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

241–250 of 1001 posts

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

#241

Post by [deleted] »

VikingCoder wrote: post #169
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…

Here's what I don't get - Where the hell is the money _going_? Are Colleges and Universities pocketing the money? Are they publicly traded and distributing dividends? Are they building rockets? I know some of it goes back to financial aid, and some goes to football coaches... But we're talking about so much freaking money, and I just can't visualize where it's going.

[deleted]

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

#242

Post by long_time_gone »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #185
long_time_gone wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Communicating with eachother, knowledge of business, and understanding language seem like things we would want more of in society. Not sure why they would be demonized. Is the goal of higher-education to promote learning and build a well-rounded citizenry or to create worker drones?

> Not sure why they would be demonized Because they're in large part neither functional nor artistic. Both force one to think in novel ways. The certification-for-its-own-sake majors do not. There are reams of low-grade degrees in which the majority of teaching is in memorization, not mastering new ways to think. That doesn't advance society, particularly when it burdens young people with debt.

This sounds like a bias working backwards to find a justification. Is there any studies or data that support your stance? Which are the "good" majors? Who gets to judge that?

> There are reams of low-grade degrees in which the majority of teaching is in memorization, and not mastering new ways to think.

The biggest complaint from anyone I know who studied medicine/pre-med is the sheer amount of memorization involved. Must be a useless field of study.

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

#243

Post by lotsofpulp »

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.

It distorts prices and results in a suboptimal allocation of society’s resources, and results in people complaining about having a “degree” and having to sling coffee cups as their career.

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

#244

Post by dpierce9 »

jackson1442 wrote: post #182
dpierce9 wrote: post #111

There are a lot of people blaming federal loans for the inflation in college costs, however, private secondary school (high school) tuition has also grown at a comparable rate (maybe even faster). There are not, to my knowledge, federal loans for private secondary schools. Does anyone have an explanation for this? Edit: clarified that private secondary school = private high school. Of course federal student loans are…

There do appear to be federal loans for private schools- Baylor is a private school in Texas, here’s their site on loans: https://www.baylor.edu/sfs/index.php?id=963417

Baylor is not a secondary school. Secondary school = high school.

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

#245

Post by dqv »

ars wrote: post #109
Graffur wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 logic follows that we should have let the original and more deadly variants rip through society? I participate in two communities - one that completely ignores COVID (except for a couple months at the very very beginning). They don't test, they don't care if someone is positive. Lots of people are vaccinated, but lots aren't (they all had COVID, they can't think of any reason to get vaccinated since they alread…

Anecdotes are useless. And my experience has been the opposite of yours. Nil deaths, one infection, same mental health for the cares-about-COVID community. The community that doesn’t has had 3 deaths, dozens of infections, and worsened mental health from the deaths of loved ones.

So why am I supposed to give more of a shit about your anecdote than my experience again?

>It's over. COVID is over. It's time to stop closing everything.

Uh we know. We’re talking about what happened in the past. Everyone has been using past tense verbs.

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

#246

Post by travisgriggs »

connorgreenwell wrote: post #183
VikingCoder wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's what I don't get - Where the hell is the money _going_? Are Colleges and Universities pocketing the money? Are they publicly traded and distributing dividends? Are they building rockets? I know some of it goes back to financial aid, and some goes to football coaches... But we're talking about so much freaking money, and I just can't visualize where it's going.

Armies of administrators, shiny new amenities to attract more students (competing on quality of education is too difficult / more expensive). There's probably some good that it goes towards too, but its hard not to be cynical about it.

Pournelle's iron law of bureaucracy at play again.

At this point, my feeling is that the local maximumizations that have driven us to this point are irrecoverable. There is no “fixing” this system. It will carry on for a while yet out of momentum, but something disruptive will dethrone it eventually.

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

#247

Post by reilly3000 »

ravenstine wrote: post #140

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…

>something no one cares about like communications, philosophy, journalism, etc.

Excuse me? No one cares about fields that employ 2.8 million workers [BLS.gov 2020] ? No one cares about work that provides information, entertainment, and shapes political views? FYI your doctors, lawyers, and politician's biggest expense line items usually include money going to communications and media professionals.

I and many others resonate with the notion of 'useless degrees', but you chose some terrible examples. That said, there is more value to education than vocation, and your inability to see that shows that you missed quite a bit in yours. The classical liberal arts education could and should be continually reimagined for a changing world, but to wholly discount its importance is capitalist orthodoxy that misses much of what life is about. Read a goddamn book.

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

#248

Post by BingoAhoy »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #134
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.)

Stephen King was an English major. Word art, literature, helps people advance cognitively.

English is an unowned cultivated intellectual property that greases communication which greases all other human endeavors. I think its underappreciated.

Not all education needs to advance the frontier, much of it is about maintaining what we've already claimed and passing it on to new generations.

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

#249

Post by paulpauper »

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…

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?

I think foreign colleges have stricter entry requirements and fewer amenities compared to American colleges. So yes, college may be free in Japan, but also much harder to be accepted.

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

#250

Post by Goronmon »

standardUser wrote: post #181
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.

Public schools average about $10k per year for in-state students. That's a far cry from the $25k-$50k per year people tend to quote when arguing against the cost of college. How important that difference is depends on which state a student lives in. In California there are literally dozens of options including several prestigious ones, whereas many states only have a couple of middling schools to choose from, and out…

Public schools average about $10k per year for in-state students.

That seems low to me. Are you only counting the cost of tuition (and not books, room and board, etc)?

I just grabbed some numbers for NH, one site says the average for tuition alone is $10k, with another $1.5k for books/etc, and another $15k for room/board. So, unless you are able to commute from your parents, looking at closer to 25k+ in loans, per year.

I also checked UNH specifically, where the numbers are roughly $20k for tuition/fees and $33k all in.

Post reply on HN