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I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

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Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#281

Post by snowwrestler »

rayiner wrote: post #241
slowhand09 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no free. Free means Janet's dad who didn't go to college get to pay additional so Bill's son goes for free. When resources are free, they become either worthless or completely over-utilized. If you make college free, that means colleges will still charge for classes, still charge for books, still charge for dorm rooms, etc. They'll send their bills to the government, to pay with increased tax dollars. They'l…

> Looks like a major redistribution of wealth, from taxpayers to educational institutions. :-/ This is my surprised face. This is my beef with free college. It's a huge amount of public money going to benefit people who don't need it, all for an extremely tenuous promise of upward mobility. Kids growing up in real urban poverty aren't going to college, tuition-free or not. The hurdles keeping them from upward mobilit…

This might come as a shock, but AOC is a member of Congress now.

(It's silly to judge the value of a college education by the jobs that people get the first few years after college.)

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#282

Post by chongli »

lbatx wrote: post #209
honkycat wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this trade school obsession is foolish. Everyone cargo-cults it as "pragmatic" without actually analyzing what the jobs entail and what you can actually expect to make. Statistically, you still earn way more with a degree than without. You EARN that pay in the trades, and being an electrician is dangerous. The work is hard on your body. A lot of electricians end up on disability. I wasn't very academic growin…

Taking your comment to its logical conclusion, then, no one should become an electrician. Too dangerous. Low (relative to a degree) pay. Well, who then is going to fulfill this necessary role?

If fewer people decide to be electricians, then pay must go up to attract them, changing the calculus. If we force every high school student into trade school, on the other hand, there will be a glut of electricians and pay will go down.

Then what do we have? A lot of very angry people who feel betrayed by our insistence on trade school. And they'd be right to feel betrayed! We should be encouraging people to pursue fields that suit their interests, talents, and ambitions. If there are financial barriers then we need to tear them down.

The economy exists for the people, not people for the economy.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#283

Post by Balanceinfinity »

A degree from an expensive private school or out of state school is a luxury item, and parents need to treat them like the Jaguar or Porsche with a comparable value. If your child got their license and asked for a Range Rover, would you plunk down $100,000? Then why on earth would you do it for an undergraduate degree to an expensive school.

If anything, the money should be saved for graduate school, where the big payoff happens. If they can get through undergrad at the instate school (or maybe an out-of-state public school) with the grades and pedigree for grad school, then maybe Duke Law School, or University of Chicago Medical School (or a masters from Stanford in engineering) is a worthwhile financial investment, but never for undergrad.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#284

Post by asdff »

vsskanth wrote: post #4

Serious question: how does a parent deal with their high school kids wanting to pursue college in a field with a low probability of high lifetime earnings (art, theatre etc.) ? Especially when they are middle class without generational wealth to insulate themselves

In that case it's critical to go to an excellent school where networking is easy. If the probability of a job is low, go where that job is. NYC schools or USC/UCLA, I don't think the job opportunities are as plentiful in Chicago as you get competition from talent from both coasts and everyone with a pipe dream in the mid west. Otherwise it will be that shit underpaid job that you can't crawl out of, because you aren't going to get that 1 of maybe only 2 cushy theater company jobs in Houston, or a job as an illustrator in the entire mid west.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#285

Post by swiley »

Grakel wrote: post #96
vsskanth wrote: post #4

Serious question: how does a parent deal with their high school kids wanting to pursue college in a field with a low probability of high lifetime earnings (art, theatre etc.) ? Especially when they are middle class without generational wealth to insulate themselves

Theatre Professor here. Do not let your kids go to school for acting. Oh, he or she is perfect looking and incredibly talented? Great, they don't need a degree in acting. Go to school in New York, Chicago, or LA, and audition between classes in a real degree. Now if they want to study design and tech, go nuts. The amount of work out there is incredible, there is just so much content being consumed.

I kind of regret doing CS instead of music. Maybe if I had done something more art focused the competition wouldn't have been so bad and I'd probably still have a girlfriend, which is more important to me personally than money.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#286

Post by ip26 »

frankbreetz wrote: post #149

I think at least part of the solution is to involve your children in your finances. I think if they are able to understand your families monthly/yearly budget, they will be much less likely to take on a ton of debt, as they will more likely understand the consequences of their decisions. The financial literacy in this country(USA) is absolutely terrible and I think this is one of the most important things a parent ca…

There's a big catch with this though, your teenager/college student can't budget & spend like a mid career professional. $10k is far dearer to them than you. (They also have far fewer expenses)

I don't know what the answer is, perhaps you start with basic financial literacy & later mock up what their life might look like with X debt and Y income.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#287

Post by bgorman »

Balanceinfinity wrote: post #283

A degree from an expensive private school or out of state school is a luxury item, and parents need to treat them like the Jaguar or Porsche with a comparable value. If your child got their license and asked for a Range Rover, would you plunk down $100,000? Then why on earth would you do it for an undergraduate degree to an expensive school. If anything, the money should be saved for graduate school, where the big pa…

An undergraduate degree from an elite school helps with networking and gives the student a "brand" that will help with getting all subsequent jobs. Same phenomenon for business school- the curriculum isn't much better but the connections and brand are much better.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#288

Post by asdff »

leetcrew wrote: post #95
criddell wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see anything wrong with going to school for an education rather than training. Frankly, I wish there were more kids working on a liberal and fine arts education. It's one of the reasons I'm a big fan of the free-college-for-all plans being pushed by some politicians.

this sounds like a really bad way to spend my tax dollars. by all means, use them to educate the next generation of teachers, social workers, and scientists, but don't make me foot the bill for some kid to study art history for four years and still need government assistance at the end.

You are already footing the bill for the art history student to go through over 12 years of education, what's 4 more?

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#289

Post by kxyvr »

mnm1 wrote: post #102
kxyvr wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will contend that this is not the core problem, but an auxiliary one forced by the states themselves. The primary source of funding for universities is the state, which makes sense because universities rely on local infrastructure and respond to local needs. Depending on the size of the university, they can essentially be a small city within a city. At the same time, the amount of money invested in universities has…

State institutions are only part of the picture and not the worst part. This might explain why they've raised their tuitions but it doesn't explain why private institutions have done so even more aggressively. It's definitely the easy, guaranteed money from student loans.

Yes and no. Higher public tuition costs allow private entities to raise their tuition as well. While it depends on the college, I contend that most private colleges are not competing on cost. Schools like Harvard and Duke use price as a way to convey prestige, so they need to remain higher priced than their public counterparts. Schools like University of Phoenix compete on convenience, but if everyone else is charging higher tuition, then they can justify even higher tuition costs as well since everyone else is doing it and this new price is the de facto standard.

Now, I agree that the Feds need to cut back on loans in order to put pressure on the states to reduce their tuition costs. Essentially, the student loan system allows the states to receive free federal money by using students as the vessel of that transaction. I find that morally wrong. At the same time, there are a huge number of students who need some kind of loan to pay for college. I believe it to also be morally wrong to create a system where only those of means can enjoy public education. If the states adequately funded their universities, the universities held their tuition costs down, and either the state or the feds provided loans, then this wouldn't be an issue. However, this requires all of these institutions to agree on the principles of access to education and this isn't happening.

I don't know how to fix this. If the Feds eliminated their loan and grant programs, I personally believe that tuition costs would go down or stabilize because a large-section of the population would not be able to afford the current prices, so the universities would be forced to reduce tuition. This would benefit middle class families who have saved for education. I also believe this would prevent low income families from attending college and I'm not fine with this prospect.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#290

Post by bonoboTP »

vorpalhex wrote: post #242
snowwrestler wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should realize that primary and secondary school are already provided "free" to anyone, and the reasons that works are just as valid for college. There's nothing magically impossible about using taxpayer money to provide 16 years of education instead of 12.

It benefits us as a country to have an electorate who can read and write and have a basic understanding of civics and history. It doesn't necessarily appear to benefit us the same way to have a bunch of folks spend 4 years getting English degrees to make mom and dad happy. There are a lot of benefits to college, but a lot of those benefits go away when college stops becoming a choice and starts becoming mandated stat…

You don't have to speculate, this is reality in Europe.

An important part of these systems are the limits on the number of students admitted to most programs.

For example in Hungary there are centralized final exams at the end of secondary school (age 18-19) and you get a score at the end. You can apply to several universities at the same time, in a preferential order. Then, each year, an algorithm goes down the list of all students ordered by their score and allocates them to their topmost choice where there's still room.

(Also there's no "soft" and subjective bullshit, like essays about your motivation and proofs of "well-roundedness".)

This way the state can focus the subsidy to educational fields that will benefit the economy more, while still subsidizing a certain number of places everywhere.

(Of course if you don't have enough points, there are further, paid places as well.)

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