[Political Junkie Too]

As I posted before, I believe the problem is that universities are putting out a product that there is no demand for.

I believe it's a three-fold issue.

1. The job market isn't paying the salaries.
2. The students aren't pursuing the marketable degrees.
3. The universities are cranking out graduates without regard to whether the job market is there for the graduates. In other words, they are graduating buggy whips.

The causes for #1 are two-fold:

1. The jobs are being off-shored to lower-cost geographies.
2. The cheaper workers are being imported via H-1B visas and are displacing our graduates.

The causes for #2 are two-fold:

1. The students are choosing social-justice degrees with no anchoring in reality.
2. The K-12 schools are socially promoting students who either aren't ready for college or are better suited to trade studies.

The causes for #3 are two-fold:

1. The students have been socially indoctrinated to believe the only way to succeed is with a college degree, so everyone must now go to college.
2. The change to government-sponsored student loans has made it easy for universities to pad their enrollments in order to get the funding to sustain their tenures and research programs.

I believe that if there is a market balance between supply and demand then the price paid will equal the cost plus profit. If the universities were balancing the supply of graduates with the demand for graduates, this would mean that the graduates were being paid a salary that allowed them to pay off their loans plus their living expenses.

The fact is that the university degree market is completely unbalanced and out of whack. Young students may be making good decisions to pursue a degree, but many are too uninformed at that age to understand that the universities are glutting the market right now. The universities have built up a capital investment in professors and manufactured an inventory of graduates that can't be sold.

The university result will eventually be the same as a business selling unwanted products: their inventory of unsold graduates will lose their value (in terms of alumni donations, university brand reputation, etc.), and the university might eventually go out of business if they can't get new student enrollments because the word is out that their graduates are unemployable.

Is all of this the fault of the student loan scam? Is it the result of students making bad career decisions? Is it the fault of businesses that are looking for cheaper workers or exporting jobs? Is it the fault of universities hungry for students flush with loan cash that they keep taking them in regardless of the ability of the job market to absorb the graduates?

-PJ

[octex]

Very good comments, PJT! I agree.

When the government guaranteed the student loans, the colleges realized they had the “Golden Goose” and began raising the tuition fees.

In the early ‘70s in Texas, after 89 hours and an AAS degree at Jr. College (all part time), I enrolled at a State Univ. The tuition cost then was $121 for 15 hours and more hours were free. ....This was at NTSU (now UNT) in Denton. It was before Mean Joe Green attended.

At age 32, I took a leave of absence from my full time job as an Eng. Tech. at TI to finish my last 12 months of college. I knocked out 59 hours that year, with 21 hours in the last semester.

Did that while married and raising two little girls. Worked at the apt. complex where I lived to reduce the rent by $5/hr. .............I could never have afforded to go to college with tuition rates like they are today.

I’ve blathered enough...