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CommieGIR
Aug 22, 2006

The blue glow is a feature, not a bug


Pillbug




Let's talk about rising costs of College in the United States and what it might mean Economically and Socially for our futures!

Bonus Chat: High Book Costs

As many are well aware, especially in light of Obama's goal of 'Free' Community College education push, College costs are spiraling upwards, matched by an increasingly for-profit driven University system flooded with both promising students and unwilling applicants trying to fulfill their income dreams.

A couple good sources on rising costs of US Colleges:

National Center for Education Statistics: http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=76
Wikipedia: US Tuition Increases: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_tuition_in_the_United_States

Of course, you have a couple EU countries like Germany offering free education with some stipulations.

This hits me personally, as I am an undergrad Physics student in Georgia, and rising costs have caused me to cut my class schedule, matched evenly by rising book costs.



Discussion Topics Include:
Student Loansharking
Decreasing Federal Aid
Emphasis on non-STEM fields
Outsourcing and Education

CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Jan 23, 2015

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CommieGIR
Aug 22, 2006

The blue glow is a feature, not a bug


Pillbug
[Reserved for Future Moaning]

GAINING WEIGHT...
Mar 26, 2007

See? Science proves the JewsMuslims are inferior and must be purged! I'm not a racist, honest!
I feel like this, along with seemingly most problems currently befalling America, is purely a symptom of not taxing the rich enough. If we taxed them appropriately (and implicit in that is actually making them pay it vs having them hide it away in the Caymans), there would be money to subsidize higher education like we do with public schools, and like nations that already pay for higher education do.

Costs are rising and people's wages are stagnating because the money that could help is currently being used in a pissing contest among people that regularly end up in Forbes.

PT6A
Jan 5, 2006

Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane
As much as I sympathize with the plight of US college students, from what I've heard of the US education system, you guys really need to get your poo poo together with everything before university first. Of the Americans I know personally, none send them to public school, and they'll pretty much give up any other luxury to ensure they can pay private school tuition. Here in Canada, only rich idiots with more money than brains send their kids to private school, but in the US it seems to be the way to go if there's any way you can swing it.

Let's say you made college free, for the sake of argument. The only people who are going to be able to take advantage of that are people who went to good schools in the first place, which will only further entrench the class divide (since now there will be no reason not to go to university if you can). Is that really where money and effort should be directed first?

Captain_Maclaine
Sep 30, 2001

Every moment I'm alive, I pray for death!
I teach history at a major public university in upstate New York at the moment and do my level best to only assign books that are as inexpensive as possible. Admittedly, it's a bit easier than in the sciences where, I'm told, textbooks are ruinously expensive. Even still, it blows my mind how much it costs my students just to take classes and all, compared to how things were back in the late 90s when I was an undergrad myself.

One thing that helps in my higher-level courses where the books I assign are just that, and not actual textbooks, is that ebook variants are increasingly available (though that makes getting my students to cite properly even more of a pain than usual), which I'd like to think must save a fair amount of money. Not that I'm claiming a cheap technical fix like that resolves the larger, structural issues of cost of higher education in an economy where if you're even going to have a shot at all you need a bachelor's degree or something equivalent.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

The university of washington makes billions (with a b) in revenue, hundreds of millions over its largely bloated and ridiculous expenses, and yet continually raises tuition, because having a bunch of students in an old building get lectured at hundreds at a time by a grad student making less than 18 bucks an hour apparently just keeps getting more expensive.

They send regular blast mailers to everyone associated with the university about how this is all the fault of the state, which has cut its funding for the university. Most people seem to believe this narrative.

The reality is, the University sees itself first as a research grant getter, second as a sellable research generator, third as a property owner, fourth as an athletic institution, and fifth, if that, as a place with a mission to educate the people of the state. Its spending priorities reflect that. It wants more money from the state - who doesn't - but even its self-published financial information makes clear that it is raising tuition because it can, not because it needs to. Tuition raises have matched state cuts to the university almost 1 to 1, but revenue and for lack of a better term, "profit" have risen consistently regardless of state funding.

Jerry Manderbilt
May 31, 2012

No matter how much paperwork I process, it never goes away. It only increases.
Over here in UCI the new chancellor just raised his own salary while raising tuition to help pay for it.

Sheng-Ji Yang
Mar 5, 2014


PT6A posted:

Let's say you made college free, for the sake of argument. The only people who are going to be able to take advantage of that are people who went to good schools in the first place, which will only further entrench the class divide (since now there will be no reason not to go to university if you can). Is that really where money and effort should be directed first?

What does this even mean?

The Dipshit
Dec 21, 2005

by FactsAreUseless

PT6A posted:

As much as I sympathize with the plight of US college students, from what I've heard of the US education system, you guys really need to get your poo poo together with everything before university first. Of the Americans I know personally, none send them to public school, and they'll pretty much give up any other luxury to ensure they can pay private school tuition. Here in Canada, only rich idiots with more money than brains send their kids to private school, but in the US it seems to be the way to go if there's any way you can swing it.

Let's say you made college free, for the sake of argument. The only people who are going to be able to take advantage of that are people who went to good schools in the first place, which will only further entrench the class divide (since now there will be no reason not to go to university if you can). Is that really where money and effort should be directed first?

Lots of Americans also send their kids to private schools to avoid minorities when housing segregation fails them. I had 2 years of not-public school and I did well enough to get a science Phd. without much trouble, and I can name quite a few American Phd. holders, med students, medical doctors, and a couple of MD/Phd. people who all went to public school for most or all of their primary and secondary education.

There is a non-zero chance the Americans you know are mildly to wildly racist.

folgore
Jun 30, 2006

nice tut

PT6A posted:

As much as I sympathize with the plight of US college students, from what I've heard of the US education system, you guys really need to get your poo poo together with everything before university first. Of the Americans I know personally, none send them to public school, and they'll pretty much give up any other luxury to ensure they can pay private school tuition. Here in Canada, only rich idiots with more money than brains send their kids to private school, but in the US it seems to be the way to go if there's any way you can swing it.

Let's say you made college free, for the sake of argument. The only people who are going to be able to take advantage of that are people who went to good schools in the first place, which will only further entrench the class divide (since now there will be no reason not to go to university if you can). Is that really where money and effort should be directed first?

Private school isn't the norm for those that can afford it and neither are they universally better than public schools. The public schools that are failing horribly in America are frequently in poor districts, and that's where you would see some non-wealthy families saving pennies to enroll their children in a Catholic school or something.

That said, the high school graduation rate reached an all-time high of 80% last year. Whether all of these students are left prepared for college is a different story (they aren't), but they would not be going back to high school to learn how to write or do algebra. They'd take non-credit courses at their local community college.

Ghost of Reagan Past
Oct 7, 2003

rock and roll fun

PT6A posted:

As much as I sympathize with the plight of US college students, from what I've heard of the US education system, you guys really need to get your poo poo together with everything before university first. Of the Americans I know personally, none send them to public school, and they'll pretty much give up any other luxury to ensure they can pay private school tuition. Here in Canada, only rich idiots with more money than brains send their kids to private school, but in the US it seems to be the way to go if there's any way you can swing it.

Let's say you made college free, for the sake of argument. The only people who are going to be able to take advantage of that are people who went to good schools in the first place, which will only further entrench the class divide (since now there will be no reason not to go to university if you can). Is that really where money and effort should be directed first?
The US needs to fix its primary and secondary education system, but the vast majority of people go to public schools (only 10% of students are enrolled in private schools, and many of those are not the extreme college prep academies that garner the insane tuition rates--they're mostly religious schools). The education you get varies wildly from school to school, but I'm telling you right now that American primary and secondary schools are nowhere near as nightmarish as your American friends have probably convinced you, and the vast majority of university students at schools of all calibers went to public schools.

The primary problem with US university educations is the exorbitant cost. My undergrad tuition nearly doubled in a 4-year period. Most universities are undergoing unconscionable budget cuts, but one major area to look at is the administrators. Their salaries are going up, up, up! and yet we're told that departments can't hire anyone, or need to hire adjuncts, or can't support their grad students properly, because of budget shortfalls. There's a ton of problems with that. Another place to look is the constant expansion and remodeling of facilities. I finished undergrad in 2008, and last visited my alma mater in 2011. I barely recognized the place three years later! This during a period of extreme budget cuts and tuition hikes.

It's all absurd, especially when you look at the fancy-pants new building and then look at your grad student paycheck. gently caress, I've even heard that some administrators are convinced that hiring adjuncts is in the long-run cheaper than grad students, since you don't need as many faculty to teach graduate courses if you replace grad student labor with adjuncts :suicide:.

Sheng-ji Yang posted:

What does this even mean?
I think he's convinced that US public schools are so bad that nobody who goes to them can get into even the shittiest colleges.

GAINING WEIGHT...
Mar 26, 2007

See? Science proves the JewsMuslims are inferior and must be purged! I'm not a racist, honest!

PT6A posted:

Let's say you made college free, for the sake of argument. The only people who are going to be able to take advantage of that are people who went to good schools in the first place, which will only further entrench the class divide (since now there will be no reason not to go to university if you can).

Making college free will widen the class divide, not the opposite? Are you sure? How does that even make sense? Isn't the current situation doing that, and doing it way worse?

Ghost of Reagan Past
Oct 7, 2003

rock and roll fun
Also, when the student loan bubble bursts it's going to destroy the economy. So we've got that to look forward to!

on the left
Nov 2, 2013
I Am A Gigantic Piece Of Shit

Literally poo from a diseased human butt

Ghost of Reagan Past posted:

The primary problem with US university educations is the exorbitant cost. My undergrad tuition nearly doubled in a 4-year period. Most universities are undergoing unconscionable budget cuts, but one major area to look at is the administrators. Their salaries are going up, up, up! and yet we're told that departments can't hire anyone, or need to hire adjuncts, or can't support their grad students properly, because of budget shortfalls. There's a ton of problems with that. Another place to look is the constant expansion and remodeling of facilities. I finished undergrad in 2008, and last visited my alma mater in 2011. I barely recognized the place three years later! This during a period of extreme budget cuts and tuition hikes.

Many of my foreign friends are always amazed at the difference in college experience between the US and practically anywhere else. We have the awesome on-campus housing, olympic-standard sports facilities, fancy new buildings everywhere, and administrative staff who do all sorts of dubious tasks such as "shaping the class".

These costs are probably not scalable if we gave everyone a free education. We'd have to send most people to a no-frills community college or drab extension campus.


GAINING WEIGHT... posted:

Making college free will widen the class divide, not the opposite? Are you sure? How does that even make sense? Isn't the current situation doing that, and doing it way worse?

Poor people have issues getting into college and finishing it. Making college free can easily be a stealth subsidy to the middle class that leaves the poor behind.

Cao Ni Ma
May 25, 2010



Over here you can get a 5 year bachelor degree from the best engineering university in the Caribbean (ranks pretty well in the states too) for like $1200 a 16 credit semester. Sure books are still hella expensive but you'll easily burn more money on food and housing that you would on the actual tuition. Hell, if you are a veteran they foot the tuition bill so all that sweet Pell grant + GI bill goes straight to your bank account. Its pretty sweet.

PT6A
Jan 5, 2006

Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane

GAINING WEIGHT... posted:

Making college free will widen the class divide, not the opposite? Are you sure? How does that even make sense? Isn't the current situation doing that, and doing it way worse?

I suppose it won't make it worse, but it certainly won't help anyone who already got hosed over during their primary education. I dunno, I just think that I see a lot more weaknesses in the primary education system in the US (and Canada to a slightly lesser extent) that we'd be better off spending money un-loving that before we make it easier for the middle-class to remain middle-class and exclude the working class. It'd be great to have a more college-educated population, yes, but I'd much rather try to achieve 100% literacy and numeracy first, if those two goals have to compete for resources.

Okuteru
Nov 10, 2007

Choose this life you're on your own
Another problem with education is that there is a strong belief in the older generations that college is THE ONLY way to achieve an upper middle class lifestyle, even though that hasn't been true in years. While I think Mike Rowe is a libertarian douche, I do respect his work in raising awareness of the trades as an an alternative to college. Let's face it, not everyone wants to put themselves into debt, so why aren't we pushing harder for trade schools?

Ghost of Reagan Past posted:

Another place to look is the constant expansion and remodeling of facilities. I finished undergrad in 2008, and last visited my alma mater in 2011. I barely recognized the place three years later! This during a period of extreme budget cuts and tuition hikes.

It's all absurd, especially when you look at the fancy-pants new building and then look at your grad student paycheck. gently caress, I've even heard that some administrators are convinced that hiring adjuncts is in the long-run cheaper than grad students, since you don't need as many faculty to teach graduate courses if you replace grad student labor with adjuncts :suicide:.

My commuter college is building even more dorms it doesn't need.

Also, this map is depressing.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Ghost of Reagan Past posted:

Also, when the student loan bubble bursts it's going to destroy the economy. So we've got that to look forward to!

It's a giant slow motion train wreck. People going into crazy debt to afford college that they can never pay off, many of them defaulting, and it only getting worse every year.

CommieGIR
Aug 22, 2006

The blue glow is a feature, not a bug


Pillbug

"Forceholy" posted:


Also, this map is depressing.


Yeah, College Sports programs are kind of on my poo poo list, because of the amount of attention and often funding they take up

Salt Fish
Sep 11, 2003

Cybernetic Crumb

Forceholy posted:

Another problem with education is that there is a strong belief in the older generations that college is THE ONLY way to achieve an upper middle class lifestyle, even though that hasn't been true in years. While I think Mike Rowe is a libertarian douche, I do respect his work in raising awareness of the trades as an an alternative to college. Let's face it, not everyone wants to put themselves into debt, so why aren't we pushing harder for trade schools?


My commuter college is building even more dorms it doesn't need.

Also, this map is depressing.


This is a bit misleading because college football programs are actually profit centers for public universities. It does also make the point that colleges pay a lot of money to their higher administration staff but if you look at sports programs as a contained unit they are bringing in money.

Rand alPaul
Feb 3, 2010

by Nyc_Tattoo
I just hope student loan debt becomes dischargeable by bankruptcy sometime soon. I cannot repay my loan, and if you look at the job boards for History professors/instructors, universities are paying near-or-below minimum wage for new hires.

But hey. College football continues to get lots of taxpayer money!

CommieGIR
Aug 22, 2006

The blue glow is a feature, not a bug


Pillbug

Salt Fish posted:

This is a bit misleading because college football programs are actually profit centers for public universities. It does also make the point that colleges pay a lot of money to their higher administration staff but if you look at sports programs as a contained unit they are bringing in money.

The problem being most of those profits are poured right back into the sports programs.

Salt Fish
Sep 11, 2003

Cybernetic Crumb
I looked it up and it seems that around 18% of accredited college football programs are profitable:

http://www.ethosreview.org/intellectual-spaces/is-college-football-profitable/

The NCAA claims 50% of programs are profitable. At any rate, it at least isn't as egregious as you might think based on the size of the large programs.

Ghost of Reagan Past
Oct 7, 2003

rock and roll fun

Forceholy posted:

Another problem with education is that there is a strong belief in the older generations that college is THE ONLY way to achieve an upper middle class lifestyle, even though that hasn't been true in years. While I think Mike Rowe is a libertarian douche, I do respect his work in raising awareness of the trades as an an alternative to college. Let's face it, not everyone wants to put themselves into debt, so why aren't we pushing harder for trade schools?

My commuter college is building even more dorms it doesn't need.

Also, this map is depressing.

We should probably try and fix the problems that result in obscene college debt. And people don't want to put themselves into student loan debt. They're convinced by the powerful adults around them that this is the only way to get a respectable career--and it almost always is (unless you go into the trades, but I'm sorry, if we do that trade school will be like what law school has become: a money pit with no jobs afterwards...talking about how students need to do X or Y doesn't do jack poo poo for the real problem, which is that there really aren't many good middle-class jobs left anymore).

As for the map, most of those coaches are paid for with athletic donations and the like. I agree that we pay our coaches way too much, but that's a drop in the bucket compared to most university budgets. It's just not the cause of the problem: students that go to the University of Montana (say) still have the exact same cost issues everyone else has. Now, you might say that those donors are sending their $$$ to the athletic department rather than the academic parts, but honestly universities are a gigantic clusterfuck and the money problems aren't because universities are broke. It's because their priorities are broken and there's a basically free source of money called student loans.

Best Friends posted:

It's a giant slow motion train wreck. People going into crazy debt to afford college that they can never pay off, many of them defaulting, and it only getting worse every year.
I imagine if they discharged all of it above a certain value that's been in an active repayment period for a certain length of time would seriously slow down the time bomb, but it's gonna blow sometime. It's probably continuing to hurt the economy since all kinds of money is being spent in the student loan repayment black hole.

Or, they need to make it dischargeable in bankruptcy. That'd change the whole university financial dynamics, though, and :laffo: if anyone's going to let that happen.

Rand alPaul posted:

I just hope student loan debt becomes dischargeable by bankruptcy sometime soon. I cannot repay my loan, and if you look at the job boards for History professors/instructors, universities are paying near-or-below minimum wage for new hires.
And this is why everyone in graduate school (myself included) needs to have a goddamn exit plan even if they get their PhD, because holy gently caress the pay for highly educated professionals is so bad.

on the left
Nov 2, 2013
I Am A Gigantic Piece Of Shit

Literally poo from a diseased human butt

Salt Fish posted:

I looked it up and it seems that around 18% of accredited college football programs are profitable:

http://www.ethosreview.org/intellectual-spaces/is-college-football-profitable/

The NCAA claims 50% of programs are profitable. At any rate, it at least isn't as egregious as you might think based on the size of the large programs.

The problem is Title IX, which requires schools to funnel equal money into unprofitable sports. This requires the football team to make A LOT of money to cover the costs of women's field hockey and rowing.

The government should allow schools to creatively do the accounting for the sports program so that a school can say "We don't spend the schools money on football since it's a profitable program, so the football program is not counted for Title IX purposes"

Salt Fish
Sep 11, 2003

Cybernetic Crumb

Ghost of Reagan Past posted:

And this is why everyone in graduate school (myself included) needs to have a goddamn exit plan even if they get their PhD, because holy gently caress the pay for highly educated professionals is so bad.

Which highly paid professionals? The entire reason that we want to lower tuition costs is because having a degree is lucrative in the job market. Otherwise the solution would be to say "just don't go to college".

Ghost of Reagan Past
Oct 7, 2003

rock and roll fun

Salt Fish posted:

Which highly paid professionals? The entire reason that we want to lower tuition costs is because having a degree is lucrative in the job market. Otherwise the solution would be to say "just don't go to college".
I don't think I said anything that disagrees with it? My specific thing was about graduate school and going into academia. Which is, really, almost always why you get a PhD.

I'm all for lowering education costs and I don't know how you read me as saying anything relating to that? It was just a comment about how bad the academic job market is.

BlueBlazer
Apr 1, 2010

Forceholy posted:

Let's face it, not everyone wants to put themselves into debt, so why aren't we pushing harder for trade schools

When I was growing up I knew the only way to get into college was to find a way to pay for it. Qualifying was nothing.

Those measly scholarships didn't really adjust for tuition increases.

Thus viola. I became an electrician. Once you get into the college educated bubble you tend not to notice everyone else fighting for min wage jobs and the hope for some sort of apprenticeship. I've been funneling anyone I know with a lovely min slavery job to my contractor buddies, you get way more out of being a carpenter/plumber/IT/maintenance helper for a year than 10 working retail.

I just want to gauge here, how many here are tradesmen? Or non-college educated "professional s" working in a field where your experience meets the requirement of a college degree.

Okuteru
Nov 10, 2007

Choose this life you're on your own

Ghost of Reagan Past posted:

We should probably try and fix the problems that result in obscene college debt. And people don't want to put themselves into student loan debt. They're convinced by the powerful adults around them that this is the only way to get a respectable career--and it almost always is (unless you go into the trades, but I'm sorry, if we do that trade school will be like what law school has become: a money pit with no jobs afterwards...talking about how students need to do X or Y doesn't do jack poo poo for the real problem, which is that there really aren't many good middle-class jobs left anymore).


You only get a degree if you get a STEM degree, at least according to the internet.

Captain_Maclaine
Sep 30, 2001

Every moment I'm alive, I pray for death!

Forceholy posted:

You only get a degree if you get a STEM degree, at least according to the internet.

The latest rumblings I've been hearing are that STEM is turning into STEAM, with the A being "arts" since, hilariously, STEM has been pushed for long enough, loudly enough, that there's a growing glut of graduates with bachelors in those fields, and a dearth of liberal arts grads out there.

Rand alPaul
Feb 3, 2010

by Nyc_Tattoo

Forceholy posted:

You only get a degree if you get a STEM degree, at least according to the internet.

That's a huge problem, too. Everyone goes to college and majors in the "hot" degree "that will guarantee them a job when they graduate." Then you have a huge loving glut four years later.

Science Friday on NPR had a segment about 12 months ago talking about how most STEM is already saturated.

Salt Fish
Sep 11, 2003

Cybernetic Crumb

Forceholy posted:

You only get a degree if you get a STEM degree, at least according to the internet.

It's an undeniable fact that different degrees lead to different opportunities that pay different amounts. I find it really weird when someone says that getting a phd results in a minimum wage job because people with that type of education are highly sought after in a number of fields. Different jobs being in different supply and demand is really a different issue than college tuition.

double negative
Jul 7, 2003


Best Friends posted:

It's a giant slow motion train wreck. People going into crazy debt to afford college that they can never pay off, many of them defaulting, and it only getting worse every year.

The best part is that we are developing new and amazingly ruthless institutions that are aggressively targeting the most vulnerable portions of the population. poo poo is crazy right now for first generation, low-income high school seniors. A lot of them have to deal with poorly funded, understaffed schools with guidance counselors who are overworked and/or unable to focus on helping them get into college. Their parents don't know what the gently caress is going on with going to college, especially if they're recent immigrants. The schools that will invariably reach out to them the most frequently and the most aggressively are for-profit institutions (my favorites are the ones that put "State" in their name to convince people they're public) with fraudulent career preparation programs, single digit graduation rates over 6 six years, and a default rate of roughly 50%. Since you'll never graduate, you can just attend forever, and keep paying! Best part is, they receive an outsized portion of federal financial aid money, which they immediately use to ramp up their advertising efforts and attract more people who don't know better to maybe (probably not) get a worthless degree and definitely eat a ridiculous amount of debt.

Even when they clear that hurdle, there's a poo poo ton of arcane paperwork and logistical hoops to jump through, especially if they have a noncustodial parent, which many of them do, and especially if they're trying to attend the kind of upper-tier private institution that might actually give them a full ride. We're defunding the public colleges and universities that are supposed to be the most affordable for the most students, and this is all happening at a time when a post-secondary degree is both more necessary and less cost-effective.

The harder you look at it, the more hosed up it is. The way things are set up now, we're just exacerbating all of the worst trends in our society in terms of social and economic stratification with the mechanism that's supposed to do the opposite.

Effectronica
May 31, 2011
Fallen Rib

Best Friends posted:

The university of washington makes billions (with a b) in revenue, hundreds of millions over its largely bloated and ridiculous expenses, and yet continually raises tuition, because having a bunch of students in an old building get lectured at hundreds at a time by a grad student making less than 18 bucks an hour apparently just keeps getting more expensive.

They send regular blast mailers to everyone associated with the university about how this is all the fault of the state, which has cut its funding for the university. Most people seem to believe this narrative.

The reality is, the University sees itself first as a research grant getter, second as a sellable research generator, third as a property owner, fourth as an athletic institution, and fifth, if that, as a place with a mission to educate the people of the state. Its spending priorities reflect that. It wants more money from the state - who doesn't - but even its self-published financial information makes clear that it is raising tuition because it can, not because it needs to. Tuition raises have matched state cuts to the university almost 1 to 1, but revenue and for lack of a better term, "profit" have risen consistently regardless of state funding.

So how much of that money is grants/donations for specific purposes and how much of it can be used for anything? Because if they get money to build a new dorm, and they use it to make up for the state of Washington slashing funding again, they are liable to be sued, and in any case, are less likely to get any more money from that donor.

blah_blah
Apr 15, 2006

Ghost of Reagan Past posted:

Also, when the student loan bubble bursts it's going to destroy the economy. So we've got that to look forward to!

Why do you believe that this is the case?

i say swears online
Mar 4, 2005

blah_blah posted:

Why do you believe that this is the case?

It may not collapse the economy, but it'll significantly damage the overall career prospects for an entire generation.

pentyne
Nov 7, 2012

blah_blah posted:

Why do you believe that this is the case?

Yeah, it's never going to burst unless millions of graduates just refuse to work. The Income Based Repayment policy lets people pay back their loans based on their income, so at worst the loans are just collected with a massive amount of interest as people work to pay it off their entire lives.

The most sensible option is to move back in with parents hopefully rent free, spend 2-3 years living on the cheap trying to pay down the bulk of the loan, and then move on from there, but living with parents is still a huge social stigma. Assuming the average college graduate's salary is 35k, without factoring in rent, assuming 500 a month to live off of, someone could pay off $24k a year, and in 3 years probably be clear of student loans.

Granted this means they aren't buying a house a year or two out of college or having kids, so that's going to be a side effect, but the student loan industry is about as stable as any loan practice can get.

Freakazoid_
Jul 5, 2013


Buglord
It is likely we will have to push more people into college just to get all those low-skill workers out of the way when new automation technologies kick in 10-20 years from now.

Obama's proposal to pay for two years of community college education simply isn't enough (not capable of passing aside). It's more likely the government will have to foot the whole cost.

Ardennes
May 12, 2002

Forceholy posted:

Another problem with education is that there is a strong belief in the older generations that college is THE ONLY way to achieve an upper middle class lifestyle, even though that hasn't been true in years. While I think Mike Rowe is a libertarian douche, I do respect his work in raising awareness of the trades as an an alternative to college. Let's face it, not everyone wants to put themselves into debt, so why aren't we pushing harder for trade schools?

I actually heard the exact opposite from older generations all my life, that college is just nonsense and that there are plenty of trade jobs out there that sit because everyone is enrolled in gender studies.

The problem with pushing trades is actually there aren't many openings in unionized positions unless you know someone, and if you know someone then you are going to know that will be path for you in life. Outsourcing and the aftermath of the recession took a giant hit to a lot of trades, especially in manufacturing and construction and a lot of those jobs aren't coming back. It is all well and good to have funded trade schools but on the other hand telling kids they have a easy street with no connections and a competitive job market is a bit nuts. I don't think everyone should go to college, but there is a bit more going on.

Salt Fish posted:

It's an undeniable fact that different degrees lead to different opportunities that pay different amounts. I find it really weird when someone says that getting a phd results in a minimum wage job because people with that type of education are highly sought after in a number of fields. Different jobs being in different supply and demand is really a different issue than college tuition.

The funny thing a lot of people who really are into pressing STEM also think nursing is a "humiliating menial job for women" when it is one of the fields with the most demand and more and more nurses are men making solid middle class incomes. Also, many undergraduate degrees in liberal arts usually aren't suppose to directly lead into a field like an engineering degree which makes posters (grover and co) head explode.


Best Friends posted:

The reality is, the University sees itself first as a research grant getter, second as a sellable research generator, third as a property owner, fourth as an athletic institution, and fifth, if that, as a place with a mission to educate the people of the state. Its spending priorities reflect that. It wants more money from the state - who doesn't - but even its self-published financial information makes clear that it is raising tuition because it can, not because it needs to. Tuition raises have matched state cuts to the university almost 1 to 1, but revenue and for lack of a better term, "profit" have risen consistently regardless of state funding.

I think that is issue, most universities are run as businesses not schools and the business they are in, isn't really education but almost everyone else, including being landlord for student tenants and a real estate developer. Tuition is just another income source that goes into the pot and universities in general try to offer aid as limited as they can get away with.

Go to most major American university campuses, especially upper tier ones and there will be new buildings and new construction all over the place including state schools. UCLA is the best example of this until they ran out of land and bought more, who knows how it makes actual student life better.

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on the left
Nov 2, 2013
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Freakazoid_ posted:

Obama's proposal to pay for two years of community college education simply isn't enough (not capable of passing aside). It's more likely the government will have to foot the whole cost.

Free community college is a good way to start, because many people will not even finish 60 credits of community college. No point in throwing good money away on people who can't even succeed in general ed classes in CC.

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