Posted on 07/13/2021 7:52:29 AM PDT by karpov
Columbia University is among America’s most elite schools. Many believe that a graduate degree from Columbia or another Ivy League school will lead to financial security for life. But a recent investigation by Wall Street Journal reporters Melissa Korn and Andrea Fuller shows that this perception, so eagerly cultivated by universities, is a fiction.
Master’s-degree students at Columbia and many other elite schools take on hundreds of thousands of dollars in student-loan debt. Yet after they graduate, too many find that the degree did not open the doors promised. The existence and scale of these subpar graduate programs is tied to irresponsible federal lending practices, which extend unlimited lines of credit to graduate students with no regard to their ability to repay.
Students in Columbia’s Master of Fine Arts in film program typically accumulate $181,000 in federal debt, according to the report. But when they enter the labor market, their median salary is just $30,000 — less than one-sixth of the debt they took on. Few, if any, of those students will fully repay what they borrowed from taxpayers.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
that might mean that perfessors would have to take substantial pay cuts. can’t have that.
Isn’t “master” a racist term anyway?
;^)
All government is doing is inflating a tuition bubble, for a preferred political base (the education industrial complex)
Just END all government-sponsored and supported student loans
Tuition will drop immediately.
It all depends what you are getting degrees in.
Some fields of study, such as accounting, nursing, the hard sciences, lead to job and career paths. Some fields of study lead to good paying jobs which would enable one to pay back the loans taken to get degrees in those fields.
But there are many college majors and grad school degrees which do not lead to anything in the job market. People who take out loans for degrees in such fields choose poorly.
We should really get away from the idea, that everyone should go to college, and that somehow parents feel their children must go to college, regardless of what they plan to study.
And if your financial situation is such that you need to borrow, think long and hard if this is really what you want in life.
You are correct on all points.
The Federal student loan program enables this kind of poor decision making among young people coupled with private universities’ predatory practice of offering these romper room majors to access their loan funds at no risk to themselves. The solution is to reform the student loan program to rate majors by prospective income to the total degree cost and have a sliding scale of the amount of loan a student can access and a sliding interest rate structure based on the major. Film students would be at the bottom of the scale and STEM majors at the top.
If an IVY League degree doesn’t pay off, then what of a degree from some random state college somewhere? What does that tell you about the value of college degrees?
That's a case of supply and demand. There simply aren't that many jobs for art or music majors; the ones that are available tend to get sucked up by the absolute brightest and most capable of the degree holders, leaving the marginal ones to go begging.
Imagine if medical degrees were as common and easy-to-get as liberal arts degrees. How many of the people holding them would actually be earning any money?
You major matters. Let’s try this:
1) Kill the student loan program. Place restrictions on lending institutions for “student loans” (e.g., loan is okay as long as it maintains a 10:1 asset-to-loan value).
2) The only lender is the college/university itself. All loans are made with the proviso that the loan repayment starts 4 years from the signing of the loan. The institution is free to loan to whomever it wishes.
3) Any student who defaults on their loan becomes part of that institution’s Grounds Crew until the loan is paid off.
My guess is that a lot of institutions would have a lot better looking grounds than they do now.
My PhD/MBA brother was sucking wind during the Obama recession while I, armed with mere diplomas in electronics, never missed a day of work or a paycheck. It may not always work like that, but it has been said that a PhD will eventually need a plumber. The reverse is not as certain.
Columbia is offering a service that people are willing to pay for. If they weren’t then there would be no reason to offer the degrees. It’s the student’s decision to take out the loans that a cursory investigation would show don’t pay off.
I took out loans. Paid them back.
Last time I remember, as it was a while ago, NO ONE put a gun to my head to sign on the dotted line.
First person and group to blame:
Soetero for having the Feds take over the loans.
Warren for pushing loans forgiveness
The Squad and the Democrats for pushing loan forgiveness.
If it’s easy to get the loans and you’ve been brainwashed into thinking the loan will be erased you’ll keep signing that line.
Add to that, that each of these kids either think they’ll be the next curator at The Louvre or get tenure at Columbia, all before they’re 25.
Columbia University:
1. Obama received his master’s degree from there. Or was it his law degree??
2. Did they ever release Obama’s transcripts or are they still “sealed.”
3. Has any student during Obama’s tenure at Columbia ever recalled seeing him or campus or in class??
4. With whom did Obama associate there and where did he hang out??
An 18 year old can’t buy beer or cigarettes because they lack the impulse control or discipline to make good choices, yet they can rack up massive debt.
You are unable to rent a car in some states under the age of 25, yet you can get a student loan for $300k to study film.
My point is the reason for the restrictions are the supplier or society has realized young people are to volatile to be trusted with some things. They break them. So fences are made.
Yes, the kids were stupid. We were stupid at that age. I bought thousands of dollars of camping equipment and knives for Y2K. But at least I had the goods, these kids don’t have that.
In the eighties I was looking at Columbia for an engineering masters (nuclear). My faculty advisor at NJIT advised against it (I had graduated six years before and had some working experience plus in my way to a PE license), since he said Columbia had a political agenda. Yes, even then. He recommended Brooklyn Poly instead.
I was already doing dosage and shielding calculations.
Force the Universities to use their TAX FREE ENDOWMENTS to pay off Student loan debt!!!
“Just END all government-sponsored and supported student loans. Tuition will drop immediately”.
That and again make student loan debt dischargeable in a chapter 7 bankruptcy!
They can serve in the military, vote, establish credit, marry, and do most of the things adults can do. Besides, the examples in the Wall Street Journal. story dealt with graduate school students. People who would be in the 20s or older.
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