How America's universities became debt factories
anandsanwal.me
How America's universities became debt factories
1–10 of 564 posts
Re: How America's universities became debt factories
#2I was lucky enough to get a grant, 100% of cost, with two caveats, you have to finish, and once you finish you HAVE to work in the country for 2 years. Overall an amazing compromise for government.
Re: How America's universities became debt factories
#3I agree entirely, made my college decision based on these factors at 18. However, these analyses miss the mark by stressing the map, instead of the territory.
Ex. The graph about graduates being underemployed goes back to 1990, and there's no meaningful difference in the difference in the rate between then, and now.
Ex. 41% graduating after 4 years doesn't mean it is necessary colleges need to Find A Better Way: that would affect ex. the complain around graduates being not prepared with no discernible skills
Re: How America's universities became debt factories
#4Even saying this a decade ago would have been labeled misinformation.
Re: How America's universities became debt factories
#5I agree, and another way out is educating people who are about to enter university properly so they make an informed decision about the major they wanna choose more than their feelings and more on facts to see the outcome.
Re: How America's universities became debt factories
#6We should be way more willing to straight up kill multi-billion dollar industries. Without that willingness, most modern problems are impossible for governments to solve, and such industries and even their potential competitors are incentivised mostly to exacerbate the problem. I love a good market as much as anyone but there really are problems
markets will never solve
Re: How America's universities became debt factories
#7It depends on the type of university tbh.
Getting a BA in Underwater Basketweaving from your local commuter state university is much less financially damaging than at Duke or UChicago.
I'm not a fan of the idea of "useful" and "useless" degrees (ime, the best predictor for success is critical thinking skills, not major), but I do find private universities don't make as much financial sense, especially given that well paying industries like Engineering, Accounting, etc don't place much weight on your initial Alma mater beyond your first job.
Anecdotally, I had an alumni interview with a successful tech IB/PE/HF alum from CS@CMU years ago while I was applying to colleges, and he was very insistent about how he felt the RoI at SJSU or CalPoly is superior to CS@CMU. I didn't end up attended CMU (I was lured to a more "prestigious" LAC) but he was absolutely right.
Re: How America's universities became debt factories
#8I wonder why there's no mention of a free education as an alternative solution to the broken system
Re: How America's universities became debt factories
#9We should be way more willing to straight up kill multi-billion dollar industries. Without that willingness, most modern problems are impossible for governments to solve, and such industries and even their potential competitors are incentivised mostly to exacerbate the problem. I love a good market as much as anyone but there really are problems markets will never solve
That's too disruptive, and there's too high a chance of unintended consequences. Instead of that what you'll see is a 'we'll kill this multi-billion dollar industry over the course of the next 30 years'
Re: How America's universities became debt factories
#10I agree entirely, made my college decision based on these factors at 18. However, these analyses miss the mark by stressing the map, instead of the territory. Ex. The graph about graduates being underemployed goes back to 1990, and there's no meaningful difference in the difference in the rate between then, and now. Ex. 41% graduating after 4 years doesn't mean it is necessary colleges need to Find A Better Way: that…
> The graph about graduates being underemployed goes back to 1990, and there's no meaningful difference in the difference in the rate between then, and now.
this probably mattered less when the debt load was much lower