'We're on the edge of the precipice': How the pandemic could shatter college dreams

Politico ^ | 4/12/20 | Bianca Quilantan

[Libloather]

The pandemic and the nation's brutal economic collapse are combining to crush the college hopes of low-income and first-generation students.

Some high school seniors are dropping their first-choice schools in favor of colleges that are cheaper and closer to home, early surveys have found. Others are thinking about going part-time, or taking a gap year so they can work and bail out families whose breadwinners are suddenly out of work. Those who work with low-income students worry freshmen from poor families who were sent home this semester may never return and high school seniors won't get the hands-on help they need with their financial aid applications.

The effects of these decisions could ripple across not just campuses but the U.S. for years to come. Students could be stuck in lower-paying jobs for the rest of their lives, lacking the financial boost brought by a four-year college degree. Requests for additional financial aid will ramp up, and colleges with their own financial struggles may not be able to meet the demand. Colleges could see the widening of an already existing gap between low- and high-income students entering their doors, and many are trying to make it easier for applicants whose lives are in chaos.

“We're on the edge of the precipice,” said Bridgette Davis, a researcher and doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago who is studying 31 low-income students navigating their first year of college. Many have told Davis they are now less confident that they will successfully finish their current college semester, let alone reenroll in the fall.

[polymuser]

Hey kids, welcome to how the world always was before the GI Bill and too-easy credit.

[wally_bert]

A couple of new people starting today.

My inbox still pops with job opportunities. A few I’m suited for. I’m not going any further where I am and actually look closely at possibles.

[Jim Noble]

If the number of students in college fell by 90% the nation would be better off.

[wally_bert]

I know it’s being made fun of but there is a little truth regarding Why Study Industrial Arts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icZuJ4Xi8js

[Jim Noble]

I’m totally against any type of student loan forgiveness/bail out.

What you SHOULD be against is student loans, period.

The loan forgiveness has become necessary, for reasons I have gone into here before. The majority of the moral burden falls on the college racket, not the students with the loans. If it were possible to make them pay anyway, I would, but it isn't.

The PROBLEM is the existence of the loans themselves. End them, or at least make them hard to get, demand creditworthiness, and limit them to certain fields of study.

And stop publishing drivel about "college dreams". That's just horseshit.

If 90% of college students dropped out tomorrow, the world would be a better place, and the price would fall to a point where a decent summer job could pay for it.

[SkyPilot]

If about 2/3 of the nation’s colleges went away tomorrow nobody would miss them and the country would be better off.

Very true.

Colleges and Universities signed their own death warrant when they mandated quotas for minorities, instituted double standards in admissions that penalized whites and Asians while rewarding blacks, Hispanics, and other racial groups, adopted insane and immoral curriculum, encouraged and allowed soft (then hard) suppression of Conservatives, Jews, and Christians, and allowed campuses to become boot camps for the violent Fascist Left.

Today, you can almost always accomplish more on-line than with in-person lectures. There are fewer and fewer professors who are actually real material (not political indoctrination), but more and more "Diversity Officers" and useless "administrators" who draw 6 figures for doing nothing but cause carnage.

[SkyPilot]

...who are actually teaching real material...

[Josa]

Well the financial situation in the article described this “cracker’s” college experience.

Worked thru college while living at home and attending community college.

Here I was feeling proud of myself when all along I was poor and disadvantaged. Dang should have been whining instead of figuring a path forward. Boy do I feel stupid now.

[SanchoP]

What you SHOULD be against is student loans, period.

I agree completely but that horse is gone and the barn burned down.

[stremba]

Agreed. Having more kids go to cheaper schools closer to home is a positive thing, not a negative. A degree from a local state university can do just as much for a kid as an expensive private school degree.

[metmom]

Time for people to learn a trade again.

[ronnie raygun]

College dreams, funny! liberal arts, propaganda, we love che and Castro, commie socialist studies, social justice, diversity studies, economic inequality, transgender, LGBQ agenda , women rights, activism, liberal arts. All garbage! this is their dream?

[SanchoP]

Made fun of? I have a nephew 3 years out of high school bumping against a six figure income as a welder. He's laughing all the way to the bank.
I will admit he's had help getting his foot in the door but his work ethic is top notch.

[Fury]

Why have a college degree if there are no jobs because liberal think has destroyed America and the FERAL G0vernment floods the country with visas.

Still need higher ed for educating medical professionals, engineers, etc.

[F450-V10]

Maybe the divine hand that is steering the defeat of Trump’s/America’s enemies is making the virus a net positive:
1)Millions of parents may find home schooling is superior to public education scholastically and morally.
2)The points of this article...less priority on college...interrupt the loan ponzi scheme that enables job security for radical left indoctrinators.
3)Keep critical mfg. domestic...medical equipment, drugs, other commodities soon to become apparent.

[Starcitizen]

I’m for this is an immediate and total ban and removal from this country of H1Bs and other assorted foreign trash.

[NorthWoody]

Several years ago I met a guy, probably around 50 years old, who has a PhD in world history. Because of his degree he can use the title “Dr” before his name.

He was unable to find a decent job in the field of world history after years of trying. At the time I met him he was an over-the-road truck driver. Dr. Driver.

If you’re going to get a degree, get a useful and practical one. History is good to know (doomed to repeat it, and all that) and I suppose he had a passion for it.
But it wasn’t a good move to spend all that time and effort to end up doing an unrelated job that can be attained with a couple thousand dollars and a few weeks of training.

[NorthWoody]

I’m still working my normal schedule, but I’m always looking for a better job. I get job emails daily and there are plenty available.

With all the government-induced uncertainty lately though, I’m not willing to make a job change right now. I want to keep the PTO time and the health insurance I have and not start from scratch at a new job with things as they are.

Hopefully that will be changing sooner than later, but for now I’m just staying where I am.

[RoosterRedux]

Sounds like the pandemic is doing these kids a BIG favor.

By deferring college until they have a little more sense (and cents) and/or going to college at less expensive schools nearer to home will most likely leave them with a better education and certainly leave them with a lot less student debt (and a collective less brainwashed view of life).

This sounds like a "win-win" to me.

[mason-dixon]

The bottom line is the job you need to get after the degree.