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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.
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.
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.
That didn't work for me. The college district sent me an extortion note years later claiming that I owed them money. Thing is that I don't owe them any money and it's an impossibility that I owe money for that term as they won't let you register for classes if you haven't paid and I took classes the next quarter. They still haven't unlocked the account. I'll probably have to file suit against the college if I want my transcripts unlocked as sending them a letter demanding evidence that I owe money didn't work and student loans aren't subject to any statute of limitations on collections.
I'm still not sure why they felt the need to send out fraudulent bills other than the budget conditions now, but unfortunately, filing a lawsuit against the state is likely the only way in which I'll get it permanently cleared up.
When education, to escape the McDonalds job's pay, costs more than your average home loan, what other option is there?
Oh, right. Rich and influential parents who can make sizable "donations" to the educational institute.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
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.
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"
Your other option when you can't afford it is to take things step by step. Get your associates, take a step forward in your career. Get your bachelors, take a step forward in your career. Get your masters, etc. Sure you don't become a PhD by age 25 this way, but shockingly, life is not "fair."
The point is the college is owed no money, it has been paid, it therefore has no reason whatsoever to hold up the release of transcripts. If the school was giving you the loans, it would be a different story and they could do as they please, but when the facts are
you got a 3rd party loan
you paid the college for your classes
the college has no vested interest in holding your transcripts.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
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.
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?
they should have no interest in doing so
They have a very big interest in student loans; without affordable loans the number of students would drop dramatically. Students who don't pay back their loans are costing everyone who does make their payments extra in the form of higher interest rates. Instead of getting a big attitude, try working with the system instead of against it.
The issues with your argument is that you canw alk back one step further and see that all these things are requirements by the government
student aid? many government loans there so your not really correct there
food, government requires schools to provide food to XX standards, you need XX permits to operate at a school, blame the regulation there
houseing, what? most student housing around any campus I have been around minus the dorms (which are owned by the schools 90% of the time) are private owned by and rented out, you dont like it, you buy one of the houses by a college and rent it yourself.
homework assignments....ok now I know you are just making shit up. Please explain to me what having to do homework has to do with corporations? MOST homework at a school (a good one) is set up by your professor and his/her helpers, not "a corporation"
bookstores... well, yeah what else did you expect? corps are best suited to be in business of selling goods, you dont like it buy a bunch of books and talk a school into letting you open shop
you really need to think things a few steps further down the road.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
And what kind of thing would that be? Businesses demanding payment for services rendered? Or gubmint demanding payment of money owed? Try not paying your taxes Mr Teat Partier, and see what happens.
What this needs is a car analogy:
You need insurance for your car, so you buy some from ABC, and put in on your Visa credit card. So far so good.
Then some idiot rear ends your car... so you call your insurance company, and they tell you your claim can't be processed because you missed a payment on your credit card, and they won't honor your insurance until you repay Visa.
See why this is both weird and wrong? Your insurance is paid up, and paid in full. Its none of ABC's business whether or not your account with visa is in good standing. That's between you and Visa.
That's the problem that is happening here. The government (taking Visas place) loaned the student money to purchase an education. The student then used that money to purchase an education from the school (taking the insurance companies place). So the transaction between you and the school is complete, and the school was paid in full for your education.
Its no more more the school's business to collect payment on your student loan than it is the insurance companies business to do collections for Visa.
Government needs to get out of the business of supplying endless money to students. This is the exact reason why college tuition has skyrocketed in recent years. Universities don't have to care about keeping expenses low, they just need to feed all the students through the government loan line effectively. If loans had to be secured only through private means or at LEAST the gov loans were very low, universities would have to lower prices to keep getting new students.
But the third party has every right to go to the school and make this kind of arrangement. "Help us collect or we won't do business with your students."
Might even result in lower interest rates for students, since the risk to the lender is lower.
:wq
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.
by that logic if I am using the same bank that you are using, I should be able to put a lein on your house if you owe the bank I affiliate with any money.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
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.
You aren't prevented from getting those transcripts to provide to a potential employer unless you are behind in payments. Kinda like a repo man coming for the car you aren't making payments on. What happened to the concept that if you borrow money from someone to buy something and then don't pay them back, you don't get to keep what it is you bought with their money?
The summary is, of course, deliberately inflammatory, in that not getting your transcripts does not prevent you from working, only from using those transcripts to get a specific job. There is no involuntary servitude involved. You can still get a job and pay your loans, and when you do, you get your transcripts. That the school is involved is natural, since they are providing the thing that you have used someone else's money to buy.
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.
In fact if you look at tuition, aside from Australia, the US government is less-involved in college education than any other developed country in the world.
interesting argument, and I am all for allowing the 3rd party the right to do as it pleases, however the point remains, party A gives me a loan, I pay party B in full for (insert item / service here) party A should not be able to bypass me and go to party B for any reason, party A has no relationship with party B in practice. If a friend lends me money to buy a car, he cant go too the dealership and demand they hold the title until I pay him back
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Holy moly, are you completely clueless on how broken "the system" is? That post was right out of some PR department. Get this: Students are never affecting the system like that because school debt is next to never written off. They just make more off of a delinquent debtor so more profits. It's cute people still walk around thinking they can work "with the system" and everything will turn out a-ok. Maybe you'll never be on the receiving end of hard times but if you ever are you will find out quickly the system is and has been against *you*.
Dude... ^^ THIS. Seriously....the University I attended (Michigan "Technological" University) recently outsourced their email, groupware, etc to Google.....I'm like, what the fuck?? You teach computer programming and IT, and presume to be a top tier engineering school, but can't even maintain your own basic IT systems? Do you not see how you are outsourcing your core competency and denying your students the ability to get real world hands on experience fixing this stuff?
That's the argument I made on Facebook anyhow, and several drones (you know the type....19 year olds who think repeating establishment propaganda is the same thing as making a logical argument) immediately attacked me saying I didn't know what I was talking about. OK then, fine kids...stick your fingers in your ears and whistle. Actions have consequences. Enjoy your $100k in student debt when you're unemployed, and too stupid and inexperienced to get a job....asshat.
As a Canadian, where the government is heavily involved in both providing student loans and subsidizing education, I have to say that you're totally wrong.
I graduated in 2004 with an Electrical Engineering degree. The total I had in student loans was $0. (zero) Co-op paid for most of my expenses. Courses were about $400, six per term, a total of $2400 per semester. (I know, holy shit, right?) Books were the typical ass-rape, but in the non-lubed Canadian version. (A couple of books were $120, lots at $80, I eventually just gave 'em all away.) I was not living with my parents, and rent was about $500 a month.
It's dirty socialism, right? Nope, it's long-term thinking. I pay more in taxes now than I did before I got my degree since I'm earning 2.5x what I got when I started school. I'll be paying 2.5x more taxes (more actually, since we have progressive taxes up here) for the rest of my career.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
by that logic if I am using the same bank that you are using, I should be able to put a lein on your house if you owe the bank I affiliate with any money.
No, by the logic being used, the BANK should be able to "put a lein on" (and has, the day he signed the mortgage) the house if he owes them any money. And they should be able to (and will) reposess (foreclose) if he stops paying them back what he owes.
In this case, the government has put a lein on the product that you purchased using the money you borrowed from them, and are foreclosing only because you aren't paying them back like you promised you would. The fact is the limitation on getting a transcript only occurs if the debtor is BEHIND in payments, not just because the loan exists.
Seriously, show me the debtors prisons..
'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.
That was my exact situation, in 1997. Unemployment had caused me to fall behind on the student loan. Needed a transcript for the new job. Called them. Funny enough "let me have a transcript so I can get the job that will result in you getting paid back" seemed reasonable to them too.
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.
you really need to think things a few steps further down the road.
I think it's you who need to think more.
Universities are in the business of educating.
How the hell is anyone supposed to be educated in anything, if they can't get any hands on experience?
Washing the dishes in the University food court is just as valuable of an educational experience as sitting in the classroom taking notes. Working in the university printing room is certainly worthwhile. So is maintaining a university email system....etc etc. Outsourcing all this stuff is absolutely the wrong thing for an institution of higher learning to do, if they actually value education.
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?
If a friend lends me money to buy a car, he cant go too the dealership and demand they hold the title until I pay him back
If your friend loans you money to buy a car and doesn't get his name on the title as a leinholder, then he's stupid or else a really really good friend that really really trusts you not to fuck him over by selling the car and keeping all the money. If he's on the title as a leinholder, he can, indeed, prevent the transfer of that title to any other person, and is first in line for any insurance payments when you break it.
The government isn't your friend and doesn't really really trust you. They are a leinholder on the stuff you bought with the loan until you pay it off. They have a vested interest in being paid off and have arranged with the provider to cut you off when you don't pay.
Whether that is a 'dick move' or smart business is a different argument. Why it happens is quite logical, and not that different from many other large-ticket loan agreements. Why would your degree at $30k in outstanding loans be much different than a $20k car or $100k house?
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?
Some countries pay--not loan--100% of the tuition for a fairly large percentage of their student population and don't seem to have the runaway cost problems that we do.
As with most situations like this, there's clearly a solution other than "the government needs to get out of the business of X". Maybe it should, but it doesn't need to; it may just need to do it better. What do places like Denmark do differently? Can we try that, rather than just giving up?
Seriously, show me the debtors prisons..
Stand up. Look around you. Look outside. The whole country is turning into a prison.
It's the same as the goddamn health care "arguments" from the US right.
"We have too much government involvement! Of course it's expensive! If we get the damn government out the market will fix everything!"
Yeah, maybe, I guess. Or we could do the opposite of what you're saying and get guaranteed results, as proven in reality, not some ideological model.
If this pattern continues, next the poor dumb bastards will start arguing that government-subsidized education infringes on the average american's right to start and run a student loan corporation, or to choose which loan corporation fucks them in the ass.
Google Apps for Education is free. There are a lot of good reasons not to use it, but your argument of "enjoy your $100k in student debt" doesn't fly - the University can reduce its costs by outsourcing email. That in turn reduces student fees, which reduces student debt.
A lot of people like Google Apps. Perhaps they did it not out of laziness, but by considering the feature set students need. Many university use crappy webmail clients like Horde or Squirrel Mail... the UX of Gmail is far ahead of those. Google Docs has excellent real-time collaboration features. There are plenty of ways for students to get hands-on experience without avoiding useful web applications.
It could prevent you from getting a job that pays anything, in which case you are in a kind of debtors' prison. It would more sense for the bank to get part of your paycheck withheld.
When education, to escape the McDonalds job's pay...
Step 1: Finish highschool
Step 2: Pick a trade, something fun but challenging.
Step 3: Get ticket, and work for someone for awhile.
Step 4: Quit, use all those contacts you've been building up for the last 6-7 years and start a business of your own.
Step 5: Hire an apprentice or two, then run the business.
Step 6: Enjoy the money.
I still find it funny that the majority of people on /. think that the only way to get good money is to have a university education. Skip it, get a trade.
Om, nomnomnom...
I'd guess that those other places don't allow for-profit institutions to access government subsidies.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
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
Well, you don't know what you're talking about. The IT system at the University isn't a learning lab where mistakes can be made and the entire system can be wiped clean every semester to make way for the new batch of fiddlers. There are privacy requirements that must be adhered to.
The fact is they can maintain their basic IT systems. It just costs more than using Google. If you want real world experience pay attenion: there are a lot more people in this world managing vendor relationships then there are programmers or IT guys.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
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 .
Very true, I live in one of those places where the government can give you 100% of the tuition if you're below a set income.
It works because our education establishments are non-profits, usually registered as charities (state owned schools are non-profit by nature, but you can open your own private non-profit school if you want). There is no profit motive, so there is no drive to milk the system for money, therefore we don't have runaway costs.
People don't work at at these places to make boatloads of money, they do it for education/research/furthering knowledge/etc... If they wanted to make money, they could do that in all sorts of private companies that exist.
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.
Government needs to get out of the business of supplying endless money to students.
True, it should. But since a college degree is fast replacing the high school degree as the minimum level of education to enter the workplace, government needs to start providing it free as well.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Mine? I was simply replying to his.
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
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?
Do you not see how you are outsourcing your core competency and denying your students the ability to get real world hands on experience fixing this stuff?
They are getting real world hands on experience. If you don't think they will see this happen time and time again in their IT career, think again. Maybe it will even be enlightening to some of them.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
What exactly is our $600+ billion military budget protecting us (or other countries) from? No other governments want to attack us because their countries are too busy selling stuff to us. A few terrorists (which will ALWAYS be around, ESPECIALLY when you spend $600 billion annually on new explosives to destroy their communities and take their resources) don't qualify as a threat to an entire country's national security. Even if they did (and there would need to be A LOT of sporadic attacks to argue that), how exactly do gigantic fleets of warships, nuclear submarines, fighter jets, rocket launchers, tanks, and all other sorts of things (which have together ended a grand total of 0 extremist ideologies) "secure" us?
And anyway, it's fairly obvious that I meant "free" in the same way that a pre-college education is free. And substantially cheaper per capita than private alternatives. It's astounding how much public services can provide when they're actually made to service the public instead of a few rich people.
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.
AFAIK, although there are no federal laws that require a university to withhold transcripts of students that are in default of their student loans, it is apparently highly encouraged by the department of education to withhold the transcript if a Title IV loan is in default.
However, some states have actual laws that require institutions to withhold transcripts. For instance, California Section 66022 of the California Education Code provides that...
The governing board of every community college district, the Trustees of the California State University, the Regents of the University of California, and the Board of Directors of the Hastings College of the Law shall adopt regulations providing for the withholding of institutional services from students or former
students who have been notified in writing at the student's or former student's last known address that he or she is in default on a loan or loans under the Federal Family Education Loan Program. The regulations shall specify the services to be withheld from the student and may include, but are not limited to, the following: (1) The provision of grades. (2) The provision of transcripts. (3) The provision of diplomas.
Also, many states (incl CA), penalize institutions that have high default rates (for instance by not making them eligible for state student loan programs like Cal Grants), so even private institutions have an incentive to help get the default rates down so they can continue to offer those loan sources to future students even if they aren't required by law to do so.
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
Remember, though, that in certain fields your ability to advance is hindered past 37. Also, your life-long earning potential would be somewhat retarded by this.
Ideally we'd reign in inflated education costs (and force institutions to do the same), or realize as a culture that affordable, universal, education is in our best interest.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
"Hipsters" and "gangstas"? LOL! Oh man, you don't get out much, do you?
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
If a college has too many students default on their loans, the school is in danger of loosing pell grants. That is a HUGE motivator for many schools
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
because there is no proper analogy between a service provided by an educational institution and a physical good, and it's not possible in any meaningful sense to take a college degree from somebody.
There is no way to take the information and education from someone, but in a very real sense, if you are applying for a job where they want you to prove you have a college degree and you cannot get the college to send a transcript, the college has taken the degree away from you. Thus, the reposession of a vehicle for failure to pay the loan is a very real and applicable analogy. The only failure is in who the contractual parties are, and those are set by the loan agreement signed originally.
Further, the continued service of proving to potential employers your degree status is what is being withheld, and that certified transcript is very much a good, physical or not. Let's use the car analogy of leasing a car from the dealer. Even if the dealer decides not to reposess, he certainly isn't going to keep servicing the vehicle for you to drive about town. Likely he'll simply keep the car when you next try to get free service.
In effect, what this means is that even though you've completed the educational requirements to hold a position and you're perfectly qualified, an arbitrary third party is allowed to step in...
Not an arbitrary third party, a third party that YOU invited to the party by asking for money to pay for something you wanted but could not afford yourself, from them. There are no arbitrary parties in this arrangement. You picked them ahead of time, and they aren't "stepping in", they are fully in the room with you until you pay them off.
... and prevent you from getting that job because you owe another third party money.
All those "parties" that you invited to the party when you asked for the money. If you don't want them to be involved, then don't ask them to be involved, or at least meet the terms of the contract that you signed with them when you asked them for money. You broke the terms of the contract by not paying, so you get the consequences. That's real life.
This is not only detrimental to you,
It is intended to be. You agreed to pay them back. You broke that agreement. You didn't even bother to negotiate new terms with them so you wouldn't be in default.
but also to the employers missing out on potentially productive employees,
If there wasn't more than one applicant for the job, then there is a very real possibility that the transcript wouldn't be a sticking point. Any company that has just one qualified applicant for a highly paid job, and that applicant presents himself as a well educated, skilled, productive person during the interview will most likely bend the requirements to get who they need. At worst, if you explain the situation to them, they'll work with you. Maybe make getting the transcript to them after six months a requirement, so you'll have six months of pay to deal with the default status. After all, you're the only qualified applicant. The company isn't a loser here, unless they choose to be.
In fact, there were many many times when I was interviewing for my first job out of college that the company was quite willing to wait for proof of graduation, since even those who have already performed their final graduate presentations are still required to edit their dissertations and present a final copy. Those companies I talked to had no problem hiring me prior to the final degree being granted, as long as would agree to get it finished. The place I eventually worked had a carrot with the stick -- when I got the degree finished I'd get a healthy raise.
and in the long run the loan issuers who aren't going to get paid back when the students can't find a decent job.
If the graduate isn't paying back the loan already, t
My income tax rate's not far under that, all things considered, and I do all right but I'm far from rich (FICA is a bitch--a regressive-ass bitch). For it, I get poor transportation infrastructure (my state's roads are exceptionally bad, to say nothing of public transit, or rather, the lack of it), no help toward health care (so, like most, my health and my family's is dependent on my employment; there's a nice extra risk to discourage entrepreneurship), and some minimal aid toward education should I want to use it (didn't before, don't expect that I will).
I'd happily pay another 10% or so to gain what people in many (most?) other OECD nations have--I'd be a fool not to, since it's a bargain.
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.
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
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
Debtor's prisons were real and need no quote marks. As late as the 19th century, if you owed debts you could not pay, you could be literally imprisoned in a workhouse where your tiny wages went to pay off the debt, often far insufficient to make headway paying it off. The poster is not insensitive, but rather has a better history education than you.
The dilemma is that in order to pay off your student loans you need decent work, but in order to get decent work you need to pay off your student loans.
If Americans wern't so stupidly paranoid about socialism, they could have a govt student loan scheme like we have in Australia where the HECS scheme operates, a small extra percentage is deducted with your tax once you reach a certain wage. Of course that, like decent social health care not going to happen in the backwards US.
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.
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.
What I've found is that most of the people who whine about high taxes and say that they prefer the American solution fit into one of three categories:
Greedy 'I got mine' Rich Person: They make enough money that the lack of public infrastructure and government support doesn't impact them in a meaningful way and want to hoard as much money as possible, presumably so they can pretend they're Scrooge McDuck and swim in a pile of gold. They don't give a shit about the hoi polloi and despise having to give anything back to the society that enabled their success.
Wannabe Rich Person: They've bought into the lie that all it takes to become super-rich is a bit of hard work and want to be one of the above jack-asses when they get there so they support low taxes and deny the need for government help even though it would benefit them greatly as they are now because they think it'll make things better once they 'make it big'. They don't realize that realistically, you need to be either incredibly lucky or be born into it to get rich enough that lower taxes actually benefit you more than the complete lack of adequate social services that enables such low rates hurts you.
Free Market Drone: Maybe they read a bit too much Ayn Rand. Maybe someone forced them to watch Cold-War era propaganda films for days on end, Clockwork Orange style, perhaps a Marxist molested them as a child. Whatever the reason, this is a true believer. Unlike the other two, this isn't sociopathic self-interest (or the delusion of future such self-interest) but rather a genuine belief that the government is always evil, the market is always right, lower taxes are always better and that completely unfettered markets would lead to anything other than a cyberpunk dystopia.
Of course it can be fair. If restraining one person for the benefit of another were absolutely and in all cases unfair, then any law whatsoever is unfair. It's a matter of degrees, and yeah, people don't seem to agree where the line is, but it doesn't mean people who don't agree with you are freedom-haters or whatever.
All civilization is compromise; wise use of government is recognizing when said compromise yields sufficient benefits (cost savings, strategic advantage, freedoms) to outweigh the costs (sometimes money, sometimes personal advantage, sometimes other freedoms). The argument of the Rugged Individualist is poetic and tempting--it's easy to see its appeal--but as best I can tell doesn't yield the best life for most people. Unfortunately, things aren't that simple.
I try to weigh each policy decision by its merits, rather than attempting to smash it in to the mold of some iron-clad dogma. What will I actually gain? What will others gain? What will I/we lose? Are the gains worth the costs? If the policy closes some doors for us, does it open others?
In the end, real-world examples are my guiding star. If "socialism" is so bad, how can so many countries that practice it be so well-off? It may not be the sole answer to every problem, but if your goal is to raise the overall standard of living then government-driven solutions seem to be worth a look, at least.
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
"...the University can reduce its costs by outsourcing email. That in turn increases the amount that the people working for the university can pay themselves."
FTFY
Unless you can show that this actually results in lower student fees, which I doubt.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
There's some truth to this.
In the UK, tuition fees were introduced some years ago - previously the government subsidised your first degree more-or-less 100% (though you still had to find money to live on). The amount the university could demand of students was capped and a student could take out a government-backed loan to cover it; needless to say every single university in the country immediately started charging precisely the level of the cap, no more, no less.
Recently, the cap has been raised quite considerably. The government's logic was that the Free Market would ensure that only the best universities were able to charge the highest fees. It hasn't quite worked like that. AFAIK every single university promptly raised their fees - to the level of the cap.
U.S. Department of Education ...
Office of Management
Regulatory Information Management Services
400 Maryland Avenue, SW, LBJ 2W220
Washington, DC 20202-4536
ATTN: FOIA Public Liaison
Dear FOIA Public Liaison:
This is a request under the Freedom of Information Act.
* I request that a copy of th e following documents (or documents containing the following information)
be provided to me (identify the documents or information as specifically as possible):
* In order to help to determine my status to assess fees, you should know th at I am (select one -
required):
An individual seeking information for personal use.
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
Can you understand that such a system actually sounds more desirable to many people, because they consider helping others and their society as a whole to be a higher virtue than enriching themselves? It would be nice if everyone did this voluntarily, but unfortunately there are people who think they made it to the top all on their own and so shouldn't have to pay back into the system. Those people have to be dragged forward by the rest of society that would rather see every succeed somewhat, than a few people succeed immensely and many fall by the wayside.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
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".
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.
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.)