"The solution is and always has been to cut the fluff from the academies. For context, go add up the salaries the 'student services' area of the expensive school of your choice. Having worked for one such office for ~15 years, the most appalling part was that they are largely antagonistic toward the faculty and mission of the schools. The waste is dizzying." I made the above comment on another thread with a similar t…
College costs have increased due to decreased state funding and increased regulation (both legal and from accreditors), which requires more administrative staff. Ironically, decreased state funding leads to an increase of administrative staff too, as universities invest in grant offices, development offices, and outreach departments in an attempt to find more funds.
No, but we can decide by administrative fiat that Harvard can’t charge more than the community college does, and must transition its business model to be similar to that of the community college.
It's not obvious to me that we can. Harvard Community College seems like it would just end up in the same place as Harvard Extension School currently is, where everyone understands that it's not "really" Harvard and if you want the associated prestige you need to go to the 4 year residential program with competitive admissions.
You could regulate the cost of the 4 year residential programme (and presumably you also include those at similar universities while you were at it). Whether that's a good idea or not is a matter of debate, but it's essentially how most European universities work.
I'd like to see student loan debt forgiven along with implementing a plan to address the cause of this ballooning debt. Unfortunately, this is the United States, and federal legislation on just about anything is currently impossible if there is any opportunity at all to turn it into a divisive issue. Even if the democrats managed to build a majority that would allow them to pass whatever they wanted, tackling a probl…
Every problem that gets solved is one less thing to campaign on. And since we don't hold our politicians accountable, they can just campaign on the same things over and over and never do anything about them.
Let's be real here, our generation was sold a bill of goods. Do well in high school and you'll get into college, which is the only chance you have to succeed in the world. If we didn't do well, we were shamed, grounded, told we were failures and punished. Do good, get a degree and the world will be your oyster! There will be an ocean of jobs all of which will allow you to retire with a big fat nest egg! The problem here isn't the loans, its not the universities costing too much, its the big fat lie. Maybe Johnny can't be a doctor or lawyer but if he went to a trade school and learned a skill more mechanical in nature he might just be as well off. We eliminated all the trade schools though, why? Because the big lie that University and the Corporate ladder is the "One True Way." It was all horseshit though. High tuition isn't because of the "Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act 1993". Sure maybe it is a contributing factor, one of many, but the true reason its cost so damn much is because most of the degrees of asinine bullshit that doesn't prepare anyone for the real world. We ended all the trade schools and stuffed everyone into the same cookie cutter mold and then get upset when no one hires all the ugly cookies that didn't graduate magna cum laude. But little Johnny got a degree, why is he still working at McDonald's. Maybe you shouldn't have told Johnny that his only worth while trajectory in life was to get a degree. Maybe when Johnny's grades were tough you should have introduced him to something like metalworking, or wood shop, or electrical work.
Student debt is mostly held by the richer half of the US population. Serious question: would it do more good if instead of giving money to people with student debt, you gave money to people without it? The first test of a potential policy is whether it's better than doing exactly the opposite. If you can't even prove that, it's probably not a good policy. https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1521112550770946048
Income is not wealth. Especially when you factor in student loan debt! You can make a higher income than another person but still be poorer than them because of debt. Also, income can change a lot from year to year. My income certain has. If the economy goes to pot, suddenly a lot of people with higher income will become unemployed. And the years you spend in school are typically very low or no income, so you're not…
A college graduate will earn $900,000 more than a non-college graduate over their lifetime.
> You can make a higher income than another person but still be poorer than them because of debt.
Maybe we should focus our money on making college costs more affordable rather than forgiving loans and signaling to universities and students that it's safe to take on more debt?
There’s no data in this article. In his recent book, Ron Lieber argues that the actual price paid hasn’t gone up nearly so much as the sticker price because of the increasing ubiquity of merit aid (which is terribly named). How does that factor in? He also points out that people’s expectations about what colleges provide have gone up. People expect small class sizes, mental health services, etc. If you argue colleges…
> I want to know where you think it’s going and why you think that
Guess: Do nothing administrators paid to be on vacation.
Why: Several years ago I called 4 of them to follow up on different job applications and did not once get a live human, only out of office messages. Over the course of about six weeks I called each every week and left each a single message. I never received a single call back or email. This was my almamater after moving back to the state following my graduate study.
Might be an unpopular opinion... but this is exactly why we shouldn't do student loan debt forgiveness. The root core of the issue wouldn't at all be addressed and it would actually be a signal to universities and students alike, that Universities can charge more, and students can continue to take out larger loans because... they might be forgiven at some future point in time.
I reluctantly agree--unless the forgiveness is coupled with new laws and regulations that substantially reform the system (perhaps by eliminating the federally subsidized student loan system altogether, and restoring the more generous grant system of yore). If we do nothing to change the system, what are new college applicants going to think? Either they'll have to pay back their loans and, compared to those who wend…
> If we do nothing to change the system, what are new college applicants going to think? Either they'll have to pay back their loans and, compared to those who wend before, get totally screwed.
EDIT: I misread your comment. Please disregard.
They got screwed when they took the loan out, not when they pay it back. The terms never changed, people just realize they made a bad decision. Sometimes people argue they cant actually consent to the loan in which case we should just cease the loans immediately.
Part of the puzzle is rebuking this sort of logic: "Education is important. Having a bachelors degree is practically required. Therefor a loan is worth it." Without any qualifiers. This suggests the degree job prospects and loan amount don't matter. They do. If education is expensive enough, it's just not worth it.
This is like a broader version of keeping up with the joneses.
A bit of a hot take but I definitely think Facebook/social media factors into this more than we realize. Colleges regularly have major artists perform “Spring Weekend” concerts and being top-tier headline comedians to perform. That costs a ton of money and it just wasn’t happening in the 90s. Or maybe it was? And no one else knew about it...
> Colleges regularly have major artists perform “Spring Weekend” concerts and being top-tier headline comedians to perform.
I actually got a notification last year an artist was playing in a city near me so I went and what I didn’t realize was that it was actually a university event that happened to also be open to the public.
Might be an unpopular opinion... but this is exactly why we shouldn't do student loan debt forgiveness. The root core of the issue wouldn't at all be addressed and it would actually be a signal to universities and students alike, that Universities can charge more, and students can continue to take out larger loans because... they might be forgiven at some future point in time.
If we were dealing with the victims of a school shooting, first we'd make sure none of them were going to bleed out. Then they'd be prioritized for dealing with their root cause injuries. We can apply similar tactics to these school financial injuries. We don't need to choose one or the other. And the core problem with people taking on debt to pay for college in the US is individual people having to pay for college,…
Providing emergency aid to shooting victims doesn't incentivize more school shooters. If anything, it's a disincentive because it counteracts their goal. By contrast, forgiving student loans incentivizes more people to take loans, which in turn allows colleges to raise tuition prices.
> I can't be the only one who feels like this is "buying votes". Votes are already bought by wealthy campaign contributors. Anyway, aren't politicians supposed to help the public financially? If a politician campaigns on tax cuts, tax credits, and tax incentives, isn't that also "buying votes"? Which politician is not buying votes with their stated economic policies?
I sense there is a difference between passing policy which broadly affects future actions (tax rates, credits, etc.) and making a campaign promise to directly pay (or in this case forgive) a lump sum of money to a certain contingent of the electorate.
The child tax credit would be an example of ‘buying votes’ too, right? What about promises to increase milk subsidies? Or promises to keep protecting the limber industry from competition from Canada? Aren’t all such things ‘buying votes’ as you put it?
I’m not an economist but I suspect that in a society with a strong welfare system, universal healthcare, and free higher education then wages wouldn’t have to be as high as they are in the U.S. for certain industries. I don’t claim that student debt forgiveness is the efficacious or even that it should be done. I do claim that it’s best to ‘buy’ votes by creating a society with strong social programs.