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More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

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Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#131

Post by ls15 »

lordnacho wrote: post #63

We have to do something about what people think college is to an employer. I'm excluding courses where you specifically need the degree: medicine, law, and maybe some others. Clearly you can't be a doctor or lawyer who hasn't passed his exams. Also if you are going to be a professor or phd naturally you will need to have studied whatever it is. For everyone else, all college does is shows people that you are diligent…

> Are there other benefits to college?

I think I learned a thing or two at university.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#132

Post by lumost »

epistasis wrote: post #56
ChicagoDave wrote: post #28

I have 3 college-aged kids and one nearly there. Their universal concern is the cost. It has become prohibitive. Colleges assumed the trend of charging $25k to $50k per year would be sustainable. They were dead wrong, especially given the horrendously predatory loans backed by the government and barred from bankruptcy. If we fix the college financial system, enrollment would likely skyrocket.

I've heard tales of people with interest rates of 7%+ on student loans, and the official rates are not incredibly low either: https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types/loans/interest-r... Any loan that is charging 6.28% interest and also cant be discharged by bankruptcy is just usury with current interest rates.

This Happened to me on loans taken out between ‘07 and ‘10. The liquidity crises meant that banks stopped lending to students, and everyone assumed that interest rates would rise. I got locked into 7.25-8% fixed on roughly 80k in debt which I paid off over the next 10 years. Unfortunately a bout of unemployment in 2010 prevented me from refinancing.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#133

Post by ejb999 »

_fat_santa wrote: post #95
ChicagoDave wrote: post #28

I have 3 college-aged kids and one nearly there. Their universal concern is the cost. It has become prohibitive. Colleges assumed the trend of charging $25k to $50k per year would be sustainable. They were dead wrong, especially given the horrendously predatory loans backed by the government and barred from bankruptcy. If we fix the college financial system, enrollment would likely skyrocket.

Thought it's not as glamorous as a 4 year college experience, I highly suggest going to a Community College for the first two years and then transferring to a state school. I did this and through I resented it at the time, I existed college with around $30k in student debt versus my friends that all has something in range of ($40k to $80k). IMO 30k in student debt is very manageable, currently have the thing paid dow…

>>IMO 30k in student debt is very manageable, currently have the thing paid down to like $12k and I like knowing I can reach into savings at any time and wipe out this debt if need be.

Absolutely - $30K in debt is completely reasonable imo; if after 4 years in college you have not improved your job prospects enough to cover that payment, then you probably didn't work very hard, or didn't pick a marketable major.

Most of these 'college debt is out of control' stories being pushed in the press, are usually focusing on outliers - i.e. people that borrowed $250K for multiple useless majors and now work at Starbucks because they chose badly. Public policy shouldn't be based on edge cases like this; not do we want to reward people for making bad decisions.

Last I read, the median college debt that people owe is less than $20K, and should be more than manageable for most people.

If we want to fix the college debt problem, focus on getting the college costs down - anything that tries to make it easier to pay for, without controlling the cost side of the equation, will almost certainly cause the cost to go up even faster then before.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#134

Post by JumpCrisscross »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #108

This is nearly a strictly American problem. Much of the rest of the world has realized that society requires and is capable of supporting advanced education for all -- after all we want humanity to be advancing , right? America is still stuck in this alternate universe where it's a great privilege to have the opportunity to learn, which is of course true to some extent, but they really put it on a pedestal there. Com…

> after all we want humanity to be advancing, right?

I don't know how much our reams of communications, generic business and English majors are advancing humanity. (Granted, I studied finance [and engineering] in undergrad.)

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#135

Post by BingoAhoy »

devwastaken wrote: post #88
ChicagoDave wrote: post #28

I have 3 college-aged kids and one nearly there. Their universal concern is the cost. It has become prohibitive. Colleges assumed the trend of charging $25k to $50k per year would be sustainable. They were dead wrong, especially given the horrendously predatory loans backed by the government and barred from bankruptcy. If we fix the college financial system, enrollment would likely skyrocket.

Yes, this is the issue right on the head. At a $0 income, federal and state grants + student loans will not cover tuition and housing costs at the most affordable of in state universities. We can't just look at tuition, but housing costs. The cost of housing sometimes rivals tuition. A fun fact is they make freshmen have to buy $2200 meal plans for their first year. They also prevent freshmen from better housing wher…

I've always been curious about who's winning the lionshare of the pie of these gluttonous institutions. Is it administrators? they're an easy scape goat. Does it fund more research, so presumably the PHDs and their research assistants?

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#136

Post by bart_spoon »

syki wrote: post #34
disambiguation wrote: post #27

Less than 3k kids under the age of 24 have died from covid since the start of the pandemic [0] yet they have some how wound up with the harshest restrictions. These kids will never get these years back. What a disgrace. [0] https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-by-Sex...

In my college system I’m responsible for cleaning my classroom after each use. If I forget to do this and a student gets sick then I’m personally liable. I’m not paid enough to clean classrooms and teach and I’m not taking on the liability. Thus, I haven’t taught in the classroom for the last 2 years.

How on earth could they possibly identify your lack of cleaning with someone's infection? Seems like something that sounds scary but the real world implications are meaningless.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#137

Post by noasaservice »

matt_mb wrote: post #105
hammock wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College was once to be reserved for the rich elite. But central bank and government policies starting in the 70's gutted US manufacturing and took away most of the non-information worker jobs - so there was little else for the middle class to go for a career except first to college. Hence today. However, today it's easier than ever to live off the nanny state WITHOUT a career. What should the role of college be today…

>However, today it's easier than ever to live off the nanny state WITHOUT a career. In what way?

Like the way corporations do, I guess?

PPP was a boon - 'Here is a loan that converts to freebie money for millions of companies'. Where'd the money go? Buying Lambo's and the like.

Or, when can I get a tax abatement for 10 years? COmpanies can because of this mythical 'they create jobs' tripe.

Just look up corporate welfare. And if I was permitted to, I would.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#138

Post by wil421 »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #108

This is nearly a strictly American problem. Much of the rest of the world has realized that society requires and is capable of supporting advanced education for all -- after all we want humanity to be advancing , right? America is still stuck in this alternate universe where it's a great privilege to have the opportunity to learn, which is of course true to some extent, but they really put it on a pedestal there. Com…

Yes I can say the same in the US. My state paid full tuition for B average and above students if you went to a college in the state. After a little over a year I took off and went back to school while working at a later point. By that time I qualified for federal tuition aid but lost my state one. It wasn’t much over $20k for 5 years out of pocket for me.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#139

Post by gorjusborg »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #108

This is nearly a strictly American problem. Much of the rest of the world has realized that society requires and is capable of supporting advanced education for all -- after all we want humanity to be advancing , right? America is still stuck in this alternate universe where it's a great privilege to have the opportunity to learn, which is of course true to some extent, but they really put it on a pedestal there. Com…

I've lived in the U.S. my entire life, and I agree with you. Our culture somehow misses the fact that as a society we benefit from educated citizens. There's even a segment of the population that fetishizes ignorance as a virtue, and knowledge as leftist indoctrination.

There also seems to be a deep seated fear that any sort of public investment in people is seen as a slippery slope to soviet-style authoritarian government.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#140

Post by ravenstine »

Most of the college graduates I know ended up not using their degree because they majored in something no one cares about like communications, philosophy, journalism, etc. Maybe some people are figuring out that flipping burgers or literally just hanging out at home is a better use of their time from a financial standpoint than spending 4 or more years taking various prerequisites to get a degree that only results in more debt. Bell curves gonna bell curve, so it's not like all of these people are gonna have what it takes to instead become doctors, lawyers, and politicians.

As far as I'm concerned, besides the fields that deal with the fate of a person's life (like doctors and lawyers), the whole idea of going to college and getting a masters in whatever your heart's desire deserves to be imploded. I see no sense in those saying that we need to "fix universities". Honestly, fuck universities for acting they're worth as much as they are while still pretending their priority is the students. Everything I learned in college and the different schools I went to can now be learned online or at the library for free or for $29.99. In a few generations, universities will be naturally replaced with more practical alternatives. So why try to prop up these archaic institutions for the sake of the average person rather than the exceptional? Such a desire is more of a fetish for an image of what universities represent.

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