Slashdot Mirror
Universities Hold Transcripts Hostage Over Loans
Hugh Pickens writes "Dave Lindorff writes in the LA Times that growing numbers of students are discovering their old school is actively blocking them from getting a job or going on to a higher degree by refusing to issue an official transcript. The schools won't send the transcripts to potential employers or graduate admissions office if students are in default on student loans, or in many cases, even if they just fall one or two months behind. It's no accident that they're doing this. It turns out the federal government 'encourages' them to use this draconian tactic, saying that the policy 'has resulted in numerous loan repayments.' It is a strange position for colleges to take, writes Lindorff, since the schools themselves are not owed any money — student loan funds come from private banks or the federal government, and in the case of so-called Stafford loans, schools are not on the hook in any way. They are simply acting as collection agencies, and in fact may get paid for their efforts at collection. 'It's worse than indentured servitude,' says NYU Professor Andrew Ross, who helped organize the Occupy Student Debt movement last fall. 'With indentured servitude, you had to pay in order to work, but then at least you got to work. When universities withhold these transcripts, students who have been indentured by loans are being denied even the ability to work or to finish their education so they can repay their indenture.'"
And the bubble continues to press against the thumbtack.
I have a feeling this collapse is going to be bigger than anything we've seen yet. Dot Coms or Real Estate be damned.
This is the kind of thing that happens when you allow the government to get in the middle. I am just glad that I didnt make the mistake of getting into the mess of student loans. There really is no excuse for what is going on here
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I was incredibly fortunate to be able to call my department head and speak with him, he personally corresponded with the background check agency and it was finally accepted that I wasn't lying, however, they said that I couldn't list the degree on my resume. This was in 2005 by the way.
...what happens if a student contacts the lender and informs them of the problem. I know people who have done this, lenders understand and generally work with you if you explain the situation. Not so much if you just stop making payments.
Just don't be a deadbeat. Taking more money than your McDonalds job can pay is a dumb position to put yourself in.
Considering almost no one pays for college without loans today, any college whose students could not get loans would be dead in the water. That gives a lot of leverage for banks to "ask" colleges to play along.
Then there is the unspoken truth that most of these degrees are worthless. If banks ever released official statistics on what degrees from which colleges resulted in the most defaults, it would hurt a lot of programs. (and immensely help out prospective students, but who cares about that?)
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
You can't work until you start paying us back and you can't pay us back until you start work.
Seems a bizzare way of organising things. In the UK you can't pay back your student loans until you earn a certain minimum wage and then it starts to come out from your pay like a tax as a percentage of your wage. And like the summary says it is the government who hold the debt, not the individual Universities/colleges. If they really want to stop the problem of defaulting then surely it would make more sense to reduce the number of degress that didn't have much job prospects, rather then block the people with degrees from getting jobs.
And if word gets out, maybe we can deter the incoming freshman from this self-destructive strategy.
Taking out student loans for an undergraduate degree is just stupid and lazy.
It leads to the lifelong debt cycle Americans are increasingly trapped in.
This seems like a great way to get alumni to donate when they eventually do start making good money. The affected alumni are not going to harbor any resentment at all.
Any school who withholds a transcript for an overdue Perkins loan is probably doing the right thing since they're indirectly suffering economic damage. Not so okay for other loans.
The way student loans typically work is that the bank or government pays immediately and then collects over time.
For the schools to withhold the transcript implies that the schools themselves weren't paid which is not how this normally works.
So... did the schools get paid or not? Who secured the loan? I've seen no instance where the schools have ever backed a loan for a student's education outside of scholarships and that's because the school is basically waving fees.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Now I can convince employers I have a degree law from Harvard. I am just behind in my loans.
If I was a lawyer I'd look at this as a Great opportunity to file a class-action lawsuit. As the summary states the colleges are not owed any money, therefore they hve Zero grounds to hold hostage the record of the students 4-5 years. They are committing a crime (charged money but did not provide the final document promised in the contract).
Go for it Mr. Lawyer.
Rape the bastard colleges.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
How wise is it to prevent those who owe you money from getting jobs to payback said money?
She concedes it's a difficult issue but says that "it's the only tool we have to make them pay."
A music major ... was making payments on his $62,000 student debt after graduation while working as an adjunct professor for Temple.
So we have institutions lending $62,000 to majors that have terrible job prospects, then when they can't get jobs they don't know how to get the money back... okay. How about don't lend that much money to someone who you can be pretty sure won't pay the money back? I know higher education should be accessible to all and this and that, but perhaps 62 grand for a degree in music should give us pause to reconsider a) why does a degree in music cost 62 grand and b) why does someone want to spend 62 grand for a degree in music.
I can partiall answer b). I was at a advisory board meeting for my university's CSE department recently, and some undergrads were asked the question: "So what is tuition now?" No one could answer. They don't even KNOW that they are paying $40k+ a year in tuition. This is because they don't even look at their bill. They fill out the fafsa, press a button, sign some papers, and get free money that gives another year of partying. The reality only hits them AFTER they graduate and look back at their full bill. This attitude on the student's side has got to stop
There's also the attitude on the institution side, that they can loan someone $60k for a degree in basket weaving and reasonably expect to get it back. This has to stop as well, but I don't know how to fix it.
Not necessarily for this reason, but it's as good as any opportunity to point out that you should really have a local copy of your transcript, preferably scanned into PDF along with your diploma as well. For many things, especially outside academia (e.g. applying to jobs in corporations), a PDF of your transcript is perfectly sufficient, and it's quite convenient to have one handy, even if you aren't behind on your student loans, because the official registrar transcript is often not very timely in arriving. Only a minority of things really require an original stamped/embossed copy of the transcript, versus a copy or even a PDF.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Once a school opens the door for corporations, there is basically no turning back -- corporations begin to influence every aspect of the university.
Palm trees and 8
Who is muddying these waters?
The schools have been paid, have they not? That's the whole point of a loan - lender pays now, and you pay the lender.
And, as others have said, it's a little short-sighted to stand in the way of those in debt, since the best way for them to pay off those loans is to be successful. Again, that's the whole point.
Any institution engaging in this sort of behavior is way out of line. In fact, it's rather rare to see such a clear-cut case of wrongdoing when it comes to financial/political entanglements.
Back off, universities. You are not moral guardians, gatekeepers, or creditors. You are educational institutions, and your obligation is to the students, not to whatever twisted group of people suggested you monitor you alumni for credit score violations.
A declining credit score is already one hell of a millstone - like weight gain, it's much easier to damage your score than improve it. The last thing we need is universities undercutting those students who need their credentials the most - those who essentially gambled a portion of future success on the hopes of a beneficial education. Do they want us to pay our loans off or not?
But is an employer asking for your transcript really that common? It has never happened to me in the 20 years since I graduated. After my first job, nobody cared other than that I had a degree in my field, and not one employer since then has checked just to see if I was lying about it.
Now grad school, sure they'll want your transcript, but if you can't pay your undergrad loans, is borrowing a ton more money and going to grad school really a good idea?
Necron69
I'm not sure what part of the word 'loan' people don't understand.
I'm not sure what part of the word unemployment you don't understand.
Stop apologizing for your corporate masters; it's disgusting.
'It's worse than indentured servitude,' said NYU Professor Andrew Ross who completed his post doctorate work in Hyperbole at the University of Bologna.
Seriously, show me the debtors prisons..
(/local/home/curiosity)-#who -u|grep thecat|cut -c 44-49|xargs kill -9
They will give you an enormous amount of patience and latitude. All you have to do is call and tell them that you can't pay them. They will ask you a few questions, then take your word in regards to your income, employment status, and expenses without asking for so much a a shred of proof, and most likely grant you a deferment of forbearance.
When I couldn't find a job about 5 years ago, at first I got by on deferment for about 6 months, after which a had to bite the bullet and take a job way beneath my education level. When I called to tell them that I was now able to pay about 50% of my payment every month, they offered to keep the deferment in place so my partial payments would go entirely to principal. Yes, that's correct - they had even stopped the interest for the entire deferment period. They stopped time itself to help me. Once I had gotten on my feet I started full repayment. When I lost that job before I'd had a chance to save and build an unemployment hedge, they did it for me again.
They withhold transcripts in cases where students have dodged them, avoided them, and failed to acknowledge the debt.
You are the kind of fool who looks at the rigged game and says 'well why cant you play better?'
Good-bye
Wow 60% huh? I'm guessing because you're shunning ignorance and embracing science, that you simply hit enter before actually providing us with the source for a number. I mean, what kind of a idiot would base such a bold statement on his mere feelings.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Bluto: Hey! What's all this laying around stuff? Why are you all still laying around here for?
Stork: What the hell are we supposed to do, ya moron? We're all expelled. There's nothing to fight for anymore.
D-Day: [to Bluto] Let it go. War's over, man. Wormer dropped the big one.
Bluto: What? Over? Did you say "over"? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!
Otter: [to Boon] Germans?
Boon: Forget it, he's rolling.
Bluto: And it ain't over now. 'Cause when the goin' gets tough...
[thinks hard of something to say]
Bluto: The tough get goin'! Who's with me? Let's go!
[Bluto runs out, alone; then returns]
Bluto: What the fuck happened to the Delta I used to know? Where's the spirit? Where's the guts, huh? This could be the greatest night of our lives, but you're gonna let it be the worst. "Ooh, we're afraid to go with you Bluto, we might get in trouble." Well just kiss my ass from now on! Not me! I'm not gonna take this. Wormer, he's a dead man! Marmalard, dead! Niedermeyer...
Otter: Dead! Bluto's right. Psychotic... but absolutely right. We gotta take these bastards. Now we could do it with conventional weapons, but that could take years and cost millions of lives. No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part!
Bluto: We're just the guys to do it.
D-Day: [stands up] Yeah, I agree. Let's go get 'em.
Boon: Let's do it.
Bluto: [shouting] "Let's do it"!
[all of the Deltas stand up and run out with Bluto]
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I worked when I was in college. The problem is that most of it was not directly related to my field.
'Tis not the paying back of loans that is in question here, but how to do it as quickly and completely as possible.
I have a friend who attended what is considered by some lists as one of the most expensive universities in the US. Putting aside his lifestyle choices and various other problems (parents are divorced, and he changed his major 3 times), he has supposedly completed all of his requirements for graduation (started off in IT, ended up in Marketing). Anyway, without that last payment, he cannot graduate. So he needs to find (best guess) $30,000 or so in order to get his degree. However, he cannot get a loan, and his parents do not want to help out. As such, he is stuck earning some rather sorry wages at fly by night companies, up and until he earns enough to make that final payment, which grants him the degree, which lets him earn (I believe) a better lifestyle. However, given the wages he's earning, it should only take another 6 or 7 years for him to earn enough to get that degree.
With a degree, he might be earning $60,000 / year. Without it, he might be earning $10,000 / year. I keep telling him that if he just stops eating for a few years, he will have enough to get that degree sooner. My sympathies to him, as the university has a ten year rule, so the credits he does have will expire by September, and at some point, the loans he does have will be called in...
I am John Hurt.
The American education system itself isn't that bad. It's not the best, but it's not the worst, either.
One huge problem is that the schooling (schooling, not education) centers around rote memorization and teaching to the test. How things work, why they work, how to apply them... those kinds of questions are nonexistent in most cases.
The first rule of student loans, don't get one!
I wager that it was a guess, remember 7.24*10^42% of all statistics are made up on the spot (oh damn fox did I go over 100%?), the idea is that people keep voting on the majority against science and pro ignorance (I should know, I live in Kansas...), request citation from my state and I'll spend some actual time pulling it up. I can't make truth or false on his claim with sources, but I definitely get his sentiment.
I will at least bring this to the table though, many fundamentalist Christians see science as a direct attack on their religion and I cite Galileo, the book burnings of the dark ages, evolution, vaccines, personhood rights (pray that god doesn't take you if your child will cost you your life, this is medical science which opens a whole ball park), etc. There's also a movement in the christian sector that support science and believe that man wrote the bible and is literally meant to be taken as allegory. But those seem far and few between because those who are most radical tend to have the loudest voices, and mob mentality listens to those who speak the loudest.
WTF Slashdot, why do I have to login 50 times to post?
I put all three kids though the UNC system, Chapel-Hill, NC State and Greensboro + grad school with no debt to me or to them. Maybe NYU and the Ivies and Columbia and all the rest need to re examine the efficacy of charging ridiculous sums of money especially in this economy. And increasing rates at 2x the rate of inflation year over year over year every year for the last 30 years. Maybe students need to re examine the efficacy of getting an MFA in post modern Marxist-Anarchist-Lesbian critical literary theory when literally the only job they can get is teaching that to the next crop of like minded students. Maybe parents need to stop enabling their kids to do whatever they like wherever they like for whatever it costs when it doesn't cost the students anything or they've convinced themselves that going a hundred thousand dollars in the hole is no big thing because they're a special snowflake and somebody somewhere will swoop in to bail them out. I got news for you. Anyone who MARRIES someone with huge student debt is an enormous idiot. So all the snowflakes should all work that crap out before they move on to the next phase of their lives, which no doubt will be moving in with their parents for Adolescence II, The New Beginning.
I have zero sympathy for anyone involved in this, just like the janitors who took out liar loans on half million dollar houses and now cry to Mother Government to bail them out because the banks went broke selling smoke and bullshit to EACH OTHER. Jesus Christ in a shopping cart does ANYONE bother with due diligence anymore?
Work 5 jobs if you have to and repay your debt.
I honestly hope you don't believe that. Even working 5 jobs at part time (20 hours) you'd be working 100 hours a week. There are 168 hours in a week. Assuming you get a full 8 hours of sleep (which you will NEED, working 5 jobs), that's another 56 hours. That gives you a full 12 hours left a MONTH, most of which you will probably spend going between jobs and changing uniforms. That isn't how people pay back education loans. That's how people become serial killers.
And it's not just as easy as "get 5 jobs". I have a friend who had (until last week) been unemployed for 3 years. She would have loved to work 5 jobs, hell she would have loved one. And it's not that she was unqualified-there is simply no work available, even at fast food places.
You seem to be a little out of touch with the world around you. But then again a lot of people who aren't in this situation are.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
It's leverage to force them not to blow the loans off completely.
Basically the same ideas behind letting the carpenter put a mechanic's lien on your house and getting to repo it if you don't pay up.
I wondered when debtors prisons would be updated to the 21st century.
You could end your life, or you could chose to do something with your life that would make it worth it to you. You can try things you would never have dreamed of, since your not worried about the risk. Check out www.reddit.com/r/suicidewatch to talk your issues out, while it may not change your resolve, you can at least get it out there. Nice work on the dictionary btw.
Dude, is this for real?
Probably a troll, but just in case.....don't do it man.
First off, Hugh Pickens needs to learn how to use quotation marks properly, so that he isn't plagiarizing the article he's describing.
"It is a strange position for colleges to take, however, since the schools themselves are not owed any money. Student loan funds come from private banks or the federal government."
This is totally bogus logic. By this logic, a car dealership should help its customer cheat the bank out of the money it loaned the customer to buy the car. After all, the car dealer isn't owed any money. Well, the problem is that the banks obviously wouldn't take this lying down. Suppose Bank of America finds out that Jones Chevrolet is giving its customers instructions on how to default on their loans without losing their cars. BofA is going to respond by refusing to make further loans through Jones Chevrolet.
What is actually a "strange position" to take is to expect lenders to make a type of loan that doesn't have any collateral and that the borrower can walk away from without any penalty.
In the US, student loans are treated differently than other types of loans. You can't discharge them through bankruptcy. The IRS can garnish the borrower's paycheck if he defaults. These measures are meant to keep lenders in the market at reasonable interest rates (currently about 7%). Since these loans are highly regulated by the government, the electorate could certainly choose to make their terms more favorable to students. But guess what? Lenders can't be forced to lend. They will either raise interest rates or (if they're prohibited from that) leave the market.
The real moral of this story is that people need to stop being indifferent to the price of higher education. Tuition at private universities is getting crazier and crazier; their tuition inflation is about double the general rate of inflation. They can get away with this because parents somehow believe that getting a degree from the USC (the University of Spoiled Children) is going to be way better than getting one from UCLA.
People are also spending money on a degree that's way out of proportion to the market value of the degree. The article describes a guy who got an undergrad degree in music at Temple and ended up $62,000 in debt. Yeesh. Pennsylvania has a big community college system, but he obviously didn't consider spending two years there before transferring in order to save some money. He also obviously didn't consider the current market value of an undergrad music degree before going so far into debt to get one. He has his sights set on teaching music at the university level. A reasonable expectation for someone with a bachelor's in music is that you're going to spend your career teaching band to junior high or high school kids. But he's not doing that -- he thinks he's entitled to default on his loan because he couldn't find a permanent, higher-level teaching job at a university. (What he got was part-time faculty work at a university, which by its nature is a temporary job, not something you can depend on for the long term.)
Find free books.
Sounds like Universities are now becoming lackeys for the Federal government. These days, the vast majority (80% - 90%) of student loans come directly from the Federal government. Private lenders were taking advantage of students, so the government stepped in and pretty much owns the market. And the government won't generally let you off the hook for these loans -- even through bankruptcy. The government wants its money back.
The same government that subsidizes student loans also sends grant money to the Universities. I'd bet dollars to donuts that the government is willing to put the squeeze on universities to find some way to force students to pay. It shouldn't surprise anyone to find out that the Feds might withhold funding from Universities if their students don't pay back loans.
Like the summary, and others, have pointed out: there's no good incentive for Universities to not send transcripts for students behind on their loan payments. So why else but pressure from the Federal government would Universities do something that harms their alumni and their reputation?
Funtime Candy Wow! - my plan for eventually conquering Japan.
Get an unofficial copy of your transcript immediately after graduation.
Won't work for every job, or for follow on degree admissions... but it will satisfy some employers.... at which point you can start paying your loan off if hired.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Woah... That was an epic Slashdot circle jerk. You managed to bag on all the elitist neckbeard enemies in one post. Hipsters, gangstas, religious fanactics all in one post and blame them for something completely unreleasted you got upvoted to Score:4 Interesting! Congratulations!
The only type of loans where the School is the Lender is Perkins Loans. These are 5% hard coded interest loans where the school guarantees the money. So if they don't get it back, they have to front it back to their creditors, i.e. their bank/the fed/whatever. You can't file bankcruptcy out perkins loans nor stafford loans. A creditor can garnish wages to get them back, but it is definitely a lengthy court process, especially if the student moves out of county/state. You also have to try hard to get a Perkins loan, since it is a subsidized Loan that has the aforementioned unflinching interest rate, generally by having a low enough Estimated Family Contribution (i.e. you are broke and/or your parents are broke). Also, the total amount of perkins loans is 50k per student, and 8k per year, in theory, but I have seldom heard of people getting anywhere near that kind of money since the Perkins allotment are actually quite limited.
A few more factoids:
a) If you have loans out, and if you don't graduate, you have to start paying them back immediately.
b) If you have loans and you graduate, the grace period of any of those loans that are obtained via the fafsa process is one year. This includes Perkins loans.
c) If you can't make the payments, you can choose to pay them back in 20 years instead of 10 (lowering payments) and then backload the payments (for now). By the time I was said and done, my first loan payments were in the sub 150 dollar range.
d) If you can't make those payments after the grace period has ended and you've already lowered the payments, apply for forbearance. When I was working for NSLDS and the FAFSA hotline, the policy was that you'll get it the first time for a length of six months after you fill out a form and apply for forbearancee. Then you have to call again. If you manage to hide in graduate school or fulfill one of the other conditions for deferrment, then you can also apply (using the same form) and your interest for subsidized loans (perkins included), is forgiven.
e) Perkins loan payments are seperate from other fafsa loans. Generally the school uses a different payment processor than the Direct Loans folks. However, the deferrment/forbearance process will bail you out of both types of loans for a while.
f) Once you have defaulted on your loans, you can't apply for deferrment/forbearance, not even if you go back into school. Once you default, you have to make 12 months of payments reliably before you are back in Uncle Sams good graces. So you can't hide in Graduate school and not pay your loans back indefinitely, unless you do some leg work before hand.
It takes a great deal of negligence to piss off schools to the point where they will come after you. If you game it right, you can not pay anything back for 2 years if you manage to speak to the right individuals on the phone. Indentured servitude it is not.
Here is the thing. For an undergraduate who is less than 25 in age, not married, not a veteran, not a ward of the courts, i.e. not an independent student, the limit for total loans are almost inadequate for the average state school. For example a standard University of Kansas education, estimated cost of tuition was 300 a credit hour plus fees for an _in-state_ student. It comes out to about 12k a year after fees. (Here is another interesting tidbit, 300 a credit hour fees use to be for _out_of_state students, the in-state fee was 67 a credit hour in 1996 and a flat fee of 3k a year for as many hours as you want to take before 1995. Those were the days). Typically your stafford loan limits are:
Dependent Students:
First Year $5,500 ($3,500 subsidized/$2,000 unsubsidized)
Second Year $6,500 ($4,500 subsidized/$2,000 unsubsidized)
Third Year and Beyond $7,500 ($5,500 subsidized/$2,000 unsubsidized)
Independent Students:
First Year $9,500 ($3,500 subsidized/$6,000 unsubsidized)
Second Year $10,500 ($4,500 subsidized/$6,000 unsubsidized)
Third Year and Beyond $12,500 ($5,500 su
Or, you know, actually worked a job.
Where did the idea come from that students should just play during the 20-30 working hours a week that they're not in class?
20-30? I wish. For me it's more like 40-60. And after talking to many of my fellow classmates, I'm fortunate. At least I don't have children.
do() || do_not();
When a society fails, fear is created. Fear of failure, unemployment, homelessness, destroyed relationships and depression. We are now seeing the results of our government's change to the laws that favored wall street and moneyed interests. The last bastion for personal confidence after all has failed is religion. What we are seeing now is just the tip of the iceberg for the chaos that is coming .
Need the job to pay the loan...
...pay your damn student loan bill, dumbass! If you are behind because you had no job, call them and make arrangements.
"...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive...it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it..."
Please call the suicide crisis line at 1800-273 Talk. I know someone who took that route, and it is bad all around. And no, I don't think it "made a difference" to those who did the damage. Only to those who were already also hurting beyond belief, and then hurt even more, including her mildly retarded son.
Though it isn't the advise those people could give, my only advise is to turn to God and seek his Word and His face. Nobody else is going to have answers on the "why".
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Usually after repossession the loan is written off. I'm sure plenty of people wouldn't mind handing back the diploma to be free of debt.
There's another large portion of Americans who aspire to be nothing more than "gangstas". Even when involving a curriculum developed by non-whites and taught by non-whites, these people still insist on rejecting "the white man's education".
"Large" you say? Based on what standard?
But these days, we're talking about 60% or more of Americans who willfully and voluntarily reject a useful education. That's a recipe for disaster.
Citation needed. And some comparison needed as well.
Mine? I was simply replying to his.
How do the universities know which individual graduates are behind or defaulted on their loans? Is it only certain loan types? Are the loan agencies breaking any laws by sharing the graduates' personal financial information with universities? I RTFAs, and I got no answers.
If students at the University of Utah where I studied Physics can run one of 33 teaching nuclear reactors in the U.S., I'm pretty sure letting them near an email server would probably be OK. http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705368841/University-of-Utah-has-own-nuclear-reactor-tucked-away.html
When I was working on a CS degree, one of the work study jobs a number of people in CS could get was computer operator on the campus computer system, which in fact gave them the keys to the kingdom. Unsurprisingly, the world didn't end as a result, nor were the operators grades ever 4.0 across the board.
-- Terry
If large institutional investors (like Wall St. banks) are heavily invested in higher education, then there would be ample pressure to do things like withholding of transcripts.
I would be interested in seeing some statistics on this question.
Golly. That's quite scary. 60% - or more! - of Americans who deliberately reject a useful education? Naturally, you have the statistics and references to back this up, unlike those other fools.
Actually, could you please provide your references for, umm, well, basically everything after the first three sentences?
Students are given access to easy credit and can spend a lot of money on tuition without any conception of how they are going to pay it back or what they can afford. If students default, universities shouldn't get all that money since they are complicit in the process and it should help reign in the bubble.
But colleges keep raising tuition and we keep allowing students to get deeper and deeper in debt to pay the tuition. But the debt is what allows the tuition to go up beyond what people can afford in the first place. Like any bubble, there is no way to stop this.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Depends on your state. In my state (Massachusetts) there's a heavy emphasis on reasoning skills. Consequently we're at or near the top of the heap in terms of the percentage of 8th graders who test as "advanced" in mathematics (17% vs. 7% for the country as a whole), for reading comprehension (5% vs. 2% for the nation as a whole) and science (5% vs 2.9% nation-wide) . My daughter just returned from an exchange program in Hamburg, Germany, and reports that gymnasium students there don't work nearly as long and hard, and our students don't lag in anything but free time. She's taking 10th grade geometry, and every week there are at least one or two problems that are extremely difficult for *me*, and I was good enough at math to go to MIT. Granted it's honors math, but still.
If you want to see how your state ranks in mathematics or reading, you can go here.. If students in your state are ignorant, illiterate or intellectually passive, don't blame American culture. Blame the people running your state. Chances are they're looking for someone to blame, too.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
There couldn't be high tuition without the vast amount of money given out for loans. The same was true of home prices. Cheap credit is at the core of it.
And as time goes on, not allowing students, who made a lot of these major financial decisions at 18, to discharge debt in bankruptcy seems downright wrong.
So colleges will raise tuition and we'll allow students to become bigger debt slaves because that's the compassionate thing to do.
This bubble will burst and there will be a lot of pain. It's going to happen and it's going to be ugly.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Had I the money, I wouldn't loan it to him. I'd have given it to him, or more appropriately, the bursar.
I am John Hurt.
Since the school I attended had this thing with their career services. They'd help you but only for 6 month immediately after graduation. After that they'd start charging for their services. In my case the problem was my depression(admittedly self diagnosed) didn't really let up for more than a year after I graduated and I was a little bummed out that they basically weren't going to help after making me depressed in the first place.(Since I pretty much wasn't in the condition to even be able to use the services at first.) So to state it more succinctly they were will to help for free students who didn't need the help.(IE student who had a job before or up to 6 months after graduation) If you needed the help, oh you had to pay for it. (Did I mention it was a private school so they charged up the wazoo in the first place? Admittedly back then things weren't as expensive as now but even I paid more than I would have expected.) It was of course self defeating since one of the things they accomplished in the end was to convince me to never donate a dime to them ever. (I always get a cheap laugh when they send their stupid fund raising letters, pleading with me to donate to them when I know I never will. Karma is a bitch, but it does make me think I should donate to the state university again.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
The difference is your HS claimed you owed THEM money. In this case, the universities withholding the transcripts aren't owed anything. They got their money before you were allowed to attend classes. They are holding transcripts hostage over someone else's loans not being paid.
Seriously, call them and tell them to knock this off or they're never seeing a dime from you. I just checked the universities I've attended. Not a word on their web sites that they do this.
They also reject a useful education, either in favor of mooching off of their wealthy parents, or by studying a field that offers absolutely no job prospects and no real-world value.
Actually there used to be a time when people valued "non-useful" fields, but now we expect college to be a glorified trade school training purpose built drones. I went to school for philosophy, actually, and upon entering the program we got to see a nice graph showing that our entry level earning was lower than most "specialized" fields, had a much higher top-cap, since we were being trained to think. Not think about a single task, but to be, basically, generalists.
The people I know who make the most money either majored in something useless (history, education, philosophy, politic science) and ended up in the military going on to work for/as contractors, or when to school for something useless that has large repercussions outside the field. Of the four people I know who take home the most yearly, one is a high school drop out, one has a B.S. in anthropology, one dropped out of a history program, and one has a B.S. in education.
I also don't see a problem with someone who goes to school to better themselves. There is more to life than money, in the long run personal and intellectual fulfillment also deserve their place. Even knowing that I could be pulling in twice as much if I studies something "useful", I still would have gone to college for what I did. I had a passion for something, I acted on it, so I'm not going to lose sleep over people's disapproval. I, in fact, have more respect for art and history majors than I do for MBAs, the former generally has more character and makes the world a more interesting place.
This isn't to say that people genuinely interested in more practical fields are bad. As long as their choices spring from genuine interest, and not some soulless "I need to make a shit-ton of money someday" motive.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Right... So poor* people shouldn't have education.
* By poor I of course mean half of the middle class as well. College is damn expensive.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
WTF does that hillbilly racist/elitist datribe have to do with universities withholding transcripts on unpaid student loans?!?
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
"Hipsters" and "gangstas"? LOL! Oh man, you don't get out much, do you?
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Actually, in many repossessions one can get the property back if that start paying again. It is not a perfect analogy but it is close. The main difference between an item like a vehicle and grades is that the grades have no value to the entity who loaned the money and therefore can not be re-sold. Maybe fewer people would borrow money for courses and degrees that will not make money.
Another issue is that transcripts are generally used for further education. So you want us to give you transcripts for a program you have stopped paying for so you can get into another program where you can borrow more money. That does not sound right to me.
Well if he's trolling it's epic, going on for months of posting history on slashdot, with some unrelated posts, too. There is corroborating evidence online for most of it but the work at Target and the leg show up in one set of sources and the computer/Japanese stuff in another. It's possible icongorilla has assumed Zach Dovel's information and woven into his own story. Or not. The real Z.D. supposedly has a NOC engineer job. But maybe it's really the same guy and he's just puffing his resume a bit. I'd say ~70% probability it's a really epic troll, 30% probability it's truth. If someone asked the one with the nice Z.D. linkedin profile and also the guy with the zakkudo wordpress blog if he's really icongorilla or not,it would clear things up.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Which grad school did you go to, that was centered around "rote memorization"?
When students from all over the world stop lining up to come to our grad schools, we can talk.
This article was about college loans, and the corporatization of higher education. Of course we're going to be paying more and getting less, as long as our universities continue to follow a corporate model. That's the way corporations work. Profits come from giving a customer less than he paid for.
In the 80's, when I started my academic career (well before I got tenure) I noticed a distinct transformation in university administration. More academic bigwigs read the latest business management self-help guide than read St Augustine or Plato. Endowments were treated like corporate war-chests. Three-piece suits replaced tweed jackets with suede elbow-patches.
And it went downhill from there. Universities decided that they didn't really have any responsibility to society, they only had a responsibility to the "market". And having a relative monopoly on credentials, they began to raise their prices to whatever the market would bear. I started noticing a lot more "Associate Deans" in departments that were not academics at all, but transplanted corporate middle management. C-level executive jobs started going to corporate stars, not educators. And the salaries and bonuses and golden parachutes followed right behind. Any of you who've worked in academic know what I'm talking about. One day I noticed that the CIO of my institution was a former Sun exec who got an unbelievable compensation package from the school. A few years later, when Sun crashed, it was easy to see why he had been so happy to take the university's offer. And he was a fuckwit. I think he later became the CIO of a big Ivy school after our IT had been thoroughly trashed. Like many corporate execs, he failed his way to the top. He likes to be on corporate boards, I have heard, naturally.
A belief started in the early '80s, that universities needed to be "run like businesses", as if there was something salutary about the corporate culture of Wall Street. And as you might expect, running a university "like a business" has turned it to very expensive shit, where a graduate leaves the institution with more in the debit column than the credit column. And it got worse and worse and though I tried to insulate myself from it I eventually just walked away and retired on my 50th birthday. Fuck it. If I wanted to work in corporate culture, I'd have gone for the money in the first place.
Oh, by the way, the same people who had the bright idea that universities should be "run like businesses" also brought us the notion that government should be "run like a business". That if we just put some business douchebag in charge of the shooting match, everything will be just fine. The only problem is, almost none of the people that those institutions are supposed to serve happen to be shareholders. As universities, and governments start to be run like corporations, we are finding that students and citizens are seen as consumables, not consumers. And certainly not shareholders. The expendibles.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Back the Jurassic age of education (late 1970s), my official M.S. transcript was held up until I paid all the parking tickets I had accumulated over my college career.
Same here. Twenty years ago a business would see that and say "Hey, this person is motivated and hard working because they busted their ass working to pay the bills while doing college full time and they have a 3.5+ GPA" and hire you. Now companies see that and say "Oh, you don't know how to use *specific software only someone who's already had the position you're applying for would have used* because you were busy working to pay the bills? Fuck you".
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
When I didn't have a job and couldn't easily afford to make my loan payments, I requested a six-month deferment online. It was approved within a few days. No sweat. My universities still provided transcripts too as I was applying for professional programs at the time. This was 2007-2008, and I see that the possibility of deferment is still available to me today every time I check my balance online.
My understanding, and I hope this is still true, is that as long as you communicate with your lender (in my case the federal government) BEFORE you start missing payments, you'll be okay. However, any hint that you plan on blowing off your obligation, even as little as missing one payment for no apparent reason, will get you into trouble. I don't know where my fellow debtor went wrong here, but I'm wondering if he just missed payments without contacting the lender.
Also, it's a music program he's applying for. Can't they just have him play an instrument or see a portfolio or something? We don't need an official piece of paper to prove everything.
Survey without religion bias And 64% of Americans would hold onto a religious belief even if it was contradicted by clear science and evidence. In 2009 a survey showed only 4 in 10 Americans believed in evolution.
That is pretty bad.
Anarchists never rule
Ultimately your resume shows your competence. I got a few salaried positions over the years just putting the date I was going to graduate on my resume (clearly marked as "expected graduation date"). I got my first salary position in my field about 2 years before I graduated. You don't necessarily need the degree. As long as you can show that you're actually knowledgeable and capable and that finishing the degree will not interfere with your work schedule. Obviously, if the issue is paying a debt then you don't have to go to classes so it won't interfere. You might end up with a slightly lower starting salary but that will go up quickly then.
I've been working for a company now for over a year and my boss just recently found out I had a degree in math. At a certain point, they just don't even look at it. It only came up because he was talking about another possible area I could do work within the company. They look at your listed accomplishments and see if you're competent enough to do the initial job they want you to do.
Work Safe Porn
I agree it's a crappy thing for the government to pressure schools to do, but it's not at all like the analogy the NYU prof has put forth. It's more like buying a lawnmower for your landscaping business on a loan, then not repaying the loan. Just because the bank repossesses the lawnmower does not mean they're depriving you of your ability to get work. It just means you cannot use the lawnmower to help you find landscaping work, at least until you start making the loan payments.
The students are not unable to work (that would be like debtor's prison). They can find work just as easily as any other able-bodied person. They just cannot find work which takes advantage of their degree which they haven't been paying for.
Tenure should be abolished. At the very least you should have to prove why you deserve tenure every couple of years. It is the first thing that needs to be removed to get rid of the ivory tower complex that seeps into many "professions". Especially lawyers and the judiciary. But most all in any case.
This is because, for a lot of people, the 'free market' is basically a religion. It lets them be as greedy as they want to be and classify that behavior as good and moral so they refuse to acknowledge that there's any situation where 'running things like a business' isn't the correct solution.
Simple answers are always easier to sell people on than complex ones, even if they're not right, especially if it lets people do what they want to do anyway and feel good about doing it. It doesn't help that we spent most of the 20th Century blasting every with propaganda extolling the virtues of the free market and the evils of socialism.
Here in Belgium, any degree in any university (bachelor or master level) costs around 500 euro tuition per year, for anyone. Additional costs are housing (around 250-300 euro a month for a room in a university dorm or in a shared house), food (subsidized by the university, a decent meal in the university restaurants costs around 3-4 euro's), and books (most courses are printed as a stack of A4 paper and distributed by the university itself, for only the cost of the paper). Of course there is the occasional prof that insists you buy book XYZ for 50-100 euro's, but that is rather rare, and generates a lot of complaining. There are almost no other costs.
Furthermore, if you are a "needy" student (e.g. your parents died when you were 17), the tuition is dropped entirely, you get almost free housing, and about 1100 euro's a month for living expenses (nothing of this needs to be paid back by the way). It is almost impossible to go into debt for your higher education here... By the way, anyone is welcome here, we have great beer, and still have a decent old-style education.
int main(void) {while(1) fork(); return 0;}
without affordable loans the number of students would drop dramatically.
Without student loans, the price of education would drop dramatically.
Inexpensive, readily available student loans have the same effect on the cost of education as inexpensive, readily available home loans did on the cost of property during the housing bubble - they give the purchaser far more purchasing power than they would normally have, resulting in the price of the product being bid up much higher than its value.
We're trapped in a vicious cycle - education is perceived as "too expensive", so we give out loans to students so they can pay for education. Then prospective students, collectively armed with more money to pay for education, then bid up the price of education, making it too expensive.
A good way to look at this is imagine someone is selling a car that you want to buy. The car costs $10,000, an you only have $2,000 but you need it to get to work, so you'll take out a loan to buy the car. Then, the government comes along and decides to give a free $10k loan to whoever buys the car. What happens? Now a whole bunch of other people can buy the car too, so the dealer raises the price to say, $12,000.
So now instead of a $8k loan with market interest, you have to get a $10k loan with discount interest. Didn't make the car any cheaper for you, but the car dealer made an extra $2k off the taxpayer.
Student loans are working the same way - they use taxpayer dollars to inflate the cost of education, raising the costs to both students and the taxpayer.
What's worse is, just like we had no standards on housing loans leading into the housing bubble, we have no standards on student loans either - virtually any student can get a loan, even if the school they are going to go to is a degree mill where graduates see no increases in employement opportunity (as measured by low loan repayment rates), or they are getting a degree where the expected salary can not justify the loan cost. (i.e. tens of thousands of dollars in loan debt for a degree in a career path with $30k top pay.)
We would be far better off if we eliminated student loans entirely, allowing the costs of education to fall and people would once again be able to afford to pay for an education with a job while they are in school, instead of having to pay for their education for 20 years after school.
paintball
If the government REALLY "got in the middle", this wouldn't be a problem in the first place since public colleges and universities would be dirt cheap or even free, as they are in most other OECD countries.
How would banks make billions in federally guaranteed and subsidized profits if the government just provided higher education to qualified students?
paintball
Live in Finland already? Live out the remainder of our lives in quite modesty and let our children have a free wonderful education?
I know at least one Top-5 university will withhold a degree until full repayment of any money loaned by the university is repaid. This doesn't apply to student loans, just "emergency" loans from the finance dept, typically agreed when a student drinks themselves into poverty and can't pay rent for the month, buys a £400 coat and can't afford noodles etc.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
There appears to be at least two inaccuracies in this article.
1) Defaulting on Federal Stafford loans do affect the school for a period of time. Schools who participate in Federal Student Aid (FSA) are beholding to a concept of the "Cohort Default Rate". The basic premise is this: The U.S. Department of Education (ED) monitors the number of loans that a school has in default relative to the total number of loans made to the school for a rolling three year period. If this ratio passes a certain point, ED begins applying an ever increasing set of penalties on the school. If the cohort default rate passes a certain point, the school loses its ability to issue FSA. Also, Federal Perkins Loans are subject to this as well, on top of the fact that schools partially fund Perkins loans with their own money.
More information can be gleaned here: http://ifap.ed.gov/DefaultManagement/CDRGuideMaster.html
2) There has been argument for at least the 13 years I worked as a contractor to ED that transcripts are school property. Mark Kantrowitz, noted FSA researcher and commentator, has posted an excellent article on his website describing the subject here: http://www.finaid.org/educators/withholdingtranscripts.phtml
If you read the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA), there is one section of the regulations that may be useful as leverage in dealing with a case of withholding transcripts. Mark deals with this section in his article. If you are experiencing this issue, I highly suggest you read the article, as well as the reg itself and make your argument from there. I have semi-successfully made the argument on behalf of clients previously during my time as a contractor, so please note your mileage may vary. The larger schools may offer a compromise (which the reg allows) while the smaller schools may cave in due to how much it'll cost them to offer the compromise.
Good luck.
I! Tego Arcana Dei.
Can I ask exactly what a transcript is and what it's used for?
In the UK, we get certificates showing our final exam/degree grades, and that's it. I assume a transcript is a detailed record of everything you do somewhere?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
But these days, we're talking about 60% or more of Americans who willfully and voluntarily reject a useful education. That's a recipe for disaster.
BS. The world is full of ditches to dig, shelves to stock, papers to shuffle, rote memorized medical procedures to perform, TPS report headers to be modified ...
I would guess that at least 95% of jobs are "trained" jobs with no educational requirement. Post secondary training, sure. But education, no. Jobs where independent thought and/or thinking outside the box is strongly discouraged by management. Apparently at least 35% of those employees are over-educated/under-employed/frustrated.
You need a dentist? Train a guy to make holes in teeth and fill them. If instead you educate him by also sending him to philosophy class or maybe english lit or ceramic sculpting class or theater class, he's just going to end up miserable later in life at his assembly line of drilling holes in teeth and filling them. It'll have no positive correlation with his skills at drilling holes in teeth.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I agree, but what could be simpler than the notion of public education and that an educated society is a more successful society? We've had public schools (and public universities) since George Washington.
Americans have been proud of public education forever. I think the shift to corporatization is more sinister. Some very powerful people stand to benefit.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I think Massachusettes' success has a lot more to do with the socioecomic status of the families who live in that state. I can take the same curriculum, put in in an inner-city Philly school and not get the same results.
Yes, the curriculum is important, but it is secondary to the quality of the family unit.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Everyone keeps asking for citation, it's extremely easy to find it if you actually look!
80% of American's think creationism should be discussed in schools, 60% think it should be discussed in science classes.
Depending on how you ask the questions and what answers you allow, you can get better than these numbers (these are, admittedly, the worst that I've seen) but it's very hard, no matter how you ask, to get more than 25% of Americans to agree with: "Evolution should be taught and creationism has no place in science".
When you dont pay for what you contracted for. They graduated or left long ago.
We have inner cities, too.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
As someone who grew up in and lives in a highly religious area, people don't really shy away from STEM fields for religious reasons that often. The human brain can remarkably work around flaws in logic (mostly because even well trained we don't think logically). There are some big obvious places that fundamentalist Christians will deny science in favor of religion but many embrace science in many other areas. The problem is more that we value talent based careers far more than STEM. The dream that I can make a million dollars playing a child's game is far more alluring than sitting down doing hard stuff for 6 figures. Because of that there is a culture in many poor areas, both rural and urban, to try to hit the jackpot of Sports or Music or Acting rather than put in the work on something with a more probable payout. That culture marginalizes those who try to succeed in STEM because they don't feed the culture.
I'll start by commending you for actually finding something that has figures and apparently was done in a scientific manner.
But the page you link has almost the exact opposite figures from those in your post (and would therefore seem to not support the AC to whom I replied).
The main findings, according to that first page, include that people want Evolution emphasized in science.
The overwhelming majority of Americans (83%) want Evolution taught in public schools.
The site goes on to say that while many Americans support Creationist discussions in schools, they want them taught as beliefs, and outside of the science room.
fewer than 3 in 10...wants Creationism taught as science
Another key finding? 60% of Americans reject the Kansas decision to delete Evolution from its state science standards. Only 28% supported the move.
So, basically, all you can take from this reference is it contradicts the AC poster's assertion. And, in the nicest possible way, it seems you've failed at reading comprehension. Have you considered further education, such as getting a degree?
And then there are bigots who, without understanding other groups at all, perceive themselves to be experts in all areas because they studied in one of them. They go on to be nanny-state politicians because they clearly know what's best for everyone without doing any research.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Why is this bad? Science, by definition, studies the natural. The supernatural and miraculous is excluded by science a priori because it's, you know, supernatural. I've witnessed an exorcism. I can assure you that a thin teenage girl who can throw off 6 youth pastors, speak in a male voice that's way too low for her and foam excessively at the mouth like someone fed her shampoo with her eyes rolled back in her head cannot be explained by most scientists. In fact, most will tell me in doesn't exist, even though it does. The Bible on the other hand has no trouble explaining this phenomena.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Why shouldn't scientific challenges to a scientific theory be studied in science classes. You actually prefer our children to be force-fed a single view without critically thinking about it? If the creationists are full of it, won't they be as easily dismissed as flat earthers? After all, the flat earth challenges are allowed to be discussed despite being obviously false.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
I know some doctors. They could explain these symptoms with ease. I'd start with the psychiatrist.
We've had public schools (and public universities) since George Washington.
Public schools were established for the most part between 1840 and 1920, driven by state initiatives. Public Universities do go back to Washington, however. With Georgia getting one of the first ones in the 1780's.
He effected a bored affect.
Of course, then there are those of us who choose to believe in both science and religion. Crazy talk, yes, I know.
The fact of the matter is, there is a lot of stuff we simply don't know. A hundred years ago, current tech would have been considered downright fanciful. It really isn't a big leap to assume an omniscient deity would be able to make better use of fundamental laws of reality (physics, etc) far better than we're ready to accept.
This doesn't preclude our own bumbling attempts to understand the universe, along with all the wonderful things science and education bring. I, for one, refuse the false dichotomy.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
The problem is a bunch of entitled, snotty little kids that believe the internet is a fundamental human right, who want everything handed to them on a silver platter. Everything is a right these days.
Here you are making a gross generalization of the problem, with in a nutshell is as follows: 1) a raise in tuition costs, combined with 2) greater difficulty in getting a decent job without a 4-year degree (*point elaborated more at the end of this post)
A college education is not one of those.
Why not? Again, why exactly not? Now, again, I'm not advocating for it to be a free-for-all-right, but I would like to know why people get so cranky about the subject. To be honest, and to qualify my statement (which is already off the tangent) is that it should be a right for qualified individuals. The problem is that there are little barriers of entry to college. There should be quotas, with harder entrance exams and middle-school/high-school scores to back up an application request. Then and only then, those who get in should get get as much help as possible from the government.
Why? Because education (even higher education) is an asset of national interest, like infranstructure and armies. Because that is what most developed countries in the world do (in particular barrier of entries to higher education.)
The same people claiming to "work" for their education are the same ones who racked up $100,000 in loan debt for an English degree and demanding that all student loan debt be forgiven.
Every one. All of them? Are you telling me that what you are describing here is the general case?
Yeah, I went to college. I did night classes over 8 years in the Army, still doing night classes while working full time.
Congratulations. Myself it took me 8 years to get my BS in CS, starting with zero knowlege of English, studying part-time and full-time while also working part-time and full-time flipping burgers and working in computer labs, enough to live (by eating stale muffins), but not enough to pay for college (thank God for Pell Grants and student loans in my senior year and grad school.) So I know (kinda) what you mean. I say kinda because I've never served in the armed forces, so your work is more commendable.
However...
I could stop working and use my GI Bill, like thousands of people do. Their college funding was earned by actually doing something.
What it seems to me is that you are allowing your services to the nation (which we all people with a modicum of decency appreciate) into a holier-than-thou attitude. If people don't do the exact same amount of sacrifice you did, then they are not working for it. That is pretty much how you are summing it up, with one single stroke. If that is not what you mean, your words certainly paint it that way.
I mean, how else to explain the gross generalization that you so readily apply to your countrymen? That is a sad emotion, not a solid argument for the issues at hand.
Seriously, yes, there is the English major with $100K in debt, but are you telling me that such a case represents the majority or all of the people that are now struggling with rising education costs and student loan debt? (*) There used to be a time when you didn't need a college degree to get a good job. Manufacturing jobs, blue collar jobs were the middle class. That is no more. As recent as ,possibly 15 years ago, it was still possible to get a job as a programmer, machinist or master electrician with a AA/AS/AAS degree. Now it is impossible.
Add to that the fact our country does not have a viable vocational education system (like Germany or Japan), and we have hundreds of thousands, millions coming out of HS without viable skills nor direction (other than joining the Armed Forces, which of course it is not a viable alternative for all of them.)
The American education system itself isn't that bad. It's not the best, but it's not the worst, either. The main problem is the people.
Neither is it homogeneous. There are places where it's pretty bad. Very generally speaking, where society is weakest, so are the schools.
A large portion of Americans are religious to the point where they refuse to acknowledge reality.
Oh, really. I think that portion is smaller than you're willing to accept. A larger portion of Americans are politicized to the point where they refuse to acknowledge reality. This is doubly true when religion is being talked about (from EITHER side of the aisle).
Even when it's readily available and of a high quality, these people will shun any education that may remotely challenge their religious beliefs in one way or another.
Happens from time to time, but there really isn't that much friction between science and religion. We're talking about evolution, geologic time, and maybe abortion (plus a few odds and ends). That leaves a lot of ground uncovered.
They steer clear away from any sort of science, and many of them even distrust mathematics.
Oh, really? That's a new one. I don't doubt the possibility, but I've never run across it. You're really speaking about a niche group now.
This distrust and outright hatred of science and math doesn't leave them very many useful fields to study.
I guess it wouldn't. Who are we talking about again that fits this bill? I've never met them.
There's another large portion of Americans who aspire to be nothing more than "gangstas".
This is true, and unfortunate. But our media is willing to market to (and glorify) the gangsta' culture. It's hard to fight that while retaining free-speech (a must).
Even when involving a curriculum developed by non-whites and taught by non-whites, these people still insist on rejecting "the white man's education".
There are some of those. I generally don't believe this excuse. The issue is cultural, and usually boils down to poor school experience with limited home support. But if they can blame it on the white man, many of them will. It's really sad to see racism start off this way, but it happens.
Finally, there is the whole "hipster" phenomenon. These are adults who are mentally still children, usually due to growing up in a household where everything was provided to them.
That's half the picture. It's what wasn't provided them which is truly problematic. They aren't (weren't) provided with a useful view of society. All they experienced were school and leisure home life. Nothing was expected of them, but neither were they permitted to show initiative, to wander or experiment. All they were permitted to play with were video games.
...or by studying a field that offers absolutely no job prospects and no real-world value.
If you were following your heart, and had absolutely no idea what the job market was like, what field would you choose? Again, I blame school systems and parents. Frequently, the things taught are worthless, and the things of value are omitted.
It was one thing when there was a small portion of Americans who would embrace ignorance. There have always been people like that, and nothing can be done for them. But these days, we're talking about 60% or more of Americans who willfully and voluntarily reject a useful education. That's a recipe for disaster.
Rejecting education today has very little to do with embracing ignorance. It's mostly about sour grapes. There is a presupposition that it's out of reach, so why try?
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
There is a corner in bankruptcy where a vendor that fails
to deliver product in a way that hobbles a company from
making money to repay that vendor can find themselves
liable for more than they bargained for.
While most US student loans are guaranteed by the federal gvmt
the school could find that the guarantee is void because they blocked
the student from working.
Student loans like home loans were granted with no consideration of
the true ability to pay the loan back. The honest wages that
some degrees might qualify a graduate for might fall under the poverty
level after a couple kids yet the loan is in keeping with a high paying
executive level dotcom/startup lottery ticket winner.
There are dead beats out there and they need to pay back
a little or a lot. Sadly the terms of many loans are so good
that paying the loan back does not make financial sense to
someone with a sharp pencil .
University finances are out of control.... it is not a light dance shoe that will drop.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
At my institution (perennially one of the top 3 in the US), you do have to keep proving you deserve tenure, by publishing.
Once you get to that level, though, a tenure system is the only way to provide transgenerational academic freedom. You don't want some venal beancounting administrator to make a decision on a faculty member based upon some ideological disagreement.
Tenure may not be a perfect system, but it's the best I've seen. Here in the US, you will find faculty with the entire range of political and social ideology, despite what you hear from right-wing "thinkers". I studied at a school that is always singled out as being "left-wing" and "marxist" but I had professors there that were full-blown wingnuts. And some liberal dean can't just come a long and decide they don't belong there.
No, tenure is the best way to insure academic diversity and excellence.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"I'm a kung-fu hippie from gansta' city!" - Poochie the Dog
The bubble in the housing market happened because the government didn't regulate the housing loan market, but ended up on the hook for the defaults anyway. If they had regulated the fly by night lenders and forced banks to adhere to their own standards instead of letting those banks play "pass the trash" , none of the liar loans and NINJA loans would have happened.
If the government could regulate prices of healthcare services the way Japan's government does , then we wouldn't have the industry making up the prices they like and passing the bill to the government.
If the government could have told the universities to go fuck themselves when they started implementing double digit inflationary tuition prices back in the 80s, then we wouldn't have the astronomical, unpaybackable student loans that are presently going to go into massive default.
If the government has to pay, then the government has to be able to control costs. That's the solution the rest of the developed world has come to in healthcare, in education and in housing .
But here if you try to regulate these industries, the tea party crowd has a fucking aneurysm and starts screaming about "socialism".
The opposite anti-socialsm - seems to not be working out so well for anyone except the Angelo Mozilos of the world.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/long-after-fall-countrywides-mozilo-defended-his-legacy/
What test would falsify creationism?
There isn't one? Not science!
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
To all you young people!!! At the moment of graduation, get about 20 copies of your transcript, Post one on your Social Network page. Send another to a public notary and have the legitimate document publicly recorded. In short, remove the University from the equation. Take back what is yours, and hold it tight. Greedy minds and hearts will rob you at the first opportunity.
Yes, but of course the university depends on a constant stream of government money in the form of loans for current students.
That money has a number of strings attached to it, and the Dept of Education can invent new strings as it sees fit.
"If you want to be on the approved disbursement list next year, you will do this for us."
Something like that.
I'm unsure if it is that high (95%). However, your point is correct. For instance, a doctor is really just a skilled trade. Why exactly do they need much of their undergraduate college classes?
Perhaps the largest complaint is that they don't understand the scientific method and cannot use, critique, and apply research. If that is the case, get rid of the undergraduate degree requirement or change it so they only take classes that meet the actual medical practice requirements. It would have the added benefit of reducing the time in school and their debt.
Degrees have become screening tools for HR and employers. They have also become a way to avoid training employees. Couple this with the massive expansion of administration costs at colleges with the removal of government support at State schools and you have massive loan debt for jobs that don't (or didn't) really need degrees.
Seems pretty fair to me: you pay to get a set of services including a transcript, and they are withheld if you don't pay. I think that same rules apply at the Supermarket or the gas station.
The strange thing here is the sense of entitlement that people have regarding their debts. Now, the tuition prices at many US schools to seem crazily high, but the correct solution there is to go to a cheaper school. Of course, education is probably one area where it is definitely not a god idea to focus on the short-term cheap deal, but you do need to keep in mind that the price you pay actually has to be paid, even if a loan is involved.
I think science simple confirms the greatness of what we know as :"God" when one considers immense suns, quasars, black holes, galactic formations, proto-stars and proto-galaxies, and the immense size of it all, and then consider some entity even greater than all this.. does not that give you *pause* to realize just how IMMENSE that entity must BE?