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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

#111

Post by BeetleB »

ashton314 wrote: post #21

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 pec…

> 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!

It's not a given that most arts/humanities programs are impacted. Just some arcane ones.

And while we're at it, they really should can the MFA programs. Most MFA programs exist just to milk money out of students.

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

#113

Post by BeetleB »

WalterBright wrote: post #74
janalsncm wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The purpose of higher education is not to get you a job. This is the line universities give, knowing full well that the only reason students pay exorbitant tuitions is because bachelor’s degrees are necessary for most salaried jobs in the US. Schools want to have their cake and eat it too. If education isn’t about the money they should have no problem charging lower tuition rather than paying their presidents milli…

If one thinks doing simple derivatives is a chore, I'd suggest a career other than engineering. I've known many engineers who practiced math avoidance. None of them were worth much as engineers. I know a recruiter who would ask engineering candidates what is 20% of 20,000, without using a calculator or phoning a friend. He was surprised at how many could not, and it was an easy way to filter out the no hires.

> I've known many engineers who practiced math avoidance. None of them were worth much as engineers.

I have an engineering degree and did "real" engineering (electronics/semiconductors) before switching to SW.

Almost all my engineering courses required calculus knowledge. None of my real engineering jobs benefited from it.

And I say that as someone who tried to find any and every excuse to use calculus at work. I love calculus.

My role is not an outlier. Every grad who came back to talk to students said the same.

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

#114

Post by throw2ih020 »

AngryData wrote: post #97
throw2ih020 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would stop graduates from declaring bankruptcy early in their careers to discharge their debt, before they use their education to build a lifetime of earnings and assets?

Whats to stop people in their 20s now taking out tons of credit then declaring bankruptcy without the college?

Credit limits on the credit cards they can apply for. Good luck getting a limit higher than a few grand at 20 years old on your own.

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

#115

Post by BeetleB »

stevenalowe wrote: post #29

I'm all for informed consent - publish the data - but leave the choice to the individual. The goal of education is self-improvement, not necessarily/only money. The way student debt is (mis)managed is a different issue.

> I'm all for informed consent - publish the data - but leave the choice to the individual.

The choice is not being taken away - the Federal government is merely telling the universities to find some other way to fund those programs.

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

#116

Post by collinmcnulty »

frognumber wrote: post #67
janalsncm wrote: post #41

> 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…

I think the corollary is about taxpayer accountability. 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 industria…

You don’t think investing in arts, humanities, and music contributes to a functioning democracy?

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

#117

Post by throw2ih020 »

AngryData wrote: post #96
Aurornis wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The full reason is that preventing bankruptcy is the only way to keep interest rates low and make the loans widely available. If bankruptcy was allowed then the obvious play would be to take the loan, max out credit cards right before graduation, then declare bankruptcy before you get your first job. Lenders would respond by increasing interest rates dramatically and restricting loans to those who had assets. This wo…

If that was an actual problem wouldn't people be doing it without the college already? When I was in my early 20s I got non-stop credit offers and I could have easily pulled out tens of thousands in crappy debt.

> If that was an actual problem wouldn't people be doing it without the college already?

I see you haven't heard of /r/churning. Although it doesn't involve bankruptcy, because then the sheriff comes down and takes your property from you...

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

#118

Post by eastbound »

frognumber wrote: post #67
janalsncm wrote: post #41

> 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…

I think the corollary is about taxpayer accountability. 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 industria…

> It's easy to make the argument:

And it is false. Those are truthisms, except at one point, college can destroy people’s lives. College can teach people wrong things. College can misdirect people from being about to contribute to the economy and redirect them towards the political goals of the teachers, especially when those don’t derive revenue from their contribution to the economy. College can also misdirect people who would have been happier and more useful with immediate work.

There goes my demonstration: College can be harmful to society, it’s subjective to judge when the threshold was crossed. For my opinion, it was crossed in 2013 through politicization.

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

#119

Post by fragmede »

collinmcnulty wrote: post #116
frognumber wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the corollary is about taxpayer accountability. 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 industria…

You don’t think investing in arts, humanities, and music contributes to a functioning democracy?

Last time someone got rejected from art school, there was a bit of a fascism that happened, so investing in arts totally contributes to functioning democracy!

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

#120

Post by collinmcnulty »

CircuitSeuss wrote: post #36

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…

Aggravating the issue is the administration’s goal. They want an undereducated population and are using the more popular issue of student debt as a fig leaf. Note especially how it’s on the university to prove that each program justifies itself economically, increasing the administrative burden on colleges. If they really cared about limiting taxpayer burden, they’d exempt in-state tuition at state schools from this rule.
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