5 ms·

So at 17 or 18, with little life experience, students are supposed to make a financed $160k ($40*4) investment which may decide their economic fate for 20-30 ye

by dv_dt 10y ago

So at 17 or 18, with little life experience, students are supposed to make a financed $160k ($40*4) investment which may decide their economic fate for 20-30 years? Even with the help of parents and advisors to make predictions that isn't a good policy for the general case. (For one parents and advisor’s are also often wrong). There are ways to achieve good outcomes in the current system, but that is not the same as systemically maximizing good outcomes for society at large. I think the most efficient way to do that is to go back to giving significant direct funding to public university systems so they can offer low to no tuition education options. This puts competitive pressure on private universities and would have an overall downward effect on tuitions.

gist 10y ago
> So at 17 or 18, with little life experience, students are supposed to make a financed Well a good start might be simply avoiding majors that you know will go nowhere, don't you think? Like music, art and certain liberal arts. Even when I went to school it was known to be hard to get a job in those fields. But yet people still choose them and tried to "follow their passion". My passion was to learn something where I could earn a living. And I am having plenty of fun doing that. Of course you can't predict the future. But you can certainly improve your chances by giving some thought to what is not a good choice and hasn't ever really been.
- dv_dt 10y ago
  I'm sympathetic to what you're saying here. Sometimes I think the same. But ultimately I think it's premature optimization for society to directly build in economic earning value onto the cost of education. Maybe every major should show prospective students the typical earnings of that major as an indirect influence - but I don't think building that correlation into direct budgeting is a good thing to do in the long term. It would do far more good to first get tuition costs under control and then maybe use the direct funding path as a way where influence on public universities could be had. However, I think society ends up stronger if there's something of a firewall preventing politicians from putting too many specific policy requirements attached to that funding.
- legutierr 10y ago
  If some music, art or writing program is a top program, we want the best, most passionate people capable doing that work to be there, regardless of how much money their parents had. We all benefit if our most talented artists, musicians, writers and filmmakers are able to work in their chosen field. It's how culture moves forward, and it makes all our lives better. What you seem to be saying is that only the rich and well-off should pursue those fields, while the poor and middle class keep their heads down to "earn a living." Can't you see how that policy will impact your life negatively? I would hate to live in that world. Wouldn't you?
  - rayiner 10y ago
    False premise: education is necessary for society to develop musicians, artists, and writers. Hemingway was a "mere" high school graduate.
    - legutierr 10y ago
      I did not mean to imply that a formal arts education is necessary to train a great artist. But you seem to be saying that great artists don't need any education or training at all! Hemingway did not spring to life a great writer. He might have only completed high school, but high school was enough to get him a reporting job at age 18, and it was a reporting job that sent him to Paris, where he found Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, F Scott Fitzgerald. I would call that an education. The original point I tried to make was this: by expecting all poor and middle-class kids to spend their formative years preparing for practical, low-risk careers -- at the expense of their artistic "passions" -- we are depriving ourselves of their creative output. Things were different 100 years ago. If Hemingway didn't go to college, it was because he didn't need to. He was lucky enough to live at a time when you could work as a journalist at age 18 having no greater qualifications than a high school diploma and a few articles published in the school newspaper. What would Hemingway do today? Following gist's advice, he would go to college and study computer science or biomedical engineering. Or maybe he would substitute San Fransisco for Paris, and instead of A Farewell To Arms we would have another social-some-shit to add to the cannon of timeless iPhone apps. But study journalism or English literature with a view towards becoming a reporter or (gasp) a fiction writer? Out of the question. You know those majors won't go anywhere. You need to earn a living.
- radarsat1 10y ago
  So is your answer that people who choose "music, art and certain liberal arts" deserve the problems they get from college debt? Does that imply that you are fine with a society where these career paths effectively do not exist?
  - tptacek 10y ago
    I don't think the word "deserve" has to factor into it, but there's an ROI function not only for your major, but for the college you choose to pursue that major at.
    - radarsat1 10y ago
      Agreed, but that's a problem. Or at least, as long as we decide that "music, art and liberal arts" are things we want people to be able to do. If we decide those are not good things for people to do, then sure, make it difficult for them, but at least let's put the cards on the table. Otherwise I find that this train of thought has a "blaming the victim" element to it that I find distasteful.
      - tptacek 10y ago
        You've evaded my point. I'm saying, you can get a music degree without paying to do it at a top tier university. With remunerative degrees, you can at least make the argument that selective schools gate selective employers, and so expensive colleges can be a necessity. But it's harder to make that argument for music or art. The question isn't whether you should study art. It's how much of a premium you should pay to study it at an elite school.
        radarsat1 10y ago
        That's a fair point. I guess we should ask then why people do it. Is it because they are stupid? (Maybe, sometimes.) Or is there something about elite schools that are attractive for musicians, despite the risk of not getting a remunerative career out of it? Should we be doing something about that? In any case, you seem to be narrowing the domain more and more here, from "education is difficult for people to afford", to "education is difficult for artists to afford", to "education is difficult for artists who went to elite schools to afford." The article, on the other hand, is saying that even if you do make enough to get by, it's still hard to pay for school.
flubert 10y ago
>So at 17 or 18, with little life experience, ...isn't the real failure right here, in the constant infantilizing of our young? Shouldn't we be expecting our society to produce semi-capable adults when they come of age? It's not like people have to be so unworldly at the tender age of 18. http://roppskyline.pbworks.com/w/page/6550634/Growing%20up%20Spartan http://roppskyline.pbworks.com/w/page/6550634/Growing%20up%2...
- dv_dt 10y ago
  I would argue that requiring social/economic path that loads people down with high-debt at the beginning of their life is a recipe to destroying a lot of beneficial economic activity. (irrespective of if their specific career pays a lot). I strongly suspect that if you took the exact same amount of money as is spent on education today, financed it using either public debt or taxation or some mix, and direct funded more education through public universities, education would run more efficiently, and society and businesses would benefit economically more than individually loading people down with educational debt.
- azernik 10y ago
  I'm pretty sure those Spartan soldier-children were not capable of making informed financial decisions. In fact, a big part of that regimented lifestyle was built to take away choices from young people. Great saying (I think Israeli) - "the army is a system built by geniuses to control idiots". Because they generally recruit 18-20-year-olds, and yes, 18-20-year-olds are idiots. So the institution puts them through the kind of regimentation that the Spartans did to exert some kind of control.
  - dctoedt 10y ago
    > Great saying (I think Israeli) - "the army is a system built by geniuses to control idiots". That's a variation on a line from Herman Wouk's World War II novel The Caine Mutiny, in which one character says that the Navy is a system designed by geniuses for execution by idiots.
    - 10y ago
tptacek 10y ago
You don't generally pull the trigger on six-figure medical or law school debt in your teens.
- dv_dt 10y ago
  Ok, how about a straight undergrad budget at a public university. https://www.admission.ucla.edu/prospect/budget.htm https://www.admission.ucla.edu/prospect/budget.htm Depending on circumstances $25k to $52k for next year with a 10% increase over the next three to four years... http://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/tuition-and-fees-and-room-and-board-over-time-1975-76-2015-16-selected-years http://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-table...
  - pvg 10y ago
    The UC is the top tier of a multi-tiered public higher education system. A CA resident, even one set on a UC undergrad degree isn't going to end up $200k in debt or at minimum, can easily avoid it.
    - dv_dt 10y ago
      Who said 200K, the $25k/year is for a CA resident staying with relatives (i.e. free rent). That still adds up to $100k. Do we want to filter who goes to a top-tier university by those who are able to spend money there or by how well they perform? Doesn't society benefit the most if we are able to send the highest performers to the best universities without unrelated financial criteria knocking them out? And before someone points out financial aid - many potential people may self-disqualify before even getting to the point of applying. Even if people can afford it, charging that $100k takes away capital that a bright recent graduate might have been able acces to bootstrap a startup. I think across multiple facets, there are a large economic costs we pay by charging high tuitions to students.
      - pvg 10y ago
        The thing you linked shows $12,816 tuition. It is not cheap but it alone is not going to put you in six figure debt. Additionally, there are other forms of financial aid, you can work, and as I mentioned previously, you don't have to go to a UC school for the full four years get a degree from one - this is a path many take to both gain admission and make the financial burden more manageable. Is it ideal? Far from it. But it's also not an insurmountable obstacle for most who are qualified to attend. The public education systems fails lower-income students long, long before they get to university level.

by dv_dt 10y ago

gist 10y ago

> So at 17 or 18, with little life experience, students are supposed to make a financed Well a good start might be simply avoiding majors that you know will go nowhere, don't you think? Like music, art and certain liberal arts. Even when I went to school it was known to be hard to get a job in those fields. But yet people still choose them and tried to "follow their passion". My passion was to learn something where I could earn a living. And I am having plenty of fun doing that. Of course you can't predict the future. But you can certainly improve your chances by giving some thought to what is not a good choice and hasn't ever really been.

dv_dt 10y ago
I'm sympathetic to what you're saying here. Sometimes I think the same. But ultimately I think it's premature optimization for society to directly build in economic earning value onto the cost of education. Maybe every major should show prospective students the typical earnings of that major as an indirect influence - but I don't think building that correlation into direct budgeting is a good thing to do in the long term. It would do far more good to first get tuition costs under control and then maybe use the direct funding path as a way where influence on public universities could be had. However, I think society ends up stronger if there's something of a firewall preventing politicians from putting too many specific policy requirements attached to that funding.
legutierr 10y ago
If some music, art or writing program is a top program, we want the best, most passionate people capable doing that work to be there, regardless of how much money their parents had. We all benefit if our most talented artists, musicians, writers and filmmakers are able to work in their chosen field. It's how culture moves forward, and it makes all our lives better. What you seem to be saying is that only the rich and well-off should pursue those fields, while the poor and middle class keep their heads down to "earn a living." Can't you see how that policy will impact your life negatively? I would hate to live in that world. Wouldn't you?
- rayiner 10y ago
  False premise: education is necessary for society to develop musicians, artists, and writers. Hemingway was a "mere" high school graduate.
  - legutierr 10y ago
    I did not mean to imply that a formal arts education is necessary to train a great artist. But you seem to be saying that great artists don't need any education or training at all! Hemingway did not spring to life a great writer. He might have only completed high school, but high school was enough to get him a reporting job at age 18, and it was a reporting job that sent him to Paris, where he found Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, F Scott Fitzgerald. I would call that an education. The original point I tried to make was this: by expecting all poor and middle-class kids to spend their formative years preparing for practical, low-risk careers -- at the expense of their artistic "passions" -- we are depriving ourselves of their creative output. Things were different 100 years ago. If Hemingway didn't go to college, it was because he didn't need to. He was lucky enough to live at a time when you could work as a journalist at age 18 having no greater qualifications than a high school diploma and a few articles published in the school newspaper. What would Hemingway do today? Following gist's advice, he would go to college and study computer science or biomedical engineering. Or maybe he would substitute San Fransisco for Paris, and instead of A Farewell To Arms we would have another social-some-shit to add to the cannon of timeless iPhone apps. But study journalism or English literature with a view towards becoming a reporter or (gasp) a fiction writer? Out of the question. You know those majors won't go anywhere. You need to earn a living.
radarsat1 10y ago
So is your answer that people who choose "music, art and certain liberal arts" deserve the problems they get from college debt? Does that imply that you are fine with a society where these career paths effectively do not exist?
- tptacek 10y ago
  I don't think the word "deserve" has to factor into it, but there's an ROI function not only for your major, but for the college you choose to pursue that major at.
  - radarsat1 10y ago
    Agreed, but that's a problem. Or at least, as long as we decide that "music, art and liberal arts" are things we want people to be able to do. If we decide those are not good things for people to do, then sure, make it difficult for them, but at least let's put the cards on the table. Otherwise I find that this train of thought has a "blaming the victim" element to it that I find distasteful.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      You've evaded my point. I'm saying, you can get a music degree without paying to do it at a top tier university. With remunerative degrees, you can at least make the argument that selective schools gate selective employers, and so expensive colleges can be a necessity. But it's harder to make that argument for music or art. The question isn't whether you should study art. It's how much of a premium you should pay to study it at an elite school.
      - radarsat1 10y ago
        That's a fair point. I guess we should ask then why people do it. Is it because they are stupid? (Maybe, sometimes.) Or is there something about elite schools that are attractive for musicians, despite the risk of not getting a remunerative career out of it? Should we be doing something about that? In any case, you seem to be narrowing the domain more and more here, from "education is difficult for people to afford", to "education is difficult for artists to afford", to "education is difficult for artists who went to elite schools to afford." The article, on the other hand, is saying that even if you do make enough to get by, it's still hard to pay for school.

flubert 10y ago

>So at 17 or 18, with little life experience, ...isn't the real failure right here, in the constant infantilizing of our young? Shouldn't we be expecting our society to produce semi-capable adults when they come of age? It's not like people have to be so unworldly at the tender age of 18. http://roppskyline.pbworks.com/w/page/6550634/Growing%20up%20Spartan http://roppskyline.pbworks.com/w/page/6550634/Growing%20up%2...

dv_dt 10y ago
I would argue that requiring social/economic path that loads people down with high-debt at the beginning of their life is a recipe to destroying a lot of beneficial economic activity. (irrespective of if their specific career pays a lot). I strongly suspect that if you took the exact same amount of money as is spent on education today, financed it using either public debt or taxation or some mix, and direct funded more education through public universities, education would run more efficiently, and society and businesses would benefit economically more than individually loading people down with educational debt.
azernik 10y ago
I'm pretty sure those Spartan soldier-children were not capable of making informed financial decisions. In fact, a big part of that regimented lifestyle was built to take away choices from young people. Great saying (I think Israeli) - "the army is a system built by geniuses to control idiots". Because they generally recruit 18-20-year-olds, and yes, 18-20-year-olds are idiots. So the institution puts them through the kind of regimentation that the Spartans did to exert some kind of control.
- dctoedt 10y ago
  > Great saying (I think Israeli) - "the army is a system built by geniuses to control idiots". That's a variation on a line from Herman Wouk's World War II novel The Caine Mutiny, in which one character says that the Navy is a system designed by geniuses for execution by idiots.
  - 10y ago

tptacek 10y ago

You don't generally pull the trigger on six-figure medical or law school debt in your teens.

dv_dt 10y ago
Ok, how about a straight undergrad budget at a public university. https://www.admission.ucla.edu/prospect/budget.htm https://www.admission.ucla.edu/prospect/budget.htm Depending on circumstances $25k to $52k for next year with a 10% increase over the next three to four years... http://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/tuition-and-fees-and-room-and-board-over-time-1975-76-2015-16-selected-years http://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-table...
- pvg 10y ago
  The UC is the top tier of a multi-tiered public higher education system. A CA resident, even one set on a UC undergrad degree isn't going to end up $200k in debt or at minimum, can easily avoid it.
  - dv_dt 10y ago
    Who said 200K, the $25k/year is for a CA resident staying with relatives (i.e. free rent). That still adds up to $100k. Do we want to filter who goes to a top-tier university by those who are able to spend money there or by how well they perform? Doesn't society benefit the most if we are able to send the highest performers to the best universities without unrelated financial criteria knocking them out? And before someone points out financial aid - many potential people may self-disqualify before even getting to the point of applying. Even if people can afford it, charging that $100k takes away capital that a bright recent graduate might have been able acces to bootstrap a startup. I think across multiple facets, there are a large economic costs we pay by charging high tuitions to students.
    - pvg 10y ago
      The thing you linked shows $12,816 tuition. It is not cheap but it alone is not going to put you in six figure debt. Additionally, there are other forms of financial aid, you can work, and as I mentioned previously, you don't have to go to a UC school for the full four years get a degree from one - this is a path many take to both gain admission and make the financial burden more manageable. Is it ideal? Far from it. But it's also not an insurmountable obstacle for most who are qualified to attend. The public education systems fails lower-income students long, long before they get to university level.