4 ms·

The student loan crisis is a much bigger problem. 18 year old kids are being given the ability to take on massive, crushing debt that is too easily used for va

The student loan crisis is a much bigger problem. 18 year old kids are being given the ability to take on massive, crushing debt that is too easily used for vacations, boob jobs, or whatever else, and even when it is only used for classes, people feel like they need to take on this debt to spend 4 years learning (and forgetting) material that they will never use, for degrees that probably won't be relevant to their career. Just to get a slip of paper that says "bachelor's degree". It is trapping people. Making community college easily accessible is a nice step, but community college is already incredibly cheap in most places, people don't go there because of costs but because they don't have the name recognition of a state school or a big private school. Sometimes small policy steps like this (it won't get passed in this climate anyway) are more destructive than not doing anything at all. They give the illusion of progress, or treat the symptoms when the real illness remains unresolved

eastbayjake 12y ago
> people feel like they need to take on this debt to spend 4 years learning (and forgetting) material that they will never use, for degrees that probably won't be relevant to their career. Just to get a slip of paper that says "bachelor's degree". It is trapping people. My wife and I have this argument frequently and I usually take your position. She likes to point out that college graduates are not just earning more than their less-educated peers, but the income gap has never been wider between young college graduates and those who only finished high school: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/02/11/the-rising-cost-of-not-going-to-college/ http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/02/11/the-rising-cost-of... I think we can all be angry that most colleges don't measure or seem to care whether students are better thinkers by the time they graduate. Too many are interested in funding third-rate research by second-rate academics, too few are interested in pedagogy and making sure their faculty are good teachers. Why is the lecture still the core of university teaching when everything we're discovering about human learning says it's a terrible way to teach anyone anything?
- EpicEng 12y ago
  Looking at the broad stroke (i.e., median income) can be useful, but if I were helping my child make this decision, I wouldn't focus on that. Depending on the career path, income can be highly variable. I also think that these numbers are skewed by the fact that more and more jobs are requiring degrees which didn't before. I would also argue that degrees should not be required for many of these positions. I mean, a Bachelor's of Hospitality? Restaurant management? Come on, learn that on the job.
  - eastbayjake 12y ago
    The other part I don't like about these conversations is that I still really believe that a good college education isn't about learning a job skill. It's the one time in your life that you can think full-time about life's big questions and devote yourself fully to intellectual curiosity. It's a shame to use that time to learn about restaurant management. But it's crazy that it costs $50k/year to read great books and discuss them with a small group. It's a crazy price if you're intellectually uncurious and just want to get a job. It's an especially crazy price if you just want to party and grow up a bit before working. Our society should have room for both vocational schools and big-picture-intellectualism schools. It's part of the reason I'm so excited about developer bootcamps, if only as a model of what adult vocational learning could look like -- shorter time commitment, much lower cost compared to university, and a faculty fully devoted to pedagogy and student outcomes. You should be able to attend a low-cost big-picture-intellectualism school for a while if you want, then learn vocational skills at another school when you're ready to work.
    - dllthomas 12y ago
      "Our society should have room for both vocational schools and big-picture-intellectualism schools." Moreover, it should be reasonable for someone to attend both.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- aaron-lebo 12y ago
  Yes, especially when you consider that professors aren't rewarded for being good teachers, they are rewarded (tenure) by spending less time teaching well and more time on research (I apologize if this is redundant with what you have already said). The incentives are all out of whack.
  - eastbayjake 12y ago
    Yeah, just one example: the world doesn't need another paper on symbolism in Ulysses, it needs English professors who help legions of young people become good writers and thinkers. The "research" that's being done by departments outside of the Top 100 -- maybe even the Top 25 -- has an extremely low marginal benefit compared to better educating undergraduates.
hharnisch 12y ago
I don't think it's fair to call a bachelor's degree a trap. Year after year the data shows you'll make more money if you graduate: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/upshot/is-college-worth-it-clearly-new-data-say.html?abt=0002&abg=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/upshot/is-college-worth-it... The only kids who are trapped are the ones who never finish, no degree and all the debt.
- aaron-lebo 12y ago
  There is the latter group which you mention that is trapped. But as for studies that show you make more if you graduate, that's only because we have designed the system that way. You can't get many jobs without a bachelor's degree (often times in anything), regardless of whether that four years of education is actually needed. Were the trap is for those people is the lost spending power every monthly student loan payment means for them. It limits what they can do. I'm all about learning for learning's sake, but the question is whether these degrees are actually worth the artificial price tags we've put on them.
  - bdcravens 12y ago
    Went to school for 2 years, taking on $6500 in debt without knowing what it meant. (state school in Oklahoma, so I know that's low end for 2 years) Bad grades (staying up all night hacking around on langages, Linux, you name it, on a used 486 I bought) meant I lost my financial aid, had to get a job to live, so started my IT career doing help desk for regional ISP. 15 months later (early 2000) got my first real programming job, and the rest is history. Still paying off that $6500.
saraid216 12y ago
1) It will probably give people who actually can't afford community college the ability to do so. Yes, it's "incredibly cheap in most places", but a penny is still costlier than free. 2) It means people can spend what savings they make from attending community college on tuition, room, and board at a -year, if they go that route. If this program works for longer-term students, that means borrowing less overall. That reads like progress to me. It certainly doesn't solve the issue, but it does help. Edited to add: I found this article while Googling around for other stuff: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/uc/2014/04/starting_from_the_bottom_why_mexicans_are_the_most_successful_immigrants.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/uc/2014/04/s... It's not entirely relevant, but it's certainly an interesting counterpoint to your thoughts.
- aaron-lebo 12y ago
  1) Grants already exist for those who cannot afford college. 2) The savings you get at a community college are going to get spent in a couple semesters at a regular uni. This goes back, though, to actually dealing with the root problems. Yes, it reduces their borrowing burden, but it should not be necessary. Thank you for the article.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > 1) Grants already exist for those who cannot afford college. The big difference with this proposal is that while it has generally similar kinds of requirements for students as existing grant programs, it has more stringent requirements for the schools and particular degree programs covered. From the fact sheet [0]: "Community colleges will be expected to offer programs that either (1) are academic programs that fully transfer to local public four-year colleges and universities, giving students a chance to earn half of the credit they need for a four-year degree, or (2) are occupational training programs with high graduation rates and that lead to degrees and certificates that are in demand among employers. Other types of programs will not be eligible for free tuition. Colleges must also adopt promising and evidence-based institutional reforms to improve student outcomes, such as the effective Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) programs at the City University of New York which waive tuition, help students pay for books and transit costs, and provide academic advising and supportive scheduling programs to better meet the needs of participating students, resulting in greater gains in college persistence and degree completion." [0] http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/01/09/fact-sheet-white-house-unveils-america-s-college-promise-proposal-tuitio http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/01/09/fact-s...

eastbayjake 12y ago

> people feel like they need to take on this debt to spend 4 years learning (and forgetting) material that they will never use, for degrees that probably won't be relevant to their career. Just to get a slip of paper that says "bachelor's degree". It is trapping people. My wife and I have this argument frequently and I usually take your position. She likes to point out that college graduates are not just earning more than their less-educated peers, but the income gap has never been wider between young college graduates and those who only finished high school: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/02/11/the-rising-cost-of-not-going-to-college/ http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/02/11/the-rising-cost-of... I think we can all be angry that most colleges don't measure or seem to care whether students are better thinkers by the time they graduate. Too many are interested in funding third-rate research by second-rate academics, too few are interested in pedagogy and making sure their faculty are good teachers. Why is the lecture still the core of university teaching when everything we're discovering about human learning says it's a terrible way to teach anyone anything?

EpicEng 12y ago
Looking at the broad stroke (i.e., median income) can be useful, but if I were helping my child make this decision, I wouldn't focus on that. Depending on the career path, income can be highly variable. I also think that these numbers are skewed by the fact that more and more jobs are requiring degrees which didn't before. I would also argue that degrees should not be required for many of these positions. I mean, a Bachelor's of Hospitality? Restaurant management? Come on, learn that on the job.
- eastbayjake 12y ago
  The other part I don't like about these conversations is that I still really believe that a good college education isn't about learning a job skill. It's the one time in your life that you can think full-time about life's big questions and devote yourself fully to intellectual curiosity. It's a shame to use that time to learn about restaurant management. But it's crazy that it costs $50k/year to read great books and discuss them with a small group. It's a crazy price if you're intellectually uncurious and just want to get a job. It's an especially crazy price if you just want to party and grow up a bit before working. Our society should have room for both vocational schools and big-picture-intellectualism schools. It's part of the reason I'm so excited about developer bootcamps, if only as a model of what adult vocational learning could look like -- shorter time commitment, much lower cost compared to university, and a faculty fully devoted to pedagogy and student outcomes. You should be able to attend a low-cost big-picture-intellectualism school for a while if you want, then learn vocational skills at another school when you're ready to work.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    "Our society should have room for both vocational schools and big-picture-intellectualism schools." Moreover, it should be reasonable for someone to attend both.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
aaron-lebo 12y ago
Yes, especially when you consider that professors aren't rewarded for being good teachers, they are rewarded (tenure) by spending less time teaching well and more time on research (I apologize if this is redundant with what you have already said). The incentives are all out of whack.
- eastbayjake 12y ago
  Yeah, just one example: the world doesn't need another paper on symbolism in Ulysses, it needs English professors who help legions of young people become good writers and thinkers. The "research" that's being done by departments outside of the Top 100 -- maybe even the Top 25 -- has an extremely low marginal benefit compared to better educating undergraduates.

hharnisch 12y ago

I don't think it's fair to call a bachelor's degree a trap. Year after year the data shows you'll make more money if you graduate: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/upshot/is-college-worth-it-clearly-new-data-say.html?abt=0002&abg=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/upshot/is-college-worth-it... The only kids who are trapped are the ones who never finish, no degree and all the debt.

aaron-lebo 12y ago
There is the latter group which you mention that is trapped. But as for studies that show you make more if you graduate, that's only because we have designed the system that way. You can't get many jobs without a bachelor's degree (often times in anything), regardless of whether that four years of education is actually needed. Were the trap is for those people is the lost spending power every monthly student loan payment means for them. It limits what they can do. I'm all about learning for learning's sake, but the question is whether these degrees are actually worth the artificial price tags we've put on them.
- bdcravens 12y ago
  Went to school for 2 years, taking on $6500 in debt without knowing what it meant. (state school in Oklahoma, so I know that's low end for 2 years) Bad grades (staying up all night hacking around on langages, Linux, you name it, on a used 486 I bought) meant I lost my financial aid, had to get a job to live, so started my IT career doing help desk for regional ISP. 15 months later (early 2000) got my first real programming job, and the rest is history. Still paying off that $6500.

saraid216 12y ago

1) It will probably give people who actually can't afford community college the ability to do so. Yes, it's "incredibly cheap in most places", but a penny is still costlier than free. 2) It means people can spend what savings they make from attending community college on tuition, room, and board at a -year, if they go that route. If this program works for longer-term students, that means borrowing less overall. That reads like progress to me. It certainly doesn't solve the issue, but it does help. Edited to add: I found this article while Googling around for other stuff: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/uc/2014/04/starting_from_the_bottom_why_mexicans_are_the_most_successful_immigrants.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/uc/2014/04/s... It's not entirely relevant, but it's certainly an interesting counterpoint to your thoughts.

aaron-lebo 12y ago
1) Grants already exist for those who cannot afford college. 2) The savings you get at a community college are going to get spent in a couple semesters at a regular uni. This goes back, though, to actually dealing with the root problems. Yes, it reduces their borrowing burden, but it should not be necessary. Thank you for the article.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > 1) Grants already exist for those who cannot afford college. The big difference with this proposal is that while it has generally similar kinds of requirements for students as existing grant programs, it has more stringent requirements for the schools and particular degree programs covered. From the fact sheet [0]: "Community colleges will be expected to offer programs that either (1) are academic programs that fully transfer to local public four-year colleges and universities, giving students a chance to earn half of the credit they need for a four-year degree, or (2) are occupational training programs with high graduation rates and that lead to degrees and certificates that are in demand among employers. Other types of programs will not be eligible for free tuition. Colleges must also adopt promising and evidence-based institutional reforms to improve student outcomes, such as the effective Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) programs at the City University of New York which waive tuition, help students pay for books and transit costs, and provide academic advising and supportive scheduling programs to better meet the needs of participating students, resulting in greater gains in college persistence and degree completion." [0] http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/01/09/fact-sheet-white-house-unveils-america-s-college-promise-proposal-tuitio http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/01/09/fact-s...