There are multiple problems with college costs. Government lending might worsen things some in some ways but its absolutely not ‘the’ singular problem.
Also I wonder how much of the debt and losses for student loans was from those predatory for profit universities? None of them should have ever been eligible for any student loan or any other government funding. Yet big companies made an industry out of getting students into student loan debt.
Don’t public universities offer this same type of help to students? I think at least some of them do.
So true! It’s mind boggling how these institutions have settled lawsuits on several occasions and yet they still qualify for this indirect government funding.
Eh, I will beg to differ.
Private universities were very popular with my graduating class, although that was back in 2002. That’s because I was born and raised in New York State, which has the SUNY system as the in-state public university option. SUNY (including the big four, Albany/Binghamton/Buffalo/Stony Brook) is simply not competitive in many majors with surrounding private schools. I work in high tech and I can say that my employer does not bother with on-campus recruiting at any of these schools because their academic reputation isn’t stellar. SUNY has a hard time recruiting those looking for rigorous academics.
Side note: Cornell is actually a public/private hybrid, and is New York’s land grant university. However, only four schools are public - Human Ecology, Agriculture, Industrial/Labor Relations, and the vet school. If your major is in one of those schools, you pay public tuition, if not, you pay full-freight private tuition.
When you start looking at out of state public options with better academic reputations, like Michigan, Georgia Tech, UW-Madison, UT-Austin, UCLA, University of Washington, etc… out of state tuition is on-par with that of private universities.
I think a lot of folks that live in states with marginal public universities are often forced to explore private options. I was one of them, and I’m as cheap as they come.
True. Looked at that university in Ann Arbor and it was actually more expensive than many other private schools. Columbia ended up being cheaper than that university after merit scholarship.
So the problem there is really that SUNY is marginal. Its not that SUNY is unaffordeable.
IF people in NY are saying ‘college isn’t affordable’ based on your reasoning then what they should really be saying is ‘SUNY isn’t good enough for me’.
Its a different problem with a different solution. And I think NY is in a small minority of states that have that problem (at least that bad).
I do see your point though as it applies to that situation. And different states all have different public schools of varying quality. I don’t know if I’d want to got to U. Wyoming or ND State any more than SUNY.
Also the 50 states have different funding and costs for their public colleges. So even the affordability of public universities varies a lot. RI, VT, others have pretty pricey in state public tuition rates.
From Biden’s Twitter account:
In the 21st century, twelve years of school isn’t enough. That’s why under the Biden-Harris plan, community college will be free — and public colleges and universities will be tuition-free for families earning less than $125,000 a year.
agree with community college,trade schools etc. being free. We have a shortage of trades. 4 yr colleges have too many BS degrees though (i don’t mean B.science 
)
It’s funny how Cornell is a public/private hybrid, and land grant university. Meanwhile UPenn is a private Ivy. Wonder how Cornell deals with public major switching? Human Ecology could be a great premed degree too. Wonder what the out of state spread is?
I liked the proposal that colleges should underwrite the loans to their students. It’s not like Ivy Leagues with their 10 figure endowments need anyone else’s money. Who else has all the information to judge both the student’s prospects (from their application) and the quality of their education and future degree/job prospects (from their alumni)? If their degrees are worth it, let them put their own capital on the line at market interest rates, or at the very least, take the equity tranche / first loss of say 20% if the loans are going to be partially backed by outside financing. This will definitely align incentives and stop people from getting a bunch of worthless degrees and then sticking the taxpayer with the bill. The fact is a lot of degrees these days aren’t worth anything, let alone 6 figure sums that they cost in inflated tuition, but the Feds don’t care in the way they give out loans these days.
Yes good for schools to have skin in the game, just like banks should with home loans etc.
My MBA director @ state school made over $200K for a part time gig so did a lot of profs.
That’s why I like the % of future income option too. At most 5% of income for 20 years and then it’s discharged if not paid. Add more skin for the universities by making them underwrite this and it’s pretty close to perfect. Less burden on all those students that drop out without a degree. And more incentive for schools to provide actual value.
This seems relevant (and cool):
The article links to the source study, but not to the website, and the link in the study is also wrong. Here’s the website: https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/CollegeMajorROI/.
From the study:
Though I suspect it may have had something to do with the oil boom… the kids getting that degree may not have ended up using it, they were just at the right place at the right time.
I’d maybe agree with 5% of income for 20 years, for those who did not get a degree. But once someone has their degree, they got exactly what they were paying for. I dont care if it proved to be a stupid decision, there’s no reason to give them a rebate on the cost of something they knew going in.
Time has pretty much aged me out of being relevant to this situation, but I’ll use myself as an illustration anyways. I got my 4-year degree. I had no student debt (and not because daddy paid the bills). All along, I based my choices, in part, on the price tag going in and the earning prospects going out. I chose what school to attend because they offered more scholarships (not because of the weather or campus social scene). I chose my major considering future earnings potential (not as a glorified hobby). I worked through school. I was conservative with my spending to avoid debt. Even after graduating, my decisions were based on paying my bills and making ends meet above anything else. Etc, etc, etc. So when we reward those who dug themselves a hole, what do I get for having done it right?
It’s not like we can erase someone’s education or “college experience” when we erase their school debt; they’ve still received what they were expecting to receive. For my years of sacrificing and calculating and strategizing and deferring gratification to ensure a solid financial foundation, I’ll be no further ahead. In fact, I’ll actually be poorer due to the “life experiences” I delayed (or passed on altogether) because I knew (or thought I knew) the piper would have to be paid eventually, and I didnt want to be stuck behind a mountain of debt.
For a small fraction of the resources they want to throw at bailing out student loan borrowers, we could instead focus on preventing people from digging that hole in the first place. I really dont like the idea of world where it’s accepted that you pile on as much debt as you can, knowing that if enough people do it then no one will be required to repay it…
An issue with the for-profit universities is that many of their graduates can’t get a job with their degree. In fact, the for-profit universities wouldn’t have a bad reputation should their degrees were an indication of knowledge and expertise similar to, say, the degrees of state universities.
It isn’t just about graduating or not; it’s about education quality. BTW, some of the for-profit offer degrees in IT/programming, MBA’s, … subjects we don’t associate with basket weaving.
If the student didn’t get what they paid for, then it should be on the school to resolve. Not the government/taxpayers responsibility to subsidize a do-over.
But to your comment, if a school’s ‘degree’ has such a bad reputation, it begs the question why the student chose to enroll there in the first place…
I fully agree. Right now, the taxpayers are subsidizing these schools.
I wonder why these universities continue to have thousands of new students each year. My guess is that some folks aren’t fully aware about reputations.
And that indicates that getting a degree is the end goal. Not the means to an end. Getting a degree is the entirety of the plan; those pesky details about how much it costs or the quality of the education or getting a job after graduation are not relevant considerations. That is the root of the whole problem.
how big of an issue is it specifically? up until covid, we had a historically low unemployment rate. give me some numbers to back up that claim.
I agree with the sentiment but what’s the recourse for students? Right now, there’s no accountability or oversight for universities to deliver a degree worth anything. They are just contracted to provide you with classes in exchange for your tuition. Whether that leads to a degree that’s marketable is something entirely the responsibility of the customer (student) to make sure of before they pay tuition.
There is a problem of due diligence obviously on the part of the students but it’s a fine line. Talking about comparable amounts of money, if you purchase a car, there are some anti-lemon laws and manufacturers do provide some guarantees. And in worst case, you can stop paying for it and get some debt relief or you have a tangible asset worth something. But for college education, there’s basically nothing to speak of except reputation, rankings, etc. That’s not very much considering you end up paying 3-4 times the price of a car.
While doing college searches this year, this was very apparent. There’s a lot of trash out there with 6-yr graduation rates in the 30s% and starting salaries in the 30k range for some majors. How are those allowed to continue promoting themselves as an investment is simply puzzling to me. At this low levels, you could put your money on red at Vegas and have better odds to get a return on investment. It’s puzzling to me how they’re even allowed to continue operating while effectively being a complete waste of money.