61–70 of 565 posts
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…
Gut feeling here is that this is going to result in significantly lower higher ed enrollment, and therefore a less educated populace. Less federal aid means fewer students can afford our insanely expensive educational system. This will pull up the ladder on the younger generations. We do not teach history or ethics, or much in general to our pipeline welders, but they make bank for their hard labor. Meanwhile our wel…
> 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…
imo this is pants on head backwards. The whole problem with the current university system is that it has become exclusively a credentialing system that everyone uses to justify higher salaries. We’ve completely left the education part of it by the wayside…except for the liberal arts majors who are actually there just to learn! This rule is just encoding the existing tulip mania into federal law directly, by making it…
liberal arts majors who are actually there just to learn
s/learn/be indoctrinated/
imo this is pants on head backwards. The whole problem with the current university system is that it has become exclusively a credentialing system that everyone uses to justify higher salaries. We’ve completely left the education part of it by the wayside…except for the liberal arts majors who are actually there just to learn! This rule is just encoding the existing tulip mania into federal law directly, by making it…
I didn't go to college to get an engineering degree. I am a born engineer and I wanted very much to learn the craft.
My diploma sits in the basement somewhere. I never put it on the wall.
> But this new test, known as "do no harm," raises some thorny questions about the purpose of college. Like: Is it just about making more money? If this is a fair question to ask students, then it is a fair question to ask the schools as well. They are the ones charging enormous amounts of money to students for this. This doesn’t prevent people from learning to paint or play the clarinet. It prevents students from ta…
It's easy to make the argument:
"If we invest $1M in education, we will have $10M in additional future economic output, $4M in future taxes, and $20M less in law enforcement / criminal prosecution / jail fees. It improves global competitiveness."
That's a no-brainer. Education is a very high ROI investment for a country. Like infrastructure spending or industrial policy, it's about cold, hard economics.
One step more complex -- but equally high ROI -- is towards having a functioning democracy. That's economics, but a bit more squishy.
Investing in the arts, humanities, and music is a good thing as well. However, that's a very different bucket of money. I wouldn't lump it in with the former two.
Gut feeling here is that this is going to result in significantly lower higher ed enrollment, and therefore a less educated populace. Less federal aid means fewer students can afford our insanely expensive educational system. This will pull up the ladder on the younger generations. We do not teach history or ethics, or much in general to our pipeline welders, but they make bank for their hard labor. Meanwhile our wel…
> Less federal aid means fewer students can afford our insanely expensive educational system Are we sure about this or is federal aid one of the reasons education is so expensive?
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Also unclear how it works for the PhD pipeline. If you roll straight from bachelor's to a doctorate program - you have abysmal earnings for the next 5-6 years of your life.