8 ms·

This is fundamentally incompatible with the idea that everyone should be able to afford to go to college and private institutions need to foot the bill for the

by slg 7y ago

This is fundamentally incompatible with the idea that everyone should be able to afford to go to college and private institutions need to foot the bill for the costs. We as a society prioritized availability of college education over costs. In order to get both you would likely have to change to some income percentage based repayment system instead of traditional loan repayments and that probably wouldn't be possible unless the government is heavily involved.

chimi 7y ago
Debt as an investment is fine. If you are investing in your future with your education, okay, but that requires the education be practical. It must have a value greater than its cost. That is not true for most education and thus we are not investing in our future as a society with this debt. I'd rather the debt we incur as a society be spent on infrastructure and engineers than wicker baskets. Wicker baskets don't last very long. Roads and bridges do. Engineers do.
- slg 7y ago
  Sure, but once you bring financial value into the equation it starts limiting access. Not everyone can be an engineering major. Not everyone even belongs at college in the first place. But we as a society want everyone who wants to go to college to be able to afford it (at least initially). That is not compatible with a profit minded view of that education being a sound financial investment for each individual student.
  - chimi 7y ago
    This doesn't mesh with my perspective of education. Universities are non-profits for a reason. yes, there are profit minded University of Phoenix's but that is not the historical norm and they are the worst offenders. Not everyone should go to college. We shouldn't enable everyone to go to college. If you shouldn't go to college, going to college won't change that. You'll struggle and fail out or get a worthless degree because it's the only one you can pass enough classes to get. We have trade schools. We have apprenticeships and on the job training. Lots of folks for home those paths are better, are turned off to them by social pressure, not logic. I've taken welding classes and vehicle maintenance classes and they have shown themselves to be valuable assets to me. I can connect steel at the atomic level. I can keep my vehicles safe for me and my family and friends. There's no one-size-fits all approach to human evolution and we need all of us. Maybe I'm idealistic. We need to stop doing stuff that only makes sense to the banks. They are entirely self-interested and provide negative value back to society. We are squandering our futures to the fat cats.
- hedvig 7y ago
  Okay - can anyone actually cite me even a class, let alone a degree, that has the word wicker baskets in them? If not, stop using this straw-man term.
  - ummonk 7y ago
    Dude it is a satirical term to symbolize low value programs. It isn’t supposed to be taken literally.
    - fzeroracer 7y ago
      Teachers generate less value (see:income, GDP) than engineers. We should abolish teaching degrees and just teach software engineering at college.
      - virmundi 7y ago
        Given the hard core attempt to subvert eduction going on in the public schools, maybe. At least with software you’ll have logic, math, and history. https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/dqd6ca/activists_want_to_abolish_your_kids_honors_classes/ https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/dqd6ca/activist... You should take a moment and read that individuals post. It is well researched. Just because it’s from r/conspiracy doesn’t mean you should skip it.
      - aianus 7y ago
        We probably should. I bet it's easier to teach a STEM grad how to teach (in a professional training program after college) than to teach a professional 'teacher' how to do math.
        jklein11 7y ago
        What are you basing that on? My sister is a 3rd-grade teacher and I'm not sure I would be equipped to handle 30 children without lots of training. Teaching someone how to teach 3rd-grade math is not that difficult. Teaching someone to start building positive learning habits with 8-9-year-olds sounds incredibly complicated. I might be reading into your post too much but it seems like you think STEM grads are superior to non-stem grads. I don't buy that. STEM grads have a specialty that is in demand in the labor market. It doesn't make STEM grads better then non-STEM grads.
usefulcat 7y ago
Regarding income-based repayment, I think Purdue was experimenting with this, and may still be. I haven't heard of any significant government involvement in that program. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/04/11/at-purdue-student-aid-based-on-future-earnings-could-revolutionize-college-debt/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/04/1...
- slg 7y ago
  I didn't know that, thanks for passing it along. The reason I think the government needs to be involved is because this isn't going to be financially viable for every student at every college and therefore private banks won't want to participate. Purdue seems to have found a way around that by funding the program themselves but I wonder if that self funding is scalable.
chrischattin 7y ago
College was dirt cheap before student loans became non-dischargeable and the government started backing them.
- fzeroracer 7y ago
  College was also dirt cheap in an entirely different era where people could earn a living even with menial labour and where the average purchasing power was higher. Trying to correlate the two and say it's because of government loans is just plain ignorant. Or are government loans also to explain why people can't save money, or afford rent, or survive off of a single 40h job etc.
- tzs 7y ago
  I looked for tuition costs over time, but didn't find much online. I did find Stanford tuition data going back about 100 years. Here's a graph of the log of Stanford tuition over time [1]. The log of tuition has grown pretty much linearly. There doesn't seem to be much difference between how it grew before government backed loans and after them. Somewhere I've got a spreadsheet where I compared the growth rate to the inflation rate. I can't find that right now, but if I remember correctly the tuition growth rate was about twice the inflation rate. It would be interesting to get this kind of data for a variety of schools, but I couldn't find it. [1] https://imgur.com/fXnjDNn https://imgur.com/fXnjDNn
rayiner 7y ago
The government is already heavily involved and we already have that system: https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay-loans/understand/plans/income-driven https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay-loans/understand/plans/in...
tallon 7y ago
Half of all college students don't finish their 4-year degree in 5 years, and it's not due to cost. Even countries like France, Netherlands, etc which have lower costs for college, place you in a track when you're in your freshman year of high school. This track determines if you're going to college, a trade, or somewhere in between, and it's hard to switch from lower to higher tracks. College should not be a goal for 100% of the population like we have now, there should be a greater push for trades like chefs, electricians, HVAC technicians, plumbers, woodworking, metal working, glass blowing. You're an apprentice, you get paid a livable wage, and you have 0 student loans.
- henryfjordan 7y ago
  You're describing a caste system, except instead of having your life determined by your lineage it's determined by some standardized tests given when you are 14 years old. It might work for some societies but that flies so directly against the "American Dream" that it will never work here.
  - t0mas88 7y ago
    In reality it isn't as limiting as you think in the Netherlands. You get different levels of education based on previous school results, but after finishing "mid level" highschool you can continue and take the last two years of "upper level" highschool if it turns out you developed more and are now a better learner at 17 than you were at 14. In total that takes only 1 year extra, because "upper level" is a year longer by default. Same in college vs university, you can continue from the lower level program into a masters degree as long as you pass the acceptance test or have the required grades.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- SkyBelow 7y ago
  > Even countries like France, Netherlands, etc which have lower costs for college, place you in a track when you're in your freshman year of high school. Imagine trying to do this in the US. I wonder to what extent colleges are free in places where there is stricter criteria to get into college.

by slg 7y ago

chimi 7y ago

Debt as an investment is fine. If you are investing in your future with your education, okay, but that requires the education be practical. It must have a value greater than its cost. That is not true for most education and thus we are not investing in our future as a society with this debt. I'd rather the debt we incur as a society be spent on infrastructure and engineers than wicker baskets. Wicker baskets don't last very long. Roads and bridges do. Engineers do.

slg 7y ago
Sure, but once you bring financial value into the equation it starts limiting access. Not everyone can be an engineering major. Not everyone even belongs at college in the first place. But we as a society want everyone who wants to go to college to be able to afford it (at least initially). That is not compatible with a profit minded view of that education being a sound financial investment for each individual student.
- chimi 7y ago
  This doesn't mesh with my perspective of education. Universities are non-profits for a reason. yes, there are profit minded University of Phoenix's but that is not the historical norm and they are the worst offenders. Not everyone should go to college. We shouldn't enable everyone to go to college. If you shouldn't go to college, going to college won't change that. You'll struggle and fail out or get a worthless degree because it's the only one you can pass enough classes to get. We have trade schools. We have apprenticeships and on the job training. Lots of folks for home those paths are better, are turned off to them by social pressure, not logic. I've taken welding classes and vehicle maintenance classes and they have shown themselves to be valuable assets to me. I can connect steel at the atomic level. I can keep my vehicles safe for me and my family and friends. There's no one-size-fits all approach to human evolution and we need all of us. Maybe I'm idealistic. We need to stop doing stuff that only makes sense to the banks. They are entirely self-interested and provide negative value back to society. We are squandering our futures to the fat cats.
hedvig 7y ago
Okay - can anyone actually cite me even a class, let alone a degree, that has the word wicker baskets in them? If not, stop using this straw-man term.
- ummonk 7y ago
  Dude it is a satirical term to symbolize low value programs. It isn’t supposed to be taken literally.
  - fzeroracer 7y ago
    Teachers generate less value (see:income, GDP) than engineers. We should abolish teaching degrees and just teach software engineering at college.
    - virmundi 7y ago
      Given the hard core attempt to subvert eduction going on in the public schools, maybe. At least with software you’ll have logic, math, and history. https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/dqd6ca/activists_want_to_abolish_your_kids_honors_classes/ https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/dqd6ca/activist... You should take a moment and read that individuals post. It is well researched. Just because it’s from r/conspiracy doesn’t mean you should skip it.
    - aianus 7y ago
      We probably should. I bet it's easier to teach a STEM grad how to teach (in a professional training program after college) than to teach a professional 'teacher' how to do math.
      - jklein11 7y ago
        What are you basing that on? My sister is a 3rd-grade teacher and I'm not sure I would be equipped to handle 30 children without lots of training. Teaching someone how to teach 3rd-grade math is not that difficult. Teaching someone to start building positive learning habits with 8-9-year-olds sounds incredibly complicated. I might be reading into your post too much but it seems like you think STEM grads are superior to non-stem grads. I don't buy that. STEM grads have a specialty that is in demand in the labor market. It doesn't make STEM grads better then non-STEM grads.

usefulcat 7y ago

Regarding income-based repayment, I think Purdue was experimenting with this, and may still be. I haven't heard of any significant government involvement in that program. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/04/11/at-purdue-student-aid-based-on-future-earnings-could-revolutionize-college-debt/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/04/1...

slg 7y ago
I didn't know that, thanks for passing it along. The reason I think the government needs to be involved is because this isn't going to be financially viable for every student at every college and therefore private banks won't want to participate. Purdue seems to have found a way around that by funding the program themselves but I wonder if that self funding is scalable.

chrischattin 7y ago

College was dirt cheap before student loans became non-dischargeable and the government started backing them.

fzeroracer 7y ago
College was also dirt cheap in an entirely different era where people could earn a living even with menial labour and where the average purchasing power was higher. Trying to correlate the two and say it's because of government loans is just plain ignorant. Or are government loans also to explain why people can't save money, or afford rent, or survive off of a single 40h job etc.
tzs 7y ago
I looked for tuition costs over time, but didn't find much online. I did find Stanford tuition data going back about 100 years. Here's a graph of the log of Stanford tuition over time [1]. The log of tuition has grown pretty much linearly. There doesn't seem to be much difference between how it grew before government backed loans and after them. Somewhere I've got a spreadsheet where I compared the growth rate to the inflation rate. I can't find that right now, but if I remember correctly the tuition growth rate was about twice the inflation rate. It would be interesting to get this kind of data for a variety of schools, but I couldn't find it. [1] https://imgur.com/fXnjDNn https://imgur.com/fXnjDNn

rayiner 7y ago

The government is already heavily involved and we already have that system: https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay-loans/understand/plans/income-driven https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay-loans/understand/plans/in...

tallon 7y ago

Half of all college students don't finish their 4-year degree in 5 years, and it's not due to cost. Even countries like France, Netherlands, etc which have lower costs for college, place you in a track when you're in your freshman year of high school. This track determines if you're going to college, a trade, or somewhere in between, and it's hard to switch from lower to higher tracks. College should not be a goal for 100% of the population like we have now, there should be a greater push for trades like chefs, electricians, HVAC technicians, plumbers, woodworking, metal working, glass blowing. You're an apprentice, you get paid a livable wage, and you have 0 student loans.

henryfjordan 7y ago
You're describing a caste system, except instead of having your life determined by your lineage it's determined by some standardized tests given when you are 14 years old. It might work for some societies but that flies so directly against the "American Dream" that it will never work here.
- t0mas88 7y ago
  In reality it isn't as limiting as you think in the Netherlands. You get different levels of education based on previous school results, but after finishing "mid level" highschool you can continue and take the last two years of "upper level" highschool if it turns out you developed more and are now a better learner at 17 than you were at 14. In total that takes only 1 year extra, because "upper level" is a year longer by default. Same in college vs university, you can continue from the lower level program into a masters degree as long as you pass the acceptance test or have the required grades.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
SkyBelow 7y ago
> Even countries like France, Netherlands, etc which have lower costs for college, place you in a track when you're in your freshman year of high school. Imagine trying to do this in the US. I wonder to what extent colleges are free in places where there is stricter criteria to get into college.