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Supply and demand - the supply of college degree holders has gone up dramatically, therefore the cost of those degree-holders' labor to employers can be much lo

Supply and demand - the supply of college degree holders has gone up dramatically, therefore the cost of those degree-holders' labor to employers can be much lower. Combine this with rampant anti-labor practices, poor wage growth since the recession, and the huge increases in tuition/fees due to federal loans. These loans allow universities to jack up the costs, and then at 6% interest on federal loans, the govt is robbing our graduates. Can we take a step back and consider this: Germany and other modern nations provide free education, while poor and middle class graduates are paying 6% or more interest on their loans. Absolutely disgraceful!

whatshisface 7y ago
Tuition has also skyrocketed relative to inflation. New graduates are being squeezed from every side, to no clear benefit for the rest of us.
- deleted 7y ago
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randomdata 7y ago
Germany is also at the bottom end of tertiary education attainment in the OECD. The real lesson to learn from Germany is not free education, but that tertiary education simply isn't needed by the vast majority of the population. As the price of post secondary schooling is also a function of supply and demand, when the rest of the population back away from those services, it will become more cost effective for those who have a good reason to be there.
- Wohlf 7y ago
  Because Germany doesn't let anyone go to tertiary education, it's extremely selective.
  - vonmoltke 7y ago
    The new problem the US will have if they actually try to implement any kind of free or heavily-subsidized tertiary education system is that this high selectivity will not be acceptable to a significant portion of the US population. Part of the reason we are in this student debt crisis in the first place is the constant drumbeat that everyone is supposed to go to college. You can't suddenly tell a large portion of them "sorry, you aren't good enough for college".
    - whatshisface 7y ago
      America already has exclusive scholarships.
      - chrshawkes 7y ago
        Unless your mother is Felicity Huffman. That type of nonsense has been going on since jump street and another reason to despise the racket that is the typical modern day college education.
  - randomdata 7y ago
    And like whatshisface said in another comment, the US already provides scholarships for those who have good reason to attend a college. It is free already. The difference is that the US also allows those who wouldn't be accepted in Germany to fork over their own money to attend as well. Which, I imagine no American would want to take away. The freedom to be able to purchase desired services is something most Americans hold dearly.
    - syndacks 7y ago
      In other words, in America you have the opportunity, the freedom if you will, to be an idiot. Jonathan Franzen explores this in _Freedom_.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
joeyrideout 7y ago
I wouldn't say paying for something voluntarily is "robbing". Just bad marketing. And yeah, government subsidies inflating costs is a classic outcome. Demand has also dropped since the quality of post-secondary students has regressed to the mean of society. Schools used to be more selective, and you'd only get in if you were in the upper percentiles of society in terms of aptitude, ability, and work ethic. In the 60s, only 10% of people had college degrees. Now almost any high school graduate can find a university program. Unfortunately the selective outcome was marketed as achievable to anyone who goes to university, leading to swathes of people forking over money expecting the best result.
- creatornator 7y ago
  I don't think schools used to be more selective... It seems more like the selectivity shifted from being self-selective (only highly apt/able people would apply) to selectivity on the part of the universities themselves. My father says when he went to Columbia University in the 80's the acceptance rate was >60%. Nowadays Columbia is 7%. It's a similar story with most other colleges. My university used to accept pretty much anyone and now it's <%20. Not sure how that can be spun to say universities are less selective now. Maybe there are more universities, so some of them are less selective than others were in the past. But if you track the same universities over time, they have vastly decreased acceptance rates over time.
  - vonmoltke 7y ago
    The state school I went to was automatic admission when I applied in 1998 (meet the SAT/GPA requirements, you're in). Now even they have an acceptance rate that is somewhere on the 50s.
  - geodel 7y ago
    But how many students really applied in those days. If application rates were low, which I think is very likely, then selection rates can simply be higher.
  - mountainofdeath 7y ago
    I remember reading somewhere that just a generation ago, Ivy League schools where about as selective as flagship state schools are today. So many people want to get a brand name education (domestic and international) that it pushes the acceptance rate toward 0. The median standardized test school for successful applications is near perfect.
SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
13th Grade. — Still waiting for someone to change my mind. When I was graduating there was no option but to apply to colleges. We carved our time in classes to fill out applications. We were sent to guidance counselor to help select schools. I remember the worst kids in class who hated school talking about what college they were going to next year. At least now Trade School isn’t a bad word, and coding boot camps are a step in the right direction (sort of). I shake my head when I see calls for free college. There IS GOING TO BE a barrier of entry SOMEWHERE. We moved it from BA/BS degrees on to Masters, now those are becoming worth less and less as the prices go up. Now people act surprised, but this seems obvious.
- TomVDB 7y ago
  It’s fine to have some barrier, but the income level of your parents is probably the most unreasonable one. So let’s have free college and figure out some other barrier, please.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    If that is the concern, why “free college” rather than “free college for people whose parents make less than 200% of the poverty line?” Free college for everyone wont have a leveling effect. Indeed, it will make degree inflation even worse. For lower income people, living expenses, opportunity costs, and lack of college predatory K-12 still serve as huge barriers. Middle and upper income people will still account for most college attendance, so in the end it’ll be a big handout to the middle and upper middle class.
    - TomVDB 7y ago
      > Indeed, it will make degree inflation even worse. I grew up and went to university in a country where you only paid a nominal tuition (~$500, and when it got raised to $550 students went on the streets to protest the injustice.) If you wanted to go to college, you could. People studied what they were passionate about. And companies didn't mind hiring a language major, because a university degree was seen as sufficient proof that somebody was smart enough to learn complex material quickly. And there was no grade inflation. Because there's the thing: when students don't have to pay an insane amount of tuition, the professors don't have any pressure to not fail a bad student because so much money is at stake. Failing grades for bad students were the norm. This was true from elementary school all the way to university. When I see my daughter graduating with an average score of 92% while hardly breaking a sweat, I'm obviously proud of her, but I also can't shake the feeling that she was never tested. But it has to be like this because GPA is so important for college admission. > Middle and upper income people will still account for most college attendance, so in the end it’ll be a big handout to the middle and upper middle class. Oh, there's a very easy solution to that: a tax system that's even more progressive.
deleted 7y ago
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whatshisface 7y ago

Tuition has also skyrocketed relative to inflation. New graduates are being squeezed from every side, to no clear benefit for the rest of us.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

deleted 7y ago

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randomdata 7y ago

Germany is also at the bottom end of tertiary education attainment in the OECD. The real lesson to learn from Germany is not free education, but that tertiary education simply isn't needed by the vast majority of the population. As the price of post secondary schooling is also a function of supply and demand, when the rest of the population back away from those services, it will become more cost effective for those who have a good reason to be there.

Wohlf 7y ago
Because Germany doesn't let anyone go to tertiary education, it's extremely selective.
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  The new problem the US will have if they actually try to implement any kind of free or heavily-subsidized tertiary education system is that this high selectivity will not be acceptable to a significant portion of the US population. Part of the reason we are in this student debt crisis in the first place is the constant drumbeat that everyone is supposed to go to college. You can't suddenly tell a large portion of them "sorry, you aren't good enough for college".
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    America already has exclusive scholarships.
    - chrshawkes 7y ago
      Unless your mother is Felicity Huffman. That type of nonsense has been going on since jump street and another reason to despise the racket that is the typical modern day college education.
- randomdata 7y ago
  And like whatshisface said in another comment, the US already provides scholarships for those who have good reason to attend a college. It is free already. The difference is that the US also allows those who wouldn't be accepted in Germany to fork over their own money to attend as well. Which, I imagine no American would want to take away. The freedom to be able to purchase desired services is something most Americans hold dearly.
  - syndacks 7y ago
    In other words, in America you have the opportunity, the freedom if you will, to be an idiot. Jonathan Franzen explores this in _Freedom_.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]

joeyrideout 7y ago

I wouldn't say paying for something voluntarily is "robbing". Just bad marketing. And yeah, government subsidies inflating costs is a classic outcome. Demand has also dropped since the quality of post-secondary students has regressed to the mean of society. Schools used to be more selective, and you'd only get in if you were in the upper percentiles of society in terms of aptitude, ability, and work ethic. In the 60s, only 10% of people had college degrees. Now almost any high school graduate can find a university program. Unfortunately the selective outcome was marketed as achievable to anyone who goes to university, leading to swathes of people forking over money expecting the best result.

creatornator 7y ago
I don't think schools used to be more selective... It seems more like the selectivity shifted from being self-selective (only highly apt/able people would apply) to selectivity on the part of the universities themselves. My father says when he went to Columbia University in the 80's the acceptance rate was >60%. Nowadays Columbia is 7%. It's a similar story with most other colleges. My university used to accept pretty much anyone and now it's <%20. Not sure how that can be spun to say universities are less selective now. Maybe there are more universities, so some of them are less selective than others were in the past. But if you track the same universities over time, they have vastly decreased acceptance rates over time.
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  The state school I went to was automatic admission when I applied in 1998 (meet the SAT/GPA requirements, you're in). Now even they have an acceptance rate that is somewhere on the 50s.
- geodel 7y ago
  But how many students really applied in those days. If application rates were low, which I think is very likely, then selection rates can simply be higher.
- mountainofdeath 7y ago
  I remember reading somewhere that just a generation ago, Ivy League schools where about as selective as flagship state schools are today. So many people want to get a brand name education (domestic and international) that it pushes the acceptance rate toward 0. The median standardized test school for successful applications is near perfect.

SlowRobotAhead 7y ago

13th Grade. — Still waiting for someone to change my mind. When I was graduating there was no option but to apply to colleges. We carved our time in classes to fill out applications. We were sent to guidance counselor to help select schools. I remember the worst kids in class who hated school talking about what college they were going to next year. At least now Trade School isn’t a bad word, and coding boot camps are a step in the right direction (sort of). I shake my head when I see calls for free college. There IS GOING TO BE a barrier of entry SOMEWHERE. We moved it from BA/BS degrees on to Masters, now those are becoming worth less and less as the prices go up. Now people act surprised, but this seems obvious.

TomVDB 7y ago
It’s fine to have some barrier, but the income level of your parents is probably the most unreasonable one. So let’s have free college and figure out some other barrier, please.
- rayiner 7y ago
  If that is the concern, why “free college” rather than “free college for people whose parents make less than 200% of the poverty line?” Free college for everyone wont have a leveling effect. Indeed, it will make degree inflation even worse. For lower income people, living expenses, opportunity costs, and lack of college predatory K-12 still serve as huge barriers. Middle and upper income people will still account for most college attendance, so in the end it’ll be a big handout to the middle and upper middle class.
  - TomVDB 7y ago
    > Indeed, it will make degree inflation even worse. I grew up and went to university in a country where you only paid a nominal tuition (~$500, and when it got raised to $550 students went on the streets to protest the injustice.) If you wanted to go to college, you could. People studied what they were passionate about. And companies didn't mind hiring a language major, because a university degree was seen as sufficient proof that somebody was smart enough to learn complex material quickly. And there was no grade inflation. Because there's the thing: when students don't have to pay an insane amount of tuition, the professors don't have any pressure to not fail a bad student because so much money is at stake. Failing grades for bad students were the norm. This was true from elementary school all the way to university. When I see my daughter graduating with an average score of 92% while hardly breaking a sweat, I'm obviously proud of her, but I also can't shake the feeling that she was never tested. But it has to be like this because GPA is so important for college admission. > Middle and upper income people will still account for most college attendance, so in the end it’ll be a big handout to the middle and upper middle class. Oh, there's a very easy solution to that: a tax system that's even more progressive.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]