Posted on 05/16/2014 7:25:45 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
There’s a debate among economists about why a college degree is worth so much. That the credential is valuable is not in doubt. According to the Pew Research Center, college graduates earn about $17,500 more annually than high school grads. Why?
The “human capital” school believes that students learn valuable skills in college that employers are willing to pay for. The “signaling” school doubts that the content of a college education is really that marketable. They argue instead that employers are interested in the traits — diligence, intelligence, self-control — that a degree reflects.
For decades, politicians have bought votes with promises to make college “more affordable.” They passed legislation with names such as “The College Cost Reduction and Access Act” and the “Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act.” There are Pell Grants and Stafford Loans, and much more besides.
Shockingly, colleges and universities have increased their prices more than any other sector of the economy except health care, which is also — surprise! — highly subsidized. As Anya Kamenetz writes in “$1 Trillion and Rising,” a report for Third Way: “Since 1978, the cost of college tuition has increased faster than the consumer price index in every single year. That’s not true for any other item in the basket of consumer goods.”
Student-loan debt now exceeds all other consumer debt except for mortgages. Default rates have reached a 20-year high, with as many as one in six borrowers failing to repay their loans. Taxpayers pick up the tab. Just since 2007, the average debt has increased by 43 percent to $26,000. The overhang of student debt is slowing the economy, some argue, as debtors put off purchases of cars, homes, and other goods in order to service student loans. For the 30 percent of debtors who don’t graduate, the added debt carries no offsetting reward in higher wages.
What have colleges been spending all of that extra money on? Between 2001 and 2011, according to the Wall Street Journal, the number of college and university administrators grew 50 percent faster than the number of instructors. Presidents of public research universities earned a median income of $441,392 in 2012.
Facilities at many colleges have become country-club lavish, with hot tubs, climbing walls, lazy rivers, movie theaters, sushi bars, and single rooms with attached bathrooms. Universities across the country have been on a building spree. Dubbed the “edifice complex” by Richard K. Vedder, who studies college spending, much of it has in turn been financed by debt.
Though both Republicans and Democrats have participated in the political pandering that created the higher-education bubble, Democrats have less room to maneuver in seeking reform. As with K–12 education, the universities that profit from current arrangements are the Democratic party’s constituents. President Obama’s approach has been to forgive outright the debt of students who work for the government, thereby increasing the burden on taxpayers (most of whom did not attend college).
The sky-high cost of college is a worry for many middle-class families. (Have you seen the financial advisers’ ads targeting parents of newborns?) Republicans are likely to have the reform field to themselves for a while.
As a successful and highly popular two-term governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels taught the Republican party valuable lessons in management, and he is now doing the same for academia as president of Purdue University. For the third year in a row, Purdue has frozen tuition rates. President Daniels (I know, it has a nice ring to it, but let that go) explained how he did it. As USA Today explained, “There was no secret sauce, just a little sensible pruning that would be ordinary in the business world but seems alien in much of academia, where a steady flow of federal aid guarantees a steady flow of students at seemingly any price.” Purdue consolidated some of its administrative positions. It chose a higher-deductible health-care plan. It cut food-service costs by switching providers and hiring part-time students to do work formerly performed by full-time employees. It short, it acted as if it cared about consumer, i.e., student satisfaction.
Republican governors of Texas, Wisconsin, and Florida have called for $10,000 degrees at their public universities. Not $10,000 per year, but $10,000 total, which would return college, inflation adjusted, to what it cost in the 1970s.
Anya Kamenetz urges that a combination of online courses (MOOCs), fewer non-academic perks, cutting administrative bloat, and focusing on graduation, not just enrollment rates, would make college what it should be — a boon for the poor and middle class. The current system, which burdens taxpayers, graduates, and — most painfully — dropouts, with massive debt is uneconomic, unjust, and unsustainable.
— Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist
Here is what I did to make college more affordable for me:
1) I selected a public university, not a private one.
2) I selected a public university near my house, and lived at home, not in a dorm while earning my college degree.
3) I avoided excessive partying and fraternities.
4) I worked two part time jobs while in college.
5) I kept student loan borrowing to a minimum.
6) I bought only used text books whenever possible.
I still think many students today could avoid massive student loan debt by doing the same things I did to get through college if they wanted to.
How to make college affordable: reform the accreditation system.
Students at the College of the Ozarks Graduate Debt-Free
http://www.eduinreview.com/blog/2012/03/students-at-the-college-of-the-ozarks-graduate-debt-free/
I still think many students today could avoid massive student loan debt by doing the same things I did to get through college if they wanted to.
Many of those things would help, of course. Unfortunately the cost of the college has climbed ridiculously high. Once past a certain point, the costs are just ‘put on the credit card’, which when enough people do it, increases the costs for everyone else. If one doesn’t get the big subsidies, it can easily cost each year the equivalent to the median income of workers who are up the chain a bit.
I dunno--I see plumbers and auto mechanics doing a lot better financially than most liberal arts graduates.
Stop sending all the stupid people to college.
Stop student loans and grants from the government.
I still think many students are selecting universities waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay beyond their means. Not working. And spending vast amounts on living expenses which could be greatly reduced if they could live at home.
There’s a debate among economists about why a college degree is worth so much. That the credential is valuable is not in doubt. According to the Pew Research Center, college graduates earn about $17,500 more annually than high school grads.
If it were the fashion for highly intelligent and hardworking people to have a third eye tattooed on their foreheads, it doesn’t mean the tattoos deserve credit for the fact that these people have much higher earnings, nor that average people can improve their life in the ling run by getting a tattoo (though some might want to, just to defraud employers and business contacts into thinking that they are smart or hard working.)
For starters, get rid of all departments that have the word “studies” in its name
Get government out of it and student loans. Remove all State schools.
bfl8r
“6) I bought only used text books whenever possible.”
I was working toward my BSEE degree at a large state university. It was rare that my text books weren’t new editions when I took a particular course. I was never able to “buy used texts books” within my major. Occasionally I would be able to buy one for an elective course.
Funny thing though... many of my EE books were written by my prof or one of his associates. I suspect that is the academic equivalent of the football/basketball coach’s “Shoe Contract” (a way to pocket a significant amount of money on the side). Most ‘revisions’ were a joke. But you had to buy it.
Transfer credits from a local community college, finish up a four year degree at a state university. Children of numerous acquaintances and extended family are doing this of necessity. Half a lifetime of debt servitude ahead of you with poor employment prospects upon graduation is no way start out.
The guy who installed a For Sale sign on my front lawn yesterday told me he made a quarter of a million bucks a year doing it. I believe him. Wonderful man with real Freeper attitude, looking to get out of Maryland and move to America. I don’t think his business requires a graduate degree from an Ivy League school.
It is fun to see liberals doing gymnastics to attribute to the college what is more correctly attributed to the individuals.
The dirty little secret is we are seeing the effects of several generations of academic meritocracy combined with assortive mating. The reality is that it is a waste of money to try to subsidize the higher education of most of the lower classes and even much of the middle class.
1) I selected a public university, not a private one.
2) I selected a public university near my house, and lived at home, not in a dorm while earning my college degree.
3) I avoided excessive partying and fraternities.
4) I worked two part time jobs while in college.
5) I kept student loan borrowing to a minimum.
6) I bought only used text books whenever possible.
I basically followed your approach, especially #1. Although my family lived but five to six miles away, I did want "the college experience" of living in a dorm and socializing with fellow students; so, I did not go along with #2. As to #3, like you, I did not have time to go to parties (of which there were very few on my campus) since I was studying and working my tail off at my part-time job.
I also followed your #s 4, 5, and 6.
I walked away with a nice degree right into a job, too.
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