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College today has way more responsibilities. It has to fix rape culture, dismantle patriarchy, fix diversity, organize protests... All that costs money. In 1990ties 20% of students got raped, nobody wants to go back to that dark times!
Is this meant as parody? I can't tell sometimes.
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.
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
I certainly don't feel student loan forgiveness is "fair" in that circumstance!
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>"However, that would require an act of Congress, whereas federal student loan forgiveness can be accomplished immediately via executive action. This is why people are calling for it now, because it can be done right now. Also, the President promised to do so multiple times during his campaign." I can't be the only one who feels like this is simply 'buying votes' in an attempt to try and salvage some seats for the up…
Anyone know where I can get a $10k education loan immediately?
Michigan cut basically all remaining funding for higher education while I was in college. I saw double-digit percent increases every year. A few years ago I went back to look, assuming sky-high tuition rates, but they ended up only being a little bit higher than when I went. So why did tuition get high? The state stopped subsidizing it directly.
Given that degree holders go on to make wages much higher than those without, is it really fair that those without subsidize the education expenses of people who will go on to out earn them? Especially given how vanishingly little of it goes to actual education and instead administration and sporting programs.
It's also worth noting that reducing subsidies to education led to much of the administrative expansion. Recruitment, development, alumni, grant, and IP offices were created or expanded tremendously in an attempt to find additional funding from sources like more students, donations, indirect costs, and royalties.
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'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…
Forgiving debt incentivizes debt though. It's impossible to address the root cause and forgive the debt.
The academic industrial complex has since moved on to focusing on wealthy international students, a group that is even less cost sensitive than an American student with a blank check.
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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?
A male college graduate, on average. https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/research-summaries/education...
"Men with bachelor's degrees earn approximately $900,000 more in median lifetime earnings than high school graduates. Women with bachelor's degrees earn $630,000 more. Men with graduate degrees earn $1.5 million more in median lifetime earnings than high school graduates. Women with graduate degrees earn $1.1 million more."
Of course these are just averages. There's no guarantee that any given person will earn even a penny more. Not to mention that not everyone who goes to college even finishes their degree, but they accumulate the debt regardless.
> Maybe we should focus our money on making college costs more affordable rather than forgiving loans
Why not both?
The thing is, the people who make a lot of money after college are able to pay off their debt. The real problem is the people who get stuck with debt for decades, unable to pay it off. It's a lifetime burden. Senior citizens are a very fast growing group of student loan debtors.
I don't necessarily believe that you should forgive student loan debt the minute someone walks out of graduation. But what about decades later?
Anyway, it's important to remember that these lifetime earnings numbers don't include college costs. You have to subtract those. Unless your parents pay for your college, in which case you have no student loan debt.
I mean, yeah. But also, the expectations placed on colleges have grown exponentially. Retention staff, student life staff, counseling staff, new innovative (read: Expensive) programs, the 'experience'. These all cost money. My experience of expectations of college in the 90's - can I drink? Do the faculty let me miss if I need to? My experience of expectations of college now - is my child safe? Can s/he access approp…
When I send my own children to college, it will be exclusively through extension courses. No frills. A long time professor at Harvard did the same thing for his children and gave me this idea. I feel strongly that these expectations could well lead to the undoing of Western Civilization. "...is my child safe..." Perhaps the issue is that the people who go to college these days are still... children?
I have a half an hour soapbox rant about over-protective, bulldozer parenting and what I have seen it do to our kids if you have time.
I work in administration now for retention services, but I've done a little of everything over the years from maintenance and janitorial to executive leadership to professor.
My favorite story - I taught an educational law course; this was a 600 level graduate course for future principals and superintendents. It was a weekend course that met 4 weekends, for 8 hours both days each weekend. On the second weekend, one of the students came to class Sunday morning hammered. Not hung-over, I get that. But hammered drunk. Slurring, falling down drunk.
So, I sent this full-grown adult home and gave him a zero on what we were doing.
Monday morning, this man's mother called me to complain that I treated her son wrong. He was 15 years older than I was. He was a leader in his k-12 school. He was training to become a literal district superintendent. And his f**ing mom called me. Like, the 18 year olds I at least understand. The parents are used to stepping in at that point (even thought that's a whole other issue). But this man was a full-grown ass professional adult. And his elderly mom called to try to tell me I was wrong for sending him home when he came drunk to my class.
This is the world we live in.
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>"However, that would require an act of Congress, whereas federal student loan forgiveness can be accomplished immediately via executive action. This is why people are calling for it now, because it can be done right now. Also, the President promised to do so multiple times during his campaign." I can't be the only one who feels like this is simply 'buying votes' in an attempt to try and salvage some seats for the up…
By that argument, everything is "buying votes". There are far more blatant examples of vote buying, like creating jobs in the production of weapon systems for the military, tax cuts for specific groups (mostly the rich, though that's more "buying campaign donations"), and plenty of other examples. The fact of the matter is that these loans are unsustainable. They saddle people with life-long debt that they can never…
I would prefer that the change be that loans can be discharged in bankruptcy instead of this one off forgiveness.
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If you reason from the premise that it's only the diploma that matters, I'm not sure it makes sense to talk about "transitioning" college from one model to another in the first place. We can't just decide by administrative fiat to transfer a bit of prestige from Harvard to the local 2-year school, even if we all agree it'd be better that way.
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.