The education system needs a stupendous amount of reform, not the least of which is the ridiculous debt load we put on young adults in what should be the years they're laying the foundation for a productive, happy life.
https://research.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/trends-college-p... (pg 18)
There are lots of influential professional students (doctors and lawyers) who want $100k+ handouts, but they are a loud minority.
Average Student Loan Debt: $39,351
Median Student Loan Debt: $19,281
Average Student Loan Payment: $393
Median Student Loan Payment: $222
Half of student loans are $222/mo or less. I'd also like to mention that if student loans became a lot harder to come by, people like myself could not have afforded college.
[1] https://thecollegeinvestor.com/32031/average-student-loan-de...
Yes but why is that? all I paid for 5 years of university education was about $30 in administrative fees, and I have no complaints about its quality.
Without being able to borrow (or making it very expensive to do so), it would require a part-time job on top of a full coursework, or taking longer to get a degree, which has it's own costs associated with it via lost earnings.
It's a result of the US Government guaranteeing loans of ever greater sums regardless of the ability to pay them back. It's an extraordinarily obvious outcome to that foolish approach. Try it in real-estate or any other sector and see what happens. If they tried it in healthcare, a new US Government guaranteed healthcare loan program (need a $1 million loan (at 9% that you can't discharge) for your surgery? step right up), it's similarly obvious what would happen.
The only solution being offered by the left is to generate a lot more debt in one of a few different ways (and the right is largely proposing no solutions at all; both sides are captive morons (to their dogma) when it comes to solving the student loan mess that the government created).
https://studentaid.gov/help-center/answers/article/how-much-...
> If you’re an undergraduate, the maximum combined amount of Direct Subsidized and Direct Unsubsidized Loans you can borrow each academic year is between $5,500 and $12,500, depending on your year in school and your dependency status.
> If you're a graduate/professional student, you can borrow up to $20,500 in Direct Unsubsidized Loans each academic year.
Most people aren't going to graduate school, and the full amount of government loans one can get for undergraduate don't make most private schools in any way affordable to those without jobs or family support.
On the left a potential solution is to increase the share of corporate profits going to workers.
On the right (and part of the left) a potential solution is the reduction of credentialism.
How "willing" are the debtors when the whole system seems to built around the idea that a student will take out a loan to pay for the education, an education which is priced around the idea that anyone that isn't wealthy takes out a loan? I mean, yeah, I guess they willingly went to college...
I have $70k in loans. I also paid a boatload of cash directly to my tuition so my loans weren't even the full price.
I don't care if it isn't supposed to be easy. It wasn't and to the day I am struggling with it. Something has to change. You can act like its a moral failure on the students' part all you want but that doesn't make this system sensible or sustainable.
If we discharge a loan on a house or car your possession is confiscated no matter how much you had paid off...should the same go for your degree if you want to get out from under your student loan?
As more direct comparable, consider the Small Business Administration's loan process. These loans are guaranteed by the federal government in essentially the same way as student loans or FA/VHA home loans.
If Bob gets an SBA loan to start a restaurant (famously a bad risk...about 30% fail their first year) and it goes belly-up, he can file bankruptcy and eliminate the debt. That will ding his credit rating, but that's all. The government might (or might not) get a few thousand bucks from selling the restaurant equipment (commercial stoves, freezers, and such), but all the money spent on employee salaries, decorating (quite expensive), advertising, taxes, insurance... it's just gone, and the government can go whistle for it.
Why is Bob allowed to file bankruptcy, while Steve, who took out a student loan, is not?
The only way to get around this would be for most to not be able to go to college with a loan at all, which isn’t going to happen.
Also, though credit card debt is unsecured, the creditors can garnish your wages, and since your limit and hence debt scale, in effect they can generally take a high percentage back.
Any reason why? Why should education be this expensive to begin with? Why make students work 2 jobs while having college?
Here in Germany we have a student loan model, where as long as your making progress in Uni, you get around 1.3k a month, only have to pay back at most 10k with 0%. Oh and if you pay all at once you can get up to 50% cheaper.
So why should students be forced into 30k dept with crazy interest rates, just because they wanted to study something?
Genuinely curious
Also, does everyone get to go to university in Germany or are there restrictions on who gets to go? In the US you basically just have to have a HS diploma and money to go...
1) Quality of the classes (most classes at all schools are pretty much made to fit the abilities and interests of the average student, which can be a big negative in transferring or even getting hired.)
2) Time to, and odds of, completion can lower for CC > Uni transfers, mostly depending on how well the 4-year schools partner with CCs in enabling transfers.
> Luckily with the internet you can study a lot of things for free...no need to pay some overpriced college anymore.
It's only rarely about what you know. The first step in the door is often gate-kept by a credential requirement.
The reason government support for tuition exists is because as a matter of policy society benefits from: 1) a more educated public; and 2) taxes from the higher wages educations historically commanded.
The problem is guaranteed government loans allowed schools to begin charging students tuitions that resulted in an inability to payback loans on average market wages over lifetimes.
Now imagine if the government guaranteed car & homeloans for all borrowers starting at 17 years old. That bad policy would result in Homeowners/car dealers charging more than a kid could ever expect to pay off in a lifetime, historic defaults due to inability to service loans and no net benefit to one’s income tax bracket for federal taxes. Is such a system existed I hope everyone would demand reformation, not demand some other unrelated debt be forgiven.
Existing federal student loans should be forgiven & the current guaranteed federal student loan/university system reformed…mortgages and car loans really have no relationship with federal student loans.
Many people weren’t given the opportunities nor had the privilege to be given basic social safety nets like a way to finish high school. Most people don’t have easy lives. No one loves to part with money to pay for the “decisions” of others. I quoted the word because i don’t understand the notion that people are making such major decisions independently of capitalisms grasp on all of us.
Don't forget you'll be told you are lazy for not affording a house unlike your friend who just had his debts cancelled and was able to save up!
I've seen a lot of people graduate, get their first job and then buy a car that is more expensive than their yearly salary. "Well I want to be able to enjoy having an income now"...not doing the math on what that costs and what they will need to pay back.
Adding a financial literacy course in high school and requiring completion of that course before getting loans for college should be a must.
50 years ago was a pretty special time, if we're being honest. The ratio of home prices to income was an all time low. Go back to the 50s and it was the more typical 4x ratio. Clearly the 6x and 8x bubbles we've recently experienced aren't sustainable, but we're also probably not going back to the relative utopia that was 1970s house prices.
What did the people in the 70's do differently?
Since then we've ratcheted up expectations for what minimal housing should be, which raises the price floor. Dropped interest rates, which pushes up demand. People not getting married need their own home, pushing up demand some more. Forcibly constrained sprawl, pushing down supply. Zoning, etc. It's hard to imagine how we actually lower prices significantly (aside from the bubbles, which I'd guess have as much to do with interest rates as anything else).
With enrollment trending down many colleges appear to focus on making up the loss through raising tuition.
To attract students the universities invest in prettier buildings and more "college experiences" to attract students.
Meanwhile information is cheaper and more easier to replicate than ever in human history.
Books ought to included in tuition, a good professor can note any updates needed.
Lectures ought to be digital. Let classroom time be for students to work or ask questions or discuss. Saves both students and professors money.
Integrate and use/teach open source software. This would lower costs to students and long term lower the technology costs to the university (especially if universities are aiding each other in development).
That's three core parts of modern college that can and ought to be reduced in costs.
There's no (good) excuse for academia to not do this in my opinion and if they (universities) fail to keep up with the rate of opportunity sadly I believe we'll see a lot of knowledge lost.
We shouldn't have lectures at all, IMO. They arose in medieval times before the printing press, when the lector (which means "reader" in Latin) would read a book, very slowly, while the students copied it down verbatim. At the end of the course, you'd have your own copy of the book. Of course, this actually made sense at the time. You couldn't pop down to Barnes and Noble and get your own copy of Aristotle, after all.
The fact that we're still doing this in the 21st Century has more to do with the ego of academics who like to hear themselves talk than it does with any bona fide educational purpose.
We already have technology that can help tailor instruction to individual students, and that capability is only going to get better with time. The university as we know it is doomed, IMO. The corpse just hasn't stopped twitching yet.
I really like the idea of having a personalized copy of your class/book once you're end of term.
Universities function far beyond just teaching undergraduates. They often function as essential research hubs, protect & disseminate knowledge.
However I agree we having technology that changes the need for traditional college lectures. Though I struggle to see how to adapt the need for accreditation & proving someone is qualified, which is a nice function of colleges.
And that's where I have a problem. If I pay $613 per month for the next 10 years (https://www.forbes.com/advisor/student-loans/average-student...), and all of the sudden that gets paused, I will not go out and think: oh let me get a new car with on a 5 year, $400 / month note.
This debt load is also voluntary, is it not?
I mean, when I went to college, I went to one that I could afford.