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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

#431

Post by gottorf »

ryzvonusef wrote: post #349
metaphor wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have the right to a degree in XYZ... No, you don't.

As in, you and the college can decide privately if they want to teach you XYZ in return for money from you. Getting tax payers to chip in brings in a 3rd party and then they have right to decide whether you get to learn or not.

I think the GP's point was that the college is also bound, privately by accreditation bodies and publicly by a duty to society not to devalue the meaning of a degree, to not grant you a degree in XYZ if you fail to learn.

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

#432

Post by nradov »

treis wrote: post #418
nradov wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medical licenses are not revoked based on lack of certification. There are plenty of working and employed physicians who lack board certification. Hospitals and health systems in areas with a shortage of doctors can't afford to be too picky, at least not for primary care.

There aren't any practicing cardiology or nephrology which is the GP's point and my point.

Your point is simply wrong. Especially in underserved rural areas you'll often see primary care doctors delivering cardiology and nephrology treatments even though they lack board certification in those specialties. There are no certified specialists available so they make do.

You guys need to expand your horizons a bit.

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

#433

Post by djoldman »

rainsford wrote: post #377
djoldman wrote: post #288

The calculation is interesting: (For bachelors degrees): Each year, they will calculate the median earnings 4 years after graduation of graduates of every (Institution, CIP code) tuple. (CIP Code: 6 digit code that identifies a "program"; there are ~2,000). Then they calculate the median earnings of high school grads in that Institution's state across all jobs . If the high school grads earn more than the bachelors d…

Unless I'm misunderstanding, that calculation sounds fundamentally wrong if it's comparing median college graduate earnings after 4 years against high school graduate earnings in general. After 4 years the median college graduate is still early in their career and likely hasn't hit their maximum income potential, but they're being compared against high school graduates at every stage of their careers, including those…

It's 25-34 year olds:

> To calculate the earnings premium for undergraduate programs, the threshold is the median U.S. Census Bureau earnings of a working high school graduate, aged 25-34 who were not enrolled in postsecondary education during the year of the associated measured earnings, in the state in which the institution is located unless the institution enrolls more than 50% of its students from out of state, in which case the national median is used.

Details here: https://www.nasfaa.org/ge_2026

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

#434

Post by fwipsy »

BeetleB wrote: post #110
fwipsy wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also a straw-man. You don't just need to establish that students should learn history, literature, etc -- you need to establish that 12 years of that is not enough, and they need to take an additional 4 years at a much higher cost. But why stop at 16 years? Why not 20 or 30 years? Clearly there are diminishing marginal returns. At some point you should trust students who are motivated to learn to continue the…

> You don't just need to establish that students should learn history, literature, etc -- you need to establish that 12 years of that is not enough, and they need to take an additional 4 years at a much higher cost. Actually, I didn't get 12 years of most of the liberal arts courses I took at university. A number of them were completely new to me - no exposure in K-12 at all. And you're being creative with numbers. N…

No, we're not talking about defunding engineering degrees. We're talking about defunding (mostly) liberal arts degrees whose economic value, at least, does not justify their cost.

If those few liberal arts degrees you took in college were so valuable, why can't they be integrated into the k-12 curriculum? Or why couldn't you study them independently using free online resources, or at a community college? I'm not against people learning this stuff, and I enjoy reading about it in my spare time as much as the next guy. I'm just not clear why taxpayers should cover this when it's such an inefficient option.

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

#435

Post by fwipsy »

mistercheph wrote: post #133
fwipsy wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the value of studying arts, social sciences, etc. But why should taxpayers cover that? There are lots of online courses which could provide the same education for free. Community colleges also show that it's possible to provide a decent in-person education at a fraction of the cost of major universities. If we could get tuition under control, then federal tuition assistance would be fine, but also hardly…

Why should taxpayers pay for jobs training programs? since these vocational students expect to make lots of money with their certificate in hand, they can just take out a loan. this makes an actually rational system where the cost of job training is forced to be commensurate with the economic value of the output after the job program. OTOH education should obviously be subsidized because it is a public good to have a…

Sure, continue providing free k-12 education. Continue funding community colleges and free online courses. But funding private universities with public money creates a huge misaligned incentive. Universities are incentivized not to provide the best education, but the best experience so that they can attract more students and more public money. This can be actually detrimental to education - e.g. grade inflation because universities are unwilling to delay graduation for underperforming students, which reduces the rigor of education for high performers.

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

#436

Post by BoingBoomTschak »

xethos wrote: post #417
BoingBoomTschak wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all, most of these are obviously "symptoms" of a well functioning society (not just democracy), not its cause.

Regardless of whether we classify it as humanities or political science (as neither seems to be looked at as terribly useful in the states), a population without some grasp of civics does not lend itself to a healthy democracy Not everyone must be a plumber or electrician, but we're well-served by having some basic knowledge, and an ability to find answers to the questions that arise as we do basic handywork, such as…

I usually don't like to get into these subjects on HN, but I'll expand just a little bit on what I mean.

All political systems (all of them) have "holes" in that they're more or less dependent on individual virtue to function in a long-term fashion - some of them having holes so large they can only work as naïve thought experiments with perfect civically-minded (thus imaginary) people - and not academic knowledge, which is completely orthogonal to said virtue.

That "grasp of civics" you're talking about is the same, it's not about knowing but being willing to make some real thankless efforts; the culprits in the proverbial "Tragedy of the commons" aren't ignorant.

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

#437

Post by usrnm »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #416
usrnm wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you only consider fundamental research in maths or sciences worth pursuing? Do you even realise how much of your everyday life depends on the results of fundamental research in philosophy and humanities?

> Do you even realise how much of your everyday life depends on the results of fundamental research in philosophy and humanities? Approximately zero? Could you articulate what exactly you have in mind here? A liberal arts degree is certainly beneficial to the individual's broader understanding of the world, and I certainly would prefer my elected representatives to have a thorough grasp of history and philosophy, but…

Human rights? Personal freedom? The entire structure of society? The economy? The political system? Laws? Modern views on morality? Even science itself was created by philosophy, what is knowledge and how to get it is a philosophical question, not a scientific one. Every time you interact with other human beings you're doing through the lens of what philosophy and humanities achieved in the last millenia

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

#438

Post by WalterBright »

WalterBright wrote: post #430
arjie wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a trivial task and certainly does not require attending an early morning class. In fact, most engineering does not require the degree. Almost everything in the field is self-learnable in a short period. The reason the students are in the class at 0750 is not to learn how to do this, since it is trivial and almost everyone I know could do it by the 10th standard two years prior to college. It's because no matter…

An engineer who does not understand the math is not an engineer, but a technician. Technicians can do very good work as the result of experience. But knowing the math behind it is what makes an engineer. Credentialism is why the recruiter asked the simple math question.

I remember an engineer who was trying to solve a noise problem in an analog circuit. He spent days trying various combinations of resistors and capacitors. Finally, a real engineer stepped in, did a quick calculation, and picked the correct resistor and capacitor and solved the problem in a few minutes.

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

#439

Post by someguydave »

dragonwriter wrote: post #387
ryzvonusef wrote: post #140

The purpose of a college degree is NOT a job... but the purpose of a college LOAN is 100% a job, and it's very important to differentiate between the two. The whole point of the loan is to buy time; you don't want to wait for when you have savings to purchase the degree, you want to do it now . If you are not doing it for the job, then why the loan, what's the rush? If knowledge and prestige is all that matters, then…

> The purpose of a college degree is NOT a job... but the purpose of a college LOAN is 100% a job, and it's very important to differentiate between the two. No, the purpose of a college loan is to enable a student to pay for college with future earnings. It can be perfectly rational even if the loan/degree doesn't improve job prospects (and even more especially so if it doesn’t “improve” them in a purely financial se…

But also the taxpayers and dollar holders have a right to ask for good management of their taxes and savings

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

#440

Post by quickthrowman »

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…

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