Hmmm. Let's see if we can think this through:
1) Government ends subsidization of student loans.
2) Students have to pay more per loan.
3) Students have to think more seriously about taking out a loan.
4) Students take out fewer loans.
5) Colleges have more pressure on them financially.
6) Colleges are forced to make prices more attractive to students
since they can't count on government subsidies on loans.
7) College rates go down.
8) Useless college programs and administrative bloat gets cut.
9) Some students decide not to go to college.
10) These students go to work instead.
11) Work helps economy.
12) These students also not saddled with enormous amounts of debt from
bloated college costs.
13) Colleges don't have as much pressure to dumb-down degrees to the
point anybody can pass since everybody is expected to go to college.
14) Quality of education goes up.
15) Devaluation of college degrees from the fact everyone has them
stops and college degrees improve in value.
16) Government pulls back ever so slightly from an area of the economy
and allows natural market forces to sort things out (to a degree).
17) One less reason for the government to keep more of our money as taxpayers.
What's not to like here?
GET THE STORY.
Rubbish. Humanities do not fund their graduate students very much. It is almost impossible to get an advanced degree without college loans. Does this imply that humanities degrees are for the rich?
Science degrees are almost always paid for.
Now, the argument might be valid for undergraduate degrees, but for graduate degrees it is worthless and insulting and I say this as some who has been to graduate school in both the sciences and the arts and have extensive experience.
The Chicken
But Jimmy, but Jimmy! Education is the key to the future of our children, Jimmy! Our children! Think of the children! You don’t want to take the future from our children, do you? If support children and their futures, you must support centralized, bloated government bureaucracy. Because bureaucracy, as you know, is French for “it’s for the children.”
Speaking as an admittedly not disinterested low-income student, this is only a good idea if we’re sure that points 6-7 will offset the increased financial pressure on students who need loans, which is far from clear. You’re certainly on to something with points 9-15. However, point 8 is doubtful. Colleges aren’t always good at cutting in the right place, as I can tell you from unfortunate experience.
10) Students cannot find work and end up on welfare.
Well, for one thing it is making me concerned about my supposed entrance into the seminary this fall. If I understand things correctly, I am going to have to pay my student loan interest on my old college loans while I’m in there, all with no income for 6 years. I am hardly sure how I will be able to make it as it is!
This seems a bit rose-colored to me. It seems to assume that people react rationally, which we mostly don’t. Specifically, I have *serious* doubts about points 8, 10, 11, 13, and 14.
Revised point 8: College administrations make deep cuts in widely varying places, depending on the wisdom (or lack of it) of the administrators and the bureaucratic infighting skills of the various people getting funded. Since good teachers and successful bureaucrats are usually not the same people (different skill sets), these battles will go, more often than not, to the people who are already hired for being successful bureaucrats–that is, the folks who run the inessential support functions of the school.
Revised point 10: These students *try* to go to work, except that the economy already doesn’t have enough jobs for high-school graduates.
Revised point 11: Unemployment rises, along with all its attendant social ills. Wages for the working poor are held stagnant, at best, although the most wealthy benefit from lowered labor costs in the firms they own.
Revised point 13: Expectations are slow to adjust (as they often are), so the folks who didn’t go to college in point 9 are tagged more or less permanently as losers. Colleges experience increased, not decreased, pressure to dumb things down, since financial status and academic ability only correlate loosely and the colleges are desperate to get as many tuition dollars as possible.
Revised point 14: Quality of education changes unpredictably from institution to institution. Improvement is the exception, not the rule. See revised point 8.
New point 16a: Lots of schools close their doors. Some of them should, granted; others are performing a valuable service but are doomed by poor administrative decisions.
Granted, removing federal support for student loans would kill some of the less scrupulous of the for-profit schools. It would also remove some of the upward pressure on tuition that has increasingly made higher education follow more of an airline-like pricing model, where what any given student pays bears less and less relationship to the nominal sticker price of tuition at the school. But the fact that some of the consequences are good doesn’t mean that the whole idea’s a good one.
Peace,
–Peter
I think #11 is fundamentally flawed. How does “work” help the economy when there are fewer and fewer low-skill jobs to be had? Further, work is getting harder, more intellectual, not less. All the easy bridges have been built, so engineers have to learn more before they’re useful at making bridges. All the easy source code has been written. All the easy theories have been discovered, all the easy theorems proven. There’s way more knowledge to absorb in medicine/pharmacy and those degrees take longer to get. All the easy problems to solve in our society have already been solved.
Plus, robots are increasingly taken the low-skill jobs. #11 is a lynchpin and I think it’s erroneous.
Rubbish. Humanities do not fund their graduate students very much. It is almost impossible to get an advanced degree without college loans. Does this imply that humanities degrees are for the rich?
I got through a four-year undergraduate degree in the humanities with very little in loans, and my mother was hardly rich. Grants covered most of my costs. And then I was fully funded through my Ph.D coursework. Sadly I still racked up student loan debt based on some poor management on my part.
I agree that this is all *very* rose-colored but when I see this kind of argument I’m more troubled by the fact that the only considerations are of this free-market vs bureaucracy dichotomy. But surely the question of subsidizing higher education is more than just one of markets, isn’t it? What the government does in spending our tax dollars reflects what we, as a society, agree to value and support collectively. There’s nothing wrong in principle with subsidizing worthwhile things. Don’t we all still want churches and traditional marriage subsidized through tax breaks, for instance?
Not everything deserves to be treated just as a market. Some things are too valuable! And I’m glad that my tax dollars are used to subsidize higher education even if I think we need to improve the quality of that education. But I don’t trust the ‘free market’ to accomplish that goal on its own.
How necessary is higher education to living a good life?
Rubbish. Humanities do not fund their graduate students very much. It is almost impossible to get an advanced degree without college loans. Does this imply that humanities degrees are for the rich?
I hate to disagree with the chicken, but my wife and I both grew up poor. I got a Ph.d. and my wife got an M.D. without either of us taking out one red cent in loans (and while having two children) or receiving any help from family etc. It took hard work and scrimping and sacrifice, but it can be done.
My mother worked through college– BS with a minor in education– without student loans. (I have to exempt myself, my husband, my father and my brother, because we’re all military; my sister is “only” a certified masseuse and had some family help, and I’m not familiar with the finances of the other college folks.)
A bit amusing to see folks accusing the listed reasoning of “rose colored glasses” when the supposed justification– that the benefit to the tax payers is worth the cost– is at least as overly optimistic, and involves forcibly taking someone else’s money. When it comes down to two options, I generally prefer to respect peoples’ right to their labor and thus their property. Those folks who want to help the next generation with their college costs can do it on their own– giving them the chance for charity, and a much higher chance of supporting what they find important.
I wish I was as lucky with grants as many of the other commenters! While I entered college with some scholarships, over the years the aid I received has dropped to about 1/10th of my tuition costs. With no family for financial support and only a part time job that has to fit around classes/studying and organization meetings, it’s a struggle to get enough money just to pay for my car, food, and rent every month. While some money is saved up for the tuition the next semester, loans help pay for the rest.
World needs ditch diggers too, right Jimmy.
Of course Jimmy is at least comfortable and not applying to any universities…..
I receive $27,000 in grants and loans each school year. Actually my school does! The university I attend is one of the biggest industries in it’s particular state. It employs thousands and reaches to the entire community. I’ll be repaying well over half of it and working off a great deal of the remainder by teaching at “at need” schools. I’ll be giving back in a variety of ways.
The poorly presented premise which many of you missed is that universities are money pits and don’t make impacts to economies, don’t hire thousands of local workers and offer a great deal to communities.
If anything education need to be more vigorously supported financially speaking.
Especially with the misinformed losing touch and calling for deeper cuts.
BTW Jimmy how does being a Catholic apologist help the economy? If your going to state: “Work helps economy”
You first…get a real job and show us how it’s done!
And this is what chaps me Jimmy! You aint gonna budge from your ivory tower economy or no. So don’t call for the door to slam on others trying to get out of the wage slave cycle.
13) Colleges don’t have as much pressure to dumb-down degrees to the
point anybody can pass since everybody is expected to go to college.
This is current internet hogwash I’ve been reading elsewhere.
No one want to admit that perhaps education is BETTER due to internet advantages that put entire libraries and tools at ones finger tips. I can access the ENTIRE catalogue of THE major scientific journal in seconds. Even if the library has them in the stacks there is no way you can be .1% as efficient as I can now at home. Serious students are WAY more prepared than in the past.
Last scientific paper I wrote I read abstracts to over 100 papers and used ~25 as my sources. No way I could have approached that even 10 years ago. I’m not bragging but I probably have a much better handle on the subject than a similar student from 10-20 years ago writing the same paper.
There may be some easier prerequisites along the way but the idea that calculus and physics and chemistry have been dumbed down is a joke. My university has a high failure rate for these disciplines! Typical first day in those classes may be prefaced with the statement: “:Take good notes so you can pass the second time around”.
Talk about dumbed down….
“There are now better resources available, easier than ever before” does not address the point of dumbed-down degrees.
Neither does trying to re-characterize the argument as being about only calculus, physics and chemistry; it can be held as indirect support of the point, since defense of women’s studies or even English degrees is notably lacking.
Likewise, the entire response that focused on attacking Mr. Akin personally, rather than responding to his reasoning or facts is generally lacking.
Closing with an ad hominem just helps seal the irony in– how many college graduates of even 50 years ago would be unable to build a rational defense of their position, instead of laying logical fallacy on bad debate tactics with a few more fallacies for topping?
In Australia -taxpaying population 11 million – we have a system called Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) which enables students to attend university even though their parents can’t afford the tuition. The HECS loans are interest free. My children completed their university degrees under the HECS scheme and when their income hits a certain level an amount of money will be automatically addeded to the income tax they have to pay until their HECS debt is paid. Typically Australian students don’t go across the country to attend university and thus don’t have to pay for food and accommodation. My daughter is a clinical psychologist and my son has his Masters in Urban Planning and they are both very grateful to the HECS plan. In my day I obtained a teaching qualification and was paid to do so! My parents couldn’t afford for me to attend University and so I became a teacher. Because you were paid to attend Teachers College it was a way for the children of working class people to obtain a secure well paying job.
A bit amusing to see folks accusing the listed reasoning of “rose colored glasses” when the supposed justification– that the benefit to the tax payers is worth the cost– is at least as overly optimistic
I can’t speak for others trying to defend government subsidies for education but for my part this is not really the calculus at all. Perhaps the subsidies *do* pay for themselves. But that’s beside the main point which is that the question is more than a market question. It’s like asking if we still want to have a public parks department because it can;t be demonstrated that the expense of maintaining public parks contributes to the economy. It would be better to make parks privately owned and admission based. This is nonsense! Of course we want parks. And it’s right of us to pay our taxes to fund them.
We collectively (through taxation, yes) help to fund things we value like parks, churches, charities, and education.
What student loans do is allow the colleges to capture the marginal value of going to college.
Kinda defeats the purpose.
Rubbish. Humanities do not fund their graduate students very much. It is almost impossible to get an advanced degree without college loans. Does this imply that humanities degrees are for the rich?
Science degrees are almost always paid for.
Now, the argument might be valid for undergraduate degrees, but for graduate degrees it is worthless and insulting and I say this as some who has been to graduate school in both the sciences and the arts and have extensive experience.
The Chicken
Chicken: I appreciate your agreement that the argument may be valid for undergraduate degrees, which are the large majority of degrees.
I also know how little humanities grads get paid, because I was a humanities grad student. I was so poor that I vividly remember my wife and I picking coins out of the seat cushions trying to find enough to buy a pack of hot dogs and a generic can on lemonade concentrate so that we could have food for dinner. I also remember my parents’ horror when I offhandedly referred to cheese as “rich people’s food” in their presence.
The statement that it is difficult to obtain a graduate degree without a loan may well be true. However, the need of loans does not mean that the government should subsidize them. These are two separate issues. “Loans are needed to do X” and “The government should use taxpayer money to subsidize loans for X” are two different propositions, and there need to be arguments for the second proposition if one wants to show it to be true. Merely asserting the first proposition does not provide a fleshed out argument. (Also, the cost of advanced degrees would go down if the government ceased subsidizing loans, just as the cost of undergraduate degrees would.)
I don’t see how any of this line of reasoning is insulting.
It certainly is not my intent to insult, though if I have offered any offense I apologize.
Jimmy
Well I’m not an economist and only have suspicions of how banks operate. I do know I was unable to secure a private loan and federal aid the only option I had.
Of course I could have continued as a day laborer to Jimmy’s and others delight… contributing to the economy etc…
And yes that is insulting…since the economy has been hammered no fault of mine and I don’t come from a position of wealth in Jimmy’s world I get to flip burgers and save for college……. Lets see at the current “prevailing wage” with rent and living expenses it should be more than 10-20 years before I have enough…..
So far I am receiving excellent grades at the #1 university for my major in the US. As I said I will be in the position to pay back my loans in short order and contribute to a need. My family will prosper if I continue to work hard. There will be more money returned than borrowed. Gladly!
Perhaps my children won’t need assistance to attend college but if they do I won’t cry foul nor will I create a mind set that makes it harder for YOUR children or YOU to rise above.
Regards,
Warren
Warren,
Your anger seems badly misplaced. No one is suggesting that students be completely unable to obtain financial help, it’s just that the means through which they obtain help should be re-considered. It’s possible – no, it’s almost certainly true – that our system of federally subsidized loans is keeping tuition costs artificially high. Tuition increases at most private colleges far exceed the inflation rate.
And it’s also true that not everyone needs to go to college. It’s not about finances. But if people are better suited for technical fields and other pursuits, why do they need a liberal arts degree?
Finally, one of the great scams is the idea that you absolutely need to go to an elite university. I say this as someone who went to a top ten college, but state colleges are often just as good, and are a lot cheaper. Now for graduate school, especially law school, it’s definitely far easier to find employment having gone to a top tier school regardless of grades. But for undergrad, it’s not quite as imperative as people make it seem.
Sorry, not angry!
So far I seem to be the only one that is totally involved in the process. I just signed another promissory note a week ago and am well familiar with the process and costs…and benefits.
I have ventured into all phases in an attempt to fund my education and as said above was denied a private loan, as the vast majority are without a cosigner.
I think some key points are being left behind. What I take exception to are Jimmy’s ‘the economy needs ditch diggers’ (completly ignoring a university’s economic impact!) and fierfox ” involves forcibly taking someone else’s money.” as if eliminating subsidized loans would lessen his tax burden.
I can’t think of another area of federal funding that puts such fail safe airtight locks on the borrowing and assures pay back with interest; loan sharked by IRS.
Next time you take exception to federal spending try doing without. Stay off the freeway system and don’t purchase items that come via it. In other words impact yourself before you call for cuts of projects you don’t happen to use or need.
Warren
It’s like asking if we still want to have a public parks department because it can;t be demonstrated that the expense of maintaining public parks contributes to the economy. It would be better to make parks privately owned and admission based. This is nonsense! Of course we want parks. And it’s right of us to pay our taxes to fund them.
Except that this is a case of using tax money to for what amounts to private parks that charge admission, on the assumption that it shows we value parks.
We are talking about taking public money– money that belongs to other people– to apply to a private goal– the education of an individual– which may or may not be repaid, and may or may not offer public benefit, and which the person will privately profit from. (One should hope, either financially or as a person.)
You value education? Then collect like-minded people to make loans– or grants, or scholarships. Things should be handled at the most human level possible, rather than kicked up to the federal gov’t.
Warren-
1) I’m a woman, as the mention of my husband may have indicated,
2) my name is Foxfier,
3) you are the one that disrespects non-degree jobs by assuming they are “ditch digger” jobs,
4) you are ignoring the impact of the forced aspect of the spending,
5) again, you try to change the subject,
6) again, you mischaracterize what others are saying.
I admit I am a bit curious– do you deny that federally subsidized loans are money that belongs to other people, which they did not have any choice about lending to you?
I must say I do not find “being loan sharked by the IRS” to be some sort of benefit to the system– that just means even more tax dollars spent. I’d be delighted if the DoE didn’t do home raids anymore.
1) Politician 1 suggests ending government subsidization of student loans
2) Politician 2 accuses Politician 1 of supporting “the rich” and wanting the rest digging ditches
3) Politician 2 accuses Politician 1 of being “anti-education”
4) University personnel and students march and hold candlelight vigils in protest
5) Al Sharpton leads marches against “racist” cuts
6) National news media follow items 2-5 sympathetically
7) News media broadcast report after report on individual “sob stories”
8) Government subsidies ultimately increase.
9) President introduces one of the beneficiaries of said increases at his State of the Union standing next to Politician 2.
You value education? Then collect like-minded people to make loans– or grants, or scholarships. Things should be handled at the most human level possible, rather than kicked up to the federal gov’t.
Foxfier, you obviously have great faith in the market to provide for a just society. I wish I could share it. For my part I trust that a truly free market is just the freedom of the rich to get richer at the expense of the poor and middle class. Rockefeller was able to create his crushingly unjust monopoly precisely because that market was so very free.
But that’s not the argument I intended to have in the first place. You keep talking in terms of markets. I don’t even think it’s the right sphere for this discussion. As I’ve tried to articulate in my previous comments I consider how we handle education, even higher education, to be a debate that should take foremost on terms of justice, social idealism and such. I grant there are market forces that deserve consideration but they need to be relegated to secondary considerations.
You can feel free to have the last word if you want it. Best regards.
Foxfier…sorry for the gender confusion.
Subsidized education loans are but a small percentage of the over all federal budget. Your reasoning would make ANY tax a forced seizure of YOUR funds. And of course that is true.
So it seems you are chapped by the idea of taxes…right? Now if now it seems you would have “special projects” you would deem your hard earned money goes towards. I’m sure you have little concern wether I agree with them or not.
As for; 3) “you are the one that disrespects non-degree jobs by assuming they are “ditch digger” jobs,” My bet is you haven’t had to look for a job without a degree for a while. Ditch digging, cheap house painting and lugging mortar for a tile setter is all I could find this summer and all were under the table day labor. I made <$1500 this summer.... there just is not much out there right now for what ever reason. I feel there is a class system being promoted here by those who already have a better chance and am trying to bring a balanced REAL life situation to the discussion. Out, Warren
Jimmy, you did not insult me. What I found insulting was the idea that people in graduate school can magically find money to pay for classes. I tried that in my music grad program. I only took the courses I could pay for out of pocket, which meant about 2 courses per quarter. The end result: I almost got kicked out because I, “wasn’t making sufficient progress towards the degree,” as they put it. This, despite the fact that I won the college-wide graduate student research forum competition three times (I’m the only student to do – after I did, they changed the rules so that anyone who won could not re-apply), my research made the cover of Science News (and I was in a music department), I was one of five Alumi Research Grant winners, I was on NPR Science Friday, and the Discovery Channel wanted to do a special, but I was doing research out of nine different labs on campus, simultaneously, and they realized it would cost too much to follow me around.
Yet, I could not get any funding from my department. My dissertation (not a publication, but a dissertation) has been downloaded more than 500 times, but I had to pay for most of the research using student loans. It was scandalous, but without those loans, I would have been on the unemployment line (okay, I could have gotten a science job, but the point is made). Some good students just can’t work their way through college. Most students can’t.
Money is not the real issue. College has been oversold to high school students for ages. In the 1950’s, only exceptionally prepared people went to college and IR was considered a privilege. Then, the Baby Boom happened and colleges were flooded with students, who quickly turned a seller’s market into a buyer’s market, and colleges wre flooded with money in the 1960’s and early 1970’s. In the 1980’s, parents started treating college for their kids as an entitlement and demanding that the colleges bend to their will as if a college were a supermarket or a car dealership. When the baby boom ended, colleges became more desperate for money the “market” model morphed into a corporate model, which is where we are at, today.
Government funding of education did not create the education bubble. It was the demand by parents that little Susy not be told that she wasn’t college material that led to the massive borrowing. Yes, the government made money, but the demand had to be there and it was the over-inflated expectations of the ME generation that did it.
Cutting off funding is an excuse not to deal with bigger societal issues. If most women valued marriage and family, the college enrollment would drop considerably, but it was precisely the feminist movement that caused so many women to consider college instead of marriage and the result is that we are below population replacement level with regards to actual non-first generation citizens and we have far too many lawyers (no offense to lawyers).
There is no education bubble. There is a constriction in society towards the formation of extended families and the generation and preservation of culture. We see it in the faux Internet friends, the shallow hook-up culture, etc., wherein a large portion of kids hide out in college instead of living 3-dimensional lives. That the government encourages this does not mean that the government should stop funding higher education, but that the problem is that they are interfering at a much earlier level. The education bubble is not a bubble, it is a boil and boils indicate the presence of bacteria beneath the skin that needs to be treated. Simply put, government needs to get out of schools in first grade, not graduate school. Government funding in the k-12, at least today, is largely a program in indoctrination. In undergrad, a little less, and graduate schools are immune to this in large part, except insofar as they have to teach undergrads.
Governments should use taxpayers loans to subsidize higher education because that is a valid investment in the future of society. What they should not be doing is using the money to convince large numbers of people to go to college who shouldn’t be there. That happens much earlier that college. If only those people who went to college were the people who had a vocation to college, then far fewer people would be going and it would be seen that the money is well spent.
So, there is a problem, but the people who are making the most noise about the education bubble have badly misdiagnosed the problem. It is much farther downstream than college. If education control were returned to the local level and communities really valued that control by willingly paying for education, instead of being duped by lotteries, there would be fewer people in colleges, but a more productive, happier, and stable society.
I got a Ph.d. and my wife got an M.D. without either of us taking out one red cent in loans (and while having two children) or receiving any help from family etc. It took hard work and scrimping and sacrifice, but it can be done.
That is such an exception as to be insignificant, sorry, and I strongly doubt that you got the degrees at the same time or if you did, that you didn’t have some sort of fellowships, which, while not being tied to the government, are financial aid. You could never have done that while working, in addition to going to college, I guarantee, because medical schools will not let you. My sister-in-law is a doctor and a former professor in medical school and I have taught many pre-med/nursing science students. You just do not work a factory job and go to either medical school or nursing school. There is more to this story than you have stated.
I did not mean to start a firestorm. In fact, based on the students I see, I think that some students should not got to college, but the problem is not student loans and that is not where the solution lies. It is in the large number of starry-eyed teenagers who are told that they are nothing without that degree. If students were more realistic and knew both themselves better and appreciated hard work, they would find their own way – some to college, some to the home, some to doing other useful things.
No, many kids, today, are greedy long before they go to college. We can’t get enough people to go into the sciences because it is hard, pay is low, and they would be forced to really face their limitations. Student, even good potential science types, are flocking to useless business majors where the math savvy go on to become Wall Street math types who are ruining the economy by their impressive, but meaningless calculations.
No, cutting off funding of higher education will not end this and the rosy picture painted in the article is a lacking in understanding of the real problems in higher education as if it were written by someone who hasn’t really lived much of a hard life or suffered. Rear a child right, early, and he will go the right path. That is where we are failing. Not after he has left home.
Sorry, for going on so much. If you can’t tell, I am somewhat passionate about this issue,
The Chicken
Adam D-
Foxfier, you obviously have great faith in the market to provide for a just society.
No, I simply don’t share your faith in the greater ability of a distant power structures, supported by the force of law and managed by a sub-group of people to provide a just society; it is far too easy for power to be perverted, and it gets easier the further away it gets. The advantage of the market over the government is that one is voluntary, while the other is not; I am much more worried about injustice being enforced than about injustice being a possible choice.
I think people have to work to make a just society, and I believe that voluntary association, persuasion and living as examples are a much better route than using the federal government to reach goals that may or may not be just.
Where is the justice in forcing people to offer loans for the personal goals of another?
Warren-
You are still trying to shift the grounds– this is not about the relative size of education loans, nor about me being “chapped” about taxes, nor about your projected assumption that I have special projects I’d rather the money goes towards. Mr. Akin very clearly laid out a rational argument, and you still haven’t responded to it.
Please try to respond to the actual points?
My bet is you haven’t had to look for a job without a degree for a while.
Good thing you’re not a bookie; you’d lose that bet.
Your personal ability to find jobs (during a time of high unemployment) is not relevant to your claim that “ditch digger” is all those without degrees are fit to do. (That you were offered illegal employment might support Mr. Akin’s broader point about gov’t interference, but it is also a red herring.)
Since you’re obsessed with making things personal, here we go:
My husband has a job that didn’t require a degree. He’s a systems administrator. Worked up to the position from data entry and some basic computer repair. Paid his own way through part of college, ran out of money, decided that he needed to grow up and joined the military. Still hasn’t gone back to finish his degree, although it’s on his “eventually” list. He has several certifications from relatively short classes, most of which he paid for himself; a few were paid for by his employer. (Not counting the jobs he did in the military.)
I have a half-dozen certifications from on-the-job training, and was trained by my former employer as a calibration tech. (US Navy.) Several college classes for self-improvement, all paid for out of pocket. One of these days I hope to tap in to the college fund I paid into when I joined the Navy, at least enough to get my money back.
My sister, as I mentioned before, is a certified masseuse; our parents, who aren’t very well off, helped her pay her way so she only had to have one waitress job while taking classes. She can’t get a job in that field in this economy, so she’s working a floor worker in a discount store.
My mother a BS with a minor in education by never working less than two jobs and only taking an occasional $20 for pizza from her dad; she worked as a school bus driver in multiple states (any training was out of pocket), is a certified beef AI technician (out of pocket, although her ranch employer didn’t dock her salary for the week she spent at the school) and is a weed board certified rep. (If they “hire” you, they provide the training– about two day’s initial training, and annual additional training; not bad, since you’re only paid for meetings and mileage otherwise.) She is also a skilled welder, although I do not believe she is certified.
My father was drafted for Vietnam and got an AA after coming home, through the GI bill; no other certifications, has been a ranch worker or manager for half a century. This means he operates a wide range of machinery, does basic vet work, mechanics, does customer service, public relations, manages basic genetics for the herd and– yes– digs ditches at times, though these days he tends to use a backhoe.
My former brother in law piled up college loan debt, flunked out, and got a job working at a window and door manufacturer; they tested him in-house and qualified him to drive three of the four levels of heavy machinery that they use, as well as qualifying him for stock management.
My aunt went to college long enough to discover that she was really bad at college classes. She has been the record manager for a hospital for longer than I can say, and now manages a photography business for her husband. That uncle is a certified EMT– no student loans, although he was in Vietnam as some sort of electrician– and a self-taught award winning nature photographer.
Another uncle who joined the Navy during Vietnam, as an electrician, is a certified electrician who runs his own business (most of the time) and takes on apprentices and journeymen.
As you can see, there are many other routes to pay for education or training. BLS has a site on it, even. (They also have a page that explains the various types of training. College isn’t the only option.)
I feel there is a class system being promoted here by those who already have a better chance and am trying to bring a balanced REAL life situation to the discussion.
You are making emotional appeals in the place of rational arguments, and– ironically– assuming that those who disagree with you do so for personal gain while bragging that you do stand to personally gain from the position you are promoting. Amusingly, you also assume that the experiences of others are less “REAL” than your own.
Rather timely episode of Afterburner.
Chicken-
If most women valued marriage and family, the college enrollment would drop considerably, but it was precisely the feminist movement that caused so many women to consider college instead of marriage and the result is that we are below population replacement level with regards to actual non-first generation citizens and we have far too many lawyers (no offense to lawyers).
Both of my grandmothers were college educated, with 4+ children each. (Newspaper reporter and court stenographer, respectively.) My mother has both the highest level of college education among all of those children, and has the second most children. (I don’t know what the education of that aunt is, since she married into the family and her children are a lot older than my siblings.)
You’re right about the movement to college instead of marriage, but college isn’t directly responsible for the push for women to choose “career” over “marriage and kids.”
Gotta agree on lawyers, even though there are some I love and more I respect. It’s nearly impossible to find a decent OBGYN, and when you do it’s even harder to find one that will accept the risk of a normal birth after c-section, simply because of the high risk of ruin if anything goes wrong.
The excess of lawyers may also contribute to the lower rate of birth– a large number of male friends have told me that it’s simply not worth the risk to be involved with a woman, and you’d be horrified to find out how many guys get vasectomies just in case they every do loose their mind and take the risk.
The more general rot where an OBGYN talks about getting my tubes tied before we even go over birth options (And expresses shock that I have a religious objection to this. In a Catholic associated clinic.) probably does not help in the slightest.
“Finally, one of the great scams is the idea that you absolutely need to go to an elite university. I say this as someone who went to a top ten college, but state colleges are often just as good, and are a lot cheaper.”
This doesn’t really fit on the topic of subsidization of student loans, but I disagree with this.
I go to a top ranked engineering school – it also happens to be a public school so it’s fairly cheap. While all students I’ve met from other schools in my major seem well educated, recruiters/interviewers perk up at the mention of the school. They also seem more than willing to overlook low GPAs. Every person I know that’s graduated within the last 2 years from my school has found a job related to their degree. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for my friends from less recognized (but still good) schools in similar fields.
While I agree that it’s definitely not absolutely necessary, it does have its advantages!
I feel the need to apologize to MS for my remarks, above. I do not know his or his wife’s situations and it was unfair to make commentary without that knowledge. I, myself, have known people who have gotten their Ph.D while working a day job, but it doesn’t usually work in a research heavy Ph.D situation, which are the one’s I am most familiar with, for the simple reason that one has to be doing research virtually 24 hours a day. It is consuming. Still, I can’t speak to all circumstances.
My original comment said that it might be okay to cut back on loans for undergraduates and had I read the article before knee-jerk posting, I would have seen that that is exactly what was on the table, not graduate loans. Graduate student have, by and large, already shown that they can be productive in their field, so funding them is of great benefit to the government, in general, especially in technical fields at the present time.
Both of my grandmothers were college educated, with 4+ children each. (Newspaper reporter and court stenographer, respectively.)
This doesn’t really change my argument, as, of course, women went to college before the feminist movement, but largely in education or clerical fields. It was only after the feminist movement that women started in large numbers seeking parity with men in business and technical fields. How many women CEO’s were there before 1975? How many doctors? How many women helped put a man on the moon at NASA? It has only been since about 1975 that women started showing up in tech fields outside of the military, where they had been used since WW II. The computer language, COBOL, used in business, even today (although grudgingly), was developed by a woman in the 1950’s, Rear Adm. Grace Hopper.
My twin brother is a multiple award-winning college science educator who is much closer to the contemporary administrative aspects of education than I am. I should ask him what he thinks, but I can tell you that science departments are struggling to keep students enrolled, so cutting loans would really hurt and it would not keep mediocre students from going into the sciences. The sciences are, of almost all degree programs outside of the arts, self-selecting. Almost no one goes into the sciences with the idea of getting rich and almost all who go into the sciences really are among the best and brightest or they flunk out pretty quickly.
I haven’t been getting much sleep, recently because of the heat and humidity. Because of a medical condition, I can’t use an air conditioner, so I get a few hours of sleep a night and it is really starting to show up in my work and my posts. I think I’m going to lay out from posting for awhile until the heat goes away.
The Chicken
“Finally, one of the great scams is the idea that you absolutely need to go to an elite university. I say this as someone who went to a top ten college, but state colleges are often just as good, and are a lot cheaper.”
I have to chime in with Name on this one. As an undergrad in my science field at a #1 college for my discipline is HEAVILY recruited.
What many fail to notice is a grad level class is open to undergrads if they meet the prereqs. I have already taken 3 graduate level classes. My instructors are world class and generally featured page one of the important journals. They are also hands on and every paper is graded by the instructor and they tend to tear it apart!
I think this thread is the result of a whole bunch of misinformation regarding higher education and it’s impact on individuals and subsequently the post education economy.
Subsidized student loans are a GREAT thing and the democratic handling of them the only way to do so in a free society.
Warren
TMC-
I know how the lack-of-sleep feels, although not nearly as bad as it sounds like it’s hit you.
Looks like we’re agreeing by different routes- a lot of the current problem culturally is the push on women to have a career instead of a family. (Don’t get me started on the scorn heaped on husband/wife teams; the notion of a wife being support is pretty solidly drummed on as a personal failing in the woman, never mind that husband/wife teams make a lot of sense rationally.) When real teamwork is devalued, and only being the “hard charger” type leader is encouraged, it’s going to make issues. (Especially if someone doesn’t have a personal tendency to being a leader, or can’t tell good leadership from bad leadership.)
I know this thread has been done to death but here is PROOF going to a premier university for undergrad work is a wise move.
From the University of Arizona Geosciences Facebook Page:
Congratulations to Geosciences UNDERGRAD Lujendra Ojha, co-author of a new study in the journal Science that suggests there is liquid water during warmer seasons on Mars.
http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/05/how-an-undergrad-spotted-possible-water-on-mars/
Warren