[HN Gopher] Colleges at the breaking point, forcing 'hard choice...
___________________________________________________________________
Colleges at the breaking point, forcing 'hard choices' about
education
Author : PretzelFisch
Score : 226 points
Date : 2020-04-30 14:48 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| brewdad wrote:
| My kid will be making his college choice in the coming year. As
| such, he's getting mail from colleges pretty much every day. The
| mailer from Vanderbilt really struck me as to the wrongheaded
| thinking of university leaders. On one side was this amazing
| blurb:
|
| "Vanderbilt financial aid packages DO NOT INCLUDE LOANS. IT'S
| FREE MONEY....65% of Vanderbilt students received some type of
| FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE"
|
| Tell me why college pricing makes shopping for a car look simple,
| even by pre-internet standards.
| frockington1 wrote:
| Over a decade ago when I was applying to schools, Vanderbilt
| also stood out as the worst experience. Parents were placed in
| a separate room a told that there only purpose is to pay the
| bill and the campus tour felt like a ghost town on a sunny
| Spring Friday
| ryanwaggoner wrote:
| Revenue maximization by way of price discrimination. Charging
| $x as the list price but giving 65% of students a big need-
| based financial aid package is a lot more palatable than saying
| the price is $x unless you're rich or foreign, in which case
| it's $x * 3, even if they're functionally equivalent.
| [deleted]
| clairity wrote:
| "free money" just screams inflated valuation. it's like credit
| card companies giving "cash back" so they can take larger fees
| for themselves. the fees more than cover their costs, so they
| funnel some of the largess back to the consumer to make sure
| the gravy train keeps going.
|
| i'd be for having _every_ student leave college with some debt,
| maybe on a scale of $1K for open-to-all colleges and $10K for
| the most competitive ones. enough to feel the value
| proposition, but not enough to laden the futures of those
| recent graduates.
| Chromozon wrote:
| I went to Vanderbilt and graduated in 2013. Their financial aid
| covered everything up to what FAFSA said my parents could
| afford- the EFC (expected family contribution) value.
| Tuition+room/board at the time was $56k, and EFC was $8k, so
| Vanderbilt covered the full 48k difference with no loans.
|
| Vanderbilt has a very large endowment, and there is a lot of
| money earmarked for financial aid. I received $30k+ in
| scholarships that I never personally applied for, and I was
| able to graduate without loans.
|
| On the flip side, if the EFC is very high and your family
| cannot afford it, you will have to get loans from another
| source.
| ilamont wrote:
| We just went through this. The finalist schools -- a big
| midwest Catholic school and a large NE state university --
| offered scholarships or grants between $16k and $21k per year
| with some caveats such as min 2.0 GPA at one and FAFSA
| qualifications staying roughly the same over the four year
| period.
|
| These scholarships/grants brought the per-year cost close to
| the University of Ottawa international rates, about $41k/year
| all in. If my senior had been accepted to UMass Amherst, our
| in-state university, the all-in cost would start at $33k/year
| (without FAFSA consideration).
|
| The brand-name private colleges around the Northeast US now
| have all-in sticker prices of $75k-80k. Financial aid in the
| form of grants or scholarships (not loans) would have to be
| $35k-40k to make these schools competitive on a cost basis with
| the examples given above.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > The brand-name private colleges around the Northeast US now
| have all-in sticker prices of $75k-80k. Financial aid in the
| form of grants or scholarships (not loans) would have to be
| $35k-40k to make these schools competitive on a cost basis
| with the examples given above.
|
| Harvard's financial aid is such that if your income is under
| $150,000, the max you pay is 15K a year.
| zhdc1 wrote:
| Harvard : )
| caludio wrote:
| Oh, so expensive private education is only sustainable in a
| hyper-inflated economy? That's sarcastically unexpected.
| austincheney wrote:
| Software should be either a trade school or a masters program
| depending on a student's level of commitment to the academics
| involved just like law, medicine, or engineering.
|
| The primary problem with education financing is unrealistic
| expectations. Do some basic math before paying for any education.
| If an education loan costs you a certain amount plus interests
| you need to make a certain amount minus what you would earn
| without the education to qualify that expenditure. If people
| currently working in your field aren't making $150k then why
| would a $100k loan make any sense? Why waste that kind of money?
| When you could attend a trade school for $10k that allows you to
| earn $60k. Blaming the system does not excuse bad personal
| financial decisions.
|
| When I was picking schools out of high school I found the third
| cheapest 4 year university in Texas. It was the only school I
| applied to more than 20 years ago. A 12 hour semester cost $1800
| including dorm, tuition, and meal plan. Books and supplies were
| extra. To me that price made perfect sense because it would take
| becoming a CEO to justify the expense.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| If you go 100k in debt to get a job that pays the same as one
| you could have only gone 10k in debt for, it's probably because
| you like doing that better.
|
| Some people would way rather be an elementary school teacher
| than an electrician and that's fine.
| nimbius wrote:
| Disclosure: i never went to college, I went to a trade school.
|
| Colleges really only started scaring the heck out of me when I
| started enjoying my career. After spending a day wrenching in a
| garage, we'd hit miller time and head down to the Soapbox Bar and
| Grill. Over the span of a month or two ordering buckets and
| shooting pool I learned our bartender Javon had a masters in
| biology and his fiancee Cortisha who bussed the tables had a
| bachelors in mining science. The both of them came in well below
| what I earned, had no healthcare and no retirement. I remember
| having a few too many boilermakers one night and I asked why he
| was serving grease monkey clowns like us instead of working on
| flowers. Javon just said theres no work, and the work he would
| get would pay about as well as a fry cook anyway. He had some
| massive college bills too and i didnt understand how those
| worked, but you cant get rid of them like you can a car loan.
|
| That scared the hell out of me. You could waste a hundred grand
| on something I always thought made people into millionaires and
| still wind up serving suds to a drunk in a blue jumper covered in
| soot from a runaway 2 stroke who thinks you "invent flowers." I
| woke up the next morning with a hangover and anxiety.
| IdiocyInAction wrote:
| While I do not want to be rude, statistically speaking, those
| with tertiary education still do better on average than those
| without. It's true that there's outliers and that
| underemployment is a persistent problem (especially in our
| over-educated society), but getting tertiary education might
| still be a better choice than a trade school, depending on your
| situation.
|
| Nothing is without risk and you should inform yourself about
| your job prospects beforehand though. Not every major will pay
| and some will only pay to a select few. One should put much
| thought into major choice (or whether they should go to
| university at all) - it's one of the more impactful choices in
| people's lives.
| Diederich wrote:
| The other replies are interesting and insightful, so I wanted
| to add a little anecdata here.
|
| > some massive college bills
|
| In the late 1980s I started a Computer Science program at Cal
| Poly Pomona https://www.cpp.edu/ If memory serves, my tuition
| for a quarterly full load was less than $300. That's not per
| credit, that was for as many classes as I wanted. Books added
| up to a bit less.
|
| Working at Jack in the Box and later McDonalds, I was making
| minimum wage which was I believe $4.25/hour. Assuming I kept
| 70% of that after taxes it took me about 185 hours to pay my
| combined tuition and books, which comes out to about 19 hours a
| week over the 10 week quarter.
|
| And I did, in fact, work about 20 hours a week.
|
| This doesn't include housing, but it was also fairly
| affordable. I believe another 10 hours a week could have
| covered some basic shared rent. I had a place to live for free,
| fortunately.
|
| EDIT: I haven't done any math for how this would look today,
| but I'm pretty sure it's not quite so friendly.
| vondur wrote:
| At CSU Long Beach, tuition is about 7k per year. We hire our
| student assistants at 13/hr, so they can make around 8 or 9k
| year in salary. Not nearly as cheap when I went, we paid
| around 2k a year for tuition. So if you are willing to go to
| a state school, you can come out with relatively small
| amounts of debt. Now if you go to a really nice private
| University and live on campus, all bets are off.
| Diederich wrote:
| I'm glad to hear that state schools are still reasonably
| inexpensive.
| bsder wrote:
| In California, at least, it used to be that(still may be, but
| my data is a couple years old) you could get about 2 years of
| your prerequisites done at a community college and then use
| that to funnel into the Cal-State schools.
|
| That was a significantly cheaper option for most students.
| And the classes tended to be smaller and, often, much better
| quality.
| moftz wrote:
| My state does something like that. You do an associates at
| the state community college system in a field geared
| towards your planned university major and as long as you
| get good grades, you get guaranteed admission to a state 4
| year school. It helps the student by reducing cost and
| helps the 4 year schools by reducing the number of incoming
| freshmen.
| blhack wrote:
| What is the job you do where somebody thinks you make flowers?
| xenomatic wrote:
| Botanist
| baby wrote:
| your comment reads like bukowski
| lanewinfield wrote:
| was just going to say--I'd read your book.
| gabrielflorit wrote:
| I enjoyed your writing style. Thank you.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| _our bartender Javon had a masters in biology_
|
| That's de-risking, de-skilling and outsourcing. Back then, in
| the last century, the US and Europe had a functioning chemical
| industry. Unfortunately, information technology took off, and
| investment banking discovered that returns are better with
| Facebook than in Pharma, consequently that's where the jobs are
| now. Also, mergers & acquisitions took off in the same time.
| Why invest in research when you can buy up someone else's
| research? Industry research does not exist any longer in the
| sciences. The sciences are not a good proposition any longer if
| you want to make a living.
| mpweiher wrote:
| The financialization of the economy is more a US/UK thing
| than the rest of Europe.
|
| Lots of chemical industry here, etc.
| amiga_500 wrote:
| Yep, financialisation black hole. Cratering living standards,
| partially hidden by printing ever bigger numbers next to
| people's house prices and ignoring that they have no
| retirement savings.
|
| Many of the "industries" beloved by this site are showing
| they are only viable on top of a backbone of "real" jobs like
| industry and manufacturing.
|
| No N95 mask manufacturers, but we can write how sad we are
| about this on facebook. And the media won't tell us the root
| cause, so nothing is learned.
| kanwisher wrote:
| 3M one of the biggest n95 manufactures in the world,
| originated and still has factories in America
| 12elephant wrote:
| N95 is the US standard, so it makes sense the US makes
| more of these than other countries.
|
| Compare production capacity of N95s in the US with FFP2/3
| in the EU, or KN95 in China. Then we'll really see how US
| production capacity stacks up.
|
| To be clear, I have no idea how these production
| capacities stack up. But if we want to evaluate medical
| mask production, this is the comparison that needs to be
| made.
| amiga_500 wrote:
| Yes and the Greeks invented math, but times move on:
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/decades-offshoring-led-mask-
| shor...
| Frost1x wrote:
| You don't have to create and improve in a world you have
| little to no competition with high barrier to entry
| established. You can keep repackaging the same things without
| risk and work on perceptive value of people.
|
| Why innovate and create when I can live like a king just
| playing our economic, governmental, and social systems like a
| fiddle? We're not quite _that_ bad yet but we 're already
| headed down the path in that direction.
| N1H1L wrote:
| In economics this is what is called _rent-seeking behavior_
| , and I think it probably is an exceptionally interesting
| area of research to study how financialization of
| industries modifies rent-seeking behavior in those
| industries. My own hunch is that it probably increases
| significantly.
| amiga_500 wrote:
| I know you aren't promoting it, but to answer your
| question:
|
| > Why innovate and create when I can live like a king just
| playing our economic, governmental, and social systems like
| a fiddle?
|
| Because the entire country is going to implode.
|
| 2008: financial crisis
|
| 2016: political crisis
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| 2008: financial crisis
|
| 2016: political crisis
|
| 2020: deadly pandemic, inducing a financial crisis, while
| also collapsing the real economy, on top of four years of
| political crisis
| reroute1 wrote:
| Political crisis? Yeah I'll pass
| wolco wrote:
| It may pay the same but building experience today would net him
| a better job in the future.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| I saw something similar a couple of decades ago when I was
| living in Austin and working at a well-known game development
| house. There was a Chinese restaurant close to the office, a
| really good one. We ate there all the time, enough to get to
| know a couple of the waiters pretty well. One of them, a guy by
| the name of Bruce, was especially friendly and professional. He
| always remembered us, spoke perfect English, never let our
| drinks run dry. We'd ask to be seated in Bruce's section when
| we saw he was working. He always got big tips.
|
| One day he mentioned that he had an MSEE degree from a
| university back home in China. _Cue record scratch._
|
| That was a deeply unsettling revelation, since a couple of us
| were EE dropouts ourselves. How'd I drop out of school and end
| up with my dream job, while Bruce finished his master's program
| and ended up serving Szechuan shrimp? WTF was up with that?
| What if, in my next life, I'm the one who gets hosed like this?
|
| I didn't wake up the next day with a hangover or anxiety -- not
| with the ego that it took to run in _that_ crowd -- but I
| certainly had a new perspective on things. If people think that
| even a STEM degree is going to be an automatic ticket to ride
| through the good life, there 's some massive disillusionment
| coming.
|
| And I don't think it's going to matter whether you're from
| China or the US or anywhere else. Not in the long run.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Actual boilermaker here.
|
| Can confirm: earn more than my university educated age group;
| no education debt; have home and mortgage that I don't struggle
| to pay; still have plenty of work during the down turn.
|
| Have often thought about living on rice n lentils n going to
| university to get a degree, but this whole pandemic mess has
| made me realise: _well and truly fuck that for a joke_.
| moftz wrote:
| It's all a betting game. Go to trade school and get a decent
| job making good money but have little upwards mobility other
| than opening your own business. Or go to university and hope
| you pick a worthwhile major and get a great job out of school
| where you have a lot of upward mobility. University is risky
| but if you can pick something like electrical engineering and
| end up at a top firm, you are probably set for life. I've got
| friends with university degrees that have done very well for
| themselves and those that just couldn't find a job in that
| field so now they work in retail. Some of them did everything
| right but just couldn't find high-paying work (computer
| science), others choose majors that fit their passions but
| don't have any immediate real world use (english).
|
| I think some people have huge expectations for what their
| degree will get them that just aren't reasonable. I picked a
| engineering major that would pay big but also fit my passion,
| got the job I wanted, and have constant work lined up for me
| for the next 5 years. I got very lucky at the university
| betting game. If I hadn't gotten into college or decided to
| drop out when I had to take an semester off due to grades, I
| probably would have decided to try trade school.
| mettamage wrote:
| Carpenter
|
| 1. Work
|
| 2. Buy house
|
| 2b. Rent house out
|
| 2bb. Problem? Fix it with your carpenter skills or trade
| school buddies (plasterer, electrician, you name it, they
| know them).
|
| 3. Work a few years more
|
| 4. Buy second house
|
| 5. Get a few more houses.
|
| This is what my carpenter buddies are doing. And I was the
| smart kid in my class. I guess they have the last laugh,
| they are all on their second houses now.
| darkerside wrote:
| I guess Javon never learned about second order effects in
| college.
|
| > the work he would get would pay about as well as a fry cook
| anyway
|
| You start in the same situation, but with the room for
| advancement in a skilled field, you have the opportunity to
| either pursue growth in your role, or leverage those skills
| into a related but more lucrative career. Avoiding dead ends is
| much more important than your velocity, assuming you have
| enough time to let things play out.
| dnautics wrote:
| it goes further up. Luckily I was an only child to a single-
| worker-family midlevel government employee that rode the
| interest cliff and was willing to spend gobs of money for my
| (quite good) college, and I went for a technical grad program
| that pays you sub-minimum-wage (but no educational debt!) to do
| 100 hours a week in a lab for seven years, so I had no debt --
| but I quit my postdoc to drive for lyft for a year and a half,
| and I made more money and had less stress driving for lyft
| (yes, after expenses) than I did in my postdoc. Everyone
| thought I was crazy. Well, maybe I was, but I wasn't the only
| postdoc that had quit and was driving for lyft full-time.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I don't understand how people can spend 4 years pursuing a
| major and never spend 5 minutes googling job prospects and
| salaries for their major.
| gwd wrote:
| > He had some massive college bills too and i didnt understand
| how those worked, but you cant get rid of them like you can a
| car loan.
|
| This is the thing that is really the most shameful and
| outrageous thing about the US system. Our entire K-12
| educational system and our culture is set up to paint a college
| degree as a ticket to "the good life". Then an 18-year-old,
| potentially with parents who aren't great at math but have
| great aspirations for their child, is sat down and asked to
| sign a load of papers, not realizing that this will lock them
| into decades of unforgiveable debt and wage slavery.
|
| There's a reason many ancient religions forbid loaning money at
| interest entirely; and it's the same reason we have bankruptcy
| laws. None of those reasons somehow go away just because it's a
| student loan -- on the contrary, an 18-year-old thinking
| they're buying a ticket to a better life is far _more_
| vulnerable than the vast majority of people who will ever be
| seeking a loan.
|
| All of us should be regularly lobbying our lawmakers to make
| student loans dischargeable by bankruptcy, just like any other
| loan.
| maximente wrote:
| no need for lobbying, apparently:
|
| https://www.npr.org/2020/01/22/797330613/myth-busted-
| turns-o...
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >This is the thing that is really the most shameful and
| outrageous thing about the US system. Our entire K-12
| educational system and our culture is set up to paint a
| college degree as a ticket to "the good life". Then an
| 18-year-old, potentially with parents who aren't great at
| math but have great aspirations for their child, is sat down
| and asked to sign a load of papers, not realizing that this
| will lock them into decades of unforgiveable debt and wage
| slavery.
|
| It's because one generation ago, college was a great way to
| access a pretty good life for most people, and was affordable
| on an average person's income.
| [deleted]
| optimiz3 wrote:
| > access a pretty good life for most people
|
| Depends on the degree, school, and student. Still true for
| STEM and medicine.
| panzagl wrote:
| You mean 'still true for a small selection of engineering
| degrees/CS and pre-med'
| eldavido wrote:
| I have this evolving metaphor of the US as a financially
| overextended household or business.
|
| We've lived large since WWII. Bought new cars every few
| years, built the suburbs, provided quality education to a lot
| of people, etc. Is it all that surprising that people want to
| "go back" to this? For many people in the US, it was GREAT.
|
| But it's all been at great cost. The '60s through the '90s
| were a time of huge debt accumulation at every level of
| society, from the US Treasury borrowing, to state and local
| governments underfunding their pensions, even down to
| households, with ballooning credit card balances and ever-
| greater levels of mortgage debt.
|
| Now we get to pay for it. Partly that means higher taxes, so
| we can finally properly fund social security and medicare,
| and repay the literal trillions of dollars we just borrowed
| in the past few weeks. Partly taking better care of the
| environment, which let's be honest, is going to cost a ton of
| money.
|
| It also means some hard choices about what we aren't going to
| pay for anymore. An entitlement that one should be able to
| study pretty much anything, for four years, with world-class
| experts, as a national birthright -- maybe something we can't
| afford? In my view, we need to start being a bit -- not a
| lot, just a little more -- economic and practical in how we
| think about education. Maybe night school or Khan Academy is
| a better place to study medieval history, or divinity, or any
| number of wholesome, life-enhancing subjects, than a four-
| year liberal arts college. Maybe more people should think a
| little harder about how their investments -- let's face it,
| that's what they are -- into education, will transform into
| marketable skills. And maybe the government should stop
| subsidizing all this, so that colleges will trim down what it
| costs so that it's actually affordable.
|
| We can fix this, it's just going to take a while, and a lot
| of long, slow, not particularly newsworthy or sexy,
| adjustments.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| > Now we get to pay for it. Partly that means higher taxes,
| so we can finally properly fund social security and
| medicare, and repay the literal trillions of dollars we
| just borrowed in the past few weeks.
|
| Sounds like a great deal for those who were alive then. I
| don't think it's as simple as you suggest.
| eldavido wrote:
| I'm not saying borrowing for the stimulus was necessarily
| a bad idea. Only that, unless you think the current level
| of debt is either sustainable long-term (maybe?) or that
| it can continue to rise, that the only rational
| conclusion is that our material standard of living has to
| decrease. That seems to be the only rational conclusion
| when you see 25% increases in US national debt in an
| environment where GDP is growing 1-2%/year.
|
| We've made _a lot_ of "promises" in this country in the
| past 50 years. Senior healthcare. Education. Old-age
| pensions. Government worker pensions. Being the world's
| police force. I'm only saying that if you take a hard
| look at all this, and we can't or won't continue to
| afford it, some things have to be cut. Will it be four-
| year college for everyone? Or will it be granny's
| healthcare? Anyone who says "we have to continue to do
| all if it" is just kidding themself. We just don't have
| the money.
|
| I'm not long-term optimistic about what it means that the
| US isn't funding NATO as heavily as it used to be, but I
| do have to give Trump credit for making this a kitchen
| table issue. Being the world's police force is damned
| expensive and I wouldn't mind if we cut that back a bit
| if that's what it takes to balance, e.g. social security.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| Fair enough. I would agree at least, that spending needs
| to decrease. Figuring out how, is, as you've touched on,
| a whole other issue.
| tharne wrote:
| > There's a reason many ancient religions forbid loaning
| money at interest entirely;
|
| It's sad that most cultures understood the danger and
| fragility that debt brings, and yet we've all somehow how
| forgotten it. We even have terms like "good debt".
| xmprt wrote:
| Debt is good. It's what enables people who don't have the
| money up front to start businesses or buy houses. It
| becomes bad when people are relying on it to finance small
| purchases or when loans have predatory terms (like credit
| card payments, payday loans, etc.)
| vkou wrote:
| > Debt is good. It's what enables people who don't have
| the money up front to start businesses or buy houses.
|
| The reason people go into debt to buy houses is _because_
| everyone is using debt to buy houses, thus driving the
| prices up.
|
| If mortgages were capped at 5-year terms, the price of
| houses would be a lot lower, which would be great for
| society - for the same reason that having cheaper
| electricity is great for society.
| briandear wrote:
| Good debt is also known as leverage. It's essential in the
| real estate business. Incurring a debt for a depreciating
| asset is dumb (cars, boats,) but for an asset that
| appreciates, it actually is good.
| logfromblammo wrote:
| Housing also depreciates. It just so happens that for
| much of history, the lands that those houses are attached
| to have appreciated fast enough to counteract the loss.
| ericmcer wrote:
| buy house, start new business, buy equipment for existing
| business = good debt. Lifted $40k truck that you get with 0
| down = bad debt.
|
| Unfortunately our culture and multiple industries strongly
| push people towards bad debt.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| I prefer the terms, "productive debt" and "consumptive
| debt". Productive debt allows you to produce more things. A
| business loan, for example. Or even a small loan for an
| inexpensive car so you can go to work would also be
| productive debt. Consumptive debt is a large loan for a car
| that is way more than the minimum, or for most recreational
| spend.
| loteck wrote:
| Debt is simply a way to "materialize" risk. There are
| certainly good risks and bad risks. Leaving good risks
| untaken is one way to miss out on experiencing growth.
| justAnotherNET wrote:
| Yep. We created a society where everyone pays 150%-250% for
| everything over time just to fund a parasitic banker class
| cmurf wrote:
| One party stood vehemently, unmoving, in 2005 to change the
| law in order to make it more difficult for student loans to
| be subject to bankruptcy, based on false pretences. And quite
| literally no one cared. There's no political will to make
| student loans more easily dischargeable, even merely
| repealing the 2005 law. Just like there's no political will
| to consider education a right, let alone higher education. In
| the U.S. education is a product you buy, rich people get more
| and better versions of it.
|
| But as it turns out, an infinitesimal number of students even
| try to have these loans discharged.
| wolfgke wrote:
| > Our entire K-12 educational system and our culture is set
| up to paint a college degree as a ticket to "the good life".
|
| That's called "marketing".
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| > Then an 18-year-old, potentially with parents who aren't
| great at math but have great aspirations for their child, is
| sat down and asked to sign a load of papers, not realizing
| that this will lock them into decades of unforgiveable debt
| and wage slavery.
|
| Well yeah, because us "adults" don't wanna pay the state and
| local taxes necessary to keep public universities affordable.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| Why is this downvoted? In the European nations (with the
| notable exception of Britain), university is free or nearly
| so.
| pmorici wrote:
| It's not 'free' it's paid for through taxes.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| Good point. The rich need to pay taxes, else there is
| civilization only for the rich. Consider Alabama, a
| lowtax state, thanks to the 1901 constitution that the
| landowners and industrialists wrote to protect their
| wealth and look what shape the state is in.
| dyadic wrote:
| It is free to the person that receives it.
|
| Imagine I bake and give you a cake, it's still a "free
| cake" even though I've put the work into baking it and
| other people have put the work into harvesting the
| ingredients and bringing them to me.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.XPD.TOTL.GD.ZS?en
| d=2...
|
| Our government spends more money on education in both a
| relative and an absolute sense than the European average.
| chongli wrote:
| It may be free but fewer people attend university in
| European countries (apart from wealthy Luxembourg) than
| in the US. So essentially, the "free" university is a tax
| on everyone that mostly benefits the rich. I don't think
| Americans want that.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Attitudes such as this are the problem. Civilization has a
| cost, that cost is paid with taxes.
|
| Edit: I didn't pickup in the sarcasm. Mea culpa.
| Gollapalli wrote:
| The guy was agreeing with you.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| You know I sarcasm-quoted "adults" to indicate the
| immaturity of not paying for civilization-upkeep costs,
| right?
| vkou wrote:
| > This is the thing that is really the most shameful and
| outrageous thing about the US system. Our entire K-12
| educational system and our culture is set up to paint a
| college degree as a ticket to "the good life".
|
| That's because it _is_ a ticket to the good life if you are
| of average intelligence, average ability, average
| connections, and average parents. Or, more specifically, it
| is a ticket to a less bad life.
|
| Not everyone can go into trades. Not everyone should go into
| trades. If you are an average person, and you're not working
| trades, and you don't have a college degree, you're going to
| be capped out at waiting tables and flipping burgers.
|
| At least these masters-degree holders can _apply_ for crappy
| low-end office jobs. You actually get evenings and weekends
| off with most of those, and you 're unlikely to get a chef
| screaming at you while you're holding a pot of hot oil.
| jedberg wrote:
| > All of us should be regularly lobbying our lawmakers to
| make student loans dischargeable by bankruptcy, just like any
| other loan.
|
| The reason they aren't dischargeable is because what bank in
| their right mind would give a loan to an 18 year old with no
| collateral? They only guarantee they get that it will be paid
| back is the fact that it can't be discharged.
|
| Student loans would dry up overnight if they could be
| discharged at bankruptcy.
|
| That being said, I actually think that's a good thing,
| because it would force colleges to charge reasonable tuition
| rates and also offer scholarships if they want to get the
| best students.
|
| But barring shifting to a European model of college funding,
| I don't see the US allowing dischargeable loans, nor do I
| think they should, because the reality of it is that colleges
| won't reduce their rates nor increase their scholarships,
| they would just be completely out of reach of poor and middle
| class students.
| novok wrote:
| America had dischargeable student loans before the early
| 2000s, and the education banking system did not implode
| from that. I think the student loan system would be fine
| with bankruptcy of student loans too after much gashing of
| teeth.
| bsder wrote:
| > Student loans would dry up overnight if they could be
| discharged at bankruptcy.
|
| So? That's the marketing evaluating what the loan is
| _actually_ worth.
|
| Bankruptcy isn't a magic "Get Out Of Jail Free" card.
|
| Your credit is trashed at a point when you might want to
| get married, buy a house, start a family, etc.
| labcomputer wrote:
| > Bankruptcy isn't a magic "Get Out Of Jail Free" card.
|
| Except that it is in this case. The order of operations
| is:
|
| 1. Take out student loan
|
| 2. Graduate
|
| 3. Get a job, spouse, mortgage, and new car
|
| 4. Declare bankruptcy to discharge student loans
|
| 5. Profit
|
| The order of steps 3 and 4 are critical. Your car and
| house are collateral for their respective loans, so they
| don't go away when you declare bankruptcy. Since you have
| a house and new car, you typically _don 't need_ good
| credit for the 5-7 years it takes before people will
| start loaning you money at reasonable rates again.
|
| This isn't some theoretical pattern. It's what people
| actually did. Especially doctors, because they could
| often qualify for nice mortgages while still in residency
| ("doctor loans").
| Swizec wrote:
| Here's a lifehack: Attend college in Europe then move to
| USA for that high paying job.
|
| Works really well. Cheap to free education, better skills
| because you're not just living the college life and
| professors have little incentive to make it easy. It's
| great.
|
| Hell you don't even have to fully graduate to get most of
| the benefit.
| jedberg wrote:
| Aren't European colleges the same price as American
| colleges if you're not European?
| evolve2k wrote:
| Germany for example offers free education for
| Americans/foreigners. I remember this was discussed a
| while back on HN.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9308261
| foepys wrote:
| Some states already require foreign students to pay
| 500EUR each semester and others will follow. On top of
| that you will have to guarantee that you can support your
| life in Germany, meaning you are not eligible for _any_
| kind of government support if things get tough or you
| lose your job.
|
| Going there thinking everything will be provided is wrong
| and the COVID-19 crisis will get a lot of foreign
| students into deep trouble as they lose their jobs and
| can't support themselves.
| voqv wrote:
| Only one state (BW) requires payment with no clear
| indication that others will follow.
|
| > you will have to guarantee that you can support your
| life in Germany What's so special about that?
| snowAbstraction wrote:
| It depends on the country and sometimes the institution
| and program. Here is a price list from a Swedish
| university with the approx. USD amounts being between
| $10,000 to $30,000 depending on the program:
|
| https://www.slu.se/en/education/application-and-
| admission/tu...
| Macha wrote:
| Depends where you go. I know we had some Chinese students
| in my college, they paid EUR10000 a year, compared to the
| Irish students who paid EUR3000 a year.
|
| As far as I've heard, US colleges are on the order of
| $10000+ per semester.
| unexpected wrote:
| $10,000 a semester is cheap. The current price at the
| university I attended is $73k a year.
| pc86 wrote:
| There's also a point about sticker price vs. actual
| price. Anyone actually paying six figures for a
| Bachelor's degree is not only getting fleeced by an
| expensive school, but also can probably afford it (no
| need-based scholarships or grants?) and is also not very
| smart (no merit-based scholarships or grants?).
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| My school was 30,000 a year, and my wife's state school
| was definitely less than 10k a year. There's a really
| wide variance.
| et-al wrote:
| If you're never going to pay European taxes, that seems
| like an unethical life hack. And if enough people
| actually do this, I wouldn't be surprised if European
| universities start raising their foreign students
| tuition.
| jmeister wrote:
| This will also have the beneficial effect of drastically
| reducing immature America-bashing among the young.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| I really doubt this. Irish people are plenty familiar
| with Britain and Canadians with the US. Doesn't stop
| bashing at all.
| decompiled_dev wrote:
| The school admitting the student should co-sign the loan.
| If the school is confident in the value of their program
| they should assume the risk.
| wespiser_2018 wrote:
| This is the basic idea behind an Income Share Agreement,
| or ISA, where the student pays for the education out of
| their future. Don't make money == school doesn't get
| paid! This would be a nice solution to the current
| educational mess we are in.
| jedberg wrote:
| A funny idea, but also a great way to make sure that
| schools only offer majors with a high average post-grad
| salary.
| itronitron wrote:
| It's a net-gain for the school programs that do this
| well.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Is that bad? Humanities departments are already shrinking
| without any changes because there's just no demand. It
| doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to me that if you are
| determined to get a degree in philosophy, which has
| virtually no job prospects outside of teaching the next
| generation of philosophy students, you have to go do that
| at one of a handful of schools that carve out a niche for
| themselves with a philosophy department.
| jedberg wrote:
| > Is that bad?
|
| It depends on your point of view. Should college be a
| trade school or should it stick to it's roots of
| broadening one's horizons?
|
| I found my philosophy classes quite enlightening. They
| were required for my degree in CogSci.
|
| If my school didn't have a philosophy major, it wouldn't
| have a philosophy department, and I would never have had
| those classes.
|
| Also, there are some majors that lead to professional
| school. English/Rhetoric are often majors of people going
| into law school for example.
| Reedx wrote:
| Philosophy is great, but it's not something you need to
| go into debt for. Did you learn anything in those classes
| that you couldn't have learned on your own via books and
| free lectures on YouTube, etc?
| jedberg wrote:
| I think you're missing the point of college.
|
| Anything you learn in college can be learned from a book
| or YouTube. The value of college is the curation the
| professor provides and the people you are doing it with.
| toast0 wrote:
| > If my school didn't have a philosophy major, it
| wouldn't have a philosophy department, and I would never
| have had those classes.
|
| I went to an engineering school, the only majors were X
| Engineering, Business, and Nursing. Somehow, we had
| professors for the humanities classes, so I don't think a
| major is a requirement.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| The problem is that universities are neither trade
| schools nor a place to broaden your horizons. It is a way
| to get a credential that you can use to signal your worth
| on the job market.
|
| If testing your skills was done outside of school GRE-
| style, would all these people who pay many thousands of
| dollars to get a diploma pay so much? I really doubt it.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| >It is a way to get a credential that you can use to
| signal your worth on the job market.
|
| What a sad state of affairs we find ourselves in that
| this attitude is common.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| > Should college be a trade school or should it stick to
| it's roots of broadening one's horizons?
|
| The term "liberal arts" means "free arts". The root of
| this term is that Athenian society was composed of a
| small class of free families and everyone else was a
| slave owned by those families. The free families were
| wealthy enough to afford a liberal education for their
| free sons.
|
| Everyone else had to work.
|
| Those are the roots of the liberal arts.
| kaibee wrote:
| We have robots instead of slaves now. We, as a society,
| can afford to provide a liberal arts education to
| everyone. In fact, we already do, for grades 1-12. I
| think the main issue is that that education fails people
| who could progress through it faster (and those who need
| more time in certain areas).
| [deleted]
| abnry wrote:
| It brings up the old joke about being a philosophy major:
| "Two things to do with a Phd in Philosophy: 1. Teach. 2.
| Pose the question: 'But do you know why you want fries
| with that?'"
|
| College is an investment that costs hundreds of thousands
| of dollars. When you invest that much money, you should
| expect a ROI. If you can't even put roof over your head
| or eat with that investment, then it is really hard to
| say it was a good idea.
| kmstout wrote:
| "I'm a philosophy major. That means I can think deep
| thoughts about being unemployed."
|
| -- Bruce Lee
| jchrisa wrote:
| As a Philosophy major who has succeeded in tech, I think
| tech would be better off with more humanities people
| involved. Writing code isn't the hard part, when you are
| solving big problems.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Philsophy majors are a common target for ridicule, but
| the fact of the matter is that corporations go out of
| their way to hire Philosophy majors to be problem-solvers
| of various types because they essentially have a degree
| in critical thinking.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| They'd be better off hiring people with engineering
| degrees (non-software). That's applied critical thinking
| and creative problem solving all in one.
|
| I really don't know why there's this insistence that
| humanities has a monopoly on teaching critical thinking.
| lordnacho wrote:
| What's wrong with software engineers? Surely there's a
| fair bit of critical thinking involved there, too?
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| I meant that if employers were looking for people who
| were adept at critical thinking and software developers
| didn't fit the bill (the original posters implication)
| that there was a category of people who would be even
| more adept at it than philosophers. Sorry if I was
| unclear.
| teh_infallible wrote:
| As someone who majored in English, I assert that the
| emphasis on STEM and shift away from the humanities is
| causing serious problems in our society.
|
| Specifically, having a population lacking in critical
| reading skills makes everyone more susceptible to
| propaganda, and less able to critique and assess flawed
| arguments in writing.
|
| If you want to know why, for example, our political
| "debates" are shallow circuses of misdirection and name
| calling, look at the state of the humanities.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| >Specifically, having a population lacking in critical
| reading skills makes everyone more susceptible to
| propaganda, and less able to critique and assess flawed
| arguments in writing.
|
| 1. Humanities does not teach any sort of critical
| thinking more than other classes, and if anything I found
| my STEM classes to teach more critical thinking because
| of more formal systems of proof or statistics needed to
| back a point.
|
| 2. A very large percentage of the population doesn't go
| to college. If we wait to teach the basic skills in
| college, it is already too late. This type of thinking
| needs to be taught in grade school.
|
| >If you want to know why, for example, our political
| "debates" are shallow circuses of misdirection and name
| calling, look at the state of the humanities.
|
| Why wouldn't this be a symptom of the market? There is
| money to be made in controversy and click bait, and that
| applies just as well in politics.
| greglindahl wrote:
| Wow, I had no idea that STEM education results in people
| who lack critical reading skills.
|
| You didn't offer any support for your claim, though,
| which triggers an alert from my critical reading skills.
|
| Did I pass the test? I did major in STEM.
| btilly wrote:
| Your argument assumes that taking humanities is required
| to develop critical reading skills.
|
| However attempts to measure critical reading skills, for
| example in standardized tests such as the GREs,
| consistently find that STEM majors are better at critical
| reading than humanities majors!
|
| Secondly, critical reading is not the only required skill
| for critiquing and assessing potentially flawed
| arguments. Quantitative reasoning is also needed. For
| example you can't assess public policy questions about
| COVID-19 without quantitative reasoning. However STEM
| courses are far more likely to teach quantitative
| reasoning than humanities courses.
|
| This critique of your argument is brought to you by
| someone with a STEM degree.
| potta_coffee wrote:
| Funny, I was exposed to more propaganda in university
| than anywhere else. Are you saying that only humanities
| majors are educated enough to recognize propaganda?
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| Just 40 years ago it was pretty rare for someone to go to
| college, so I don't think you can blame a shift away from
| humanities on that.
| twic wrote:
| You don't have to look very hard at all to find people
| who are participants in and cheerleaders for those
| debates who have degrees in the humanities. Most
| journalists, for example.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Is it not the case that most people still do not go to
| university? Then what is having a few humanities majors
| going to change?
|
| Political debates are a circus because the political
| system was designed in a different era that didn't have
| reality shows and endless mind melting entertainment.
| irishcoffee wrote:
| You're unfortunately disproving your own point.
|
| > Specifically, having a population lacking in critical
| reading skills makes everyone more susceptible to
| propaganda, and less able to critique and assess flawed
| arguments in writing.
|
| Do I need to point out all the flaws in this sentence or
| can you critically read your own writing?
|
| > If you want to know why, for example, our political
| "debates" are shallow circuses of misdirection and name
| calling, look at the state of the humanities.
|
| Would you agree that the majority of politicians are
| lawyers, or at the very least non-STEM majors? What
| you're claiming then, is that humanities majors create
| and participate in "shallow circuses of misdirection and
| name calling"
|
| Was that the point you were hoping to make?
| WalterBright wrote:
| Considering that humanities majors tend to believe in
| socialism does not burnish their critical reading skills
| and resistance to propaganda.
|
| The reality of the history of socialism is one of
| failure.
|
| And yes, I do understand that everyone thinks that those
| who disagree with them are ill-informed and susceptible
| to propaganda, and those who prefer socialism will think
| that of me :-)
| [deleted]
| gvjddbnvdrbv wrote:
| Socialism in the form of social democracy has built some
| very very nice countries here in Scandinavian.
| WalterBright wrote:
| 20% of Norway's GDP comes from oil pumped out of the
| ground and flows to the government. It's enough to cover
| the deficits of socialism. The others keep enough of a
| free market to keep things afloat, but are not known for
| being economic powerhouses. None have tried communal food
| production yet, for good reason.
| [deleted]
| bosie wrote:
| I am not following your argument, is your first and
| second sentence connected?
|
| why is a mathematican less likely to be able to critique
| and assess a flawed argument compared to an English
| major? why is an English major less likely to fall for
| propaganda compared to a computer science major?
| traverseda wrote:
| Are universities in the US being used as an expensive
| stand-in for the failing k-12 education system? At least
| the basics of that kind of critical reading is something
| that the english classes in high school should teach.
| 0xEFF wrote:
| Psychology and the social sciences have another
| explanation: Politics is mostly about how people feel and
| has little to do with how or what people think.
| jerf wrote:
| I think one of the major reasons you see this is that if
| you're going to go to college and come out with debt that
| takes you 20 years to repay, crippling you financially
| while you do [1], any reasonably smart person is going to
| ensure that they come out with skills that will justify
| that. If you want people to feel like they have the
| resources to spend on humanities, it needs to be cheap
| enough to justify it.
|
| And the truth is, there's no effing reason for a
| humanities course to put you into that kind of debt.
| Cheap (often free!) books, a room to meet in, and some
| small groups for slightly-focused discussion among the
| students shouldn't be costing on the order of a thousand-
| dollars per credit hour (per student!) over the course of
| your compounding-interest loan. It's a terrible value for
| the money; if it wasn't for the credential nobody would
| be doing it because if you just want the knowledge/wisdom
| there are _far_ cheaper ways to get it.
| irishcoffee wrote:
| The meat of the below quote: you dropped a hundred and
| fifty grand on a fuckin' education you coulda got for a
| dollar fifty in late charges at the Public Library.
|
| Quoting the whole thing:
|
| """ CLARK: There's no problem. I was just hoping you
| could give me some insight into the evolution of the
| market economy in the southern colonies. My contention is
| that prior to the Revolutionary War, the economic
| modalities--especially in the southern colonies--could
| most aptly be characterized as agrarian pre-capital--
|
| WILL: [interrupting] Of course that's your contention.
| You're a first year grad student. You just got finished
| reading some Marxian historian, Pete Garrison probably,
| you're gonna be convinced of that until next month when
| you get to James Lemon, then you're gonna be talking
| about how the economies of Virginia and Pennsylvania were
| entrepreneurial and capitalist way back in 1740. That's
| gonna last until next year, you're gonna be in here
| regurgitating Gordon Wood, talkin' about, you know, the
| Pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects
| of military mobilization.
|
| CLARK: [taken aback] Well as a matter of fact I won't,
| because Wood drastically underestimates the impact of --
|
| WILL: "Wood drastically underestimates the impact of
| social distinctions predicated upon wealth, especially
| inherited wealth..." You got that from Vickers, Work in
| Essex County, Page 98, right? Yeah I read that too. Were
| you gonna plagiarize the whole thing for us--you have any
| thoughts of--of your own on this matter? Or do--is that
| your thing, you come into a bar, you read some obscure
| passage and then you pretend, you pawn it off as your own
| --your own idea just to impress some girls, embarrass my
| friend?
|
| [Clark is stunned]
|
| WILL: See the sad thing about a guy like you is in about
| 50 years you're gonna start doing some thinking on your
| own and you're gonna come up with the fact that there are
| two certainties in life. One, don't do that. And two, you
| dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin' education
| you coulda got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the
| Public Library. """
|
| https://genius.com/Good-will-hunting-good-will-hunting-
| bar-s...
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| And in another movie Tony Stark built an arc reactor in a
| cave with a box of scraps.
| irishcoffee wrote:
| Yes, a comic book hero did comic book hero things in a
| comic book hero movie. Not sure what point you think
| you're making.
| btilly wrote:
| The point is to demonstrate that if a fictional character
| in a work of fiction does X and it works out, that does
| not serve as evidence that a real person doing X will
| work out in reality.
| irishcoffee wrote:
| You can't read a book and understand it unless you pay
| someone to sit in a class and tell you how to think about
| what you read?
| btilly wrote:
| Do you understand the distinction between "does not serve
| as evidence" and "serves as evidence against"?
|
| Now in fact it is possible to learn from self-directed
| study. But your odds of learning are massively better
| when you get to ask questions, test your understanding by
| talking with others, and have your ability to explain
| your understanding graded.
|
| Which means that, on average, people get more value out
| of going through a book in a classroom setting than they
| get by reading it on their own.
|
| Whether that is enough value to justify tuition is
| another story entirely...
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Well, that just because it's in a movie doesn't mean it's
| true.
|
| Few people would get to any sort of level of
| understanding of that sort of material just by reading
| it, and just because a movie genius can do it doesn't
| mean it's easy.
|
| If we replaced all those examples with engineering
| textbooks, wouldn't it be the exact same, if it not, why?
| We learn he's an untrained math prodigy later on in the
| movie, so he doesn't need any education. It would appear
| a STEM education is a waste as well.
| irishcoffee wrote:
| So in order to understand something, you need to a.) and
| then b.) have someone tell you how to think about what
| you read? While paying them? You can't wrestle with deep
| and complex topics unless someone tells you how to think?
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Not at all, but having someone who can provide context
| sure helps with a lot of works - often these works are
| building on centuries or millennia of thought that they
| may assume you're aware of and that help place the
| arguments.
|
| Again I ask, given that textbooks exist, can you make the
| argument that STEM is any different?
| irishcoffee wrote:
| As a STEM major at a large public university, my
| classmates and I decided that at a meta-level, STEM
| majors learned how to learn new and complicated things
| quickly in order to get good grades in classes. Also, as
| a STEM major, I found attending class less than helpful
| most of the time. I do remember spending quite a lot of
| time in either a computer lab or in the library fighting
| my way through problems. Math, physics, chem,
| programming. Attending lectures was largely someone
| regurgitating either slides or a textbook.
|
| I assumed this was true for most people in STEM majors in
| college, no?
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| > STEM majors learned how to learn new and complicated
| things quickly in order to get good grades in classes.
|
| That's a skill that the liberal arts pick up as well.
|
| > I do remember spending quite a lot of time in either a
| computer lab or in the library fighting my way through
| problems.
|
| Will did that all on his own, without the need for a
| college. You're also describing a technical institute.
|
| I don't see any skills there that really require a
| university either.
| irishcoffee wrote:
| I didn't realize we were in violent agreement. I posted a
| fun quote from a movie I like that was relevant to the
| parent. You replied with a touch of snark and I felt
| compelled to defend myself from your comment. And now
| here we are. Heh.
| take_a_breath wrote:
| ==philosophy, which has virtually no job prospects
| outside of teaching the next generation of philosophy
| students==
|
| Is this true? It seems some tech companies disagree: CA
| Technologies [1], Y Combinator [2], Google [3]. Is it
| possible that you are not well versed in what philosophy
| majors actually study and how well that might translate
| to a working environment?
|
| [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/16/tech-talent-gap-
| looks-to-phi... [2]
| https://www.fastcompany.com/40440952/why-this-tech-ceo-
| keeps... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
| switch/wp/2015/08/26...
| dnautics wrote:
| If that's the case then the philosophy department should
| have no trouble bankrolling their program with
| accessibility for all on a combination of some wealthy
| kids and some majors who snag a job at well-paying tech
| companies. Or did you miss the class on inductive
| reasoning?
| take_a_breath wrote:
| Maybe you're right. I was simply using examples to
| question the underlying assumption. You seem to have
| skipped over that.
| lallysingh wrote:
| I thought Philosophy was essentially pre-law.
| filoleg wrote:
| Yeah, philosophy was a bad example of a "non-high-
| earnings" degree.
|
| Sure, there are plenty of whack philosophy programs that
| lead nowhere. But if you go to a school with a rigorous
| philosophy program (which doesn't mean only
| Ivies/Stanford/etc.), you can easily go for a law degree
| or a finance job afterwards. Rigorous philosophy programs
| usually involve tons of discrete math and logic classes,
| and mastering that opens a lot of doors. I only took up
| reading philosophy material after graduating, but it is
| very obvious to me that knowing that in school would have
| helped me with my more theoretical/math-y CompSci classes
| tremendously.
|
| Not even talking about some other good applications of
| that degree that I might not be aware of due to not being
| a philosophy major myself.
| [deleted]
| xfitm3 wrote:
| Student loans should absolutely be dischargeable. It will
| force tuition to drop to something affordable. It's
| advertised as a ticket to a good job and that's just false.
| jedberg wrote:
| I addressed this in my comment. You'd end up with schools
| not lowering their prices, they would just be available
| only to the upper class.
| panzagl wrote:
| There are not enough upper class to go to all of the
| schools currently operating- colleges would have to lower
| prices or disappear.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| Universities don't hike prices for the sake of extracting
| more money from students. They do so because it's the
| only way to make up for the enormous cuts in funding from
| states, which have historically provided the bulk of
| revenue that universities see.
| jedberg wrote:
| Yes exactly. The small schools would just disappear, and
| the big names would keep going.
| lallysingh wrote:
| Why? Schools can't be cheaper?
| thorwasdfasdf wrote:
| or the small schools find a way to make education more
| cost effective. i'm sure there are tons of businesses
| that would be happy to give you an online education for
| cheap if it were legally allowable.
| iguy wrote:
| Clearly both would happen, right? Harvard doesn't set
| their prices based on loans, they wouldn't care. Some
| mid-rank colleges would disappear, and some would adapt
| to serve the new market.
| jedberg wrote:
| > Harvard doesn't set their prices based on loans,
|
| They most definitely do:
|
| https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2006/10/25/tuition-
| increa...
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| This source does not have any information related to
| loans availability correlating with tuition prices. Are
| you making the assumption that tuition hikes can only be
| caused by loan availability?
| iguy wrote:
| Well perhaps I should have said, they don't have to.
| Right now they need not bother to charge at all. And how
| they set the sticker price is only a small part of the
| picture anyway, since they gather near-perfect
| information about your parents ability to pay (or to
| donate!) before anything gets agreed.
| spaced-out wrote:
| So you're saying small schools would choose to close
| rather than lower their prices and stay open?
| chongli wrote:
| It's not really a choice. Those schools tend to have very
| expensive, high maintenance campuses. I suppose they
| could also let all the buildings deteriorate but then
| they risk being closed against their well due to safety
| concerns.
|
| In truth, the costs of these schools results from a
| ratchet effect. Wealthy donors buy the fancy buildings
| which the schools are then stuck maintaining. It's a
| classic case of a white elephant [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_elephant
| spaced-out wrote:
| It's not uncommon for organizations to have to downsize
| due to changing economic conditions.
|
| In fact, when people ask why colleges are paying
| administrators 6-7 figure salaries while classes are
| taught by lecturers making a fraction of that, they say
| they need to compete with private industry for top
| talent. I would hope that an administrator making
| $300,000+ can come up with a more creative plan for what
| to do with high maintenance buildings than just "let them
| deteriorate".
| unexpected wrote:
| I disagree a bit. The big name schools can get away with
| charging their current prices, but small schools would
| radically re-think. No more football stadiums, fancy
| dorms, etc. People still need to get educated. The rest
| of the world has universities with sensible pricing -
| only the US is an anomaly.
| brightball wrote:
| I think they should for the same reason you point out. The
| cost of school has gone up due to the endless supply of
| loan money mixing with demand.
|
| That cost will go waaaaaaay down if the loan money dries
| up, potentially back to the point where it was when
| "working your way through college" was possible.
| lilott8 wrote:
| Isn't this why the cosigner exists on student loans?
| Basically the cosigner is the one with collateral, capable
| of meeting the terms of the loan. While IANAL, my
| understanding of reading a master promissory note for
| student loans is that basically the debt falls to the
| cosigner should the primary be unable to meet the financial
| obligations in any way (after wage garnishing, etc).
| jedberg wrote:
| Yes cosigners exist, but the loan still has no
| collateral. Usually a loan pays for a tangible asset that
| can be taken away when you fail to pay.
| btilly wrote:
| _The reason they aren 't dischargeable is because what bank
| in their right mind would give a loan to an 18 year old
| with no collateral? They only guarantee they get that it
| will be paid back is the fact that it can't be discharged._
|
| And yet somehow banks were happy to do so until 2005.
|
| _Student loans would dry up overnight if they could be
| discharged at bankruptcy._
|
| _That being said, I actually think that 's a good thing,
| because it would force colleges to charge reasonable
| tuition rates and also offer scholarships if they want to
| get the best students._
|
| Both of these statements I agree with. The larger the loan,
| the better the guarantee that banks want.
|
| Every measure that we take to make it easier for students
| to pay tuition without imposing cost controls results in
| increases in tuition. The result is that tuition has been
| growing faster than inflation for many decades, and the
| trend is unsustainable.
|
| _But barring shifting to a European model of college
| funding, I don 't see the US allowing dischargeable loans,
| nor do I think they should, because the reality of it is
| that colleges won't reduce their rates nor increase their
| scholarships, they would just be completely out of reach of
| poor and middle class students._
|
| This I disagree with. Universities are businesses. The bulk
| of their customers are able to pay thanks to loan
| guarantees backed by special government rules. Take away
| those loan guarantees and the universities will have to
| figure out how to live without customers, or without
| charging so much.
|
| That said, you can't get there without creating a crisis
| that forces universities to make hard choices that they
| have been avoiding for decades.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> somehow banks were happy to do so until 2005_
|
| Before 2005 most loans were already protected from
| bankruptcy, and for the others you generally needed your
| parents to co-sign.
| btilly wrote:
| The loans that were protected from bankruptcy from 1978
| to 2005 were student loans to the federal government.
| They weren't private loans to banks.
|
| Therefore before 2005, banks that lent money for student
| loans did so without that particular extraordinary
| protection.
| labcomputer wrote:
| > Therefore before 2005, banks that lent money for
| student loans did so without that particular
| extraordinary protection.
|
| Most of the pre-2005 loans required a parental co-signer.
| And I know that _I_ wasn 't able to take out non-federal
| loans all by myself.
| btilly wrote:
| Yours is a true statement that doesn't contradict what I
| said. Namely that until 2005, banks were lending to
| students without protection from non-payment during
| bankruptcy.
|
| In fact the fact that banks insisted on mitigating their
| risks with a co-signer is actually supporting evidence
| __FOR __what I said.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| > The bulk of their customers are able to pay thanks to
| loan guarantees backed by special government rules.
|
| Universities are not businesses. Students are not
| customers. Student tuition was much more heavily
| subsidized by states, but funding from states to
| universities has declined in the past few decades. This
| is the reason for tuition hikes.
|
| In the past, there was an agreement between states and
| universities: The states will provide a certain level of
| funding for students, and in exchange the universities
| will be barred from raising tuition above a very small
| rate annually. Then some states decided that having a
| "balanced budget" during all years, including recessions,
| was better policy than keeping education well-funded. Now
| recessions cause huge drops in education funding, which
| are accompanied by removing the limits on yearly tuition
| hikes.
|
| Because it's generally better to have a more educated
| population, the federal government picks up some of the
| slack with grant and loan aid, and banks pick up more
| slack with private loans to students who otherwise
| couldn't afford it. Then funding never returns to prior
| levels.
|
| Stop blaming universities. The blame very clearly lies
| with states and their asinine balanced budget policies.
| btilly wrote:
| Yours is a narrative that universities themselves like to
| put forth. However it doesn't make sense.
|
| Tuition rises are a long-term trend. As
| https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/education_spending
| points out, from the 1950s to the present, the share of
| GDP spent by government on universities went from 0.4% to
| 1.7%. With sometimes progress, and sometimes a loss. But
| the long-term trend is that spending by states has gone
| up relative to both enrollment and inflation.
|
| Yes, there are recession years where universities blame
| tuition hikes on cutbacks in state spending. But tuition
| has outpaced inflation in good years as well. Which
| suggests that the long-term trend has other causes.
|
| How bad is it? At present average college tuition at a
| private school is $45k/year. Salaries for the people
| teaching vary from $40k for a postdoc to an average of
| $95k for a full professor. Which means that in an average
| classroom, a handful of students could hire the teacher
| as a private tutor, give the teacher a pay raise, and
| themselves save money! This basic fact suggests that it
| should be possible to teach students for a lot less than
| we consider normal today.
|
| Now why have caused risen? It turns out that a lot of
| causes have been proposed, from the cost of buildings
| going up to an increase in bureaucracy to deal with
| government regulation. But attempts to quantify all the
| different factors, such as
| https://www.nber.org/papers/w21967, find that the biggest
| single factor is the combination of restricted supply and
| artificially increased demand (thanks to the availability
| of loans and financial aid).
|
| Exactly as I said.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| >As
| https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/education_spending
| points out, from the 1950s to the present, the share of
| GDP spent by government on universities went from 0.4% to
| 1.7%.
|
| A four-fold increase in funding as a percentage of GDP
| isn't relevant to the more important metric, real funding
| per student.
|
| https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-
| hig...
|
| > But the long-term trend is that spending by states has
| gone up relative to both enrollment and inflation.
|
| Real funding per university student has not increased,
| and this claim is not backed by your source. See my
| source above for rebuttal.
|
| https://www.dallasnews.com/news/texas/2012/09/23/texas-
| colle...
|
| "State officials used to brag about the affordability of
| college, but the costs have ballooned since 2003, even
| when inflation is factored in.
|
| Less money from state
|
| That year, to help close a budget cap without raising
| taxes, lawmakers cut the amount of taxpayer money the
| state sent to universities -- an overall 11 percent
| decrease per student -- but removed ceilings placed on
| tuition so campuses could make up for the lost revenue."
|
| > But tuition has outpaced inflation in good years as
| well. Which suggests that the long-term trend has other
| causes.
|
| Yes, that state funding doesn't return to prior levels
| (See my first source)
|
| > Salaries for the people teaching vary from $40k for a
| postdoc to an average of $95k for a full professor. Which
| means that in an average classroom, a handful of students
| could hire the teacher as a private tutor, give the
| teacher a pay raise, and themselves save money! This
| basic fact suggests that it should be possible to teach
| students for a lot less than we consider normal today.
|
| A university is more than its teaching staff. There's
| research, buildings to maintain, academic support staff
| and programs, and plenty of other things as well.
|
| > But attempts to quantify all the different factors,
| such as https://www.nber.org/papers/w21967, find that the
| biggest single factor is the combination of restricted
| supply and artificially increased demand (thanks to the
| availability of loans and financial aid).
|
| One source which happens to ignore many of the factors I
| mentioned above does not prove your point true. Most
| importantly, tuition ceilings imposed on universities by
| state governments. Luckily the paper discusses its
| shortcomings:
|
| "Given that our model effectively lumps private and
| public colleges together, it appears that changes in
| state funding support and changes in other sources of
| non-tuition revenue largely offset each other. In future
| work, we plan to disaggregate the model along the
| public/private dimension."
|
| The source groups private and public colleges together.
| Private colleges do not receive state funding and
| therefore would not have to hike tuition in response to
| lower stand funding. This noise averages out the effect
| that state funding cuts have on public school tuition
| rates.
| [deleted]
| gwd wrote:
| > The reason they aren't dischargeable is because what bank
| in their right mind would give a loan to an 18 year old
| with no collateral?
|
| If it's a bad bet for the _bank_ , it must be _far_ worse
| of a bet for young adults. That 's the point -- right now
| we're essentially suckering millions of naive young adults
| into a life of wage slavery by giving them a "bet" which
| they are completely unequipped to evaluate; and many of
| them are making a bet when they shouldn't.
|
| What you're essentially arguing is, "We have to enslave
| these people or society wouldn't function". On the
| contrary: we must not enslave these people; if stop doing
| it, society will figure out some other way to get things
| done.
| bananabreakfast wrote:
| "Society" doesn't figure anything out. If "Society"
| wanted people to go to college then it would it give it
| to everybody for free.
|
| People are incentivized to act one way or the other.
| Less-wealthy people cannot afford college tuition, and
| the government cannot mandate that banks give away money
| to extremely risky but ambitious people.
|
| This same problem exists with extending loans in general
| to risky, low-income individuals. Yes their rates are
| insanely high, bordering on predatory, but they also have
| sky high default rates so the alternative is they simply
| cannot get a loan at all.
|
| This is essential economics.
| psadri wrote:
| This argument is missing one important part. The
| prevalence of student loans has caused the cost of
| education to skyrocket, pushing it even further out of
| reach. So now even people who previously afforded higher
| education need to get loans. It's a self-fulfilling
| system.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Ironically, every governmental attempt to make college
| more affordable has caused tuition to rise.
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| > " If it's a bad bet for the bank, it must be far worse
| of a bet for young adults."
|
| That's not a valid implication at all. 18 year olds
| change their mind all the time, base decisions on
| impulsive reasons, etc., that comes with immaturity, lack
| of experience and indecision.
|
| The loan being a bad risk for the bank is a function of
| youthful impulsiveness and a person without the means to
| pay it back yet.
|
| It's not risky to the bank because college itself is
| risky or fails to deliver wage opportunities. Not saying
| college cost-benefit is always favorable, just that your
| implication is wrong.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| "If it's a bad bet for the bank, it must be far worse of
| a bet for young adults."
|
| Not necessarily. Even if it's a good bet for the student,
| what's to stop them from declaring bankruptcy just after
| graduation, and before they start their lucrative career?
| They would then get all the upside, whilst the bank gets
| zero payments.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| If it's a bad bet for the bank, that just means it is a
| bad bet _on average_ and _right now_. The thing is, a
| student can know a lot more about themselves than the
| bank can. A student can make a bet with an extremely high
| expected return, that the bank would be unable to
| appropriately risk-price.
|
| The problem with the current system, is we don't force
| the students to understand the price of the risk. The
| problem with making them normal loans is that the bank is
| unable to accurately price the risk. There are middle
| grounds, but arguments from the extremes seem to carry
| better.
| jedberg wrote:
| To be clear, I don't think college should be paid for
| with loans. I agree with you that we shouldn't be
| enslaving people.
|
| But I also don't think allowing these loans to be
| discharged in bankruptcy will solve anything (and will
| arguably make things worse) without systemic changes in
| the way college is paid for.
| gwd wrote:
| It will force "the system" to come up with some other way
| to pay for tuition.
|
| What do you think about Income Share Agreements?
|
| https://www.thesimpledollar.com/loans/student/income-
| share-a...
| jedberg wrote:
| I love income share agreements.
| drevil-v2 wrote:
| Out of the fire and into the frying pan..
|
| What makes you think that "profit motive" or "regulatory
| capture" will be kinder and more gentle with this
| approach?
|
| For hundreds and thousands of years Indian farmers had a
| version of "income sharing". You should research how it
| went. And please don't respond with "Sure they fucked up
| but WE will build a better system this time around"
| btilly wrote:
| I think that they help universities raise tuition as long
| as the projected lifetime income increase from going to
| college exceeds the cost of tuition. Which will just
| allow our unsustainable "tuition rises faster than
| inflation" trend to last a few more years before it falls
| apart.
|
| Note that "projected lifetime income increase" is
| generally overestimated. What we do is compare average
| income of a college graduate with a high school graduate
| and attribute the difference to college. However people
| who could get through college likely would have made more
| than people who couldn't, even if they hadn't gone to
| college!
| VLM wrote:
| Its also backwards looking, obviously. In the boomer
| working years, colleges were very selective and a degree
| was a stealth IQ test along with socioeconomic group
| membership.
|
| At this point the average IQ of a college grad is very
| close to 100. I guarantee that within the next 30 to 40
| years someone will make the shocking discovery that the
| presence or absence of a degree has no influence on
| income, success, or happiness.
|
| At that point the ponzi scheme of higher ed can collapse.
|
| There's nothing wrong with designing and implementing an
| education system for the top 5% of society and the jobs
| that top 5% will likely have. There is a big problem with
| a marketing scam along the lines of every American is a
| temporarily inconvenienced millionaire.
|
| Surely, my favorite waitress at Dennys is making more
| money as a waitress than she would as a K12 educator, if
| she could get hired, which she cannot. The degree does
| not make her a better person nor a better waitress. It
| does signal that she's in maybe the top 50% of humanity
| WRT the skills required to get a degree. She's a somewhat
| better than average person because of who she is, not a
| meaningless piece of paper for training she will never
| use. The point of discussing my favorite waitress is we
| need "something" to signal in the job market who is in
| the upper half of potential employees, and $100K of debt
| and four years of labor seem a huge waste on a
| civilizational level.
| endymi0n wrote:
| So what you're proposing is that a fairer way to paying
| back tuition is making it essentially free when taking it
| and then, IF you end up making a lot of money, paying it
| back with a share of your income?
|
| I can't resist the feeling this sounds surprisingly
| related to the concept of free higher education and a
| higher, progressive income tax, a pretty revolutionary
| approach we've been doing with limited success over here
| in Germany.
|
| Then again, that might just be my naive European
| perspective on things and since taxes are theft and free
| education is just for those commies wanting free things,
| it's surely inappropriate for a free country.
| leetcrew wrote:
| I realize you're being somewhat facetious, but a key
| difference with ISA is that you don't actually pay the
| "tax" if you don't go to college. this doesn't make much
| difference for successful people, since most of them
| probably went to college anyway. but if you're a
| lower/middle income person who didn't go to college, it
| seems sort of unfair to have to pay towards other people
| gaining an advantage over you in the job market.
| dnautics wrote:
| Ironically, income share agreements are increasingly
| being challenged on the grounds that they violate the
| 14th amendment (being rather close to the indentured
| servitude model).
|
| I think the (optics) problem is that it's a "more obvious
| voluntary fractional slavery program". So it's easy to
| criticize. Of course, because it's a less obvious
| voluntary fractional slavery program, non-dischargeable
| loans are simultaneously harder to criticize and harder
| for people to see the trap they're walking in to.
| xur17 wrote:
| I could be okay with income share agreements if they had
| a (short) time and percentage cap. Otherwise I feel like
| we'll have the same problem, students will sign
| agreements that they don't understand, and then end up
| paying for it for a large part of their life.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| In my mind the problem is the system itself was designed
| for a world that doesn't exist. When the supply of
| college degrees was low 50 years ago, sure, it paid to
| have a degree. But now that it has become commoditized,
| it's not that valuable. There's no supply / demand
| pricing mechanism to influence a student's major. The
| cost of tuition is mainly based on an arbitrary credit
| hour. No matter how worthless a course is for your
| future, the price of the class is still the same.
|
| I've read this about socialist countries that have free
| education. You'll have folks with law degrees driving
| taxi cabs. It's a waste of resources.
| wolco wrote:
| Why would having someone who knows the law and drives a
| taxi make it a waste of resources? Taxi drivers should be
| uneducated in your view. Why? How does that help society?
|
| Many lawyers need to drive taxis to get by. Being a
| lawyer doesn't mean instant riches unless you land at a
| high profile firm directly out of school.
|
| Studying law isn't a finite resource either.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> If it 's a bad bet for the bank, it must be far worse
| of a bet for young adults._
|
| That doesn't follow: you could graduate, get your degree,
| and declare bankruptcy. You're fine, your loan is gone,
| and the bank regrets their investment.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| Was that what we saw happening before such loans were
| made non-dischargeable?
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Let's make that point clearer:
|
| Since the bank is absolved from making that bet, it is
| now the young adult making the same bet that no sane bank
| would take.
|
| A lot of people are now living with having lost that bet.
| jefftk wrote:
| The bank doesn't want the bet because "bankruptcy" means
| very different things to the bank and to the student. To
| the bank it means they lose all their money. For a just-
| graduated person with minimal assets it's not that bad --
| sure you can't get a mortgage to buy a house for a while,
| but you probably couldn't have afforded that anyway with
| student loans. You still have the degree, they can't take
| that (well, https://www.jefftk.com/p/repossessing-
| degrees).
| iateanapple wrote:
| > For a just-graduated person with minimal assets it's
| not that bad
|
| It is in fact bad.
|
| You can't just declare bankruptcy and get a high paying
| job a year later and have no student debt....
|
| When I looked into personal bankruptcy I was told by my
| lawyer that it would only make financial sense if there
| was no way I could pay back the amount owed in the next
| 7-10 years.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Having a bankruptcy on your record may make it difficult
| to get that high-paying job, as employers may not look
| favorably upon it.
| wolfgke wrote:
| > Having a bankruptcy on your record may make it
| difficult to get that high-paying job, as employers may
| not look favorably upon it.
|
| Why? I rather consider this as a sign that the person
| will be rather loyal as employee because he needs the
| money ...
| zhynn wrote:
| I would not underestimate the impact bankruptcy plays in
| someone's life. You would be getting a bankruptcy on your
| record in the prime of your life (mid-twenties), making
| it very very difficult to borrow for the next 10 years.
| You end up starting building credit in your mid to late
| thirties, and maybe you are able to participate in the
| modern economy in your forties. It sucks. I lived it.
| Spivak wrote:
| However, in a world in which it is common for college
| students to declare bankruptcy immediately after
| graduating, financial institutions might take advantage
| of that information and realize that their
| creditworthiness is much higher than the bankruptcy would
| predict. Kind of like how the stock price many companies
| go up after they cut retirement benefits.
|
| This of course will be to the spiral and collapse of the
| college loan system.
| jefftk wrote:
| I'm talking about declaring bankruptcy immediately on
| graduating, at age 21 (not mid-twenties), and it's off
| your record seven (not ten) years later, at 28.
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| It still doesn't follow that the bet is bad for the
| student if it is bad for the bank. As the student you
| have some degree of control over the result. If you have
| reason to think you can make it work it might be a good
| bet. The bank OTOH only sees that X percent of students
| fail to pay back.
| ivalm wrote:
| But the young adult has agency over outcome while the
| bank doesn't. Normally the bank would take collateral to
| align interests.
| hinkley wrote:
| And then you can't get a decent loan for anything until
| you're 30. It's not a great solution.
| markdown wrote:
| Do you know what bankruptcy does? One does not simply
| declare bankruptcy unless they're willing to have their
| lives suddenly become much harder and stay that way for a
| while.
| jefftk wrote:
| Let's say I've just graduated from college with a degree.
| I have minimal assets (clothes, computer) and lots of
| debt (100k in student loan debt). How does bankruptcy
| work out poorly for me?
| brianwawok wrote:
| 7ish year delay in buying a house. Which may be better
| than 20 years of payments to debt.
| leetcrew wrote:
| even graduating with no debt and a good job, I doubt most
| people are looking to buy a house within seven years
| anyway.
| [deleted]
| jefftk wrote:
| On graduation, unless someone has incredible job
| prospects, wiping out 100k of debt in exchange for not
| being able to get a mortgage for 7y is a great deal. At
| 20k it's not great but still pretty good. I bought a
| house 7y after graduating from college, and I think this
| was earlier than most of my cohort.
|
| Additionally, I wouldn't even expect a college bankruptcy
| to fully preclude getting a home mortgage. With a large
| down payment the bank isn't actually taking that much
| risk.
|
| (Except that really I expect that if this law changed
| loans would require cosigners with good credit)
| SkyBelow wrote:
| Back when the loans could be discharged this was not at
| all common, so why would it be so now?
| smooth_remmy wrote:
| Because now the internet exists. Back then, probably only
| a few students knew how to abuse bankruptcy laws.
|
| If bankruptcy laws were abusable by students in the
| present day, EVERYONE would know how to do it
| [deleted]
| cujo wrote:
| Because college was infinitely more affordable.
| mhb wrote:
| The argument is that you are reversing the cause and
| effect.
| abnry wrote:
| I agree with what you are saying, except that we
| shouldn't say students are unequipped to evaluate the
| "bet" merely for being young and inexperienced. If we
| wanted to, we could train students to be much better at
| evaluating such a bet.
| rch wrote:
| > we could train students to be much better at evaluating
| such a bet
|
| Maybe... but we could _definitely_ alter the nature of
| risk involved.
|
| Why not reduce cost of tuition (e.g. <$1K/semester),
| while raising the bar on academic rigor as a means of
| controlling demand?
| eldavido wrote:
| This is probably what's going to happen, but only if we
| take a LOT of human labor out of it. Either that, or
| accept that every class will be huge (200-500 students)
| with minimal attention given to students, no office
| hours, and low-paid labor doing all the grunt work
| (grading, answering questions)
|
| I see a lot of parallels to medicine here. Both are
| highly regulated and seen as a "right" we ought to fund.
| Maybe, but until we achieve greater labor leverage (made
| even harder by professional credentialing in medicine),
| there just won't be a way to drive costs down much, so
| we're stuck with what we have.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| College at $60k a semester while an adjunct earns $28k a
| year and somehow this doesn't result in a 1:1
| student:teacher ratio means someone's skimming off a ton
| of money.
| eldavido wrote:
| Skimming or cross-subsidizing?
|
| Part of the problem with universities IMO is the
| accounting for revenue<->expenses isn't at all
| straightforward. Athletics generate a ton more money than
| they cost, most people seem fine with that. Research
| generates no revenue but costs a ton, for some hard-to-
| quantify but (hopefully?) real benefit to society at
| large. Tuition is nominally for teaching, which is a big
| cost center for a university. And, at least in the US,
| all the costs are split between the national government,
| the state government (who has the pleasure of educating
| people who may not live in that state long-term?) and
| tuition, and various donors and grants.
|
| A system ripe for disruption, if ever there was one.
| gwd wrote:
| But the reason interest-bearing loans were considered
| immoral for so long, and the reason that nearly _every
| other kind of loan_ can be discharged through bankruptcy,
| is that _it is too dangerous to allow anyone to offer
| such a loan_. There 's nothing magical about student
| loans that somehow makes them safe, and no amount of
| training will change that.
| lordnacho wrote:
| The kind of knowledge you need to evaluate this is
| something that is normally taught in college. What high
| school teaches decision making under uncertainty, along
| with economic history and statistics?
|
| I mean sure we could try to teach kids this stuff, and I
| certainly aim to tech my kids, but it's not what's been
| done in the past at secondary school.
| WalterBright wrote:
| It's really too bad that high schools do not teach basic
| accounting, compound interest, and how the free market
| system works.
|
| Things people need to know to function in our society.
| abnry wrote:
| Isn't that then a gigantic failure of high school then?
| If there is one thing we need to prepare students for,
| isn't it how to start making career decisions?
| lordnacho wrote:
| If that's a goal of high school, then yes, it's a huge
| failing. There's also a bunch of other useful stuff they
| don't teach you, like cooking and how to wash your
| clothes. There's no coherent idea of what school is
| supposed to be, though. Is it a place to learn a bunch of
| practical skills? Or a place to read about some
| interesting ideas? All those things take time and money,
| and we end up with a school that does a bunch of
| different stuff with no real plan.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Our town used to have the Mechanics' Academy. A 12-week
| study program to learn enough math to balance, books,
| amortize a loan, calculate weights and measures, figure
| load limits. Graduates were very employable. My Mom's
| Grandfather was one.
|
| Long ago demolished and turned into a Mall during Urban
| Renewal.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| Bingo.
|
| Be careful, this is very dangerous informstion
|
| And it gets worse
|
| You forgot that these loans are subsidized, so when they
| Go sour (and they will) its the taxpayer holding the bag,
| not the banks
|
| In other words, its 2008 all over
| d883kd8 wrote:
| > The reason they aren't dischargeable is because what bank
| in their right mind would give a loan to an 18 year old
| with no collateral?
|
| Except private student loans exist
| devit wrote:
| Maybe it could be a percentage of all taxable income, kind
| of like giving out equity in the student themselves as a
| person?
|
| Although of course there is no reason for college in
| general to be particularly expensive.
| cure wrote:
| I believe Australia has a system along those lines, with
| forgiveness for people who work in the public service
| sector.
| outoftheabyss wrote:
| That's what it is here in the UK. It's around 8% of
| everything over PS20k with loan forgiveness after 30
| years.
| x0x0 wrote:
| > Student loans would dry up overnight if they could be
| discharged at bankruptcy.
|
| There were student loans before 1976, when they became non-
| dischargeable.
| [deleted]
| jedberg wrote:
| Yeah but college could be paid for with a minimum wage
| summer job.
|
| That change in 1976 was actually the cause of the steep
| rise in tuition. Can't really put the genie back in the
| bottle now.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Well ... You can. A lot of things will change and there'd
| be much disruption and churn in academic institutions,
| but it is possible.
| dnautics wrote:
| Think of all of the bureaucrats in the colleges that will
| lose their jobs.
|
| Also think of all of those low and middle class students
| who we'll turn down since we're not willing to do wealth
| redistribution with our endowment (<scoff>, that's the
| government's job).
| staticautomatic wrote:
| I find this attitude disturbing. The only things stopping
| real change in America are people who don't want it to
| happen and people who have been tricked into believing it
| can't.
| jedberg wrote:
| I want real change, I just don't believe this is the
| change that makes sense.
|
| Changing the way colleges are paid for would make sense.
| Capping tuition would make sense. Making you pay a
| portion of your income back to the college for the rest
| of your life (or maybe just 20 years) would make sense.
|
| But allowing student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy
| would do more harm than good without other systemic
| changes.
| bluGill wrote:
| If you are getting a degree that doesn't have good job
| prospects then you should pay for it out of pocket, only
| the rich should try for it (rich can mean middle class
| with a good job taking a second degree for fun). If you
| take a loan that means you expect the value of the degree
| is worth more than the loan amount over time. If you
| can't find such a job paying enough to make it worth it,
| then you should declare bankruptcy.
|
| If the only value of the degree is it makes you well
| rounded, then universities should ensure that only enough
| people start down the path using loans as their are
| tenured positions expected to be open in 10 years. If
| there is industry demand elsewhere then meet it.
|
| I don't know how to solve the problems of someone
| declaring bankruptcy as soon as they finish their degree
| though.
| staticautomatic wrote:
| I got a liberal arts degree that by all accounts should
| have left me with terrible job prospects but I ended up
| going straight into a lucrative career path with just my
| BA. I know music majors who went into consulting and
| English majors who went to work for Goldman Sachs. Yes,
| they were exceptional people. None of us were rich.
| lallysingh wrote:
| > But allowing student loans to be discharged in
| bankruptcy would do more harm than good without other
| systemic changes.
|
| Why?
| vonmoltke wrote:
| > The reason they aren't dischargeable is because what bank
| in their right mind would give a loan to an 18 year old
| with no collateral?
|
| Over 90% of loans are owned by and issued by the federal
| government. It's not banks Congress was protecting.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| We treat education as a public good. Employers don't have
| to pay for their employees' educations, and employees can
| take their skills around with them.
|
| Given that banks know their customers need employees they
| would get around to giving loans out to keep the supply of
| talent coming.
|
| There would just be far less waste if student loans were
| dischargeable.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Well there's part of the problem. Public goods are
| nonrival, and education isn't, especially if you want
| instructor attention and small class sizes.
| vonmoltke wrote:
| > Given that banks know their customers need employees
| they would get around to giving loans out to keep the
| supply of talent coming.
|
| Banks generally don't give loans, the federal government
| does.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| If the US treated education as a public good, then the US
| taxpayers would pay for education.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| Maybe not the best word to use. Education is not a
| private good, like that offered by a medieval guild which
| required the learner to work for some period for the
| guild like an indentured servant.
| maps wrote:
| > But barring shifting to a European model of college
| funding, I don't see the US allowing dischargeable loans,
| nor do I think they should, because the reality of it is
| that colleges won't reduce their rates nor increase their
| scholarships, they would just be completely out of reach of
| poor and middle class students.
|
| The reality is that the they should be out of reach to poor
| or middle class students TODAY. They are not serving those
| people and are actively making their lives worse by
| saddling them with outrageous debt and no prospect of
| meaningful employment.
|
| If the US changed bankruptcy it would force the colleges to
| change as well. Lenders are not going to be sending
| children into the workforce with zero chance to recoup that
| loan, and they are not going to want to bloat the college
| stay to ridiculous proportions.
| jedberg wrote:
| Like I said in my initial comment, I don't agree that
| would be the outcome.
|
| I think a lot of smaller college would fail, and the big
| colleges would keep their high prices, and only cater to
| the wealthy.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| You only need to look at historical examples to know that
| cannot be the case.
|
| Take for example, cars. That's how cars started. Look
| where we are today.
|
| If tuition stays sky high, it will be because of
| regulatory requirements (and enabling subsidies) to stay
| sky high, not because theres no market for education for
| working class folk
| jonkho wrote:
| Here is an idea: let's have colleges themselves act as
| the guarantor for a student loan. This way the incentives
| are aligned; if the colleges are poor judge of a students
| talent (and admit too many low performers), or having
| teaching standards are too weak will stand to lose money
| when a student cannot secure a job and repay their loans.
| bradlys wrote:
| > The reality is that the they should be out of reach to
| poor or middle class students TODAY.
|
| That varies so much by student and to bar a whole class
| of people out of these things is not going to improve
| their outcomes. While some students are not served with
| better employment opportunities by going to college and
| earning a degree - there are many others who are.
|
| Outlawing things to a group of people isn't going to
| serve them better. It will mean that the entire middle
| class will be unable to educate into jobs. Educating them
| about the effort college requires to be successful once
| you leave would be better.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's a sure thing for the bank. Most of the loans are
| guaranteed by the federal government.
|
| Student loans only changed to be non-dischargable in the
| 70s and 80s, driven by certain professions (especially
| medical) and costs associated with them.
| vonmoltke wrote:
| > It's a sure thing for the bank. Most of the loans are
| guaranteed by the federal government.
|
| _Owned_ and _issued_ , not guaranteed.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| >The reason they aren't dischargeable is because what bank
| in their right mind would give a loan to an 18 year old
| with no collateral?
|
| Why is that a bad thing? This pushes choosing a good degree
| from something entirely on the 18 year old to something the
| market is deciding, by calculating the risk of a default,
| and removes much of the penalty from making a bad call from
| the 18 year old. Yes, not everyone will qualify for a loan,
| but if the bank who is interested in making money off loans
| decides your plan isn't worth a loan (and this bank has
| plenty of money to loan, so it can invest in many and aim
| at averages) thinks you are too likely to not get a good
| job and will default... maybe you should consider what that
| means.
|
| And it puts downward pressure on college prices, like you
| mention.
|
| >they would just be completely out of reach of poor and
| middle class students.
|
| There aren't enough colleges to survive on just upper class
| students. So either the colleges will go out of business or
| they will have to learn how to be in reach of the rest of
| the population.
| dhimes wrote:
| <Cue your "OK boomer" clips>
|
| Former professor (community college), father of three, two
| still paying tuition.
|
| Here's my take:
|
| Students should be ineligible for loans until they complete
| one semester of college. Colleges should make that semester
| a "boot camp": Varied, challenging, intellectual
| curriculum, forced work-together times (a study-hall
| "lab"), and so on. The problem I have is that a helluva lot
| of students who go to college right out of high school are
| there for the wrong reasons. They aren't applying
| themselves intellectually- any growth they get will be, if
| not despite their behaviors, at least accidental.
|
| I don't want free tuition/subsidized loans/etc. in the
| current situation. And I _totally_ believe that society
| should make an investment- hell I 've dedicated my life to
| it- but it's a careful investment. I want those young
| adults to come away from college with real intellectual
| growth. At least they should be able to read and think
| critically.
|
| And making college free in the USofA will make college
| costs _increase_ (unless you think the US military spending
| is under control).
|
| Having an onboarding boot camp, where you have to learn to
| study and take it seriously or you don't get to stay, would
| help the First Year Experience folks (who would run it),
| the professors (yay!), the students, the parents who would
| otherwise be throwing their money away, even high school
| teachers. It might make enrollment drop-at least initially-
| but it seems like that's an issue now anyway so it might be
| a good time for it.
|
| Now, get the hell off my lawn!
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| >colleges won't reduce their rates nor increase their
| scholarships, they would just be completely out of reach of
| poor and middle class students.
|
| If you let that run its course for a couple years then
| either the employers will have to relax their degree
| requirements or colleges will have to relax their price
| requirements. It'll be a game of chicken.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Do employers have degree requirements? A 1970 SCOTUS case
| put strong constraints on what employers could require,
| at least with respect to high school diplomas. The same
| logic would apply to college degrees. Unless a direct
| link to a job (not just a general linkage) could be
| demonstrated, if there is a de facto racial
| discriminatory effect (and there would be, just from
| different rates of graduation from college) then the
| requirement would be illegal.
|
| I've been waiting for someone with a bone to pick against
| higher education to file a lawsuit over this. It could
| devalue college degrees.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Or maybe they won't. Chronic underemployment has been a
| thing since at least 2008. Given a reality where there
| are simply more people than jobs that need doing,
| shutting the poor out of the education system seems like
| just another way to increase wealth inequality.
| [deleted]
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| Now you have to explain how students got loans before 1998
| and 2005, before student loans were made non-dischargeable.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2019/01/09/studen
| t...
|
| The fact of the matter is that by making the loans non-
| dischargeable, lenders loosen their purse strings since
| risk of default is much lower. And colleges being on the
| receiving end of these loans are naturally going to move
| their prices upward to capture the increase.
|
| Going back to the way things were in 1998 would go far in
| bringing down the astronomical tuition increases we see
| year after year.
| rolandog wrote:
| But isn't the reason for the sole existence of college
| loans that there aren't any regulations controlling the
| private education industry? More availability for loans
| means the schools can charge more for tuition.
|
| Just like the whole american privatized healthcare; the sky
| is the limit... to what they'll charge you.
| lawnchair_larry wrote:
| No other country works this way, yet they have college. So
| this argument doesn't pass the smell test.
| jedberg wrote:
| The US dug themselves into a hole in the 70s when they
| disallowed bankruptcies on school loans.
|
| That opened up a flood of money to 18 year olds going to
| college, which in turn led to the colleges massively
| expanding their offerings.
|
| Colleges in the US don't just educate. They are also the
| minor league sports programs for most sports in the US,
| and they provide luxury benefits like gyms and movie
| theaters and so on.
|
| They can't go back now. They can't just stop doing all
| the sports with all the fancy equipment they bought, they
| can't just get rid of all the luxury housing and movie
| theaters and so on.
|
| So yes, the US is pretty unique in this respect.
| dnautics wrote:
| I think the US also did some strange things like giving
| GIs free tuition (not necessarily a bad thing) then
| artificially supporting those GIs by requiring a college
| degree as gatekeeping for bureaucratic jobs. If you look
| around places where there's lots of bureaucracy (like
| washington dc) there's tons of strange billboards and the
| like on public transit advertising graduate school (MA
| and PhD) targeted at beaurocrats that need to check off
| that box for a pay/rank/retirement increase. IIRC one of
| them was called "Graduate School", as in you would go to
| a graduate school called "Graduate School".
|
| In any case not-in-DC it's more focussed on the BA
| segment of the population, but artificial gatekeepering
| is a thing (even in tech! I know many candidates that I
| wanted to hire but were turned down because they didn't
| have a BA in CS)
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| Credentials are used as a lazy proxy for ability in any
| number of large organizations all over the world.
| brownbat wrote:
| > All of us should be regularly lobbying our lawmakers to
| make student loans dischargeable by bankruptcy,
|
| I thought so too. This always made me so angry. Last time I
| posted a rant about that here someone urged me to read the
| REPAYE Act, and it completely changed my mind.
|
| Under REPAYE, students get income based repayment, even down
| to $0 payments if you're anywhere near poverty level. After a
| certain number of years of repayment, the government just
| pays off your entire balance.
|
| This solves the same problems bankruptcy is designed to solve
| without ruining people's credit. It also prevents doctors
| from declaring bankruptcy right after medschool -- I'm
| honestly unsure whether that was a real or just anecdotal
| problem, but income based repayment for a fixed term seems
| like a better way to let people escape debt while still
| expecting them to pay what they can.
| MrMorden wrote:
| Doctors declaring bankruptcy to get out of medical school
| debt sounds like anecdata. If student loans were
| dischargeable, that would change nothing for MDs because
| they're still going to make enough money to service the
| debt after residency/fellowship.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Even if you're going to be making $200,000 a year after
| your residency, why not declare bankruptcy as soon as you
| graduate. It'll save you $200,000 which is totally worth
| a 10 year hit to your credit
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| Be aware REPAYE can be voided if your loan is resold (which
| you have no control over) and any missed payments or extra
| payments or any changes to your program (ie, if you apply
| for lower interest, your REPAYE is reset).... this has
| occured to people who go through the public service path.
| salawat wrote:
| Personally, this right here is the crux of the problem.
| Debts should not be resaleable. Loans are supposed to be
| about risk-sharing first, profit-taking second.
|
| However, seeing as that will never happen I would settle
| for no resale without a meeting of seller, buyer, and
| borrower, with right of refusal of transfer of service by
| the borrower. to ensure that any changes/terms associated
| with the initial debt contract are properly transferred
| and honored; and no resets of timers as long as your
| account is in good standing. I.e. your debt holder
| selling your balance should still qualify as the same
| fundamental debt you originally entered into.
|
| I don't particularly give a damn if that ruins/misses the
| point of securitization.
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| I wish... there are people who have been on the public
| servant program for 8 years and had their timers reset by
| a resale... without any missed payments.
| graeme wrote:
| This still inflates the cost of university for everyone.
| Basically the govt is taxing society to funnel the money
| into student loans which are then ploughed into college
| facilities and administration staff.
|
| It's a massive misallocation of societal resources.
|
| And I suspect many people earning a mediocre wage are still
| stuck repaying, and would have been happier had loans not
| existed and college have been forced not to be bloated.
| seiferteric wrote:
| Exactly, we need cost pressure. Not to mention the fact
| you would still have to go into debt and live with that
| psychological pressure until the government so generously
| decides to forgive you...
| elliekelly wrote:
| This program only applies to federal student loans. Anyone
| with private student loans (before ~2010 IIRC) is SOL.
| wegs wrote:
| I went to MIT. MIT is corrupt as !@#$. The amount of
| money flowing into private pockets at the higher levels
| is insane. Corrupt isn't the same is criminal -- most of
| the activity goes through networks of lawyers and loop
| holes (although criminal activity happens too).
|
| My opinion is that to be eligible for federal financial
| aid, there ought to be some cap on tuition+expenses at a
| level students can afford. Subsidizing $200k tuition
| makes no sense to me. Either students are already very
| rich, or they'll end up with a painful amount of debt.
|
| I'd much rather have an MIT with old, rundown buildings,
| low-paid professors, few administrators, and a focus on
| science and learning (rather than a focus on $300 million
| buildings, yachts, fancy faculty dining clubs, and
| increasingly creative ways to funnel money into people's
| pockets).
| horsemessiah wrote:
| I appreciate this perspective. So many people have no
| sympathy towards young people, who have been told their whole
| life that college is the path success.
| eldavido wrote:
| Maybe that belief isn't wrong, but outdated?
| WalterBright wrote:
| > All of us should be regularly lobbying our lawmakers to
| make student loans dischargeable by bankruptcy
|
| That'll just make loans even more expensive for everyone
| else.
| thorwasdfasdf wrote:
| those loans shouldn't be allowed in the first place. There
| should be some kind of cap on the loans in the first place.
| Perhaps, create a ceiling of something manageable say 5k. At
| that point, colleges will have no choice but to start cutting
| costs and make college more affordable.
| ge96 wrote:
| Personally still owing some debt(that was pretty much wasted
| since I didn't finish school, my own fault) debt was handed
| out easily/same with credit cards. I think it's a great
| opportunity if you use it right(follow through in my case). I
| didn't understand money though at that time, wasted it/killed
| my credit score. I was lucky though I have federal loans and
| they do a pay as you earn type plan where you can pay nothing
| if you don't make enough granted it still builds interest.
| Overall my debts aren't bad since I had some grants/went into
| engineering/physics not a doctor or lawyer. I at least made
| it into software so if my life continues to pan out I will
| get out of debt within two years at best.
|
| But yeah, at that time though(in school) I was really scared
| because I was not doing well in school and I was like "how
| will I pay this back"...
| cableshaft wrote:
| Colleges should be shaking in their boots for the next
| generation, because there's going to be a whole generation of
| parents that suffered terrible college debt they couldn't pay
| off and will likely be telling their children it's just not
| worth it (as opposed to the previous generation that had
| cheap college and a great economy and pressured all their
| children to go for that 'guaranteed better life').
|
| I made it through relatively okay because STEM and some
| scholarships, but I'm not even sure I'll recommend my
| children go to college. Especially with online courses (not
| talking about college, just courses) becoming more viable and
| useful.
|
| I definitely won't for some pursuits, like art. I'd rather
| they live at home with me for four years, doing self-study
| and putting their art out there online and developing a
| following rather than spend $200,000+ on college that will
| likely not result in anything afterwards (hell, as a semi-
| professional game designer myself, I'd happily work with them
| to get their art into published games).
| nostrademons wrote:
| Also a generation of potential parents who won't be having
| kids because they can't afford to, largely because of
| student loan and housing costs.
|
| That's already hitting - the incoming class of 2023
| (matriculating 2019) is the first cohort born since 9/11,
| and is tiny. A number of colleges are facing bankruptcy
| because there just aren't enough students to go around. And
| it'll only get worse. Birth rates were depressed from
| 2001-2009, but they fell off a cliff after 2009.
| logfromblammo wrote:
| People aren't stupid. They do respond to incentives and
| disincentives.
|
| The debt load on young people is greater than the cost of
| raising a child to adulthood. By the time it is paid off,
| the urge to procreate has gone.
|
| And those who turned baby-raisin' into a soulless, for-
| profit industry can choke on their sins, too.
| cableshaft wrote:
| I didn't mention that, but you're right. I also have been
| putting off having children (and the pandemic didn't help
| that at all) until my finances are in better shape, and
| I'm sure there are a lot of people in worse positions
| than I am.
| evolve2k wrote:
| Birth rates where? Just the US? Or globally or just
| Western powerhouse counties?
|
| Side note: I remember being shocked the first time I
| found out that baby boomers and 'the aging population
| issue' weren't actually global issues and only affected
| the counties who took the spoils post WW2 (aka western
| powerhouse countries).
|
| Lots of other counties have very different population
| ages mixes for example Ireland and Turkey.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Developed countries, but it's spreading worldwide. Japan
| hit their baby bust in the 90s, and then Western Europe
| in the last 10 years, and now it applies to the U.S. as a
| whole. China and India have also seen remarkable drops
| since 1980.
|
| The only continent that still has fertility rates above
| replacement is Africa:
|
| https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publica
| tio...
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| Colleges were counting on foreign students to fill the
| gap. Now with massive unemployment, immigration may slow
| to a trickle for a while, and with it the allure of
| American colleges for students elsewhere.
| staticassertion wrote:
| Can I read more about these statistics somewhere?
| nostrademons wrote:
| Big WaPo feature story on Hampshire's bankruptcy and the
| impending demographic apocalypse for colleges:
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2019/10/21/downfa
| ll-...
|
| Fertility rates by year in U.S:
|
| https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locat
| ion...
|
| Births per year:
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/195908/number-of-
| births-...
|
| I was wrong about the start date, BTW. I'd thought that
| fertility started dropping after 9/11 (which also roughly
| coincides with the children of the 70s having kids
| instead of baby boomers, a smaller cohort), but it really
| didn't peak until 2007-2008. Then there's a double-
| whammy: there are fewer women of childbearing age
| (coinciding with Gen-Xers born in the 70s and early
| Millenials), and the fertility rate among women who _are_
| of childbearing age has fallen off a cliff. Births are
| down about 15% since 2007; when you think about what that
| means for a typical classroom (where you might 've had 24
| kids, now you might have 20), that's pretty huge.
| jedberg wrote:
| Looking at the first chart tells me that the size of the
| upcoming cohort will be similar to Gen X -- that is it
| will be smaller than the previous but not unsustainably
| small.
|
| Although that chart doesn't capture the ratio of women of
| fertile age in each year, so there may be an unforeseen
| cliff.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| Might be similar to Gen X, but remember that college
| seats have expanded to peak throughput.
| tren-hard wrote:
| Wow those are really good points I hadn't heard yet about
| future outlook for colleges.
|
| There's a lot of parents whom children are in high school
| now that already went through the student loan debt cycle
| so we should start seeing the effects of that soon.
|
| Perhaps we'll see a rise in trade/vocational school as a
| result.
|
| I think the stigma of not going to college is changing a
| lot (for the better) or at least in the programming world
| it seems that way.
| happythomist wrote:
| > There's a reason many ancient religions forbid loaning
| money at interest entirely; and it's the same reason we have
| bankruptcy laws.
|
| The Catholic Church condemns usury as intrinsically evil
| because, in the words of Aquinas, usury is to "sell what does
| not exist". [1]
|
| Aquinas observed that some goods are consumed by their very
| use, such as food or drink. Allowing someone to use such a
| good is equivalent to transferring the ownership. You cannot
| "rent" a sandwich or allow someone to "borrow" a bottle of
| wine, at least not if they intend to eat or drink it. Once
| the ownership is transferred, you have no basis to charge for
| its use.
|
| He argued that money was an example of such a good. The only
| way to use money is to spend it, and it is consumed by that
| use. Therefore, loaning money at interest is an attempt to
| "rent" money that you no longer own, which is unjust.
|
| Today, there is much greater access to profitable investment
| opportunities. It is even possible to obtain a guaranteed
| rate of return on money through CDs and GICs. It is therefore
| licit to reflect this in the "price" of money that is lent,
| but this is not usury. The Church cannot change her
| definitive teachings of faith and morals; usury has always
| been and will always be a grave sin. [2]
|
| [1] https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3078.htm
|
| [2] https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15235c.htm
| eldavido wrote:
| In my view, this is a situation where technology changed
| our understanding of morality.
|
| When Aquinas was alive, there was nothing remotely similar
| to modern banking. Money was lent at punitive rates of
| interest (20% or more/year), with very little regulation
| concerning what rights creditors had if debtors couldn't
| pay. As an example, look at mortgages today; in many
| states, these are non-recourse, meaning the _law_ limits
| the borrower 's liability to the mortgaged property (the
| house), and nothing more. People aren't sold into slavery,
| there are no debtors prisons, and we have a sophisticated
| system of personal bankruptcy that lets people start over.
|
| In short, if you can't pay a loan, you aren't getting your
| kneecaps broken or getting sold into slavery. In my view,
| that's a game-changer.
| apta wrote:
| This doesn't change the fact that lending with interest
| is inherently evil and parasitic, even in modern times.
| It is completely prohibited in Islam, and Jews don't lend
| each other with interest.
| abnry wrote:
| The government will give out a loan to students for basically
| any reason, as long as their family doesn't make too much
| money. Think about the insanity of that kind of investment
| practice. No "business plan", no estimates of ROI, no
| collateral, little to no grade submissions. It's a bad way to
| invest.
|
| If a student is going to get a loan, what I think the
| government and banks should do is require them to file a
| proposal explaining how they plan to recoup the cost of their
| education using real, hard market data. If you want to become
| a archaeological historian, you need to research what sorts
| archaeology jobs are in your neighborhood and what they will
| make.
| vonmoltke wrote:
| > The government will give out a loan to students for
| basically any reason, as long as their family doesn't make
| too much money.
|
| The only bearing family income has is whether you get the
| lower subsidized rate or not. Anybody can get unsubsidized
| loans.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Sounds good in principal, but would require a very large
| investment in a bureaucracy to carefully evaluate and vet
| the load applications of every student in the country.
| yowlingcat wrote:
| That colleges still get to win when their students graduate
| into economic destitution is a moral hazard of American
| society that we will inevitably look back upon as a great
| stain on history. I think a lot of people agree there. While
| I don't argue it would solve the entirety of the problem, I
| think a great first step would be to change the financial
| product itself. The code academy's tuition deferment until
| employment model seems a lot more sane than what we currently
| have. If every educational institution had to take this
| approach, would we still see the same kind of bureaucratic
| overreach, feudal approach to tenure, and debt slavery that
| we currently see? I'd love to know.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| > All of us should be regularly lobbying our lawmakers to
| make student loans dischargeable by bankruptcy, just like any
| other loan.
|
| Because if that was the case no one would lend them money,
| and there wouldn't be any student loans.
|
| Also there is a repayment system where you only are required
| to pay a percentage of your income above the poverty line..
| mercer wrote:
| While I think things could be a lot better, I like how
| college loans work over here in The Netherlands.
|
| Regardless of whether they're a 'golden ticket' or not (times
| are changing?), the student loan is something one doesn't
| have to worry about too much. Not only is/was a big part of
| it considered a 'gift' (up to half when I was studying,
| depending on my parents' income), but the entirety of the
| loan left over is low-interest and has no real demands.
|
| Basically, you're asked to pay off x amount per month based
| on the total loan, but if x amount exceeds 10% percent of
| your income, you can ask to pay (potentially much) less. If
| you don't make any money, you pay off nothing.
|
| My income is rather irregular, but for close to a decade I've
| been paying off the amount suggested. It's partly laziness,
| and partly a desire to be a good citizen that makes me not
| bother to ask to pay less based on my income. Anecdotally I
| know many people like myself who basically pay more back than
| they strictly have to.
|
| All in all I suspect the system not only works well, but
| ultimately is a net benefit to the entire country. A well-
| educated individual over here makes 10x times that of a low-
| wage workers, and the taxes are significantly higher too.
| While it could take 20+ years to pay off the student debt,
| much of it is probably paid off in increased taxes in the
| interim.
|
| Also I imagine the student debt not being a sword of damocles
| has a not insignificant effect on our general state of
| wellbeing and a reduced number of heart attacks, burnouts,
| and the like.
| eldavido wrote:
| American here - The Netherlands is a pretty small country
| (population wise) but the more I learn about it, the more
| impressed I am. Low public debt, sophisticated commercial
| culture, great education system, very cosmopolitan, and
| sensible.
|
| Good job, guys.
| slg wrote:
| >All of us should be regularly lobbying our lawmakers to make
| student loans dischargeable by bankruptcy, just like any
| other loan.
|
| Why would anyone lend money to someone with zero credit
| history, zero income, zero collateral, zero prospects of
| repaying the loan for at least 4+ years, and has the ability
| to immediately declare bankruptcy as soon as it comes time to
| start paying you back? What would the free market interest
| rate be on that type of loan?
|
| Allowing loans to discharged is nothing but a band-aid on a
| broken system. We need to work to make college cheaper.
| Building the entire system around loans is the problem, not
| one specific feature of those loans.
| lostcolony wrote:
| I'll go one further.
|
| Education is not an asset you can take away. Houses and
| cars can be foreclosed on; you can't take and resell
| education as a good.
|
| It either needs to be kept as a pure luxury commodity, or
| it needs to be valued societally and not require an
| individual to pay for. Even if college is 'cheaper', if it
| prices some people out, it can't be viewed as a necessity
| to be able to get a good job (not saying it is, but society
| certainly tries to push that viewpoint).
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| Lots of credit card debt is unsecured because the
| purchased goods are consumed, but that is dischargeable.
| slg wrote:
| Which is why credit card interest rates are so high and
| why you can't get a credit card with $100,000+ limit as
| an 18 year old with zero income or credit history.
| lostcolony wrote:
| And also why credit card debt is not concerned a
| necessity for 'making it' in society.
| YPCrumble wrote:
| Lenders stopping lending would be fantastic! Without eager
| lenders with usurious terms on their loans like no
| bankruptcy colleges would have to make "tough decisions"
| like figuring out how to be less expensive.
| vonmoltke wrote:
| 90% of the money comes from the federal government, so
| how is that going to work?
| dabbledash wrote:
| The interest rate would be very very high, as it should be.
| You can't on the one hand encourage people to loan money to
| those who aren't credit worthy and on the other hand bemoan
| the fact that people end up with loans they can't pay back.
| The former policy is guaranteed to produce the latter
| outcome. It also artificially inflates the price colleges
| can (and will) charge. Allowing people to discharge
| education debts in bankruptcy is one part of making college
| cheaper.
| slg wrote:
| Reducing the supply for colleges isn't going to make
| overall college education cheaper while maintaining the
| same quality of education. There is certainly some waste
| in college budgets, but it will mostly force colleges to
| cut the least profitable programs. Education is a social
| good. We should invest in it like we do with other public
| services. It shouldn't need to be profited minded.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > We should invest in it like we do with other public
| services.
|
| Yes. We should invest in public universities to have very
| low cost or free tuition, and stop pouring public money
| into private education institutions.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| >Reducing the supply for colleges isn't going to make
| overall college education cheaper while maintaining the
| same quality of education. There is certainly some waste
| in college budgets, but it will mostly force colleges to
| cut the least profitable programs. Education is a social
| good. We should invest in it like we do with other public
| services. It shouldn't need to be profited minded.
|
| We subsidize the shit out of education, and yet it still
| manages to be such an awful investment people can't pay
| it off over 30 years with very low interest rates.
| slg wrote:
| A person's ability to pay off a loan is not the true
| value of the investment. There are positive externalities
| to getting an education that boost society as a whole.
| Real wage stagnation, rising income inequality, and
| compound interest on loans would all serve to make this
| investment less rewarding for individuals while not
| decreasing the overall societal value of education.
| dabbledash wrote:
| I think we should invest in public colleges (increasing
| supply) and stop subsidizing loans with special
| bankruptcy protections and federal money (reducing demand
| at higher price points).
| slg wrote:
| Sorry, I phrased that last comment incredibly poorly. I
| was referring to the supply of financing which in turn
| impacts demand. When the demand curve shifts, they supply
| being provided by colleges decreases. The overall amount
| and quality of education is not something we want to be
| decreasing.
| labcomputer wrote:
| > The interest rate would be very very high, as it should
| be.
|
| The offered loan amount would be much lower, too.
|
| There would be nothing to distinguish a student loan from
| any other unsecured personal loan (like a credit card),
| so the credit line would be similar. For an 18 year-old,
| that means the total amount over 4 years would certainly
| be less than $10k at an APR in the 20's to 30's.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _The offered loan amount would be much lower, too._
|
| Which is fine, because tuition, textbooks, and housing
| would be, too.
|
| This is a crystal-clear example of what happens when
| government subsidies distort a market.
| mywittyname wrote:
| It's hard to pick an economically viable major. There are lots
| of difficult fields to study that just don't pay well due to
| competition. People tend to think Science = STEM = Guaranteed
| Job, but that is not the case. Lots of sciences don't make much
| money, especially the ones driven by passion. Others are highly
| geographically dependent, so mining engineers might have a
| median salary of $80k after five years, but 80% of those people
| live in a handful of rural states.
|
| Also, a lot can change in the four to seven years it takes to
| complete school. A recession can drive a large of people into
| "safe" majors, like accounting, making it more difficult for
| new graduates to onboard. And other fields can shrink or
| disappear almost entirely within that time period.
|
| That being said, these people didn't _have_ to settle for
| serving drinks in a bar. They could have searched employment in
| tangentially-related fields or learned some more technical
| skills. They could have also relocated. Maybe those were not
| options for whatever reason, but in general, those are things
| successful people do. Because the job market is going to change
| wildly during the 40+ years you 'll be employed.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| You make it sound more complicated than it is.
|
| Good grades and a degree in
| Math/CS/Statistics/Physics/Engineering (or
| Business/Finance/Economics in a top uni) = high paying job.
|
| Life sciences pay much less unless you are ready to pursue a
| PhD or MD, in such case the numbers are somewhat comparable.
|
| A person who pursued biochemistry bachelor as a terminal
| degree or studied English literature has all information to
| know the opportunity costs of their decisions.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| Colleges should not even offer loans for non-viable majors.
|
| Picking a major should not be like Indiana Jones picking
| which grail to drink from.
| fossuser wrote:
| Even better would be true market rate pricing for majors.
|
| Why are all majors 4 years? Why does a poetry major cost
| the same as an engineering major?
|
| The universities say there's value in a liberal arts
| education beyond actual economic value? Fine, but someone
| is going to be subsidizing it somewhere - if the schools
| actually value it beyond the market rate and want to donate
| funds from more economically viable majors to it then fine,
| but it shouldn't be the students paying for the overpriced
| poetry degree.
|
| If degree costs were reflective of their true economic
| value then there would be less risk. An economically
| useless degree would at least be cheap in cost (if not in
| time).
|
| All majors being the same length and cost is a sign that
| something is broken.
| matwood wrote:
| > Colleges should not even offer loans for non-viable
| majors.
|
| Oddly enough, a couple of the best programmers I have ever
| work with are now CTOs at their respective companies. One
| of them had an english degree and the other a music degree.
|
| Just yesterday there was an article here on HN about the
| importance of writing.
|
| So, which majors would you consider non-viable?
| twomoretime wrote:
| >There are lots of difficult fields to study that just don't
| pay well due to competition
|
| That may be the case, but speaking as a recent young person,
| the vast majority of college students I met did no actual
| research regarding the employability of their majors.
|
| It's also a disservice to group soft and hard sciences
| together under STEM - because you end up with millions of
| children who can't hack it in math, but they hear that
| psychology or sociology are STEM and therefore a meal ticket,
| and end up taking out loans for a worthless degree simply
| because they had it drilled in their heads that they needed
| to go to college and major in something "useful".
| tengbretson wrote:
| I truly believe that it should be illegal for state-funded
| universities to collect tuition from students that are
| "undecided" in their major.
| mikeg8 wrote:
| So students remain undecided as long as possible to
| enroll in as many undergrad classes as possible? your
| proposition makes no sense to me. I believe as an 18 year
| old, you need to begin seriously taking responsibility
| for your decisions, and if you choose to go to school,
| you absolutely should pay for it. the cost argument is
| totally separate, colleges should be much more affordable
| IMO, but there shouldn't be free rides for remaining
| "undeclared", that would have perverse incentives.
| tengbretson wrote:
| I guess what I said was too ambiguous. What I meant was
| that undecided or undeclared should not even be allowed
| to go to university
| alistairSH wrote:
| I'm not sure I agree with that. I was undecided for 2
| years (of the typical 4 at a US institution). It wasn't a
| problem and didn't cost me anything. Expecting an 18 year
| old to commit to a program seems a bit excessive (yes, we
| do it for professional programs like nursing and
| engineering - but not all students are the same, both of
| those programs have high wash-out rates, and at least
| with engineering, if you get a job doing other things).
| syedkarim wrote:
| Why is this being downvoted? Strange.
|
| I graduated in 2007 and your observation is the same as
| mine. Students go to school without really thinking about
| what is next. I'm guessing that is a result of a
| middle/upper middle class upbringing. I noticed
| international students were a lot more driven, on average.
| I went to a small, liberal arts college that was not highly
| selective in admissions.
|
| Even with the talented and studious, very few had any real
| idea of what was next. Why do we encourage so much debt
| just for the supposed sake of edification.
|
| I will say, though, that it was a really fun time in my
| life. So maybe that's worth it?
| TuringNYC wrote:
| I think lots of it is due to bad biased advice. True
| story, on my first day of college, at the convocation,
| the university president told his true story about how he
| decided to stay at university for an extra year "to study
| the classics" and what an amazing decision this was for
| him. He encouraged everyone to seek erudition.
|
| I wonder how many students accepted that as fact. Because
| it is indeed a great strategy if you are wealthy and have
| a social-network safety net waiting to bail you out with
| a nice job after graduation. But for working class
| students like myself, it is horrible advice. I couldn't
| have graduated a moment too soon, I need to help my mom
| with rent, pay loans, etc.
|
| You have wealthy "successful" academics and others giving
| advice that is noble but unrealistic and downright
| harmful in some cases.
| 0d9eooo wrote:
| It's more complicated, and a deeper problem than that.
|
| For example, I'm one of those former psych majors, and
| though those majors are full of people who aren't good at
| math, there's also a lot of them who know more computer
| science and math than some of the comp sci majors I've
| worked with. In fact, a common problem for psych majors and
| other students is to take the first couple of psych
| courses, think it's a breeze, and then hit advanced courses
| with cognitive modeling, neuroscience, epidemiology, and
| genetics, and realize it _is_ basically STEM.
|
| The problem with this is that everyone who took those first
| couple of classes, or didn't, has this stereotype of psych
| as all involving people laying around on couches discussing
| past lives or something. So you might have a psych major
| who did a thesis involving neural network models and
| cognition, maybe with some imaging involving a cutting edge
| system in the imaging center, working with physicists, and
| they will get looked down on by employers. Meanwhile the
| comp sci undergrad who barely gets python and did their
| group final project on some kind of toy webapp is
| qualified.
|
| I have family who are making significant money in web
| development who are actually English majors, who just
| happened to have the right connections at the right time.
| When I was in undergrad, comp sci was filled with a glut of
| unmotivated students who just wanted a degree for a job,
| and we were all being told that there wasn't going to be
| demand for comp sci degrees because there would be too many
| grads in it and you could always learn that stuff through
| different means. My father, who is now in medical
| administration with an MD, talked me out of biochem and
| biology degrees because he couldn't find employment with
| those degrees and had to go on to grad school.
|
| So what do we make of a degree? Does my dad's biochem
| degree suddenly become more valuable when it's a stepping
| stone to an MD program? Did that family member with a
| "worthless" liberal arts degree waste their money when
| they're making a comfortable income in the tech sector?
|
| The deeper problem is that people are seen one-
| dimensionally, as equal to some degree, rather than their
| experiences, like college is some glorified vocational
| certification program.
|
| Whenever we talk about "worthwhile" versus "worthless"
| degrees at some level what we're accepting is this idea
| that someone's skillset is defined by the degree, rather
| than the degree being an indicator of part of a skillset.
|
| Society used to see things in the latter way, and at some
| point it transitioned to the former.
| danbolt wrote:
| Reading your comment really affected me just now. I work
| in the video games industry, and since entry-level
| positions are quite competitive (video games are quite
| popular with younger folks), people make a lot of
| decisions to take a focused, employer-attractive, career
| path to be hired. Firms will often hire aspiring
| designers that have worked doing QA for a few years as
| well as programmers that have spent a lot of time
| intentionally studying C++ and rendering.
|
| I appreciate the effort and enthusiasm my coworkers have,
| but sometimes I feel like the expertise in the industry
| is too overspecialized. Perhaps it's a product of larger-
| budget games being more conservative by
| financial/organizational necessity, but I'd appreciate if
| the people working there were more well-rounded. I would
| love more game designers to have a liberal-arts
| background to inject into their ideas.
| verall wrote:
| I'd say a bigger problem isn't that undergraduate psych
| is easy, but rather just that _so many_ students that
| don't really know what they want to do take it, causing
| like a permanent glut of psych undergrads.
|
| My major was also very popular, but about 1/3 students in
| computer engineering drop or switch majors, most after
| the first year. Fair or not weedouts and things to reduce
| the glut of undergrads. At least at my school the
| graduation rate for the psych school was way higher.
| twomoretime wrote:
| >The deeper problem is that people are seen one-
| dimensionally, as equal to some degree, rather than their
| experiences, like college is some glorified vocational
| certification program.
|
| This wasn't a problem when college was an exclusive
| program with standards that maintained prestige. Those
| standards have been gradually eroding as we faced
| collective political and corporate pressure to "open
| college up to everybody."
|
| Intelligence and ability are heavily skewed
| distributions. The purpose of college was once to develop
| and certify those near the top. Now we're in some weird
| PC transition zone where standards have been lowered
| (this is evidenced by the fact that the distribution of
| intelligence has not changed, but nearly 50% of people
| have a degree).
|
| Imagine if we decided that everyone needed to learn and
| play basketball and started letting everyone into the
| NBA. Imagine what would happen to the sport if we decided
| there were too many straight black men playing and we
| needed better representation of women and other groups.
| Sure, if you institute society-wide training, people on
| average might get a little at basketball, but nothing
| will change the fact that a tiny percentage of the
| population is able to play at a professional competitive
| later.
|
| The only difference here is that intelligence is far less
| visible. There's far more room for decades of excuses and
| second chances when we have drilled into two generations
| now that anyone is capable of being a rocket scientist
| and all we need to do is go to school and try. The road
| to hell is paved with good intentions.
| mettamage wrote:
| I don't fully agree with your post, but you do make some
| good points. In The Netherlands I have seen some majors
| go downhill (hello psychology!), while others became a
| bit tougher actually (hello computer science!).
|
| In the Netherlands though, what I've noticed is that high
| school was tough (if you did STEM high school that is).
| IMO, high school was way tougher than university,
| considering the skills you had at the time and effort you
| needed to put in.
|
| Even computer science is a cake walk compared to that,
| because at university people tend to be more motivated
| than in high school.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| _That being said, these people didn 't have to settle for
| serving drinks in a bar._
|
| I'm familiar with a certain materials science startup in
| England that lost out on a round of funding in the dotcom
| bust and went bankrupt soon after. The chief chemist, a very
| capable man, went back to his native country in the Former
| Eastern Bloc and worked in a shipyard for a couple of years.
| It was that bad.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| but his similarly skilled native born co-worker, probably
| found his footing in a decent job. The privileges of
| citizenship. And I don't say that in a sarcastic way.
| chipperyman573 wrote:
| There was nothing that the OP said that would imply the
| person wasn't a citizen, much less that they had troubles
| because of their citizenship.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| One way in the US to help pick an economically viable major
| is to use the BLS Occupational Outlook...
|
| https://www.bls.gov/ooh/mobile/home.htm
|
| It gives estimates of salary and future demand for pretty
| much all occupations. Recommend this to your children to help
| them understand how their major selection could impact their
| future career.
| [deleted]
| mettamage wrote:
| Even as a non-American, this is fascinating. I wonder if
| other countries have it.
| bachmeier wrote:
| For the average college graduate, college is still a pretty
| good investment. I could write lots of comments about people
| without a college degree that live crappy lives and have
| trouble finding good paying jobs, and people with college
| degrees that live well and make a lot of money.
|
| My prediction is that we'll see changes in the US system. The
| problem you're pointing out is the risk. Universities are the
| ones that IMO should be taking on the risk. If you graduate
| 3000 students a year, most will do okay and some won't, and
| that would be no big deal if college cost $800 a year. I
| predict that over the next couple decades we'll move to a
| system where you pay for college out of your earnings.
|
| This would clean up another issue (not pointing any fingers
| with this). Colleges would nudge students into careers with
| better prospects. If they'd get paid less from students in
| certain majors, there'd be fewer of those majors. I could even
| see a system where "you're on your own" if you major in certain
| limited prospect fields. Universities that align their
| interests with those of the students will be the ones that
| thrive.
|
| Disclosure: Professor for many years
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >For the average college graduate, college is still a pretty
| good investment
|
| Evidence doesn't seem to bear this out.
|
| " _The college income premium--the extra income earned by a
| family headed by a college graduate over an otherwise similar
| family without a bachelor's degree--remains positive but has
| declined for recent graduates. The college wealth premium
| (extra wealth) has declined more noticeably among all cohorts
| born after 1940._ _Among non-Hispanic white family heads born
| in the 1980s, the college wealth premium is at a historic
| low; among all other races and ethnicities, it is
| statistically indistinguishable from zero [emphasis added]_
| _. Using variables available for the first time in the 2016
| Survey of Consumer Finances, we find that controlling for the
| education of one's parents reduces our estimates of college
| and postgraduate income and wealth premiums by 8 to 18
| percent. Controlling also for measures of a respondent's
| financial acumen--which may be partly innate--, our estimates
| of the value added by college and a postgraduate degree fall
| by 30 to 60 percent. Taken together, our results suggest that
| college and post-graduate education may be failing some
| recent graduates as a financial investment. We explore a
| variety of explanations and conclude that falling college
| wealth premiums may be due to the luck of when you were born,
| financial liberalization and the rising cost of higher
| education. "_
|
| particularly noteworthy: _" [...]among all other races and
| ethnicities, it is statistically indistinguishable from
| zero[...]"_
|
| https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/12/is.
| ..
| vsareto wrote:
| No college is going to advocate for taking future income from
| students over government backed loans or a traditional loan.
| The former translates to less immediate income. Colleges had
| little reason to raise tuition since 2000 except for money, I
| don't see them suddenly moving to forward-thinking
| strategies.
| fossuser wrote:
| They may if they face competition form Lambda School style
| ISAs (not necessarily just ISAs generally, but ones that
| are actually good for the student).
|
| As a bonus this would make universities better at education
| since the incentives would be aligned with the students.
|
| It would be helped though if the easily available
| government loans were not available, though with the
| generally bad politics from both sides on this, I find
| progress there unlikely.
| ineedasername wrote:
| You're assuming a lot of faith in market forces. In
| reality, the incentives _should_ already be aligned with
| student interest: All of the information for it is
| already available. Retention & graduation rates are
| public knowledge, and you can easily find out if a school
| has job placement (and their rates) or merely a "career
| services" area that will help you write a resume and
| point you at some other resources.
|
| The fact is, the majority of students don't make their
| decisions of where to attend based on tangible metrics.
| They make their decision based primarily on the perceived
| "experience" they will have in college, and only after
| that do they filter their options based on other factors
| (if at all).
|
| The problem is less with the colleges, and more with the
| fact that attending college has become less about
| academics and much more about a stage of transition into
| adulthood (along with a sort of last "hurrah" farewell to
| the lesser responsibilities of childhood)
| fossuser wrote:
| It's not really the same when the school gets the money
| either way and it's not clear how the placement rates
| really translate to good outcomes (it puts the
| rationality burden on the students which is the wrong
| place for it and less likely to work for the reasons you
| describe). Schools are incentivized to not have students
| fail out and to select hard for students already likely
| to succeed during admissions, but that doesn't mean the
| students currently learn much from the school or that the
| schools should even make education their focus (as
| opposed to increasing their prestige via research or
| facilities to attract more students).
|
| If student failure to succeed in the market led to
| university failure we'd see a lot different behavior from
| universities.
|
| I don't think the universities are currently selling
| education, they're selling prestige and network access
| via credentials with some education on the side at
| inflated rates from easy access to government non-
| defaultable loans.
|
| This leads to weird behavior like all majors being the
| same cost and the same length along with lots of people
| employed by the university that don't know anything
| (career services where I went to school was a good
| example of this). There's also a lot of spending on
| facilities to lure students that is unrelated to
| education or success afterwards (since they have to
| compete with other universities for all of the free
| government loan money).
|
| If this free money was not available there would be a
| check on people getting loans for majors that are not
| economically viable. If school's offered ISAs then the
| school's would provide the check. As it is currently, the
| student carries the burden of evaluating all of this -
| it's not a surprise a lot of people fail this at 16.
|
| This incentive alignment issue is why people come out of
| universities and get destroyed by technical interviews,
| why a large amount of CS majors can't solve fizzbuzz and
| why people pay a lot for ultimately worthless degrees. I
| don't disagree with the cultural problems you describe,
| but I think if there's an ISA option vs. 100k in debt
| option more people will take the ISA option if the
| education actually works (and it will have to for ISA
| providers to survive).
|
| There's a way to fix the systemic incentive issues and
| place the burden of evaluating economic viability on
| systems better able to handle it. This would fix a lot of
| the problems, but it's hard to change from within the
| system with the current broken incentive structure.
| That's why I'm excited about the Lambda School approach -
| I don't think universities can dig themselves out of this
| and I don't think the necessary changes to government
| loans is politically viable.
|
| This is also why I think 'free college' is bad policy, it
| further prevents Lambda School like ISA approaches and
| cements in the current broken incentive structure.
| ineedasername wrote:
| I think it's more of a problem that the economy simply
| doesn't need as many people with college degrees as are
| produced. Even if companies need to filter candidates for
| competence, they'd still have to do that, and we'd still
| be stuck with a glut of people with credentials that will
| go unused due to over supply. I don't have an answer to
| that. (except that apart from the massive debt problem, I
| still think it's a net positive in society to have
| slightly better educated people even in low-skill jobs.)
|
| As for free college, countries that have it don't just
| make it free for anyone: there is a significant filtering
| process that entails tracking students who don't perform
| academically into paths more suited to specific trades
| instead of college. If there's a solution to the above
| problem, it need to include something like that as well.
| fossuser wrote:
| College degrees generally? Sure, I agree - the market
| doesn't need a lot of them.
|
| I think there's a lot of market demand for certain
| capabilities though - specifically capable software
| developers.
|
| Maybe there's an argument that there's not enough
| intellectual capacity to meet this demand, but I think
| it's more an issue of opportunity (Lambda's student
| success seems to be evidence of this). I guess I'm not
| convinced there's oversupply generally as much as there
| is an oversupply of certain non-economically viable
| majors (because of this incentive problem).
|
| For the free college, even with those restrictions (which
| are good), I'd argue it doesn't relieve the incentive
| alignment problem with the colleges themselves (so it
| harms potential ISA competitors without solving the
| underlying problem).
| bachmeier wrote:
| Actually, some schools do have versions in place already (I
| believe Purdue's engineering is one example).
|
| My opinion - not my area of research - is that the days of
| hiking tuition like they did year after year are over. Note
| that there's no reason this won't bring in money
| immediately. Students would essentially be doing an IPO and
| giving shares to the university. Those shares would have
| value to someone, and they could serve as collateral for a
| loan. And beyond that, there's no reason it has to be all
| or nothing. You could pay half tuition now and sign over a
| percentage of future earnings.
|
| There's no way colleges want to do this. It's unclear to me
| how long they continue to operate under the current system.
| They're going to have to innovate.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| College, and the push to send everyone to it, makes much more
| sense when you view College as both an economic proposition,
| and a part of social class.
|
| The economic aspect has been well covered here, but the social
| class has not. Social classes are a set of shared values,
| habits, and beliefs that help cluster people together into a
| sense of shared social membership. It is completely distinct
| from economic class, with some of the "lower" classes regularly
| having more income and net worth than the "upper" social
| classes.
|
| In America, a large portion of the push to send everyone to
| college has been a push for the supremacy of middle class norms
| and values over working class norms and values via college.
| College is literally an indoctrination process into the middle
| social class, it's where you learn the norms and values of that
| class and socialize exclusively with other members of said
| class.
|
| As you've discovered, social class and economic class are not
| one and the same, and you yourself as a member of the working
| class actually make significantly more money than members of
| the middle class who went to college but did not reap any
| economic benefits from the process.
| [deleted]
| eternauta3k wrote:
| Reminds me of this other reference [1] to college being
| finishing school for the upper classes
|
| [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/01/30/staying-classy/
| ashtonkem wrote:
| The first link in that blog, siderea[0] is exactly where I
| first learned about social class. Definitely worth a read.
|
| [0]
| https://siderea.livejournal.com/1260265.html?format=light
| dschuler wrote:
| You write very well, it flows in a way that reminds me of
| Bukowski.
| nyxtom wrote:
| What is happening with this make for movie story ^ So much here
| ^ :D
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. Out of curiosity, how did you wind up on
| Hacker News?
| geebee wrote:
| Thanks for your story. I had a similar moment after college
| myself. I graduated into the recession of the early 90s, in San
| Diego, which had been hit very hard by defense cutbacks. Almost
| everyone I knew worked service jobs, and even those were hard
| to get at times. The only people getting decent jobs - by
| which, I mean jobs that build careers, I'm not talking about
| pay - were engineers and a few finance/accounting related
| majors. Humanities majors who moved (to Washington DC, New
| York, to a lesser extent San Francisco or Los Angeles) fared
| better.
|
| I agree that "STEM" alone won't get you a good job, and some of
| the bio majors were not doing a whole lot better than the
| humanities majors. But overall, STEM was a vastly better place
| to be, especially the more "numeric" fields - by that, I mean
| the various majors that require the common two year sequence of
| math from calculus through linear algebra and differential
| equations as a prerequisite to whatever upper division
| specialization happens. Even there, some are better than others
| in terms of jobs, but they all fared vastly better.
|
| Humanities majors from very elite schools tend to weather a
| recession ok, but otherwise, I think that one advantage to
| being a STEM major (with the caveat I described above) is that
| you're less likely to be permanently knocked out of the game by
| a bad stretch, especially in the beginning. There's a real risk
| to getting sidelined, and I worry about the young people
| graduating right now. For instance, my employer has done a
| hiring moratorium for a year, and there may be layoffs. This,
| especially if it goes on for a few years, is unusually
| devastating to the long term career prospects of people just
| starting out.
|
| My suspicion is that there is a huge difference between
| graduating as a humanities major in a recession vs boom. If you
| graduate in better times, you lock in a few good career
| building years. You may stagnate, you may even be unemployed
| for long enough that it knocks you off the path for a bit, but
| you have something to build on. If you graduate when nobody is
| hiring, and you float around for a few years, by the time
| things pick up, employers are either hiring the people who have
| some experience, or going back to recent grads for entry level
| hiring. That definitely happened to a lot of people I know who
| graduated in the early 90s in SoCal.
|
| I suspect that humanities majors from very elite colleges, as
| well as STEM majors in very in demand fields from a broader
| range of colleges, are less likely to be locked out in a bad
| market, and more likely to be recruited back in when things
| improve. This is a bit of a guess, though I think it is
| supported by some research.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > My suspicion is that there is a huge difference between
| graduating as a humanities major in a recession vs boom.
|
| Drop the "humanities major"--it's true even for STEM majors
| as well. There's a pretty consistent career track from
| college to junior to senior positions, and if you fall off
| that track, it is quite hard to get back in again. There are
| very few majors for which demand is high enough to let you
| get back on the track, certainly not all of STEM.
| whymauri wrote:
| CS major graduating in June from a top 3 institution, here.
| Last fall, my application-to-callback rate was like
| 80-90+%. I had to stop applying to jobs to make my workload
| and interviewing manageable.
|
| My current rate is like 15-20% after I lost my full-time
| job. About 10% in software and engineering vs. 30% in
| finance.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Most of STEM degrees are not similar to CS regarding
| career prospects. Masters in chemistry or mathematics
| don't have that many entry level jobs with attractive
| salaries eagerly waiting for fresh grads.
| whymauri wrote:
| Sorry, I should clarify. My point is that even a
| candidate who would typically be a viable hire or
| interviewee is now struggling in the job market. The
| implication being that other STEM students, including CS
| students, are severely struggling to find jobs, right
| now.
|
| My friends in earth sciences are essentially at 0%
| callback. Friends with identical experience to me from
| different schools are getting a <5-10% callback rate
| unless they have referrals.
|
| I'm in 100% agreement with you and the other poster.
| There's no real silver bullet for quickly finding
| employment right now except the small niche of math/CS
| majors with good GPAs from T10 institutions applying to
| work in finance.
| geebee wrote:
| It's no joke in STEM either, I'll give you that. I should
| have said it's hard for humanities majors _relative_ to
| STEM, because I definitely wouldn 't try to claim it isn't
| a big difference for everyone, graduating in a recession vs
| a boom.
|
| I read an article a while back about how it doesn't matter
| where you go to college provided you major in STEM. Here's
| a link, along with a counter point:
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/do-elite-colleges-lead-to-
| highe...
|
| https://money.com/college-matters-stem-majors/
|
| I wasn't super caught up in the debate, mainly because I
| think that as an absolute statement, the claim that it
| doesn't matter at _all_ is nearly impossible to defend. It
| 's really a relative argument. Read that way, though, I do
| find it compelling.
|
| Another couple of problems here is that 1) there's always a
| bit of hand waving around "STEM", with a temptation to turn
| it into a no true scotsman argument. I defined STEM for
| this purpose as majors that require you to take specialized
| upper division coursework with a prerequisite 2 year
| undergraduate calculus through linear algebra and
| differential equations sequence. Even that's loose though,
| and may include some finance or highly quantitative Econ
| majors (I suspect they do just fine, though).
|
| The other is that I think this may hide some differences
| between elite STEM majors in the nature of the work done.
| There's a big difference between "senior data scientist at
| uber cool prestige media company with tons of autonomy" and
| "senior CRUD bug fixer."
| 7leafer wrote:
| People aka the New Oil must have skills, not knowledge. This
| narrative has been coming out of the woodwork recently. Like,
| lumberjacks over dendrologists all the way.
|
| If we translate this motto from the newspeak, it would be this:
| the New Oil must flow smoothly without asking uncomfortable
| questions about the piping.
| thorwasdfasdf wrote:
| the reason those people can't get jobs isn't because they're
| not smart. It's because there simply aren't enough jobs that
| require that, and waaaayyy too many people running around with
| that education and those degrees.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| I work in AV development, and the number of refugees from the
| hard sciences is astonishing. I guess I don't blame them, but
| it's weird to have a physics PhD report to you and be able to
| use only a fraction of the skills she spent a decade and
| hundreds of thousands of dollars gaining.
|
| This isn't quite a complaint: adopting math and physics PhDs
| (first as a mentor and now as a TLM) that are seemingly
| unproductive has been a consistent secret weapon of mine:
| they're often written off as unproductive, but it's not
| difficult to turn someone that smart into a solid engineer with
| a few months of guidance, as long as they're willing to learn.
| In specific domains, a subset of their actual skills are a good
| fit (they tend to be great at math), but it just signifies an
| unfortunate and fairly significant misallocation of resources.
| gji wrote:
| I'm a physics grad student finishing up a PhD, would you have
| some time/be willing to chat about industry jobs? Email is in
| bio.
| code4tee wrote:
| Most STEM PhDs (and especially in the hard sciences) are
| funded from mostly government sources. It's seen as the
| country making an investment in top talent.
|
| Nobody (who is any good) in the USA pays money for a STEM
| PhD. You get paid to do these degrees, albeit not a lot but a
| lot better than paying yourself!
| wutbrodo wrote:
| Right I know, but I was making the assumption that they had
| a related undergrad, and more importantly, accounting for
| opportunity cost. Five years of working time for someone
| smart and quantitative enough to do a physics PhD is easily
| over six figures.
| abnry wrote:
| However, the opportunity costs for a PhD are very, very
| high, especially if the degree takes longer than planned.
| benibela wrote:
| True. I had planed to finish my CS PhD in 2016, but now I
| am still not finished
| N1H1L wrote:
| PhDs though are never self-funded, so almost entirely the
| loan is from undergrad.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| I didn't mention a loan, and was thinking primarily of
| opportunity cost (and to a lesser extent, undergrad, though
| the skills gained in undergrad tend to be the ones directly
| useful for their current work).
|
| I tend to treat opportunity cost like inflation adjustment:
| in most cases, failing to include it is an error, so I do
| it by default.
| skwb wrote:
| *STEM PhDs are almost always funded.
| bradstewart wrote:
| "AV" being audio/visual, anti-virus, else?
| burntoutfire wrote:
| Air conditioning, Ventilation perhaps?
| wutbrodo wrote:
| Sorry, autonomous vehicles. We use the term so much
| internally and in industry-adjacent conversations that I
| have a blind spot around the fact that it's not an obvious
| acronym at all.
| pp19dd wrote:
| Autonomous vehicle?
| frozenlettuce wrote:
| Or autonomous vehicles, I'm also confused
| knzhou wrote:
| Physics PhD student here. Yeah, we're all playing the lottery
| for the dream of a life studying the universe.
|
| It's the exact analogue of how serious student athletes throw
| away their whole undergrad education for a shot at a pro
| career, usually to end up injured and useless a couple years
| later.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| I don't know about that. If you fall short of your
| aspirations at the PhD or postgrad level, there's always
| quantitative finance or any number of other lucrative
| careers where your background will at least get you in the
| door for an interview.
|
| For the athlete, it's literally all or nothing.
| knzhou wrote:
| > there's always quantitative finance
|
| From the perspective of understanding the universe, that
| _is_ nothing. Decent consolation prize though.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Student athletes could go to class, engage in
| scholarship, and learn something.
| aroundtown wrote:
| I thought getting a degree in computer science was my ticket
| out of poverty and the lower class blue-collar work that has
| perpetuated my family for generations.
|
| Boy was I wrong.
|
| Opportunity and pure luck have to be at your back for the kind
| of generational change I sought. End up on the wrong side of
| either one of those and you too might not end up where you
| expect.
|
| Nowadays, I wish I had learned a trade. Sure the work is hard,
| but those skills are always in demand. Houses will always need
| electrical or plumbing, but not everybody needs someone who can
| design an emulator or make an interpreter.
| contemporary343 wrote:
| A couple of points: not all colleges are created the same. Many
| state schools, particularly top-tier ones offer fantastic
| educations at an excellent price-point. They are a good value,
| and will remain so. Along with need-based aid and scholarships,
| they are amazing vehicles to reduce generational inequality (look
| at UCLA for example). I can only speak to the engineering (not
| software) side of things, but from lab work to project-based
| design classes, I gained skills, knowledge and experience from
| well-trained instructors in a way that I think would be very
| difficult to begin to replicate in a remote experience.
|
| Many, if not most students, can't learn effectively by themselves
| through online videos alone. Structure, assessments and regular
| interaction with teaching staff have real, measurable value.
|
| Finally, the social networks that universities provide students
| and alumni are valuable. We're social beings. These networks open
| students to possibilities and careers they may not have
| considered. Of course, there are negatives to this as well.
|
| Universities remain economic engines, particularly across wide
| swaths of semi-rural parts of the country. They create dynamic
| flows of people, ideas and capital that are undeniably important.
| gnulinux wrote:
| I would personally consider the education I received in UC
| Berkeley when I was there studying CS, excellent. It was very
| challenging (in a way, it's impossible to exaggerate this), I
| found tons of help from TAs, my peers, professors were experts
| in their fields, labs were very useful to make me experience
| "real life" stuff and discussions were very useful to learn
| "theory" side of things, both of these occurring in the same
| class. I had a lot of research opportunities, and "hand-on"
| engineering opportunities.
|
| The only problem I can think of right now, it was occasionally
| hard to get the class you want; but with a few strategies it
| was manageable to get all the classes you want.
|
| I hear a lot of people who criticize college being "4 years of
| fun". I don't doubt this is the case for most people, but this
| cannot be further than my own experience (and my friends in
| Berkeley who studied some STEM field). When you have _endless_
| stream of homeworks, projects, midterms and often-times you
| need to make decisions so that you minimize the penalty you can
| get by spending too little time on a HW (as opposed to
| maximizing your grade), there was simply not enough time to
| socialize. Obviously there were many people who socialized and
| partied but their GPAs were low. Also obviously, there were
| people who socialized and partied also had high grades, but
| they were very brilliant and were probably 0.1% of the class.
| Most of us mere mortal souls spent weeks in library studying
| and perfecting ourselves.
|
| We can have endless discussions about importance (or lack
| thereof) universities, but given the correct setting, and
| correct motivation, they can be incredibly good tools.
|
| When I came to Berkeley my family was piss poor and I was a 1st
| generation college student. Fast-forward 3 years (I graduated
| in 3 years as opposed to 4) I found a 6 figure job doing what I
| love every day, programming. I think that's a very good deal.
|
| Controversial claim ahead: I think this discussion about
| universities' importance is uniquely American. I think we're
| simply discussing the wrong thing. Instead of questioning
| whether college is important for X, Y, we should be discussing
| how we can make every single American go to college. Yes this
| would mean having public universities where Americans can go
| without any cost, European style.
| machinehermit wrote:
| I just don't agree we should be discussing how every American
| can go to college.
|
| I am a drop out. I really had no business ever going to
| college in the first place.
|
| I love what I do now but I had to figure things out on my
| own.
|
| Free college would have just been more free party time for
| me. You can run it a 1000 times and every time I am partying.
|
| What we need to do is make sure people like you don't put off
| college because it becomes too pricey.
|
| I also think I would have figured things out sooner if I
| would not have been pushed so hard by all these signals as a
| young man that college was a given.
| teslabox wrote:
| > I think we're simply discussing the wrong thing. Instead of
| questioning whether college is important for X, Y, we should
| be discussing how we can make every single American go to
| college.
|
| Or we could help most people learn valuable skills in their
| first 13 years of schooling, so the only people who need/want
| to go to college are those who will actually benefit.
|
| I saw a submission in /newest last night about how one of the
| actual purposes of American K-12 education is 'childcare':
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23027408
|
| _" Like pretty much every everything about schooling in the
| US ever, it assumes that what schools do - and all that
| schools do - is educate. [...] The fact of the matter is our
| primary school system is state-subsidized childcare for the
| vast majority of parents who cannot afford to raise their own
| children in our ghastly economy. That's been the case for the
| last 40-plus years. This isn't new, and if it's news to you,
| o reader, it's only because nobody much in the US has wanted
| to admit this evidence of the US economy being terrifyingly
| more broken than we Americans are prepared to confront."_
|
| While I appreciate that public schools are supposed to serve
| the interests of the public, the standard factory school
| model isn't doing anyone any favors.
|
| The United States' College/University system is a much more
| valuable institution than the K-12 as commonly exists today.
|
| The only reform really needed for K-12 is to transform it
| into an institution that exists to help children figure out
| what they're good at, and provide the resources to help them
| learn what they want to learn.
| fancyfish wrote:
| I agree, as a Tier-1 dev. I went to a Tier-1 university and
| wouldn't discount universities in Tiers 1-2 for the research,
| lectures, and resources they provide, in addition to the
| serendipitous environment where you will bump into other top-
| talent people.
|
| Below Tier 2 I would support online learning to an extent, but
| having regular lectures and group work is important to keep an
| 18 year old on track. Universities need to instead cut
| superfluous spending on sports programs, new buildings, and
| layers of administration.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > the social networks that universities provide students and
| alumni are valuable
|
| Colleges say this, but does anybody ever really find it to be
| the case? I suppose if you went to Harvard or Princeton this
| might be true, but as a representative of the other 90%, I've
| never interacted with anybody I went to school with (including
| a year abroad, a four-year degree, and a master's degree) in
| any way.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| The culture of higher education isn't what it used to be. The
| advancement of knowledge is now secondary to economic growth in a
| university. Students begin as customers and turn into products by
| graduation. Universities used to be gatekeepers to better
| economic opportunities but those opportunities have disappeared.
| This is a relatively recent phenomenon in that Baby Boomers don't
| have the student loan obligations that generations following them
| do. Boomers changed the policies to suit their own financial
| interests, destroying the opportunities that they benefited by
| for future generations. Massive student loan debt constrains
| major life decisions and limits access to credit. It's a lot
| easier to navigate life when you don't carry inescapable debt
| burdens. Government refused to limit access to credit and that
| allowed universities to constantly charge more every year. You
| can't escape student loan debt as you can business loans by
| declaring bankruptcy because of a fundamentally flawed logic
| about what the student loan enabled. Higher education is an
| economic investment. Yet, when the investment fails, the lenders
| aren't exposed to the losses -- the borrowers are. This has been
| a great deal for lenders as they aren't exposed to risk.
|
| Unfortunately, neither a Trump nor Biden administration is going
| to change anything. It's up to the free market and entrepreneurs
| to disrupt this exploitative system.
| ycombi3 wrote:
| I'm sorry, but how could someone not have agreed with your
| statement? Online learning is a major threat to college for
| many of those reasons.
| non-entity wrote:
| Online learning isn't a very big threat to colleges because
| colleges hold a sort of "social monopoly" on credentialling
| for majority of fields. No one will care about you coursera
| certificates they want a bachelors degree.
| macinjosh wrote:
| > The advancement of knowledge is now secondary to economic
| growth in a university.
|
| I will second this just taking from my own experiences.
|
| > Students begin as customers and turn into products by
| graduation.
|
| To add to this the students' parents have also wedged
| themselves into the customer category. They are often footing
| the bill or at least the loan payments and some of the more
| helicopter-like parents feel entitled to demand universities do
| more and have more for their precious children.
| wespiser_2018 wrote:
| makes sense: colleges are are entering another recession, and
| there is already a forecasted drop in enrollment of the
| wealthiest students, who should have been born during the last
| recession, that will hit in 2026 and could be as bad as a 15% to
| 20% drop in enrollment.
|
| All in all, this might not be too bad, if you look at the growth
| in college expenses over the last few decades, the rise in
| tuition isn't going to instruction, it's going to administration,
| and hopefully this downturn will lead to the emergence of mass
| market cheap credential that are feasible solutions for everyone.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Good to know it might be cheap to get a second degree in a few
| years.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| There are too many short-sighted idiots who don't realize that
| having your neighbors child is the 2nd most important thing to
| having your own child educated.
|
| "But I didn't have childen! Why should I pay taxes for schools?"
| is not uncommon. The answer, of course, is that we all benefit
| from their education, and so it isn't unreasonable for tax money
| to be spent to help heavily subsidize education.
|
| I'm lucky; I went to college in the early 80s, at a good state
| school, and it cost about $5000/year ($13K/year in today's
| dollars). I'm doubly lucky: my parents paid for it, so I left
| college penniless but without debt. It sickens me to read how
| much colleges are charging these days, and how even state schools
| are modeling themselves after for profit schools. When I went to
| school, most classes were taught by full time professors, many
| tenured, aided by TAs. Now there are so many "associate
| professors", i.e., getting paid minimal amounts per course hour
| taught without benefits. The system is rotten.
|
| Back in the 70s, Texas was awash taxes from oil money. I knew
| someone who attended UT Austin back then and it was a few hundred
| dollars per semester, as the state picked up the rest.
| Conservatives were conservative back then too, but they saw the
| value in an educated public. Now they feel like schools should be
| self funding.
| waynecochran wrote:
| I was also lucky. Undergrad funded by my parents. Grad school
| funded by assistantships with most tuition waved. I got a PhD
| with zero debt.
|
| My father could pay for college himself back in the 50's and
| 60's a summer job and with a part time job during the year. His
| parents were poor and uneducated, yet He got a PhD with no
| debt.
|
| Now my kids are facing college. The landscape has changed and
| it is not good. I am very well paid but I make too much money
| for financial help, but not really enough to pay for 4 years of
| college for all my kids. I have saved money and have paid off
| my house, but I don't have another $600K set aside for college.
| I don't want them getting out of school with debt, so I will
| make sure they don't do anything stupid with large student
| loans. But I imagine they will all have to take on some debt.
|
| The sad thing, college is not better (actually worse in the
| liberal arts -- that is a different discussion) and the
| inflated costs are insane. The money is _not_ going towards
| better professors -- I was a professor for 18 years and I didn
| 't see a proportional growth in teaching and research. Almost
| all of the extra money went into the bureaucracy.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.md/7H1xu
| renewiltord wrote:
| Universities have to do all this proxying for a good education
| because they are unable to demonstrate the primary value: making
| you valuable to society.
|
| If they did, they could simply publish "Median income
| distribution for graduating students by degree achieved". They
| currently sell a common lie: that there is a roundedness or
| completeness to education. This is common wisdom and false.
| md2020 wrote:
| FWIW, my university does do this. The college of engineering
| here publishes a yearly report that breaks down statistics
| about the graduating class (post-graduation plans, salary
| statistics, etc.) for each major.
| renewiltord wrote:
| This is wonderful. I checked your profile and couldn't tell
| where you go. Would you mind sharing?
| md2020 wrote:
| University of Michigan
| renewiltord wrote:
| Thanks, brother.
| daseiner1 wrote:
| go blue baby, when i was a student in the CoE and having
| the standard "I'll never make it!" anxiety I'd take a
| peak at that report every now & then and feel just fine,
| lol
| Nasrudith wrote:
| They would need the value before to do that which isn't exactly
| easy to gather and prove meaningfully.
| downrightmike wrote:
| The only degree that doesn't force a "well rounded" education
| is aerospace engineering. They start on their major course work
| right away. How many of those guys are out of work? "Well
| rounded course work" is just a money sink and wastes two years.
| Most of the major course work that matter you don't get to
| until junior and senior years. All you really need are those
| last two. First two are a waste.
| rstupek wrote:
| that's why a strategy I've heard that helps to reduce cost of
| higher education is to take as many of the courses that you
| can at a community college where those credits can transfer
| over to the university of your choice.
| non-entity wrote:
| Out of curiosity does the also mean Aerospace engineering
| degrees are cheaper, or are those 2 years replacwd by even
| more major work?
| geogra4 wrote:
| This is where the continental european model of the university is
| so much better than the anglo-american one.
|
| Universities should be about coursework and research, that's it.
| Dorms, dining halls, gyms, social clubs, sports etc. are not part
| of the university's mission
| zwieback wrote:
| I went to university in Germany (ME, Stuttgart) my kids are
| attending public universities in Oregon. I get exactly what
| you're saying, when I walk across the OSU campus I'm amazed at
| how beautiful everything is made for the students life. THe
| flipside is that many labs are underequipped. We have to face
| the fact that colleges in the US are providing lifestyle at
| least as much as education. However, when kids and parents pick
| colleges they decide it's worth it, otherwise everyone would be
| going to community colleges.
| Loughla wrote:
| Many, many students choose those schools specifically because
| of the 'lifestyle' they offer. You are solidly correct.
|
| What everyone seems to be missing in this thread is that
| those things only exist because people want them. I work for
| a bare-bones community college. We're less than 1/8th the
| cost of the closest large state school. And people choose to
| go there, and pay 8x more than they would at our institution
| because of dorm life, student life, and club opportunities.
|
| Like it or don't, schools are only responding to what
| students want. There is obviously bloat in administration at
| schools - anywhere with a bureaucracy will (in my opinion)
| have that. But all of the other 'fun' things are because some
| students made a stink about wanting them.
| vzidex wrote:
| I disagree with you, however one aspect of the continental
| European model that I admire is the close integration between
| post-secondary education and industry. One of my cousins - who
| studied and now lives in Germany - did his Masters and PhD on
| the topic of work he was doing while working at <large car
| manufacturer>, where he still works today.
|
| On the other hand, from my understanding such close integration
| between advanced degrees and industry is less common in North
| America - to my disappointment.
| MatthiasP wrote:
| This is not as common as you might think. Some universities
| do closely collaborate with their regional industry, but the
| vast majority of master thesis have zero practical
| application, just like in the US.
| zhdc1 wrote:
| It generally depends on where the funding comes from, at
| least from what I've seen. Chairs or individual projects
| that are funded by industry generally hand walk graduate
| students through partner-sponsored topics.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I feel like engineering and graduate education are linked in
| the US too. I've worked for many large companies where staff
| were also Ph.D students using their work as their thesis.
| Granted, every one of these companies were European, and I
| worked in R&D labs. But I suspect this is reasonably common
| in engineering.
| zwieback wrote:
| I did graduate work at Fraunhofer in Germany, which straddles
| academia and industry. It's a model that could be employed
| more in the US, I think. I work at hp in the US now and we
| fund a lot of very small projects, effectively paying for
| some graduate students we like, but nothing at a large scale.
| bambataa wrote:
| I've never understood why students would even want the college
| to be so involved in their student life. Allocate some
| buildings to the student body, get them to organise themselves
| and throw a bit of a cash at them. I think that's a good
| balance. I studied at a university with quite a focus on
| "college life" and it was nice to feel part of something but we
| didn't need to organise our social lives.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| > I've never understood why students would even want the
| college to be so involved in their student life.
|
| If I understand the American system, there is pressure from
| parents as well. The students might not want the college to
| be so involved in their student life, but many parents would
| be unwilling to allow their children to attend an institution
| that is not highly focused on keeping them safe, to the point
| of treating adults as children. Rules requiring you to live
| on campus for the first 1-2 years, college-organized sober
| social activities, mental-health personnel on university
| staff, etc. is all meant to say "See, parents, your kid is
| safe with us."
| bambataa wrote:
| Does this have anything to do with 21 being a significant
| age? I understood that from 18 in the U.S. you were legally
| an adult but there seemed to be a bit of a blurry period up
| to 21. That seems less of a thing in the UK.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| 21 is the legal age to drink alcohol in the United
| States. Yes, really. The _management_ of 18-21 year olds
| as if they were children is primarily to keep them from
| having a beer or two.
| kazen44 wrote:
| which is just weird because well, at around the age of 18,
| most people should be able to handle themselves and they
| are not children anymore.
| Loughla wrote:
| Should and can are two different things in the real
| world.
|
| We can idealize what people should do, or we can work
| with what they can do. Not both.
| bambataa wrote:
| Any normal 18 year old should be able to look after
| feeding themselves. Yes, they might eat crap for a while
| but that is part of the process.
| ex_amazon_sde wrote:
| > highly focused on keeping them safe
|
| This is not the point of the parent post. Extravagant
| expenditures on dining halls do little for safety.
| Competitive sports are a net negative for safety.
|
| A large number of european (as well as japanese) cities are
| very safe. Also, university students are adults.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| > Extravagant expenditures on dining halls do little for
| safety.
|
| Parents are worried that their children might struggle to
| nourish themselves without the college or university
| seeing to their meals. Once all institutions have come to
| offer some form of meals on campus, individual
| institutions can then stand out from the crowd and
| attract students' interest and parents' approval by
| boasting more elaborating dining halls than other places.
|
| > A large number of european (as well as japanese) cities
| are very safe.
|
| Of course. But the issue here is that fretful American
| parents assume that anywhere their little darlings go off
| to will be unsafe, and their children shouldn't be left
| all on their own.
| augustt wrote:
| I think it's often the parents who are buying into these
| things. Meal plans and dining halls are so popular because
| parents think their kids can't possibly cook for themselves
| or walk 10 minutes to eat out (at least that's my perception
| in a college city with lots of options to eat out, most of
| them cheaper & better than meal plan).
| 0az wrote:
| Actual college student.
|
| UCSD has a food bank on campus. Here's the math as to why:
|
| Recommended daily dining dollar spend: $19
|
| Breakfast: $3.95, "Bobcat Sandwich" Lunch: $5.25, Hamburger
| Dinner: $6.95, "Wok Entree"
|
| This adds up to $16.15. That hamburger isn't very filling
| (between Whopper and Whopper Jr.), especially if you still
| operate on a teenaged metabolism. Add a fries to it, or do
| what I did and get a $2 salad from the salad bar. At 39C/
| to the ounce, it's a cheaper option to maximize nutrition.
| Sometimes they have leftover salmon, flaked.
|
| Okay, that's the expensive meal plan. You get five days of
| those, not seven. This is on the maximum dining dollar plan
| of $3800. You do not get a discount. One dollar in is one
| dollar spend.
|
| But you can't afford the full plan. The other option - and
| you have to pick one, they're mandatory for on campus
| residents - is "worth" two meals a day, five days. You need
| to stretch it out.
|
| It's not enough. If you don't do the accounting and budget
| beforehand, you will run out. If you don't supplement with
| ramen, you will run out. If you want a snack every now and
| then, you will run out.
|
| Also, you don't have a kitchen in the residential halls. I
| hope you have a friend in an apartment or with access to
| the rare communal kitchens [1], since you otherwise can't
| cook, and must eat.
|
| Oh, and as of winter quarter 2019, they started using
| scales to measure everything, down to the last noodle.
|
| Panda Express doesn't do that, by the way. You get filling
| meals at only a slight premium, though I can't remember the
| price off the top of my head. The real value option is
| Subway, which costs $6.99 for the footlong of the day,
| including tax, and each is good for 1.5-2 meals with more
| or less balanced nutrition. If you somehow have a stove, a
| pre-packaged two-pack of Tikka Masala from Costco runs at
| around $3.50/meal, plus rice, and takes less time than the
| cross-campus dining hall roundtrip.
|
| Fortunately, for 2019-2020, they increased the maximum
| package to 5100, which helps those who have financial aid.
| This doesn't reduce the daily cost, however.
|
| People universally get the lowest dining plan allowed by
| HDH. It's just cheaper to go to the vendors, even with the
| invisible on-campus price hike.
|
| [1]: The price of access to a communal res hall kitchen is
| fire alarms at 3 AM during finals week.
| swiley wrote:
| Where I went there was a very strong fear that the students
| might socialize with people in the town and get influenced
| by them. The university had a bunch of rules in place to
| prevent this, they knew who they were selling to.
| non-entity wrote:
| I started looking st going back to school starting around mid
| last year. I picked up my research again in the past month.
|
| All I've done is manage to make myself so much more cynical.
| Everything I read and learned made it seem like college is
| nothing more than a pay to play game. I'm not andti-education or
| anti-intellectual, but I sure as hell do not support whatever the
| hell is going on in US higher education. I've been tempted to
| write aboutit, but my particular circumstances are rather unique
| and it would just come off as an angry rant.
| swiley wrote:
| IMO at least in the US college is an education themed social
| exercise.
| craftinator wrote:
| I was often told stories from the Boomer generation of people
| "working their way through college", holding part time jobs
| through college to pay for both living expenses and tuition. That
| is, quite literally, impossible today.
| catalogia wrote:
| It's still possible if you go the computer science route and
| get a few good intern gigs, but the margins are quite tight.
| It's a far cry from paying for college by selling firewood,
| like my baby-boomer father did.
| asah wrote:
| Even GenX attending certain state schools could partially pay
| for school this way, especially if you had low/free rent, for
| example living at home.
| craftinator wrote:
| Can you provide some sources for this? Let's assume minimum
| wage, calculate average living expenses, hours spent in class
| and doing HW vs hours working. I know I spent at least 70hrs
| a week doing school.
| kingaillas wrote:
| I'm GenX, went to college in the late 80's, in state
| tuition in TX was $2000 per semester as I recall. I knew
| people who worked a part time 20 hours/week job that paid
| $8 an hour. (graveyard shift sorting boxes at a local
| shipping company). I knew many others who did some program
| where they worked at the college and made $5 an hour IIRC).
| I was a grader/TA/proctor for the first year engineering
| course and made the princely sum of about $10/hr but there
| was a lower cap on weekly hours which I don't recall
| exactly. I want to say it worked out to 10 hours/week on
| average so about $100 a week. For two semesters of about 18
| weeks of work (10 hours a week) I could make $3600. But you
| had to be a junior or senior so this job could only be done
| for 2 years.
|
| Not sure what sources you want to see. The fact is tuition
| now is mind bogglingly more than when I went. Or, tuition
| is outrageously jacked up now compared to the past.
|
| Here's a link from the Houston Chronicle showing tuition
| over the years for TX:
|
| https://www.chron.com/news/houston-
| texas/texas/article/The-c...
|
| For 1990 it shows average tuition, room, board was about
| $6500 for a YEAR, for TX state schools.
|
| Maybe you couldn't earn every penny you needed while also
| attending as a student, but it sure was a hell of a lot
| easier to get 50% of the way there than it is now. If you
| needed financial aid to bridge the gap you weren't facing
| painful debt for decades. If you only had to borrow half of
| what you needed, you could leave college with a loan of
| $13000 to pay off. That's a cheap car.
| craftinator wrote:
| Ah my brain did a flip flop, mixed up genX with
| millennials. Yes, that was a very different landscape
| than we have now. I recently went back to school for an
| EE degree, and the costs were insane, even for someone
| with a good job and middle class wealth. An interesting
| thing I noticed was the the time cost for classes. I
| would spend a HUGE amount of time doing homework, maybe
| double the time it took during my CS degree. A lot of
| that time was fighting against the online homework
| system; what I could do on paper in 10 minutes would take
| 20 minutes to do, and the sheer load of homework was much
| higher. I can't imagine trying to hold a decent job and
| still keep my grades up. College seems a pretty poor
| option modern day.
| [deleted]
| draw_down wrote:
| That's ok, they'll still talk trash about how millennials and
| younger generations have no work ethic. They were born on third
| base and think they hit a triple.
| [deleted]
| sharkiwi wrote:
| It is in a city. I'm working to pay for my living expenses and
| full-time university currently ongoing -- not really
| struggling, either. The last few weeks of each semester
| requires sacrificing some sleep, though.
| Upvoter33 wrote:
| Not all colleges are the same. For example, at the UW-Madison,
| over half the students leave with do debt at all. There is a
| Bucky tuition promise so that any low-income person will have
| college paid for in entirety.
|
| All of the negative comments on here treat "college" as if it is
| one unified thing, when in fact the experiences across
| institutions (both educationally, as well as financially) are
| quite different.
|
| All of that said, to those who say "free college": try telling
| that to a person in the middle of the state, who has never been
| to Madison, has never had a kid go to Madison, and who has to pay
| their tax dollars to support the University. It is a hard sell.
| Sure, it'd be great if people were willing to support colleges so
| that they were free. But the taxpayers, by and large, aren't.
| kevindong wrote:
| > try telling that to a person in the middle of the state, who
| has never been to Madison, has never had a kid go to Madison,
| and who has to pay their tax dollars to support the University.
| It is a hard sell.
|
| Everyone wins some and loses some with government spending. But
| overall as a collective group, the idea is that the group is
| better off (e.g. a more educated population produces greater
| amounts of valuable work which raises the standard of living
| for everyone, etc.).
| chadash wrote:
| I think it's time to decouple education from all of the other
| things tied to colleges. When I studied abroad in Australia,
| things like the gym or meal plans were available, but not
| "bundled in" to your tuition. The idea of tying competitive
| sports teams to a university would be laughable.
|
| We need to remove all of the "excess" stuff from higher education
| and get back to the core of education and research. Sure, things
| like football might be net profitable (for some schools), but
| lacrosse, baseball, swimming, gymnastics and all of that are not
| and students shouldn't be paying for that.
| [deleted]
| JackFr wrote:
| While we're eliminating non-revenue sports teams can we also
| drop theater groups, singing groups and school newspapers.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I've volunteered at a summer youth leadership camp held at a
| local state university since 1998. In the last 10 years the
| host university has undertaken massive construction of more
| "luxury appointed" dorms, recreational complexes, a huge
| basketball arena, and upscale dining halls. The justification
| was that it was necessary to do these things to compete with
| other colleges. I can't say that I've followed the cost of
| their tuition and fees, but given the amount of money spent on
| construction I can't imagine the curve is flat.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Students will actually pay for those things though and they
| are willing to pay a premium.
|
| My alma mater is concerned about having to run online classes
| next semester as they usually pay for many of the costs with
| the residence money...
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I won't dispute that students will pay. I think it is
| predatory, though, on the part of the colleges.
|
| I'd argue students, by and large, don't have the maturity
| to make such consequential financial decisions (taking on
| loans representing multiple years of their future gross
| income that can't be discharged in bankruptcy). The average
| young person just hasn't had the duration of life
| experience to think on a 10+ year horizon. (Arguably a
| shortcoming of humanity in general.)
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| No, especially not football. At my college the football team is
| essentially a separate corporation. The college gets nothing
| from the arrangement. In fact they have to rent parking from
| the football folk.
|
| Fat deal were made to coaches over the years, until its all
| pork-barrel dealing and nothing left for the school. The
| students can't even go to games, the ticket prices are a
| semester's tuition.
| a9h74j wrote:
| Pre-1990 I read this quote from a college president: "College
| administration boils down to sex for the students, football
| for the alumni, and parking for the faculty."
| blululu wrote:
| The great Clark Kerr:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark_Kerr
| daseiner1 wrote:
| Given the similarity of your description to my own alma
| mater, I can virtually guarantee that that football program
| is self-sufficient, and probably raises your university's
| profile. They couldn't charge that much for tickets
| otherwise. So I don't really see the harm.
| draw_down wrote:
| This is not realistic, sadly. American universities are
| businesses, they have been turned into money-making
| enterprises, education is a concern but not really a primary
| one.
| macinjosh wrote:
| This is essential. The state university my partner attended and
| worked at became, over the years, more similar to a theme park
| or all-inclusive resort than an educational institution. They
| were involved in everything from student banking, fast-food
| franchises, high-end gyms, suites instead of dorms, and on it
| went. Not saying these things have no place, just that it
| shouldn't be part of the university.
| Engineer2Throw wrote:
| You don't need to use them. I never paid for any of these and
| I graduated debt free
| MattGaiser wrote:
| There are schools without all those things. They are just not
| the ones students choose to attend.
| chadash wrote:
| And that's the problem. Malcolm Gladwell has a great podcast
| about this focusing on Bowdoin college. Bowdoin (apparently)
| spends a lot of money on luxuries like great food for the
| dorms, etc.
|
| As a result, the rich kids who can afford it naturally prefer
| to go to Bowdoin. Now, the school becomes more prestigious
| because of the rich kids... it's a place to go to meet other
| rich kids, which builds valuable connections that ultimately
| help your career. Meanwhile, schools that prioritize
| financial aid over things like gyms and food go down in the
| rankings and become less desirable.
|
| Now, this is all fair game in my opinion. The schools are
| basically turning into country clubs of a sort and I think
| country clubs have a right to exist in America. BUT... I
| don't want to see them subsidized by the rest of us. If you
| are a school and you want to receive state/federal money
| directly or via student loans and you want to maintain your
| non-profit status... scale down the amenities.
|
| At the very least, I don't want tax breaks going to subsidize
| (mostly) rich kids' gyms.
| kevindong wrote:
| I went to Purdue. At Purdue, athletics and student
| housing/dining are entirely separate divisions from the
| academic side of the university. Each of those divisions is
| required to be self supporting without needing aid from tuition
| dollars.
|
| That being said, a mandatory part of tuition is funding for the
| student gym. I think it came out to be something like
| $100/student/semester which I'd consider reasonable.
| cousin_it wrote:
| Tech companies should take the lead on this. Say loud and clear:
| we no longer ask about education, and no longer take education
| into account when hiring, starting today. Devalue the sheepskin.
| ryeights wrote:
| How else do you propose companies should assess new hires,
| especially young ones? And while the cost of tuition these days
| (IMO) outstrips the value of a college education, that's not to
| say that value is zero.
| rdgthree wrote:
| I'd say the value of the average four year bachelors degree
| today is less than the value of the average two year trade
| school, so the value might not be zero but it might as well
| be.
|
| That being said, I think the assessment problem is real. I'm
| the founder of a small startup that very few people want to
| work for (relative to say, Google) and that means I can
| assess each candidate in careful/unorthodox (time-consuming)
| ways. Companies at Google scale have to assess thousands of
| candidates per month (week?) and they have to do it in a way
| that ensures they're beyond reproach with regard to
| discrimination.
|
| Having a college degree means you're statistically more
| likely to know your stuff, period. Correlation or causation
| isn't material in this case. There would have to be a very
| good reason for any big company to start ignoring that
| reality.
|
| Tricky problem. I'd imagine the only solution involves an
| actual replacement credential. Like a bar exam, but for
| "private" disciplines. Maybe Neuralink will sort out how to
| see if you actually have the necessary understandings in your
| brain.
| [deleted]
| daseiner1 wrote:
| > the value of the average four year bachelors degree today
| is less than the value of the average two year trade school
|
| but _why_ do you think this? I see this assertion more
| commonly than I 'd expect here and it always to me seems
| wrapped up in an implicit glamorization of blue collar work
| & tradesmen without referring back to, say, quality of
| life, long-term earning potential, flexibility in
| occupation, etc.
| egl2020 wrote:
| I did a lot of interviewing of new grads when I worked at a
| FAANG. I had the luxury of not needing a prior, and I looked
| at the resume only after conducting the interview and
| submitting my recommendation. I rarely looked even then. The
| degree might have helped or hindered your getting through the
| early part of the funnel, but was irrelevant once you got to
| me.
| cousin_it wrote:
| The question is rather, how do you think degrees help assess
| new hires?
|
| 1) Programming skills? These are easy to assess with
| programming exercises. If someone has a degree but can't
| solve a programming exercise, I won't hire them.
|
| 2) Interpersonal skills? But a tech degree doesn't certify
| those, you need to assess them the hard way anyway.
|
| 3) Culture fit? But if you use degrees for that, it's simple
| discrimination, "let's hire this guy because he's from MIT
| like us". Not sure why this should be defended.
|
| So in the end, degrees don't seem to help tech hiring in any
| way. I think tech companies could stop looking at degrees
| with very little loss.
| daseiner1 wrote:
| I think this is a very limited view of what college, and
| being a great employee, is all about. Yes, I agree that
| education should not a priori be a dealbreaker. However
| you're shortchanging here the value of a) accomplishing
| something over a number of years, which a decent number of
| people with all 3 of the dimensions you specified, couldn't
| necessarily do; and b) the Gen Ed side of technical
| degrees. Strong communication skills and a general
| intellectual background are both valuable assets in an
| employee, and aren't captured by programming
| skills|interpersonal skills|culture fit, but are hinted at
| by, e.g., the ability to write a 10 page research paper
| which is a degree requirement for the top-line university
| certifications.
|
| Yes, all of these skills can be gained and evinced without
| the traditional 4-yr college route, but I understand why
| generic Big Corp middle management uses it as a proxy for
| establishing a baseline in what I, and you've, mentioned.
| [deleted]
| battery_cowboy wrote:
| > Culture fit shouldn't be assessed.
|
| I can't agree with this, you need to work well with the
| people you see every day.
| dudul wrote:
| I get where you're coming from, but honestly I would actually
| prefer the opposite.
|
| Sometimes, when I'm looking and interviewing for a new job, I
| really wish we had some sort of standardized, recognized
| certification that companies could see on my resume and think
| "OK, this guy knows how to code, we don't need to put him
| through the BS of a take home, or whiteboarding exercise or
| whatever". After 15 years in the industry, I'm less and less
| patient with having to prove myself by explaining how I would
| find duplicates in 2 arrays or how I would process "very large
| files" or whatever.
|
| That being said, now we kind of get the worst of both worlds
| where you need the degree for HR to forward your resume, and
| you need to dance the "coding interview" anyway.
| skwb wrote:
| My big prediction for education is that a lot of research
| universities are going to move large lecture halls online (think
| chem 101, etc) with labs, seminars, and discussions with lower
| number of slots to abide with moderate social distancing
| requirements. It provides the primary educational content of
| lecture, and provides in person opportunities that students
| desire.
|
| Once we see students and professors like this format compared to
| either all in person or all online, I think it will stick around.
| There's clearly a need for both improved efficiencies as well as
| the desire to have real human interaction, and I suspect this
| Fall we'll have the golden opportunity to really experiment with
| it.
| tmaly wrote:
| I feel like you can learn quite a bit now with just online
| material.
|
| YouTube and the algorithm have really forced content creators to
| improve the quality of the content.
|
| It's going to be tougher for schools to charge 30-50K a year when
| there are credible alternatives.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| I wish I could be more sympathetic to the college industrial
| complex, but they've been treat us poorly for years. Yes, I know
| it's our fault for demanding gold plated educational experiences
| and then going into crazy debt to finance it. But who wants to
| blame himself/herself?
|
| The job can be done better for much less. Indeed, it used to be
| much cheaper in the past when the dorms weren't so fancy and
| there were a bazillion deans waltzing around trying to look
| essential. The adjunct professors get paid next to nothing. Let's
| give them a slight raise, fire 90% of the deans and we'll get
| back to something sustainable and affordable.
| clairity wrote:
| maybe the dept of education should stipulate that 80% of
| college operating budgets be direct teaching/research costs,
| lest their fed loan largess be taken away. and progressively
| tax endowments, particularly targeting above a threshold of
| $100K/student or something like that.
|
| currently, the incentives are such that greedy people can just
| milk all the unrestrained cash flow coming into what should be
| a non-profit-oriented institution.
| johncalvinyoung wrote:
| Honestly, those endowments are part of why some schools like
| my alma mater are able to offer a no-loan commitment for
| need-based aid. Now, those calculations are still awfully
| rough on many middle class families, they tend to
| overestimate family contributions, but they're still really
| helpful for a lot of students.
| clairity wrote:
| that's a tried-and-true sales trick--inflate the price and
| then offer a discount. calibrate your discount to extract
| maximum economic value from each customer individually.
|
| it's best if schools have to compete on price vs. value,
| and for students to leave school with a little debt to know
| the value of what they bought. it's when both price and
| debt are unconstrained that you need such tricks in the
| first place.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Relatively few people can go to a school with endowment
| subsidized tuition. The ivys only started doing it because
| it looked bad for them to be sitting on piles of money and
| only allowing wealthy elites to attend.
| secabeen wrote:
| Which of these expenses do you think they should eliminate?
|
| https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_334.10.a.
| ..
| clairity wrote:
| i'm sure there's plenty of nuance, but that chart shows
| about 43% overall going to instruction & research, so
| everything else?
|
| (until you get to ~80/20)
| jimbokun wrote:
| Not sure, but of the 44,965 being spent per student, only
| 7,219 is going to salaries and wages of the instructors
| (2016-17). Seems like an awful lot of overhead in there
| somewhere.
| ttymck wrote:
| Ideally you'd start with Instruction right? A breakdown of
| the "constituent categories" therein would be useful.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> The adjunct professors get paid next to nothing. Let's give
| them a slight raise, fire 90% of the deans
|
| This is where the education industry can learn from the law
| schools. They are certainly ivory towers, but part of that
| tradition is that law school deans still ussually teach. My
| first year contracts prof was also the school dean. Law school
| deans remain largely 'first among many' rather than a separate
| profession, the 'professional administrators'.
| wtvanhest wrote:
| Law schools are the worst offenders in the education
| industry. Only a small percentage of law students end up at
| big law where the salaries can support the debt load, but
| almost everyone leaves law school with a mountain of debt.
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| > Law schools are the worst offenders in the education
| industry.
|
| They also are some of the best too. My wife went to a top-
| tier school and I remember the controversy when it was
| discovered that almost 50% of the tuition was actually
| given to the medical school. The justification was that
| they were a top school, they would charge what the other
| top schools charged, and they had a moral imperative to
| make the medical school as cheap as they could make it.
| They also guaranteed (in writing) that if any graduate had
| difficulty paying off student loans, the alumni network
| would step in and make the payments.
| wtvanhest wrote:
| Top-tier law schools get the majority of big law slots
| and are usually a pretty good balance. Anything outside
| the top 8-10 law schools and the % of graduates who go on
| to big law is VERY, VERY, VERY small.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _part of that tradition is that law school deans still
| ussually teach_
|
| At my Uni, the administrators taught bullshit courses on
| personal development _et cetera_.
|
| Law schools have a unique culture. Teaching requirements are
| a product of their "first among equals" attitude, not a
| cause. Porting the mechanism without the culture is unlikely
| to solve the problem.
| basch wrote:
| >The job can be done better for much less.
|
| First and foremost, the lecture part of education is extremely
| inefficient. I know "watch the video" just doesn't work for
| some people, but charging for a live rendition of a repeated
| script, and then not valuing the person who watched the same
| recording equally, is absurd.
|
| Education needs to acknowledge a couple things. 1) Theres
| probably a "best" lecture or lecturer out there for each topic.
| That's an overstatement, and a more documentary style edit of
| the best lectures is more realistic. The point is, there should
| be a collaborative way for lecturers around the country to
| contribute to a shared curriculum, and a group of people
| editing out redundancy. The amount of people in the country
| delivering roughly the same speeches is astounding. An open and
| shared processes for editing would allow for competing edits to
| exist simultaneously, a la forks and branches. 2) School needs
| to flip a bit and focus on the parts that need more individual
| attention. Discussions, Labs etc. Using physical space
| limitations in lecturers to create scarcity benefits only the
| schools. Anybody who has been in a 300 person lecture knows how
| little question and answer interaction there is with most
| professors, during the lecture. 3) a large portion of the value
| of school is networking. who you meet, who your environment is
| and who you absorb. is that the actual thing being sold,
| elitism? how do you fix that, when the product being sold is
| club membership under the guise of education? it's a way to
| manufacture class/caste divides there otherwise wouldnt be, or
| that would be even more nepotistic. its very much a "i had to
| do it to get in the club, so the next generation should too."
|
| tldr: "school" is an artificially scarce elite caste
| membership. just because you pay the membership fee, doesnt
| mean you actually make the club, but getting in the lobby is a
| prereq to full membership. make school about education.
| DataDaoDe wrote:
| I've spent a fair amount of time and energy working and
| researching in this area. I'd agree with most of what you are
| saying. To point #1 I worked on a project that had almost the
| exact same design you mention (collaborate, git versioned
| edits of learning modules, etc.) - the biggest problem is the
| mounds and mounds of red tape and regulation that stifle any
| truly innovative solution. There are some movements for high
| school materials that are tackling parts of the problem (see:
| https://www.ck12.org/student/, https://www.khanacademy.org/),
| but it definitely needs to be on a much larger and national
| scale and extended to universities. I think, most all
| undergraduate courses could be done this way. If someone with
| enough leverage could ever push it through it would virtually
| completely remove textbook, materials, and lecture costs from
| the system and if done right, provide a treasure store of
| knowledge.
|
| To #2 This is already a technique in education research its
| called flipped classrooms
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom).
|
| To #3, I'm sure there are organizational structures you could
| implement that would augment every students network - there's
| a lot of stuff from management science you could try out.
|
| Overall though I found it extremely frustrating trying to
| innovate in education because you really need to be able to
| implement radical changes but there are so many regulations
| at every level that you have to creep forward, hoping for
| minor incremental improvements when what you need is complete
| system overhauls. This was extremely frustrating for me.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Could you describe some of the regulations you found
| burdensome? I work in regulatory compliance (in an
| unrelated field) and I'm wholly unfamiliar with the
| requirements for education.
|
| A few months ago I saw a Lambda School tweet with a giant
| stack of regulatory filings and I've been wondering ever
| since why I don't hear much about higher ed compliance. It
| isn't one of the areas that immediately comes to mind when
| I think of "highly regulated industries" (banking,
| insurance, healthcare, etc) but perhaps it should be.
| basch wrote:
| with regard to 2, thats why i used the word flip. i dont
| think my 1 or 2 are that unique, a lot of it is dreaming of
| a khan+git+wikipedia.
|
| with regard to 3, i think the larger question is, is that
| what is best for society? to create elite clubs based on
| who you know vs merit, capability, output volume etc.
| DataDaoDe wrote:
| > is that what is best for society? to create elite clubs
| based on who you know vs merit, capability, output volume
| etc.
|
| I don't know if finding ways to expand someone's network
| and connections necessarily means we have to create elite
| clubs - having networks is vital to success in any way,
| especially in a system based on merit.
|
| So maybe I was one step ahead of what you were saying. I
| read it as more along the lines of given the entire set
| of X people in our education systems, how do we ensure a
| system that is fair and allows for the maximal human
| flourishing of each individual member while taking into
| account our psychology and the negative externalities /
| side-effects of emergent system dynamics. (Of course this
| last point, is something we sorely need in many fields -
| not just education).
| mywittyname wrote:
| I remember when MIT first started publishing their lectures
| online. I would watch them for my chemistry and physics
| classes and was astounded by the fact that the lectures were
| basically identical. Ivy league schools had this mystique
| around them and I always wondered what it would be like to be
| there instead of a community college. Turns out, the
| difference is absolutely not in the lectures or tests. At
| least, for freshman-level courses.
|
| I think we are slowly getting here though. The number of
| credible online degree programs has exploded in recent years.
| Online education used to be like online dating: only
| something losers would do. But now it seems to moving towards
| the default way of doing business.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > The number of credible online degree programs has
| exploded in recent years.
|
| Could you supply some examples? I know of Western Governors
| University, but it only has limited majors.
|
| In particular, do you know of any online degree programs in
| materials science?
| N1H1L wrote:
| Not really. There is an online MS in Computers Science
| from Georgia Tech, that's really well regarded and will
| cost you approximately $8,000 for the whole degree.
|
| A lot of materials science is highly experimental, so
| it's not super easy to teach advanced skills. I went to a
| top 10 materials science school for my PhD, and the
| absolute vast majority of what I _learnt_ was self-
| taught. However there is a caveat - I self-learnt by
| doing, and failing multiple times. The advantage of a
| high ranked school is that the research facilities are
| top notch and professors bring in external grants, so the
| research facilities are always maintained at a high
| standard through overhead costs.
| ska wrote:
| There is also a lot of value in the conversations you
| have with other students and faculty something that is
| really hard to reproduce remotely. It's also something
| where quality matters, I suspect.
| N1H1L wrote:
| Highly true. You learn a lot through osmosis, by
| interacting with smart peers (faculty/other PhDs) and
| that is invaluable.
| Misdicorl wrote:
| The difference is the other students. For most, your peer
| group is what motivates you. A peer group which values
| excellence in X will motivate you to become excellent in X.
|
| The peer group in the ivy leagues have been strongly pre-
| selected to value achievement in academic related pursuits.
| c9fc42ad wrote:
| I had a similar experience about 8 years ago in Intro to
| Linear Algebra. I had been attending lectures at my school
| but I ended up missing a day so I decided to find the
| corresponding lecture from MIT. It turns out, I was able to
| watch a lecture from the author of the textbook we were
| using. Even crazier, the lecture I watched online ended
| with him working through an example problem but he did not
| finish.
|
| When I went to the next class in person, our professor was
| finishing up the exact same example problem from the
| lecture video. It could have just been coincidence that
| that exact lecture lined up the way it did, but it kind of
| opened my eyes to how silly it was to have professors
| repeating the same thing year after year.
| cloudier wrote:
| Agreed, I also found this to be the case for my CS
| degree. When I realised that some courses were
| essentially facsimiles of courses I could take on a MOOC,
| I changed the way I chose my courses. Why take a copy-
| pasted course, when I could just take it online for free
| from the original source? I ended up doing a lot more
| project-based courses after that.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > Charging for a live rendition of a repeated script, and
| then not valuing the person who watched the same recording
| equally, is absurd.
|
| I went to a small college where most lectures had fewer than
| ~20 students (if that), so I realize this doesn't scale as
| well to 100-person lecture halls.
|
| But, I got a lot out of the interaction in my college
| lectures. I almost always sat in the front+ where it was easy
| to ask and answer questions, which I did a lot. Less
| obviously, professors could and did react to my facial
| expressions of confusion/understanding/curiosity as they
| went. Well, I don't know that it was specifically my facial
| expressions, but there was definitely an interaction going on
| between us even when only the professor was speaking.
|
| I can't say if that's worth the inefficiency of small-ish,
| in-person classes, but it certainly helped me.
|
| ---
|
| + College: the one place where the best seats are also the
| easiest to get. Fine by me--I took advantage.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| OTOH, being able to hit rewind is invaluable. Or hitting
| rewind, googling a bit, and then continuing. My first
| online course was Andrew Ngs when he at Stanford, and being
| able to rewind and google whatever he just said was
| fantastic. It also meant I could play it at 1.5x speed for
| the bits I had no trouble with.
|
| If we wanted to make it better to support interactive
| questions, one could imagine an online system with videos
| plus "Push now for live help". Or facetime your peers.
| alistairSH wrote:
| I was just about to post something similar. I attended a
| large state U and I got the most out of smaller
| lectures/discussions than the large classes with 300
| students. FWIW, only the most introductory classes had
| large head counts. Everything 200 level and above was
| somewhere between 20-50 students (and most had an
| associated discussion with 10-15 students, usually led by a
| grad student, but sometimes the professor).
|
| That's where the value in live classes lies - the
| interaction with peers and professors. Not the listening to
| pre-scripted lectures.
| Retric wrote:
| Collage is not expensive due to lectures because they don't
| actually cost that much.
|
| Let's say your average class size is 20 people at a good
| school and a professor costs the school 200k including
| benefits per year. Assuming a student takes 18 credit hours
| and a teacher teaches 12 credit hours that balances out to
| ~15k per year. But, more than 2/3 of what a teacher spends
| their time on is outside the lecture such as grading
| assignments etc. So, removing lectures only saves ~5k per
| year.
|
| Sure the physical room adds a little, but the average teacher
| is also far less expensive at most schools.
| basch wrote:
| I am not saying the lecture itself is expensive. I am
| saying the artificial scarcity of everything around higher
| education keeps people from receiving a certified education
| that is recognized by the employment marketplace, when at
| least for undergrad classes, the lecture and the textbook
| is largely what you need to receive a functioning
| education.
| Retric wrote:
| I think the number of people graduating with a collage
| degree significantly outstrips the demand for collage
| degrees. Otherwise you would not see people with collage
| degrees working retail etc.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| _For some degrees_. I don 't see many CS degrees working
| retail. I don't see many EE degrees doing so.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| Nearly every EE I graduated with, including me, had to
| give up on our dream of being a hardware engineer because
| nearly zero hardware companies will hire an EE grad from
| a mid-level school. They either refuse to hire new grads
| or only recruit at CMU/Purdue job fairs.
|
| Then you take a software job that's available but not
| interesting, and you get pidgeonholed into that field.
| It's not retail but it doesn't seem great for EEs who
| didn't go to a top-10 school. I'd be very interested to
| hear any other EE grad's perspective though.
| nsnick wrote:
| This is absolutely true which is why I went back and got
| a masters from CMU.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| How'd you like it/would you recommend it? I've heard
| really good things about that program specifically, other
| than it can be hard to graduate from it.
| nsnick wrote:
| It is as hard as you want to make it. You have near
| absolute freedom in the classes you choose to take. I
| would say it was definitely a worthwhile experience.
| zachm0 wrote:
| I'm an EE that went to a mid-level state school and got a
| hardware engineering job out of school; I got lucky that
| there was a hardware company in town that did a lot of
| hiring from my school. I had a similar experience
| applying to other companies before I graduated though,
| the company I eventually started working for was the only
| one to ever give me a call back and I think that was only
| because I was already working there as a software
| engineering intern ;)
| [deleted]
| Retric wrote:
| It's a fair point, but colleges also adjust program sizes
| based on what students chose to study. Just compare CS
| graduates in 1990 and how fast that grew and shrunk over
| time.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Not to nitpick but it's spelled "college"
| basch wrote:
| That's what I meant by my line "just because you pay the
| membership fee, doesnt mean you actually make the club."
|
| College is selling you the promise of an opportunity to
| join the club. You pay an application fee, and then you
| may or may not get into the club. If you don't get in,
| they keep your application fee, and you have student
| loans and a degree but no viable networking.
| Yhippa wrote:
| > Theres probably a "best" lecture or lecturer out there for
| each topic.
|
| This is something I've been thinking about for a while. Let's
| assume that there is one "best" lecture for a given topic. I
| think then effort could be spent with smaller study groups
| where students can have direct access to people who can help
| them understand the concepts. There is little reason to have
| so many other different takes unless they add to the
| universal body of knowledge.
| basch wrote:
| And part of the problem with asking "what's the best
| lecture on x" is that the replies often come from people
| who have seen one prestigious lecture, and recommend the
| one they are familiar with. Popularity breeds popularity.
| There's a much smaller sample of people who sat through
| 20-30 of the same lecture series, for the same course, from
| different professors, and know which parts are the best
| from which person.
| [deleted]
| jseliger wrote:
| If you want a book that will further erode sympathy towards
| colleges, try _Paying For the Party_
| https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party-eliz...
| [deleted]
| matchbok wrote:
| Agreed, sadly the demand is still there. It's so easy to get
| huge loans and as a result, there is no downward pressure on
| price. My tiny college had 5 full-time staff for "residence
| life", plus a dean of that department. Totally unnecessary.
| irishcoffee wrote:
| The problem is the loans. I have a funny feeling if loans
| were capped at say, 10k/year, colleges might all the sudden
| charge 11k/year to attend instead of 30k...
| lumost wrote:
| One of the oddities in the college process is how public
| universities followed the price increases of their private
| counterparts. Why weren't state governments able to dictate
| effective cost controls to keep costs down for residents?
|
| Note that I'm aware of in-state tuition. The main campus of
| my state university charges 30k/year instate, and 40k/year
| out of state. Neither number is appropriate in a state with
| a median household income of 75k, and a median home price
| of 450k.
| raiyu wrote:
| What I read was that the reason for in-state college
| tuition increasing so much was because of the reduction
| in property taxes.
|
| Typically property taxes go towards education at the
| local level, and as property taxes were reduced there
| would be a shortfall in the budget somewhere. This
| typically fell on education, which then forced colleges
| to start raising tuition as there is still a non-zero
| cost to education.
|
| There was a "print" article about this in the 70's or
| 80's in a local newspaper in California urging residents
| to vote NO on lowering property taxes citing the increase
| in future college education as the main reason. But the
| vote went through, property taxes were slashed, and then
| of course ten years later and so forth, tuition had sky
| rocketed.
|
| Decreasing taxes is like debt. Once you are hooked on it
| it's hard to go back. Hard to imagine any real states or
| large communities raising property taxes significantly to
| actually reinvest in the local community.
| yardie wrote:
| In my state, FL, derives most of it's income from sales
| taxes and fees. Property taxes are really local, down to
| the county and city.
|
| > Decreasing taxes is like debt. Once you are hooked on
| it it's hard to go back.
|
| Well some voters see the taxes as an investment in their
| city and community. My city passed a referendum to back a
| bond to pay for climate change projects and education
| programs. The state passed a constitutional change that
| has made it virtually impossible to raise taxes.
|
| When I look at the midwest and the hollowing out of their
| cities I have to imagine the tax cuts partially
| contributed. But at the time they passed the politicians
| believed they would be a net positive.
|
| It's a delicate balance. Taxes too high will drive
| businesses away. Taxes too low will reduce communal
| investment and drive people away.
| 0d9eooo wrote:
| If you can figure out the reasons for university price
| increases, good luck. It's a combination of a variety of
| things.
|
| One is that increased demand for employers for
| "certification" of ability pushes demand for degrees
| among students. Every recession there's articles showing
| that those with a college degree fare better than those
| without. We can argue about why that is, but that's what
| the average 17 yo sees, along with their parents, and
| they don't want to be left behind, regardless of the
| details.
|
| Another is that loans basically prop that up and
| facilitate it. So schools don't lose money on people who
| say "I can't afford it" because they find a way.
|
| Another is the increasing administrative bloat at
| universities, which are now largely run like for-profit
| institutions even when they are not on paper. I think
| this is similar to a lot of fields, but my sense is that
| (based on personal experience) things are much more
| hierarchical now, with more of a focus on exploiting the
| university for personal gain than anything else. So
| administrative salary costs, and administrative costs in
| general, drive up the need for costs.
|
| The public colleges have to compete for private colleges
| for faculty, administrators, etc. which then increases
| their costs, which then drives them to bigger need for
| more tuition.
|
| At the same time, states have been cutting their funding.
| If they cut funding and unis have all these fixed costs,
| where else are they supposed to get money from?
|
| A major dynamic between public universities in the US and
| political circles in the last couple of decades has been
| an increasing pressure for them to operate as revenue
| generating, profit-making institutions in every aspect.
| At the state level, the idea is that their role is to
| bring in money, at less cost (an alternative is to see
| them as providing a service to the state and country --
| can you imagine wanting K-12 schools to be treated as
| profit-making ??? ). As a result, what we've ended up
| with are institutions with a lot of profit-seeking
| administrators, pyramid schemes, taking advantage of
| federal funding loopholes at every chance to bring in
| money, etc.
|
| Public universities should be able to offer a good value
| to students, but they're being run as profit centers. If
| you think of it that way, it's no surprise tuition isn't
| competitive.
| N1H1L wrote:
| Also have you seen how much reporting requirements have
| increased for faculty? How much paperwork is needed for
| grants?
|
| Just today there was a story I read about a Georgia Tech
| professor who is under federal investigation for
| misrepresentation on her continuing NSF grant. And the
| money involved was $40,000. And one of her defenses is
| that Georgia Tech provided very little secretarial
| services to her. Which may very well be true.
|
| Everyone cribs about increased administrative bloat at
| universities, but given how massively paperwork
| requirements have ballooned, nobody is willing to point
| the figure also at that. Universities are hiring more
| admin because professors are often overwhelmed with
| paperwork nowadays.
| secabeen wrote:
| This is all true. The cost of research is high. And
| although there are some additional costs involved in
| educating a more broad student body, it's nothing
| compared to the disinvestment in higher ed by state
| governments. Here's the ed department's data on
| expenditures. It doesn't show huge increases: https://nce
| s.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_334.10.a...
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Because many (most?) states have been cutting state
| funding for public universities for years, IIRC. (See,
| for example, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/most-
| americans-dont-r...). It wouldn't have been sensible to
| impose price caps while cutting funding at the same time.
| wincy wrote:
| If I'm a Republican legislator and I'm seeing my kids
| enroll at a state college where gender and queer studies
| classes are a requirement to get a computer science
| degree, I'm going to want to defund too. I remember my
| Republican high school peers arguing with our liberal
| debate coach, and he'd just laugh and say "wait until you
| go to college, then you'll get it". Sure enough, she went
| to Harvard Law and became a Democrat. The indoctrination
| is there and if monetary compensation isn't the reason
| professors get into teaching, what is? If you have a
| mission to "educate young minds" to reject their
| "problematic" notions, that can be a strong motivator.
|
| There's a strong culture war aspect to defund colleges,
| because you're essentially funding the opposition if
| you're a conservative and you're paying the salaries of
| the extremely liberal college professors. Then people say
| obnoxious, arrogant things like "well reality has a
| liberal bent" and other platitudes to explain away why
| conservatives voices have been systematically excluded
| from college campuses over decades.
| JadeNB wrote:
| "Educated people become liberals" isn't the knock against
| liberals, or education, that you seem to think it is.
| mattkrause wrote:
| Can you name a major college or university where "gender
| and queer studies classes[0] are a requirement to get a
| computer science degree?"
|
| [0] _Specifically_ , please. Two semesters of English,
| which is pretty standard, doesn't count unless few other
| options.
| N1H1L wrote:
| _State schools in US are often the best STEM schools._
|
| I have cried myself hoarse on HN trying to make this
| simple point - but except for Cornell, every Ivy League
| is ordinary in engineering and the hard sciences.
| mattkrause wrote:
| I'm not sure that's true for science.
|
| Harvard is a biomedical behemoth, especially once you
| include the affiliated hospitals (MGH, Brigham and
| Women's, Dana Farber, Beth Israel Deaconess, etc) and
| research institutes (Broad, Roland). Harvard proper and
| MGH each receive about a half billion dollars a year in
| NIH funding. These are usually listed separately in those
| "league tables", but the whole system must bring in
| nearly $2B/year (out of a total NIH extramural budget of
| ~$28B).
|
| The other Ivies aren't as big (though not much else is),
| but all of them have well-regarded medical schools
| (except for Princeton) and biomedical research programs.
| Yale, Havard, and Princeton have pretty credible
| chemistry programs too. Princeton also has the Institute
| for Advanced Study, which has hosted a crazy number of
| Nobel/Fields/Wolf/Cole prize winners; it's formally
| independent but...right there.
|
| It _may_ be debatable how much this matters for undergrad
| teaching--is it better to have a world-renowned expert or
| someone invested in teaching?--but for anything involving
| research (including undergrads), they are definitely way
| up there.
|
| (No argument that JHU, Stanford, and other places (CMU,
| UMich, NYU, etc, depending on field) also have intensive
| research too).
|
| NIH funding data from here:
| https://report.nih.gov/award/index.cfm
| dmoy wrote:
| Do we include math and physics in there? If so there
| might be a couple other exceptions there.
| N1H1L wrote:
| Basically Harvard, and maybe Columbia and that's it.
| UIUC, Wisconsin-Madison, Berkeley, Michigan-Ann Arbor are
| orders better schools in the sciences than Dartmouth or
| Brown.
| Kephael wrote:
| The undergraduate students at Dartmouth and Brown are
| generally much better than the ones at those large
| publics. The rankings are largely due to the department
| size and what the professors and their PhD students are
| publishing.
| JadeNB wrote:
| In math, Princeton tops all the non-Ivy's you list, and
| UPenn has at least a fighting chance, maybe depending on
| speciality.
| N1H1L wrote:
| Specialty fields yes. But Princeton engineering is
| ordinary, and the state schools often have exceptional
| faculty across multiple departments - leading to way more
| collaborative, cutting-edge work.
| thomashobohm wrote:
| Once you're at that level, the differences are marginal.
| It matters if you want to go to graduate school, I
| suppose, but we're talking about people who just want to
| get a degree and go into the workforce here. For them,
| Princeton vs. Michigan won't matter a bit if they're
| studying to become an engineer.
| JadeNB wrote:
| My point was specifically about studying math.
| sysbin wrote:
| Did you find anything in the previous comments for
| needing to write this nonsensical opinion?
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| "Crippling the young with lifelong debt to win the campus
| culture-wars and own the libs."
| dctoedt wrote:
| FWIW, I was a lifelong conservative Republican but in
| recent years have slowly become a liberal independent
| (leaning very much Democratic) because of A) the gradual
| takeover of the GOP by fact-scorning white nationalists
| who used to be banished to the fringes of the party; and
| B) what I've experienced and seen in life over the
| decades, which has made me much more sympathetic to
| others who didn't get the breaks that I and my ancestors
| did.
|
| As just one, powerful example: Go visit the National
| Civil Rights Museum in Memphis sometime, at the Lorraine
| Motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. They
| have life-changing exhibits about the Jim Crow system;
| about the civil rights era -- which I remember from
| childhood; and especially about slavery. I was fighting
| back not just tears but sobs. Twenty years ago I scoffed
| at the idea of reparations for African Americans; now I'm
| very much open to the idea because of the corrosive
| compound-interest effect of what was done to their
| ancestors. To be sure, neither I nor my forebears kept
| people enslaved, AFAIK -- in fact, one of my ancestors
| was crippled in the Union Army, according to family lore
| -- but all we whites are still benefiting from what was
| done to the A-As. (Yeah, yeah, I know, other minorities
| were treated badly too, including some of my recent
| ancestors; none, _none,_ were treated as badly as
| enslaved Africans and their descendants.)
|
| That's just one example. I could go on ....
| acbart wrote:
| Perhaps if the conservative voices would stop saying
| stupid stuff like this, they wouldn't be systematically
| excluded from the conversation. In my particular subfield
| of CS, there's a "self-identified conservative" who's
| been more or less utterly rejected from the community
| because, in addition to their bonkers political opinions,
| it turns out they also have bonkers scientific opinions.
| In fact, I'd go so far as to say that they reject the
| scientific process. It's hard to find that compatible
| with doing science. Perhaps I have many secret
| conservative colleagues in my field, but the only one
| I've seen is not someone who I would ever wish to
| collaborate with.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Universities are also the place that turn out STEM
| graduates and Ph.Ds: engineers (the non-software kind,
| where you actually need and use the education),
| physicians, scientists and researchers of all flavors
| (like the kind trying to find a cure for COVID-19), and
| so forth. These people are the pillars of progress and
| innovation necessary for a country to be great.
| Ironically, by defunding universities, culture warrior
| conservatives are effectively slitting their own
| country's throat.
|
| (Personally, I had no use for the ideologues either but
| managed to avoid them by simply not taking any of their
| classes; foreign language courses are a great way of
| filling humanities requirements with something actually
| useful.)
| gowld wrote:
| Are you asking why state governments choose to collect
| easy money from voluntary taxes funded by Federal
| government backed loans?
| megiddo wrote:
| So, to be clear, price controls never work. Prices are
| determined (mostly and usually) by supply and demand.
| More demand -> higher price. More supply -> lower price.
|
| The price of an education (regardless of cost structures,
| public funding, or whatever) is going to dominated by
| demand, since supply is relatively fixed. It takes years
| or decades to increase the supply of qualified
| instruction following typical university models.
|
| In this case Federal dollars guarantee a massive surplus
| of demand, while Federal accreditation limits supply
| (rightly or wrongly).
|
| "Public" schools are paid by students, just like private,
| as a fee-for-service product. For most educations at most
| universities, this service is largely indistinguishable.
| Some of the University income comes from tax offsets, but
| the product they provide is the same service and on the
| same market as private universities - fee-based
| educational services.
|
| The price is therefor entirely determined by the amount
| of supply (relatively fixed) and the amount of demand for
| fee-based education. Demand has risen dramatically since
| WW2 due to a bevvy of Federal programs designed to
| underwrite and promote post-secondary education.
|
| No amount of legal wrangling or tax-offsetting will
| defeat that. In fact, by increasing tax-offsets for
| public universities, the apparent price of the service
| supplied by public universities drops (relative to the
| market price), which is a signal to buyers that they
| should buy MORE of that service. This signal would
| naturally increase demand until the price of a public
| education on the market matches the price of the same
| education at private institutions.
|
| The actual oddity is not that public education pricing
| keeps rising to private institutional pricing, but that
| it is not already at the same price.
|
| Prices drive expense-side efficiency. An operation (such
| as a University) will not be mechanically driven to keep
| costs significantly lower than income - most are non-
| profit. There is no reason to "increase margin". Most
| Universities are already teaching at capacity. Since the
| price is set by the market, there is no reason to keep
| prices significantly below the market rate. Instead, the
| costs associated with an education simply rise to meet
| whatever revenue can be generated from a fixed pool of
| buyers. These buyers have virtually no spending limit,
| since their purchasing is de facto underwritten by
| enormous Federal programs. The result year-over-year
| dramatic price increases.
|
| For extra credit, this is largely the same process that
| drives healthcare pricing in the US. A relatively fixed
| supply of a specialized service and a price-insensitive
| buyer pool largely underwritten by massive Federal
| programs.
| ridaj wrote:
| > this is largely the same process that drives healthcare
| pricing in the US
|
| Also, real estate
| N1H1L wrote:
| And traffic in freeways when you build them in/near urban
| centers.
| secabeen wrote:
| > No amount of legal wrangling or tax-offsetting will
| defeat that. In fact, by increasing tax-offsets for
| public universities, the apparent price of the service
| supplied by public universities drops (relative to the
| market price), which is a signal to buyers that they
| should buy MORE of that service. This signal would
| naturally increase demand until the price of a public
| education on the market matches the price of the same
| education at private institutions.
|
| This is an interesting claim, because tax-offsets of
| tuition have been going down over the last 30 years, not
| up. Look at the percentage of educational costs covered
| by state general funds in the late 60s compared to today.
| It's night and day different.
|
| > Prices drive expense-side efficiency. An operation
| (such as a University) will not be mechanically driven to
| keep costs significantly lower than income - most are
| non-profit. There is no reason to "increase margin". Most
| Universities are already teaching at capacity. Since the
| price is set by the market, there is no reason to keep
| prices significantly below the market rate. Instead, the
| costs associated with an education simply rise to meet
| whatever revenue can be generated from a fixed pool of
| buyers. These buyers have virtually no spending limit,
| since their purchasing is de facto underwritten by
| enormous Federal programs. The result year-over-year
| dramatic price increases.
|
| This is a interesting point, but the data doesn't back it
| up. We have data from the Department of Education on
| expenditures by universities. It doesn't show dramatic
| expenditure increases. The prices went up because state
| legislatures cut higher ed funding, and universities had
| to raise tuition to balance the books. Here's that data:
| https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_334.1
| 0.a...
|
| If you have data showing that universities are spending
| dramatically more in expenditures on a per-student
| constant-dollar basis, I'd love to see it.
| lumost wrote:
| This is true for free-market goods, however there is no
| fundamental reason a state run institution should be
| beholden to such rules. In the case of public transport
| the state dictates the price and to some extent capacity,
| and the local authorities find the right set of tradeoffs
| to make it work ( with mixed results ).
|
| In the case of a state university, it's odd that we don't
| see at least one example of this approach. Why isn't
| there an example of a state university with fixed
| admissions capacity, poor dorm/ student life quality, low
| cost, but with good academics?
|
| We generally see the same set of tradeoffs across the
| entire industry with no student cost considerations in
| university planning to speak of.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| My anctedot... My daughter at college has three academic
| advisors; a general advisor, honors advisor, and her chosen
| major advisor. Geeesh.
| JadeNB wrote:
| As a professor who is also a major advisor, I cost nothing,
| because I'm not paid separately to advise. On the other
| hand, given the corresponding emphasis on training and
| evaluation of advising (not much, although our department
| and college are working to get better at it), my advising
| is probably worth about what I'm paid for it.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| And how much "advice" to they give? When I went, the only
| time you had to talk to your advisor, was once a semester
| for them to rubber stamp your approval for major-only
| classes (which the official advisors would defer to in-
| major professors). Beyond that, you were free to talk to
| advisors on an as needed basis. There role was essentially
| to be a primary point of contact for students. Why
| shouldn't a student have multiple advisors. If she has a
| problem/question with her honors program, ask the honors
| advisor. If she has a general administrative question, go
| to the general advisor.
|
| Our entire math department was served by two advisors who
| likely also had non advising administrative duties.
|
| My honors advisors were just the main faculty of my honors
| program.
|
| I don't think I ever spoke to my official CS advisor.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| I found my CS advisor repeatedly very helpful. I would
| not have graduated in four years without her advice.
|
| So, just because you didn't get value out of it doesn't
| mean that's true for all students.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| How many students? As residence is basically a hotel with
| 4000-10,000 students, so 6 people seems low if anything.
| burfog wrote:
| How exactly is it "so easy to get huge loans" for college? My
| kid needs that, but we see only $5500 available for the first
| year.
|
| Did you instead mean loans that the parent takes on, perhaps
| as cosigner?
|
| I'm seeing nothing beyond $5500 that can be obtained by a
| student.
| jimbokun wrote:
| I think if you're low income, you qualify for a lot more
| loans.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me how 15K+ in
| tuition a year is acceptable.
|
| No sympathy here for the college industry.
| jimbokun wrote:
| $15k is a great price, must private universities are far more
| than that. And public state universities, if you are paying
| out of state tuition.
| mgoblu3 wrote:
| There's a bit of a rat race in colleges posturing to get
| ahead of each other always, and that takes capital investment
| and the recourse to raise funds ends up being tuition.
|
| These things and reputations take years and tons of willpower
| and planning, so the risk of falling behind is immense.
| tehjoker wrote:
| If only we were somehow able to remove the ability to
| peacock and ensure everyone going through the system got a
| good education.... then rich people and employers would
| have much less to work with in terms of picking candidates
| based on school "reputation".
| JackFr wrote:
| There is a school of thought that all the value in higher
| education comes from signaling.
|
| There is more value in a Princeton diploma than a
| Princeton education.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| One solution I heard is changing the loan requirement to
| be a fixed price sole payment accepted with zero required
| additional bundling. They can have scholarships but none
| of this "must stay in our dorms the first year and meal
| plan, books must be bought from here now suddenly several
| thousand each" mark up smuggling opportunity bullshit. So
| there would be a driven for efficiency. You want federal
| money for education? It is accept $35K/yr per student or
| get bent.
|
| There would be fine tuning in the numbers and parameters
| but that would kill price as a signal as a good thing as
| it forces either public rates or exorbitant private
| school which thinks they can actually make more without
| the massive prime consumer pool.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If only we were somehow able to remove the ability to
| peacock and ensure everyone going through the system got
| a good education_
|
| Good professors are rare. Good classmates are rare.
| Distributed education lets benefits from the former
| scale, albeit with degradation. There is no known way to
| scale access to the network of a good college experience.
|
| Education quality varies with respect to both of the
| above. As a result, there is a scaling limit. As a
| result, there will be scarcity until the preconditions
| are solved or the scaling limits released.
| [deleted]
| fatnoah wrote:
| > I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me how 15K+ in
| tuition a year is acceptable.
|
| My town currently spends about $12,635 per pupil for public
| schools. Other towns in the state spend over $20k. Compared
| to that, $15k tuition seems right in line.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| I do think there's an argument to made that college should
| be cheaper (at least excluding housing and other secondary
| costs) than K-12 given that K-12 has a bunch of mandatory
| cost centers like special education (which is to say
| dealing with kids who destroy classrooms, abusive parents,
| etc.), that class size can be larger in college, that
| students in college (at least excluding community college)
| should be above the average in K-12, time in classroom per
| student/semester is lower, etc.
| kenjackson wrote:
| But the salary of the faculty is more expensive, at least
| on a per instructor basis. Although maybe you need fewer
| instructors. And facilities will cost more. You're not
| likely to have a nano-technology lab at your K-12 school.
|
| I think university could be cheaper than it is today, but
| probably not much cheaper than K-12.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me how 15K+ in
| tuition a year is acceptable._
|
| I believe people who support such things think as follows:
|
| 1. $15k a year tuition for 4 years is a great deal if it
| turns you into a banker or programmer with a $150,000 a year
| salary and a 40-year career. Indeed, it would be unjust for a
| garbage man's taxes to be paying for a stockbroker's
| education.
|
| 2. Majoring in poetry might not be such a clearly great
| decision, but if you're on the left politically, banning
| poetry is anti-intellectual; and if you're on the right
| market demand is its own justification.
| mrj wrote:
| > Indeed, it would be unjust for a garbage man's taxes to
| be paying for a stockbroker's education.
|
| Education and improving society floats all boats, just as
| the garbage man is dependent on people generating trash.
| Stocks fund companies that employ people who generate
| trash. That was a very narrow, short-sighted analysis of
| tax policy.
| [deleted]
| notfromhere wrote:
| Said 150k a year for 40 years generates more in taxes than
| the up front cost of the education, so said investment
| makes sense in terms of the public good.
|
| With loans, the govt both makes a return on the interest
| AND a lifetime increase in net tax revenues.
|
| Value of a college education goes beyond salary, and
| ideally creates a better informed citizenry.
| Gollapalli wrote:
| About as right-wing as you can get. also studied poetry in
| college. Let's not make this about left-right, thanks.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| It's not unjust if that garbageman went to university too,
| or at least had the same opportunity. Society is better off
| with better educated citizens. It's why we have free public
| schooling up through the age of 18; many other countries
| simply carry that farther.
|
| On the poetry point specifically, I really think writing
| degrees in general would be more successful if they were
| granted by trade schools (i.e. a focus on doing the thing,
| not a focus on academic scholarship about the thing).
| vonmoltke wrote:
| > It's why we have free public schooling up through the
| age of 18; many other countries simply carry that
| farther.
|
| To be fair, we also have _compulsory_ schooling for that
| period as well, and it makes complete sense to use tax
| revenue to pay for something the same government is
| making you do.
|
| Note that I don't oppose the use of tax revenue to fund
| voluntary education, and I personally benefited heavily
| from it. Its just that using the example of the
| government paying for something it made mandatory is not
| much of an argument in itself for having it pay for
| something that is voluntary.
| eachro wrote:
| 15k in just tuition does not seem outrageous. Suppose a year
| is 30 weeks, and you spend 10 hours a week in classes (not
| even counting the other benefits that college/a college
| campus may offer), thats about 50 dollars/hr you're spending
| for lecture. For some classes/fields it's clearly a much
| better deal. But 40k+ in tuition? Yea agreed, that's pretty
| outrageous.
| gowld wrote:
| $15k/yr is not expensive. That's about the same as K-12. Most
| schools are $30-$60k/yr
| mrlala wrote:
| >That's about the same as K-12
|
| Are you forgetting the entirely free K-12 option here that
| most people grow up with?
|
| >$15k/yr is not expensive
|
| Ok....
| ceejayoz wrote:
| They're not free, they're differently funded.
|
| My kids' school spends $21k/pupil/year.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| Not sure why you are getting downvoted. Very few of our
| parents shelled out the 15k a year in public school
| costs.
|
| We distributed the cost, but 15k a year is absolutely
| unaffordable for most Americans.
| bluedino wrote:
| $12k/student is the national average for K-12 spending
|
| https://www.edweek.org/ew/collections/quality-
| counts-2019-st...
| vidanay wrote:
| Gotta pay for those basketball and football programs somehow.
| (Yes, SOME athletics programs are net positive - most are
| not)
| mgav wrote:
| I didn't realize that. Do you have a source for this,
| please?
| vidanay wrote:
| This article is a few years old, but I don't think the
| situation has changed radically.
|
| http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-
| center/news/athlet...
| notyourwork wrote:
| It depends on the school which means maybe some schools
| should not have sports teams? How crazy is it to think
| that a school should be focused on education and not go
| into debt to finance extracurriculars.
|
| Big brand name schools that are regularly competing at
| top level in sports are usually seeing huge financial
| surplus due to sports.
| [deleted]
| krn1p4n1c wrote:
| Big sports inside universities are usually structured as a
| separate corporation for maximum tax effect.
| czinck wrote:
| Your source says "athletic departments", not football or
| basketball programs, which is an important distinction.
| Football and basketball are the only money-makers (I think
| hockey or baseball make money at a few schools), and all of
| the other sports drag down the athletic departments budget.
|
| That's also ignoring that FBS is basically advertising.
| There's been a steady increase in applications (and
| subsequently an increase in average GPA and similar
| numbers) at University of Alabama under Nick Saban, and I
| know I would have been less likely to go to Virginia Tech
| if it wasn't for their football program drawing me in when
| I was in middle/high school.
| JackFr wrote:
| A couple of other examples:
|
| Jim Calhoun and Geno Auriemma did more to take the
| University of Connecticut to national prominence than 100
| deans. And Auriemma did it by excellence in a non-revenue
| sport.
|
| While Mark Few at Gonzaga made the NCAA tournament 20
| years in a row, this small Jesuit school in Spokane
| doubled the number of applicants, increased the
| proportion of students from outside Washington, increased
| incoming student test scores and dramatically grew the
| endowment.
| rwmurrayVT wrote:
| Slightly off-topic, but the recent performance of VT's
| football program has been depressing. I'd hate to see
| things sway over to UVlame. :(
| snapetom wrote:
| Boston College received triple their number of average
| applications the year after Doug Flutie threw his Hail
| Mary.
| amiga_500 wrote:
| No, it's led by the other end.
|
| Funding is created for college places. Enough to "educate" 30%
| of people. People start to go.
|
| Employers for very basic jobs notice that 50% of applicants
| have degrees. They stipulate on their next job advertisement
| "degree required".
|
| The bar has been raised. You now cannot get an interview
| without a degree in many jobs.
|
| You have to get a degree. The financiers start to loan more and
| more for this now essential ticket.
|
| Universities start charging more. Student's entire working
| lives are financialised, as the debt will take a lifetime to
| repay.
|
| University is not set by the cost to deliver, it's set by the
| available credit.
|
| Same for housing.
|
| But hey keep on focusing on your "right to free speech" that
| every single other nation has but without a brutal police force
| that Europeans look upon with horror.
| shawndellysse wrote:
| http://archive.is/VX8ms
| cwperkins wrote:
| I understand that colleges charge the same tuition for online
| students and in person students, but what's preventing the
| schools from lowering the cost of online, part-time degrees as a
| way to increase enrollment? They may have hosting costs, or costs
| associated with platforms like Coursera, but there's no cost for
| facilities which should make them able to cut the tuition. The
| cost of healthcare and education is far too high in the US. IMO
| Universal means Affordable, Accessible and Abundant (In addition
| hopefully high quality as well). Education and Healthcare should
| meet all of those points.
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| My sense is it's a good idea to separate college as a place where
| you take classes and can get a degree from college as a lifestyle
| choice. While living at home and later with a friend, I went to a
| community college after high school, that my family paid a
| nominal amount for, and transferred to a UC from there that was
| entirely covered by Pell/Cal grants until graduation. No debt
| required.
|
| Had I gone straight to a 4-year from high school, lived at the
| school, and made it a lifestyle as opposed to someplace I go to
| take classes, then I likely would have graduated with a
| significant amount of debt.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| This situation is exposing colleges as the scam that they are.
| Families are getting indebted up to their eyeballs, thinking are
| paying for education. In reality the education can be had for
| free. What they are really paying for is a sorting function,
| something that could also be had for free with national exams.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > something that could also be had for free with national
| exams.
|
| That just causes the money to be poured into national exam test
| prep like in South Korea or China.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| Some money maybe, but "the money"? Korean and Chinese
| families are paying 250K per kid in test prep?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| It wouldn't be 250K USD due to lower incomes, but the
| average South Korean family spent 20% of their income on
| test prep and private tutoring back in 2011. Anecdotally, a
| friend in China is talking about his future with his
| girlfriend and they are looking at around that figure as
| well if they have kids.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/s-korea-tries-to-
| wrest-...
|
| http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,209442
| 7...
|
| https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2176377/chi
| n...
| zarkov99 wrote:
| Its a lot more than I expected. Thanks for pointing this
| out.
| state_throw_2 wrote:
| One of the "hard choices" some colleges are making is removing
| the requirement for SAT or ACT tests for admission. While a case
| can be made against certain types of standardized tests, will
| their admission criteria be made more rigorous in other areas to
| compensate? Lowering the bar for incoming students could end up
| reducing both the educational experience at the college and
| eventually its reputation, making them even more desperate for
| unqualified students in the future, ad infinitum until it gets
| bailed out or goes bankrupt.
| tharne wrote:
| Any time you make money easily available for a certain good,
| whether through debt or direct subsidy, the cost of that good is
| going to increase proportional to the amount of money made
| available. This is what happened in the housing market and with
| college tuition.
|
| I'd be willing to bet that if you outlawed student loans
| (assuming that was possible), you'd see colleges finding all
| sorts of ways to cut costs without negatively impacting the
| students.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| You would probably end up with a two tiered system of online
| MOOCs for most and the normal experience for the elite.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > I'd be willing to bet that if you outlawed student loans
| (assuming that was possible), you'd see colleges finding all
| sorts of ways to cut costs without negatively impacting the
| students.
|
| Big optimist you. They'd find all sorts of ways to cut costs
| without negatively impacting the _enrollment_ , which is the
| statistic colleges care about (at least indirectly, to the
| extent that it correlates with tuition).
| nickgrosvenor wrote:
| They should outlaw hiring practices with required college degrees
| for all but the most regulated careers like doctors, lawyers etc.
|
| To require a BS or BA for a sales job is insane and just creates
| servitude dynamics for no reason.
| EGreg wrote:
| Colleges, like Intellectual Property, impose artificial scarcity
| on the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge in an age where
| the Internet has allowed us all to publish and discuss like never
| before. They come from a time when we couldn't record audio and
| video and disseminate it so easily. Never mind _multimedia_ ,
| they use heavy textbooks!
|
| There is a concept called "flipping the classroom", where people
| can watch the classroom lectures at home at their own pace, and
| do the homework together in class. And these lockdowns just go to
| show that people can carry on learning online. They just need a
| good coach or course.
|
| Lectures are the commodity. Individual attention from tutors and
| labs is the scarcity.
|
| When even rich Hollywood celebs feel they need to bribe colleges
| for their kids to get in, we know we have artificial scarcity and
| an old boys network.
|
| Flipping the classroom is not enough. Here is what we can do to
| fix the educational situation: http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158
| EarthIsHome wrote:
| College isn't as appealing as it once was. In order to
| participate in the economy, we need a well-paying job. We're told
| to get a well-paying job, we need a good degree. To get a good
| degree, many of us have to go into debt. We finish college with a
| good degree but are saddled with thousands of dollars of debt
| (sometimes tens of thousands). And this college debt doesn't go
| away if we go bankrupt. It will always follow us. So, while we're
| trying to pay back our debt for a good degree for a dream to live
| well in this life, we also have to pay for our housing, to live,
| to eat, etc. It makes it so hard to save up for a house or
| anything permanent. Everything always seems precarious because it
| is. We're precarious. What's the point of a college degree if
| we're going to be in debt while working after getting the degree?
| Might as well skip the whole college part.
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| You are still way better off with college than without. It's
| not as good a deal as it used to be but it's still the best
| deal available.
| kevinskii wrote:
| I'm not so sure. I would probably choose a vocational
| apprenticeship over a B.A. in Sociology from State U.
| magicsmoke wrote:
| A B.A. in Sociology isn't a good comparison to vocational
| apprenticeships. A better one would be a B.E in some kind
| of engineering.
| kevinskii wrote:
| I agree with you, but that wasn't the claim that I was
| replying to.
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| How many people with a vocational degree make >100k? Not
| many. The path to higher income is paved with credentials
| if they make sense or not.
| vzidex wrote:
| I think it depends on what you're doing. If you want to be an
| artist or a writer, maybe community college would be a better
| deal.
|
| On the other hand, if you want to be an engineer then it's
| pretty important to go to a reputable institution - at least
| in the field I work in.
| methehack wrote:
| I think in state tuition at a public university is often still
| a very good deal w/o nearly the debt profile.
| clairity wrote:
| in states with good public universities, the best value is 2
| years at a good community college, then 2 years at the state
| school. even 2 years at a good state university is getting
| ridiculously expensive ($60K+).
| thelean12 wrote:
| What state schools are $60k+ for 2 years for in-state
| residents?
|
| Berkeley was my guess for an expensive in-state tuition
| rate and they're $38k for 2 years.
|
| Unless you're including housing/food/etc.
| clairity wrote:
| yes, total cost, as that's the truer measure.
| thelean12 wrote:
| Certainly not an option for everyone, but a ton of people
| in my state school class still lived at home. A good
| percentage could have lived at home but chose not to.
|
| It's also hard for me to include housing because you'd
| need housing no matter what path in life you choose.
| clairity wrote:
| that's true, but that ignores opportunities/opportunity
| costs, which would cover housing/food in an alternate
| scenario.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| UIUC is 25k a year just tuition and fees. Expensive
| college town room & board plus opportunity cost of
| education instead of working easily gets you to 30k a
| year.
| mrlala wrote:
| Holy shit it's that expensive now?? Graduated from there
| about 15 years ago and it was _maybe_ 8-10k a year..
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The state cut all funding under the last governor so they
| had some major issues.
| areyousure wrote:
| https://admissions.illinois.edu/invest/tuition "Following
| are our estimated expenses for 2020-2021. Illinois
| Resident Tuition & Fees: $16,862-$21,956"
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Plus 3700 in fees
| areyousure wrote:
| My apologies for not quoting it originally, but it
| literally says "Tuition & Fees".
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Except it also lists $3700 of other fees.
| yardie wrote:
| From others experience it's 2 years at good community
| college and 2.5-3 years at the good state university. I've
| yet to see state college take all the credits from a
| transfer.
| clairity wrote:
| admittedly i don't have first-hand experience in this,
| but my understanding from friends & family here in CA is
| that limiting time at a state university to 2 years (and
| sometimes less) is entirely possible, with some planning.
|
| the confounding factor for young adults, i suppose, is
| that it's hard to be certain enough about future
| interests amid all the possibilities not yet forgone to
| stay the course without (understandable) alteration (i
| changed course a few times in college myself).
| dastbe wrote:
| I think the level of economic anxiety (precariousness) people
| have is one of the biggest mental health risks in the US. It
| lowers people's ability to perform cognitive tasks and results
| in more bad decisions.
| dakna wrote:
| > What's the point of a college degree if we're going to be in
| debt while working after getting the degree? Might as well skip
| the whole college part.
|
| A bachelor's degree serves as a barrier of entry for many roles
| outside of IT. Historically the pay gap between the jobs you
| can get without, and what you make after clearing this barrier,
| made up for the initial investment rather quick. Now that there
| are diminishing returns on that investment, you need to
| optimize on a case by case basis. Does your chosen profession
| allow other paths to high paying jobs? Can you get the degree
| with less investment using less costly credit hours (community
| college first, then state university)? Is the peer group and
| the resulting network formed after attending college valuable
| enough to boost your career 5 years later? There are not that
| many well paying jobs accessible without a degree, I think cost
| optimization is worth it in the long run instead of not going
| to college at all.
| gdubs wrote:
| It's too bad college has become so transactional. Not judging
| -- there's a lot of wealth inequality in the world, and the
| vast majority of people don't have the luxury.
|
| But there's another aspect to college -- the friendships, the
| discovery, finding interests, finding yourself.
|
| These aspects have gone to the wayside, because for the
| majority of people there's just not enough money to justify
| this. It feels similar to the cuts to art and music in lower
| schools - "what good are those programs for getting a job?"
| mdszy wrote:
| >thousands of dollars of debt (sometimes tens of thousands)
|
| I'd almost venture to say "tens of thousands of dollars of debt
| (sometimes hundreds of thousands)"
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Once the role of professional college administrator became a
| thing, then they took over. They're paid more than the faculty
| now. And they run it like a body shop. To pay for their
| hyperinflated salaries and padded staff.
|
| I wish I were being pessimistic about this.
| 0d9eooo wrote:
| Speaking as a college professor, this is true. I started
| noticing really quickly that there was an implicit expectation
| that faculty be evaluated on their suitability and/or desire to
| move into administrative positions. This is fine, but it got
| mingled with professional administrators brought in from other
| institutions trained in business administration etc. Our
| president actually had no experience in higher ed prior to
| their appointment, it all being in large corporate business,
| and it was seen as a good thing somehow.
|
| Everything has become very hierarchical, run as a corporation,
| focused on profit maximization, with those profits going
| progressively more and more to those higher and higher up the
| administrative chain.
| metalchianti wrote:
| This seems relevant:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy
| code4tee wrote:
| The higher education bubble has been building for a long time. It
| follows a similar trend to the housing bubble: high prices fueled
| by loans that are too easy to get and too hard to repay.
|
| The current situation is likely going to force a hard reset for
| the industry. Administrative bloat and other expenses will need
| to be addressed as colleges get back to basics and focus on
| delivering education under a more sustainable economic model.
|
| A 10% decline in enrollment (much higher is realistic for many
| colleges) would devastate the finances of most institutions.
| These will be an interesting next few years.
| burlesona wrote:
| There's this fairly well known idea in organizations that
| expenses will tend to rise to fill the available budget. It's not
| nefarious, just the natural result of a competitive market - both
| the market inside the organization, where people want to spend
| any money that is allocated to them (because why not?), and the
| market outside the organization, where spending (on fancy dorms,
| maternity wards, or rock climbing inside the office) is an arms
| race to attract "the best" students, patients, or tech workers
| (just to name a few examples).
|
| Again there's nothing inherently wrong with this. In tech,
| especially in the Bay Area, it means a lot of us get to live
| pretty nice lives as our employers have to invest a lot more of
| their budgets in attracting and retaining a skilled work force.
|
| The problem is when this sort of thing is fueled by subsidies
| and/or opaque mechanisms. Google can afford to lavish it's
| workforce from its own profits, but the average startup these
| days is burning heaps of investor money on "perks" to compete for
| talent that aren't truly necessary.
|
| But that's private money, and if/when those companies fail,
| society at large isn't threatened.
|
| When this same phenomenon happens in public institutions like
| Universities and Hospitals, where the money is coming from
| individuals who need these services to thrive, the damage is much
| greater. In the long run, public subsidy for student loans
| doesn't make college available to the masses, so much as it
| balloons the cost and saddles students with debts. In the long
| run, the US' Byzantine "insurance" system for health payments
| doesn't spread the cost around so much as it inflates and
| distorts the costs and changes insurance from a "nice to have" to
| an increasingly expensive barrier to entry.
|
| The global pandemic didn't create the problems these institutions
| have, it's just exposing them and accelerating the inevitable
| failure of the unsustainable. It's going to leave a lot of damage
| in its wake.
|
| Pessimistically, I expect these institutions to go beg for money
| from the printer and try to sustain the unsustainable. But my
| optimistic side sees this as an opportunity for all of us to
| question the systems around us, and try to fix some of the
| underlying root causes that made these systems so fragile in the
| first place.
| v4dok wrote:
| I always found the US model of colleges so outlandishly short-
| sighted. Problems of non-bankruptcy and wage slavery are just the
| very apparent outcomes that you would have a system like this.
|
| "Free" education is the only thing that separates us from a
| dystopian society of social immobility. And hence people in US
| defend it.
|
| I came from poor background and the fact that Uni education is
| free allowed me to, first of all, receive it, and also take risks
| that I wouldn't be able to do if I had to repay a 100k+ loan.
| These kinds of risks are what in essence allow social class
| movement, otherwise, we are talking about more comfortable wage-
| slavery.
|
| On the other hand, belief in higher education wanes, people
| question if degrees like philosophy are "useful" (whatever that
| means) and then question why voters have no critical thinking to
| decide their own future.
|
| I would love to see if there is historical data supporting my
| intuitive belief that free access to higher education made
| significant differences in the advancement of otherwise similar
| nations. USA is throwing its education down the drain and the
| decay is already visible.
| engineeringwoke wrote:
| I grew up in the States and live in the Netherlands now. I can
| see this truth, but the Americans don't understand.
|
| I want to take citizenship in a couple years... my family
| doesn't understand. The cultural rot is obvious to me. I hope
| simply that the country survives without violent conflict. It
| seems like it would have had to be saved ten years ago.
| wturner wrote:
| I worked at a private college called Expression right at the end
| of the first dot com bust.The founder wanted to turn the school
| into the "Julliard of the digital arts" - and keep the tuition as
| low as possible. For the first few years it was a really
| interesting and unique place. To make a long story short, the
| board of directors weeded the main founder out and moved the
| school through the accreditation hoops so that students could get
| massive loans. As a result, the school raised the tuition. The
| place exploded with students for x number of years. When Obama
| came to office new laws killed off the loans (and the school).
| Most of the original staff left and the whole thing was sold to a
| company named SAE. I always wondered what would have happened if
| they were never able to get accredited and were forced to stay a
| small trade school. The aftermath is documented in the eastbay
| express article below (2015). From reading current reviews, the
| place never recovered.
|
| https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/sound-arts-fading-out...
| findyoucef wrote:
| I'm a developer at a university. We're horrified.
| beams_of_light wrote:
| I'm using Blendle, but can't find this story there.
| GnarfGnarf wrote:
| As I understand Blendle, they only offer _some_ stories from
| their list of publishers. NYT, WSJ, WaPo, LA Times, etc. will
| pick & choose what they allow Blendle to offer. Top-tier
| stories will not be shared through Blendle, and will be
| reserved for direct subscribers.
|
| It makes Blendle less attractive to me.
| beams_of_light wrote:
| That's too bad. Guess this is almost useless to me.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| I would like to see a reckoning for the modern college and
| university model. They have extremely bloated administrative
| costs due to the moral hazards of public funding, they have
| accumulated ideologically biased fields that should never have
| been legitimized (https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-
| grievance-studi...), they are increasingly becoming political
| monocultures that are hostile to any diversity of thought, and
| they seem archaic when their primary function these days is not
| to teach (especially at large, well endowed, research
| universities) but to certify. That is, people mostly attend
| college to leverage their names as a proxy for economic value on
| a resume. Could they largely be replaced with testing centers and
| more focused vocational schools?
|
| All that said, maybe what we need is simply increased
| competition. Rather than a few, large colleges that absorb lots
| of students and funding, we need a web of smaller universities
| that are given greater consideration (and support?) than they are
| today. However, the current conditions might starve out the
| smallest colleges or trade schools, and only amplify the hegemony
| of large colleges.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| The fairly recent law that you cannot bankruptcy out of a college
| load caused all this.
|
| - Lenders are willing to lend to anyone knowing they will HAVE to
| pay.
|
| - Colleges over-inflated costs, way beyond inflation
|
| - It balanced out to this shit.
|
| In the past, colleges had to be careful, and so did lenders,
| because lots of people just didn't go to college due to cost. So
| they had to sell their worth.
| skizm wrote:
| Also, the best thing (for banks) is that since the borrower
| can't discharge the loans in bankruptcy, the banks have the
| borrower's entire working life to garnish wages and levy
| penalties.
| alexpetralia wrote:
| This is remarkably similar to the subprime bubble (in part
| instigated by a federal policy to encourage homeownership).
| wallawe wrote:
| It's amazing how few people recognize this. Unintended
| consequences of government policy in both cases. "Everyone
| deserves a home" said GW back in the early 2000s. We've now
| seen the exact same thing play out in the education system.
| Of course as soon as the government gets in the business of
| providing/guaranteeing loans, the cost of tuition skyrockets.
| Why wouldn't they raise prices?
| sauwan wrote:
| Right, it's a weird situation, where lenders don't want someone
| going into bankruptcy right out of college when they have
| nothing to lose. But preventing loans from being discharged in
| bankruptchy has created the perverse dynamic where it's made
| the cost of college very inelastic and almost predatory.
| mrlala wrote:
| Well.. the problem is how can lenders "be careful" when loaning
| to an 18 year old, which we can call an adult all we want but
| an 18 year old on their way to college is basically a grown
| child with no money.
|
| So how can a lender protect themselves? Make a parent with
| enough money co-sign? Then you are essentially systematically
| not giving loans to poor people.. and only giving "loans" to
| kids with parents who have money.
|
| Anyway I do think it's a complicated problem.. we want to be
| able to give loans to basically anyone so they can go to
| school; but if they are loaning to people who by definition
| have no assets how can a lender protect itself without
| essentially discriminating against the poor?
| sauwan wrote:
| Well, I think part of the solution is to require schools to
| provide an option for payments to be a fixed percentage of
| wages after graduation for a set number of years. Everyone's
| interests are then aligned, and the school now has to bear
| some of the risks, and also gains some potential upside if
| their students regularly command high wages. It's obviously
| not that simple, but schools like Purdue (Back a Boiler) have
| working systems in place.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| I think it is not that complicated. In any case, there should
| be risk management involved. If you have a parent with enough
| money, make them co-sign.
|
| If you come from a not so wealthy background, then you only
| get a loan for a program that has a higher earnings potential
| than what you put in. I mean come on, Williams College, the
| supposedly best liberal arts school in the country has a
| "median" graduating salary of 58k, and this number does not
| include the possibility that you could graduate with a major
| no one wants to hire. 1 year of cost of just tuition and room
| and boarding is 74k. This does not include other costs like
| health insurance, books, and other equipment, extra living
| costs. You add this up, you can easily run up the bill to
| 400k. You seriously think a person should be able to get this
| loan to graduate in "Arabic Studies"? I mean I am sorry that
| people come from a poor background (me included), but taking
| out that 400k loan without any checks and balances seems
| irresponsible.
| lcall wrote:
| Two accredited online ones that have interestingly sustainable
| models, and possible interaction with others, I think:
|
| BYU Pathway Worldwide and associated programs. It requires a
| Church affiliation but not necessarily membership (I think). I
| think tuition is much lower, bachelors programs (like IT,
| business, others) are available, programs excellent, and is also
| suitable for those who need to first become qualified for
| entering a university (edit: i.e., learning English which is used
| in curriculum, and other basic skill), then provides that
| university. More info is in Wikipedia and I have gathered a bit
| of info including linking to a news article that explains it well
| I think, here: http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854578440.html .
|
| And: https://www.wgu.edu/ (also mentioned in wikipedia): state
| aid available from multiple states it seems (per wkp).
| grubb wrote:
| I know that standard BYU has the lowest tuition in Utah, lower
| than any state school, provided you are a tithe-paying member
| of the Mormon Church [1]. Otherwise they have a higher tuition,
| similar to the in-state/out-of-state changes for most state
| schools. Does BYU pathway tuition work the same way?
|
| I don't have a ton of experience with Western Governor's, but
| the fact that unlike many online universities they are
| nonprofit is a good sign. Of course, whether they have access
| to quality instructors is an unknown to me.
|
| [1]: https://finserve.byu.edu/students-parents/tuition-fees-
| deadl...
| lcall wrote:
| Good question: if you ask BYU Pathway Worldwide people or
| browse their site to learn about it, would be a good follow-
| up post here, to say. :) I am pretty sure I link to them
| indirectly above (i.e., to a page that has a convenient link
| to them).
|
| (Edit: from what I have read, I don't think there are
| different tiers for tuition, but it is all the same.
| Corrections welcome. I think it is quite low, for any
| student, so the opportunity including for international
| students in lower-income countries is significant.)
|
| And for WGU, there were praises of it on this page from
| former students
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22719797 and Ctrl+F for
| "wgu"), and a relative of mine is planning to attend soon,
| but I can't say from personal experience. I would certainly
| hope they do a good job. At the _very_ least, they are
| accredited and one can use that credential to earn money
| while continuing to learn well from many available sources
| (like MIT online courses, unix system documentation, etc :).
| realbarack wrote:
| Shuttered colleges should be turned into hubs for remote
| knowledge workers. The worst part of remote work is that it's
| hard to build a community without an office; college campuses are
| designed around community-building, with great shared spaces,
| gyms, etc. They also tend to be in beautiful places that are
| reasonably affordable, at least compared to the expensive coastal
| cities where many knowledge workers live.
|
| The current financial precarity of colleges and the massive
| increase in full-time remote workers have created a very
| interesting set of pre-conditions. If these conditions persist a
| while past the distancing phase of the virus, the environment
| could be uniquely perfect for this shift to take place.
| BadassFractal wrote:
| They won't be missed. I hope they use this as an opportunity to
| re-evaluate what exactly they're offering to students for the
| currently astronomical prices inflated by reckless borrowing.
| achenatx wrote:
| State schools are still a relative bargain. I attended around 30
| years ago and it was about 5000/year + 4000 room and board.
| Tuition now is about 16Kyear and room and board is about
| 13K/year. If tuition is doubling every 20 years, that is about
| 3.6% growth in cost
|
| The average public university is about 10K for tuition today. I
| think that is attainable for a middle class family.
|
| Where things are really out of whack is all the loans to attend
| private schools. A student has no business going to any private
| school if they have to take out 50-100K in loans per year.
|
| There should be no govt backed loans to private schools and no
| student loans should be discharged in bankruptcy.
| gnusty_gnurc wrote:
| Good! These aren't hard choices - this is the type of prudent
| spending that happens when you're not guaranteed infinite sums of
| money from the federal government. Scale back on the insanely
| bloated administrative staff, lavish facilities, sports stadiums,
| etc.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| "Things that can't continue forever will stop."
|
| Education wasn't on a sustainable course anyway (no pun
| intended). They couldn't keep increasing costs, increasing
| numbers of students, living off of the work of non-tenure-track
| instructors who got paid a pittance, and growing the size and
| cost of the administration. I think that was getting close to the
| breaking point, even without Covid.
| Loughla wrote:
| >living off of the work of non-tenure-track instructors who got
| paid a pittance
|
| This is, in my opinion, the number one problem in higher
| education right now. Adjunct/associate/part-time faculty are
| good, many of them are great. But the experience with those
| people is just not the same as with full-time tenured faculty.
| When a faculty member is worried about whether or not they'll
| have a course load next semester, their incentives are vastly
| different.
|
| This is a system that needs to die.
|
| Source: I have worked in higher education for a couple of
| decades now. Adjunt/associate/part-time has exploded since
| 2009-10 or so. It's ridiculous.
| TaylorGood wrote:
| I once interviewed for a CD role at a private, vocational
| certificate college. They do have some IRL locations but
| primarily online. The director shared that their revenue was
| about $500m. I didn't take the role, and I was left scarred
| knowing their revenue is someone elses debt and based on hope.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Well, a lot of college programs are just not worth it. The ones
| that are (engineering) tend to be four years of sleep-
| deprivation.
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