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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

#141

Post by HWR_14 »

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.

> Any loan that is charging 6.28% interest and also cant be discharged by bankruptcy

The interest rates are high because so few loans can be discharged by bankruptcy. You can refinance your mortgage with anyone. Far few companies will refinance your student loans.

Meanwhile, it makes prefect sense that bankruptcy cannot discharge student loans. Otherwise, every single student would have crappy credit from 21-28 and no student loans ever.

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

#142

Post by dqv »

bopbeepboop wrote: post #55
inanutshellus wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm young and healthy, I should be allowed to spread a new virus to the entire planet. The health of my society is not my responsibility. What a disgrace."

You’re missing two key points: 1. COVID was always going to become endemic to humans. 2. Young people are part of society — and you’re blatantly disregarding harm to them in your appeal to the “health of my society”.

You talk about young people as if in their own world able to act autonomously away from the rest of society. Young people have parents. And they frequently rely on them into their mid-twenties. Many young people lost one or both of their parents from this (and other people they loved dearly). As has been repeated elsewhere, dying isn’t the only thing their parents and loved ones have to worry about having had COVID. The purpose of the lockdowns was to try to prevent this.

And so I can ask the same question, why are you disregarding the harm done to them (them being the young people)?

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

#143

Post by zdragnar »

cgearhart wrote: post #98
epistasis wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without room and board, University of California fees are around $20k. And none of the college towns have adequate housing, so any sort of housing is absolutely through the roof.

“The University of California is the world’s leading public research university.” [1] So $20k/yr seems like a steal. Meanwhile, if you’re price sensitive then you can go to one of the 26 Cal State campuses for ~$8k/yr (Cal Poly SLO is an outlier at $10k). [2] If you’re really looking to keep costs down, head to community college for two years to finish a Cal State transferable AA, then have guaranteed admission to a…

In my experience, "Research universities" are a joke for undergrad students. All it means for most of them is that their classes will be taught by graduate students because the "professors" are too busy doing research to be bothered with such trivial work.

You need to be pretty lucky in your final years or actually going for masters or PHD to really be exposed to the research side of things.

It's a steal alright, but I cant say I agree with who is coming out ahead.

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

#144

Post by f6v »

bart_spoon wrote: post #100
sylens wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's quite clearly this. Millennials have been out there for nearly a decade yelling on social media about how ridiculous their student loans are. Kids on the precipice of college have started paying attention. Combine that with the restrictions for Covid, and you have a lot of kids who don't think that taking on tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of dollars in debt is worth it for some Zoom classe…

Plus the amount and quality of alternative learning resources is very high, at least in some fields. I know coding bootcamps get a bad rep, often justified, but at the same time my buddy went to college for a degree in HR and I went for STEM. He ended up hating HR, did a 9 week boot camp, managed to get a job, and after a few years of experience is in roughly the same place as me and is thriving. It took him a little…

> Plus the amount and quality of alternative learning resources is very high, at least in some fields

Out of interest, what are other fields besides IT?

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

#145

Post by HWR_14 »

sarchertech wrote: post #129
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.

>horrendously predatory loans backed by the government What's predatory about public loans. They all qualify for income based repayment, which means you'll never pay more than 10% of your disposable income (any income over 1.5x the federal poverty level). If you make below that amount, you'll never be required to pay back anything. And they are cancelled after 20 years. Theoretically you'd owe tax on cancelled debt,…

You also get credit for going into public service as well.

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

#146

Post by jackson1442 »

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’m attending a state school in the US, and my degree costs about $13k/year + books + housing.

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

#147

Post by awb »

I’ve been recruiting for US startups since 2008, probably recruited over 100 folks from engineers to C-level.

I have never considered a candidate’s college or if they even attended one. The only thing I evaluated is what they accomplished in the last 1-2 years. That meant hiring some brilliant engineers straight out of high school.

Most of these candidates were early stage hires for dozens of companies that went on to become billion dollar public companies or get acquired for 8-10 figures.

As far as a springboard for a career, I haven’t seen colleges come close to worth the price of admission.

Almost your entire career value is dependent on how well you can self-learn and self-motivate. The one important piece that school might teach or give you exposure to is how to collaborate effectively with others.

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

#148

Post by thehappypm »

samarama wrote: post #126
sylens wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's quite clearly this. Millennials have been out there for nearly a decade yelling on social media about how ridiculous their student loans are. Kids on the precipice of college have started paying attention. Combine that with the restrictions for Covid, and you have a lot of kids who don't think that taking on tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of dollars in debt is worth it for some Zoom classe…

Are student loans really such an issue? 85% of graduates have less than $50,000 in student loans. Paid off over 20 years, that’s really not much. https://www.rclco.com/wp-content/uploads/advisory-student-de... Additionally, those that have much higher loans are usually medical students who make $200,000/year at the entry level.

A $50,000 loan with a high interest rate is not good AT ALL.

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

#149

Post by jrsj »

MattGaiser wrote: post #60
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.

Aren't state colleges must cheaper than that?

Many now make room and board mandatory and when you factor that in with tuition, books, etc you can get to $25k total cost even with in-state tuition. I don’t know how common this is exactly but Ohio State does this for freshman and sophomores now.

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

#150

Post by devwastaken »

sarchertech wrote: post #119
devwastaken wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>The vast majority of students don't fit into this, they come from middle class parents and have to take out private loans. Private loans only make up about 8% of total student loan debt https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/student-loans/stude... https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics

The bill infront of me isnt lying. The amount of student loans is not enough to cover the costs, therefore requiring private loans or someone else to pay it. So either all these parents are paying it, or they're taking out private loans. Or, more likely, the stats are collected poorly as they typically are. Same as how unis are allowed to lie about job placement rates.
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