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Mia Love was elected last year as rep for the Utah 4th CD in a historic election. In her first year she has been relatively quiet, doubtless preferring to watch and learn before she leaps, but this is her first big initiative. Sounds like it is more or less the ed equivalent of warning labels on food products. Kids, think twice before you chow down on 1000 milligrams of sodium, or before you spend $100,000 on that art history degree.
Quote:
The bill is intended to help students understand the value of their education. Love said she had recently talked with a Salt Lake woman whose son graduated from college owing $80,000 in student loans but had no job.
The act was originally introduced last session by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., but failed to pass. It was introduced Thursday in the House by Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif. Love is the original co-sponsor.
It's not the libertarian ne plus ultra bill of my Mia Love dreams, but I like the fact that she is starting with nuts&bolts issues before tackling bigger things.
I think there are a number of colleges out there that are out and out scams-- many for profits such as U of Phoenix for example. These schools live off student loan money and rarely do students graduate and get jobs. I think the government is better off spending time enforcing regulation to insure that all schools are delivering the education they claim to....
Beyond that, I'm not sure how you judge the ROI on a college education. Whether or not someone has a job and how much they earn includes many factors beyond education. Additionally, education is valuable in many ways beyond the workplace. Colleges and universities aren't "job training centers" but also one of the only venues where scholarly inquire and (most importantly) research occur...
Besides the far too costly For Profit universities like the U of Phoenix, I think the state universities and non-profit private colleges need to let prospective students know how good their chosen degree may be in obtaining work after graduation as well.
An 18 year old often doesn't have any clear notions of what they really want for a career, and even the most engaged parents may know nothing of where the greatest needs lie in industry, business, medicine, engineering, and the arts and sciences. Sometimes the best and most secure jobs to be found aren't in places most folks would think them to be. And sometimes the best training for those jobs may not be clearly evident, either.
While it's not the responsibility of any college to decide what direction a student chooses, I think that providing current information on the economic potential of a career choice is something they should offer. I also think it would be good for a college to show its own track record in their graduates achieving economic returns for their investment in the expensive education they will get.
A friend of mine and I discussed this topic recently. He has a Master's degree in fine arts, but he has never made his living as a painter or a sculptor. For a long time, he's made a good living as a stringed instrument repairman. He said he never regretted his educational choice for a minute, because his art training gave him a critical eye for details, something that is extremely important to his present career, and many other things that also apply as importantly.
He has held several vastly different jobs over his working life, and in all, his art training was valuable in ways that weren't obviously apparent in any of them.
Oddly, the following week another friend brought over a new handmade guitar that was done by a friend of his I didn't know at all. I have some experience in that field, and the maker knew about me from our mutual friend, and wanted some of my thoughts. I was so impressed with the instrument I decided to call him.
He turned out to be a very successful cabinet and furniture maker, who has decided to spend less time on his cabinetry as he's preparing for retirement, and spend a little more time as a guitar maker, as a way of making some added income without the need to maintain a big shop with a lot of expensive equipment in it.
I'm very familiar with the high-end acoustic guitar market. I've played lots and lots of guitars that cost thousands of dollars, and while all of them were someone's dream guitar, there are relatively few that knock me over, but his did. He was a fine art major, too, and never made a dime painting pictures. One guy attended a state college, and the other attended a private art school.
Just goes to show what happens when a kid makes a correct choice that is right for him. Both these guys had to learn on their own how and where to apply their education, and I'm sure they would both have appreciated knowing beforehand where a degree that looks to be esoteric and a chancy money-maker can have good economic value.
A typical kid who is a pretty good artist may first think he can make the big bucks in design work for a digital game company. Right now, there are so many of these kids with degrees that any company can pick out only the best and pay slave wages for the best work. Millions of kids all have the same idea. That stuff, too, is something a college should provide. Knowing the downside is as important as knowing where the good money is being made.
I hope the bill Mia is working on is a good one. It makes as much good economic sense as a contents label makes good nutritional sense. That's a pretty impressive first effort on her part to me, and I think it's something both parties can get behind. It also shows Mia is doing what she was elected to do- go out and learn the needs of her district and work on ways to address those needs with something more tangible than political beliefs and symbolic gestures.
What is this bill about? Not something I have heard of or follow, some context on it would be nice, but in general it would be nice to know how much in debt a degree is gonna get you before starting college. Though I also think for profit colleges should basically be illegal or come with a warning.
Higher education education has become a massive scam in general. I don't know if a bill like this could help much but kudos to her for trying.
I think that's too big a paintbrush to swing. Sure- some colleges are bad buys, but does that make them a scam?
Only if a student puts down the money and then walks into an empty building, with no teachers or equipment. That's a scam.
I've seen a big trend developing in schools that only offer advanced technical training, where learning how to become a highly skilled welder or a technician is the purpose of the school. They all offer freshman-level general courses like English, History, or whatever the most common basic entry courses offered in any college has, and many are connected to colleges where a tech school graduate can go on to get a full scholastic degree.
That is one way of cutting down the cost of student loans. A student can go to a tech school for a couple of years, then go straight to work in a skilled job, and then pick up the rest of the stuff needed for a degree when it can be afforded later on.
One of the biggest problems these tech schools have is the transference of credits. I hope Mia's bill addresses that; if a tech school's scholastic classes are as good as a college's, there should be no reason for those credits to be denied, but it happens all the time at present. And far too many colleges refuse to recognize credits earned at a different college.
That need to be corrected on a national level, so any student can go back and get a degree without having to repeat courses at needless extra expense. Jobs move around these days, and workers follow them. Mia's bill could be a big help in the elimination of a lot of wasted time and money repeating courses that were already completed and passed once.
If nothing else, any college should be required to state what credits they allow or not. Prospective students would benefit from that knowledge.
What is this bill about? Not something I have heard of or follow, some context on it would be nice, but in general it would be nice to know how much in debt a degree is gonna get you before starting college. Though I also think for profit colleges should basically be illegal or come with a warning.
Yes, but the U systems don't want to be clear about how fruitless their overpriced subsidized sub-standard results really are.
So, you're saying you would prefer all colleges to be government run? Only an entity managed by the government could survive turning a constant loss. In fact, at this point, I believe it's mandatory for all government programs to lose as much money as possible.
How else could a college exist if it doesn't turn a profit... even if it's a non-prof?
It would remove all competition, and our higher learning future would be effectively dead.
I believe the government subsidies to universities should be illegal. If a school can't turn a profit, it's educational results are more than likely poor. Well managed businesses offering a good product are the ones that tend to survive.
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