Looks Like People Still Care!!

[RSL]

We should be talking about skilled trades with the same level of respect as college professions too. 

Hi Joe, I'm 89 years old and I can remember a time -- actually when I was in high school -- that the trades were treated with respect. There were two tracks in high school: academic and trades. I'm not sure that's exactly what they were named, but you picked one of them. Both were equally respectable in the eyes of the mass of students, and as I remember, the society at large. That was in the forties. We've rolled a long way downhill in terms of education since then.

[Garnick]

Frankly, Kevin, I think that if his real concern was to relieve the unreasonable financial burden put on these kids by government interference with the market he'd have done this anonymously.

I could not agree more.  All, and I mean ALL CHARITY should be Anonymous!  FULL STOP!

[BernardLanguillier]

I feel really sorry for then kids in America who know they will need to borrow money amounting to tens to hundreds of thousands of US$ to get educated in a top college.

For what it's worth, the level of taxation in Europe isn't that much higher, but top education is nearly free for all the students having demonstrated the level of skills.

This isn't enforced in a fair way in all countries, France being on poor example, but it is in countries such as Belgian where I grew up.

It is pretty crazy to blame the current increase of tuition fees to limited gov loans when you have a hugely successful counter example in Europe where gov funded top education enables hundreds of thousands of kids coming from low income families to get access to education opening them the doors to a successful professional life...

The increase of the cost of education in the US is simply the result of people accepting to pay the crazy fees that they are trying to charge and of gov not acting to define clear rules limiting the cost of education. Period.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Robert Roaldi]

From what I've read, the single greatest increase in american university costs is in administration, which have gone up about 60% in the last generation. The number of students has gone up as well, but the number of professors hasn't, as the universities prefer to hire temporary sessional instructors who enjoy no long-term stability. The aim seems to be to privatize all university learning and turn schools into profit centres while minimizing costs. Sort of the way you run a hamburger stand or an Amazon warehouse. And the usual fellow travellers latch onto those ideas of course because their tribe requires it. This has the effect of making education more difficult to obtain and so tends to limit access to people whose parents have more money.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, countries try to make education easier to access in the belief that this will benefit those countries. So the rest of the world is turning out engineers and researchers in record numbers and more and more of the best research comes from those places, while the US imposes greater and greater debt on students. What is the long-term goal of this strategy?

The idea that costs go up because governments make loans easier to obtain or because government subsidies makes universities less efficient is laughable. Stop reading from your prayer books.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

The amount of a typical student loan is not much different than the price of a car. Yet no one ever complained about the need to take a car loan, nor we hear about national car loan crisis. In a few years, the car is gone, while education is going to keep providing benefits for the rest of one’s life.

[OmerV]

It's a great gesture, Kevin, but how about next year's graduating class? Is he going to do it again? Problem is, it doesn't solve the problem, probably makes it worse. You'll now have kids hoping somebody will pay off their debts as they buy a round for the whole establishment to the cheers of the group. What we need most desperately is less government subsidization of universities, which dependable surveys again and again show simply increases the costs to students as the universities raise their charges. It's a giant racket and it needs to come to a screeching halt.

You're right, Russ. It is unrealistic to expect the hundreds of thousands of student loans to be paid off by "angel" billionaires annually. But the guy is no idiot, so perhaps his intention was more to spotlight the problem in hopes of getting politicians, and the country to consider alternatives to the predatory loan system.

You mentioned universities, so then government subsidized charter schools are OK?

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

...the predatory loan system...

What makes it “predatory”?

[OmerV]

The amount of a typical student loan is not much different than the price of a car. Yet no one ever complained about the need to take a car loan, nor we hear about national car loan crisis. In a few years, the car is gone, while education is going to keep providing benefits for the rest of one’s life.

Predatory lending, whether for a car or education, is a serious problem. Correct me here, but wasn't the recession caused by the predatory housing loan industry? Or to put it another way, by venal loan entities.

Education should be accessible to anyone without onerous financial burdens.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... So the rest of the world is turning out engineers and researchers in record numbers ...

Who then come to the U.S. to work. A normal consequence of providing free education is the overproduction of graduates, outstripping the demand for their skills. In my generation, it wasn’t unusual to wait up to 8-12 years for the first job for doctors, engineers , etc.

Or they come to the U.S. universities, in spite of the cost. Some would even bribe their way in, to the tune of $6.5 million (a real-life example).

I wonder why, in both cases. With the U.S. being so “bad,” why is everyone risking life, limb, and wealth just to get in?

[32BT]

I agree with Slobodan, and the problem is not so much the loan for the education as it is the assessment whether the education is worth it. We pretty much expect young people, still searching themselves and their talents, to make a long term assessment that will influence the rest of their miserable lives. If we subsequently devalue education by spitting out too many average graduates for the sake of profitability and system thinking, it becomes a vicious circle.

I see it in our country as well. University graduates from some International Business type of specialty with a complete disinterest in world economics. I don't know how that's even possible. I once asked someone why they chose this education, and the answer, unsurprisingly perhaps, was that they think they can make good money. Next we get lawyers with a disinterest in ethics. Same thing, obviously on their way to politics...

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Predatory lending, whether for a car or education, is a serious problem. Correct me here, but wasn't the recession caused by the predatory housing loan industry? Or to put it another way, by venal loan entities.

Education should be accessible to anyone without onerous financial burdens.

You have not answered my question, what makes it predatory.

As for education, your stance is highly debatable. Good education is expensive and someone has to pay for it. We in the U.S. tend to believe that that someone is the one who is going to enjoy the benefits of it, not the taxpayers. When it goes directly out of your pocket, you tend to be more careful how you are going to spend it.

[OmerV]

What makes it “predatory”?

The loans are offered seemingly without proper oversight of the ability for proper or timely repayment. The young and poor, who can be desperate and poorly educated are usually the victims. 

[RSL]

Education should be accessible to anyone without onerous financial burdens.

And when I went to University of Michigan in 1949, it was.

[OmerV]

You have not answered my question, what makes it predatory.

As for education, your stance is highly debatable. Good education is expensive and someone has to pay for it. We in the U.S. tend to believe that that someone is the one who is going to enjoy the benefits of it, not the taxpayers. When it goes directly out of your pocket, you tend to be more careful how you are going to spend it.

The poor and undereducated are a huge burden to the country. We can ease that burden by making education more attainable. This is not socialism, just common sense. The truth, I suspect, is that very few people really believe in socialism, and most Americans are willing to pay for things. But for too many an education is akin to a Leica, and the option for a Canon is disappearing. 

[RSL]

You mentioned universities, so then government subsidized charter schools are OK?

I didn't say anything about charter schools, Omer. Let's back up. I think the government should keep its hands out of education. Period. I'm sure that idea will drive a couple of our posters crazy. But anything the government touches becomes a political toy. It's unavoidable.

[JoeKitchen]

I feel really sorry for then kids in America who know they will need to borrow money amounting to tens to hundreds of thousands of US$ to get educated in a top college.

For what it's worth, the level of taxation in Europe isn't that much higher, but top education is nearly free for all the students having demonstrated the level of skills.

This isn't enforced in a fair way in all countries, France being on poor example, but it is in countries such as Belgian where I grew up.

It is pretty crazy to blame the current increase of tuition fees to limited gov loans when you have a hugely successful counter example in Europe where gov funded top education enables hundreds of thousands of kids coming from low income families to get access to education opening them the doors to a successful professional life...

The increase of the cost of education in the US is simply the result of people accepting to pay the crazy fees that they are trying to charge and of gov not acting to define clear rules limiting the cost of education. Period.

Cheers,
Bernard

What is your yearly tax rate please?  Also, what is you VAT tax?

Last, I seem to remember reading that (I believe) Denmark is having a very hard time getting students to study important subjects like engineering, leading to a shortage of engineers.  The overwhelming consensus on the right and the left is that since kids no longer need to pay for an education, they don't look at it as an investment and therefore are opting to study the easier fields, which do not really contribute to society as much.  Now the solutions to this problem do differ, but everyone seems to agree on the cause, free education is causing kids to opt for less paying and less advancing fields of study. 

[JoeKitchen]

The poor and undereducated are a huge burden to the country. We can ease that burden by making education more attainable. This is not socialism, just common sense. The truth, I suspect, is that very few people really believe in socialism, and most Americans are willing to pay for things. But for too many an education is akin to a Leica, and the option for a Canon is disappearing. 

This is a ridiculous statement and assumes that all students will be going to the upper echelon of colleges in the country, or that they are the only choice. 

I just looked up the cost of tuition for a full time student at the Philadelphia Community College (not a bad school) and it is $4632 per year plus about $1500 for books and supplies.  If you don't think a diploma with this institution's name on it is any good, you could always go for two years and transfer somewhere else, still saving a lot of money. 

2nd, you don't necessarily need a college eduction to do well in this country.  Plumbers, electricians, mechanics, carpenters, machinists, etc, all do pretty well and many get on the job training. 

[amolitor]

The government of the USA had a bad reputation as a runner of things. It turns out that its actual record is pretty good. Not perfect. Quite often, though not always, the government offers a good product more efficiently than the private sector.

It has a few spectacular failures (the military) which have been parleyed into a myth of universal failure. Curiously, many of the players behind the myth making seem to be largely interested in taking money away from other endeavors to spend more on... the military.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

The poor and undereducated are a huge burden to the country...

Burden!? No, they are not. They are a normal part of every society.

[JoeKitchen]

The government of the USA had a bad reputation as a runner of things. It turns out that its actual record is pretty good. Not perfect. Quite often, though not always, the government offers a good product more efficiently than the private sector.

It has a few spectacular failures (the military) which have been parleyed into a myth of universal failure. Curiously, many of the players behind the myth making seem to be largely interested in taking money away from other endeavors to spend more on... the military.

The government has a horrible record of running things.  Aside form NASA, I can't think of any agency that really does a good job.  (And I should mention that for years NASA refused to put Wernher von Braun in a position of power purely out of politics even though he was clearly the most qualified.  This lead the USSR to beat us in nearly every single major accomplishment of space exploration.  And if it was not for Sergei Korolev dying unexpectedly, they very well could have beat us to the moon too.)