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> Americans spend about $30,000 per student a year—nearly twice as much as the average developed country. This narrative needs to die. Hear me out before judg
by Alupis 8y ago
> Americans spend about $30,000 per student a year—nearly twice as much as the average developed country.
This narrative needs to die.
Hear me out before judging...
Yes, University is expensive! But - a large portion of the numbers you see thrown around include living expenses! The same living expenses a student would incur if they were not attending University.
The predominant reason for this is students are still today largely encouraged to be Professional Students, ie. full time students who do not work, or work very little.
This mandates their living expenses having to come from elsewhere - either parents, or loans! No person should be taking out loans to eat at Taco Bell... or buy toilet paper.
Instead, we need to shift the focus away from encouraging Professional Students, but rather we should encourage Professionals who attend University.
Not only will our youth gain more valuable and tangible life-long skills and experience working full-time, but their education can become a more significant compliment to their ascension to adulthood. Working well with others, balancing a bank account, paying bills, working on real-world problems, and more!
It will take longer to gain their degree, but it will become more valuable and appreciated in the process. Graduating students will have actual skills and experience industry needs, not just academic and homework skills.
At the top of it all, they'll be graduating with much less, or no debt - since working full-time during school would have been paying the bills, buying that Taco Bell and toilet paper, and more.
- jeremyjh 8y agoTFA acknowledges this but points out that we still lead the world (other than Luxembourg)when taking out those expenses.
- sofaofthedamned 8y agoIt's a good point tbf - i'm in the UK and my partner is in academia, we disagree on politics massively. One thing we agree on is that universities should be a place of constant learning - less pressure on doing it when you're 19-22, and more like your National Insurance payments as an adult should go towards being able to go to the local Uni and using these credits for learning.
- Retric 8y ago'Living expenses' charged by schools are insanely inflated. ~3 months of food and shelter don't cost ~7k when you have roommates.
- Alupis 8y agoI certainly don't dispute that - it's borderline criminal what the University-sanctioned housing charges - particularly when they stack up to 5 people in a single unit! However, in my experience, most students live off-campus these days. There's just not enough student housing, and it's a terrible deal anyhow.
- xvector 8y ago> However, in my experience, most students live off-campus these days. Can you source this statement? I know at UCB there were some students that lived off-campus but the vast majority lived in campus dorms IIRC.
- Alupis 8y agoMy experience is with UC Davis and CSUS, both of which have dramatic shortages of student housing for their over 35,000 student population at each school.
- ryandrake 8y agoMaybe it’s different now, but when I went to university, costly on-campus housing was mandatory up until your 4th (Senior) year.
- aidenn0 8y agoIt varies greatly from school to school. Where I went, they didn't even guarantee housing to Freshmen, where my wife went, first 2 years were mandatory on-campus living.
- amreact 8y agoAt UAH (University of Alabama in Huntsville) they have started requiring first-year students to live in the dorms. Not sure if they require second-year students to.
- vkou 8y ago> Yes, University is expensive! But - a large portion of the numbers you see thrown around include living expenses! The same living expenses a student would incur if they were not attending University. Nearly all American universities require their students to live in dorms for the first X years of their undergrad. You can be exempted from this requirement if you are dirt-poor, or are married. [1] If you are a middle class, unmarried 18 year-old, you are forced to undertake this expense - even if you have the option of living at home, or somewhere cheaper. It's a blatant money grab. Yes, there are advantages to dorm living, but also lots of disadvantages. [1] Apparently, all the nonesense about fraternity with your students, and learning independence, and students living in dorms having better grades flies out the window if you're married. Huh. It's almost like it's a thin justification for the university spending millions of dollars on building housing.
- Alupis 8y agoThis isn't true for all Universities - and for those where it's still an outdated requirement, we should push to change this. Student housing is a rip-off.
- vkou 8y agoWhat's happening is the converse - more and more universities are instituting this requirement. After all, the fancy dorms they built aren't going to pay for themselves, if they don't get a captive tenant base.
- pwthornton 8y agoThe market is not looking to hire a bunch more unskilled 18 year olds. If the U.S. military wasn't essentially a workforce development program for unskilled 18-year-olds, we would have an even bigger glut. Your argument is flawed. This may be true for master's degrees, where it makes sense to work full time and take courses part time, but the idea that it makes sense for a bunch of 18-year-olds to try to compete over a bunch of minimum wage jobs doesn't seem like a great solution. Most jobs for 18 year olds cannot over living expenses and college tuition.
- Alupis 8y agoWorking professional doesn't necessarily mean bachelor-degree professionals. There are plenty of places that hire students full-time, for interships or full positions. Students can even get unskilled jobs - nothing wrong with that. Working at McDonald's, possibly working you way up to shift leader, team leader or manager is perfectly acceptable. Just so that you work full-time.
- fzeroracer 8y agoYou're extremely out of touch with the modern day job market and issues students face. There's zero to very little career advancement while working minimum wage jobs. Minimum wage jobs won't even cover the cost of rent in most states, let alone the full cost of living and the cost of college. Saying that there are 'plenty of places' is also outright wrong considering the competition for minimum wage jobs is harsh; it's not just students that are in the pool.
- Alupis 8y agoYou're talking to a student who's spent 15 years attending community college and then University while working several full-time jobs to get to where I am today. Don't tell me I'm out of touch when I'm living exactly what I'm preaching. Don't tell me it's impossible when I'm doing exactly what I advocate for. It's time to change the University system... and standing here and saying these things are too hard to fix is why it's so broken. The solution isn't more tax-payer subsidies... it's fixing what we expect out of Universities, and what we expect out of students.
- fzeroracer 8y agoOkay, so where are these professional jobs going to come from? Last I checked unpaid internships still exist and are a blight for many industries, and although companies would gladly take advantage of free student labor this solves none of the problems with student debt. For other industries finding jobs related to your career while in college can be incredibly difficult; even back when I was in Uni I was in an area where there were zero opportunities for software development internships. Additionally how do you expect students to balance out both work and college? To draw back into my experiences I frequently would have to spend 3-4 hours after class every day working on projects, doing homework and studying. Time that would seep into my weekends and beyond. Combine that with a full time job and you have a fairly high stress environment. Other countries have students going to university full time without a problem. So then why is it uniquely an issue in America?