How to help student tuition problem.
- Thread starter The Spin Meister
- Start date
I agree that the starting point is identifying the reasons that the cost of higher education has increased so much. The decades since I graduated from PSU haven't exactly been characterized by high inflation, but you wouldn't know that from looking at tuition costs.
While I agree with your sentiment this is actually a very good potential solution.
Student Loans are subsidized by the US government.
For colleges and universities to have large endowments buy as the government to subsidize its students is somewhat ridiculous.
The government, if it really cared about student debt creation, could impose restrictions on use of government funds for loans based on an Endowment to Student ratio. Or some similar mechanism.
LdN
How about a little personal responsibility? Colleges have zero reason or incentive to lower costs. You may not like it but how about going to a school you can afford? They do exist. Don't expect or demand that I pay your debt if you have made poor choices.
If expensive colleges started getting fewer and fewer applications they might consider lowering costs. As long as somebody is willing to pay the bill they will never lower the cost.
If expensive colleges started getting fewer and fewer applications they might consider lowering costs. As long as somebody is willing to pay the bill they will never lower the cost.
I can't believe you wrote this and (I'm assuming) graduated from college. The "flooding" the market with graduates will only happen over the initial year or two. Then it's back to pumping out the same number of graduates per year. I'm assuming you were not very good at math, right???
Sure, make degrees 10 credits. 🤦♂️
I get where you're coming from though. But why are bachelor degree curriculums generally four years long? Who decided that? Does it serve the educational needs of today's students? Just because it made sense 100 years ago doesn't mean it makes sense today. Back then it was a much rural society and college students weren't often exposed to much outside their local area. Transportation was primitive. No internet. It wasn't uncommon for a household to be without a telephone. Gen ed courses may have been a good idea to expose young adults to what was in the world outside their community. Today's kids are much more aware of what's out there.
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How about all incoming students must take and pass a 1 credit online finance class that explains how much college costs per year, how much and for how long it will take to repay it, how much you need to to earn to repay it and how much money you will realistically earn with each degree?
That's a good idea but I would take it a step further. If I were king anybody in America getting a high school diploma would be required to pass a personal finance class. Just teach people the basics of what a credit score is. What is an interest rate, the time value of money. How credit card debt accumulates over time. How do you apply for a mortgage, accumulate wealth by purchasing a home. Plan for a retirement with a 401k or whatever. It is amazing how many people know none of this. The financial literacy in this country is awful. Better understanding would go a long way toward decreasing poverty and raising living standards.
We probably need more trade schools and fewer colleges for one thing.
This from the guy who says we should devalue the entire education by making the first two years free and base the next two years on income. Talk about making a college degree worthless. If they’re going to make the first two years free, they better make it really hard to get into school in the first place or a college degree will be worth nothing. If a ton of people have something, then it’s not worth much.
I've actually taught that class before. So there are plenty of places that teach it. The issue is that are few kids take it seriously no matter what their background is, many of them think they're going to be working for a salary of at least $100,000 when they don't have the work ethic to work a minimum wage job at the 7-Eleven.
We used to put 30 different jobs and their salaries in a hat and the kids would have to randomly pick their salary and budget for an entire year based on that salary. Once all the jobs were selected kids couldn't believe the salaries of some of those jobs. Then they would ask me where the real jobs because they were either going to be pro athletes music stars or youtube stars
It's really hard for a lot of those kids to grasp the concept of compound interest on a credit card as well. We spent two entire class periods one year going over how making the minimum payment on a credit card bill was one of the worst thing you could ever do. And yet even going through all of that there were still kids that wanted to use a credit card for going to Chick-fil-A everyday for lunch and buying a different pair of shoes every week.
Many of them would treat it like an EBT card or something that has a set amount on it and they can just use the card until it's out. It's going to take more than a year of one personal finance class to make up for all the terrible decisions that a lot of these kids parents make financially as well. They see all the dumb stuff their parents do and think it'll be fine for them as well.
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Thank you. You are my hero for doing this kind of thing. All you can do is give people the information or at least try. What they do with it is up to them.
You don't seem very sympathetic to that graduating class that got swamped with two sets of graduates. Anyway, your "express" method of getting a degree might make it cheaper and faster. However people who could afford the old four year method would still go, so those numbers would remain the same. What would change would be an increase in the number of people who couldn't afford to go to school for four years, but could afford to go for your cheaper/faster "express" program. Thus more college graduates on the market every year. That's a flood.
While the market might adjust for this, the major pitfalls are these: first, these people were only educated in one subject. So while they got a cheaper/faster degree in one area, they were educated in nothing else and have nothing else to fall back on if their "major" doesn't work out. Secondly, the danger here is that students who got on the "express" too early at age 18 and now want to get off it at age 20 just set themselves behind and incurred debt while doing it. Had they been in a more general education course of study on a four year model (two of which were free) they would still be on track to get out in four years with little to no debt. "Express" savings just went out the window.
I simply said you will not pay for your first two years. If you do not get a degree after two years because you decided not to continue once the bill came due, how has that devalued anything? If you want to go and see if college is for you or if you want a chance to really explore something you were never exposed to and might take interest in, here are two years to do that without incurring life altering debt. Plus, I think a partially college educated 20 year-old is better able to choose what they want for their life than an 18 year-old who recently sobered up from prom. Just my opinion.
Your final two years you will be on the hook based on need, income, major choice, merit, and other factors that the school can weigh to come up with the final price tag. That might cut down on those scary "worthless" degrees that everyone on here moans about. Families or students themselves might actually be able to save for those two years regardless of major choice, so no debt at the end. Also, as stated above, some people may say that they don't want to take on the debt and simply stop after a year or two. No harm, no foul, and no debt for those people. Further still, someone who really wants to work hard and take on the debt can do so knowing that they only need to pay off two years and not four plus years with interest. Goodbye massive debt for those people.
Unlike the "express" plan you get a well rounded education that in the event your major does not work out in the world, you have something else to fall back on. The need to attend for four years is still present. Plus you have the safety net of picking your major later in your college career so as to avoid the unfortunate wrong debt decision that you had to make as an 18 year-old.
It's not perfect. But the goal is to avoid putting people into massive debt.
Nothing is free. Don't ask me to pay for my neighbors education after I sacrificed to pay for my own and my children's.
Why should the goal be to not put people in debt? That’s one of the things that adds value to a college education is that people have to pay for it. Why not give people the first two years of a mortgage free so they can see if they like a house? How about a free car for two years to test drive it? If someone chooses to rack up debt on a worthless major, that’s on them. Cost is one of the things that separates a degree from Harvard and PSU and Podunct Community College. People can go to college debt free if they want to, but many don’t. The other hole in your theory is that someone is going to have to pay for it and that someone is likely people like me and I really don’t want to pay for someone else’s kid’s education.
I've never seen a high school that doesn't offer a personal finance class, never. It's the parents responsibility to make sure their children take that class, or teach it themselves, or both!
