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I think the point wound be to eliminate all borrowing for tuition. It would be drastic and universities would complain the whole time but band-aid has to be rip

by Spivak 8mo ago

I think the point wound be to eliminate all borrowing for tuition. It would be drastic and universities would complain the whole time but band-aid has to be ripped off at some point. I don't think a solution other than welding shut the money font will have a meaningful effect. * Eliminate the entire federal student loan program. Just gone. No more loans. * Make it so that private loans for tuition and related expenses can be trivially discharged. Like just fill out a form and it's auto-approved. You can just decide to not pay your student loans with no repercussions whatsoever. There's probably a better way to accomplish this legally but make it so that they're toxic to private lenders. Once the money officially dries up and less than 1% of families could pay out of pocket for current tuition rates then we watch as jobs stop requiring degrees, apprenticeships become popular, and schools belt-tighten to focus on student ROI. Watch magically as GE requirements evaporate and we find out they weren't ever necessary in the first place. Watch as high schools get pressured to teach actually useful things instead of being grade school the sequel.

p_j_w 8mo ago
Your solution means that only the wealthy can attend university, someone who grew up poor wouldn’t stand a chance.
- Spivak 8mo ago
  Your argument is basically that current university costs are intrinsic and can't possibly be reduced but we know that isn't true. We have not two generations ago people paying for their college tuition with money from their part time jobs. My grandpa paid his way to a PhD as a line cook. Got no financial support from family who were only slightly above dirt poor. Like I don't want to be completely reductive but a good chunk of university classes are 30-100 people paying for a single dude and a room with chairs to lecture for 5 hours a week. This doesn't have to be ruinously expensive.
  - zeroonetwothree 8mo ago
    I’m guessing those were at subsidized public universities. I don't think anyone was paying full fare Harvard tuition entirely with part time work.
    - BobaFloutist 8mo ago
      Most top private schools will give a full ride to anyone that's not from a wealthy family (or I guess wealthy themselves) anyway, no? According to this page https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/why-harvard/affordability https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/why-harvard/affordabi..., Harvard covers your costs if you have <$100k family income. So in ways it's better than covering tuition with part time work.
  - lokar 8mo ago
    My PhD program, in CS (top 20 school), for an American, was basically free back in the early 2000s. At times it seemed like there were more fellowships than students. I'm not sure if that has changed.
    - gs17 8mo ago
      My CS PhD was not only free, I got a decent stipend, and that's still common, but it often depends on grant funding, which has been less stable lately.
      - lokar 8mo ago
        Oh, yeah, I mean by free, "net free", like the stipend cover almost all my expenses.
    - Spivak 8mo ago
      I feel like I maybe should've been more explicit about him having gone all the way from undergrad to a PhD was all paid for by being a line cook. Yeah, he didn't actually pay for his PhD program because he got a fellowship but that's also not really the point. He was still able to pay for the expensive part on what was barely over minimum wage for the time.
  - gs17 8mo ago
    >This doesn't have to be ruinously expensive. Having been the "single dude", the issue is not that they are paying lecturers too much for this service, doubly so for adjuncts.
    - Spivak 8mo ago
      I think this is the strongest disagreement I have gotten from someone who understands my point completely and agrees with it. This is exactly why I'm saying that university can be made orders of magnitude less expensive is because the primary educational value you get which comes from professors lecturers, and TA's is not expensive at all. Everything else is negotiable and an opportunity to make cuts.
  - BobaFloutist 8mo ago
    >My grandpa paid his way to a PhD as a line cook. Got no financial support from family who were only slightly above dirt poor. That can still be easily done. In California, most families earning under $100k get their tuition costs to UCs covered. CSUs are probably even easier. Then, PhDs largely get paid for by undergrad tuition and research grants, it's pretty unusual for PhDs to pay their own way.
    - Spivak 8mo ago
      Right, so broadly the solution you're proposing is subsidies. University will be cheaper from the perspective of the student but we don't actually undergo any meaningful cost cutting it's just the money comes from somewhere else. I don't know about you but I don't think this actually solves the problem of the cost of university ballooning out of control and becoming unaffordable to almost every American if they had to pay for it with what was in their bank account. I mean it can work so long as the government can bully the university into keeping a lid on the per student costs but large public universities have massive amounts of political capital to sell the cost increases to the government.
      - BobaFloutist 8mo ago
        I'm not proposing a solution, I'm describing the current reality.
        Spivak 8mo ago
        Forgive me, are you not proposing to roll these subsidies out everywhere? Because yeah, someone can afford their tuition on minimum wage if they get a full ride scholarship too but that's hardly a solution to the student loan crisis unless we're handing them out to all our undergrads.

by Spivak 8mo ago

p_j_w 8mo ago

Your solution means that only the wealthy can attend university, someone who grew up poor wouldn’t stand a chance.

Spivak 8mo ago
Your argument is basically that current university costs are intrinsic and can't possibly be reduced but we know that isn't true. We have not two generations ago people paying for their college tuition with money from their part time jobs. My grandpa paid his way to a PhD as a line cook. Got no financial support from family who were only slightly above dirt poor. Like I don't want to be completely reductive but a good chunk of university classes are 30-100 people paying for a single dude and a room with chairs to lecture for 5 hours a week. This doesn't have to be ruinously expensive.
- zeroonetwothree 8mo ago
  I’m guessing those were at subsidized public universities. I don't think anyone was paying full fare Harvard tuition entirely with part time work.
  - BobaFloutist 8mo ago
    Most top private schools will give a full ride to anyone that's not from a wealthy family (or I guess wealthy themselves) anyway, no? According to this page https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/why-harvard/affordability https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/why-harvard/affordabi..., Harvard covers your costs if you have <$100k family income. So in ways it's better than covering tuition with part time work.
- lokar 8mo ago
  My PhD program, in CS (top 20 school), for an American, was basically free back in the early 2000s. At times it seemed like there were more fellowships than students. I'm not sure if that has changed.
  - gs17 8mo ago
    My CS PhD was not only free, I got a decent stipend, and that's still common, but it often depends on grant funding, which has been less stable lately.
    - lokar 8mo ago
      Oh, yeah, I mean by free, "net free", like the stipend cover almost all my expenses.
  - Spivak 8mo ago
    I feel like I maybe should've been more explicit about him having gone all the way from undergrad to a PhD was all paid for by being a line cook. Yeah, he didn't actually pay for his PhD program because he got a fellowship but that's also not really the point. He was still able to pay for the expensive part on what was barely over minimum wage for the time.
- gs17 8mo ago
  >This doesn't have to be ruinously expensive. Having been the "single dude", the issue is not that they are paying lecturers too much for this service, doubly so for adjuncts.
  - Spivak 8mo ago
    I think this is the strongest disagreement I have gotten from someone who understands my point completely and agrees with it. This is exactly why I'm saying that university can be made orders of magnitude less expensive is because the primary educational value you get which comes from professors lecturers, and TA's is not expensive at all. Everything else is negotiable and an opportunity to make cuts.
- BobaFloutist 8mo ago
  >My grandpa paid his way to a PhD as a line cook. Got no financial support from family who were only slightly above dirt poor. That can still be easily done. In California, most families earning under $100k get their tuition costs to UCs covered. CSUs are probably even easier. Then, PhDs largely get paid for by undergrad tuition and research grants, it's pretty unusual for PhDs to pay their own way.
  - Spivak 8mo ago
    Right, so broadly the solution you're proposing is subsidies. University will be cheaper from the perspective of the student but we don't actually undergo any meaningful cost cutting it's just the money comes from somewhere else. I don't know about you but I don't think this actually solves the problem of the cost of university ballooning out of control and becoming unaffordable to almost every American if they had to pay for it with what was in their bank account. I mean it can work so long as the government can bully the university into keeping a lid on the per student costs but large public universities have massive amounts of political capital to sell the cost increases to the government.
    - BobaFloutist 8mo ago
      I'm not proposing a solution, I'm describing the current reality.
      - Spivak 8mo ago
        Forgive me, are you not proposing to roll these subsidies out everywhere? Because yeah, someone can afford their tuition on minimum wage if they get a full ride scholarship too but that's hardly a solution to the student loan crisis unless we're handing them out to all our undergrads.