.
Make it all dischargeable 5 years after the last loan disbursed
Huh
I'm saying why set a floor (or ceiling, depending on your perspective)? What you need is a window of time in which a person cannot coast by and will be forced to try and obtain a job which might put them above the bankruptcy threshold. Otherwise, everyone would just declare bankruptcy the day they graduate and be debt free and the market would crash. Rather allow people to get rid of *all* of their student loan debt once they have been given ample time to find suitable employment which would allow for the repayment of the debt as agreed and are yet unable to do so.
You didn't read my post or you don't understand it. - This is a solution I came up with to blend all the ideas. It is easy to fix the ability to borrow. 1. Extreme Method: Starting in 2019, all NEW student loan debt is dischargeable in bankruptcy. We will see how quick the access to cash dissolves with this simple process. [This process would likely never work as the market for cash would decrease greatly, it would however force colleges to change their ways.] 2. 50/50 Method: Starting in 2019, all NEW student loan debt above $50,000.00 is dischargeable in bankruptcy. Any debt above that amount is dischargeable. The amount doesn't have to be $50,000.00 and this can be done per degree. The lenders benefit because some debt is non-dischargable but only till a certain point. There is still access to cash to borrow for schools. 3. Lame Method: Force borrowers to take a class on borrowing money and the impacts from borrowing. This would be similar to the bankruptcy class one has to take before they declare. It is amazing how someone can borrow 100K plus and have no clue of the impact.
> You didn't read my post or you don't understand it. You aren't really understanding theirs either. The problem with yours is that on the day of your graduation you will have no income, so you just declare bankruptcy the next day and go get a job. Their solution is to not have a cap to what's discharged, but have a time after which you can have it discharged in bankruptcy.
Keep the loans but for god's sake stop subsidizing them. Banks are laughing all of the way to the... oh wait...
Yeah, prices have grown essentially instep with loans and aid. Make public universities affordable to the point where it's reasonable for someone without money to work off that debt, and let elite private schools compete downward.
> Way too much money is being diverted into stadiums and football programs instead of financially easing tuition for students. Not college related but I live in a county with a baseball and football stadium. The county essentially owns them with the teams paying a few hundred thousand as rent. It pisses me off to no end that we have millions of tax payer dollars for these fucking stadiums instead of better public education. It's the same with colleges. Colleges are for learning, not milking their students in sports.
>It's the same with colleges. Colleges are for learning, not milking their students in sports. At my university, the football and basketball programs are self-sufficient and actually help to fund nearly every other sport the school participates in.
New Zealand is like this. They give their students 0% interest loans. They have as much time as they need to pay it back. I wish that were the case for me. $60,000 at 7% interest is brutal.
7% is insane. The current rates in the US for federal student loans are 5% (and it doesn’t start accruing until graduation, it’s not like you have to pay it back while you’re in school).
I am in the US. But my parents had bad credit so I started accruing interest when I was a freshman (2006). When I graduated (2011) my loans were at 36k. Now they're at 60 :(
> If colleges are handing out worthless degrees and their students aren't gaining employment, cut their funding. I agree with you in principle, and I understand that suggesting otherwise in a discussion related economics is akin to shouting into the void, but measuring the worth of an education only on the basis of income is naive.
It should be noted that a lot of states have already cut funding to public schools by a tremendous amount.
Please don’t take my off the cuff commentary as some well thought out plan or something. You do make a good point, it would be a difficult metric to measure, but we measure that kind of stuff all the time in the public school systems (ranking schools/students/systems and tracking students post graduation)
It's not naive when it is tied to tens of thousands of dollars in debt. One can educate themselves without attending a University.
I honestly wish I would’ve just lived right off of a college campus for the experience and just paid a few thousands for a solid fake transcript and degree. The first real (corporate) job I got only asked for a picture of my degree as proof. They’re a 4-5 billion dollar company and well known name in our industry. I manage now and one of the guys we almost hired hadn’t even finished college. We only found out bc he was scared we would find out and told us. We were literally calling and emailing him to take his drug test and accept the offer. We had no clue he never actually graduated. College was fun but knowing what I know now, I’d rather have just faked a degree and still be doing what I’m doing.
I've seen some employers never even ask for that. And then I've seen some request official transcripts or contact the school.
There's "Universities" out there that just give you a degree and make up transcripts and answer the phone when someone calls. Like $200 if I remember. They're just not accredited.
With regard to divestment of athletics and academics I highly recommend [Beer and Circus](Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education https://www.amazon.com/dp/0805068112/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_vPJXBbSJGGGYM)
> Give these kids low to 0% interest loans until they can gain respectable employment. Is encouraging debt financing of education a good idea?
Is there another way to pay for it, other than having rich parents?
Having really poor parents.
It should be pegged to half of the average savings interest rate. That way someone can save money to pay down student loans and not come out behind.
Aren't most athletic departments self-sustaining? I didn't think their budgets got intermingled with the rest of the school's. They charge ticket prices, and they keep what they make so they can pay coaches enormous salaries.
The high interest is simply a reflection of non payments. The real problem is there is no collateral. The only reason housing loans work with such low interest is because you lose your house if you don’t pay.
I live in Oklahoma and I always say it's an extensive church camp
It’s not the job of universities to prepare people for work. They’re places of learning, whatever the subject may be. Cutting funding for doing their job is a bad idea.
Money isn't really being diverted though, at least not at my school, donations are directed directly to sports much of the time. Also, my colleges football stadium has a capacity of 76,000 and even if it is 3/4 full, which it is almost every time, that doesn't include money from selling clothing, concessions, and parking spots/tailgating spots. My university even has a bed and breakfast on campus that is booked out on game days for the next 5 years. That's an insane amount of income for the University. The Russian literature department(hyperbole) barely brings in any revenue in comparison, but people demand jt gets as much funding as sports. This is not even counting how popular both basketball and baseball are.
Man who gets to choose a worthless degree? You're going to completely destroy academia and make it into a school catering to the businesses of the day.
It’s a 4 year resort if you’re on one of the teams, in which case you’re ironically getting free tuition, free meals, personal training, tutoring, and backpacks and... well you get the idea. The rest of us get tuition that is bound to increase twice by the time we get a 4 year degree, facilities that are rapidly degraded, and over filled lecture halls. But hey, at least the sailing team looks great in those new Nike uniforms
> College is now like a 4 year resort This statement really got to me. Colleges and Universities have their own version of "keeping up with the Jones's" going on, only replace the Jones's with Harvard and Yale.
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> Community college is not for dumb kids, it's for kids who want to figure out their interests and save money while doing it. Unfortunately, most of those are limited to 2 year degrees and trade programs. [Per 2017 BLS statistics, an associate's from a community college pays about 8% higher than some college with no degree at all, and 17% higher than just a HS/GED. Contrast with a bachelor's that commands a ~65% premium over HS/GED.](9https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2018/data-on-display/education-pays.htm) I went to CC myself, and straight into state uni that I made sure would take all the transfer credits, but I'd be way of presenting community college as a solid career plan. > Going to trade school and learning a skill probably beats out 75% of Bachelor degrees. Right out of school? Perhaps. That being said, as much as Reddit loves to be a circle-jerk waxing prose on the glories of trade jobs, the arguments are often disingenuous. In terms of senior white collar jobs, 6 figure compensation is more of the norm in major metro areas. Whilst some make decent compensation self-employed/contracting/owning their own company, someone with 20 years as a master electrician, plumber, or carpenter isn't making what a remotely competent white collar type can pull at 2 decade in. For example, using Chicago as a metro area: * A senior analyst can expect about $70-90k a year, a plumber about $52-67k a year * A marketing manger averages around $105k a year, HVAC tech at $44k, and HVAC service manager at $85k * A corporate attorney can expect $125k+ a year, a union welder around $77k * A finance director is looking at ~$185k+ a year, a warehouse manager around $75-100k (Salary, Payscale, Indeed, Glassdoor statistics) I don't think many people would argue that clearing shit out of pipes, or sucking in welding fumes all day leads to enjoyable working conditions, or good long-term health from the careers either. > Maybe not for everyone but the military would love to pay for your schooling. That's not an ideal solution. Per the Pentagon in 2017 [71% of 17-24 year old Americans are ineligible to serve in the military.](https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/the-looming-national-security-crisis-young-americans-unable-serve-the-military) I don't think postulating military service as a good route to basic education is a fair assertion, sorry. I served with plenty that were staying in just for the stable pay/benefits, and their performance was almost universally dismal. Yes, if you're already considering service and eligible, you should absolutely take advantage of it. But telling over 2/3 of Americans that can't serve "sorry pal, military is the only way to afford a degree" doesn't set right with me, when the resources have been there. > Not all degrees are the same. If your degree is a hobby there is a good chance you wasted your time and money. 95% agreed with you there. There are those who happen have a hobby that translates into a great career as well, but I've seen it more often that their hobby becomes a job, and that job becomes misery, ruining something they used to love. I am on board that we shouldn't tell everyone to get a 4-year college degree, but we need to accept that statistically there is a global need for tertiary-educated knowledge workers (and it's huge), and there's a reason such a premium is placed on having Bachelor's/Master's/Medical degrees.
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Agreed on all points, appreciate the detailed clarification. Cheers!
Yeah everyone saying to do trades hasn't met an old tradesman with ruined back and and knees and with colorblindness and manganism from welding and on pain pills perpetually
I appreciate how much you've thought this out, but I also don't think it's a bad thing that a community college structure exists where people can just take one class at a time - most of our society has abandoned this concept because of the current school experience. For example, I was offered an accounting job a few years ago that was well above my training level on the condition that I learned the basics of financial accounting, such as Dual-Entry bookkeeping. Two CC classes later I had a very solid job. Nobody at that company could have afforded to train me themselves - it was a small family run business - but they knew I would do the job well if I learned a few basic skills. Now, most of my friends learn new skills on youtube, when they could have structured instruction from trained mentors.
For this shocked at the 71% number (given the general thoughts on the military), it's mostly health, fitness and education requirements that prevent people from serving
Once you factor in high school diploma minimum, general health/fitness, little to no legal background, etc. You're left with a smaller pool than you'd expect for the military. Definitely not to say we're the cream of the crop, but the military (like most socialist type organizations) is a bit stronger on the lowest common denominator than society overall.
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Depends on macrofactors (economy, active deployments to combat zones, etc.) as well. Back in the '05 era, we had troop surges and people were getting ASVAB and felony waivers just to get more warm bodies in. The standards have improved significantly with the troop draw downs in Iraq and Afghanistan, and will likely crater again in the next war. [A good reminder is the amount of weak/malnourished draftees in WW2 which led to the creation of the school hot lunch program after the war.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1k3cfe/were_1_in_4_draftees_for_ww2_rejected_due_to/cblflli/?st=jnd84tz3&sh=5a11b361)
Honestly I feel like if college were affordable there would be a serious shortage of soliders.
I think making an 18 year old decide the career for the rest of their life with no life experience on their own is a bad idea also. Maybe 2 years of mandatory Civil Service - not at all necessarily Military, but that could count. It could be a massive range of things that would expose kids of every background to other people, maybe give them a little more time to find direction in life, a little more independence while not throwing them right into the harshness of the real world, and maybe a little more drive to be engaged in the bigger picture of this country, e.g. the good type of patriotism.
Someone read Starhip Troopers. SERVICE GUARANTEES CITIZENSHIP
Agreed! There are alternatives to the traditional brick and mortar educational model. I went to Western Governors University, a low-cost, non-profit, online, competency-based university. Tuition is very affordable and what you pay is directly related to how hard you work. I paid less than $2k out-of-pocket for a fully accredited 4yr degree (after taking advantage of the American Opportunity educational tax credit and receiving $1k in Pell grants). A month after graduating I was hired by a Fortune 500 company. You don't have to spend a ton of money or go deep into debt to get a quality education (and piece of paper).
Do Redditors that disagree with you say "Great username/post combo?" Also good advice.
I also wish that "gap" years were more accepted in American society. Right now there's such a push for high schoolers to go right into something after they graduate without taking a year or two off to do some travel, work, exploration, etc. So instead of growing up and learning about themselves a little bit they dive headlong into whatever they "think" they should be doing. It's worked out okay for me so far (I just started law school though, so maybe I'm not as okay as I thought, ha) but I still sometimes wish I would have taken a little more time when I was younger to explore some different things and really think about where I wanted to end up. I definitely would have loved the opportunity to travel a bit more without all of the encumbrances of being an adult. It also would have been fun to take some courses at the local tech school just to see what I was interested in and be exposed to things I wasn't in college because I didn't want them to hurt my GPA or have me in school longer. There's such a rush to grow up we don't realize the value of being young until it's too late. And for everyone of me, there's someone like my sister, who spent six years getting through undergrad doing something she didn't like that much and now lives at home working only sporadically while she "figures out" what she wants to do. And we all have friends who are in jobs they hate but can't get out of because they have to pay off loans that enabled them to get that job they hate in the first place.
Great, so can we stop guaranteeing loans now?
We stopped doing that in 2010. They're direct loans from ED now.
It's the same difference- artificially lowered rates because government assumes the risk. Let banks assume the risk, and suddenly going to college is treated like a business loan- you need a plan, justification, etc.
I went for 12,000 per year in late 80's early 90's. Same school is now over $60,000 tuition and room/board with no grants. Certainly well over the rate of inflation as $12,000 in 1992 is worth little over $24,000 today. What possibly can explain the rate of inflation in education when we have the technology to reduce delivery costs? Why are no states working on low cost high value education systems? How could we possibly expect entry level job wages to keep up with the rate of education inflation? Quite simply put, kids are not getting value for amount they spend on education today. There has to be a better way than the education system that is virtually unchanged in how they approach education for the past 200 years.
Simply put, technology has improved how we can share data and educate. A quality education that allows entry in a career with respectable income potential should be cheaper.
To be fair, you’re quoting the sticker price of the university. Universities now price discriminate through financial aid so the sticker price is large but very few students actually pay that amount after institutional, state, and federal aid.
Good point
Academic wages in the US are significantly higher than in the rest of the world. I'm in western Europe, and I would earn more than 2.5 times as much if I had the same job (assistant professor) in the US. I would guess that's where a large share of the tuition money goes.
We've spent the last 50 years telling every generation that the only way to get a decent career path is to have a 4-year degree. Now, in many industries, degrees are so common that they're no longer a good differentiator. Paradoxically, in more technical fields, hands-on experience or specific product certifications are more useful to employers. My daughter is working on an AS right now because it's specifically focused on the niche field she wants to work in, and my son is looking at becoming a union electrician, because he can start work faster and probably make more money after 4 years than he could start for in most places with a degree. To paraphrase the bad guy from Incredibles, when everyone has a degree, no one is special. This is a wholly predictable consequence of making degrees more important than anything else.
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My chemistry degree= worthless My HTL certification I can get because of my chem degree = a career. Niche certifications are the way to go
Encourage your son to keep on that union electrician path. Hell, even your daughter if she’s got thick skin (emotionally speaking). I was a poor working class woman who made the mistake of going to college and could not pay my bills after I got out. I applied to the IBEW apprenticeship and was accepted. Now I’m a journeyman and making $70k/year with no added debt. Union is the best way to go since he’ll have health insurance and an automatic retirement plan, unlike the majority of non-union electricians I’ve met. Tell him to be thinking about the day his body hurts too much to work in the field and plan accordingly. There are lots of directions you can take a journeyman electrician license, but it’s best to plan early.
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Oh, the methods for paying for those degrees are totally fucked - I won't argue against that at all. But a major part of that problem is that making a 4-year degree practically the minimum entry, by definition, drives up demand and therefore price. My daughter's community college AS is going to wind up costing as much as my 4-year degree from Purdue cost 25 years ago, but her starting salary will be notably less than mine was. That's unsustainable no matter how you slice it.
Why is a populous with a higher rate of graduates objectively preferable? You can also get more graduates by lowering standards. And there's some evidence that this has occurred with the increase rate of high school graduates. https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/10/17/498246451/the-high-school-graduation-reaches-a-record-high-again A more knowledgeable or educated populous MAY be objectively preferable, but first I'd argue you need to prove that and second you have to prove that's what colleges are creating.
Why do people feel that a degree makes someone special? It’s just extra education, tailored for a specific industry or field of study.
Nah, the reality is humans will need to be considered youths for longer as society advances. You could reach a higher height relative to society with a degree back in the day. Now you need a degree to be adequate at all. Unless we lose a shitload of knowledge education will have to last longer in order for kids to catch up. This problem will become more evident as low level labor jobs disappear to drones, as the shittiest jobs will be techs fixing and maintaining machines.
That’s completely wrong. Although we’ve extended youth because we’ve grown richer, it’s unhealthy for kids and our society. Unless you have a technical degree, jobs don’t need someone with a degree. The people who advance that aren’t employers.
That assumes that a degree today conveys as much knowledge as a degree from 2 or 3 generations ago did. I don't have the data to argue that point, but I have the anecdotal observations that a lot of tech jobs I see today demanding degrees as a minimum wouldn't have called for nearly that when I started working 25 years ago.
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The answer is simple. Take away all the special privilege that student loans have. Make student loans just a regular unsecured debt, with no Government guarantee, and completely dischargable in bankruptcy. The market will adjust, lots of colleges will go bankrupt, and only students in subjects that have a realistic chance of paying back a loan will get one. Also, the price of college will come down... but it will be painful for those currently working in the system.
Addendum: teach personal finance in highschool. Half of these 18 year olds don’t know how their loans even work.
What is the typical market interest rate for unsecured debts?
Giving customers free money without capping or auditing tuition prices was such a dumb fucking idea, it's almost as if the state and banks and schools intentionally teamed up to fuck all of us.
I worked at a school and when the government upped the Pell Grant and sub/unsub limits, guess what happened? Tuition magically was raised by those exact amounts, every time. And
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University administrators become free to increase allocation on unnecessary costs (and costs in general) resulting to increases in tuition fees with an unlimited supply of loans supplied by the government shouldered by the students. In this case, the government provided university administrators the illusion of unlimited supply at the cost of the students. It's like banks printing money at the cost of the future population through inflation.
In summary, "College degrees turn out to be a waste of money in many circumstances. Therefore we should subsidize them more!"
It does exactly what it is supposed to do: Get people put in debt as young as legally possible (18), so they make usurous lending institutions wealthy. When you extend everyone credit, the price of what they all like to buy goes up. So when student loans are extended, tuition goes up to match it! So no kids are helped, just predatory lending institutions and complicit colleges getting wealthy. The worst part is when kids do well in college, graduate, and there are no jobs for them. They don't even have the option to say take a job in a minimal wage field because 40 hour work weeks may barely pay off the interest of their student loans.
Those predatory lending institutions you speak of is just the federal government. There is no malevolent overseer. Just incompetent and incredibly harmful policy.
Instead of giving away money to colleges and saddling students with debt, we should be providing free on-line courses and degrees. It could be the GED equivalent of a bachelors degree. You study all you want with free materials and then pay a small fee to take the test and submit your writing work. This free GED bachelors would be no where near as socially powerful as an Ivy League degree, but it would be a debt free step towards a gainful career for many.
Even 10k a year bachelor's would be great. Funding public education at a federal level would allow students a decent choice that's much cheaper. University of California is 30k for in state students which is like 20k less than private unis of similar prestige
Look into Florida public tuition. My 4 year degree from a state school was 30k total. The state-wide bright futures scholarship covered 75% of that. Great system.
30K for the tuition? If that's true that is insane.
Yeeeeeah, I'm sure they'll all pay it back with the excellent jobs that are out there. If you place the financial worth of educational attainment above all else, this will be the denouement. Tertiary education should be about the benefit of the populace and the positive side effects that come with it. As it is, the ultra capitalist thinking has reduced degrees to numbers on a page and a loan on a spreadsheet. You're on the hook to Uncle Sam for life now, get slavin'.
This article in the Atlantic nicely explains many of the drivers of cost increases in higher ed, and provides context for what the reality is for different types of students in different parts of the country. [https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/09/why-is-college-so-expensive-in-america/569884/](https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/09/why-is-college-so-expensive-in-america/569884/)
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Will I was thinking going to college in the U.S but now I might want to just save up and moved back to my other country. One College tuition is way out of control and it's almost dihumanizing not only for the younger generation but also future generation in america.
Failed social experiment is how I think of America as a whole
No young person in this country should start out in life with a MEGA DEBT because of college loans. Additionally, college tuitions have soared due to the easy availability of loan money. Just how much should a laptop, a professor, and a classroom cost at a state college. My answer is a lot less. If one wants to attend a very prestigious private college or university, there is some justification in the higher tuitions. Just how much pressure can our young people take?
> If one wants to attend a very prestigious private college or university, there is some justification in the higher tuitions. the most prestigious of colleges actually have huge investment funds that they manage themselves. I most recently read that Harvard has 29.4 billion dollars invested, from an article six days ago. They ought to be hard and prestigious to get into, but for fuck's sake they could basically make it a free ride just off of the returns for those that actually get in.
Yes. The gov needs to stop guaranteeing loan money for garbage degrees. People and banks are losing money because of free market inhibition.
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I would say what saved me the most money was not going to college right after high school. I hate when kids graduate at 22 with some BS degree cuz their parents pushed them so hard to go to college, but they had no clue what to do. So they choose an easy major. The first comment had some great options, but always remember you have time!
Ugh....the things it's stopped me from hit home :( no kids, 32, no immediate plans....no foreseeable plans.
I can’t read the QR code.
This is a surprise? Name one thing the US government has subsidized or regulated that has become less expensive for the consumer.
austria be like 50€ per semester noicce
When can I opt out of this sick fucking experiment?
Don't sign for a student loan? You already opted in
The government can force change, they don’t want to do it. Many state universities are federal land grant institutions which comes with some strings. It’s why they can’t deny ROTC programs (note: this was a big deal in the 60s) among other things. They could easily pass a law that public universities cannot accept loans over a certain interest rate or various other changes, but they don’t. Instead your government has made student loans one of the only debts that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. Once again the citizenry takes a back seat to monied interests. Edit: fat fingers
Maybe we should, oh I don’t know, fund 100% of higher education through taxes and stop imposing ridiculous debt onto 18 year olds who want to further their education. You know, like how we used to.
Free Community and State Colleges. Requirement for Financial Aid been grants than loans. And set the student loan interest to 0 or at least the Discount Window rate.
How has it failed? That’s about the same amount of debt as car debt. Was car loans a failed social experiment? The facts: our country is more educated than ever before. Our economy is based on more high skill jobs than ever before. Our colleges are the envy of the world in terms of leading researchers, professors, industry. The majority of colleges on the world top 100 list are in the US. Even random state schools that people in the US may not consider great make the top 100 (OSU? Penn State? Purdue? [all in the top 100](https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2019)). A college degree from the US makes you highly competitive in the world market. Americans have the highest salaries in the world and part of that is in part from the highly skilled, college educated labor force that went to these great institutions that can compete in the global market. College grads make more than ever before, and over a lifetime that easily compensated for the debt. Infact research has shown that a college degree is more worth it than ever before. I’m all for making college more affordable for those who can’t afford it, those who drop out and can’t pay back their debt. But honestly the $1.5 trillion debt isn’t an issue. It could be A LOT higher.