A few notes I’d like to point out, in no particular order:
First, even when I was a college student, I viewed my education as an investment. I had a football scholarship at one point (pre-blown out knee) and I didn’t really care what the college cost. When I had to pay for it, I then cared a lot. Was the expensive Boston college worth the debt I’d have to carry, or was the small, state school almost as good and not worth the cost. I chose wisely and went to the small state school. College is an investment like anything else. If the stock isn’t worth the price, don’t buy it. If the college isn’t worth the cost that you’ll pay, don’t go.
Those two college costs today? $10,000 for the year in one and $55,000 per year for the other. If you want to go to school in Boston and pay an extra $180,000 that’s your call. Just don’t complain about it later. There are less expensive options.
I had a bunch of college roommates. Some stayed, some went home. There’s close to a direct correlation between daddy paying for school and quitting on the one hand, and having skin in the game and finding a way to persevere.
Lastly, and this should be apparent. Last time I checked, we are running HUGE deficits and the national debt is skyrocketing. Social security can’t meet all of it’s current obligations in less than 20 years. Shouldn’t we be concerned about giving everyone another free ice cream cone, especially when we haven’t paid for all of the other goodies yet?
If only there were a way to pay for the deficit. Hmmm, let me ponder this some. I’m sure smarter people than me have figured this out and have made the proper steps in the past few years…hmmm, no, looks like we’ve gone in the opposite direction.
I’m still not convinced this is the huge problem people say it is.
Yes, I can read stats too. However talking to college recruiters and parents out there from what I can tell is most students go into a college experience with eyes wide open and they dont rack up $200,000 in debt unless a. they are incredibly naive and rack up $100,000 on getting an art degree or b. they are going into a career like medicine where they should* make the money to pay off those loans.
At my sons school for example, they are graduating about 400 kids and most of them are starting at a community college for the first 2 years.
A more realistic number is about $20,000 to $40,000 (its actually about $32,000) in loans and if a person can get into a job making $40,000 (for example inKansas a first year teacher makes about $42,000) AND they go hard in knocking out that loan, they can pay it off in 2-4 years or so. Granted, they might have to continue the pauper college student lifestyle during those 4 years (ex. live with parents, drive a clunker, eat ramen) but it can be done.
So instead of having “free college”, which will create more problems than it solves, we need to do more to help families save for college (ex. better tax incentives for 529 plans), encourage more people to create scholarships, and get colleges to hold the line on costs. For example, why is the University of Nebraska paying $328,000 for an ASSISTANT basketball coach?
*unfortunately many people in “fancy” careers like doctors, dentists, and some lawyers, when they get out of college, instead of living cheap and paying off their college loans, suffer from “doctor-itis” and go out and buy a house, a BMW and such so they incur even more debt and make it harder to pay off those loans.
Heh we can laugh all we want, but this debt is ours, close to $70,000 for every man woman and child in the US.
And crap on Trump all you want. But each President since Kennedy (and to Roosevelt depending on how you want to count it) had increased the debt, both liberal and conservative. So point fingers all you’d like but they are all guilty.
The only constant is the American people who won’t vote for someone who says they will cut programs and raise taxes.
Or we could make college free, and then tax revenues go up automatically because going to college is always a good investment for everyone and no matter what you major in. Why, I bet the Womyn’s Studies department will pay for itself in a few years! Not to mention the massive, unfilled demand for art teachers.
Or maybe Elizabeth Warren isn’t trying for the economics majors’ votes.
I’m alright, Jack. If it’s all the same to you I’ll take getting something in return for smaller deficits over getting nothing for larger deficits, thanks.
Yes, so again I ask the people pushing for free college, is it REALLY a problem?
As Shodan says, Warren is just pushing for the art and womens studies majors votes who cant figure out why a job at Starbucks wont pay off their $50,000 debt?
I pointed out that the average student loan is less than $40,000 so if they do keep the pauper student life by living at home, working an extra job, and never seeing the inside of a restaurant or bar (except to work at them), they can easily throw say a thousand dollars a month at the debt and be done with it in less than 4 years.
And most will done done much quicker. I dont think having to live with your parents for 2-4 years will be that big a deal in the long run.
Thats why I am careful to warn kids not to waste time on nonsense degrees and to seek out the best college scholarships and finance options AND to lower the debt by doing things like living cheap or going to a cheaper school.
Finally when they get out, I tell them knock out their loans right away by living at home, keeping their expenses low, working a second job, and throwing extra money at the loan and get it paid off quickly.
Well I’ve been expressing skepticism of the proposal, so I’m probably not the person to change your mind.
I think it’s a problem for some individuals. If you borrow money just to find out you can’t hack it, your being stuck in perpetual penury doesn’t strike me as all that good for society. But that obviously doesn’t describe everyone.
I think I’d like to see the Federal government subsidize the universities directly for tuition, but with certain performance requirements- a higher % have to graduate WITHOUT dropping admission standards, for example.
I’m not opposed to the idea of free or much cheaper tuition and fees, but I don’t think it’s any kind of inalienable natural right that everyone gets to go to college. I’d actually argue that we should approach this in a multi-pronged fashion, at least for public colleges and universities.
Incentivize schools to tighten admission requirements and number of people admitted to degree programs, so that we don’t have 65% of people not finishing, and being saddled with debt for that fractional college degree. Nor do we need people who can’t pay for their own philosophy degree at SW Podunk State. Part of this would be clearly articulating the overall cost and what you actually DO with various degrees. That’s something that was nearly non-existent when I was in college.
Subsidize schools directly for tuition in certain targeted degree programs- I don’t agree with the idea that we need to subsidize tuition for something as unproductive overall as getting a BA in philosophy from a second or third tier school. Ideally this would be taken care of as part of #1 though.
Pass legislation to require licensing in many of the trades- no more unlicensed, possibly illegal immigrant tradesmen. Everyone’s got to have some kind of training and basic license/certification to practice trades- even basic carpentry. Of course we’d grandfather in any existing people who are citizens or legal residents, and enforce the tar out of these regulations.
Subsidize trade school tuition and/or incentivize the states to adopt something more akin to the German system- non-college bound students would end up with the training and the basic license upon graduation. Maybe it would be like a “Apprentice construction worker” or something that would set them up to specialize from there.
That way, we aren’t using college as some sort of high school version 2, and we aren’t saddling people who aren’t going to finish with a lot of debt. And, we’re not throwing the people who might start, but not finish college to the wolves- hopefully they’d be directed into the skilled trade track, rather than encouraged to go to college, when they’re not actually likely to finish.
On #3. I disagree because many things like electrical and carpentry can be learned so if say I want to remodel a bedroom or run power to some new outlets, I should and can do it myself. Now I know in other countries with “free college” like Denmark they require what you say.
On #4. Free trade school is already part of the vo-tec system. I agree on more apprenticeship programs.
The point of #3 wasn’t to ensure a properly trained workforce or to cut out DIYers, but rather to cut out the sketchy, half-trained guys working on commercial construction sites.
For example, here in Texas, licensed tradesmen have a harder time finding work than you’d think, because so many new construction jobs are filled by unlicensed illegals. As many as half the total workers are illegal, and there aren’t any guarantees that the rest would be licensed or trained.
So if you offered vo-tech stuff with minimal certification, and REQUIRED it for commercial construction, you could cut all those illegals out of the equation and provide jobs for native workers.
I can go along with that. Years ago I was employed as an “electrician” but in reality we were all new to this and only our boss was a certified electrician who i guess was supposed to certify our work. But then we were WAY cheaper than real electricians.
This project (an apartment complex) was so built cheaply.
I think those are all valid points as well as people on this board who go against the plan. I especially like where someone wrote that this was a slap to the face for the people who chose a cheaper college or to live at home so as to have fewer loans down the road while it rewards those who took the most expensive options.