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NYU Neatly Embodies Everything Wrong With Higher Education in America

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Re: NYU Neatly Embodies Everything Wrong With Higher Education in America

#11

Post by obstacle1 »

joonix wrote: post #7

NYU is a school for rich kids. It's a vacation for students who want college fun, but prefer it to be in an urban setting like NYC (and the best part of NY, to be sure), rather than in a small college town with its frat parties and beer pong. IMO, it's not the ideal place to study at all. Too many distractions. If you're a liberal arts student you can probably take advantage of all the events, museums, intellectual s…

>NYU is a school for rich kids

Eh... Maybe at the undergraduate level. NYU has some extremely strong graduate programs and surely most grad students there are not rich vacationers.

Re: NYU Neatly Embodies Everything Wrong With Higher Education in America

#12

Post by fantnn »

rossjudson wrote: post #9

Any government backed student loan should have a simple repayment schedule -- a maximum of 15% of your earnings for 10 years following graduation. At the end of 10 years, the loan is considered fully paid and any balance, if remaining, forgiven. The institution eats the cost of forgiving the balance. So if you're an institution providing an expensive but worthless education, you aren't going to get paid for it. Let's…

What if you've dropped out?

Re: NYU Neatly Embodies Everything Wrong With Higher Education in America

#13

Post by interestinecom »

mtsmith85 wrote: post #10
joonix wrote: post #7

NYU is a school for rich kids. It's a vacation for students who want college fun, but prefer it to be in an urban setting like NYC (and the best part of NY, to be sure), rather than in a small college town with its frat parties and beer pong. IMO, it's not the ideal place to study at all. Too many distractions. If you're a liberal arts student you can probably take advantage of all the events, museums, intellectual s…

Did you go to NYU, or are you just out to insult those who did? I went to NYU. I credit it with developing a lot of the skills that have gotten me to where I am today. This comes with a very clear understanding that my degree, while not directly related to what I do for a living, is still hugely useful in my day-to-day life. I have a substantial amount of debt; most college kids do, anyhow. I credit NYU with giving m…

All that money and you still suck at grammar.

Re: NYU Neatly Embodies Everything Wrong With Higher Education in America

#14

Post by interestinecom »

fantnn wrote: post #12
rossjudson wrote: post #9

Any government backed student loan should have a simple repayment schedule -- a maximum of 15% of your earnings for 10 years following graduation. At the end of 10 years, the loan is considered fully paid and any balance, if remaining, forgiven. The institution eats the cost of forgiving the balance. So if you're an institution providing an expensive but worthless education, you aren't going to get paid for it. Let's…

What if you've dropped out?

Then you repay the amount of money you took off the Government. I don't understand how that's even a question?

Re: NYU Neatly Embodies Everything Wrong With Higher Education in America

#15

Post by mtsmith85 »

mathattack wrote: post #2

I'm not sure I agree with all the scandal. To me it's more a legal technicality. Schools should be allowed to pay whatever market salaries they must to keep their heads. If students don't like it, they can choose to apply to other schools. If alums don't like it, they don't need to donate. If faculty are jealous, they can work elsewhere. The argument only breaks down when these schools get non-profit benefits. So why…

The point about head coaches is interesting, because while NYU has athletic programs, the funding (if I remember correctly) is hugely less than that than other private schools. NYU students just don't care about athletics.

Two additional points: 1) Conde Nast gives loans to editors and higher ups. [1] [2] 2) Having worked with some of the "all star" professors in varying capacities (and getting a glimpse, however small, of the bargaining process) a lot of other universities are often trying to poach research professors from NYU. Housing, which is a hugely hard "thing" to solve in NYC, is a large bargaining chip.

Re: NYU Neatly Embodies Everything Wrong With Higher Education in America

#16

Post by roc »

rayiner wrote: post #8

As a general rule, I think there is an counter-productive reaction among people to the idea of paying high salaries to people working in non-profits. At the end of the day, good people are willing to take a pay cut to work at an organization they perceive to be socially beneficial, but only so much of one. Their kids still have to go to college, after all. And if the organization can raise the money, why object to it…

I'm not even sure parental credit would slow things down. That might send more of the less-privileged students to smaller universities and community colleges, but I'm not sure they constitute a large fraction of major university students in the first place.

And for those students whose parents credit would justify a 60k loan, how many of those couldn't also get an 80k loan, on student loan terms (rates and repayment schedules)? I think all you'd do there is make it increasingly harder for parents of college-age children to get any further credit and draw down their consumption as college prices continued to grow. (Surely they'll rank co-signing Junior's college loans as more important than a cottage or condo in the sunshine belt.)

I think the bigger problem is that the degree and institution aren't considered in the loan process. I don't know how you'd even begin to structure an objective analysis, but it seems fundamentally wrong that the government will guarantee an 80k loan today for a degree that cost 60k yesterday, even though the market for that degree hasn't moved and the program itself is largely undifferentiated from what it was yesterday, let alone from competing universities charging 40k or less for substantially the same program.

Re: NYU Neatly Embodies Everything Wrong With Higher Education in America

#17

Post by rayiner »

rossjudson wrote: post #9

Any government backed student loan should have a simple repayment schedule -- a maximum of 15% of your earnings for 10 years following graduation. At the end of 10 years, the loan is considered fully paid and any balance, if remaining, forgiven. The institution eats the cost of forgiving the balance. So if you're an institution providing an expensive but worthless education, you aren't going to get paid for it. Let's…

For all the hand-wringing, the current federal student loan system (under Obama's PAY-E program) has pretty sensible repayment terms. You pay a maximum of 10% of your earnings above 150% of the household poverty level (but no more than you would under an ordinary 10 year repayment plan), capitalized interest capped (over the lifetime of the loan) at 10% of the original principal, balance forgiven after 20 years.

It's progressive, there's a safety net, and it is, for the time being, solvent (government makes 30-50% profit on each dollar lent). Yes, people with great credit who would end up paying less under a standard 10 year repayment at say 5% end up subsidizing those who graduate without getting a decent job, but I think that's uniquely justifiable in this context, because everyone involved is turning to the student loans as a way to better their economic situation (after all, nothing stops you from paying in cash or getting a private loan at 5% if you can qualify for one).

I think if you added a cap in there instead of going up to full cost of attendance, to force schools to moderate their tuitions, it would be nearly perfect.

Re: NYU Neatly Embodies Everything Wrong With Higher Education in America

#18

Post by mseebach »

rossjudson wrote: post #9

Any government backed student loan should have a simple repayment schedule -- a maximum of 15% of your earnings for 10 years following graduation. At the end of 10 years, the loan is considered fully paid and any balance, if remaining, forgiven. The institution eats the cost of forgiving the balance. So if you're an institution providing an expensive but worthless education, you aren't going to get paid for it. Let's…

Even simpler: Don't have the government involved in student loans at all, and let the market price loans for different degrees for different students freely. Those institutions that can convince lenders that graduates will be in a position to pay back the loans quickly will be able to offer lower rates to students, and thus attract more and better students.

Those out to study degrees that don't offer great employment opportunities will be offered more expensive loans which will curb demand for such degrees which will depress the cost of the degrees. It will also make sure that fewer people will go to a party college and study an easy degree (or, at least, that those that do aren't subsidised by tax-payer underwritten credit).

Extra bonus: All those companies that clamour for STEM grads have a very simple avenue for putting their money where their mouths are: Simply go out and underwrite some cheap loans. (And no, indentured servitude is still illegal - companies underwriting student debt shouldn't be allowed to change the terms of the loan if the student comes to work for them).

Re: NYU Neatly Embodies Everything Wrong With Higher Education in America

#19

Post by joonix »

j_s wrote: post #6

> building itself less like a university and more like a for-profit corporation This concept was discussed recently on the EconTalk podcast http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/06/pallotta_on_cha.htm... "The way we think about charity is dead wrong" http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about... Uncharitable: How Restraints on Nonprofits Undermine Their Potential http://www.amazon.com/dp/1584659556/

Charity is very profitable for many elites especially in places like NYC and DC. Just because they don't distribute dividends doesn't mean they don't distribute salaries. Most "connected" people here come out of school and get hired by their friends at non-profits. They sit around, raise money, and don't do much with it other than pay themselves.

Re: NYU Neatly Embodies Everything Wrong With Higher Education in America

#20

Post by mtsmith85 »

redcircle wrote: post #4
mathattack wrote: post #2

I'm not sure I agree with all the scandal. To me it's more a legal technicality. Schools should be allowed to pay whatever market salaries they must to keep their heads. If students don't like it, they can choose to apply to other schools. If alums don't like it, they don't need to donate. If faculty are jealous, they can work elsewhere. The argument only breaks down when these schools get non-profit benefits. So why…

There is a scandal in the sense that the people running the schools earn significant benefits at the expense of the students: they charge the students substantial tuition rates, leaving the students with horrible debt, and a low probability that their education can be applied to cover the debt (more likely, the students' own tenacity will help them overcome the debt). You might argue that the students willingly walk…

"Students willingly walk into the trap" is an interesting way to describe it, that I think only applies if in fact the student doesn't find success. I feel that I'm doing pretty well, so I wouldn't characterize it as a trap. I would characterize it as a challenge. For me it was the challenge of "launch."

But, for some students, it very well may be a trap. I've had more than a few friends spend $150k on education, to only make $30k a year as a middle school teacher. Friends who graduated with "independent study" degrees in "film and medicine." Some For some people, trap does adequately describe it.

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