I get all that and there are some caveats (as towards motive and execution) but all in all I think its a nice gesture. I have benefited from some grants (and in the end this is a type of grant) of sorts and while arguments can be made for and against them I believe they do help and improve the colleges and universities while also helping chunks of students at the same time.
Have you ever benefited from a grant after the fact? And the only thing you did different from your friend that didn’t get the grant, was to make a foolish economic decision. So your friend that did the exact same thing you did, but more responsibly, didn’t get the grant.
This is important. For colleges like Morehouse, the tuition seems daunting given the target student pool, but a lot of students receive a lot of student aid. There’s enough well-off parents who like sending their kids to such places to partly offset this. E.g., Ennis Cosby is a graduate and his dad Bill could afford to foot the whole bill.
Note that by setting a high official tuition amount, this can increase the amount of grant money and such a school gets that are on a per student basis. But you have to be careful about it.
So a kid out of high school is only on the hook for $11k for his first year? Easy peasy. And then I assume somewhere between 11k and 27k for the next couple. When you were working fresh out of high school, do you remember having that much left in your bank account at the end of the year?
And this is not problematic how?
Taking out loans does not necessarily mean one is less responsible. Two of the engineers in my office graduated with 6-figure student debt. Both continue to live at home while throwing as much of their earnings as they can against the loans. I’d say that’s being responsible.
People make choices for reasons. We may disagree with what someone else chooses, and they my disagree with us. So what?
It is very problematic. The government should get out of the corporate subsidy business. It should let the free market dictate who the winners and losers are, not let lobbyist and political opportunist use the taxpayers money arbitrarily determine which industries or companies deserve hand outs and not others.
In comparing the two, person A who works while going to school, saving, etc. and paying their own way, vs. person B who just signs up for student loans to get through school quickly and finishes with 6 figure debt, I would say person A is more economically responsible.
Yet under Mr. Smith’s grant of paying off student loan debt, the less economically responsible person is being rewarded.
That is all.
Some people could not reasonably expect to ever “pay their own way” to a private college. Giving a break to people in economically challenging situations isn’t “rewarding irresponsibility.” It’s not a solution to the college debt problem, but to a few dozen (or more) graduates of Morehouse this year, this gesture could easily be life changing in a way that reverberates for several generations. Because they will not be shouldered with debt, they can save and invest and perhaps pay for their children’s education one day.
Someone being your version of “more economically responsible” is probably a lot more likely to flunk out or take forever to get their degree. You seem to be making more of a moral judgement than some cost/risk assessment
First, this is a false dichotomy. It’s not that students take out loans OR work their way through college. As iamthewalrus(:3= pointed out, student loans are typically part of a financial aid package that also includes working.
Second, it is not necessarily irresponsible, at all, to take out loans to enable you to avoid working, or avoid working as much as you otherwise would have had to, if that enables you to devote more time to your studies and increases the chance that you will graduate on time (or otherwise be academically successful). You’re much better off having debt and a degree than having debt and no degree.
This is simplistic. Without a college degree, it could take years to work and save the money to pay for school because, get this, college is expensive and the wages for people without a college degree are low. Most such jobs don’t pay a living wage so the average person working in a sub-living wage job can’t expect to ever save enough to pay out-of-pocket for a college degree. That is, you won’t make enough to save for a college degree unless you already have one.
Oh, but you suggest that the person should earn all that money while going to school. This is, for all practical purposes, nearly impossible. If the student worked a job at a pretty typical high-school graduate wage of $12 per hour, they would need to work more than full time to afford tuition and living expenses without borrowing. Every dollar you earn in college counts very heavily against financial aid determinations. When the student contribution increases due to the student’s higher earnings, the first money that falls out of the financial aid package are the grants, which get replaced by loans. To replace all those loans that you think the kids shouldn’t take, the student would need a more than full time job. It must also be a job with the flexibility to attend classes. Jobs with lots of overtime that schedule around classes aren’t easy to find. Working more also reduces students’ grades and increases dropout rates. If working more than full time deprives students of the ability to succeed in college, all the work and tuition have gone completely to waste. Is that your suggestion?
The most responsible thing to do might be to borrow all the money you need (but no more) to attend college. Then, when you graduate and get the college earnings premium, you can pay those loans back. This plan is not without any risk but it was, for many years, a viable path for strivers to solidify their position in the middle class. It’s harder now because, as noted above, college is just way more expensive than it used to be.
People who graduate from college today without debt are pretty privileged, one way or another. Some of them got massive academic scholarships but this is often a reflection of good education opportunities (read - privilege) when they were young. Some of them got athletic scholarships, which means they were privileged with a talent that is irrelevant to academic success and the privileged ability to explore that talent. Golf and tennis lessons, for example, are expensive. Overwhelmingly, kids who graduate without college debt had college paid for by their parents. They aren’t responsible - they are just members of the lucky sperm club.
A lot of parents leave it up to their kids to pay for college.
I think this reasonable when there are lots of options out there. I paid for school with mutiple scholarships–a couple which I didn’t even apply for. I also think this is reasonable when the parents can’t afford to cover the costs themselves. No one should bankrupt themselves to send a kid to college. I also think it is reasonable when the kid seems more interested in having fun than developing marketable skills.
I do think there is some value in encouraging a kid to take some financial ownership of their education.
But there are ways to do this without forcing them to take out loans. How about only paying for their tuition if they maintain at least a B average? How about covering their tuition and leaving living expenses up to them? How about taking out a loan on their behalf and have them pay you back the principle as soon as they land their first good job? There are lots of ways to teach responsibility that don’t cripple.
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Yes.
I made the foolish and irresponsible economic decision to be born to not-wealthy parents, and well after the fact received grants (and loans) to pay for college. Many of my friends who chose their parents more wisely and responsibly didn’t get the grants (or take out the loans) that I did to go to college. I feel ok about it. I bet they do too.
And some just happen to have parents who planned, and good grades, and a little luck. We had only one daughter and we were living in Florida when the Florida Prepaid College Plan came into being. From the time she was a toddler till she was in college, we paid $35 per month for her to be in the 4-year program, but without the dorm package.
In addition, she had the grades and the community service that qualified her for a full-ride Bright Futures scholarship. The prepaid plan and the scholarship covered her tuition, books, and fees with maybe a little left over. She worked in a restaurant for a while, then later at the local science museum to help pay her rent, groceries, gasoline, and other living expenses, and we subsidized some of that for her. She also had a small inheritance from my grandfather that he specified for education (less than $5K) and a few savings bonds from my grandmother - maybe $1200 total there.
So she graduated without debt (well, except for that misused credit card, but she did take care of it.) And that was doubly fortunate, because she became a teacher - had she taken out loans, she’d have been living in a refrigerator box under an overpass. I wouldn’t call her privileged, but she was lucky to have parents who planned, and also lucky she didn’t have any siblings.
Way back in '72 when I started college the first time, being the oldest of 5, the best my parents could do was allow me to live at home. I worked weekends and summers and banked all I could (I think I was making $2.25/hr) and even then, I had to take out a small loan my first semester. I ended up dropping out and joining the Navy, and I later went back to school using my GI Bill. I couldn’t have done it otherwise.
Privilege is a continuum.
Just being born in the US probably puts you ahead of about 80% of the world’s population. Having parents who have the time and ability and interest to set aside money for your education every year gets you to the high 90s percentile-wise, I bet.
My parents also helped me a lot. They made sure I did my homework and emphasized the importance of good grades. They paid tens of thousands of dollars for my college over 4 years. But since I also went to an expensive private school, that wasn’t nearly enough. Even with grants and scholarships and working during school (and working as close to full time as I could get every summer), I graduated with tens of thousands more in debt.
This was undoubtedly a good and responsible decision for me. I make a lot more now than I would have if I hadn’t gone to college. Could I have worked more hours while I was in college? Yes. But not enough more to graduate without loans. And it’s not obvious to me that spending that extra marginal hour working as opposed to socializing, studying, or sleeping would have been a net improvement.
I had a lot of advantages. The kids who graduated without debt had all my advantages and then some. If someone had come along and offered to pay off my loans when I graduated, I am skeptical that there would be anyone in my class with less debt than me because they worked harder. If they had less debt it was because they were richer to begin with.
FairyChatMom, your daughter is a example of nearly every source of privilege I mention in my post. But somehow, your implication is that your daughter did it all herself. Okay. you keep on believing that. I’m sure you’re proud of her but a little more self-reflection might be in order. I hope to see her at the next Lucky Sperm Club meeting. I’m a member too.
Comparisons to 1972 are inapt given how much more expensive college costs are now and how little wages for high school graduates have risen since then.
+1