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The problem was so many students chose unmarketable majors. An English Literature or Art History degree isn't going to get you very far outside of academia. Students who chose degree paths in tangible, marketable fields (like computer science, accounting, engineering, etc) aren't having issues finding employment.
I really think this is something that has to be fixed but I am unsure how to do it.
Total bachelor's degrees awarded in 2012: 1.8 million.
Art History: 3,600 degrees conferred in 2012. About 1/4 of 1 percent of all degrees conferred.
English Literature: 43,000 degrees conferred in 2012. About 2.5% of all degrees conferred.
We can add about 4500 more if we add "art teacher education" and "english/language arts teacher education" to those totals.
So are you trying to say that approximately 3% of degrees awarded are responsible for whatever economic problems you think you perceive?
I think the problem is too many degrees, period. 50K out of 1.8 million are not causing the problem, the 1.8 million are.
The "tangible, marketable" fields you mention are already saturated and don't need any more.
Good luck telling parents that their snowflakes can't have the "American Dream".
If that snowflake isn't top-5% in aptitude with a good work ethic, odds are low that they'll economically out-perform their parents.
The student loan debt problem is a fallout of the whole "everybody has to go to college" mantra. If you're top-5% and you apply yourself, you'll have no problem paying back whatever education debt you pile up. If you're barely in the top-30%, you either need affluent parents picking up the tab or you need to do a careful cost-benefit analysis of every penny you spend on education.
"Americans are flooding the government with appeals to have their student loans forgiven on the grounds that schools deceived them with false promises of a well-paying career—part of a growing protest against years of surging college costs."
I am glad some students are doing this. The whole thing is one giant scam set up by the government and banks. The government allowed this mess to happen and colleges ramped up tuition to the point it has become a total ripoff, unless you are in only a couple of fields. If you live in the state of PA the cost of college is $100,000 for a 4 year degree! Yep, Penn State and Pitt are that much. Go private, pay even more. What a scam!
Ok, this might be naive for me to say but I don't understand why people make such a big deal about student loan. Why is student loan any different than mortgage? People happily take on 200K+ loan for their house yet investing a fraction of that money in their education is outrage? What is the difference?
I understand it makes your life harder to have another loan (and will make it difficult to make mortgage payment on top of loan) but that's life, why should it be easy. Having a mortgage makes people life harder by preventing them from spending money on other area in their life, like traveling & going back to school for higher education.
How much are we going to spend on IBR? Half of which was school other other half was for rent, beer, and food?
So if we scrap govt student loans and pell grants, we trim a whole lot of the private schools.
We would also have students trying to get private loans for room and board, this would make school to expensive for some as they might not qualify for private loans, or the interest rate might be too high (no assets, no career).
Just like the health industry, the govt wouldn't pay prevailing rates, they'd pay what they want, and so schools would have to lower prices for their instate students, they aren't going to cut salaries (unions!), so they'll increase their out of state/country attendance and price (this will decrease in state attendance).
Sounds like a plan to me.
Lower forgiven amounts to fewer students and those students are likely going to be the ones who would have done fine already. Everyone else will have to figure out how to scrap together enough capital to go out of state w/o federal loans and few private loans.
Or you know, people could suck it up, live like a college student, and study a useful field (come on, if we can stack 18-22 year old warfighters three deep wall to wall with a tiny common space, and feed them warm bland goof in bulk, we can do the same for the 18-22 year old college student.
One can get a UC education on pell grants if they take their first two years at a California community college, so I just don't buy the crippling debt line (especially since the median college debt is less than the median price of new cars purchased in America).
Ok, this might be naive for me to say but I don't understand why people make such a big deal about student loan. Why is student loan any different than mortgage? People happily take on 200K+ loan for their house yet investing a fraction of that money in their education is outrage? What is the difference?
I understand it makes your life harder to have another loan (and will make it difficult to make mortgage payment on top of loan) but that's life, why should it be easy. Having a mortgage makes people life harder by preventing them from spending money on other area in their life, like traveling & going back to school for higher education.
Because if you cant pay a mortgage the bank comes and takes the house back, and you get a black mark on your credit for several years and thats the end. Default on that student loan, and they can add 50% to the balance per default, garnish your tax returns, wages, social security, and suspend your professional license which gets you a job in the first place. Many people have taken out 50k loans only to find themselves over 200k in debt after extended unemployment leads to a string of defaults. Because the government backs all these loans, you've got private companies like sallie mae coming in willy nilly offering loans and preying on poor kids and hoping for a default. When the student defaults they are automatically repaid by the taxpayers for the full value of the loan. Then they can resell it to themselves and go for collections for the rest, still possessing the ability to garnish wages, suspend licenses etc.
The problem is noone knows if their college degree actually will improve their wages. The data is notoriously murky. The "million extra dollars" bachelors degree earners allegedly make over high school grads is based on old 20+ year data. Plenty of recent grads are finding their degrees utterly worthless, even some of those in practical fields. And then you have young people with professional degrees that despite making great money are being eaten alive by interest and payments.
The credit itself is the cause of the ballooning cost of university. Cut off that spigot and youll see a mass firing of high paid administrators and the return of prices to this planet. The government guaranteed loans and direct government loans are what distorted the market in the first place.
Because if you cant pay a mortgage the bank comes and takes the house back, and you get a black mark on your credit for several years and thats the end. Default on that student loan, and they can add 50% to the balance per default, garnish your tax returns, wages, social security, and suspend your professional license which gets you a job in the first place. Many people have taken out 50k loans only to find themselves over 200k in debt after extended unemployment leads to a string of defaults. Because the government backs all these loans, you've got private companies like sallie mae coming in willy nilly offering loans and preying on poor kids and hoping for a default. When the student defaults they are automatically repaid by the taxpayers for the full value of the loan. Then they can resell it to themselves and go for collections for the rest, still possessing the ability to garnish wages, suspend licenses etc.
The problem is noone knows if their college degree actually will improve their wages. The data is notoriously murky. The "million extra dollars" bachelors degree earners allegedly make over high school grads is based on old 20+ year data. Plenty of recent grads are finding their degrees utterly worthless, even some of those in practical fields. And then you have young people with professional degrees that despite making great money are being eaten alive by interest and payments.
The credit itself is the cause of the ballooning cost of university. Cut off that spigot and youll see a mass firing of high paid administrators and the return of prices to this planet. The government guaranteed loans and direct government loans are what distorted the market in the first place.
And the government backs mortgages too. You know, FHA, VA, USDA, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, etc. ? It isn't just student loans.
It was allowed, by yes, government, to swell in it's cost because it was perceived as "free" by the average 18-19 year old. No, they weren't writing checks, and perhaps their parental units were not either. In any event, here we are, exorbitant costs, and the system is predicated on the likelihood that they are guaranteed. Well, the end borrower isn't guaranteed an income to pay that loan back with. No money, no repayment. 6 month deferral period or no. It's BS. I'm not going to let my oldest go that deep into the hole. If it can't be done with our help, and perhaps a MODEST loan for an actual technical field degree, we won't be doing.
Amerikan dream is crap. If you aren't brilliant or come up with something that Google or FB will pay you personally 1 billion dollars for, forget it.
NOT NAIVE.
Last edited by ashpelham; 01-25-2016 at 08:55 AM..
Reason: spelling, which I actually didn't go to college for.
It all comes back to the purpose of Higher Education.
Historically, the purpose of higher education was to prepare the student to be a better citizen, not for a financially secure future. Many academics, particularly in the Liberal Arts, argue that education is its own purpose. That era is behind us, never to return.
If I were a cynic, I'd say the purpose of Higher Education is three-fold:
Sex for the students
Football for the alumni
Parking spaces for the faculty
Uhh...not even sure what to make of this post. Perhaps I'm being ungracious but it reads like a parody of itself.
You seem to be familiar enough with Clark Kerr's famous statement about the purpose of college to rip it off ("The chancellor's job had come to be defined as providing parking for the faculty, sex for the students, and athletics for the alumni.") and at least seem to want people to think it's an original thought.
...and yet you completely gloss over that Kerr said this in 1957 with the "that era is behind us" lament, and it's been a joke (funny b/c it's true) within higher education ever since.
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