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More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

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Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#271

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

bagacrap wrote: post #71
ChicagoDave wrote: post #28

I have 3 college-aged kids and one nearly there. Their universal concern is the cost. It has become prohibitive. Colleges assumed the trend of charging $25k to $50k per year would be sustainable. They were dead wrong, especially given the horrendously predatory loans backed by the government and barred from bankruptcy. If we fix the college financial system, enrollment would likely skyrocket.

The loans are exactly why the colleges were able to continue jacking up the prices. As with homes, people will pay as much as institutions are willing to loan them. In both cases the currently low interest rates allow the loan principal to be much higher (given that folks calculate cost based on recurring payments). If you remove the student loan system then tuition would become cheaper. However that does unfairly im…

I wonder what would happen if banks could deny student loans. Students would need to prove that they are a good investment but it also means that colleges would have to prove they are good investments as well.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#272

Post by JumpCrisscross »

long_time_gone wrote: post #242
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not sure why they would be demonized Because they're in large part neither functional nor artistic. Both force one to think in novel ways. The certification-for-its-own-sake majors do not. There are reams of low-grade degrees in which the majority of teaching is in memorization, not mastering new ways to think. That doesn't advance society, particularly when it burdens young people with debt.

This sounds like a bias working backwards to find a justification. Is there any studies or data that support your stance? Which are the "good" majors? Who gets to judge that? > There are reams of low-grade degrees in which the majority of teaching is in memorization, and not mastering new ways to think. The biggest complaint from anyone I know who studied medicine/pre-med is the sheer amount of memorization involved.…

> biggest complaint from anyone I know who studied medicine/pre-med is the sheer amount of memorization

This is a straw man. Nobody said memorization is verboten.

A certificate granted for mainly memorization, where no new modes of thinking or doing were involved, is not worth tends of thousands of dollars. If a med school matriculated students who never did practical and had never deliberated treatment modes and tradeoffs, et cetera, yes, it would be close to useless.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#273

Post by HWR_14 »

megaman821 wrote: post #252
HWR_14 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any loan that is charging 6.28% interest and also cant be discharged by bankruptcy The interest rates are high because so few loans can be discharged by bankruptcy. You can refinance your mortgage with anyone. Far few companies will refinance your student loans. Meanwhile, it makes prefect sense that bankruptcy cannot discharge student loans. Otherwise, every single student would have crappy credit from 21-28 and n…

They should be dischargable after 8-10 years. If you are willing to declare 8 years after graduating, you should be able to get your debt restructured or forgiven.

They are currently discharged (without bankruptcy) at 20 years. Yes that's a big difference, but it is an important point.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#274

Post by _moof »

vanilla_nut wrote: post #151
_fat_santa wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thought it's not as glamorous as a 4 year college experience, I highly suggest going to a Community College for the first two years and then transferring to a state school. I did this and through I resented it at the time, I existed college with around $30k in student debt versus my friends that all has something in range of ($40k to $80k). IMO 30k in student debt is very manageable, currently have the thing paid dow…

If you happen to live near a decent community college, this isn’t a bad idea. But I know a lot of people who did 2 years at community college, and then got screwed over by transfer credits enough that they ended up doing 3 years at a normal college. So the savings isn’t quite ideal. I actually went to community college instead of a senior year at high school, and think you should really inspect the quality of the pro…

A lot of community colleges have comprehensive transfer agreements with four-year schools in the same city and/or state. You can generally avoid getting screwed on transfers if you do a little research.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#275

Post by selectodude »

vorpalhex wrote: post #228
thehappypm wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A $50,000 loan with a high interest rate is not good AT ALL.

"Below $50,000". And student loans have low rates unless you go private. Of course, who is more likely to need private loans they may not be able to pay? Probably not the trust fund kids.

Federal loan maximums for dependent students is $31,000. Huge numbers of students need to dip into the private loan kitty and get fucked.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#276

Post by strikelaserclaw »

awb wrote: post #147

I’ve been recruiting for US startups since 2008, probably recruited over 100 folks from engineers to C-level. I have never considered a candidate’s college or if they even attended one. The only thing I evaluated is what they accomplished in the last 1-2 years. That meant hiring some brilliant engineers straight out of high school. Most of these candidates were early stage hires for dozens of companies that went on t…

My ideal college would be 2 years of straight up technical computer science/math, followed by straight going into the industry. If you want to learn theory in depth, that is what grad school should be for.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#277

Post by blululu »

It’s easy to say that the crippling cost of higher education is behind this drop. And while college admins are slowly turning the screw on American students, this is more of a gradual process. The immediate drop here is from foreign students deciding to stay closer to home as a result of the pandemic, visa restrictions and a drop in value of actually getting to experience the culture: https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/decl...

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#278

Post by w-m »

For some perspective, in Germany we've seen rising number of university students since 2007: 1.94M students in 2007, 2.94M in 2020. From 2020 to 2021, numbers have stagnated (+0.1%).

There's few private colleges (mostly international business schools I guess?), a large majority of students goes to the public universities. The eduction is free, but you pay a few hundred Euros per semester in administrative charges, which usually includes a ticket for city or state public transport.

You can get a loan from the state (BAföG) to cover living expenses, which you will pay back after finishing, when you have a job (well of course things are more complicated, but that's the gist). The maximum amount you have to pay back is 10.000 Euros, even if the size of the loan was larger.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#279

Post by disambiguation »

Bhilai wrote: post #69
disambiguation wrote: post #27

Less than 3k kids under the age of 24 have died from covid since the start of the pandemic [0] yet they have some how wound up with the harshest restrictions. These kids will never get these years back. What a disgrace. [0] https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-by-Sex...

I dont disagree with the sentiment on lost years but I think its very easy to say that in retrospect. At beginning of 2020, no one knew how severe the pandemic is going to be. We did not have a vaccine and we did not know which age groups are going to be most vulnerable.

I think that's a fair point.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#280

Post by simplestats »

malfist wrote: post #205
throwaway5752 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That completely shifts the blame to bureaucracies, and that isn't fair. Loans are where they are because students prefer newer dorms, amenities, programs, and research opportunities. Student competition leads to prestige, leads to demand from employers for graduates from a specific institution. It is a self-reinforcing dynamic. The fact student loads have special bankruptcy treatment is bad. But absent Sallie Mae (or…

It's a little rich to blame 18 year olds for college costs skyrocketing don't you think? Of course students prefer newer dorms, amenities, programs and research opportunities. But asking someone who might have been getting $5/week allowance to figure out how much a newer dorm is worth when the prices are in the 10s of thousands is an impossible task. They don't know how much money is worth. And then to tell them that…

It's a simple economic argument. If students care only about quality, Universities will only care about it also. And improving quality leads to higher price.
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