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Amazing, perspective is everything. I don't deny that college kids are being taken advantage of. Graduating from a small liberal arts college in South Dakota t

by gxs 13y ago

Amazing, perspective is everything. I don't deny that college kids are being taken advantage of. Graduating from a small liberal arts college in South Dakota that no one's ever heard of with a degree is Culture Studies and 80k in debt really is a rip off. The flipside of this coin however is someone like me. My parents are immigrants and I was the first to go to school. To my parents, the fact that someone would be even willing to give you money to go to school is ridiculous. I graduated with 20k in debt with a math degree from Cal. The ease of getting loans and financial aid are the main reasons I was able to attend college as my family was otherwise poor, at least at the time. In some countries, you don't even have the OPTION to take out a loan to go to school. You either have the money and you go, or you don't and it is that much harder to climb the social ladder. I'm not sure which evil is worse, but I'm damn glad I was offered those loans.

geebee 13y ago
You used these loans wisely. When did you go to Cal? I was a grad student there in 1999-2000, and the tuition for the year was only a little over $4,000. It's much higher than that now, about $15,000 for the year. That's still relatively low, assuming that you're an academic student. Professional schools can charge what they like ("data science" is 60K!) It's still possible to get an excellent education for less money. Part of this is that we need a cultural shift as well as an institutional one. Four years of cal is now very expensive (about 60K in tuition). But a lot of immigrants (many in my neighborhood) go to 2 years of community college (while living at home to keep costs down), finish at a UC, and study something with good job prospects. That's not reading poetry by the the leafy glen next to a beautiful old building, but at least it is affordable. I suppose I shouldn't just say "immigrants", I do know california natives who do this to, plenty of them, but it doesn't really fit the traditional middle class notion of "4 years of college, away from the parents". Also - Cal has a good name, but rankings like US News and World Report haven't helped either. They reward colleges for everything that costs money, but they don't reward colleges for keeping costs under control or for enrolling low income students. Not a single public institution in the USNWR undergrad top 20, including UC Berkeley. Bill Bennet, the republican and quite conservative former secretary of Education, made some very good points about this in a recent book "is college worth it". His take on it is, if you get into stanford, go. If you are inclined to study petroleum engineering, go (PE used as a stand-in for highly employable majors), even if you go to a small college in South Dakota (though if it's engineering you're studying, state schools are often more prestigious than their private counterparts, especially in the western states). The danger is in between. Don't go to an unknown third tier school and run up a huge debt studying liberal arts - or, if you do, make sure you double major with something that will lead to better employment. One thing - I don't want to give the impression that I think a cultural shift is all that is needed. Students do need to turn away from the high-cost model, but the government did play a role in this problem. Unfortunately, making loans available wasn't helpful to many students. By guaranteeing the loans, the government made it possible for students to borrow far more than a private lender would have considered prudent. By changing the bankruptcy laws around student loans, the government created a far more poisonous form of debt for students. And then lastly, by making the money so freely available, the government allowed institutions to raise their prices - so even if students wanted to "just say no" to high prices, institutions knew they could charge this cause someone would take out the loan. In short, the gov't may have ensured that the low cost education that would have been demanded never emerged.
ethanbond 13y ago
I agree. Loans aren't at the root of the problem, but they're also a bad solution. An even worse solution is getting rid of loans. The only solution worse than that? Blaming students. This is why, until there's some radical, radical change, I'll always vote for the people perpetuating student loans. I'm not going to be the one that screws an entire generation out of a worthwhile education in the name of "loans are bad!"
- twoodfin 13y ago
  This is why, until there's some radical, radical change, I'll always vote for the people perpetuating student loans. Loans for the sake of loans seem to be the key problem here: If students who intended to get a "degree in bullshit" at a gussied up diploma mill faced difficulty finding a loan for that purpose, they might reevaluate their decision. And besides: Who's seriously advocating for the total elimination of student loans?
  - ethanbond 13y ago
    And who is going to decide what's a "degree in bullshit" and what's a "gussied up diploma mill?" What metrics would they use? Libertarians tend to like the idea. But short of that, it's difficult to vote for reform that lands between perpetuate-the-problem and screw-an-entire-generation. We can fix the problem of paying for education, but that solution isn't going to be found anywhere near the student loan debate.
    - twoodfin 13y ago
      And who is going to decide what's a "degree in bullshit" and what's a "gussied up diploma mill?" What metrics would they use? Surely this isn't that difficult a problem to solve. President Obama thinks his administration could start to address it: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/13/obama-calls-more-attention-price-value-accreditation-state-union http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/13/obama-calls-mo...
    - coffeemug 13y ago
      The market. Right now, the government loan programs treat all degrees interchangeably. If you introduce market forces into the equation, the lenders will run some basic stat calculations and you'll quickly end up with the following scenario: 1. Useful degrees from good universities will be easy and cheap for good students to fund. 2. Everything else will get harder/more expensive to fund, in proportion to its statistical returns. That's all you really need to fix the system.
qdpb 13y ago
Perhaps it helps to clarify that the evil here is not that college loans exist, but how easy it is to get them to pay for any kind of education, how much you can borrow, and how impossible it is to get rid of this debt burden. The choice between no loans or bad loans is fallacious.
- joyeuse6701 13y ago
  Isn't that akin to the argument that a knife is evil because it is so easy to slit someone and someone else's throat? That isn't the evil, it's not how this college loan is used, what is evil is that our society necessitates college and the price you pay into the function is rarely less than what you get out of it these days.
johnchristopher 13y ago
> In some countries, you don't even have the OPTION to take out a loan to go to school. You either have the money and you go, or you don't and it is that much harder to climb the social ladder. > I'm not sure which evil is worse, but I'm damn glad I was offered those loans. You are stacking only two options against each other. There are countries where there are no schools and countries where school is being paid by the community via taxes. Of course between no school and school with loans the choice is clear (in an (post-)industrialized country, mind you).
- donaldc 13y ago
  Of course between no school and school with loans the choice is clear (in an (post-)industrialized country, mind you). Doesn't always seem clear to me. The whole point of the article was that you could be saddled with loan payments for a very, very long time with little to no improvement in job prospects.
  - johnchristopher 13y ago
    > Doesn't always seem clear to me. Yes it is because grand-parent stated he wanted to go to school (that's how I read it) and that statement of mine is a follow-up to that train of thought where I pointed there are more than 2 options.
MisterWebz 13y ago
In some countries, you don't even have the OPTION to take out a loan to go to school. That's because in some countries you won't be paying more than 5k to go to a decent college.
- rmk2 13y ago
  So? Where do these "5k" come from? And where do you get money to live and eat? Either you have parents who can help, then it doesn't really matter whether we are talking about 5k, 25k or 50k (from a structural perspective), or you don't. If you don't have anybody who can help, it doesn't matter whether you cannot come up with 5k, 25k or 50k. One of the reasons German students protested 600€ a term (1200€ a year) fees was that it furthered the divide between people who could afford university and those who needed loans or other money. If you could already afford it either way, 1200€ didn't make much of a difference either. If you already struggled massively to keep yourself afloat before that, coming up with 1200€ more was sometimes quite impossible. If you cannot take out a loan (any form of loan), then you are screwed unless you are already privileged enough to study. If you are, 5k, 15k or 50k make little actual difference. There are, in my opinion, two possible ways: no fees & affordable student loans for living cost OR no loans, and in the latter case, you already exclude based on wealth, so you might as well just charge whatever it is you want or whatever artificial treshhold you would like to enforce.
  - nawitus 13y ago
    You can have no fees, affordable student loans and social security (e.g. student 'credit', ~500e/month in Finland).
- 108 13y ago
  > That's because in some countries you won't be paying more than 5k to go to a decent college. And you would be earning a fraction, say $120 per month, that automatically makes the 5k college dream, a dream.
  - MisterWebz 13y ago
    And you would be earning a fraction, say $120 per month That's impossible, because around here the minimum wage for an adult working a full time job is around 10x that figure.
danielweber 13y ago
Part of the reason prices have gone up so much is that credit has become so easy. 50 years ago, if you wanted to go to college, you went, and the prices were reasonable because people could not afford a lot of money for it, and no one would lend it to them. There is almost no downward price pressure on college costs, and there is upward price pressure: since the students don't care about the price, they always want the school with better and more modern facilities, which cost money.
- nickff 13y ago
  The institutions are the ones receiving the benefits of the subsidized loans; the students bear the long term costs of the 'student loans'. "Where the supply curve is more inelastic than the demand curve, producers bear more of the tax and receive more of the subsidy than consumers as the difference between the price producers receive and the initial market price is greater than the difference borne by consumers." [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_taxes_and_subsidies_on_price http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_taxes_and_subsidies_o...
- jseliger 13y ago
  Part of the reason prices have gone up so much is that credit has become so easy. "Part of the reason," yes, but take a look at Why Does College Cost so Much? by Archibald and Feldman (http://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-College-Cost-Much/dp/0199744505 http://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-College-Cost-Much/dp/01997445...). Their short answer is "Baumol's cost disease. The long answer is the book.
- lmg643 13y ago
  the core problem with college loans is that they are non-dischargeable. this means that no matter what the student's ultimate financial situation (long term unemployed, finances wiped out, etc) they still have to pay down the debt, and it can't be wiped out in bankruptcy. This stands in contrast to virtually every kind of loan out there, which can be discharged (written off). As a result, there is less risk for the lender to give a loan to any old fool out there, regardless of the major they choose, regardless of the quality of school they go to, etc. anything that might correlate with the ability to pay it back. you might say, great, they don't discriminate against liberal arts students at no-name schools. and that might be something that suffers if reforms were made. but perhaps that student might be better served if funding were hard to come by. complain now versus complain more later, kind of thing. the great sin in the student loan market is the online degree mills, which target relatively vulnerable segments of the population, all funded by loans. for example: did you know that online universities cost almost the same as physical ones? that makes absolutely no sense when you think about it, but i don't think many of their students do. online only should be a fraction of the rate. Perhaps the online university is a market to be disrupted. not unstructured MOOCs, but credentialed degree schools that are a fraction of the cost of current ones. i can see the ycombinator startup already. and student loans should be dischargeable. it's the only fair thing to do.
waylonk 13y ago
In New Zealand the government pays about 75% of tuition costs in the first place (a degree is around $5000 NZD a year), there's a student allowance if your parents earn under a certain threshold, and your student loan is interest free as long as you remain in New Zealand.
leknarf 13y ago
There's another side to need-based financial aid that tends to be ignored. For you to attend an expensive college for less than the average rate, someone else had to pay more than the average. That is, your discounted tuition increased the sticker price for someone else. That's inherently unfair. It may sound reasonable to ask wealthy families to pay more in order to subsidise poor families, but there's no reasonable method to actually determine a family's wealth. The usual practice is to look at the parents' savings. If a family has saved $200,000, they will be asked to pay a higher tuition rate than a family that only saved $20,000. But that's crazy: it penalizes families that save for higher education. That's particularly harmful to middle class families. If you don't have any money, then you can go to an Ivy League school for free (via financial aid). If you have a great deal of money, then you can pay the full tuition rate and still have assets left over. But if you only have some savings, then a college bill can easily wipe out everything you have.
- sp332 13y ago
  The article is about loans. A loan is not a discount. And if you're talking about need-based financial aid, that's usually financed by people (often alumni) who decide to pay into a fund specifically for tuition subsidies. That means he didn't get a "discount" that average students had to make up.
  - danielweber 13y ago
    "Need-based financial aid" is just price discrimination. We hate it when the auto dealer tries to extract as much as we can afford from us, but for some reason people are happy to let the schools do it.
apsec112 13y ago
Not to belittle your accomplishment, but you were very lucky to have parents who lived in California, which still has the best public colleges in the US. People whose parents lived in the other 49 states had to either go to a worse (sometimes much worse) school than Cal, or shell out $250K for a private degree.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  I don't buy it. I went to one of the most expensive private not-for-profit schools in the US (top 20 net-cost, going by http://collegecost.ed.gov/catc/# http://collegecost.ed.gov/catc/#) and had exactly fuck-all for scholarships. I didn't shell out anywhere near $250k. Are you assuming med school or something? As far as I can tell, the median debt for med school grads from private schools is barely half of $250k. The most expensive I can find still falls short (barely, to be fair): http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-medical-schools/debt-rankings http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-gradu...
- newbie12 13y ago
  California is so large it has many great public schools, but other states like Virginia (UVA and William & Mary) have public schools that rival the best in California, and most large states have an elite public school (Texas, Michigan, UNC, Georgia Tech, etc etc) that would be top tier in California. To some degree, California's support for its universities has slipped and the reputation is based on the past.
- ridicter 13y ago
  Yup. I grew up in Arkansas. Our highest--and only ranked university--is ranked #138. The smartest students leave the state, as you can see from the SAT/ACT score ranges at in-state schools. I went to a top university and took out many loans to do so... had I lived in a state like Texas or California, I would have had access to a fantastic state school and not need to do so.
GFischer 13y ago
"In some countries, you don't even have the OPTION to take out a loan to go to school" In some countries, like mine (Uruguay) university-level education is free :) (though postgraduate studies are paid). I think China is the biggest example of free university education. EDIT: I was wrong, about U$ 2000/year and rising apparently. At least our bazillion psychologists and communication majors (equivalent to the dreaded "English majors" in the U.S.) are not saddled with debt, though a non-specialist psychologist can expect to earn less than a store clerk or McDonald's employee. Continuing edit: Sweden and other countries also have "free" college education: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/05/the-high-price-of-a-free-college-education-in-sweden/276428/ http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/05/the... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_education http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_education List of countries with free post-secondary education (from Wikipedia) Algeria Argentina Bhutan Cuba Denmark Egypt Estonia Finland France Greece Italy India Malta Mauritius Morocco Norway Oman Pakistan Russia Saudi Arabia Scotland Spain Sri Lanka Trinidad and Tobago Turkey Barbados Kenya United Arab Emirates Uruguay I was wrong about China, but apparently it is free in India. One major difference is that here in Uruguay you don't have entrance exams, and it's free for foreigners (we get several Chilean students, where it is not free).
- gebe 13y ago
  University education in China is not free, they have tuition costs as well.
  - GFischer 13y ago
    Sorry, I must have wrong information :( . I'm 100% sure we don't have tuition here in Uruguay, and poorer students get state help. However, five years after you graduate, you have to pay a mandatory special "university graduate tax" called "Fondo de Solidaridad" which helps pay for the poorer students, etc., so I guess it is a form of debt :) . It's about U$ 200 every six months currently.
    - pc86 13y ago
      Is that $200 ever six months in perpetuity or does it stop at some point?
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jacoblyles 13y ago
You're a very special case, going to one of the best schools in the country at a good price. 3/4 of American college students are not traditional college students going full time to a four-year university. And only 30% of Americans eventually achieve a bachelor's degree. But plenty of the rest take out $20k in student loans and never have anything to show for it.
gwu78 13y ago
"... perspective is everything." Indeed. If, for example, Rolling Stone were to approach this story as others have approached stories about the high cost of healthcare in America, i.e., by comparing the costs there with the costs in other countries with similarly high standards of living, it might produce a more interesting perspective. Readers might see that there are students in certain other countries who are having their educations financed under far more financially-friendly terms than those now presented to American youths. When a journalist shows the reader the healthcare costs in her country compared to those in other comparable countries, maybe it sends a powerful message to the reader. Journalists covering education costs should perhaps consider this approach.

by gxs 13y ago

geebee 13y ago

You used these loans wisely. When did you go to Cal? I was a grad student there in 1999-2000, and the tuition for the year was only a little over $4,000. It's much higher than that now, about $15,000 for the year. That's still relatively low, assuming that you're an academic student. Professional schools can charge what they like ("data science" is 60K!) It's still possible to get an excellent education for less money. Part of this is that we need a cultural shift as well as an institutional one. Four years of cal is now very expensive (about 60K in tuition). But a lot of immigrants (many in my neighborhood) go to 2 years of community college (while living at home to keep costs down), finish at a UC, and study something with good job prospects. That's not reading poetry by the the leafy glen next to a beautiful old building, but at least it is affordable. I suppose I shouldn't just say "immigrants", I do know california natives who do this to, plenty of them, but it doesn't really fit the traditional middle class notion of "4 years of college, away from the parents". Also - Cal has a good name, but rankings like US News and World Report haven't helped either. They reward colleges for everything that costs money, but they don't reward colleges for keeping costs under control or for enrolling low income students. Not a single public institution in the USNWR undergrad top 20, including UC Berkeley. Bill Bennet, the republican and quite conservative former secretary of Education, made some very good points about this in a recent book "is college worth it". His take on it is, if you get into stanford, go. If you are inclined to study petroleum engineering, go (PE used as a stand-in for highly employable majors), even if you go to a small college in South Dakota (though if it's engineering you're studying, state schools are often more prestigious than their private counterparts, especially in the western states). The danger is in between. Don't go to an unknown third tier school and run up a huge debt studying liberal arts - or, if you do, make sure you double major with something that will lead to better employment. One thing - I don't want to give the impression that I think a cultural shift is all that is needed. Students do need to turn away from the high-cost model, but the government did play a role in this problem. Unfortunately, making loans available wasn't helpful to many students. By guaranteeing the loans, the government made it possible for students to borrow far more than a private lender would have considered prudent. By changing the bankruptcy laws around student loans, the government created a far more poisonous form of debt for students. And then lastly, by making the money so freely available, the government allowed institutions to raise their prices - so even if students wanted to "just say no" to high prices, institutions knew they could charge this cause someone would take out the loan. In short, the gov't may have ensured that the low cost education that would have been demanded never emerged.

ethanbond 13y ago

I agree. Loans aren't at the root of the problem, but they're also a bad solution. An even worse solution is getting rid of loans. The only solution worse than that? Blaming students. This is why, until there's some radical, radical change, I'll always vote for the people perpetuating student loans. I'm not going to be the one that screws an entire generation out of a worthwhile education in the name of "loans are bad!"

twoodfin 13y ago
This is why, until there's some radical, radical change, I'll always vote for the people perpetuating student loans. Loans for the sake of loans seem to be the key problem here: If students who intended to get a "degree in bullshit" at a gussied up diploma mill faced difficulty finding a loan for that purpose, they might reevaluate their decision. And besides: Who's seriously advocating for the total elimination of student loans?
- ethanbond 13y ago
  And who is going to decide what's a "degree in bullshit" and what's a "gussied up diploma mill?" What metrics would they use? Libertarians tend to like the idea. But short of that, it's difficult to vote for reform that lands between perpetuate-the-problem and screw-an-entire-generation. We can fix the problem of paying for education, but that solution isn't going to be found anywhere near the student loan debate.
  - twoodfin 13y ago
    And who is going to decide what's a "degree in bullshit" and what's a "gussied up diploma mill?" What metrics would they use? Surely this isn't that difficult a problem to solve. President Obama thinks his administration could start to address it: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/13/obama-calls-more-attention-price-value-accreditation-state-union http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/13/obama-calls-mo...
  - coffeemug 13y ago
    The market. Right now, the government loan programs treat all degrees interchangeably. If you introduce market forces into the equation, the lenders will run some basic stat calculations and you'll quickly end up with the following scenario: 1. Useful degrees from good universities will be easy and cheap for good students to fund. 2. Everything else will get harder/more expensive to fund, in proportion to its statistical returns. That's all you really need to fix the system.

qdpb 13y ago

Perhaps it helps to clarify that the evil here is not that college loans exist, but how easy it is to get them to pay for any kind of education, how much you can borrow, and how impossible it is to get rid of this debt burden. The choice between no loans or bad loans is fallacious.

joyeuse6701 13y ago
Isn't that akin to the argument that a knife is evil because it is so easy to slit someone and someone else's throat? That isn't the evil, it's not how this college loan is used, what is evil is that our society necessitates college and the price you pay into the function is rarely less than what you get out of it these days.

johnchristopher 13y ago

> In some countries, you don't even have the OPTION to take out a loan to go to school. You either have the money and you go, or you don't and it is that much harder to climb the social ladder. > I'm not sure which evil is worse, but I'm damn glad I was offered those loans. You are stacking only two options against each other. There are countries where there are no schools and countries where school is being paid by the community via taxes. Of course between no school and school with loans the choice is clear (in an (post-)industrialized country, mind you).

donaldc 13y ago
Of course between no school and school with loans the choice is clear (in an (post-)industrialized country, mind you). Doesn't always seem clear to me. The whole point of the article was that you could be saddled with loan payments for a very, very long time with little to no improvement in job prospects.
- johnchristopher 13y ago
  > Doesn't always seem clear to me. Yes it is because grand-parent stated he wanted to go to school (that's how I read it) and that statement of mine is a follow-up to that train of thought where I pointed there are more than 2 options.

MisterWebz 13y ago

In some countries, you don't even have the OPTION to take out a loan to go to school. That's because in some countries you won't be paying more than 5k to go to a decent college.

rmk2 13y ago
So? Where do these "5k" come from? And where do you get money to live and eat? Either you have parents who can help, then it doesn't really matter whether we are talking about 5k, 25k or 50k (from a structural perspective), or you don't. If you don't have anybody who can help, it doesn't matter whether you cannot come up with 5k, 25k or 50k. One of the reasons German students protested 600€ a term (1200€ a year) fees was that it furthered the divide between people who could afford university and those who needed loans or other money. If you could already afford it either way, 1200€ didn't make much of a difference either. If you already struggled massively to keep yourself afloat before that, coming up with 1200€ more was sometimes quite impossible. If you cannot take out a loan (any form of loan), then you are screwed unless you are already privileged enough to study. If you are, 5k, 15k or 50k make little actual difference. There are, in my opinion, two possible ways: no fees & affordable student loans for living cost OR no loans, and in the latter case, you already exclude based on wealth, so you might as well just charge whatever it is you want or whatever artificial treshhold you would like to enforce.
- nawitus 13y ago
  You can have no fees, affordable student loans and social security (e.g. student 'credit', ~500e/month in Finland).
108 13y ago
> That's because in some countries you won't be paying more than 5k to go to a decent college. And you would be earning a fraction, say $120 per month, that automatically makes the 5k college dream, a dream.
- MisterWebz 13y ago
  And you would be earning a fraction, say $120 per month That's impossible, because around here the minimum wage for an adult working a full time job is around 10x that figure.

danielweber 13y ago

Part of the reason prices have gone up so much is that credit has become so easy. 50 years ago, if you wanted to go to college, you went, and the prices were reasonable because people could not afford a lot of money for it, and no one would lend it to them. There is almost no downward price pressure on college costs, and there is upward price pressure: since the students don't care about the price, they always want the school with better and more modern facilities, which cost money.

nickff 13y ago
The institutions are the ones receiving the benefits of the subsidized loans; the students bear the long term costs of the 'student loans'. "Where the supply curve is more inelastic than the demand curve, producers bear more of the tax and receive more of the subsidy than consumers as the difference between the price producers receive and the initial market price is greater than the difference borne by consumers." [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_taxes_and_subsidies_on_price http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_taxes_and_subsidies_o...
jseliger 13y ago
Part of the reason prices have gone up so much is that credit has become so easy. "Part of the reason," yes, but take a look at Why Does College Cost so Much? by Archibald and Feldman (http://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-College-Cost-Much/dp/0199744505 http://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-College-Cost-Much/dp/01997445...). Their short answer is "Baumol's cost disease. The long answer is the book.
lmg643 13y ago
the core problem with college loans is that they are non-dischargeable. this means that no matter what the student's ultimate financial situation (long term unemployed, finances wiped out, etc) they still have to pay down the debt, and it can't be wiped out in bankruptcy. This stands in contrast to virtually every kind of loan out there, which can be discharged (written off). As a result, there is less risk for the lender to give a loan to any old fool out there, regardless of the major they choose, regardless of the quality of school they go to, etc. anything that might correlate with the ability to pay it back. you might say, great, they don't discriminate against liberal arts students at no-name schools. and that might be something that suffers if reforms were made. but perhaps that student might be better served if funding were hard to come by. complain now versus complain more later, kind of thing. the great sin in the student loan market is the online degree mills, which target relatively vulnerable segments of the population, all funded by loans. for example: did you know that online universities cost almost the same as physical ones? that makes absolutely no sense when you think about it, but i don't think many of their students do. online only should be a fraction of the rate. Perhaps the online university is a market to be disrupted. not unstructured MOOCs, but credentialed degree schools that are a fraction of the cost of current ones. i can see the ycombinator startup already. and student loans should be dischargeable. it's the only fair thing to do.

waylonk 13y ago

In New Zealand the government pays about 75% of tuition costs in the first place (a degree is around $5000 NZD a year), there's a student allowance if your parents earn under a certain threshold, and your student loan is interest free as long as you remain in New Zealand.

leknarf 13y ago

There's another side to need-based financial aid that tends to be ignored. For you to attend an expensive college for less than the average rate, someone else had to pay more than the average. That is, your discounted tuition increased the sticker price for someone else. That's inherently unfair. It may sound reasonable to ask wealthy families to pay more in order to subsidise poor families, but there's no reasonable method to actually determine a family's wealth. The usual practice is to look at the parents' savings. If a family has saved $200,000, they will be asked to pay a higher tuition rate than a family that only saved $20,000. But that's crazy: it penalizes families that save for higher education. That's particularly harmful to middle class families. If you don't have any money, then you can go to an Ivy League school for free (via financial aid). If you have a great deal of money, then you can pay the full tuition rate and still have assets left over. But if you only have some savings, then a college bill can easily wipe out everything you have.

sp332 13y ago
The article is about loans. A loan is not a discount. And if you're talking about need-based financial aid, that's usually financed by people (often alumni) who decide to pay into a fund specifically for tuition subsidies. That means he didn't get a "discount" that average students had to make up.
- danielweber 13y ago
  "Need-based financial aid" is just price discrimination. We hate it when the auto dealer tries to extract as much as we can afford from us, but for some reason people are happy to let the schools do it.

apsec112 13y ago

Not to belittle your accomplishment, but you were very lucky to have parents who lived in California, which still has the best public colleges in the US. People whose parents lived in the other 49 states had to either go to a worse (sometimes much worse) school than Cal, or shell out $250K for a private degree.

jlgreco 13y ago
I don't buy it. I went to one of the most expensive private not-for-profit schools in the US (top 20 net-cost, going by http://collegecost.ed.gov/catc/# http://collegecost.ed.gov/catc/#) and had exactly fuck-all for scholarships. I didn't shell out anywhere near $250k. Are you assuming med school or something? As far as I can tell, the median debt for med school grads from private schools is barely half of $250k. The most expensive I can find still falls short (barely, to be fair): http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-medical-schools/debt-rankings http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-gradu...
newbie12 13y ago
California is so large it has many great public schools, but other states like Virginia (UVA and William & Mary) have public schools that rival the best in California, and most large states have an elite public school (Texas, Michigan, UNC, Georgia Tech, etc etc) that would be top tier in California. To some degree, California's support for its universities has slipped and the reputation is based on the past.
ridicter 13y ago
Yup. I grew up in Arkansas. Our highest--and only ranked university--is ranked #138. The smartest students leave the state, as you can see from the SAT/ACT score ranges at in-state schools. I went to a top university and took out many loans to do so... had I lived in a state like Texas or California, I would have had access to a fantastic state school and not need to do so.

GFischer 13y ago

"In some countries, you don't even have the OPTION to take out a loan to go to school" In some countries, like mine (Uruguay) university-level education is free :) (though postgraduate studies are paid). I think China is the biggest example of free university education. EDIT: I was wrong, about U$ 2000/year and rising apparently. At least our bazillion psychologists and communication majors (equivalent to the dreaded "English majors" in the U.S.) are not saddled with debt, though a non-specialist psychologist can expect to earn less than a store clerk or McDonald's employee. Continuing edit: Sweden and other countries also have "free" college education: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/05/the-high-price-of-a-free-college-education-in-sweden/276428/ http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/05/the... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_education http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_education List of countries with free post-secondary education (from Wikipedia) Algeria Argentina Bhutan Cuba Denmark Egypt Estonia Finland France Greece Italy India Malta Mauritius Morocco Norway Oman Pakistan Russia Saudi Arabia Scotland Spain Sri Lanka Trinidad and Tobago Turkey Barbados Kenya United Arab Emirates Uruguay I was wrong about China, but apparently it is free in India. One major difference is that here in Uruguay you don't have entrance exams, and it's free for foreigners (we get several Chilean students, where it is not free).

gebe 13y ago
University education in China is not free, they have tuition costs as well.
- GFischer 13y ago
  Sorry, I must have wrong information :( . I'm 100% sure we don't have tuition here in Uruguay, and poorer students get state help. However, five years after you graduate, you have to pay a mandatory special "university graduate tax" called "Fondo de Solidaridad" which helps pay for the poorer students, etc., so I guess it is a form of debt :) . It's about U$ 200 every six months currently.
  - pc86 13y ago
    Is that $200 ever six months in perpetuity or does it stop at some point?

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jacoblyles 13y ago

You're a very special case, going to one of the best schools in the country at a good price. 3/4 of American college students are not traditional college students going full time to a four-year university. And only 30% of Americans eventually achieve a bachelor's degree. But plenty of the rest take out $20k in student loans and never have anything to show for it.

gwu78 13y ago

"... perspective is everything." Indeed. If, for example, Rolling Stone were to approach this story as others have approached stories about the high cost of healthcare in America, i.e., by comparing the costs there with the costs in other countries with similarly high standards of living, it might produce a more interesting perspective. Readers might see that there are students in certain other countries who are having their educations financed under far more financially-friendly terms than those now presented to American youths. When a journalist shows the reader the healthcare costs in her country compared to those in other comparable countries, maybe it sends a powerful message to the reader. Journalists covering education costs should perhaps consider this approach.