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With Financial Aid Declining, Many College Students Don't Have Enough Money To Eat, Studies Show, Even Though About 40 Percent Are Also Working (npr.org)
As students enter college this fall, many will hunger for more than knowledge. Up to half of college students in recent published studies say they either are not getting enough to eat or are worried about it. From a report: This food insecurity is most prevalent at community colleges, but it's common at public and private four-year schools as well. Student activists and advocates in the education community have drawn attention to the problem in recent years, and the food pantries that have sprung up at hundreds of schools are perhaps the most visible sign. Some schools nationally also have instituted the Swipe Out Hunger program, which allows students to donate their unused meal plan vouchers, or "swipes," to other students to use at campus dining halls or food pantries.
That's a start, say analysts studying the problem of campus hunger, but more systemwide solutions are needed. "If I'm sending my kid to college, I want more than a food pantry," says Sara Goldrick-Rab, a professor of higher education policy and sociology at Temple University in Philadelphia, and founder of the Hope Center for College, Community and Justice. [...] According to a survey of UC Berkeley students, 38 percent of undergraduates and 23 percent of graduate students deal with food insecurity at some point during the academic year, Ruben Canedo, a university employee who chairs the campus's basic needs committee, says.
That's a start, say analysts studying the problem of campus hunger, but more systemwide solutions are needed. "If I'm sending my kid to college, I want more than a food pantry," says Sara Goldrick-Rab, a professor of higher education policy and sociology at Temple University in Philadelphia, and founder of the Hope Center for College, Community and Justice. [...] According to a survey of UC Berkeley students, 38 percent of undergraduates and 23 percent of graduate students deal with food insecurity at some point during the academic year, Ruben Canedo, a university employee who chairs the campus's basic needs committee, says.
How many college kids lived off of ramen noodles -- especially in tech -- and went on to do amazing things?
It is an open secret that colleges are abusing the good will of the government and the students.
College professors are paid no better or worse than they were in the 1950s.
Tuition adjusted for inflation, the cost of tuition is well over ten times what it was then.
So, if the professors are not being paid more, the students are not using 10 times as many professors... where is the money going?
Well, I'm not going to get into that because everyone has short attention spans. It doesn't matter. The point is that the costs can come down dramatically if you squeeze the universities. A lot of administrators and non-essential spending can be cut without impacting the quality of education for the students.
We can see this in other countries that didn't permit this to happen by writing blank checks to the universities. Education pretty much anywhere but the US is dramatically cheaper without being any worse for quality.
The solution is not to increase financial aid. In fact, that is a large part of what caused this to get out of control in the first place. The Feds really need to stop throwing around money. It fucked up the housing market, it fucked up US health care which has gone through the same radical inflation in cost, and it has fucked up college education.
It is a financial feed back loop. Write the colleges a blank check and they'll just get a little bolder every year seeing how far they can push it. You can either put your foot down and do some solid accounting or let it bankrupt you. It is a feed back loop. It doesn't matter how much money you have. Eventually, it will beggar anything as it increases infinitely.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
this is a false narrative used to justify cutting funding. It's a straw man.
The loans were the result of out of control tuition increases. Those increases started when federal funding was slashed. That started with Reagan, continued with Clinton and didn't get any better under Obama.
We were _heavily_ subsidizing colleges to keep tuition low because mega corporations needed trained American workers. Outsourcing and H1-Bs eliminated that need and when that happened they cut funding. We could have stood up to them and kept taxing them to pay for schools but we didn't.
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Plumbers make well over $60k and nothing about it is capped. Welders make 6 figures. Crane operators with a few years experience can make over $200k. There is a shortage of all of those and companies are willing to put people in apprenticeship positions immediately to train workers.
But you have to get your hands dirty, and that's a non-starter for many young people who have been programmed that such work is for the lesser people.
maybe it will solve the obesity issue
You joke, but maybe it will help pop the tuition bubble. State school tuition is something like 30x what it was when I was young - it's insane. The more money the government threw at the problem, the more universities raised tuition to vacuum up all that financial aid plus all the money they can from their students' families.
Like all bubbles popping, it's going to suck for a while. But university tuitions need to revert to something affordable when working part time, and that will never happen as long as the government funnels money though (some) students to the universities.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Because of the stupidity in the first sentence. It's a very common right-wing talking point that all the people with college degrees, who can't find jobs that use those degrees, were in "dumb" majors.
It's a lovely-sounding talking point that lays the blame on the recent graduate so that you don't have to do anything to fix it. Problem is it's completely false.
For example, STEM degrees are something that poster would generally consider "something society needs". The US graduates 1.5 STEM students for every 1 entry-level STEM job opening.
given the productivity raises we've continually had in America. Productivity has doubled in 40 years yet real wages are down 14%. It used to be that as productivity went up pay and standards of living did. Americans should be making _more_ not less, but inflation takes 3-4% right off the bat. It's not surprising that educators would know enough to see this and demand a 3-4% raise to keep pace with inflation.
What _is_ surprising is that labor has gotten so weak that it can no longer demand that as the pie gets bigger they get a share of it. Hell, there was just a new story about how the 1% have finally have as much of the pie as they did right before the Great Depression. That's not a coincidence. We're heading for something nasty if we don't turn back...
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If you cannot get a job in it afterwards, it doesnt matter how hard the degree was, or how smart you have to be to pass. It was a dumb degree to get, so it is a "dumb" degree.
If there are no job openings in brain surgeon, well going to school to be one is pretty dumb.
If there are no job openings for rocket scientist, well going to school to be one is pretty dumb.
If there are a ton of job openings in plumber, electrician, or mechanic then getting the traing to be one makes your education choices smarter then the other two by a long shot.