Is “fake your death” an option?
Well, free and universal exists too. It’s the case in France. The only condition being to have your High School diploma (but nowadays 80% of a generation does)
That said, French universities have their own problems. I could say that they’re underfunded and understaffed, but rather they’re overpopulated. At least at the beginning. There’s no real selection when you join, but it’s a “swim or sink” system. The abandon rate is extremely high by comparison with other countries. Half of the students having given up by the end of the first year isn’t uncommon (most of them eventually turning to shorter education tracks to become technician, accountant, whatever…).
Also, the most prestigious superior schools aren’t universities but “Grande Ecoles” (I think the existence of two parrallel education systems is quite unique). Those are the really prestigious superior education institutions, and they’re highly selective. With a couple exceptions, they’re not oriented towards academic subjects (say, history or particle physics) but rather train highly skilled technicians (engineers, high level civil servants…) so to a significant extent, they’re complementary to universities rather than directly in concurrence.
I thought of that too, but it makes your diploma rather useless. If you assume a new identity, the degree you paid for stays with the old one.
Well, you don’t tell everybody you’re dead - just the student loan people.
A friend of mine’s daughter is making the same choice. She knows what she wants, but she is about to be saddled with a ton of debt and really can’t see five years out when she has all that debt.
I LIKE small, private liberal arts colleges. Many of my friends went to Macalaster in St. Paul - many had grants (and some had trust funds, its one of the reasons that my posts here cross everything from ‘yeah, friend grew up on governement cheese’ to ‘yeah, friend has trust fund and doesn’t need to work’ - it is one of the cool things about these schools is how diverse the student population often is). And I think my daughter is the sort of kid that will benefit from that sort of education…so we’ve been saving like crazy since she was born (and her brother as well), to be in a position that if that is the best place for her, she has the opportunity without the debt.
But that sort of education is like driving a Mercedes S Class - most people will benefit from a car, you only drive an S class if you can afford it and value it. Otherwise, a Kia gets you to work and the grocery store.
I can’t see any good reason student loans should have been made exempt from discharge in bankruptcy. That was a sop to the banking industry. That measure should either be repealed or banks should be held to lower rates on student debt.
I wonder what rates would be like on a unsecured loan to someone with no assets or income borrowing an amount equal to four to ten years of their potential income. Massive moral hazard. Why would anyone every pay it back? Wouldn’t the bankruptcy lawyers have tables set up on the quad during May finals week for the seniors, just like the credit card issuers do during the first week in the fall for the freshmen?
Well, until 2005 only federal loans were subject to restrictions on discharge, and private lenders seem to have done okay nonetheless. Rates were higher, obviously.
I come from a system of free universal entry to universities and even almost universal bourses for support of the student. It is a disaster that wastes the state education resources that could have better results from the primary education. University is not a universal need and not a very good idea for all.
Banks don’t have to lend the money, y’know. And if the banks want to exempt student loans from discharge in bankruptcy, then they should accept the equitable trade-off of lower interest rates.
The bankruptcy exemption seems to be creating a bubble economy for colleges.
Banks are throwing money at students, even those attending colleges with piss-poor post-graduation employment rates.
With the free flow of loan money, colleges are jacking up their tuitions to ridiculous levels, and are going on wild spending sprees. College campuses are the only places you see construction cranes these days. Go to any city and you can find the college by looking for the cranes.
Seems wrong to me to finance this bubble by sinking college kids into hopeless debt. Bankruptcy-proof debt at that!
I know it has already been mentioned upthread, but since this is a public forum, here is the Post 9-11 GI Bill: http://www.gibill.va.gov/
They pay for school, give you a monthly living payment, and a yearly payment for books. It is a fantastic option for many people.
There is currently some debate about this. One issue - and one debate - is that schools that accept federal financial aid should have certain graduation statistics and accrediation - and maybe even (it was an NPR piece a while ago) placement statistics, in order to qualify for aid. So if you go to the $20k a year School for Music" to enter the “exciting rock and roll industry as a sound engineer or band manager or even a musician” that the school needs to be able to show that they graduate students into JOBS in order for students to get federal aid (including federal loans) to go.
Another is to allow them to be discharged in bankruptcy - they CAN be now, but it needs to be pretty significant hardship. I think a better idea is to let people discharge the INTEREST but not the principal (except in cases of hardship) fairly easily in a bankruptcy. That creates a disincentive to loan if you aren’t going to get paid back (who wants to get no return on their money?) and force lenders to actually complete a risk analysis on their loans, but it also creates a situation where you aren’t rewarded for graduating from college and declare bankruptcy to get out of your loans.
Get a two year degree in something that you’re interested in and possibly fits inot your desired four year degree. Get a good job and work while you get your four year degree. Say you want to be an engineer. Get a tech degree and work while you get your engineering degree. Who’s going to get hired at the best jobs first? You, with your 4 yr degree and your practical experience.
Trying to standardize the parameters and remove the risk isn’t going to work, no matter how hard you try. Education is an investment, and investments are always a gamble. There is no “safe bet” to an education, and there is no getting around that sometimes it takes a risky bet to win big.
I imagine that it takes a high school diploma to get into college, so the phrase uneducated seems kinda wrong.
Not sure about the states, but as far as I know only med school is a multi year course, all trade oriented vocational schools are measured in months, with the apprenticeship programs lasting several years at minimum.
So obviously from what you mentioned, there must be a third tier of schooling in basically a white collar oriented career path.
That’s a free market adjustment based on what they can get for their moneys worth, right now obviously its not a employee market, so I cant see any business settling for what might be seen as a lesser degree.
I don’t see higher ed as requiring reform, its doing what we ask of it. The paying for it, quite a different kettle of fish. This is not really directed at you, but for the purposes of putting it out there, what exactly do we the tax payer get for sending little johnny and jane to university (we have the same issue in Canada)?
So we have legacy debt that can be forgiven, its my opinion that we should put in place measures that will allow the debt to be forgiven, as its not doing us any good to have folks on the debit side of the ledger, when they should be putting that money they are paying , into the consumer side of the economy. The price for that, is that they should have to pay more in taxes, than someone who has not had to have debt forgiven.
Going forward for new folks going into the higher ed zone, student loans would only be meted out to means tested courses, based on that idea up thread that degrees to jobs ratio would be posted publically. I dont doubt that this would be weighted towards hard sciences, and humanities would take a huge hit, but we are heading that way now, so I concider it a moot point.
Declan
But taking a risky bet off of someone else’s money is the issue, not just taking a risky bet. And not all education is an investment as in “it is likely to provide financial returns.”. Nor is all education an investment in the betterment of society.
There is a difference between investing in doctors or investing in teachers, and investing in people getting their MFA, of their PhD in French Poetry.
Given that student loan debt generally cannot be discharged, I’m not really seeing a lot of risk being shouldered on the part of the lender. There are some costs to the lenders, but these remain pretty predictable and don’t really consittute “risk.”
Not every education will provide a financial return in terms of salary, but that isn’t the only way to measure investment. My graduate degree is probably going to break even financially- it will boost my income just enough to cover loan payments. But it will allow me to work in the field that I am passionate about, which I am sure will boost my productivity. If someone has the capacity to be a ground-breaking, brilliantly engaged, visionary French poetry expert, that probably contributes more to society than if they are a half-assed engineer who is just putting in the hours and making a minimal effort until retirement.
Incidentally, I know quite a few people who have leveraged their French major into great careers. Francophone Africa is a huge growth sector, and French isn’t all that popular as a second language. So if you can speak French and can do something useful in an office, you can pretty much walk into a job. Any sector that works in Africa is hungry for Francophones.
And that is the problem with trying to centrally manage university education trends. Our ability to predict what the economy will need in the next ten years, and our ability to predict what people’s career paths will look like, sucks. I graduated from my California high school in 1999, when tech recruiters were litereally grabbing everyone who could operate a mouse off the street. I knew a lot of people who chose tech majors despite not having any particular interest or talent for it, on the assumption that it was a safe career choice. When we graduated college in 2003, immediately after the crash, a lot of people were sorely disappointed.
I majored in an asotundingly “stupid” major- film production. When I entered the program, they changed the major’s name to “Film and Digital Media.” In 1999, a time when things like Facebook, digital cameras, and cell phones were just starting to hit the mainstream, “digital media” seemed as far-fetched as “underwater basket weaving.” It turns out that little sentence set the trajectory of my entire career, which has moved from teaching IT in Africa to designing databases to NGOs, to using technology to improve international development. Nobody could have seen that. Nobody would have ever advised me to do it. But if I had listened to them and did something sensible for a person from a poor family- maybe a two year associates degree as a nurisng assistant- would my life be better? Would the world be better off?
I went with #4.
Get a job and pay for school. I didn’t take any loans, but it took me 5 years to get my degree. I went to a state school so it was cheaper and I qualified for in-state fees.
This is what I did. And I was also already married when I was 19.
I also went to a much cheaper technical college and got an Associate Degree, and then transferred the credits to a different college. With the exception of a few grants that were only a couple hundred bucks, I paid the entire thing myself.
Yes, because of working it took 6 years to get a Bachelors. So what? By the time I graduated I had 6 years seniority on my job and I already had a house. Very few 24 year olds owned their own home at that time (mid 80’s) that I knew of.
We now live in such a credit entrenched, instant gratification society that kids want the entire college experience and don’t want to pay for it.
