Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 1001 posts

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

#151

Post by vanilla_nut »

_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…

If you happen to live near a decent community college, this isn’t a bad idea. But I know a lot of people who did 2 years at community college, and then got screwed over by transfer credits enough that they ended up doing 3 years at a normal college. So the savings isn’t quite ideal. I actually went to community college instead of a senior year at high school, and think you should really inspect the quality of the programs at your community college before trying this. For instance, my community college only had a couple of token CS classes, and they basically taught C++ in a C-style (all declarations at the top of the file, no object orientation) as the only style of programming. Not a great way to get a head start on a CS degree. But the math, humanities, science, and social science programs could probably give you a very cheap head start on those degrees.

For the truly frugal student, I would probably recommend something like what I did: take community college or AP classes aplenty in your senior year. Go straight to a college that has the best program for your interests (keeping in mind your interests may change). Graduating in three years is easy enough if you have a semester’s worth of transfer credits for gen eds, and classes like calculus and linear algebra in particular are really easy to cover before you go to college. Administration will probably try to make graduating early as hard as possible, but they really won’t be able to stop you if you have the credits already.

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

#152

Post by yxwvut »

lumost wrote: post #120
bagacrap wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The loans are exactly why the colleges were able to continue jacking up the prices. As with homes, people will pay as much as institutions are willing to loan them. In both cases the currently low interest rates allow the loan principal to be much higher (given that folks calculate cost based on recurring payments). If you remove the student loan system then tuition would become cheaper. However that does unfairly im…

Would it really penalize disadvantaged households? I’d imagine that many such students lack a co-signer for these predatory loans, or would be further disadvantaged by a 200k degree that doesn’t meaningfully change their economic outcomes in 2022. To make college work you need to pick a dwindling number of high leverage disciplines such as CS, even picking something technical like Chemistry won’t yield a return on a…

I think the only tenable solutions are 1) a ceiling on the loan amount tethered to public college costs to increase price elasticity and prevent runaway costs, along with a quota on loans to address the 'future ability to repay' issue with many majors/low caliber schools 2) free public college (or equivalent private college voucher)

Giving out loans with no cap on how much schools can charge and with no ability-to-repay check is a recipe for catastrophe.

I think option 2 is the best equitable outcome but is probably politically unsavory given the heterogeneity in public school costs/quality across states (which typically aligns with political divides).

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

#153

Post by bart_spoon »

Graffur wrote: post #85
bopbeepboop wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”.

Your first point makes no sense. The logic follows that we should have let the original and more deadly variants rip through society? Young people are part of society so they are obligated to protect it.

The only reason we locked down initially was to "flatten the curve". This doesn't mean eliminate the virus, it meant slow it down long enough for the hospital system and government agencies to catch up in preparation. But even then, it was understood that this virus was going to be endemic and that elimination was never a possibility.

> Young people are part of society so they are obligated to protect it.

The point is that the part of society being protected is largely confined to older parts of the population, while much of the costs of doing so are disproportionately coming down on younger people. It's easy to say "do your part to protect society", but when the part of society being protected is the mental, social, and emotional development and well being of young people, as well as technical skills and future job prospects, older people seemingly have no problem casting it aside for what benefits them the most.

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

#154

Post by 9dev »

taylodl wrote: post #128
rossdavidh wrote: post #53

As the father of a 16-year old, I can say that the current generation of teenagers has heard a lot more about the issues of college debt than previous generations did. Partly because it's a lot higher, partly because even if newsmedia doesn't report on it, there are enough adults out there saddled with it that they just hear about it from a relative or friend. It used to be a no-brainer; you go to college if you can.…

No. Things are just going back to the way they used to be: higher education is for the elites. Once upon a time we understood that higher education was important for all and having a well-educated public was good for the Republic. Now that view no longer holds - the politicians have learned that their flim-flam doesn't work as well on a well-educated public and so they've been making cuts to higher education for the…

Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".

It's enough to assume elites were greedy (and/or dense) and didn't consider long-term effects, you don't even need a decades-spanning conspiracy for it.

The elites won't be as fine once they realise much of their wealth stems from the rest of the republic, but that seems to be the circle humanity is caught in for eternity.

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

#155

Post by issa »

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.

If you are in the US and know people who are aged 30-50 and not software engineers, this is almost all that they talk about. Some people manage to pay them off, others (due to high interest) owe more than when they started. It is a huge problem.

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

#156

Post by 9dev »

strict9 wrote: post #31

This is a good thing. Too many people are entering college and taking on enormous debt to get something which is less of an edge for getting a job. Worse, many get saddled with debt and don't finish for various reasons. Meanwhile tuition and books keep skyrocketing as schools divert more of their attention away from academics and toward more profitable uses of institutional time and capital. But in a bit of good news…

Sure they are gatekeeping, but that's the problem. The gatekeeping will continue, artificially limiting access to highly paid jobs to the upper class.

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

#157

Post by greedo »

rootusrootus wrote: post #80
Aperocky wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't state colleges relatively affordable (while mostly OK academically)?

Relatively, yes, I believe so. But Oregon State still tells me to budget 30K/year for a resident undergrad. About half of that is living expenses, half is school.

I don't understand how we've accepted $30k/year as relatively affordable...

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

#158

Post by ejb999 »

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,…

>>What's predatory about public loans.

To some folks, having to pay off their loan, is considered predatory.

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

#160

Post by nradov »

taylodl wrote: post #93
monkeynotes wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition there is COVID which means a lot of online learning and none of the college social experience. I know of a coop on my team is considering pausing finishing his degree because he hates online learning and does not feel like he's getting the education he paid for.

What's the alternative? Wait for this to "blow over"? We've been waiting for two years now. Maybe omicron will be it. Or maybe not. We simply don't know. One thing we do know from past experience is those opting-out of college or putting their degree on "pause" rarely return to complete their degree. You simply reach a point where you're focusing on your career, maybe start a family, and so forth and the next thing y…

The better alternative is to immediately return all students and staff to full in-person education with no mandates or restrictions. Yes that will incur some small but acceptable level of additional risk.
Post reply on HN