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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

#281

Post by learc83 »

Shared404 wrote: post #240
ejb999 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>What's predatory about public loans. To some folks, having to pay off their loan, is considered predatory.

The predatory part is the pushing kids who don't understand finances into taking massive loans with high interest rates. I've passed on a traditional uni for this because I want to avoid debt, and still get "why don't you go to uni?"'d every so often by family and acquaintance's. And if the argument is "well, if you don't make enough to pay it, just don't!", as GP appears to be, I don't like spending other people's t…

>The predatory part is the pushing kids who don't understand finances into taking massive loans with high interest rates.

There's literally lectures and a quiz you have to pass before you can take the loans that explains how repayment and interest rates work.

For public loans the actual amount doesn't really matter because payment is income based. And the cap on lending is around $60k for 4 years, so I'd hardly use the word massive.

>"why don't you go to uni?"'

Of course all this only applies assuming you're American, which I'd guess your not since your friends call it uni.

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

#282

Post by _moof »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #163
_fat_santa wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I did community college, got a guaranteed transfer agreement to UC Davis, but was admitted to UCLA and so went there instead. The quality of teaching at the community college often exceeded that at UCLA. Researchers are not necessarily the best teachers. In my department there were a number of community college transfer students. They were almost always the most ambitious, and ended up going the furthest. YMMV.

I had a similar experience. Much better teaching at the two-year school than at the four-year. One of my upper-level professors didn't even teach at all; he just threw us a book, said "read this," and then we didn't hear from him again until the end of the semester.

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

#283

Post by rileyphone »

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.

Yes, we shouldn’t penalize people for getting an education and becoming better citizens. Many are drowning in the non-absolvable debt for student loans. And the entry level out of med school is a residency making a third of that number.

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

#284

Post by epistasis »

sokoloff wrote: post #195
epistasis wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

An interest rate on something that is entirely uncollateralized and granted to someone with no income and often no credit history nor assets is usurious at a rate of around 2x that of an owner-occupied house with 20% down, an income of >3x the monthly payments, and a 740+ credit score? That is quite far from obvious to me.

If they have to make it undischargable in bankruptcy, that is a pretty big clue that the loan is usurious, IMHO.

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

#285

Post by lthornberry »

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.

Two biggest drivers are 1) massive declines in public support (for public universities, obviously) and 2) more administrators.

Much of the growth in administration is driven by a significant rise in the costs to comply with federal regulation. Those regulations are not bad--it's the cost of complying with things like disability laws, Title IX, etc--but they require collecting and reporting significant amounts of data, and that isn't free.

There's other stuff too; some colleges do have the lazy rivers and fancy dorms, many colleges lose money on their football program, etc. But those aren't the fundamental drivers.

By the way, in case anyone is wondering, the money is definitely NOT going to faculty salaries. Salaries for full-time faculty have been stagnant for decades even though an increasing percentage of classes are taught by poorly-paid adjuncts.

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

#286

Post by lapetitejort »

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.

> There are reams of low-grade degrees in which the majority of teaching is in memorization

I have a degree in physics with a minor in literature. I took one upper div lit class a quarter. I never memorized a thing. Instead I read a ton, both assigned and peer review, and wrote a ton, both essays and creative. My lit classes are far more memorable than my physics classes because I learned the skill of communicating my ideas. "Low-grade" creative writing taught me that my ideas will never be conveyed as I hoped; good criticism can be immensely helpful; and rewriting my work is when something truly useful comes together.

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

#287

Post by treis »

HWR_14 wrote: post #130
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…

It's not just loans, it's COVID. If I were college-age and I were planning on going to college I would certainly do one of two things. I would postpone college until the COVID issues died down -or- I would use the fewer applicants to get into a more prestigious school banking on a better 3 year experience (out of 4) starting in the fall of 2022 and more impressive degree going forward. Either way, I can imagine admit…

>. I would postpone college until the COVID issues died down

What would you do instead?

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

#288

Post by paulpauper »

thehappypm wrote: post #148
samarama wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

By that logic there should be much more outrage about credit card debt, car loan debt.

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

#289

Post by kd913 »

dqv wrote: post #142
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”.

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.…

We have vaccines now, we aren't in the same situation as the beginning of the pandemic.

The purpose of the lockdown wasn't to prevent deaths, it was to prevent the hospital systems collapsing.

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

#290

Post by dpierce9 »

zactato wrote: post #269
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…

When I was in school the loans were called stafford loans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stafford_Loan I guess they've since changed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Direct_Student_Loan_Pr... They are very much for private schools. There's no real limit on them. They tend to cover the difference between what a family can pay and what the tuition is. They're generally low interest and you don't need to start p…

These are for college, not high school.

Private high school costs have gone up as fast or faster than college. This cannot be explained by the availability of federal loans.

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