Education costs and student debt: a crisis or simply discontent?

The problem seems simple to me: money is a terrible measure of the value of education but remains the only way to pay for it.

 

I think the issues are more complex than the basic complaints over tuition going up.
There's more to life & learning than going to college right of the High School gate (get a job, travel, see the world, figure out what you want to do first).

Yes, it is a Crisis, but not in the sense that people are complaining about tuition.
It was happening in California when I went back to finish my Bachelor's degree (2007-2010).

Sympathize.

Yes.

I dunno about Canada. Lower wages & higher cost of living, in general... kinda hard for me to say, I don't know the northern CA, only the Western CA.

Hell Yes.

This is where I get to have my say:

We're pumping out more and more college graduates. Like another thread around here recently about whether Kindergarten is a right or required... one respondent noted that you graduate irrespective as "social promotion." While college graduation rates are significantly less than Kindergarten graduation rates, it's the same "social promotion" ... do the work... get a piece of paper that says you've had a Critical Thinking course, but can't think critically, and are 4+ years behind your industry.

More to the point... approx 80% of College graduates don't go into their chosen degree-path-profession out of college (on average). And only about 75% end-up in that chosen path in the long-term. There are more and more students of older ages begging to come back to school to get degrees in things that they have a true interest in (after having figured it out). So, it's a Scholastic-Industrial-Complex that we have in place now (get out of HS, go to college, get a piece of paper that says you can earn more money, have put time toward something more than figuring out what you really want to be doing with your life, and have a better life... but it means nothing when you're incompetent & the economy crashes and more experienced workers are kept to prop-up businesses in times of stress).

But most significantly, I see this as a CORE ISSUE:
In attempting to serve the masses, in a selfless profession that individuals choose, then whine about pay... we increase enrollment, maintain the same level of students services, staff, professors, etc... sometimes ramping up, other times laying-off... all the while the number of individuals being served continually increases. It's disproportionate. A freeze of $500-some-odd for 40 or so years is as unreasonable as a 300% hike in tuition over a decade. Spread that out and average it... it's a 300% increase over 5 decades... how in-line is this with GDP per inflation... this is the actual dictator of truth in the equation.

Secondary factor behind hiking college fees is that quality of education is going down, while attempting to serve more students... in addition to pumping them out. I won't accuse a traditional university of being a degree mill... but I still call quick-e-mart (18-month programs) or night-class type programs from commercial entities that draw on less-than-PhD status individuals and "work experience" degree mills... because you pay the costs, go to class, do less than individuals who actually go to college out of the High School gate, and end-up with a Bachelor's degree. (FYI: I'll NEVER hire someone w/ a degree from U of Phoenix online / remote campus, or any other crap school like that, I only believe in traditional degree-granting institutions.)

Quality down, prices up, shell-shocking prices, rather than gradual... yeah, there's a big issue. The increase may be on-par with economics, and representative of the cost, but the quality is not increasing... government's and schools are hiking costs to cover losses. Which is obviously as unethical as the behavior that lead to global economic recession...

 

Read More: The College Identity Crisis - Utne Reader

 

And another ballast to the argument...

“It would not be hard at all to make higher education completely free in the USA. It accounts for not quite 2% of GDP. The personal share, about 1% of GDP, is a third of the income of the richest 10,000 households in the U.S., or three months of Pentagon spending. It’s less than four months of what we waste on administrative costs by not having a single-payer health care finance system. But introduce such a proposal into an election campaign and you would be regarded as suicidally insane.”

-- Left Business Observer (originally published in Feb. of 2010)​

 

Last bit of relevant info (came across last month) ...

“When students awaken, the national conversation will change.”

-- Diane Ravitch​

provided per:

 

Starting form a high level philosophical perspective, I think transferring knowledge to future generations is a morality question - and that we are morally obligated to do so and should at no cost to the up and coming generations. From a practical point of view I think students graduating with large amounts of debt and in some cases with low prospects for employment consistent with what was spent on educations is a negative reflection on our society. specifically, as a parent I see it as my responsibility that my son be equipt ( education and otherwise) for adulthood.

I think all primary and secondary education should be free. I believe the only higher level education public institutions operate like our service academies (selective merit based admission, no cost to student and requirement for service upon graduation), and all other higher education options be private.

In some cases we need employers to pay the bill for the special education needed by their employees. Given solid primary and secondary education if the Tech sector needs specially trained programers, they should pay for it - don't expect a low/middle income person pay taxes to subsidize a guy getting a tech degree, then he gets a high paying job, for the benefit of a monopoly like Microsoft so Microsoft can have 40% operating profit margins.

Further our system refuses to implement innovation until they absolutely have to. Given technology the incremental cost of educating one more person should be close to zero. Once the book is written, everyone on the planet has access through the internet. Why are books so expensive? Once a lecture is recorded, every person on the planet has access through the internet. I don't understand why costs have not gone down and quality gone up. Imagine having the best people in the world accessible in any language for every student interested in the subject - and the cost per person would be close to $0. I attended a webinar this morning on the internet, from a private source for education, it was so so easy and efficient.

 

Right now there is too much demand or at least steady demand for college from students and that means that they will be able to charge what they want. And there is very little existing students can do about tuition increases. Are you going to quit?

Yes, companies should be 'hiring' a group of high school kids and saying that they either will have or will have a shot at a real job once they graduate. The problem is that companies don't know where this economy will be 4 years from now.

There should be $25,000 debt limits on student loan debt. After that, there needs to be some type of program in place to have companies help pay it off like a matching 401k contribution.

And banks or the government need to limit what degrees they hand out these 'easy' student loans to. And the kids need to only use the money for tution, not big HDTVs and new laptops (I knew a few kids that did that).

 

Calgary isn't the best example of a bad place to move. Scranton, PA isn't a good place to move to.

One of the reasons I moved to Ohio for my job was because it was closer to my family. I might have moved here for a few years after college to get experience, but I would have quit years ago if I had to fly each time to go see my family.

Long-term, there are also issues with where two people are 'expected' to end up financially. I don't know how true this is, and would like to see it studied, but if two people graduate at the same time, one goes to a small town in Kansas and gets a good job vs the other going to NYC and having access to lots of different jobs, more possibility to meet someone (??? too many hook-ups or creating breaking up couples in NYC I bet compared to the Midwest), but also pay lots more for food and rent. After 10 years the person in the Midwest might be better off financially, but long-term, they might not meet someone at happy-hour that offers them a cushy job making 6 figures.