(06-28-2019, 01:00 PM)Au165 Wrote: I always felt like it would make sense for schools to price tuition based on your major and it's expected earning potential. Everyone pays the freshman fee to take general classes then after that it is wholly dictated by the major and it's potential earning power. I am also intrigued by the idea of, instead of taking loans you can simply promise a percentage of your first x years of wages as their payment. If you can't find a good paying job because of the degree they awarded you then you both can feel the pain together. This would incentivize the schools to help you get not just any job but a good paying one. It also would force schools who peddle in worthless degrees to reconsider their business model.
The issue there would be the market changes.
Currently there is a lack of nurses and doctors and physical therapists.
Over time more and more people fill those roles, but then as the baby boom generation dies off there is less of a need for those jobs and we end up with a glut of people with majors they can't use or make money with.
At one time that was lawyers, and accountants.
It would be the same with "ditch diggers". If/when the economy breaks down again there are less jobs and it doesn't matter how good you are if the jobs aren't there and if the jobs aren't there the pay won't be either.
Heck pay has barely risen with unemployment at record lows.
Your anger and ego will always reveal your true self.
(06-24-2019, 08:51 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: No. Now, Wall Street isn't to blame for this mess, at least not entirely, and I wouldn't even say mostly. Who is to blame? Government. At both the federal and state levels there has been a maelstrom of policies that have caused higher education to be more highly valued by the federal government and caused society to view it as a requirement for progress, and a devaluation in the state houses to the point where public higher education funding has been on the decline.
The long and short of it is that there are a ton of different variables that have led to the current situation we are in. Students, institutions, state legislatures, Congress, ED, employers, parents, the overall economy, these are all places at which fingers can be pointed. The students, though, share the least amount of blame of those groups.
So the people who willingly sign up for large quantities of debt, many times either not finishing or choosing a degree that has no real means of earning money with other than teaching the degree to others, often choosing unnecessarily more expensive schools than the cheaper alternatives on top of that.... those are the people who share the least amount of blame?
Go to a trade school. Go to a community college. You don't need an expensive out-of-state degree in kegs and English literature or gender studies.
Plus once you get that degree, you don't need to buy Starbucks coffee every day, and get a new iPhone every 6-12 months. It's amazing how many people cry about their student debts, but still went somewhere expensive for Spring Break, managed to get a brand new Macbook Pro for $2k, or somehow found the money to go out drinking at bars every weekend.
Most amount of blame:
1. High School Teachers (for pushing the narrative that a college degree is the only path to happiness/success)
2. Students
3. The Student's Parents (for not teaching them fiscal responsibility)
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Not to mention that for just 2 years of active duty, you can sign up for a huge plethora of non-combat jobs in the US Army and get rid of up to $65,000 of your college debt.
(06-28-2019, 12:43 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: Yes market would dictate the degrees.
Maybe find a way to limit the number of people that want a specific degree and award the ones that seem the best fit. The others can still take it, they just pay out of pocket and get a reduced amount from the gov rather than the full reimbursement. There is always a way, just might not be the most desired one.
(06-28-2019, 01:00 PM)Au165 Wrote: I always felt like it would make sense for schools to price tuition based on your major and it's expected earning potential. Everyone pays the freshman fee to take general classes then after that it is wholly dictated by the major and it's potential earning power. I am also intrigued by the idea of, instead of taking loans you can simply promise a percentage of your first x years of wages as their payment. If you can't find a good paying job because of the degree they awarded you then you both can feel the pain together. This would incentivize the schools to help you get not just any job but a good paying one. It also would force schools who peddle in worthless degrees to reconsider their business model.
Well I respect the creativity you guys show in paying for college. Sounds like you are throwing up serious proposals.
But we part company at your assumption that market demand should be the single or dominant factor in determining whether a degree is "necessary" or "worthless."
You are assuming that vocational training is the point of schooling beyond HS, getting the knowledge and skills that employers want you to have.
I am assuming that education is important, and that it should not be solely or even predominately determined by constantly shifting market demands. It concerns a kind of knowledge and values supposed to span generations and link learners to past and present as citizens. It is not directly for employers, nor determined by them. It less about getting a job than about the life for which one gets a job.
This point would not apply to trade schools, whose goal is and has always been training, not education.
(06-28-2019, 01:38 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Plus once you get that degree, you don't need to buy Starbucks coffee every day, and get a new iPhone every 6-12 months. It's amazing how many people cry about their student debts, but still went somewhere expensive for Spring Break, managed to get a brand new Macbook Pro for $2k, or somehow found the money to go out drinking at bars every weekend.
(06-28-2019, 02:07 PM)Dill Wrote: Well I respect the creativity you guys show in paying for college. Sounds like you are throwing up serious proposals.
But we part company at your assumption that market demand should be the single or dominant factor in determining whether a degree is "necessary" or "worthless."
You are assuming that vocational training is the point of schooling beyond HS, getting the knowledge and skills that employers want you to have.
I am assuming that education is important, and that it should not be solely or even predominately determined by constantly shifting market demands. It concerns a kind of knowledge and values supposed to span generations and link learners to past and present as citizens. It is not directly for employers, nor determined by them. It less about getting a job than about the life for which one gets a job.
This point would not apply to trade schools, whose goal is and has always been training, not education.
The real issue in terms of businesses impact on the college crisis is that they turned college degrees into check boxes in the application process. Jobs that should require no degree do for no real reason. You will see jobs that simply say you need a degree of some sort, but they don't even care what it is, why? The original intent of college and the cultural use of it today have splintered and that is why I proposed options that tie employment to the degree because that is the relevance to a large majority of those who attend college today.
A college degree is not needed to have knowledge of a subject. If I want to go to college to learn about something I most likely can acquire that same knowledge from the internet, the main difference being I won't pay someone to then test me on my understanding of the knowledge I have gained. College today has essentially become a service for vetting knowledge for potential future employers.
In the past college was required to acquire knowledge for many because of the limited access to some of the more detailed nuances of a subject and those who possessed it, however that information today is easier to acquire then ever because of the internet. Colleges themselves already price themselves based on the value of their degree in terms of clout, which in turn improves employment prospects. If this wasn't the case you wouldn't see employment statistics plastered on EVERY college's recruitment literature.
(06-28-2019, 01:38 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Most amount of blame:
1. High School Teachers (for pushing the narrative that a college degree is the only path to happiness/success)
2. Students
3. The Student's Parents (for not teaching them fiscal responsibility)
When I was in HS back in the 60s, it was pretty clear to me that people with college degrees lived better and seemed to know more than people without college degrees. My fellow students could see this as well. Teachers encouraged (didn't "push") students to do well in class and increase the life opportunities, including the chance to go to college. I always assumed it was because they wanted us to do well. And there were students who were NOT encouraged to go to college. (Mostly native American.) People who went into the sciences (including medical school) did so because they liked science, not because they thought it was a good way to earn a living. Same for people who went into the arts.
My parents wanted their children to go to college, but I needed no pushing. My home state, Montana, had limited higher ed opportunities but I took advantage of them as best I could. No shot at an "expensive" school. My three sisters started college. One dropped out. One became an LPN, the other a registered nurse. The one who dropped out is kind of a bum. We figured it out once--the registered nurse, with two more years of college, earned about 300,000 more dollars than the LPN over 25 years, including a couple years off.
And I needed loans, eventually about $5,000.00 worth, repaid in about 4 years.
So fast forward 5 decades or so. HS kids are still going to college, but even when attending public schools, the loans they accumulate now are like the down payment on a new house--30-100,000 dollars. And they cannot be erased by bankruptcy. My daughter spent $60,000.00 getting an MA in vocal performance. (Now she makes more money than her parents as global project manager at the head offices of an international corporation in Manhattan.)
I cannot understand this drastic change in costs, and its effect on opportunity, by blaming students and teachers. Nor can I begin to imagine a policy which would correct this imbalance.
(06-28-2019, 02:14 PM)Dill Wrote: Do you have some stats on that?
Do you have some other questions that obviously can't be answered outside of personal experience with the majority of college kids I have ever met? There isn't anyone out there doing "do you have student debt/do you own an iphone" surveys which you likely damn well knew.
Go to any college campus. Look at how many people are on new macs or iphones. Go to Twitter/Instagram/Facebook during Spring Break. Go to literally any bar around a college campus and see people buying $7 PBRs. Those are the people who will be crying about being poor and being under crushing student debt.
So to say those people have the LEAST responsibility for their debt is an absurd concept.
(06-28-2019, 02:32 PM)Dill Wrote: I cannot understand this drastic change in costs, and its effect on opportunity, by blaming students and teachers. Nor can I begin to imagine a policy which would correct this imbalance.
It's not their fault the cost changed, it is their fault that they (teachers) perpetuate the "need" and in the end they (Students) choose to take on the debt. Colleges operate much the same as every other business, their pricing is based on supply and demand. The demand is artificially inflated by the check box hiring using degrees as one of the gates to employment, especially when it isn't really needed.
I don't think we will ever get businesses to eliminate those check boxes, in fact many are moving to higher level of advanced degrees, but what we can do is keep attacking the narrative that the only good jobs are ones that require traditional college. If we can shift some of the demand to vocational schools we can force the colleges to correct to attempt to claw it back.
(06-28-2019, 02:37 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Do you have some other questions that obviously can't be answered outside of personal experience with the majority of college kids I have ever met? There isn't anyone out there doing "do you have student debt/do you own an iphone" surveys which you likely damn well knew.
Go to any college campus. Look at how many people are on new macs or iphones. Go to Twitter/Instagram/Facebook during Spring Break. Go to literally any bar around a college campus and see people buying $7 PBRs. Those are the people who will be crying about being poor and being under crushing student debt.
So to say those people have the LEAST responsibility for their debt is an absurd concept.
Your anger and ego will always reveal your true self.
(06-28-2019, 02:32 PM)Dill Wrote: When I was in HS back in the 60s, it was pretty clear to me that people with college degrees lived better and seemed to know more than people without college degrees. My fellow students could see this as well. Teachers encouraged (didn't "push") students to do well in class and increase the life opportunities, including the chance to go to college. I always assumed it was because they wanted us to do well. And there were students who were NOT encouraged to go to college. (Mostly native American.) People who went into the sciences (including medical school) did so because they liked science, not because they thought it was a good way to earn a living. Same for people who went into the arts.
My parents wanted their children to go to college, but I needed no pushing. My home state, Montana, had limited higher ed opportunities but I took advantage of them as best I could. No shot at an "expensive" school. My three sisters started college. One dropped out. One became an LPN, the other a registered nurse. The one who dropped out is kind of a bum. We figured it out once--the registered nurse, with two more years of college, earned about 300,000 more dollars than the LPN over 25 years, including a couple years off.
And I needed loans, eventually about $5,000.00 worth, repaid in about 4 years.
So fast forward 5 decades or so. HS kids are still going to college, but even when attending public schools, the loans they accumulate now are like the down payment on a new house--30-100,000 dollars. And they cannot be erased by bankruptcy. My daughter spent $60,000.00 getting an MA in vocal performance. (Now she makes more money than her parents as global project manager at the head offices of an international corporation in Manhattan.)
I cannot understand this drastic change in costs, and its effect on opportunity, by blaming students and teachers. Nor can I begin to imagine a policy which would correct this imbalance.
Not anymore. There are kids who can barely read and they're still being told from middle school that college is what you need to do.
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$5,000 in 1960 when you adjust for inflation is about $42,700 today.
Montana Public Community College In-State average tuition: $3,974/yr x 4 = $15,896
Even if you add on more for books and the like, you could do 2 years of community college and 2 years of private college (it doesn't have Montana, but Ohio is $13,841/yr) and come out right around your $42k mark of your cost adjusted for inflation.
- - - - - - - - - -
That's great for your registered nurse sister... the thing is, she had the common sense to go to college for something that actually paid well and had demand.
Only 62.1% of college graduates even have a job requiring their level of education and only 27.3% have a job matching their college major.
She's actually the minority. The vast majority of people get a college degree in something and then don't even get a job related to it.
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EDIT:
Sorry, I forgot to address the bit about not sure how to go about fixing it at the very end. Obviously I am not an expert and I don't know it would work for certain, but I have to imagine that if we stopped using mandatory education as a funneling system to colleges pockets, and instead were more realistic with children's abilities and goals, we could start giving better alternatives like more apprenticeship programs, more internships, and more trade schools as an alternative to college.
If there isn't a huge glut of unnecessary college degree holders out there, then businesses wouldn't have the option of making entry level middle-skill jobs require them. Meanwhile then less people would be in college debt.
(06-28-2019, 02:27 PM)Au165 Wrote: The real issue in terms of businesses impact on the college crisis is that they turned college degrees into check boxes in the application process. Jobs that should require no degree do for no real reason. You will see jobs that simply say you need a degree of some sort, but they don't even care what it is, why? The original intent of college and the cultural use of it today have splintered and that is why I proposed options that tie employment to the degree because that is the relevance to a large majority of those who attend college today.
A college degree is not needed to have knowledge of a subject. If I want to go to college to learn about something I most likely can acquire that same knowledge from the internet, the main difference being I won't pay someone to then test me on my understanding of the knowledge I have gained. College today has essentially become a service for vetting knowledge for potential future employers.
In the past college was required to acquire knowledge for many because of the limited access to some of the more detailed nuances of a subject and those who possessed it, however that information today is easier to acquire then ever because of the internet. Colleges themselves already price themselves based on the value of their degree in terms of clout, which in turn improves employment prospects. If this wasn't the case you wouldn't see employment statistics plastered on EVERY college's recruitment literature.
I agree with most of what you say here about how the business environment/job market has impacted college and how colleges have responded by "marketing" themselves. I believe I deplore this even more than you do.
Whether a college degree is needed certainly depends on the subject, however. I doubt I can learn neurosurgery or classical Greek on the internet. And there is a good reason why colleges require even students learning a narrow discipline to get breadth as well as depth. Few really have the knowledge to guide themselves in such matters, or the will to study something they don't think directly related to their interest.
Higher education in the US was mostly caste based until after the Civil War. Most people could learn "professions," from the ministry to law to dentistry, without going to college. Skilled workers learned their skills on the job. After the Civil War, as business and government expanded exponentially in size and complexity, they needed chemists and social scientists and engineers and managers who could no longer just get their knowledge on the job. And US higher ed responded, moving from a Latin-based curriculum to the "elective" system of disciplines and departments we have today (I.e., from "college" to "university"), when the demand for kinds of knowledge which cannot be learned on the job, or even from the internet, are in higher demand than ever.
College today has indeed become a vetting service for employers, as you say. And this has substantially narrowed the curriculum. Knowledge for them, not you.
But the response to that is not then to make market demand the determiner of what is necessary and what is worthless. That drives the "vetting service" conception of higher ed. It leaves students scrambling to pay for what their employers want them to learn--and the less about history and politics and critical thinking the better.
A final comment. Many employers rightly see college degrees as indices of more than a quantum of specialized knowledge to be plugged into their organizational chart here or there. A degree means you can set a long term goal and reach it. Others have monitored and certified your work. If your degree is in English or philosophy, then likely you are a better reader and writer (communication skills!) than that business major applying for the same job; your ability to retrain and to grasp differing conceptual models and to adjust to changing, international business environments might be better as well. All that "new" stuff the business major learned because it was in demand 8 years ago may be already outdated. The ability to write a researched and readable report is not.
(06-28-2019, 02:37 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Do you have some other questions that obviously can't be answered outside of personal experience with the majority of college kids I have ever met? There isn't anyone out there doing "do you have student debt/do you own an iphone" surveys which you likely damn well knew.
Go to any college campus. Look at how many people are on new macs or iphones. Go to Twitter/Instagram/Facebook during Spring Break. Go to literally any bar around a college campus and see people buying $7 PBRs. Those are the people who will be crying about being poor and being under crushing student debt.
So to say those people have the LEAST responsibility for their debt is an absurd concept.
Len, now don't get mad. I am taking all of your posts seriously.
But I have to say that "personal experience" here might not be a reliable indicator of any correlation between the students with new Macs and Iphones and those crying under crushing student debt. There have always been students who did not know what they were getting into, but we need more than impressions to identify the trend you are assuming here.
I have spent some time on college campuses, even recently. (Just yesterday (at a friend's invitation) I observed a cybersecurity camp for JS and HS kids at our local university.) I frequently attend lectures at universities here, in Pittsburgh, and occasionally in DC. I see lots of students and talk with them. I see laptops and students buying expensive drinks, but I see no reliable way to connect them to "crying about being poor." I see a lot of them in the local fast food services, working their summer jobs as I did 50 years ago.
Based on my personal experience, I'd say Bengals fans are bigger whiners than Steelers fans. But to make that a useful working assumption I'd have to run some tests, create control group or groups. Define "whining" and develop a means of quantifying it; give the Steelers a 6-10 season to equalize the "stimulus" and so forth. LOL
Montana Public Community College In-State average tuition: $3,974/yr x 4 = $15,896
Even if you add on more for books and the like, you could do 2 years of community college and 2 years of private college (it doesn't have Montana, but Ohio is $13,841/yr) and come out right around your $42k mark of your cost adjusted for inflation.
Would have only needed $2,500 in 1960. $5,000.00 = $27,189 in 1974, the year I graduated. Today, at $270.00 per credit hour, you'd be looking at 50.000+ dollars for four years. (The name of the institution was Eastern Montana College back then. Now it is called Montana State University, Billings.) Remember that wages have remained stagnate since the '80s. Should add that I got a couple of Pell grants too, for poor students.
(06-28-2019, 02:53 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: That's great for your registered nurse sister... the thing is, she had the common sense to go to college for something that actually paid well and had demand.
Only 62.1% of college graduates even have a job requiring their level of education and only 27.3% have a job matching their college major.
She's actually the minority. The vast majority of people get a college degree in something and then don't even get a job related to it.
LOL my parents "pushed" her to become a doctor. What if she had listened to them?
(06-28-2019, 02:53 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Sorry, I forgot to address the bit about not sure how to go about fixing it at the very end. Obviously I am not an expert and I don't know it would work for certain, but I have to imagine that if we stopped using mandatory education as a funneling system to colleges pockets, and instead were more realistic with children's abilities and goals, we could start giving better alternatives like more apprenticeship programs, more internships, and more trade schools as an alternative to college.
If there isn't a huge glut of unnecessary college degree holders out there, then businesses wouldn't have the option of making entry level middle-skill jobs require them. Meanwhile then less people would be in college debt.
Remember that most colleges are not for-profit institutions.
There is also a political problem embedded in "practical" training. Historically, vocational "alternatives" have "made sense" as "realistic goals" for minorities and lower classes. There was a time when those minorities and lower classes understood this. As vocational training displaces education as the primary goal of schooling beyond HS, the problem seems to disappear altogether from public discourse.
(06-28-2019, 03:37 PM)Dill Wrote: Len, now don't get mad. I am taking all of your posts seriously.
But I have to say that "personal experience" here might not be a reliable indicator of any correlation between the students with new Macs and Iphones and those crying under crushing student debt. There have always been students who did not know what they were getting into, but we need more than impressions to identify the trend you are assuming here.
I have spent some time on college campuses, even recently. (Just yesterday (at a friend's invitation) I observed a cybersecurity camp for JS and HS kids at our local university.) I frequently attend lectures at universities here, in Pittsburgh, and occasionally in DC. I see lots of students and talk with them. I see laptops and students buying expensive drinks, but I see no reliable way to connect them to "crying about being poor." I see a lot of them in the local fast food services, working their summer jobs as I did 50 years ago.
Based on my personal experience, I'd say Bengals fans are bigger whiners than Steelers fans. But to make that a useful working assumption I'd have to run some tests, create control group or groups. Define "whining" and develop a means of quantifying it; give the Steelers a 6-10 season to equalize the "stimulus" and so forth. LOL
So now your point is that sure there's a ton of college students you saw living well above their means, throwing it all onto their increasing debt, but short of a full sized study, you're not willing to admit that they're connected? That's the criteria we now have on this board? Perform a full scientific study or we can't even make the simplest and most basic of obvious conclusions?
As for your seeing them working at the local fast food services (which sounds an awful lot like a "personal experience" that I heard isn't a reliable indicator): https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-spring-break-spots-0203-biz-20150202-story.html
From 2015, where more than 50% planned on Spring Break trips to warm destinations.. ranging from trips to Vegas, Cancun, Punta Cana.
I'm sure their minimum wage job pays off the Spring Break trip 50%+ of them go on every year.
Maybe less YOLO and more fiscal responsibility and student debt wouldn't be such an issue.
(06-28-2019, 02:38 PM)Au165 Wrote: It's not their fault the cost changed, it is their fault that they (teachers) perpetuate the "need" and in the end they (Students) choose to take on the debt. Colleges operate much the same as every other business, their pricing is based on supply and demand. The demand is artificially inflated by the check box hiring using degrees as one of the gates to employment, especially when it isn't really needed.
I don't think we will ever get businesses to eliminate those check boxes, in fact many are moving to higher level of advanced degrees, but what we can do is keep attacking the narrative that the only good jobs are ones that require traditional college. If we can shift some of the demand to vocational schools we can force the colleges to correct to attempt to claw it back.
Most colleges do not operate as businesses. They are non-profit. In the case of public institutions, the single biggest factor affecting tuition is state allocation. E.g., at our in-town state university, the state covered 52% of costs in 1988; now it covers 27%. Student tuition covers this difference now. Whether a thousand students more or less matriculate this fall will not alter tuition. No professor or administrator's salary will change. (If enrollment in a department or program drops low enough, it could be phased out though. When we moved here in 2001, they had just eliminated the classics dept.--the one place in the U. that was ALL education and NO job training.)
I agree we should attack the narrative that the only good jobs are ones that require traditional college, but we should not embrace the implicit definition of all schooling after HS as vocational training. The result of that is that employers effectively colonize potential students minds, so choosing what the employer wants looks like the student's personal choice. If colleges need to be "forced" to do anything it is to keep their focus on education. THEN students have a choice.
As far as who pushes people to college--if you are a 17-year-old looking for a more high consumption lifestyle, and you doubt you can make it as a rapper or professional athlete, then you still notice that the lawyers and doctors and bankers live in more expensive homes and drive more expensive cars than carpenters and plumbers and truck drivers, unless these own a substantial business. You trot down to the recruiting station to consider signing up, and find out that people are sorted into enlisted and officers, and officers are paid quite a bit more, and pretty much all have college degrees. I could go on, but to get to my point, students can "see" the worth of a college degree, and the social capital that goes with it as well. This isn't just teachers "pushing" students who otherwise would have no clue. And even if teachers stop "pushing," that won't stop students from noticing how rewards are distributed in US society.
(06-28-2019, 04:13 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: So now your point is that sure there's a ton of college students you saw living well above their means, throwing it all onto their increasing debt, but short of a full sized study, you're not willing to admit that they're connected? That's the criteria we now have on this board? Perform a full scientific study or we can't even make the simplest and most basic of obvious conclusions?
As for your seeing them working at the local fast food services (which sounds an awful lot like a "personal experience" that I heard isn't a reliable indicator): https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-spring-break-spots-0203-biz-20150202-story.html
From 2015, where more than 50% planned on Spring Break trips to warm destinations.. ranging from trips to Vegas, Cancun, Punta Cana.
I'm sure their minimum wage job pays off the Spring Break trip 50%+ of them go on every year.
Maybe less YOLO and more fiscal responsibility and student debt wouldn't be such an issue. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateashford/2017/03/29/loans-spring-break/#4fb25dd96db6
30.6% of students reported using student loans to fund Spring Break trips... and that's just the amount willing to say yes.
Well, no. my point is not that I saw "a ton" of college students living well above their means. I have not seen that. (My student renter is living a pretty frugal lifestyle, as far as I can see, but then she is Nigerian.) Students working in local fast food restaurants signals a willingness to work wherever at low wages (at least for those students; my observations are not made to bear the burden yours do). Several of my wife's students have earned money cleaning our house. I don't travel to Florida or Cancun during spring break so I have not seen the real high rollers. That said, I wouldn't dispute that there may be many college students, maybe more than in my day, who are addicted to consumer goods and less self-disciplined. That would be expected in a consumer society, where education has been largely displaced by "training."
But we don't have these high college costs and large loans because students are "greedy" and stupid. These owe to structural changes in funding policy, and in loan policy written on behalf of banks.
And let's read your articles carefully. The CT article states 50% plan trips for spring break, but it does not say that most are going to Cancun. Just many. For many, probably a majority of students, the "trip" they are planning is a trip home, no different than fall break, or "Thanksgiving" as it is sometimes known.
Of those who are heading for more exotic spots, note that most are driving and sharing hotel rooms, and planning to spend less than $1,000.00. It is not clear whether ALL that money comes from the loan or some.
The Forbes article discusses daily living expenses like food and car payments coming from loans as well.
So even with your links, I can't see a ground for blaming students for policy changes which charge them more money for college and then loan them more money to pay it off. Looks to me more like debt is created around them and then "captured" by banks others who profit from the loans. The problem is not in Cancun.
Only 62.1% of college graduates even have a job requiring their level of education and only 27.3% have a job matching their college major.
She's actually the minority. The vast majority of people get a college degree in something and then don't even get a job related to it.
A note on this link. The authors of this study were only concerned with job markets in big cities, like Chicago and New York. Their numbers do not refer to all college graduates.
Though they measure the proportion of students who find jobs in their majors, they don't dismiss the achievement or value of a college degree because one's major is "unrelated" to the job one actually gets. And the issue helps make my point that degrees--and education--are about more than just jobs and majors.
People who learn how to read at a high level of literacy, to crunch numbers, and to do research communicable in professional, written forms can be adapted to a wide range of higher paying jobs. That hardly means their education was all wrong and worthless if their majors don't match. It means the general, the non-specific, non-market oriented aspects of their education proved of higher value. My sister-in-law got a Ph.D. in sociology, then a job in government, eventually running an entire department at homeland security totally unrelated to her major. High-level math skills got her foot in the door, not a specific degree in government or "security" (for which, in any case, no one could foresee a "demand" back in the 80s, when she got her degree).
Also, for the few who get "worthless" degrees and end up selling shoes, it is not clear at all that, when it comes citizenship and other aspects of life, these people are big losers, or that society is. It is also not clear that their non-college job is permanent. They still have some options those without a degree do not.
(06-28-2019, 05:01 PM)Benton Wrote: I dropped out of college twice because I couldn't afford it and I knew in my industry, the likelihood of being able to pay it off wasn't likely.
So, will they forgive my mortgage? Maybe pay off the credit card debt I racked up working low wage jobs before I got a decent payingjob?
Let's focus on the "couldn't afford it" part. That's what needs fixing.
![[Image: giphy.gif]](https://media0.giphy.com/media/1kwsTjL8BNqlszNtnCE/giphy.gif)
![[Image: jamarr-chase.gif]](https://media.tenor.com/Ycw6u-nmw3AAAAAM/jamarr-chase.gif)
![[Image: 4CV0TeR.png]](https://i.imgur.com/4CV0TeR.png)
![[Image: go-away-snail.gif]](https://runt-of-the-web.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/go-away-snail.gif)
