Posted on 06/10/2022 1:09:14 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The last time I checked, the price of a four-year bachelor's degree at the state college that I once graduated from was "slightly less than $325,000." The apparently now routine "lab cost" of a required engineering lab that meets for one hour two times a week is now, according to the website, $8,500.
Therefore, today, hundreds of thousands of students are buried in debt before they reach the age of twenty-one. They cannot throw this yoke off their shoulders. Yet this "enormous debt" has nothing to do with the actual cost of providing the thing that they supposedly bought...which, across the expanse of four years, is "much less than 200 hours of actual instructor time."
I demand we call a halt. In the place of this utter nonsense, I simply ask for a fair evaluation: "What does 'a college' physically consist of, and therefore, how much does it cost to run one?" The price that a student is required to pay for a service should be directly linked to the cost of providing that service.
So let's face it: the physical plant of "a college" is basically identical to that of any high school. It is a collection of classrooms, staffed by one instructor per room, none of whom is driving a Lamborghini. Incidental expenses include the snack machines and the janitors. Otherwise, that's about it.
Let the record show that in 1980, my total out-of-pocket expense for the same degree was $13,000, and it would have been a third of that had I lived "in state." (Fortunately for me, the entire expense was paid by a benevolent candy company.)
It is very unpleasant now to confront the true motivation for "student loan debt," but finally we must.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
there are still TONS of affordable community colleges that are very affordable.
These morons who choose to go to 200,000 a year colleges and major in “I AM STUPID, PLEASE TAKE MY MONEY 101” deserve the debt!
Better yet, learn to weld, ore become an electrician, carpenter, plumber, or mason.
Too many universities are cesspools of indoctrination. Learn a trade and bypass them.
Sometimes I wish I’d done that.
Let the colleges that bilked these people for worthless degrees pay off that student debt with their huge endowments.
I went to an in-state University and tuition in the early 1970s and it was not that expensive. Worth every penny.
Best deal is to go a decent but state university and pay as you go with no loans.
The actual value of anything is what you can get someone else to pay for it. The college values the education quite highly and the people who pay for it seem to agree. Just like a car loses half of its value as soon as it leaves the lot, a college education loses at least half of its value before the hangover that one gets celebrating its completion wears off. People who live in the projects rarely purchase rare artworks because they can’t justify the price. People who purchase educations don’t know what justifies the price.
I do not understand why college has become so expensive, and where the money goes. Is it excessive woke programs?
These days, kids have it pounded in their heads that without a college degree, they will forever be stuck at low-paying menial jobs.
Ironically, that's exactly what happened to many of them after they got their practically useless degrees in political science, communications, liberal arts, etc. Chances are the barista making your latte at $12 an hour has one of those degrees.
Meanwhile your average plumber, electrician, construction worker, etc., is making several times that and they never set foot in a college unless it was to go in there and fix something.
an education is worth what student is willing to pay for it
not more
the taxpayer subsidies have seriously distorted the market place such that rational decisions are no longer involved
the natural result is tons of waste (including $$$$ and wasted time learning things that are not connected to the marketplace or student needs, demand)
Put the colleges on the hook for the defaulted loans and they’ll stop with the non-productive bullshit.
After 45 years working for a Fortune 500 company, and in sales, I would have been ecstatic if I could have raised my prices 15% a year with out any market push back, as academia does, year on year.
community colleges are a joke
It’s a great financial strategy to spend the first two years at a CC and then transfer to a 4 year to finish out your BS.
Here is the solution, totally eliminate Federal Subsidized student loans, go back to getting a person student loan that you have to qualify for.
Once that happens the price of College will start dropping like a lead ballon, quite a number of colleges will go out of business. Trade schools will be start booming.
A Bachelor of Music is called a BM. And that’s exactly what it’s worth.
There are three parts involved in financing a college education, the student, the educational institution (EI), and the lender. Of the three the EI is the only part that has no skin in the game.
The student is motivated to prepare for their future.
The lender (if private) is careful about to whom they lend money.
The EI however simply sets the price of attendance; take it or leave it. The EI does not care where you get the money, only that it is paid in full in advance before attending. After receiving the money, the EI does not care if the student actually attends nor is the EI concerned about how the student is going to repay the loan. Bottom line here is this: there is no market pressure on the EI to control costs or to deliver an acceptable product. And with the FedGov financing any amount the student requests, the EI has no motivation to change their approach.
And that is why the EIs are over-staffed with lazy, overpaid, tenured leftists who think they are owed the jobs they have. Most deliver a crappy product that would have been cause for termination 60 years ago.
The quickest fix for all this is to a) get FedGov out of the tuition lending business, and b) make the EIs manage the loans completely from application to collections.
I did community college and transferred to four year private universities.
VA paid some and my employer paid all my tuition after VA ran out.
I have a STEM degree.
Took a while as I worked full time, had a family and life’s usual expenses I did not get my degree till age 34.
Over the next twenty years I figure that degree paid about
$700,000 above what I would have made without it.
I retired at age 55.
College is worth it, if you get a skill that is hard to do, people will pay a lot of money for, and if you are smart enough to absorb the lessons.
Most people are stupid( that is why we have Democrats).
That is why student debt is such a problem. Dumb schiffs with a BA, MA or PhD degree in soft sciences. Ever wonder why teachers don’t get paid very well?
While a socially challenging profession, it is not exactly all that hard mentally.
That is all.
I am sure there are some exceptions, but also most people that started community college never finish a four year degree. It’s a dead end for too many people.
Lineman.
.....the physical plant of “a college” is basically identical to that of any high school.....
NOT TRUE!!!! There are all those laboratories, plus student housing, dining facilities, and much more!!!! Take a good look at any university website—the physical plants of universities are much more elaborate than those of high schools or even most community colleges.
Yes, federal and other grants pay for laboratories and research, but there is all that overhead and administrative cost to run them.
IMHO, the REAL problem is all that overhead for “administration”, which has increased at a galloping rate over the past several decades!! That’s also where most of the wokeness comes in—i..e, the hiring of “deans of diversity”, etc.
Administrative wokeness usually dwarfs faculty wokeness! It also mandates much of the faculty wokeness, e.g., by requiring “diverse” faculty hiring.
A woke administration and faculty is also expensive, and contributes a lot to all that student debt!!
Largely impossible nowadays.
I had the GI Bill, and went to UF in state.
I spent around 60-70 hours a week doing HW, studying, and labs.
Labs are the worst...one credit and sometimes 20 hours a week.
Things just cost too much now.
I had the GI so I was okay. There was no way I could work.
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