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Bloomberg, WSJ: Student Aid Increases Tuition
retroworks writes "Bloomberg News makes the case that when the federal government offers tuition assistance, students apply to more expensive colleges, giving the institutions an incentive to raise tuition and a disincentive to lower it. (The Wall Street Journal has a similar article, but it's paywalled.) This reminds me of the debate over President Reagan's cuts to the Pell Grant program in the 1980s. MIT's Campus Paper 'The Tech' quoted the MIT administration as saying it had 'no idea what really will occur' when Reagan's proposal to cut Pell came to Washington. So the question is, 25 years later, do we know now? Did cuts to federal tuition assistance hurt the education of the lower income students? Did increases to Pell grants create more opportunity? Or is federal money the milkshake, and students are just the straw?"
If more money is made available to to students for education, then:
1) more people will become students (intended)
2) educational institutions will raise their prices so as to absorb all the available funds (unintended)
Student aid is flat, tuition rates rise, can't explain that!
Since the feds made student loans not eligible for inclusion in bankruptcy and the rates went up several points past the mortgage rate, I would guess that money is going to chase student loans in the future. Guaranteed payback at more than Tbills, more than the stock market average. The easy tuition loans in the future may not come from signing that Plus Loan with the government, they may come from signing that Usury Loan from the big financial houses.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
So you're suggesting that the supply of education is entirely inelastic?
The milkshake brings all the colleges to the yard.
That's all there is to say. The banks will loan pretty much anything because they know that the debt is nonchargeable (with very rare exception), the schools know this too so they just keep raising tuition and the banks keep loaning more money. If school loans were allowed to be discharged like any other debt you would see the whole show come crumbling down like (probably more so than) the housing bubble. Tuition assistance is pretty much just the "gateway drug" of school loan debt.
Isn't the whole point of the aid to allow them to go to better schools than they could otherwise afford? It's not as if low income people would be able to afford MIT today without aid had the Pell Grants been cut in the 80s anyway.
If you subsidize something, you get more of it.
- Ron Paul
Increased availability of aid and loans may very well create some tuition inflation, but I seriously doubt it is the major driving factor at public universities. It took me a while to graduate since I got called up to active duty for a while, but the tuition at the in-state public land grant university I attended nearly doubled between when I entered as a freshman and when I graduated. In 2003, tuition and fees was about 2200 USD/semester, but had ballooned to just over 4000 USD/Semester in Spring 2011. As far as I am aware, there hasn't been massive increases in the availability of aid or loans in that span (in fact, I'd argue generous private loans have become LESS available since 2008). What HAS happened is massive state budget short-falls due to economic downturns and short-sighted tax cuts. When the state is short on cash, higher education funding seems to always take the brunt of the damage in budget cuts, so public universities make up the difference by hiking tuition and/or recruiting out-of-state students.
Rain is wet. So is water.
Hate to break it to the WSJ but schools raise their tuition all the time regardless of how students pay. They are not incentivized to raise tution simple because a student has a Pell grant!
Idk, I feel like a straw though. They sure sucked enough money outta my a$$!
Us stingy non-compassionate curmudgeonly types not swayed by cries that everyone must be educated or accusations of elitism have been saying this for a very long time.
The Department of Education doesn't seem interested in the solution to this - which would be to standardize the information taught in core curriculum in college-level courses. Accreditation was supposed to convey a certain level of performance and standards - but given the rampant creation of 'accredited bodies' to which every college can make their own and become a member of; it didn't go far enough. To a certain extent, a standard cost break-down of what core courses should cost based on what materials are taught would help people decide if a particular institution represents the value they claim they possess.
While it is true (limitedly) that when you increase financial aid resources, the tuition at institutions see an increase - placing this measure on services would keep unnecessary cost increases under pressure to remain competitive. Another step that would help is a more in-depth information packet being provided to the student - like a prospectus - showing how education dollars are spent, projections for costs during the time they are attending, and how this might impact their financial obligations.
What the WSJ and Bloomberg's talking heads suggest - eliminating or severely curtailing financial aid in all federal subsidized roles - merely cuts people off from access to these educational resources. While private student loans would continue to exist, the ability to attend college would be limited to those of financial means and upbringing, not merit or skill. The people who could obtain these new loans to attend college would be those who have, traditionally, been denied federal financial aid to go to college - the children of the elite and wealthy; people who do not need loans to attend any college of their parent's choosing. Sadly, a bit of this is 'I've got mine, so screw you and yours' that permeates conservative news media sites nowadays. Others are simply content to use this measure to eliminate 'competitors' to their wealth preemptively.
The answer to every problem with a program here or there is *not* simply 'dismantle and destroy it'
It's really simple, lets say you sell at the tap chocolate milk. Your customers can get government vouchers to spend 100 dollars on faucet based chocolate milk service a month that they have to pay back in some distant future IF the government doesn't wipe the debt away someday, and the loans are also subsidized so even if they do have to pay it back it will probably be at rates far beneath what a bank would charge. You know that your customers can afford 30 dollars a month for chocolate milk service, so you price your service at 130 dollars which is what the market will bear. Your company builds a bunch of paintball places for the employees to play on because you have a TON of employees that really aren't all working as much as they could, but the service gets provided, and cutting jobs, salaries, or cutting back on jungle paintball places is unpopular internally. Besides, if your company hires too many people, builds too many paintball fields, and generally makes a mess of their finances it's OK, you can just raise the price of your internet service to 150 dollars a month. That's because your customers have parents that will pay even more just to make sure that their kids have the BEST chocolate milk out of their faucets that money can buy. In fact it's so ingrained in society that to not have chocolate milk at your faucet makes elitists think you are a second class citizen.
Chocolate milk is education, paintball fields are sports stadiums, government is government, banks are banks, and parents are parents.
This applies to many programs of this type. Back when I lived in Minnesota there was a big todo over welfare moms having more children simply to get an increase in welfare aid. Same same same. The programs intentions were good, but the outcome was not. And if you make this argument you are called a cold-hearted bastard. Well I guess I am a cold-hearted bastard, and all such programs should be eliminated. Flame suit on.
Conservative, mod down for violating
People don't like feeling like they never had a fair shot at a high-paying job. To a large degree, educated labor is more expensive, so the education-for-everyone means everyone gets a fair shot. So, naturally enough, people demand government-provided student loans. And lots of them.
But it also means that the supply of educated labor outstrips demand, which winds up pulling those salaries down and also introducing different barriers-to-entry for those positions. Furthermore, since the means of attaining this education involves going into debt, we have a very large and very depressed labor force of well-educated people working menial jobs that do not pay them enough that they will ever climb out of debt.
All of this is on top of the fact that the widespread availability of student loans has driven the cost of education up so high that people who otherwise would have worked themselves through college now MUST get a loan to cover it.
It is a bad situation all-around, and it is largely the result of the human disinclination to simply accept reality.
Reality is....there are not enough, and never will be enough, high-paying jobs for everybody. *SOMEBODY* has to scrub the toilets. If we stopped giving out any student loans at all, several things would happen:
1) Many people would have no means of affording school, so they wouldn't go to school, and they would instead accept the toilet-scurbbing jobs (which we need) without a mountain of debt.
2) The sudden drop in demand for education would bring tuition fees back down to reasonable levels.
3) The people who actually can and do purchase an education will get access to higher-paying jobs because of it.
4) The poor would scream bloody murder. Compassion would motivate us to start with the student loans again, the end result being largely the same except that the workforce is smarter, poorer, and more depressed (exactly like what we have now).
In the same way that giving $9000 to first time home buyers just caused house prices to go up by that amount. This is the same.
On another note, recently a California University system evaluation showed that administration staff was increased by %35 in the last two years. So things cost more, but no one knows why they needed to increase by a third the administrators.
From TFA:
"lured"? Kind of showing their bias, aren't they?
How is getting something done in half the time a punishment?
Again, there's quite a bit of bias showing in that article.
So they're pushing for different interest rates depending upon your major?
Fuck that! How about some GRANTS for people in the hard sciences?
Stick to a single point in each point, okay? Either they're "unbearably complex" or they give too much information about family finances.
What "academic arms race"?
TFA needs an editor who is not looking to grind the same ax as the author.
This is ridiculous, I feel like I have to post some obvious correction every time some republican politician opens their mouth about money these days:
https://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/05/22/153316565/the-price-of-college-tuition-in-1-graphic
(Spoiler: tuition increases are not related to student loans)
Usually when I say stuff like this I try to keep it apolitical, but it's really gotten out of hand - republicans vilify every single thing that the government does nowadays (except the military, and state secrets, and domestic spying). Yes, Bloomberg is a republican politician (even if he's officially independent like Lieberman), and the WSJ is a republican mouthpiece just like every other Murdoch rag. I'll stop there, I don't want this to turn into some long rant, but come on: you can't use some twisted logic to turn lowering taxes into the solution for everything.
This article talks about for-profit Corinthian Colleges soaking up federal dollars while many of their students drop out and default. Pretty interesting when considering whether the federal dollars are really helping students.
Reducing the amount of credits required for a 4 year degree. Less credits = less money needed = less teacher time.
120 credits really isn't a realistic amount anymore. You can get a solid education with less than that due to the fact that a lot of courses have no real meaning in the real world, such as electives. Get rid of them. Concentrate on the REAL classes that people need to excel. If someone wants a CS degree, get rid of some liberal arts classes that are currently required. etc etc etc.
Example:
Calculus is pointless, unless you want to be an engineer, so don't require it for degrees that are not engineering or require heavy math. Same with physics. If you are going for a liberal arts or psycology degree, you have absolutely no use for calculus or physics. Its just wasted time, money and resources.
This link leads to a study by a nonprofit group that had some different answers:
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
So if you remove loans you simply are left with all the people who don't need them. Costs don't go down the number of colleges needed to support that shrinking population does.
Similarly if you eliminate health insurance you don't decrease the cost you simply wind up having to close most of the hospitals.
Do schools have to ever lower tuition if the government is guaranteeing the loans?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
A friend of mine is now a prof, and he says that tuition increases are mostly due to bigger and better cafe's, sport stadiums, better gyms and dorms... things peripheral to the actual education part of higher-education. He also said they if they don't keep up with these things, the college up the road will, and students will want to got there instead. The implication is that most students get enamored with the biggest and best, borrow however much from whomever (after all this is COLLEGE), and not worry about the debt because once they graduate, someone will OBVIOUSLY give them a well-paying job to pay it off, because a degree makes you a superstar (or so the college says). It's a vicious cycle of enable-ment and nativity on the part of the consumer - the student. It's pretty obvious that there has to be a breaking point somewhere - the question is whether or not we'll be the new Greece.
In debates about Christianity, there are two groups: those looking for answers, and those looking to just ask questions.
College (tuition) is the next Housing Market Crash waiting to happen.
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If you ran an institution where:
1. You have more qualified applicants than availability
2. Nearly all have access to paying tuition with loans
Now you, being the bean counter - what would you do? Duh, you continually increase rates until #1 drops to a level you are uncomfortable with.
And for anyone with a few minutes to spare, you can listen to the whole Planet Money podcast on this topic: (Link)
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
The military is in effect subsidizing doctors. They give people an education and expect them to pay it back with future service.
Would Ron Paul have been a doctor without this subsidy?
Obviously, opportunity must be a problem!
I felt some of the booms in the 1990s and mid-200s were several generous tax laws changed at that time. In the old days you could only carry forward gains. Now you can exclude up to $500K gains every two years. And since 1994 you pay lower gains taxes if you holdlonger than a year. People were incentivized to buy the largest house they could qualify for a mortgage on then.
College demand seems more immune to economic down cycles than housing.
It's not just student aid, it's also the artificially low interest rates and guaranteed loans. In our race to make college more affordable, all we've done is make it more expensive. Colleges, like any other business, will charge as much as they can, just short of scaring off the customers. We did the same thing with houses too, providing NINJA loans to anyone with a pulse, driving up the costs well above the rate of inflation, leading to the inevitable bust that the entire world is forced to deal with now. Prepared to see a lot of layed off college administrators once the sentiment starts to shift to "college just ain't worth it anymore."
Traditional institutions do not traditionally spend money on nothing. They also have donors and funds that help pay for costs and keep costs to students low. What is happening now is the rise of for profit colleges, which reportedly are 1/4 of the defaults and face higher debt and more unemployment. Obviously if one is trying to make a profit, then federal subsidies are the way to go. Just look at military and farmers and the amount of money conservatives love to give to them for nothing.
What I want to see is that a university provides an education. Not job training, but insurance for the future of our democracy.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
...break on the tuition. If the student is good enough to merit the scholarship, they should be likewise desirable to the enrolling institution, such that the institution affords them a break. If, rather, the prestigious institution prefers to continue to graduate rich dolts, let them, and see how long their reputation holds out.
Public Tuition seems to be rising due to budget cuts and privates seem not to rising in real dollars for most. Planet Money did a great segment on this, tuition sticker price has been rising, but real prices have been staying with inflation; again for private schools.
https://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/05/22/153316565/the-price-of-college-tuition-in-1-graphic
The maximum Pell grant is only $5500. This is peanuts.
At highly competitive institutions, the actual cost of educating per student approaches $90K. Usually around 1/3 to 1/2 of the students receive any financial aid. Less will even qualify, much less receive the full grant. Back-of-the-envelope, on average, we might expect the average per student grant to be around $1K. If there is a price-push-up, it's probably around or under $500.
Compared to Pell grants' ability to make education accessible, or to reduce indebtedness, for many other students in non-elite situations, I think that amounts to a hill of beans.
Government-subsidized and guaranteed loans, on the other hand... that's another mountain entirely.
"tuition assistance" != loans, jackass.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
It's "WE... have been saying", not "Us... have" [sic]. The pronoun must be in nominative form since it is the subject of the sentence.
Apparently, the "everyone [who] must be educated" does not, in fact, include yourself.
this is literally econ 101.
Supply and demand.
Increase demand while leaving supply fixed and prices go up.
No, it really is that simple. Some one is going to respond "no it isn't that simple." You're wrong, it is that simple if you speak generally. It can't not be that simple. That doesn't mean there can't be complex ways for it to happen or for the means by which you calculate it to be complex. It just means at the end of the day that's roughly what is going to happen. It's simple in the sense that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Economics isn't exact. But if you push something one way there will be a response roughly in that direction that will be roughly proportional to the input.
Now if you wanted to subsidize education AND keep costs down... you could pump money equally into supply and demand at the same time. It's not exact so I'm not sure what ratio would keep stability. It would have to be tested on a case by case basis. But if supply expanded at the rate demand increased prices should remain roughly level. It's a little like one person squirting water into a glass at the same time someone else sucks it up. It would be hard to synchronize and very easy to imbalance.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Any extra money available to a particular market will be absorbed by that market. The question is, what does that market do with the extra money? Are they hiring more professors? Accepting more students? In my particular college town they are rebuilding campus buildings over and over again using the latest it architectural design and "Green" engineering.
It seems the governments purported goals would be served better if they paid the university directly to hire more professors and offer more scholarships on their own. Unfortunately the governments real goal is to engender the good will of the soon-to-be upper class graduates, and continue the idea that they can not live without their benevolent government.
What's rent like over there?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
In other parts of the world, being rich sucks a whole lot more then it does in the West. Because when there's a shitload of poor people with no prospects for a future, kidnapping a moneybag, aka rich person or his relative becomes a very attractive proposition.
But yeah, let's draw direct comparisons to places that have fundamental differences AND let you live off much less because everything also costs a whole lot less... Yeah. Stupid.
No no no.
I mean, yes its true that if there were excess money in the system, the system would suck that excess up. Thats true in ANY system.
But everyone acts as if that automatically explains where we are today.
If the total National spending on education was $5 (not millions or billions, just the $5 I have in my wallet), the above would still be a true statement, but wouldnt imply that at this moment we are spending too much.
Im so tired of this. Just because a theory is (or could be) true does not automatically mean that is the theory that is defining the current situation.
Grants, Loans, etc. are essential. I was lost when I entered College, but came out the other end with a Ph.D. and became a much more important contributor to Society than I would've been. I could NOT have gone to college without this assistance.
I think the biggest problem is that many schools are involved in things unrelated to educating students. Building research centers, Alumni centers, Hiring research only faculty and staff, Music Auditoriums, Sports Stadiums and facilities, etc. AND at least in the public sector, they are using State aid to do so. When the two big recessions hit in the last 12 years they were caught with their pants down and had to make up the loss of funding coming from state with tuition increases.
Schools accepting this aid should have to fit a formula for what percentages they can spend on things besides simply teaching courses.
Similarly, your daughter wants to be a geologist. But the best geology program is (I'm making this up) North Dakota State. You don't have the option of moving your family to North Dakota to score in-state tuition
But you DO have the option of getting private grants or scholarships for particular fields of interest.
The problem with federal loans is they float ALL boats. Anyone getting a federal grant can go anywhere, so it increases how much students pay everywhere.
Lets get back to a system where the "best and brightest" really are the ones getting more aid than someone just exploring the idea of going to college without a good reason for being there, and everyone is paying less for tuition.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Government gives money to schools to get kids into college, colleges like free money so they raise rates to get more money.
College kids have an easier time than ever getting a school loan, colleges want money so since its easier for student to borrow money they raise rates to get more money.
If ANYONE has ever thought a college is anything less than just a business then they are in need of a education in reality. Schools arent open to teach, they dont want to educate people, they dont want to improve lives, hell they dont even care if you graduate really. Schools are open for one thing and one thing only and thats money. They dont give a shit, they will bury students in their own debt as much as they possibly can to make money. And as long as the government is handing out grant money they will raise rates through the roof to get as much of that as they can. When it comes to federal grant money students are just little cash registers and nothing else.
And guess what happens when you graduate with all that debt? Youll be lucky to find a job taking coffee orders at starbucks in a lot of places.
I wanted to go to nursing school but the college here wanted 33k for the 2 year program and I didnt get anything but 1800 bucks a year in grant money. I couldnt take a loan because I know for a fact that would have ruined me financially with interest rates, I cant pay out of pocket because I dont make much money. If the course were more afforadable I could be a nurse right now.
Explain to me why we should compare ourselves to third-world shitholes instead of other first-world secular democracies.
Other than the fact that conservatives would rather us be a shithole because their taxes would be lower.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
My qualifications: 5 years at a public university, 100% on a combination of student aid, graduated 2005, worked in higher education outreach for quite a while, still working at a public university.
There are a few different kinds of Student Financial Aid:
(1) Scholarships -- a competitive grant awarded to a student for comparatively high score in testing, GPA, essay entry, speech, or a combination thereof.
(2) Grants -- a need-based or participation-based award given without competition. Need-based grants typically have minimum high school performance standards and maximum income per-person household limits. A participation-based grant (like the GI Bill) is based on a fulfilled commitment of service.
(3) Loans -- an amount of money that needs to be paid back. The best are the Federal loans that do not accrue interest while the student is still in school and repayment can be deferred reduced when income is short. Avoid private education loans like the plague if at all possible. Loans, unlike scholarships and grants are pretty easy to get an are considered unlimited.
Knowing the above, it's not general "Student Aid" that contributes to bloat on the university level, it's unlimited access to Federal Student Loans.
I went into my college career in 2000, expecting to pay a total of $14,700 for the whole year. The cost included tuition/fees, transportation expenses, room and board, books, and other expenses. It was fully paid for my scholarships and grants (I was poor and good in school... a jackpot). Tuition and Fees were deducted from the account and I was given a third of my award quarterly. It was my responsibility to use my money wisely.
Between 2000 and 2005, the cost of the very same education ballooned from $14.7k to $25k per year. I paid for my 5th and half of my 4th year entirely with federal loans. Undergrads on the same campus should expect to pay around $35k for this year.
How did prices go so high? Well, there are new buildings on campus, a new Student Union to pay for, dormitory expansions, new faculty and existing faculty getting regular raises, and administration employees making hundreds of thousands of dollars each to manage what is, effectively, a city of 40,000 people 5 days a week. I don't think a mayor of a 40,000 should make so much, but our chancellor makes over $300k/year easily.
In that time, also, there have been major cuts to state higher education funding and other shortfalls in income. There have been bad investments, I'm sure.
So how is it paid for? Well, students and parents alike have been convinced that all kids need a research university education if they are going to make more than $35k per year in an air-conditioned office, so most think they have no choice.
The demand is there. The unlimited access to credit is there. But there is no incentive to keep costs low.
I think that it should be federal law that no one working at a university making more than $75k per year should be allowed to get a raise for 3 years after the last student tuition/fee increase.
We're mainly talking about the government-backed loans that everyone is eligible for.
All you have to do is sign on the line and the school gets $5-10k per year (depending on your year) extra from "you", and the banks make interest on guaranteed (government backs them) loans.
What's that? You're telling me every one of those people whose full time job it is to bring in money for the school, are incompetent? Right...
Us stingy non-compassionate curmudgeonly types not swayed by cries that everyone must be educated or accusations of elitism have been saying this for a very long time.
Yes but the jobs which do not require an education have been shipped to China.
Very true, I consider the truth on this to be that all of Citibank's student loans have been sold off to Discover.
How much you want to bet that Discover will be receiving a bailout in the future? Gross student debt now exceeds USA credit card debt.
Think about that-- people who have jobs and were given credit because of it, use less debt than people who don't have jobs and don't have any experience at jobs.
What could possibly go wrong?
In other parts of the world, food is cheaper, and housing is much cheaper. It's pointless to compare wages dollar for dollar, you need to look at purchasing parity.
And, yeah, that's lower, too, but do you really want people on minimum wage to live in cardboard boxes as they do over there?
forced meal plans and forced room and board drive up cost as well.
With room a board you mostly pay more then renting on your own to shear a room and shear a bathroom with a full floor.
Also some of the meal plans are a ripoff and other times they come on use of lose it cash cards that time out and force some people to buy just of junk and candy just to not lose the cash on them.
Maybe it's time for shouter times in schools.
By cutting out lots of fluff and filler you can maybe cut down on the number of classes and the time in school.
also there are lot's things that can be done in 1-3 years or less.
The tech field needs more apprenticeship and less time in college / classes.
Just look at all of the people with CS who don't have the skills to do IT jobs.
Now we can take the community colleges and tech schools and add a apprenticeship to them.
college does not work as a one size fit's all and that give you people who can are both over skilled and under skilled. Also for some jobs 4 years is over kill.
Also as you go higher up the class loads become more about the the world of academic.
Read Academically Adrift
Hence the reason I hope Udacity and others are able to offer full degrees for no more than USD2500.00. If renowned professors taught the courses, it would be a much better education than even Harvard or Yale offer today.
badges earned online
http://chronicle.com/article/Badges-Earned-Online-Pose/130241/
For whom is this news? Easy education credit bloats education costs. Healthcare subsidies bloat healthcare costs. Subsidizing home loans with GSE backed credit bloats the cost of homes. If you show me something for which the price inflates 6, 8, 10% year over year I'll show you something with a tax incentive, a battalion of government subsidies, a government supported credit line or all of the above.
If you found this story informative or the least bit interesting you need to stop voting -- because you're not qualified.
Does Bloomberg mention that in most public systems, public support for the institution has collapsed over the same period of time? Off the top of my head, schools like Michigan, Penn State, and UCs get less than 10% of their money from the state governments. The UCs are getting the same amount of money today, from the state of California, that they got in the late 1990's - even though they are educating far more students.
This is really why tuition has skyrocketed. The cost of attending a UC has, I believe, tripled since I matriculated there. And I matriculated there in 2002 - 10 years ago! Now, the fact that the federal government is willing to give out more loans to students is almost certainly one reason why states are so willing to cut funding to universities. The states cut funding so they don't have to raise taxes to pay for services, and pass off the cost to students. It's a stealth tax hike on students.
It's DEMAND of ready, willing and ABLE buyers that drives price. This is determined in a large part by the financing. People don't buy houses based on how much it is, but how much it is a month.
It's better to think of the price of a loan funded product as a factor of affordability.
Increased affordability-> increased demand->increased price->decreased affordability. It just a matter of waiting for the market to adjust to the level of affordability(demand) it wants to stay at.
Attacking the problem from a demand side is a losing battle, it's better to go after increasing supply
It's DEMAND of ready, willing and ABLE buyers that drives price
BS, I've been in the workforce for 15 years in IT and I just returned to college for a CS degree. The idea that you can pick up a well rounded education on the job needs to be buried. On the job, you're learning what your employer needs you to know. And, if you haven't been exposed to theory, instructed in some math disciplines, and given a basic understanding on the foundations of IT tech, you're always going to have gaping holes in your knowledge or you're going to find yourself rebuilding the wheel because you had no idea was a state engine was (ask me about that one!).
What I've learned coming back to school is how much I didn't know I didn't know!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I doubt that students simply choose more expensive colleges simply because they can get loans. I would believe that more people go to college because they can get loans, The fact that there are more students wanting those chairs means that the prices will tend to rise. The catch is that online college programs will get much better and they is a real chance we can have free colleges that are top notch.
What the public needs is on authority that passes judgement on academic quality and gets deep studies of how many drop out, flunk out or are miserable at our colleges. Some fancy public schools are a sick joke and some private schools exist only to feast upon the students carcass.
I live in France now, though I am American by birth. The system here works very well.
University level education is almost completely free for students here. There are a certain number of places for any given program and students take competitive exams which determine their chances of getting into the program and school that they want. Students take this very seriously and work extremely hard in what we would call high school. The better they do, the more likely they are to get where they want to get to.
The society benefits because the population is highly educated in fields which are needed, with very few having the slashdot invented degree in 'underwater basketweaving'. The students benefit because they come out of school with the means to earn a living without having so much debt crippling them that they cannot get ahead of it.
Of course the far right Americans will cry 'socialism' and 'unfair taxes' but hey, you get what you ask for.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
I don't know if student aid increases tuition. If it does, it does. If it doesn't, it doesn't. Higher education is still important, and I'm concerned that articles like these (which I haven't read) will polarize people into a potentially bad decision/opinion.
Yes, food is important. Unfortunately, time and money are a factor--the time to cook the food and the money to buy the more expensive healthy food (as opposed to cheap junk food). (Did I use the "--" correctly?)
I would love to see the federal gov't spend less on "defense" and more on education and health care. When it comes to k-12 education, I'd like to see about $3k given to students in the form of a voucher to be used at a state-accredited k-12 school of their choice. Assuming roughly 50 million k-12 students, that should be about $150 billion/year. However, one string attached would be that one-third of the voucher ($1k) would be spent on free lunches (lunch to be defined on the voucher so schools can't cheap out on it), which comes to a little more than $5/day for an 180 day school year. Think buffet-style with a fruit bar.
Pricing Americans out of higher education probably won't help our economy. Sure, rich Americans can afford it, but rich foreigners can also afford it. And if there's still plenty of moderate wealthy to rich people who can afford it, is there an incentive for colleges to keep tuition low?
But, I think one issue with tuition is less state government money being spent to keep it low. Maybe this is why we have 20% annual tuition jumps? Whatever the cause, it's a serious problem that needs to be addressed. I don't necessarily want more state money being poured into public universities. I want the federal gov't, perhaps in the form of block grants, to provide aid to universities to keep tuition rates low.
I'd also like to see Direct loans modified so there's 0% interest if students pay their 10 year plan on time. I'd also like to see Direct subsidized loans to have their cap tripled.
I'd like to also see an option (not originally my idea) for students to pay 6% of their taxable income for perhaps 20 years as an option for paying back their student loans. Within first two years, you could opt in, but you wouldn't be able to opt out, even if you pay way more than you have originally borrowed.
I'd also like to see a two-year grace period with Direct loans to give graduates a chance to make something of their lives before being bled dry.
Some other issues probably need to be addressed, such as students cheating in college and laziness. I don't know how we can address the first part since I don't know how many are caught, but would the threat of losing their loan eligibility be enough (assuming that there isn't a clause in there right now)? As for the second part, would partial loan forgiveness for students obtaining 3.0+ GPAs be a good idea (assuming it doesn't increase the number of students cheating)?
Thank God for Finland. Instead of paying for education, we get paid if we study. It's not much, just ~8,500 USD a year, but it's enough to survive and study full time if you make a bit money during the Summer months as well. Your Universities seem to only be interested in making profit. That's so not the point of Academia.
Because your job is getting outsourced to the third world and robots. Even minimum wage service jobs are getting outsourced. Case in point -- the people here on the grey are sending money home even though they're making less than minimum wage.
some theory and math is OK but full CS still misses the mark and 4 years of it is way to much. But even then it's still more on the coding side and less on the tech / admin side.
Also the parts of the well rounded education need to go like art history, hobby stuff (as a full price college class), some of the higher edu, college level biology, other college level classes.
community colleges have the math and tech schools have the basic understanding on the foundations of IT tech.
Anytime you subsidize something, you get more of it.
"did cuts... hurt the education of ... lower income students?" well, a single anecdotal example: I was in college when Pell grants were cut, and when faced with the prospect of a higher debt upon graduation, I chose instead to drop out of college. True story. I wonder if, over the course of the ensuing years in which the government collected less from me in income taxes than it otherwise might have, the difference could have paid for the Pell grant that I might have received. In retrospect, my decision was probably unwise, but oh well.
feeding people increases hunger, welfare increases poverty, and education increases stupidity...
Please don't confuse western minimum wage with American minimum wage. Every other western country has decent minimum wage laws.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Rich people in a third world country are like feudal lords. People don't kidnap them -- the people who do kidnapping work FOR the rich guy. They have little armies. They do what they want with no repercussions for the most part. You want to rape some cute village girl? Go for it, the parents can't retaliate by kidnapping you, though you might want to have the parents shot just in case, the police are in your pocket, the national government doesn't care. Oh, also make up some rumors about the parents working for the CIA, Mossad, or some other despicable foreign intelligence agency and you might be the local hero.
Other than that, yeah I agree those kinds of comparisons don't do much good!
Someone needs to send this to the striking students in Quebec.
When I worked in the DP dept at Philly Community College in the early eighties, I, personally, was responsible for the tape exchange with the US federal government for the Pell Grants. I can therefor speak authoritatively, and tell you that 90% of the students were there on Pell Grants.
That's a *communtity* college. Not an Expensive, Big Name private college.
These days, with the massive cuts in Pell Grants in inflation-adjusted dollars, it's harder and harder to get to *anything*.
But Murdoch, of course, the rich foreign-born immigrant doesn't want a large and educated working class.
I mean, the last time that happened was the sixties and seventies, and look what happened then: uppity kids, women, workers, and ethnics. Didn't know when do defer to their betters, and wanted to keep a fair share of the wealth of the country.
Things are *so* much better, with folks like the Walmart heirs, whose top six own more wealth than the *entire* bottom 30% of the country, and there are so many jobs.....
mark
It was closer to ~$130k but Grandma helped a good bit and I got some need based grants and a need based scholarship.
BTW I love how people wave their hands and say "scholarships, oh you didn't get any, tisk tisk should have worked harder", I have two friends I know who had >3.5GPAs (very high and hard at Georgia Tech) and didn't get any scholarships.
My state didn't have any engineering schools anywhere near the caliber of Georgia Tech so I had to go out of state.
The problem is a lot of people have been taught from birth "education is the way out of poverty" so they naturally are willing to do anything to get one.
However, nobody thinks about the details like "I can take classes at local schools and transfer" [granted this is a very bad idea at Tech, those kids usually fail out, in addition nobody is motivated at community colleges], "I could live there for a year working a crap job first and become in-state", or "I could go to a technical school and learn wielding and work for Boeing". Especially that last one.
We're really all at the mercy of our parents and our advisers knowing enough. It's not hard to imagine how screwed you could be if your parents never made you study, take the SAT/ACT multiple times for best scores, or informed you about all your options (working at Boeing).
I am in grad school now. We broach this subject every couple of months. Basic supply and demand. All of the "extra" money is creating more demand. Positive shift in demand leads to an increase in price (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand).
Everyone knows it and we talk about it not being sustainable. So what happens when everyone outside of academia realizes it is not sustainable? People are graduating with tons of debt and everything else. If you "fix" this does it also increase the money supply because suddenly a lot more people have more money in their pocket, which leads to more spending, which leads to higher prices, increases inflation....
No win scenario unless you are the banks.
We're talking about different kind of rich. You're talking ~0.01%, I'm talking about the "upper class" that serves these in high income roles. These are usually some 2-5% of population in poor countries.
Kidnappings are generally directed at this part of populace, because they're fairly easy targets, but typically wealthy enough to be able to afford hundreds of thousands and in some cases millions of USD in ransom money. This is well seen in economies that are not terribly bad but well below Western standards, such as many Latin American countries, Russia and so on.
I love my alma mater and enjoyed my time there; however, that doesn't take away from the fact that at least one third to one half of the classes I could have done without. All this making well rounded students bullshit is a ploy to get more cash out of you.
That makes more sense. I thought most of the kidnapping and extortion was done by organized crime, though, which I would classify as top 5% (the leadership I mean). Kidnappings and murders may be carried out by poor people, but I don't think they are spontaneously done by poor people who are trying to get rich. They are done by rich criminals looking to stay rich / get richer.
In the really backwards countries like the ones I'm thinking of, the top 5% is dominated by people either in or connected to the army or the civil government. (Particularly I'm thinking of Pakistan, which I read about quite a bit.) While it's true that the elite are attacked occasionally, it's very different from what you're talking about. The ones who are attacked are attacked by people in the same social class (or higher) and usually for religious and political reasons, not to scam money. Every so often, for instance, there will be a spate of murders targeting Shia doctors. It is done by certain religious political parties since the majority population is Sunni and very bigoted. The poor people carry out the murders, but the political leaders order them -- with no consequences.
The group that is most targeted by poor people, without coercion from someone in authority, would probably be tourists who are not rich enough to have security details.
The tourists are actually one of the least targeted groups in kidnappings, because there is a collective interest of very powerful tourist industry that no such kidnappings occur.
Consider the Kenya example, where disabled woman got kidnapped for ransom by somali (no local kenyan would dare to touch a tourist). Kenya went full military on the kidnappers down to chasing them into Somalia across borders later executing a very difficult and expensive excursion into south Somalia to destroy bases where kidnappers might be trained. Al-Shahab is still recovering from that strike since. And now when my parents visited Kenya as tourists about a year after the incident, they spoke of heavy army presence on the beaches guarding the tourist sites now.