Comment by ruswick | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ruswick | Hacker News Reader

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Unlike the things you listed above, college isn't perceived as a choice. It's perceived as an obligation. Because of this, a myopia has set in among most students: "I need to go to the best possible college or kill myself trying." The decision is no longer theirs, it is the product of tremendous stigmatization, social pressure, and the nonstop inundation of students essentially from birth with platitudes about the necessity not just of education, but of the prestige that comes with an expensive education. The notion of college as a commodity product that needs to be evaluated based on value is foreign to people. As a student currently in the process of applying to schools who tends to associate with academically hyper-qualified students, I can tell you that most of them are taken aback if not totally incredulous when I say that going to my state flagship would be ideal.

Society has not equipped people to evaluate colleges rationally. I don't think it necessarily the fault of the students.

I agree that college isn't perceived as a choice, but I do question why it's the fault of anyone but the student if they apply only to $50k/yr schools, ignoring whatever their state schools are. Is it the schools' fault for accepting students who can't afford it?

Is it the loan companies' fault for trying to provide loans for students who likely can't pay them back? If so, should loan companies be able to discriminate based on which major a student chooses? Or on their GPA? Or likelihood of landing a job that pays $X/yr?

Is it the government's fault for not stepping in to make sure that a student can't get a loan that they can never hope to repay?

Ultimately I think it falls on a student for making a bad choice. I agree that it sucks that a student can't discharge the loan (as someone mentioned above). I'm not really sure how to fix that: if it's dischargable, loans are going to be a lot harder to get, then the government needs to provide the loan. Then we get a mixture of the two scenarios I mentioned above.

But I guess as a person I am a big believer in personal responsibility. You make your choices, just like I've made mine.

Up until recently (at least I hope it's finally starting to change) students were told that money doesn't matter, just borrow as much as you need because college is always worth it.

After years of hearing this repeated to them, they do think they are making the responsible choice.

For a long time it was true that college was always worth the money.

Colleges were not places of opulence: they were spartan collections of smart hard-thinking people. If you were smart enough you could go there with them. You would pay a small amount of money, but everything was done very simply, so it was cheap.

Even for the people doing things like art history, it was still a good value, because there were so few people doing art history that many could find jobs doing that. And even if you couldn't get an art history job, hey, you still had a college degree: not many people had that, and you didn't get it to make money, you got it because you liked the pursuit of knowledge. That was a valuable signal.

As soon as people expected it to always be worth the money, that's when the seeds for disaster were sown. There was no reason for a college to not charge more and more and more, because the students kept on coming. They even saw a higher price tag as an indication of excellence.

Likewise, going to college is no longer an indication of a strong pursuit of knowledge, or even basic smarts.

It's a giant credential chase, and the people a credential chase hurts the most are the poor.

> but I do question why it's the fault of anyone but the student if they apply only to $50k/yr schools, ignoring whatever their state schools are.

State schools aren't at $50k/yr (for in-state; some are for out of state), but they're not dirt cheap either. 4-year universities averaged a 15% tuition bump in 2011[1]. Median base tuition in 2011 was over $11,000, which does not include the thousands in miscellaneous fees, books (which are all "customized" for each school or only available as a non-downloadable ebook), online course software licenses, and mandated laptops that must be purchased.

> Is it the loan companies' fault for trying to provide loans for students who likely can't pay them back?

Yes and no. It's actually the government's fault for enacting legislation that forbids discharging he loan in bankruptcy. That completely removed the bank's need to do any risk assessment and price/approve loans accordingly. This in turn removes the incentive for schools to remain cost competitive, because their constituents have virtually guaranteed access to limitless capital. I don't have time to dig for it now, but I saw a graph not too long ago that showed tuition prices and average loan debt over time, which showed a considerable increase when that legislation was enacted.

[1] http://collegecost.ed.gov/catc/Default.aspx#

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