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Some U.S. Colleges Cut Tuition

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Re: Some U.S. Colleges Cut Tuition

#101

Post by rland »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #26

It’s interesting seeing how tuition costs influence students. I go to a school infamous for its high price. And truth be told, I don’t think I could advocate going here barring some serious prerequisites. One of which is having some idea of what to study. The classic idea of college being a place to mess around and figure out what to do with your life is absolutely delusional with tuition so high. Go figure out what…

The solution is easy, and it exists here and in other countries: attend a "college" -- not a university -- for the first two years. Here in the US they are community colleges. No reason to do your intro Sociology or Calculus for Business Majors general ed class at Harvard or Stanford; the content is exactly the same as at Podunk U.

Instead, students should go to community college for the first two years and transfer into University upper-division majors (or, just get a 2 year cert rather than "dropping out" if you decide you don't really like college after all!). You can spend two+ years mucking around in Community College for the tuition cost of half a single semester at a private university -- my local community college credit-hour cost is literally 10x less than out of state tuition at a private school: $41 vs $441. It might even allow for some sort of internship or apprenticeship program in the interim period to let kids have some experience before they settle in on a major program.

All of this sort of assumes though, that the system actually cares about student success, rather than laundering privilege, credentialism, and the student-loan fleecing described elsewhere in this thread.

Re: Some U.S. Colleges Cut Tuition

#102

Post by evilduck »

Nbox9 wrote: post #66
pclmulqdq wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These loans have destroyed any chance that a generation of underprivileged students will achieve financial prosperity. If they go away, the federally subsidized loan programs will likely be phased out over ~5 years or so. The private sector will replace them for students who are good bets, probably with income-share agreements or something similar and MUCH less predatory than the current federal loan programs.

This is hyperbolic. There are plenty of people with underprivileged backgrounds and student loans that have achieved financial prosperity.

But it's not a guarantee that as a mostly unqualified and unemployable high school kid that they can predict the economy and job market 4-5 years ahead of time and if they just take on a crushing amount of debt for an education that they will become financially prosperous or even qualified to work in a given field with just a bachelors. Oh, and we provide almost no social safety nets should they fail and the debt can't be discharged.

Yeah people roll these dice and win, but plenty of people roll the same dice and lose.

Re: Some U.S. Colleges Cut Tuition

#103

Post by lotsofpulp »

zaroth wrote: post #98
lotsofpulp wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The deal between the government and private colleges is that those private colleges are training our critical workforce and adding net value back into the system by increasing lifetime earnings and economic growth. Source? As far as I can tell, some genius politicians figured out they can lower taxes or keep taxes low by removing and reducing taxpayer funding for colleges, and replacing it with free non dischargeab…

I think the problem is not a lack of funding. Economically, the more you spend on a problem like this, the less you get back for every dollar spent. This isn’t a manufacturing problem where cost decreases with scale. Throwing more dollars at this will just decrease the average outcome per dollar. A part of the problem is just the notion that everyone should even be going to two or four year university. > In 2017, sta…

>In 1977, state and local governments spent $105 billion on higher education (in 2017 inflation-adjusted dollars). In 2017, they spent $297 billion.

>Higher education spending has remained relatively constant as a share of total state and local spending over time. In both 1977 and 2017, 10 percent of direct state and local direct general expenditures went to higher education.

According to the source below, there are at least twice as many people attending higher education between 1977 and 2017, not including the ones who do not complete 4 or more years of college:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/184272/educational-attai...

There's obviously a ton of waste in the system, such as the college sports business that has nothing to do with education and is clearly a taxpayer subsidy for private interests. But it seems like taxpayer spending per student is down quite a bit (can't include taxpayer backed loans, of course).

And I definitely agree, there is no need for everyone to go to a 4 year liberal arts school.

Re: Some U.S. Colleges Cut Tuition

#104

Post by lotsofpulp »

manfredo wrote: post #99
ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What problem does that solve, then? Wow, you can be bankrupt, and never be able to buy a house or car. How is that a solution? It's the same problem as now - "you can't get a house/car because your loan makes you unable to afford it." This doesn't solve the problem. See, it's just a garbage solution thrown out because it "sounds" good but on inspection it's just BS.

I'm not sure what I'm failing to explain. It's not feasible to make student loans able to be eliminated via bankruptcy without restriction, since students could just go through bankruptcy right after graduation and plan around being unable to get a mortgage or car loan until they're 30. If you graduated with a degree in CS, and landed a six figure tech job it'd still make sense financially to go through bankruptcy an…

>The optimal spot is somewhere in the middle, where the student has an escape valve - but one that is only feasible to take if you have no significant assets by the time you're 30 or 35.

The optimal spot is to not let 18 to 21 year olds borrow six figure sums without understanding the ramifications of it. There is no need for these loans to exist. The cost of higher education is high because the loans exist. The loans exist because exemptions to bankruptcy law were created specifically for those loans.

Re: Some U.S. Colleges Cut Tuition

#105

Post by lotsofpulp »

iaw wrote: post #61
hardwaregeek wrote: post #26

It’s interesting seeing how tuition costs influence students. I go to a school infamous for its high price. And truth be told, I don’t think I could advocate going here barring some serious prerequisites. One of which is having some idea of what to study. The classic idea of college being a place to mess around and figure out what to do with your life is absolutely delusional with tuition so high. Go figure out what…

> I go to a school infamous for its high price. And truth be told, I don’t think I could advocate going here barring some serious prerequisites. I went to a similar school. The benefits are not granted when you attend the school but afterward in the alumni network and the reputation of the school. I get in a lot more doors than I rightfully should given my qualifications because my school was more expensive (and thus…

>my school was more expensive (and thus prestigious) than most.

Outside of the top 20 schools or so, I would not see the point of paying any extra for a private school, as the school's are willing to accept mostly anyone who can get a loan, which is basically everyone. The private schools that are prestigious (i.e. highly selective) have substantial aid making them very cheap for families who earn under a certain amount.

Re: Some U.S. Colleges Cut Tuition

#106

Post by analog31 »

react_burger38 wrote: post #83
analog31 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider the debt burden on society, whether that burden is borne by the students themselves, or by the government, may be roughly equal. If anything, the government pays less interest. My thought is that in the future, privatizing higher education will seem like a quaint historical anomaly, like privatizing health care, both of which have made themselves at least twice as expensive as necessary. If we can't force pr…

I really think you need to reconsider your stance on private colleges.. For example, BYU and BYU-Idaho provide affordable education for tens of thousands of students every year. Sure they're religious, but they serve as price competition to state schools in the area, keeping prices down across the state of Utah. Secondly, the reason things are so expensive is because the federal government gives loans to everyone, dr…

All good points. I remain skeptical that loans are what drove prices up. Declining public funding has also played a role. Sending money directly to public colleges rather than sending that money through a twisted loan system makes more sense to me. And the state / regional colleges are cheaper to operate.

I'm paying tuition to two of those schools right now for my kids -- a state "flagship" university, and a regional campus of the state university system.

There are certainly tiers of private colleges, and I wouldn't want to mess with religious schools. I'm mainly thinking of letting maybe the top 20 private colleges in the country become the destination for the top 20000 kids based on whatever criteria they want. But don't let that system continue to distort educational policy and funding for the rest of us.

Re: Some U.S. Colleges Cut Tuition

#107

Post by zaroth »

bluGill wrote: post #74
zaroth wrote: post #37

The deal between the government and private colleges is that those private colleges are training our critical workforce and adding net value back into the system by increasing lifetime earnings and economic growth. The government guarantee on debt dollars right now is absolute. Schools get paid no matter what, and have no liability for actually providing an ultimately valuable service. Here’s an alternate arrangement…

You need to account for the "Mrs" degree. Someone goes to school to find a spouse, get married and has no income. Although "Mrs" is specific to females, my personal experience includes more males that have done this than females. The sexism is used to make the point easier to understand, and but its reflection of reality died around 1950 if it ever was one.

Ok then you make the loan payback rate based on household income instead of personal income.

I mean it’s a full decade, or let’s say even 15 years. If it’s worth under-earning your degree just to avoid paying off the loan, then the degree was way over-priced.

Re: Some U.S. Colleges Cut Tuition

#108

Post by evilduck »

warmwaffles wrote: post #60
manfredo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make student loans no longer exempt from bankruptcy. The rationale for making student loans persist through bankruptcy is that students could just declare bankruptcy after graduation, since they probably have no assets. Maybe make the exemption only last 10-15 years. The permanence of student loans means lenders have no qualms against writing loans for people who will likely not be able to pay them off for decades, o…

> Make student loans no longer exempt from bankruptcy. The other problem is that education can not be retroactively taken from them. But garnished wages can.

Maybe we should set student loan rates to reflect the actual risk being assumed instead of offering deceptively low interest rates with the fallback of modern indentured servitude. People might think twice about going to school if their student loan interest rates reflected the actual risks they were taking on.

Re: Some U.S. Colleges Cut Tuition

#109

Post by LMYahooTFY »

dragonwriter wrote: post #90
djsumdog wrote: post #4

> cut its tuition by $10,000 for all new students I find it insane tuition is that high. I finished grad school before 2010, and at least with the smaller state schools I went to, total cost of tuition and books was in the $3k~$5k range. Boutique schools like Vanderbilt were like $25k+ (per semester). I had a friend who got a free ride there for graduate school, and he said it wasn't really that different than our st…

> Federally subsidized student loans need to GO AWAY. There's a good argument that its the wrong method to acheive democratization/affordability (I personally prefer a very different approach), but… > They’ve allowed students to enter into debt, Nope, students could enter debt before (and still can outside of) federally subsidized student loans. > the only long term contracts kids under 18 can legally sign, Again, no…

>Nope, students could enter debt before (and still can outside of) federally subsidized student loans.

Yeah I'd also like a source for further reading on this. As far as I understood the number of lenders willing to underwrite a loan to an 18 year old with no collateral is virtually none compared to the ubiquitous availability of federally subsidized student loans, and the reason for this is empirically supported by how many student loans are non-performing.

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