Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Similarly, I'd drop the "4 year university or bust" approach to our education system. Put more focus on trade schools, and adult education programs.
You realize that those cost money, right?
Less than traditional 4 year universities though, right?
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In fact, with the decrease in union programs and apprenticeships, the primary source for trade schools are private schools which tend to be quite expensive. If they're not just
outright scamming their students. Of course, private vocational schools aren't much
better.
Ironically, from your first link:
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The Indiana-based technical education school, which enrolls tens of thousands of student online and at its 150 institutions, has one of the highest tuition costs among the country’s for-profit colleges. Earning an associate’s degree at the school can cost more than $44,000, while a Bachelor’s degree program can cost $88,000.
So it's $22k/year to go to ITT? And that's "one of the highest tuition costs" for for-profit colleges? Seems like you're making my point for me here Joph. Have you sent a kid to college lately and looked at tuition costs? That's cheap. Sad, but true. And frankly, it wouldn't be even that expensive, but that these colleges can bill themselves as less expensive routes than traditional four year universities and thus peg their costs to those at those traditional universities where $40k/year is
closer to the norm. To be fair, the actual "tuition" cost averages at $32k/year, but it's a lot harder to avoid all those other costs that inflate the total (mentioned in the article) when attending a four year university than when attending some kind of for profit commuter school (like ITT for example). Not that I'm pushing ITT as a grand example for education or anything, but we do have to kinda compare the two, not just bash one side in a vacuum.
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Most jobs don't actually require a degree, if you can just get some basic applicable skills in place instead.
That's for the employer to decide, isn't it?
Of course it is. But, as I pointed out earlier, if you have a glut of college educated kids with degrees in basket weaving, and the employer is forced to pay his entry level low skill workers a minimum wage of $12/hour (or higher), he's going to hire the kid with the college degree instead of the one who decided to go right into the job market. It's the cart pushing the horse. The market for college educated workers it not what's pushing college graduation numbers. It's the combination of over focusing on 4 year university or bust in our K-12 education system and the over abundance of various loan programs designed to make it appear to be easy and cheap to get that degree that is driving it. And the result is a lot of kids going to college because they think that's what they should be doing, but with no clue what they actually want to do with their lives, and then kinda drifting along, finally settling on something that seems "interesting" in college, and then graduating with what is often a somewhat useless degree, with massive college debt, and then getting hired into something unrelated to said degree anyway, just because the glut of said graduates forces it.
Absent that glut, the same kid could have gotten the same job he got absent said degree, and saved himself a ton of money. It's a self creating problem.
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As to colleges themselves? Get rid of college loan/grant programs. All that's done is massively inflate the cost of an education for those who do pursue it. When colleges have to survive charging what the market can actually bear economically, their prices will drop.
Mind numbingly poor suggestion. All this does is push people seeking loans into the private sector (ok, so I guess it's a great idea from a GOP perspective), it doesn't decrease the cost of education or make jobs not require degrees.
You're assuming that the total number of students who would seek out 4 year degrees would remain constant (and that costs would remain constant). No. Most of them would look at the costs, and decide it's not worth it. And then they'd go job hunting and likely arrive at the same job they'd have gotten with the degree, just 4 years earlier, and without owing $100k to a bank somewhere.
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Also, not to put a fine point on it, but the whole reason student loans exist is because college was already prohibitively expensive for many people (and Eisenhower wanted more college educated people to compete against the commies). If "charging what the market will actually bear" wasn't working in the 50s and 60s, what makes you think it's the solution now?
And there's you not accepting that things change over time. Yes, providing guaranteed student loans has made it easier (or even possible) for more students to attend college. But a side effect of that has been to create a "free money" situation for those colleges. Their incentive to minimize costs while maximizing value has been eliminated. Surely, we can find some solution in between, which will allow those whose outlooks will truly be enhanced by attending college to afford to do so, while not cruelly tricking those who wont into basically just racking up debt on their lives from the outset.
I just find it amusing that you linked to a lawsuit about ITT doing basically what every other non-profit college in the US does as well. So somehow because the college just pads its endowment instead of its stockholders pockets, this makes the exact same practice any less predatory? Ok. So ITT was pulling a bait and switch with a credit program they created, but the point is that a ton of students get treated to the same cost anyway regardless of where they go. At the end of the day, the costs don't change. And bait and switch or not, ITT's costs are lower than the average cost for college, so from a "are students paying too much to get an education" standpoint, isn't that relevant? So the kids going there thought it was actually going to be even less expensive, and then found out that it's just a bit less expensive instead. So what? At the end of the day, I'm not sure how much it matters what route a student takes to get himself into massive college loan debt. What matters is that he does.
College is way more expensive relatively speaking than it was back in the day. I think it's silly to ignore that fact. Hand waving it away because you can more easily get a loan for the massively higher amount kinda misses the point.
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And when more students have to pay for their own education (or their parents do), they'll make smarter degree choices as well.
Are you under the impression that you don't have to repay student loans? Or that most students are getting grants to cover all their expenses? Did you actually go to a 4-year college or university?
Did I complete a 4 year degree program? No. Have I taken classes at 4 year universities (via extension and adult education programs), yes? And you know what? I paid for those classes directly out of my pocket. And I did it because I felt the classes were worth paying for as they would expand my own knowledge and make me a more valuable employee. And I've never regretted it. Point being that I didn't take classes in underwater basket weaving (or the equivalent), because that would have been a waste of my money.
A kid being put through school via a combination of parent cash, grants, and student loans, is far less likely to make good choices about his education. And yes, I'm well aware that you have to pay back student loans. That's part of the point I'm making. Young people will make terrible choices if you give them a big credit card to pay for stuff with. And colleges basically take advantage of this with the entire setup. From the tuition costs, the silly frills they put out there that don't actually contribute to the education at all, to the meal plans, housing costs, etc. Everything is bundled in a way as to make it difficult to tell what you're actually paying for things, and to basically maximize the costs.
The fact that those costs will have to be paid back "later" is there, but doesn't really affect the spending choices along the way (and to a large degree, it's a choice of "pay this cost, or don't get a degree"). Students don't have a lot of choices. Even the "cheap" options are still so expensive that it's nearly impossible to avoid huge debt at the end. I know many people in my and my parents generation who actually worked their way through college and graduated with no debt at all. That option is nearly gone now (I'm not sure it's possible at all actually). In many cases, the universities themselves have rigged rules that virtually prohibit it (or make it even more expensive to take that route due to large overhead costs in the tuition beyond straight credit costs).
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Sure, but you're the one suggesting this as a replacement for minimum wage so I'm more interested in discussing yours.
Lol. Um... Sure. So you're unwilling to propose alternative solutions then. Got it.