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> Raising the overall level of education in this country should be a much larger goal that it seems to be. On one level, I totally agree. At the same time, wel
by ericb 8y ago
> Raising the overall level of education in this country should be a much larger goal that it seems to be.
On one level, I totally agree. At the same time, well-meaning attempts to make college loans available to everyone for everything seem to have massively bloated the cost of education to a crippling degree. I think the key is in the how of the approach.
- bluGill 8y agoThat is the problem with politics: the unintended effects are always an issue. Of course everything else has this issue as well. The only difference is most of us start small, and if it works we expand. You can't do that easily for national programs.
- stochastic_monk 8y agoNot in America, at least. Many European countries have government-paid, top-tier public education for free to the students.
- bluGill 8y agoYes, but they have their own unintended consequences. As an outsider I have no idea what, but I've been around long enough to know they exist. They might or might not be worth it.
- facing_worlds 8y agoWhat makes you think its unintended? Someone profits from all the student loans issued.
- salvar 8y ago> You can't do that easily for national programs. Is this American exceptionalism? Many nations do this, with great results.
- ataturk 8y agoWall Street greed did this! The financiers got their hooks into higher education. I'm friends with a person who is the head of financial aid at a major Mid-Atlantic university. She saw it all go down during the Bill Clinton years. It was all sold as helping people but all they did was help themselves. A lot of university administrators are guilty, too. There were likely kickbacks and other illegal schemes taking place.
- vlan0 8y ago>well-meaning attempts to make college loans available to everyone for everything seem to have massively bloated the cost of education to a crippling degree. I'm not so sure about this as a cause. If you look at the costs for colleges that have increased over time, you can start to see where a lot of this money is going. Spending on new and maintaining aging technology is increased. And now you have entire departments like Title IX that never existed in prior school models. And with expansion, additional management overhead now exists. There is seemly at least a Director of <insert title here> for everything.
- ericb 8y ago> There is seemly at least a Director of <insert title here> for everything. I would argue some of the things you list as causes of increasing tuition are the effects of tuition surpluses from additional income from a trillion in student loans.
- vlan0 8y agoI would agree. I've been in higher ed for the last 10 years and can tell you there are a lot of compounding factors that gotten us in this mess of high costs.