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Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

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Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#401

Post by sethammons »

nxm wrote: post #192
sethammons wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone would do it. No, they wouldn't. Source: go back a couple decades, and student loans had low interest rates and were dischargeable in bankruptcy. It was an option. And, in fact, practically nobody did that.

Yes they would as there’d be no cost to them while all of them on the taxpayers.

Spherical cows. You are applying economic theory in a vacuum. Sure, we joked at the time we could just declare bankruptcy and keep the degree. However, show me sources showing that this was a real problem. It wasn't.

Simply, people were not playing the game that way in any serious way. I am pretty sure I have never met a single person who declared bankruptcy purely to avoid a student loan.

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#402

Post by Aurornis »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #393
Aurornis wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Check the marketing literature for any college and you will find that is not true. I actually had the opposite takeaway. The last university literature booklets I saw were all about the experience, the facilities, the sports, the events, and the fun. I don’t even remember if they included content about getting a job at the end.

That seems to depend on the category of the institution? The websites of two R1 universities for CS I skimmed don't mention jobs but websites for two local community colleges mention career and earnings benefits front and center.

It does. Community colleges aren't big student loan targets because their tuition is lower and they're often more transactional with a higher proportion of commuter and employed students. Universities have become more of an expensive all-in lifestyle for 4 or more years.

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#403

Post by pocksuppet »

IsTom wrote: post #128
tadfisher wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I want a philosophy degree then it's my God-given right to pay $240,000 plus interest for it. Maybe it shouldn't be subsidized, though.

Is this like, a real sum of money americans pay for a degree? Overhead must be mind-boggiling if like just two students are needed to pay educator's salary for the period.

You call it overhead but it's more like value extraction.

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#404

Post by treis »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #350
newsoftheday wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Self study can only go so far I retired last year after a career as a software engineer for several decades, 99.99% self-taught. I'm not unique. I've known many others who did the same. > Studying in a university has the advantage of learning from experts Whether they are experts is something I highly doubt when thinking about all the graduates I interviewed and worked with over the years. In my experience, the bet…

Software engineering is a pretty unique field as far as self study goes. There are others since the dawn of the internet, but many domains dont have great online learning resources. And then there's labs and research.

I don't think that's really true. Big ones like medicine and law have very well developed programs. To the point where something like half of med school students attend class rarely or never. More esoteric and less explicitly goal oriented fields aren't going to have as developed options but I doubt there's any undergraduate degree that you couldn't fairly easily mimic with self study.

The difference is that software engineering more or less doesn't use a comp sci degree to gatekeep.

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#405

Post by pocksuppet »

Muromec wrote: post #187
kelnos wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collectively, yes, but not individually. The problem is that the electorate tends to not understand the concept of second-order effects. For example, a college graduate in the arts might, directly or indirectly, generate more economic activity than someone without a college degree, regardless of the difference in income level of people in those two buckets.

Then the electorate does not deserve that generated activity and it will happen somewhere else

That's an odd way to say "a country that elects stupid people deserves to collapse". It's true, but it's an odd way to say it, and also quite pessimistic.

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#406

Post by rightbyte »

nradov wrote: post #390
beej71 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> amount of tax dollars spent on classes in progressive tea pot clay handcraft is minuscule. Seriously. Our debt goes up by $1T every 7 months, but I'm sure dropping even all student loans from all education won't stop it. I guess I get way more value from having artists in society than most people do. I get a lot of value out of city parks and libraries, too, both perpetual money-losers.

And yet many of our greatest artists never attended college at all.

Computer science is not about computers anympre than liberal art studies is about singing etc ...

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#407

Post by Zetaphor »

bluGill wrote: post #230
lionkor wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a shitty American take (or any of the countries that somehow decide the USA is a good model to follow), it's kind of baffling that this is a popular opinion and explains a lot of the social issues (or near lack of social system) you guys have. You know that technically, people are allowed to have fun and not strive to be a billionaire, right? Its everyones right to pick a path they want, and enjoy, and i…

You are allowed to have fun. Do what you want I don't care. I don't even know you. However if you want me the taxpayer to pay for the fun it needs to be a good investment for me. Otherwise I want to use my money to have fun myself.

There's so many more things my taxes are being used to fund that I think the majority would agree are a symptoms of waste and corruption, that focusing on people getting a degree in the arts is laughable. The current cost of this war could have paid for decades of healthcare or education.

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#408

Post by AngryData »

Aurornis wrote: post #346
AngryData wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that was an actual problem wouldn't people be doing it without the college already? When I was in my early 20s I got non-stop credit offers and I could have easily pulled out tens of thousands in crappy debt.

And what is the interest rate on those credit card offers? Is it the low single digits of a student loan which is not easily dischargeable? Or is it 18-30% like you’d expect from a loan where the recipient can discharge it more easily? This proves the point.

Why would it matter if I just declared bankruptcy?

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#409

Post by pocksuppet »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #57
theahura wrote: post #34

imo this is pants on head backwards. The whole problem with the current university system is that it has become exclusively a credentialing system that everyone uses to justify higher salaries. We’ve completely left the education part of it by the wayside…except for the liberal arts majors who are actually there just to learn! This rule is just encoding the existing tulip mania into federal law directly, by making it…

Still it would seem to make some amount of sense for federal aid to be restricted to economically advantageous persuits, no? Doesn't mean that's the only thing institutions can offer nor do I necessarily think it's the best way to improve the status quo.

If it's economically advantageous shouldn't the private sector be able to fund it for a profit already?

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#410

Post by nradov »

rightbyte wrote: post #406
nradov wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet many of our greatest artists never attended college at all.

Computer science is not about computers anympre than liberal art studies is about singing etc ...

OK but what's your point? Colleges usually classify performing arts like singing and fine arts like painting or sculpture as separate from liberal arts.

It would be good if more colleges offered majors suited to students interested in building commercial software rather than the theory of computation. Something like a "Bachelor of Fine Arts in Software Development".

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