I wouldn’t say that a high school diploma necessarily means college-ready. But I’m not sure that taking remedial classes in an expensive college setting is the solution for making someone college-ready.
Nitpick: Raises the question. Maybe you went to a public education institution? I did, which is why I don’t know “no” from “know”
I guess we’ll go down another hijack. I’ll assume you have a cite that public schools are significantly worse than private schools when it comes to English proficiency, and go with that for the sake of argument.
Public schools are required to take everyone who lives in a certain area, whereas private schools are not, so you’ll have some difference there. Then, private schools will have, on average, wealthier students, who can also afford tutors and other educational resources. Further, the parents of private school kids are, by definition, more involved with their kids’ education on average than public school parents, since they made the effort to research private schools, get the kids to take whatever tests necessary, enroll the students into the private school, and pay thousands or tens of thousands more per year for their kids’ educations. I don’t have a cite, but I have to believe parental involvement has a big effect on a student’s academic success.
So, rather than further punish students from poor households with two working parents by having them fall even further behind in college, I guess colleges have decided to level the playing field by making sure all of their students are at least proficient in the basics.
Make sense?
You are comparing the starting salary of the mechanical engineering majors with the average salary of the gender studies majors. Also comparing across two sites which appear to be using different methodologies.
According to the first site Mechanical Engineering majors average a salary of $111,636 a year, and Women Studies majors average a salary of $75,373 a year.
According to the second site Mechanical Engineering majors average a salary of $66,800 a year early career and $110,600 mid career, and Gender Studies majors average a salary of $42,300 a year early career, and $57,100 mid career.
It turns out people in useful majors make more, This means that they are better risks for loaning them money.
No. The default rate is what matters. While the default rate for LA is greater than for STEM, the difference is smaller than the difference in default rate between selective and less selective institutions. As we’ve been over already.
Also, it’s incorrect to exclude a major from the “useful” lable if employer’s are still willing to pay a premium for that diploma.
Bob Dylan had it all figured out years ago:
Twenty years of schoolin’
And they put you on the day shift
Look out kid
They keep it all hid
Subterranean Homesick Blues
What matters is whether or not they make more than someone without a degree at all.
Is gender studies useful, if it means that you make an average of 75k a year, rather than 30ish?
Just because you could have made more with a different degree doesn’t make it useless, not at all.
All that data about loan defaults should be easily quantifiable to come up with a formula for credit worthiness. It seems like banks could take into account things like major, course load, grades, extra curricular activities, and employment history to evaluate the risk in lending to each student. It would be similar to how credit history is used, where people with good credit can get more loans at a better rate than someone with bad credit. Students who are on a trajectory which indicates they will be able to pay back the loan would be able to get more money at a better rate since the banks would be more certain the loans would not be overly burdensome and they could get paid back
A complication here is that some of the larger risk factors are selectivity of the school, age of the borrower, family income, 2-year vs 4-year. So there’s a risk of making college less accessible for people that some of us would like it to be more accessible to. As creditworthiness isn’t necessarily binary; money just costs more or less depending on it.
And pushing somebody better suited for poetry into engineering may not actually improve repayment prospects. Not completing the degree program is strong associated with default.
I realize I’m being rather contrary about everything without offering any good alternative solutions. Sorry. I’m just trying to puzzle all this out.
Instead of having the govt guarantee the loan, why not have them issue the loan?
Repayments are then made out of federal income tax, interest rate is (for the sake of the argument) inflation +1.5%, interest is waived if your income is below a certain level, payments only start if your income is about a mandated floor.
Not bad, but only for not for profit institutions.
Given the difference in default rates, people who are going to a Harvard or equivalent should be able to get a loan easier than someone going to a Vassar or equivalent. If that means poor quality colleges have to shut down, that would be a good thing.
In terms of loaning huge amounts of money, people who aren’t going to college are worse risks, people who major in useless things are better risks, and people who major in useful things are the best risks. The amount they are charged to borrow money should reflect that.
Less selective doesn’t mean poor quality. You’re effectively equating the incoming students with the quality of the institution and the education it is providing. The end result is to make college more expensive and less accessible for students who can’t get into Harvard.
As has already been explained to you, employers are willing to pay a premium for people with these degrees. Thus your choice to then use the word “useless”
even after you’ve been shown why it’s incorrect does nothing to to further your argument and merely reveals your qualifications to even be participating in this thread.
Sure, it makes sense. About as much sense as asking kids to pay for private education that can’t afford it. Which is exactly what they are doing in college.
I agree with you that parental involvement is probably the PRIMARY driver to having good grades in school. What do you do with the kids that have parents that don’t give 2 shits?
Agreed. So then what? Junior College to get prepared what you already should have learned a year or two before , FOR FREE (granted it isn’t free to all but the costs are certainly hidden from the student)
Is this yet another branch of the hijack? I’m having problems keeping track. I was only addressing your claim that private school kids have better English proficiency on average than public school kids. I’m not asking kids who can’t afford private education to pay for it, so I have no idea where that came from.
If you can help me get back on track here, I’m happy to address whatever issue you had with my post. We are really getting off the subject of this thread, though.
What’s a “useless” degree? People have said that underwater basket weaving is a useless degree, but I’m having trouble finding that in any of my local universities’ programs.
If a degree gets you a job that you otherwise would not be able to get, then I don’t see it as useless at all.
Just because it is something that does not interest me in particular does not make it useless.
That’s really the solution, really, is to make community college free and have it offer 4 year programs.
The whole point of public education is to create a workforce that is prepared for the jobs that are available. If there is a demand for better educated workers, then it is on society to provide that workforce. In exchange, the companies and the owners who benefit from having an educated workforce can pay taxes towards it.
And, just as you can send your kid to a private school rather than public for any grades k-12, you should have the option of paying a premium to send your kid to a private school for post secondary education as well.
I didn’t claim that though, maybe someone else. You quoted my post and added all that other stuff.
I asked if public education was failing, and if so why?
Again, agreed BUT:
What is going to make the student NOW prepared to learn the stuff they should have learned a year or two before? The parental involvement didn’t change, did the student?