California bans ITT tech from accepting new students • Hacker News Board

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#261

Post by st3v3r » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 5:45 PM UTC

trentmb wrote: post #131

crazy1van wrote: post #51

I agree with a lot of the complaints I've heard about ITT. They seem to broadly fall into three camps: 1) They are expensive and rely on their students getting gov't loans, 2) They don't adequately prepare students for the work place, and 3) The teachers aren't very good. I think those are all great reasons to not go to ITT. But, I think those reasons could also apply to a whole lot of other schools, profit, non-prof…

> But, I think those reasons could also apply to a whole lot of other schools, profit, non-profit, private, and public. So why stop at ITT?

Who says they will?

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#262

Post by cgearhart » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 5:46 PM UTC

cloakandswagger wrote: post #228

cgearhart wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> colleges have transformed into bloated profit machines, happily ratcheting up tuition in response to this inflated demand Colleges aren't really "profit machines" though, and growth in tuition hasn't paced enrollment increases, so it is more likely that aid levels are being increased in response to rising tuition, rather than tuition being raised due to increased aid. Interestingly, one of the dominant factors in t…

It seems like a chicken or egg problem. If there were no student loans beyond what you could get from a bank or friends and families, fewer people could afford current tuition costs and colleges would be forced to lower them to attract new "customers". It's Keynesian demand-side stimulus at its core. With the national dialogue focused on how college should be available to everyone, along with unlimited, federally gua…

> ...colleges would be forced to lower them to attract new "customers".

This is categorically false. Schools would maintain whatever price point achieved equilibrium with the market's ability to pay. It would not necessarily require any school to reduce their prices.

> ...demand skyrockets and prices rise to meet them.

But that doesn't make any sense in the context of the higher education market..."supply" is neither fixed, nor constrained (within reason). Schools could easily expand their supply to accommodate additional students because there is actually an over-abundance of adjunct labor (rather than full-time faculty) in most fields that are trained and available to teach classes now, at much lower costs than traditional tenured faculty. The costs of providing education have actually fallen during the same period that the costs of running a college have risen. It's not being driven by "demand" from prospective students -- cost growth is being driven by competition between schools.

Schools also can't choose to compete on price because the availability of "free money" in the form of loans makes students less price sensitive. Instead, schools end up competing based on maximizing overall "quality of life" factors within a fixed price.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#263

Post by ensignavenger » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 5:49 PM UTC

brianwawok wrote: post #256

ensignavenger wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is very interesting, in many years of dealing with student loans for myself and my wife, I have never heard sucha thing! For example, the Department of Education publications usually say somthing like: "You may use the money you receive only to pay for education expenses at the school that awarded your loan. Education expenses include such school charges as tuition, room and board, fees, books, supplies, equipme…

Transportation means buss fairs not cars. I was given paperwork when I got my undergrad student loans, and it was very clearly spelled out. If the loans are private, I am not 100% if all of the same rules apply.

Not everyone lives in areas served by a bus system... none of the paperwork I have ever seen has spelled out any of this like that... it may depend on the school you are attending. I don't know, I haven't found the law or any official statement by the Dept of Ed. on it.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#264

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 5:55 PM UTC

cloakandswagger wrote: post #143

iamdave wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll entertain the notion, because I have questions and reservations of my own (powered by certain built-in and historical baisies as an American...infer if you will): What would the criteria be to determine loan eligibility for a student fresh out of high school?

GPA, extra curricular activity, criminal record, intended major, savings, jobs worked and the duration they were held, etc. Of course, none of this is as accurate an indicator as a FICO score which is why student loans are federally guaranteed, otherwise who would offer them? All of this goes to underscore just how destructive the "college for everyone" concept is. The government is making junk loans so that naive yo…

> All of this goes to underscore just how destructive the "college for everyone" concept is.

No, it shows how destructive the US policy response to that concept is, not how destructive the concept itself is.

Neither difficult-to-discharge loans without substantial cost or quality controls, nor an extensive role for private, for-profit institutions are demanded by the "college for everyone" concept.

> Consequently, colleges have transformed into bloated profit machines, happily ratcheting up tuition in response to this inflated demand.

I don't think its true that "colleges have transformed into bloated profit machines", so much that "colleges that are bloated profit machines have expanded and taken a larger market share".

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#265

Post by WalterBright » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 5:56 PM UTC

HarryHirsch wrote: post #207

WalterBright wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same sort of practice whereby used care salesmen will tell you what you need to pay per month without ever making it clear what the total cost is. The instructor of my accounting class was a former used car salesman. He said that his customers didn't want to hear about total cost, they were only interested in the monthly payment. He'd try to explain, and they'd cut him off and go for whatever had the lowest mon…

they'd cut him off and go for whatever had the lowest monthly payment What if this were a rational decision? For a person with low disposable income and no savings choosing the lowest monthly payment is the most rational decision.

I neglected to mention a key point. When he'd show them a plan with a much lower total cost, but a higher monthly payment, they'd accuse him of trying to trick them into a higher payment. No way were they going to fall for that one.

They certainly believed they were making the most rational decision. It didn't help that used car salesmen don't have a reputation for honest dealings.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#266

Post by SamReidHughes » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 6:10 PM UTC

st3v3r wrote: post #259

SamReidHughes wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we need these people in society, let their salaries increase. There is no reason to prefer debt ridden graduates paying higher interest rates at lower salaries with government soaking up the cost of defaults to the benefit of employers and their direct customers.

Yes, because everyone has that perfect negotiating power to do so. There are no school districts that are struggling or can only afford to pay so much for teachers, and hospitals that can't afford higher salaries for nurses. The "invisible hand" is not what should be guiding society. The "invisible hand" has declared that it's more worthwhile to be a Kardashian than it is to be a teacher or nurse.

> The "invisible hand" has declared that it's more worthwhile to be a Kardashian than it is to be a teacher or nurse.

What you propose is to guide society by deliberately lowering the pay of teachers and nurses even more. So are you saying that the invisible hand is right? That a Kardashian should be expensive (which reduces how many are available) and that teachers should be cheap (meaning we can afford more of them)?

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#267

Post by bigtex » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 6:51 PM UTC

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #87

sanderjd wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But...if you learn all that stuff, isn't programming pretty easy? It's just specific abstractions on top of the fundamentals you already know... (I don't mean to be dismissive, I'm honestly mystified by your perspective here.)

All the stuff I mentioned has essentially zero application to writing a server script or a website backend or a commercial application, is the thing. It's like knowing car engines backwards and forwards, but never actually getting to drive one. I should mention, also, that our programming exercises were in C++ exclusively, on the campus Unix system exclusively, and the only development environment we were ever offici…

I can't upvote this enough. In college I used pine for email and created C++ apps in vi. Did learn how to create VB6 applications though. That was right about the time that .net was finally released. Web app development consisted of editing HTML in notepad, so not a very real world like experience.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#268

Post by ryuker16 » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 7:28 PM UTC

antisthenes wrote: post #249

bane wrote: post #205

One of the things that's very interesting to me is how information asymmetry helps drive people to these kinds of companies. I don't know everybody's story, but when I was just out of high school, there was no chance (I believed at the time) that I'd be able to go to a traditional school. I had bad grades, my family was poor and nobody in my family had gone to university except for my father, who had quickly abandone…

Community colleges are a hidden treasure in the United States. Many of them have very good professors, are cheap and have the benefit of having transfer programs into a big name university for the last 2 years of your 4 year degree. I'm not sure why schools like ITT or Phoenix even exist or how they attract "customers/students". This may sound arrogant, but for me, an ITT or Phoenix degree is worth less than the piec…

high pressure sales tactics and marketing....community colleges or legit trade training programs like an electrician apprenticeship wont call you for hours to get you to join.

Also, some foreigners literally do not know any better.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#269

Post by ryuker16 » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 7:34 PM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #18

Are there any good ITT / University of Phoenix type schools? They all seem like scams. I don't count community colleges here, I know those can be very good. My wife went to one, got great education, was able to pay it by just budgeting money every month out of her part time work. Then switched to a 4 years univeristy, transfered credits and graduated with honors after 2 more years (with minimal loans). Would it be ha…

From what i heard is that the big boys have bought out the decent ones and then proceed to scam the loan system immediately. Hell, some actually bought liberal art universities.

Now that they exhausted the supply of trade schools, they're moving on to buying bootcamps.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#270

Post by colechristensen » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 7:38 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #192

duncan_bayne wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.... so what's the problem? Serious question. Seems like things are working as they should.

The problem is that the government allowed the problem to persist for too long before acting. If the government wants to be in the business of approving schools (even if it's only indirectly) it should hold schools to a lot higher standards and move a lot quicker when results start to slip. For better or worse when people see "Approved by The US Department of Education" they have (perhaps unreasonable) expectations t…

I think it's important to distinguish that the government should not be directly approving of universities. Instead they should approve professional accreditation organizations that manage their own standards (which is what they do). In no circumstances do we want elected politicians to be legislating what goes into a university degree.

The Department of Education just needs to give a little bit less leeway to low quality accreditors. (and even then, the decisions should be made by career bureaucrats led by an appointed secretary, not by legislation)