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Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

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Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#21

Post by ashton314 »

This is not great. The purpose of higher education is not to get you a job. That's certainly a nice side-effect and I hope that all my students will be able to support themselves through good employment. The university is there to educate you, not train you. It's to turn you into a better thinker, a better person, and someone more capable of living well.

Making art and humanities programs demonstrate some kind of pecuniary benefit is disgusting and myopic. My wife pursued English because she loves writing. She's earned about 0 dollars from that degree because she's home with our kids. And that's OK! Our lives are so much richer because of her degree—as well as the classes I took from the English department. So we should penalize the humanities because it merely makes people better thinkers and doesn't have as high of an ROI as an MBA? Yuck!

(EDIT: the article does mention that this bar is low—so not too bad—but the fact that this is a metric and criteria in the first place opens this up to abuse in the near future.)

I get that it's intended to cut down on ballooning tuition and fees, but *this is not the right way to do that.* (Actually, if we eliminated half the administration, I wonder how much we could cut costs…)

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#22

Post by quadrifoliate »

delichon wrote: post #12
quadrifoliate wrote: post #8

Hopefully this will revamp the educational system in such a way that the pejoratively named "trade schools" can confer bachelor's degrees on their graduates as well. I don't really see why some no name university can confer a bachelor's in some bullshit field, but the respectable local trade school cannot confer a bachelor's in plumbing. They honestly have more of a right to do so.

A baccalaureate is an academic degree, which is not what trade employers are looking for. They want certifications and licenses.

Licensing and degrees are not mutually exclusive. Plenty of engineers take licensing exams (CS degree holders are a large exception).

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#23

Post by quadrifoliate »

tbrownaw wrote: post #17
quadrifoliate wrote: post #8

Hopefully this will revamp the educational system in such a way that the pejoratively named "trade schools" can confer bachelor's degrees on their graduates as well. I don't really see why some no name university can confer a bachelor's in some bullshit field, but the respectable local trade school cannot confer a bachelor's in plumbing. They honestly have more of a right to do so.

> pejoratively named "trade schools" That's an accurate name, and only seems pejorative if you see learning a trade as lesser than studying academics. > name university can confer a bachelor's in some bullshit field, but the respectable local trade school cannot confer a bachelor's in plumbing This misunderstands what the different kinds of credentials are .

You're hiding behind semantics.

Why should there be a difference in the degree being conferred at all? And if so, why not split off the departments that confer degrees with a low-earning potential and call them "entertainment schools" or something?

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#24

Post by ashton314 »

EPWN3D wrote: post #5

Holy shit this is a great idea. I get the complaints about the arts, but colleges have enjoyed essentially unlimited patience for larding up their programs with extra fees, bullshit credit requirements, and more, for decades. I don't personally think that efficiency should be the primary concern of colleges, but it should be a concern, and it just plain hasn't been for ages. And that indulgence has been cloaked in sp…

> "You can't complain about being require to take a 100-level history course because our job is to turn out renaissance scholars who can debate philosophy at cocktail parties before going to work doing something that has absolutely nothing to do with that."

> All the while, those additional credit hours cost students a shitload of money and debt and take focus away from their actual fields of study.

This is a straw-man. The purpose is not to turn people into renaissance scholars. It's to inculcate appreciation for what makes life worth living. An educated populace is also a requirement for a healthy democracy. Everyone ought to know some history at a minimum.

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#25

Post by quadrifoliate »

dataflow wrote: post #14

> If a program cannot show that it leaves its graduates financially better off than if they had never enrolled, it should not be underwritten by federal taxpayers Wouldn't this punish a huge number of students who struggle academically, by comparing them against better-achievers who simply skipped school? The two populations being compared are entirely different for a lot of schools. Just because the average student…

> Wouldn't this punish a huge number of students who struggle academically, by comparing them against better-achievers who simply skipped school?

Why would it not just compare them to the average person who skips school, which can be a combination of better and worse achievers? Is there some part I'm missing where the academically struggling are selectively compared to elite school-skippers?

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#26

Post by dyauspitr »

hankbond wrote: post #7

I feel like I have not really heard a compelling reason why student debt should not be dischargeable thru bankruptcy like (afaik) all other forms of debt. I am curious what the ramifications would be if higher education institutions had to (in some form) co-sign the debt being issued. I do get that not all education should be purely for economic reasons, but as an autodidact I feel that "learning for the sake of lear…

Because then the normal thing to do would be to graduate, declare bankruptcy when you have nothing to lose in life because you are just starting out, work for 7 years and you’re in the clear by your late 20s. Everyone would do it.

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#27

Post by nashashmi »

dataflow wrote: post #14

> If a program cannot show that it leaves its graduates financially better off than if they had never enrolled, it should not be underwritten by federal taxpayers Wouldn't this punish a huge number of students who struggle academically, by comparing them against better-achievers who simply skipped school? The two populations being compared are entirely different for a lot of schools. Just because the average student…

It would definitely punish hosting degree programs that have poor career prospects and outcomes.

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#28

Post by bruce511 »

dataflow wrote: post #14

> If a program cannot show that it leaves its graduates financially better off than if they had never enrolled, it should not be underwritten by federal taxpayers Wouldn't this punish a huge number of students who struggle academically, by comparing them against better-achievers who simply skipped school? The two populations being compared are entirely different for a lot of schools. Just because the average student…

It's much more complicated than that.

>> If an undergraduate program's graduates don't earn more than workers who never went to college,

Lots of things affect earnings. Obviously education is one of them, but it's not the only one.

Location, economic environment, social status, personal network - all are factors. In other words comparing unequal things leads to unequal results.

For example, a first-generation college attendee gets a solid job working at a non-profit helping others. Someone else in the same town goes straight into Dad's profitable factory as a manager.

Of course those might be outliers. We can use statistics to smooth things. But equally we can use statistics to show anything we want.

Yes, there are lots of really crap colleges. There are colleges that specialize in nonsense degrees in useless subjects. (English Poetry you say? Hah. Poets never made any money...)

But equally there are lots of community colleges, taking in marginal students, giving them opportunities where others won't. Some, maybe most, of those students won't make it. But some will.

The effect of a rule like this is that colleges are forced to game the system. To exclude those who might fail. To reduce social mobility.

A cynic might even suggest this is the real goal of the rule to begin with.

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#30

Post by dyauspitr »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #8

Hopefully this will revamp the educational system in such a way that the pejoratively named "trade schools" can confer bachelor's degrees on their graduates as well. I don't really see why some no name university can confer a bachelor's in some bullshit field, but the respectable local trade school cannot confer a bachelor's in plumbing. They honestly have more of a right to do so.

What’s pejorative about the term trade school? Also the difference is a bachelors degree is conferred to people that have had a well rounded education, not a 6 month course on a highly specific niche.
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