Slashdot Mirror
Colleges Face New 'Gainful Employment' Regulations For Student Loans
HughPickens.com writes: Education Secretary Arne Duncan says the Education Department wants to make sure loan programs that prey on students don't continue their abusive practices. Now Kimberly Hefling reports that for-profit colleges who are not producing graduates capable of paying off their student loans could soon stand to lose access to federal student-aid programs. In order to receive federal student aid, the law requires that most for-profit programs, regardless of credential level, and most non-degree programs at non-profit and public institutions, including community colleges, prepare students for "gainful employment in a recognized occupation" (PDF). To meet these "gainful employment" standards, a program will have to show that the estimated annual loan payment of a typical graduate does not exceed 20 percent of his or her discretionary income or 8 percent of total earnings.
"Career colleges must be a stepping stone to the middle class. But too many hard-working students find themselves buried in debt with little to show for it. That is simply unacceptable," says Duncan. "These regulations are a necessary step to ensure that colleges accepting federal funds protect students, cut costs and improve outcomes. We will continue to take action as needed."
But not everyone is convinced the rules go far enough. "The rule is far too weak to address the grave misconduct of predatory for-profit colleges," writes David Halperin. "The administration missed an opportunity to issue a strong rule, to take strong executive action and provide real leadership on this issue." The final gainful employment regulations follow an extensive rulemaking process involving public hearings, negotiations and about 95,000 public comments and will go into effect on July 1, 2015.
"Career colleges must be a stepping stone to the middle class. But too many hard-working students find themselves buried in debt with little to show for it. That is simply unacceptable," says Duncan. "These regulations are a necessary step to ensure that colleges accepting federal funds protect students, cut costs and improve outcomes. We will continue to take action as needed."
But not everyone is convinced the rules go far enough. "The rule is far too weak to address the grave misconduct of predatory for-profit colleges," writes David Halperin. "The administration missed an opportunity to issue a strong rule, to take strong executive action and provide real leadership on this issue." The final gainful employment regulations follow an extensive rulemaking process involving public hearings, negotiations and about 95,000 public comments and will go into effect on July 1, 2015.
"Career colleges must be a stepping stone to the middle class. But too many hard-working students find themselves buried in debt with little to show for it. That is simply unacceptable," says Duncan.
This is the billboard with neon flashing lights we've all been waiting for: the college degree is the new high school diploma.
You got all their money, now make senior classes impossible to pass except for only the best and brightest.
They will go MEDIEVAL on your ass!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Finally we are coming to some sort of sense when it comes to education in this country. I feel for the college students that don't know any better and major in something only to find themselves working a minimum wage job with a hefty loan to repay. At least we have a check and balance now and hopefully colleges will alter their programs to provide more marketable skills in the future.
Why the emphasis on "for-profit" schools. Are non-profit and/or state-sponsored schools immune from irresponsible and predatory behavior, in the authors opinion? Is a 100K student loan and a useless degree in Whatever-Studies from Big-State-U any less of a swindle than a 100K student loan and a Whatever-Tech degree from DeVry?
Will MRS degrees be exempt?
This is great! The next logical step would be for universities to look at their [expensive] classes and figure out what classes they REALLY need to offer, and what classes are rehashing of the same material with a different number. Also, perhaps allowing students to 'place out' of certain classes if they can prove preexisting proficiency. If you don't want drop your prices on classes, then streamline the process.
And just how many graduates from "non-profit" state schools are given degrees in unemployable fields?
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
In your haste to make a "communism" reference, you missed: In order to receive federal student aid, the law requires that most for-profit programs, regardless of credential level, and most non-degree programs at non-profit and public institutions, including community colleges, prepare students for "gainful employment in a recognized occupation"
There are some college degrees that you don't make money at... The people that graduate in those fields don't do it for the money, but for the good they do for others. This is well intentioned, but it may hurt some of the neediest. Can you imagine if our social safety net was staffed exclusively with life coaches?
A liberal arts or pure science education is not meant to be a professional degree. It's a way to learn a lot about a particular topic, independently of whether that directly helps your employment chances or not.
Historically, there was a fairly sharp delineation between universities and vocational schools--even "white collar" vocational schools like engineering were at separate institutions (often A&T or A&M schools), and lawyers and doctors were primarily apprenticed. At some point doctors, and later lawyers, became highly skilled professions that needed more formal training. To a degree it made sense to combine medical schools with pure sciences under one university, since some of the basics overlap.
But it had the unfortunate side effect of starting the thought in people's minds that universities are vocational institutions, rather than institutions of higher learning. I certainly don't mean to insinuate that a liberal arts degree has no application in the real world--quite the contrary. But it's intentionally targeted at longer-term learning rather than particular vocations per se, and not everyone who pursues a higher degree does so as a job entree.
Nonetheless, the law schools and med schools were followed by a spate of mergers between technical institutes and universities. Suddenly non-university vocational institutes were looked on as crappy and inferior, and it became a mantra (for no good reason) that you needed a 4-year college/university degree to succeed at jobs that historically had been done quite successfully without it. Even a shorter professional program started to become more prestigious if allied with a 4-year college, for no good reason (e.g. nursing schools at universities being, generally, valued more highly than independent nursing colleges).
The result was a massive spike in the number of people going to 4-year colleges--that number has sextupled or so over the past 60ish years--and a massive decline in the number of people going to vocational and technical schools. The latter have become a joke to the point where vocational school brings to mind TV commercials for Devry or Andover tractor trailer driving or dental hygeniest schools.
The downfalls of this are manifold. University prices skyrocket as everyone seeks to get in, whether they are really interested in a university degree or not. Vocational schools fold and a large percentage of the people who'd have attended them are forced into universities, exacerbating #1. Jobs see more and more college degrees, and start expecting them, making people start viewing colleges and universities as professional/career prep schools.
And universities become disincentivized to teach pure liberal arts or even theoretical mathematics, as they start being judged based on how good they are as job factories rather than as educational institutions; the result is a short-term focus that harms long-term research and eventually job opportunities (much akin to eliminating R&D budgets, but on a national scale).
rage, rage against the dying of the light
well its a start in the right direction. I blame the idea of federal loans for the high cost to begin with
,and it always costs us avg americans the most
lets face it, college is not for everyone. but since the failure known as the dept of ed, and the student loans for all, the colleges have little incentive to ensure their students do well, their only goal is to ensure the students can pay. and if the government is footing the bill, its in their best interest to enroll as many people as possible, as they will get paid regardless by the feds (the tax payers)
unintended consequences seem to sneak up everytime the feds try and do anything
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
In theory restricting by college is a good idea, but it's complex and doesn't hit the root cause.
What allows availability to loans to go nuts is the fact that you can't use bankruptcy to get out of loans. If bankruptcy were an option, lenders would be significantly more careful about who they lend to, and we wouldn't need an extra law aimed at specific questionable institutions.
exactly. they should stop paying for degrees that will not yield a return. liberal arts, music etc. the arts are a wonderful thing, but the feds should not be paying for it. the individual should
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
It appears that "non-profit" schools as well have responded to the increased loan $ available over the past couple of decades by raising tuition to absorb all of it - which is a big part of why graduates are in so much debt.
Any school accepting governent-tied money should have to pass this test.
What I find disturbing is that at age 18, we're allowed to go to war, vote, enter contracts and do just about anything (except drink alcohol... that's another weird one). Yet, we still seem to treat these same 18-year-olds like children when it comes to them understanding the loans that they voluntarily enter into. I never found loans to be a difficult concept. You borrow money now, you pay it back later with interest.
If you don't want massive loans, pick a state school. There's a lot of state schools that offer in-state tuition rates to out-of-state students, in addition to your own state's schools. There are a lot of choices without picking private for-profit schools. Now, there might be some more niche degrees only offered by a limited number of colleges, but those are much, much more fewer than the number of students who claim to be victimized by student loans.
I'm not saying that *no* colleges have predatory loan practices, or that *no* students are victimized. I'm just saying that a great deal of students who claim to be victimized are experiencing something closer to buyer's remorse at the first major, adult decision. Some of the blame for the student loan situation *should* sit with the students who entered into these agreements.
The fact that you can graduate high school without learning the basics doesn't help.
that's rich coming from the government. if only they would limit their take of my income to 8%.
My ex-roommate took out $25,000 in loans to study automotive industrial design on the West Coast because... he likes cars. Never mind that the only kind of jobs he ever had were logistic positions for warehouses. Until Telsa set up shop in Silicon Valley, it's a fairly useless degree.
I certainly should have, instead of buying into the "you're smart, you should go to college" bullshit my parents kept selling me.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
If you go to university to get job training you are doing it wrong. That is not what university is meant to be.
By subsidizing absurd tuition fees, student loan programs and grants are causing the very problem that they purport to solve. Forcibly remove colleges from the money teat, reducing demand for their overpriced services, and you will see tuition costs drop. It would also eliminate subsidized idiots choosing "disciplines" like "Women's Studies" or "Dramatic Arts". If people want to pursue such errant nonsense, they should work, save the money and pay for it themselves.
Yes and no. While the law does address that problem, it was very charged language in TFS that also attracted my attention about "predatory for-profit colleges". It's reasonable to offer a counterpoint to that. Even a waiter with a degree in critical theory could see it.
I think that's hardly the college's fault. It's one thing if they don't give you practical knowledge in the field, but a different thing if YOU CHOOSE a field with poor job prospects. I don't understand why people don't do a little research into the job prospects for their major. Yeh the market fluctuates, but in 2 years its not going to change that much. (you spend two years on course class work, and can change your major without a lot of trouble and do the final 2 years) There's tons of sites that give you an idea of what potential salary would be.
Some people make the choice fully knowing of the poor job prospects. You want a burger with peanut butter and pineapple on it? fine, that's what you get, but you eat and don't blame the cook if it's gross. That's a calculated risk you are taking. Investment firms have no responsibility to prevent you from buying stocks that will do poorly.
On the other hand, if you want to make an argument on the basis of public universities being partially funded by tax dollars, and they have an obligation to this or that to contribute meaningful skills to the community etc., then that might be a valid train of though.
I started looking into my major interests while I was in high school. Between then and the first two years of college I changed my mind 4 times on what I wanted to do.
1. Should be something you don't hate to do all the time. It doesn't have to be something you love, but at minimum not hate.
2. Should be something that can make money. Doesn't have to be alot, just enough that you aren't constantly struggling.
3. Should be something you are somewhat good at. You don't have to be the greatest, but if it is something you struggle at then you may have trouble keeping jobs.
Those are the three simple things that guided me. I love my job. I make plenty of money. I feel I do a good job.
Anything like game design, art, or music is going to have more people competing for fewer jobs because it is something people really want to do. Doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, but maybe if it's what you really want to do you should apply some of that passion to finding alternative learning resources, because you are taking a risk going down that path and a huge debt isn't something you should be accumulating if you are uncertain of your employability. Maybe get a computer science degree, get a job, and stretch your game design muscles in your free time.
I don't think people generally see a problem with liberal arts taught well. I think many people rightly see "liberal arts education" as an intellectual wasteland where little is asked of students in return for tuition money. If standards were kept high, that simply wouldn't be the case. But they haven't been kept high.
How about instead of enacting legislation that makes the college degree the new high school diploma we fix the problem with employers scalping their employee's wages to demonstrate false quarterly growth to their shareholders?
A good solution would be to tie the wage of the lowest paid worker to the highest by a ratio of 1:40 at minimum (reports say that a ratio as high as 1:20 has a large positive impact on moral). That would solve a hell of a lot more problems regarding gainful employment than any program targeting federal funding for universities.
"There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"
Actually, there wasn't. Universities *started* back in the Middle Ages as vocational schools, and the modern liberal arts degree is based (very roughly) on their curriculum and philosophy. The idea that universities were purely institutes of higher learning is actually (historically speaking) a rather recent development aimed mostly at separating those institutions who wished to place themselves a "cut above" (I.E. universities that mostly accepted students from the upper class who on graduation were expected to be "gentlemen" and enter a "respected" white collar vocations like Government, the military, or the Church if they entered a formal profession at all) from more "mundane" institutions. At the grass roots level, the general populace never stopped looking at them as vocational school and a stepping stone to employment.
You've got your timeline and causes and effects all kinds of screwed up. The "higher learning" idea arose in the early/mid 19th century. Professional law and medical universities in the mid/late 19th century. The massive spike occurred after WWII between veterans and their GI benefits and the sudden spike of "prosperity" and the enlarging middle class which had the discretionary income to send their kids to college.
Among first-time, full-time undergraduate students who began seeking a bachelor's degree at a 4-year degree-granting institution in fall 2006, the 6-year graduation rate was 57 percent at public institutions, 66 percent at private nonprofit institutions, and 32 percent at private for-profit institutions. --nces.ed.gov
Also
It was found that 14 out of 15 times, the tuition at a for-profit sample was more expensive than its public counterpart, and 11 out of 15 times, it was more expensive than the private counterpart. --wikipedia
Seems the biggest issue is a lack of a degree of ANY sort at for-profit colleges. Let alone a worthwhile ($) one. After which you're stuck with a lot more debt. For-profit colleges are clearly the target that the gov should go after first when deciding how to dole out federal aid.
time to cut down the time in schools 4+ years to long of pure classroom and lot's stuff can use some kind of mixed classroom + apprenticeship system for say 1-3 years.
Tell that to HR will you?
Great post. One point you missed, though:
Suddenly non-university vocational institutes were looked on as crappy and inferior, and it became a mantra (for no good reason) that you needed a 4-year college/university degree
It's the "no good reason" part that's the real problem - because there are reasons and they are good for some people, if not most.
First, there's an oversupply of workers for an undersupply of jobs, so why not be picky with your applicants if you're an employer? A stupid regulation like "4-year degree required" gets rid of more potential bad employees than it excludes potential good employees for many jobs. Part of this is that high school diplomas are merely attendance certificates now, but that's only a tiny part. A bigger part is a slowing of the economy, in real terms, since the early 70's, and a lack of real, good jobs. Stagflation was papered over with sheets of hundred dollar bills - the structural issues were never "solved" and still aren't. We're about twelve miles up on the structural Jenga stack at this point.
The result was a massive spike in the number of people going to 4-year colleges--that number has sextupled or so over the past 60ish years
Yes! There's your oversupply.
and a massive decline in the number of people going to vocational and technical schools
and there's definitely an undersupply there. Why? One is heavily subsidized and one is not. The one that gets the massive subsidies (grants, student loan programs below market rates, etc.) gets two things - an influx of demand, and a concomitant increase in price. It used to be 4-year students could work during the summers to pay for their tuition - but they didn't get Pell Grants, so that was awful.
Tech school prices are nowhere near as inflated, at least yet. People can still afford to go to tech school, and they're, in large numbers, starting to wise up about that. Let's hope nobody starts trying to heavily subsidize it.
But why did the US go full-on socialism with the 4-year student loan program, in particular? There's an assumption that if only the US can produce a huge number of university brainiacs then it can maintain its economic leadership position in the world, maintain its high tax base despite the competition from cheaper labor doing the same work, and therefore maintain its World Police stance. Because if it can't, China is going to eat the US's lunch, and that would be bad for the people in power. People in Power who have lots of university degrees and are, upon self-reflection, smarter than everybody else in the room, so the degrees must be causal.
Dirty secret: populations are, on average, just as smart from generation to generation, no matter how diplomas are being hung on walls.
Second dirty secret: a China-dominated world will cause the citizens of the US to be as miserable as the citizens of Luxembourg and Denmark are today. I'm just hoping the death throes of the Empire don't include firing shots at the new guy. I'm sure some school offers a degree in how starting unwinnable wars is good for an economy.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I graduated the eighth grade with fifth grade writing/math skills and college-level reading comprehension because I was misdiagnosed as mentally retarded in kindergarten. I skipped high school and went to the community college, graduating with an A.A. degree in general education four years later. Until I established myself professionally in the I.T. field, I had trouble getting level-entry jobs because I didn't have a high school diploma despite having an A.A. degree.
I certainly don't mean to insinuate that a liberal arts degree has no application in the real world--quite the contrary.
Exactly correct.
Without the liberal arts degree, one would ask, "Would you like fries with that?"
With the liberal arts degree, one can ask, "Would you like fries with that, you evil capitalist pig-dog?"
from the summary:
A secret about those private "not for profit" colleges which the Department of Education exempted from that regulation. They are for profit. Huge profits. The distinction is not that these institutions do not earn profits, but rather that they are exempt from business taxes on those profits and the income accrues to the administration and faculty instead of to business owners.
So I had a friend in college who worked part-time in the payroll office and had access to the campus salary database. From her dorm room. So one evening she asks if I want to know what any of my professors make. Looked them all up. In 2014 dollars the mid-level salary for recently-tenured faculty was about $300,000 / year. Deans, provosts and presidents made much more.
Subsidized college loans have created a glut of education dollars and "not-for-profit" educators are raking them in. They are not opposed to earning huge profits themselves, the just do not want competition from other colleges which are run as business. So they lobbied Arne Duncan to enact a regulation which, for no legitimate rationale, applies only their competition.
Don't believe me? Universities try to keep this information locked away tightly but occasionally it leaks out. Here, for, example, is what Treasury Secretary Jack Lew received as severence pay from New York University:
NYU is a private "non-profit". And, as that link indicates, as such they receive additional benefits from the federal government beyond tax exemption.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
does that mean we shouldn't train people to be poets or unobtainium miners? besides, just recognizing "bus driver" as an occupation doesn't mean that it grants a living wage. how to define "gainful employment"?
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
2 years of community college need to have the same HS cost level. And if jobs get to pushy extended that to 4 years.
Every high school counselor in the country as well as a fuckton of parents believe otherwise. College is the new high school. Try getting a so-called "entry-level job" without a degree and without multiple years of experience you can't get without already having the job. Granted, it can happen, but there's a reason that lots of people have been unemployed for months or even years. Employers want employees that require zero training, despite the harsh reality that employees can't do the job from day one without having already received training from an employer anyway.
Pumping money into subsidizing student loans and exempting student loan debt from bankruptcy is what caused college costs to surge 1,000%. Ditto with housing. When you have high demand for a limited market, adding money to the mix only increases the profit to the supplier.
If banks see more risk in student loans (which SHOULD be a risky investment) they will loan less money. Colleges will have no choice but to bring down costs.
and we willll CAPITALIZE ourselves to death.
I went to one of these schools and got straight A's hoping for a decent job but all I got was debt and more poverty. I could have handled a four year degree at a better school but this was my only option. I still think I made the right choice by going, but in hindsite I woudn't do it again. The problem was that other people made bad choices. Those people will never admit they had a responsibility to me or anyone else but themselves. Perception is everything.
The US is a media controlled dictatorship.
And remember one mans troll is another mans freedom of speech.
A major problem has been that tuitions have risen alongside the ability of students to get loans to pay for them. This would go a long way toward a college charging $150,000 for an art history major. It's perfectly OK to still take those majors, but it's predatory for a college and bank offer to sell a kid (and at 18, yeah, they're still kids) a hugely expensive degree with little expected return on investment.
I feel strongly that college should not be a trade school. Nonetheless, that's how they're treated by financial markets. Well, that works both ways: just as you shouldn't lend a minimally-employed person $600,000 to buy an inflated house in a bubble market, neither should you lend a kid six digits without him having a reasonable chance to repay it. At least, you shouldn't do either of those and have an expectation that you'll ever be able to collect.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
While this is interesting to try, the root cause is that college debt is magical debt which can't be discharged through a bankruptcy proceeding. The ease of acquiring practically limitless student debt has created the problem. The easy money drives up costs for tuition, and the cycle repeats itself as students borrow even more money for increasingly useless degrees.
It's inflation, pure and simple.
To those who would say that the purpose of education isn't to get a job; well someone should have informed the Millennials, who were told their entire time in school that an education would get them a job. To those who would say that they worked through college and didn't go into debt, you probably had far, far cheaper tuition than your average student today, and probably went to college more than 2 decades ago.
I worked through college, had the GI bill, and still managed to require student loans to attend a university. 20 years ago I'd have finished my undergraduate degree in the black, but 20 years of easy money has fattened the education market to hilarious proportions, and now a half-decent degree from a good university is basically a mortgage without a house.
The problem is the cost of education; not its usefulness. And all of these problems apply equally to for-profit, and not-for-profit educational institutions.
Tell that to the employers.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I went to a state college (twice!) and the graduation rate was bellow 33%
That's a scam... flat out scam. You have to go, they know you have to go, and they abuse you to squeeze as much money out of you as possible.
Yes, there are those that just drink themselves out. But the colleges offer absolutely no help with anything at all.
You're paying a fortune for classes, and the schedules make little to no sense at all. I'd go to a 30min English class, then have to wait an hour and half to take a 4 or philosophy class, then wait 2hrs for my 1 hour programming class. There were thousands of students studying for the same degree I was! What's the point of having these nonsense schedules?? Can't I just get into the 8am-5pm compsci course and be done with it?
On top of that, what's with the books scams? I'm required to buy a book my professor wrote but we never open it in class? Really? I was so broke I'd literally go without eating some days, but my professors ripping me off for $89.95?
Then the campus police... Constant unending harassment. Granted, I was a long hair... but, for example, they decided to raid the door rooms over xmas break and leave me a ticket for underage drinking for having an empty wine bottle in my room. It took me 2 months and 2 visits to court to get it cleared up that I was 23 I had enough going on, I didn't need to be dealing with them.
I will be steering my son towards one of the well established local community colleges we have around here when the time comes. They seem to be the best value, and the least likely to rip you off. I'd stay away from any "online" schools, TV offers and State colleges. They are the worst. The only difference between those and the state collges is the State ones only rip off maybe 80 to 90% of their students as apposed to 100% for the university of Phoenix and the like.
What I want to know is why the government has granted a publicly traded company the super power to be the monopoly for distribution of federal education money and the super power of being the only thing that cannot be dismissed in a bankruptcy. Sallie Mae is pulling the wool over the eyes of Americans, pretending to be an office of the government and that is why it enjoys these privileges. In fact, it is not. It is a company just like the one that you or I might start, but they enjoy special privileges that a company that you or I start could possibly enjoy.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
....as other mentioned before me, Universities where once upon a time for higher learning and not job prep school. Corporations have, as usual, managed to pass off the cost of training their workforce to the taxpayers and the employees.
It has been my experience that the far far far majority of what you learn in university never really gets applied in most jobs. Companies only care if you can do it fast, do it cheap, fuck industry standards (or best practices etc etc) unless mandated by law (and even then it is sometimes ignored assuming the fine is cheaper than actually implementing something the correct way). Everything focuses and short term gains so the CEO and his cohorts can cash out quick and move on to the next con job....
Bachelors tend to get you in the door, to work the crappy paying menial jobs that nobody wants to do in departments like Accounting, IT, HR, Marketing etc.....All the interesting stuff is usually blocked off for you unless you have a master's degree AND happen to have lots of high level contacts in the top 1%. At best you might make it to mid level management hell......
In any case I wouldn't be surprised if corporations in fact support this move. It is in their best interest to keep pumping out degrees as it lowers the overall value of your degree....
This is a decent idea, but it doesn't go far enough - every non-profit college and university shuld be held to the same standards if they get tax subsidies or federal loan money.
It's popular to bash the for-profit schools, but there are plenty of over-priced, in-effective 2 and 4 year schools that saddle their graduates with mediocre educations and excessive debt loads.
Ken
I wish the Ontario government would crack down on universities and colleges too. There are too many outdated and total bullshit majors at our schools here in Canada too. I am tired of these schools turning out graduates like an assembly line year after year and flooding the job market with little call for degrees and diplomas. Often times many of these fields don't need that many new graduates and don't have that many entry level positions going to justify every FREAKING COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY TURNING OUT THOUSANDS OF GRADUATES EVERY YEAR FOR IT! Just how many newly minted Graphic and Interior designers do you need especially in places like Hamilton or Oshawa Ontario? That is just one of many examples but there are plenty of other majors where there is little call for recent graduates too. My rule of thumb is if it sounds like fun or has anything to do with being creative or sitting on your butt stay away from it because you won't get a job at the end of it. Generally speaking the jobs going usually have one or more of the following qualities, you won't like it, it's hard work, and it’s dirty, dangerous and unpleasant and involves dealing with the general public. Bottom line is the jobs that are going are jobs that no one likes doing but somebody has to do it and it may or may not require a post-secondary education. Never pick something you like to major in because that is a sure fire way not to get a job at the end of it because everybody else picks the same fun thing and there is probably not much call for it. They don't call it work for nothing remember that! How many people like being a nurse or a bricklayer not many I bet but that is what is going not doing Fashion Design or any other design field.
College has never been about getting a job. Look at the help wanted section of your local paper. Astronomers wanted, poets wanted, scholars wanted will not be listed. College is for people who love learning and are willing to suffer to obtain that learning. What we do have is criminals who create worthless, phony colleges that suck the blood out of students and tax payers. The majority of online degree programs are crooked. Combine that with an economy that does not allow young people to get decent jobs and the young people figure out that by taking a worthless, college program by computer gets them a check every month from the government. These peoples' choices are as follows : You may starve now or starve later. So the young folks who really have been betrayed by society live off of their college loans and reason that the loans will have to be forgiven. So why would any government do this? These youth will discover that no matter what they do they will get the severe, bottom bracket, Social Security checks when they retire. The government will take those unpaid loans right out of their Social Security checks leaving them starving. The proof is that bankruptcy does not relieve people from government backed student loans.
#1. "College teaches you how to learn" is utter bullshit. Don't ever make this argument to me or I will laugh openly in your face. College teaches you how spend money with little consideration, hammer out homework assignments, cram for tests, and attend classes which could otherwise be downloaded as a .mp4 file.
#2. You don't need college to get a job, but you need college to get paid what you're worth. I got a job with an A.A.S. where I worked alongside engineers and spent several years trying unsuccessfully to make the business profitable before giving up. I did more than my fair share of the work and in exchange made a small fraction of the salary. Even my peers made more than me. Primarily because they had a 4 year degree and it was told to me in plain language it would stay that way until I had my B.S.
College is a way to filter out the uninitiated riff raff.
We can't have any pressure on public colleges to stop producing $useless_degree graduates, can we.
Your confusing the purpose of federal student loans with the purpose of a university. Lenders are suppose to give loans with a good faith expectation that the loan will be repaid. If schools are lending money out that can't be repaid by students then they should be cut off from federal support. Students can still attend those schools. They just will have to do it with their own money.
I agree with many of your individual statements, but I think we'd disagree on the good/bad ratio of resultant trend and how they should be guided.
With the proviso that "college costs money to attend,";
Attending college in preparation for a career is a financial investment with an expected return.
Attending college to indulge yourself in an area of interest is not an investment, it is a luxury.
From these two simple statements, we can say that anyone who needs to take a loan out to attend college, but does not attend for vocational purposes is not only purchasing a luxury service, they're doing so by incurring debt with no method to pay it off. This is the height of personal self-indulgence and irresponsibility.
The individual-affecting downfalls you note have no meaning under these lights. So what if luxuries become more expensive? So what if people go to college to learn job skills? What if only the rich can afford to - not picking on anyone in particular - major in classical english literature?
Then we get to the other downfalls, those for society, what you call "the long term".
The original claim, and intent for liberal arts was not ever 'to learn a lot about a particular topic', but rather, to create a well-rounded individual who's had an increased potential to benefit society, if not themselves. Now a days we'd use terms like 'cross-discipline knowledge', but it's pretty much the concept that certain ideas could only form as a result of the intersection of several genres of knowledge, and never from a myopic focus on just one. ... and that's why we have gen-ed requirements today. So we're covered there too. I'd be hard pressed to prove that they do actual good, but I think the general concept is sound. Do we need experts or just basic knowledge here though? How could anyone even judge?
For now at least, I think that moves like this are a good start in weeding out non-vocational luxury studies from those who would go into debt to take them. In fact, I'd say you could go a few steps further with a simple-to-say change: every college is required to co-sign any student loan. That should correct many issues in one fell swoop; class cost, student debt, non-salable degrees, administrator's salaries, paying for non-profitable sports teams because of 'tradition', etc.
Honestly I think even the measure being considered doesn't go far enough. Sure, it'll protect future students, but what about those of us who are currently feeling the penetration of the long thick phallus of Sallie Mae after having gotten a degree from one of these colleges.
I think that's hardly the college's fault. It's one thing if they don't give you practical knowledge in the field, but a different thing if YOU CHOOSE a field with poor job prospects. I don't understand why people don't do a little research into the job prospects for their major.
Neither do I, but an alarming number of people do not. Given this reality, should the government give loans to people who are unlikely to be able to pay it back?
The college is involved in approving the loan. Lenders have a responciblity to only lend money to people they expect will pay them back. Lending in bad faith defrauds the goverment and destroys wealth.
Make the school jointly liable for their students' loans. So, if the student defaults, the college is on the hook. R
Career colleges must be a stepping stone to the middle class.
Too bad "the middle class" is a rapidly shrinking island and the nearest stepping stones are increasingly far from its shores. With the possible exception of building trades, traditional middle class jobs are increasingly being exported, filled by poorly-paid H1B wage slaves, or eliminated altogether. The solution to these problems has little to do with college courses, (AKA 'job training', AKA 'shaping the peg to fit a non-existent hole'), and a lot to do with fixing massively unfair concentration of wealth.
Additionally, education should not be primarily about job training - it should be about producing well-rounded, creative, thoughtful, aware citizens who can solve problems and who can adapt readily to a variety of roles as required. Our society is not a production line for widgets, and it's time we stopped treating it as one.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
The thirteen-year-old deep thinker in me is sad. He wonders when it happened that schools, along with every other thing in our society without a single exception, but especially schools, when did they line up to serve "employers"? When did it happen that students stopped dreaming about all the naturally curious things, and instead began dreaming about the landing of jobs?
A graduate, newly destitute and without a shred of dignity, can no longer be expected to be relevant even in his own field of study. His "knowledge base" is a proprietary list of robotic competencies designed from the start to benefit whoever it was that sponsored his schooling. Although he is now an agricultural scientist, all he knows how to do is buy tons and tons of toxic soil additives; or although he is now a computer scientist, all he knows is Java and .NET.
I think SOME loans at the very least should work this way. Especially loans for poor people that really are looking at college as a stepping stone to some sort of job skills in their life.
I'd also point out that in the undergraduate courses there has been this infestation of political and advocacy courses that are pure propaganda. I won't get into them because we all know what they are... and maybe this requirement might compel college administrators to at least make those classes elective rather then waste a student's time or patience with them. Some people hit those classes and are so offended they literally drop out. It happens. And that is bad for everyone.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
they'll be calling this some "vast right wing conspiracy" and a "war on free speech" because it's gonna be real hard to demonstrate how that Philosophy and Transgender Studies degrees scored at UC campuses thru extreme expense are going to lead to "gainful employment" as anything other than a barista or community organizer.
Cue the rest as "this is sponsored by Big College to drive out the independents!"
Don't let anyone fool you that ANY college is "not for profit" especially when their administrators pull six figures, new facilities built every couple of years, and they don't even have a sports team to launder the cash through.
Say whatever you want, I dropped out of a liberal arts associate program (after 70% completion) and switched to an IT degree. The "harder" science side is easier. Less time spent on homework. Less actual thinking. A lot more look it up and regurgitate. The only exception is the programming and math classes. Liberal arts even at a community college was hardly the "easy ride" I admit I was expecting as a 19 year old who dropped out of high school at 15.
Yes, back when Universities were for the leisure class, not the poor who are taking out loans
All those liberal arts majors are screwed
The entire problem with college loans is that you cannot escape them with bankruptcy. If you take a school loan, you have that loan no matter how messed up your financial situation gets. If college loan debt were the same as any other debt, those giving out loans would be very hesitant to hand 120k to an underwater basket weaver.
It makes no sense for college debt to be inescapable. We allow people to declare bankruptcy after taking a million dollar loan to open a high end spa in an 8k person logging down. There is no reason college debt shouldn't be treated the same. If people were stupid enough to take a loan they can't repay then their credit is destroyed for 7 years (at least). If the people giving the loan were stupid enough to give out a loan that was unlikely to be repaid, they are out of their money.
We need to stop protecting people in the financial industry from their own risky behavior. It is way too expensive for our society and it does nothing but make some super wealthy organization more money.
I'm tired of politicians & pundits saying somebody didn't display "real leadership" when they don't get exactly what they want. Politics usually involves compromise: you rarely get exactly what you want. (Republicans typically push back on what they see as "excess regulations" of schools.)
"Mom didn't display real leadership by giving me 3 cookies. Instead she gave me 1 cookie and a banana."
Table-ized A.I.
Hell, you can do that without the degree. It's not like the works of Marx and Engels aren't public domain. :)
I write sci-fi for metalheads
> for-profit colleges who are not producing graduates capable of paying off their student loans
Oh, but it's okay to blow a wad of student loan money on a useless degree from a "public" or "non-profit" college. Yeah, we all know how easy it is to get a job with a degree in "Black Studies," for example - which is basically just a degree in whining.
The issue is that education can be both an investment and a luxury. People spend lots of money learning to do all sorts of things as hobbies such as art, home brewing, photography, in which they have no desire to earn a living. This is fine. The problem involves debt. Debt can be a good financial strategy if you have calculated you will get a financial return. For instance getting a mortgage to buy a house could be a good investment if you compare it to renting but if rents are low and housing prices are high it might not be.
The same applies for going into debt for education. It may be a good thing if you calculate the alternatives. Spend 4 years working and building job skills vs spend 4 years not working and going into debt with the prospect of a higher income later, or some variant of the two. The worst choice is to go into debt while not learning anything that will help you get an income high enough to pay off the debt.
As for the argument that not everyone can be educated in those profitable fields I agree. It doesn't mean you can't learn what you like be it art, music, or philosophy. Those are fine and noble pursuits. But don't go into debt to do it. Get a regular job and instead of getting a degree just learn about it on your own or if you really want a degree take night classes or save up to pay for it.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
To paraphrase the late George Carlin, If the answer to "..was the last person to get a job in my major my professor.." ..a "yes", then perhaps you should rethink your career track.
Mike Rowe may be right. Thirty years ago they shuttered all the vocational training shops in High Schools across the U.S. and rejiggered the curriculum to entirely "College Prep." Apparently someone thought the new millennia would see floating cities, personal jetpacks and genetically engineered mental telepathy as the new societal construct, and the only way to fulfill this prophecy was to produce eager young archons -disciples of the critical thinking required to operate the flying cars and mind operated workbots. Except it didn't happen, and you have to write a check for nearly $200 to the guy running the power snake in your basement floor drain on a Sunday night emergency call.
When everyone has an MBA, does anyone have an MBA?
Where does a Gender Studies degree take you when the corporatization of universities is closing the door on living wages or career advancement in higher education?
With a large number of Associate or certification programs producing comfortable middle-income career tracks in the skilled medical, production or transportation sectors, is a 4-year degree and $50,000-$100,000 of student loan debt that secures a $39,000/yr salary moving papers around inside a cubicle somewhere in the Midwest ... worth it, or right for everyone?
http://www.businessinsider.com...
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
The "culture wars" is at play here. Since Uncle Sam is handing out these loans, many tax payers want a good monetary return on their investment (or lowest loss).
Typically Republicans want their tax money going to direct job creation rather than what might be called general enlightenment. They view general enlightenment education as less useful, the job of religion instead of college, and/or "liberal indoctrination". Thus, they are against anything outside of (directly) providing jobs to the loanees.
I'm not trying to pick sides here, but rather convey the conflicting political views that are at play.
Table-ized A.I.
cite.
That...led me to an interesting thought.
Outright ban student loans not issued by the educational institution in question.
This helps in several ways:
- Institutions have to compete directly.
- They won't take on students that likely won't graduate
- They won't give out loans to people who will not be able to repay them
- They have a strong incentive to streamline their expenses - the higher the loan amount, the higher the risk of default
- They cannot offer bullshit courses - someone not earning can never repay, making them dead weight on the institution.
Watch all the problems disappear.
Except who decides the value of which degrees are useless? I've met many CS grads who are useless whereas one of the best programmers I know is an Anthopology major. I'mold enough to say that I've seen this time and time again.
The bigger problem I see is that in the more recent generations the way to deal with not being able to fins a job is to spend more money and get a graduate degree in the very major that you're not able to get a job using. Graduate school doesn't solve the problem. I would prefer that there be more restrictive rules for people taking graduate courses than for undergrads. Part of college is deciding it's not for you. Graduate school is deciding that work is not for you.
Wow! All that and not one mention of the fact that employers had to stop using their own tests to screen applicants? For either good or bad reasons, businesses used to use IQ tests and the like to screen applicants but someone decided they were discriminatory and everyone had to stop using them. What replaced them? The four year degree.
I managed the computers for a Canadian university dept., including the development and operation of a system that collected $4M a year from students for the board portion of their room and board.
Cash pickups were done by Campus Cowboys.
One day, after they had left, I noticed a tennis-ball-can sized container of pepper spray had been left behind. At this time (about 20 years ago) the police and security agencies were not yet in full Gestapo mode, so it was a bit of a surprise. Or at least how big the can was was.
Called up their HQ and asked them "Do you guys use pepper spray?"
A mixture of stammering and silence followed.
After a while I said "Well, you guys left your pepper spray behind at [our location]"
They were unusually prompt in their arrival a few minutes later.
I come here for the love
More power to him. "Because you like cars" should be a necessary prerequisite to working in the auto industry. Otherwise, we get shitty cars.
say that the system for loaning students money is completely screwed up. There is no discrimination with regard to course of study- loans are made to study medicine and underwater basket weaving and everything in between. That's just stupid policy. Loans should be made and interest should be charged based on the risk of the loan going into default. People who want to study the most workplace demanded fields should get the most money at the lowest interest rates and those who want to study fields that have low demand should either not get funded or should pay a much higher interest rate.
I know, I know, the world needs art historians and paleontologists, but the world doesn't need 50,000 art historians/paleontologists every year. The world can only support a few of each. Such fields of study should be reserved for those who can afford to fund the study themselves, or a lottery should determine who gets student loans for those fields in proportion with the number that can be supported by the economy.
If the feds aren't going to discriminate in lending based on field of study they have no business preventing people from escaping the debt through bankruptcy.
I do have a problem with a lot of the for-profit schools this measure is attacking, but for different reasons. Because it is way overpriced vocational training, not an education.
As expected, the attacking the "college is stupid, why would anybody get a degree in {liberal arts field}, because you can't get a job with it" line thought was well represented. Congratulations, you'd just brought into the mindset that the economic and power elite wants; that nothing is valuable without dollar signs attached to it.
Yes, think that higher education isn't a public good (hint, that why there are state schools, and they were subsidized for a long time with tax dollars), but instead treat it as job training that employees, not employers have to pay for. Reduce and eliminate anything that require critical thinking or actual unique thought, because that's a luxury for the rich. I mean, we can't have tax dollars and contributions going to a bunch of intellectuals that aren't smart enough to teach at a "real university". That's a waste.
And forget college preparation in high school, because who needs to be able to write a original essay or be critical of, well, anything. Just funnel everybody in a public school into a job. If you aren't wealthy, you don't deserve to have ideas, you just deserve to work mindlessly. No pursuing higher ideas for you. I mean, those classes were so annoying. Having to process new ideas, having to study things that don't interest you, having to do things you don't like or want to do? What's the point in that? Being exposed to diversity? Pfft.
This story doesn't end well. Usually, it's violent and a lot of people die. If you are lucky, it's more peaceful, but still really bad for business. But, the reduction in real tax rates for the truly wealthy can't be stopped. Increasing taxes to restore revenues to schools and education? Insisting that corporations and those that profit from them have to contribute a better society? That's insane big government talk.
Hell, just send them to a code boot camp. Those are great jobs. If want to learn stuff, just go on the internet, because, all that stuff on the internet that is useful just came out of nowhere, right? The fact that PhDs are on food stamps and can't find jobs is a canary screeching in a coal mine. Damn straight college administration needs to answer for this, but we all have to answer; we need to value real education in this country.
Who chooses? A lot of students choose courses based on what academics advisers recommend?
"Oh, you're good at art but terrible in English and with computers. It sounds like you might want to take X, Y, and Z"
Hell, my wife was looking at applying for a position at the local Uni. When she talked to an advisor, they said the recommended requirements for the position was... "a degree." Not a degree in business, tourism, or IT, but "a degree". When she mentioned she already HAD "a degree" but was looking at changing fields, they suggested some other courses etc that might be helpful.
Part of the problem is there is an industry built around pushing people into a system that's high cost and low reward. Many of them aren't sure exactly what they want to do, and are taking the advice of so-called "professionals" which are close ties to the for-profit education system.
That's the kicker. My roommate never got into the auto industry. He's still working in warehouses and still paying off his $25,000 school loans.
But not everyone is convinced the rules go far enough. "The rule is far too weak to address the grave misconduct of predatory for-profit colleges," writes David Halperin.
Says the man who works at a public college teaching English, women’s studies, comparative literature, and classical studies - fields noted for the career prospects of their graduates.
David Halperin
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
"The rule is far too weak to address the grave misconduct of predatory for-profit colleges,"
But the true purpose is to make it *look* like government is attempting to respond to predatory lending. The actual outcome will be approximately the same as the efforts to curb predatory lending after the subprime mortgage crisis.
This should be applied to every degree program in the United States.
Get your free Dropbox account with 2 GB Free storage!
you're saying the arts have no value? Thats complete and utter bullshit.
as is the notion that an arts degree will not yeild a return.
further, the purpose of education is to be educated, not to get a job.
an educated populace is good for the nation. but people who only learn in order to work are little more than drones, which may be good for a business that wants wage slaves, but not so good for a free society with a government by, of, and for the people.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
If it isn't job training then it's a hobby. There's nothing wrong with that but the federal government shouldn't be involved with helping people pay for it.
Do note that this new requirement will only affect non-degree programs at public and non-profit schools, as well as all programs at for-profit schools. I don't think that's a bad idea. It prevents "Joe Bob's school of Hi-Tek" from offering a "certificate" that is completely worthless for $50k, while it doesn't touch any legitimate liberal arts degrees.
Econ 101: If you increase demand for something, price goes up. When people got access to "free money", more demand happens for 2ndary education, so the price just inflates to match it.
Peddling debt to minors is illegal, as should catching them right into their first steps of adulthood. It should be illegal to allow kids to go into debt until they're at least 21, maybe 23.
God spoke to me
Why is it ok for corporations to offload all of their externalities and risks on to us citizens and then they get to pocket all of the profits yet when students do it, it's the evil and must be fixed? Also, you want to emulate the H1B visa model for all students, at least that's how it sounds to me. Everyone here on /. knows exactly how well that works out when one is enslaved to their company. I don't like this plan at all.
Only for-profits, huh? So this is really more about politics than education.
I, for one, should choose. I am paying for it after all. That was one of the most hated things about going to college. I was there for engineering. I'm sorry, contrary to what many of you will tell me, I do not need nor want art, humanities, physical education, foreign languages, and all the other courses that couldn't stand on their own without forced attendance. I wanted to build robots so I didn't give two fucks about Chaucer, sorry.
Yes, next fucking question, you heartless bastard.
Misdiagnosed my ass. You obviously weren't smart enough to know you needed a HS diploma. I mean your parents probably told you you did, and I'm sure your elementary school did, and obviously all of these schmucks who you saw graduating were just damned idiots. Nope, you're a special snowflake and the rules don't apply to you. You don't need no stinkin badges!
I don't understand why people don't do a little research into the job prospects for their major.
Hi - do you remember being 18 years old? Probably not the best vantage point to amass 5/6 figure debt.
No loan program can require more then 8% of income for repayment? Simple, each lender has their own loan program! Ten loans? 80%!
Businesses will need millions of newly-trained, skilled laborers every year; they can't have them if nobody is able to afford college on their own. This causes businesses to hire them from other businesses, and then lose them to other businesses, as salaries run through the roof: $250,000 Web designers, accountants, and programmers.
No, the actual result would be any company which has the option to flee this country would leave within a generation. And businesses which can't move will see their customer base erode as the multinational companies have all moved overseas. And not just move their profits overseas, their employees would be overseas as well. No one is going to pay US-based web designers, accountants, and programmers $250k per year when they have other options in countries that find value in training their workforce. We already face problems with off-shoring when the above professions only make around $80k.
In the above scenario, a business would gain an enormous competitive advantage by hiring entrants, engaging them in on-the-job training, and educating them via funding their college and trade school.
No, they would go out of business while their competition found a crop of well trained entry level employees in Germany, Japan, China, Sweden, Korea, etc.
Every country on this planet is currently in a Jobs War with each other. The countries which provide the best educated workforce and best living conditions are going to win that war.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
We need to rethink the way college is funded and paid for generally. Ballooning student debt is only one symptom of the broader problem, colleges have every incentive to maximize the number of students (tuition) enrolled each year, regardless if that is in the best interest of the student. After all, they get your tuition whether you eventually graduate or not. Colleges, as an institution, don't care if you aren't prepared academically, or if the skills you recieve are a good value for the money you are paying. They get all your money once you enroll, there is much less incentive for them to care about you from that point forward, as long as they can keep you enrolled.
Why not have have colleges offer students an education, in exchange for a manageable percentage of their future income. This way students with degrees that aren't very remunerative won't graduate with unmanagable financial burdens. You could require that students who don't graduate pay a percentage not to exceed 1/4 (or some other greatly reduced but still significant amount) of those that graduate. Colleges would have an incentive not to enroll students that are unprepared for the level of instruction, and an incentive to make sure the students they DO enroll graduate once they are in the program.
Colleges would still be able to compete on "pricing" by charing differnt percentages, offering different degrees, and targeting students with varying levels of academic skill and preparation. A college could even vary the pricing percentage from degree to degree. Instead of a college not offering Midevil feminist literature, they might elect to make it available but charge a greater percentage. Or they might just eat some of the cost if the program is prestigious but not a direct money maker. This would both allow a college to recoup their costs, dispite the fact that on average, feminist literature isn't a high earning degree, as well as signal to incoming students that the degree is not a great value, at least from a financial standpoint.
Actually, no one told me that I needed a high school diploma. I was misdiagnosed as mentally retarded, so I was expected to be an idiot for the rest of my life. I graduated from the eighth grade, skipped high school, got my A.A. degree in general education in 1994, and got my A.S. degree in computer programming in 2007, where I made the president's list for maintaining a 4.0 GPA in my major. If the public schools taught me anything, it's not to listen to idiots calling me an idiot.
What's a $useless_degree? Does it include history or literature? I thought those degrees prepared someone for a job either A. as a writer or consultant for film or video game scripts or B. in business management.
Except the part where the requirements apply to public colleges, including community colleges.
Why do you guys even try to pretend like you're attached to reality in any way. Hanging just by a thread isn't any better than full retard.
You can't prove someone will make it as an NFL or NBA player and they typically have a gigantic student loan if they weren't one of the lucky ones to get a full ride on an athletic scholarship.
This is a 2-line patch on a bloated piece of software consisting of millions of lines of code, that uses hard-coded, recycled components using none of the standards software development techniques, that doesn't use API's, has no version control and is beta-tested on users before the finished product is delivered that causes the user to acknowledge a security deficit that can't be fixed by the user that was glued together by programmers who don't work for the same organization and have no network to help collaborate or organize their work.
Society use your Sciences
It seems that most are missing the point here. It's not just student loans, it's GI Bill money & other grants going to waste on bullshit colleges/trade schools. The potential student is sucked in by the intense marketing (ITT Tech & be a GAME DESIGNER!!) & goes to see the sales person...(counselor) & they hard sell them on some useless program & set up all the financing for them. Just sign here...!!!! RTFA
Quite often jobs listings actually specify bachelors degree from an accredited college. Phoenix University degrees SUCK! A waste of all our money, not just student loans.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
"requirements apply to public colleges"
Not "non-profit" ones.
You have to know what you're good at and your chances of making lots of money with your skills. Using myself as an example: I have no skills that "count" in "the new economy" - I'm good at writing, speaking, cooking, and making music, but not enough of a child prodigy in any of those areas (nor a head for business) to launch a career right out of high school. Consequently, I declined all student loan offers and decided I wouldn't get higher ed unless I could do it without going into debt. After a few years of minimum-wage/unemployment struggle, I got a job at a university, where my benefits package includes taking up to 6 credit hours per semester at the whopping cost of $25 per credit hour. So I won't get my degree until I'm in my late 30s. No big deal. By the time I have my degree, I will have 15 years' experience in my field, plus all of the "cross-training" I've acquired in my job. So even if you don't have a loan, or you get a degree in "something that doesn't count," you can still have a career. The trick is to find your way around the system of loan and debt. You have to know what you're good at, know what your prospects are, and find a path to walk.
There was no reference to "communism". Why the fuck did you use quotes? Fucking liars...
Why limit these rules to "for profit" schools or training?
The last time they tried to change the rules based on debt to income after graduation they almost eliminated loans to medical students.
I suppose once loans start having limits school costs will come down.
Dr. OGUN I love to be on your testimonial page to spread my happiness. Your hard work and effort is greatly appreciated especially from me. My girl-friend is back home. We are back together. I'm picking her up from the station today. I haven't saw her in 6 years. I wasted so much time with other spell casters and should have stuck with you originally. You are a truly gifted spell caster and I just wanted to take the time to show how you and tell the world how grateful I am"thanks to Dr. OGUN, contact him if need his help. ogunriverstemple@gmail.com