Posted on 11/29/2018 7:31:32 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Total student debt hit an astronomical $1.48 trillion this year. The average graduate now leaves school with $40,000 in loans hanging over his head.
So is it really a surprise that Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) won over millions of young people in 2016? After all, he campaigned on student-loan bailouts and “free college.” Many students desperate for an answer now support this agenda — in the hope of escaping crushing amounts in debt.
Yet government intervention is what created the higher-education bubble in the first place. One of the biggest factors behind skyrocketing tuition rates is the federal subsidization of student loans. Every dollar loaned out leads to an average 60-cent rise in tuition rates, as universities seize the opportunity to jack up prices in the face of heightened demand. That’s why the cost of public colleges has soared in recent years — it’s up 213 percent since 1988, adjusted for inflation. So any student who is serious about addressing the rising cost of college shouldn’t be looking to big government for relief, but rather to universities themselves.
Purdue University, for instance, is proof that colleges can be affordable — if they’re run as they should be.
Tuition hikes hit Purdue students hard between 2010 and 2012. But when former GOP governor Mitch Daniels took over as president in 2013, he implemented comprehensive reforms that slashed the cost of attendance. Daniels signaled his intentions from the onset, taking a salary $130,000 lower than that of his predecessor.
Daniels then took a hacksaw to the bloated bureaucracy on campus, cutting $8 million from the school’s operating budget. He also slashed the cost of room and board by 5 percent, trimmed the fat from the campus dining program to reduce prices by 10 percent, and struck a deal with Amazon that saved students 30 percent on textbooks. Yet Daniels didn’t just cut costs — he reduced classes, too. He introduced Purdue’s now-famous “Degree in 3” program, allowing liberal-arts students to graduate a year early and reducing the cost of college by 25 percent. This lets some students save as much as $20,000.
The result of these reforms? Under Daniels, Purdue has frozen tuition rates since 2013, students and their families have saved over $57 million, and student borrowing has drastically fallen. The total in-state cost of attendance is now just over $21,182 per year — an affordable amount compared with many other top public universities. And that figure doesn’t include financial aid or scholarships, so the bill many Purdue students actually pay is even lower.
Despite what critics predicted, Purdue’s reputation hasn’t suffered after the budget cuts. In fact, under Daniels’s leadership, the university has risen from 64th to 56th in the U.S. News & World Report rankings.
Although many Purdue students lean liberal, they’re having trouble denying the positive effects that fiscal conservatism is having on their campus — and their pocketbooks. When I talked with Bridgitte Buchanan, outreach director of the Purdue College Democrats, she told me she appreciated what Daniels has done to keep costs low for students, and she praised his Degree in 3 reform. Support for the university’s president is not partisan: Daniels is so popular on campus that students sometimes crowd around him at the dining halls and take pictures. It makes sense that conservatives would love him, but at least at Purdue, the Mitch Daniels model wins bipartisan support.
So in the face of an ever-expanding student-debt bubble, it’s time for this transformation to take place on the national level. Yet unfortunately, 77 percent of Millennials still support the “free college” proposals pushed by Democratic Socialists such as Senator Sanders. They ignore the alternative: reining in free-wheeling spending on campus and passing the savings on to students.
This is dismaying. Young people at colleges across the country are paying the price of administrative waste, bloated budgets, and frivolous expenditures. But they turn a blind eye to the solution, as do administrations across the nation. Students truly concerned about tuition rates and immense amounts of debt need to forget their infatuation with socialized higher education — and realize that fiscal conservatism is what will get us out of this mess.
Textbooks.
Bernie Sanders lived with his parents until the age of 43?????????
Students should be able to access all of their text books through e-books for a nominal fee. That would save hundreds each quarter.
Dramatic cost reductions can be achieved by terminating “fake disciplines” like gender and race studies, social justice programs and the like. Also, dismantle the political propaganda arms of university administration. You would be surprised at how cost to students will decline.
>Colleges are there to enrich and subsidize liberals. Then comes indoctrination followed by education.<
And there, in a cogent nutshell is the crux of a college education.
And Bernie Sanders will not only agree, but encourage others to invest.
Great post.
>Over the past 30 years, the TOTAL COST to educate a student to a bachelor’s degree at a public university hasn’t risen more than the rate of inflation.<
I didn’t know that. Thanks for the info.
Too bad she isn’t getting an education she can use for a productive career!
No slam on you. When my son enrolled in community college, the only criteria that I put on him was for him to tell me what marketable skills he expected to gain from the classes. He tried for a year, then got a part-time job at the local Tractor Supply. He was full-time in 6 months, a team lead in another six months, an assistant manager a year later and a store manager, both to open a new store and then running existing stores a year after that. While he worries about not having the shingle, he is a productive, knowledgable and successful store manager now, with no college debt.
THAT, is in fact the plan, always was.
This whole scam is nothing more than money laundering.
The fed pays the bill for the student, the faculty sends the money to rats, and the taxpayer is hit for the loan.
The schools have no incentive to reduce costs, in fact, they have incentive to raise costs, as much as traffic(taxpayer) will bear.
I’m hoping Uncle Sam comes through for me again. My brother and I both had full 4-year ROTC scholarships to excellent universities. Saved my parents $200K. My brother-in-law went to The Naval Academy. That’s about $120K he saved my inlaws (graduated early 90s). The Navy also paid for my brother-in-laws PHD from M.I.T. Not too shabby. He only had to give them 14 years. I stayed in 24, my brother 5 years. My oldest son (I have 3 boys) is 14 and seems very interested in going to a service academy. Fingers crossed. I’m staring down the barrel of 3 college tuition bills at once...
Back in the day, I don’t remember anyone having large college loans.
A college degree means nothing today unless it’s a medical degree. Better to get skills training.
Here’s another solution: tie any student loans/grants to the market value of the degree or certification being sought. Under that plan, students majoring in engineering, IT, accounting, nursing—careers with a future—would pay little/no interest on their loans.
At the other end, students pursuing a worthless degree in women’s/gender/minority studies, art history, journalism, etc., would pay an interest rate equal to that of a subprime auto loan. That would force many students and families to rethink little Johnny or Susie’s academic plans, and pursue something with a future, or pay 25% interest (or higher) on $50-100K worth of student debt. This dose of reality would also compel “scholars” in the field to produce research that is actually useful and lends credence to the degree. If they don’t (and students decide not pay confiscatory rates for a worthless diploma), these worthless fields of study will quickly die off, saving more money in academia.
One more thing regarding Purdue: Mitch Daniels has another card up his sleeve, if the academics raise too much of a fuss. When for-profit Kaplan University (once the profit center of the Washington Post) went under, Daniels bought what was left for $1. He has since rebranded Kaplan as Purdue Global and maintained its focus in on-line education. If the ivory tower folks rebel, Daniels can simply shift much of the instruction to the virtual classroom and hire more adjuncts.
I saw the same battle play out at a college I worked at a few years ago. The president was a raging lib, but he was also a realist. He led the push into on-line ed as the only way to save a slowly dying liberal arts school. When the tenured profs protested, he showed them the numbers: on-line was attracting far more students—and generating more revenue—than the campus ever could, and it was funding new construction and program expansion. He also drove home his point by freezing faculty hires on campus and hiring full-time on-line faculty. At that point, most of the on-campus profs decided to shut up and color.
Tell your son to apply for all the service academies AND ROTC. These days, every new officer starts with the same type of commission, so the advantage of getting a “regular” commission out of West Point, Annapolis or USAFA is long since past. And, many schools with ROTC programs will offer free room and board to anyone who receives a full ride through ROTC.
I was an OTS product (Air Force) but later taught ROTC at an SEC school and interviewed applicants for USAFA. Still believe ROTC is the best option for getting your commission and education at the same time. I have a number of friends who are academy grads, and it is a personal choice. Do you want a traditional college experience while you train to become an officer, or the academy environment?
The best way is to not go! Get a technical degree or certificate; begin an apprenticeship, learn a trade; get to work!
If it isn’t a STEM degree it ain’t worth jack. That’s the truth.
I went to trade school, learned to be aircraft mechanic. Had to pay my dues then made it to the show. Worked 20 years at major airline on the line. Loved my job. That’s what I feal is important, passion for the job, not the money.
The idea was based on a big lie: that college degree holders make more money. While there is some correlation, there is little evidence of causation. Bigger incomes are more strongly correlated with having a higher IQ, being raised with a strong conservative work ethic, having ambition, staying away from alcohol, drugs, and a big party life. Having religion helps too, the good kind, not the global warming or blowing things up religions.
There is enough evidence out there of before and after. Now that every high schooler that wants a degree has one, how are their incomes? The big lie believers may be shocked to find that not only did incomes adjusted for inflation went down, now people are in major debt to leftist Club Ed resorts. But the 6 years of their prime spent on alcohol, sex, drugs, and parties were epic.
a lot of college graduates view a degree as a panacea to prosperity and a good life. it isn’t. the last time somebody pumped my gas it was a management graduate.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.