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Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal

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Re: Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal

#271

Post by 108 »

GFischer wrote: post #120
gxs wrote: post #7

Amazing, perspective is everything. I don't deny that college kids are being taken advantage of. Graduating from a small liberal arts college in South Dakota that no one's ever heard of with a degree is Culture Studies and 80k in debt really is a rip off. The flipside of this coin however is someone like me. My parents are immigrants and I was the first to go to school. To my parents, the fact that someone would be e…

"In some countries, you don't even have the OPTION to take out a loan to go to school" In some countries, like mine (Uruguay) university-level education is free :) (though postgraduate studies are paid). I think China is the biggest example of free university education. EDIT: I was wrong, about U$ 2000/year and rising apparently. At least our bazillion psychologists and communication majors (equivalent to the dreaded…

> I was wrong about China, but apparently it is free in India.

Education has NEVER been free in India. You have to pay a lot of money at the University level. Almost all education is now privatized.

Germany, OTOH, has FREE education upto the PhD level and it does not figure on the Wikipedia page - This is exactly why Wikipedia should not be a citation source. People submit wrong information and it never gets corrected, perpetuating lies.

Re: Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal

#272

Post by 108 »

MisterWebz wrote: post #33
gxs wrote: post #7

Amazing, perspective is everything. I don't deny that college kids are being taken advantage of. Graduating from a small liberal arts college in South Dakota that no one's ever heard of with a degree is Culture Studies and 80k in debt really is a rip off. The flipside of this coin however is someone like me. My parents are immigrants and I was the first to go to school. To my parents, the fact that someone would be e…

In some countries, you don't even have the OPTION to take out a loan to go to school. That's because in some countries you won't be paying more than 5k to go to a decent college.

> That's because in some countries you won't be paying more than 5k to go to a decent college.

And you would be earning a fraction, say $120 per month, that automatically makes the 5k college dream, a dream.

Re: Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal

#273

Post by 108 »

coffeemug wrote: post #66
ethanbond wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And who is going to decide what's a "degree in bullshit" and what's a "gussied up diploma mill?" What metrics would they use? Libertarians tend to like the idea. But short of that, it's difficult to vote for reform that lands between perpetuate-the-problem and screw-an-entire-generation. We can fix the problem of paying for education, but that solution isn't going to be found anywhere near the student loan debate.

The market. Right now, the government loan programs treat all degrees interchangeably. If you introduce market forces into the equation, the lenders will run some basic stat calculations and you'll quickly end up with the following scenario: 1. Useful degrees from good universities will be easy and cheap for good students to fund. 2. Everything else will get harder/more expensive to fund, in proportion to its statist…

Do they? If government loan programs treat all degrees interchangeably, why do you have differential pricing for STEM degrees and Liberal arts, with the latter being cheaper and STEM, law and medicine degrees being the most expensive.

Re: Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal

#274

Post by JonFish85 »

enraged_camel wrote: post #244
zeteo wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be fine and dandy, except employers discriminate against lower-tuition schools and even those are getting more expensive each year.

This is absolutely true. Graduating from a top tier (most of the time that means private) school will give the person a tremendous amount of leverage in their job search, and greatly increase their chances of landing a high-paying job. What that means is that telling the students to "just go to a lower-tuition school" simply perpetuates the current class system and undermines social mobility.

I'll call shenanigans on that (at least in my experience). In this area (Boston), in my experience, there are 2 tiers of schools: elite and "the rest". Harvard, MIT, Stanford, etc. are all "elite" schools and move you to the top of the pile probably.

Beyond that, the school is in the "and the rest" category, and you have to dig a bit deeper: GPA, jobs, specific interests, etc.

"Undermining social mobility" because not every student can afford to go to a Stanford/MIT/Harvard $50k/yr school is.... a stretch. Sure, if every not-rich student was forced to go to University of Phoenix or a "school" of that ilk, maybe I'd buy it. State schools aren't really discriminated against that much (UMass has a great reputation (engineering/CS wise at least), U of Rhode Island, U of New Hampshire, as do the California state schools and I'm sure many, many others).

Re: Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal

#275

Post by Ras_ »

nawitus wrote: post #72
danielweber wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still need price pressure on the schools. If tuition keeps on going through the roof but no one cares because it's "free" we're still blowing a lot of money that could better be spent elsewhere.

I'm not sure how it's done in Scandinavia. I think the government can simply fund public universities with a lump sump (per student), and disallow any tuition charges. Universities could then raise additional private money to use as they see fit.

In Finland the operating costs are nationally averaged to make up unit rate (google: yksikköhinta). Majority of state funding can be then traced back to Unit rate x number of students.

Re: Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal

#276

Post by MisterWebz »

108 wrote: post #272
MisterWebz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some countries, you don't even have the OPTION to take out a loan to go to school. That's because in some countries you won't be paying more than 5k to go to a decent college.

> That's because in some countries you won't be paying more than 5k to go to a decent college. And you would be earning a fraction, say $120 per month, that automatically makes the 5k college dream, a dream.

And you would be earning a fraction, say $120 per month

That's impossible, because around here the minimum wage for an adult working a full time job is around 10x that figure.

Re: Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal

#277

Post by TheCoelacanth »

108 wrote: post #273
coffeemug wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market. Right now, the government loan programs treat all degrees interchangeably. If you introduce market forces into the equation, the lenders will run some basic stat calculations and you'll quickly end up with the following scenario: 1. Useful degrees from good universities will be easy and cheap for good students to fund. 2. Everything else will get harder/more expensive to fund, in proportion to its statist…

Do they? If government loan programs treat all degrees interchangeably, why do you have differential pricing for STEM degrees and Liberal arts, with the latter being cheaper and STEM, law and medicine degrees being the most expensive.

They are more expensive because the programs cost more to run. The professors have more job prospects outside of academia, so that drives up their wages. They also need more expensive resources (labs, legal libraries, etc.).
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