Shocker - Common Core not giving good outcomes

[davewill]

Most importantly, though, these families also have the funds to pursue higher education, which is often considered beyond the reach of many Americans. I've found that even on this forum, one that intends to democratize access to higher education, posting opinions about universal education or student loan forgiveness is met with refrains similar to "I've already got mine." It presents a really remarkable dichotomy for me, but that's politicizing a topic, too... 

So, first, since you don't live here, you won't be paying for the degrees of anyone, so it's kind of hard to take this seriously from you.

This is not cool at all. Just how "serious" is a forum discussion, anyway? ChiGuy obviously has some insight into the subject, and I, for one, value his input.

Let's let the market take care of this, which we are already seeing - many families are seeing the student loan crisis and saying "no thanks" and sending their kids to CC first, kids are taking gap years to save up money, students are choosing trade schools, students are choosing less expensive options, etc.  The market WILL take care of this problem if we let it.  But paying for everyone who made bad decisions is NOT going to make people make better decisions in the future.

I haven't noticed the "market" helping with the process AT ALL. Pretty much all of the affordable college options are public schools, not market driven options. If we truly left it to the market, I expect that the rich would be going to expensive schools and the rest of us would have no access at all. A truly free market always devolves into a wealth gap.

Beef up the public university system, take control of it's spending and we could make it easier to access and more uniformly affordable. THEN we could consider junking the current aid system.

[indigoshuffle]

Most importantly, though, these families also have the funds to pursue higher education, which is often considered beyond the reach of many Americans. I've found that even on this forum, one that intends to democratize access to higher education, posting opinions about universal education or student loan forgiveness is met with refrains similar to "I've already got mine." It presents a really remarkable dichotomy for me, but that's politicizing a topic, too... 

So, first, since you don't live here, you won't be paying for the degrees of anyone, so it's kind of hard to take this seriously from you.

This is not cool at all. Just how "serious" is a forum discussion, anyway? ChiGuy obviously has some insight into the subject, and I, for one, value his input.

Let's let the market take care of this, which we are already seeing - many families are seeing the student loan crisis and saying "no thanks" and sending their kids to CC first, kids are taking gap years to save up money, students are choosing trade schools, students are choosing less expensive options, etc.  The market WILL take care of this problem if we let it.  But paying for everyone who made bad decisions is NOT going to make people make better decisions in the future.

I haven't noticed the "market" helping with the process AT ALL. Pretty much all of the affordable college options are public schools, not market driven options. If we truly left it to the market, I expect that the rich would be going to expensive schools and the rest of us would have no access at all. A truly free market always devolves into a wealth gap.

Beef up the public university system, take control of it's spending and we could make it easier to access and more uniformly affordable. THEN we could consider junking the current aid system.

Sir, I agree.

[bluebooger]

get rid of all "studies" degrees (gender, asian, african american)
this was a good start
https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=10393
LOL at "fat studies" courses
"The courses, typically taught in women's studies or sociology departments, teach students about issues such as 'weight justice', 'fat liberation', and 'fatness as a social construct'."
what an incredibly stupid idea and waste of money and resources

[videogamesrock]

Beef up the public university system, take control of it's spending and we could make it easier to access and more uniformly affordable. THEN we could consider junking the current aid system.

Who would take control of the spending and what would be the incentive to do so?




Sent from my typewriter.

[jsd]

Who would take control of the spending and what would be the incentive to do so?

Exactly. The private sector has proven itself to be a bad-faith actor.

Luckily, we're finally looking at alternatives to privatization, which for the past 30 years or so was for some reason the only option limited-minded folks could offer. Now we're finally seeing a movement that looks beyond this failed dynamic.

[changeyourmind90]

Most importantly, though, these families also have the funds to pursue higher education, which is often considered beyond the reach of many Americans. I've found that even on this forum, one that intends to democratize access to higher education, posting opinions about universal education or student loan forgiveness is met with refrains similar to "I've already got mine." It presents a really remarkable dichotomy for me, but that's politicizing a topic, too... 

So, first, since you don't live here, you won't be paying for the degrees of anyone, so it's kind of hard to take this seriously from you.

BUT, if we were to forgive ALL $1.5 Trillion in student loans right now, that would mean that everyone, including poor and middle-class taxpayers, and including people who already paid for their own college (or chose not to go) would be paying for people who chose to go somewhere they maybe couldn't afford.  I know LOTS of people who are struggling to pay their own way through college, or for their kids college, or who went to community college first, to avoid student loans.  LOTS of people who worked 2-3 jobs to pay their way through college (or for their kids' college).  You're telling everyone who does NOT have college debt, that they need to pay for those that do, even if those people had other options, and chose to go the debt way instead.  You're telling everyone who paid off their own debt, that they're now paying for everyone else's debt.

Also, this doesn't address the problem of the cost of college, which is just about 100% of the problem right now.  Colleges have been on a spending spree for 30-40 years.  They build bigger, nicer dorms (granite counters, hard-wood floors, private bathrooms, walk-in closets).  Have better food (weekly lobster dinners or an on-campus steakhouse).  And better amenities (lazy rivers, climbing walls, free ice-cream) than you could ever imagine.  Professors are paid more to teach less.  Spending is out of control, and it's not on professors or other necessary people.  It's in administration, with an ever-increasing salaries paid to and ever-increasing number of deans and professional staffers.  The costs balloon on an annual basis, and there is no reason for schools to watch the bottom line.  If you were to pay off everyone's student loans today, many of those students would go get another student loan for next year's tuition.  AND, if students thought we'd be doing this again, MORE students would choose to get a student loan in the hopes that they'd be paid off the next time around.  That means students who previously considered working, or going to CC for 2 years, or choosing a less expensive school to avoid debt, would have no reason to do any of this.  Instead, they'd choose the most expensive school, or their "dream school" or go out-of-state, because they'd know there was no reason to be prudent.

Let's let the market take care of this, which we are already seeing - many families are seeing the student loan crisis and saying "no thanks" and sending their kids to CC first, kids are taking gap years to save up money, students are choosing trade schools, students are choosing less expensive options, etc.  The market WILL take care of this problem if we let it.  But paying for everyone who made bad decisions is NOT going to make people make better decisions in the future.

Market cannot always take care. Sometimes, we need some more regulation.

[PrettyFlyforaChiGuy]

Most importantly, though, these families also have the funds to pursue higher education, which is often considered beyond the reach of many Americans. I've found that even on this forum, one that intends to democratize access to higher education, posting opinions about universal education or student loan forgiveness is met with refrains similar to "I've already got mine." It presents a really remarkable dichotomy for me, but that's politicizing a topic, too... 

So, first, since you don't live here, you won't be paying for the degrees of anyone, so it's kind of hard to take this seriously from you.

BUT, if we were to forgive ALL $1.5 Trillion in student loans right now, that would mean that everyone, including poor and middle-class taxpayers, and including people who already paid for their own college (or chose not to go) would be paying for people who chose to go somewhere they maybe couldn't afford.  I know LOTS of people who are struggling to pay their own way through college, or for their kids college, or who went to community college first, to avoid student loans.  LOTS of people who worked 2-3 jobs to pay their way through college (or for their kids' college).  You're telling everyone who does NOT have college debt, that they need to pay for those that do, even if those people had other options, and chose to go the debt way instead.  You're telling everyone who paid off their own debt, that they're now paying for everyone else's debt.

Also, this doesn't address the problem of the cost of college, which is just about 100% of the problem right now.  Colleges have been on a spending spree for 30-40 years.  They build bigger, nicer dorms (granite counters, hard-wood floors, private bathrooms, walk-in closets).  Have better food (weekly lobster dinners or an on-campus steakhouse).  And better amenities (lazy rivers, climbing walls, free ice-cream) than you could ever imagine.  Professors are paid more to teach less.  Spending is out of control, and it's not on professors or other necessary people.  It's in administration, with an ever-increasing salaries paid to and ever-increasing number of deans and professional staffers.  The costs balloon on an annual basis, and there is no reason for schools to watch the bottom line.  If you were to pay off everyone's student loans today, many of those students would go get another student loan for next year's tuition.  AND, if students thought we'd be doing this again, MORE students would choose to get a student loan in the hopes that they'd be paid off the next time around.  That means students who previously considered working, or going to CC for 2 years, or choosing a less expensive school to avoid debt, would have no reason to do any of this.  Instead, they'd choose the most expensive school, or their "dream school" or go out-of-state, because they'd know there was no reason to be prudent.

Sorry, I only saw this now, months later. You do have some very good points here, and I agree with some of these things. I think it's important to talk about issues, even when we don't always agree.

First, I want to address how my own background influences my thoughts on this. It's actually a self-reflection process I had to work through during my college access certificate, but I think other users could seem a lot of common ground.

I am a U.S. citizen working abroad. Foreign-earned income is excluded up to a certain amount to avoid double taxation, but I do remember I was still on the hook for like $7K one year and somewhere under $1K some other time. Never got a refund in my life, and if I got that recent stimulus, it's sitting untouched in my mailbox in the USA. I do throw into the kitty back home, and do file state taxes too, even though my state stubbornly remains the country's black hole.

I came from a low-income 1st-gen, single-parent background in the poorest state in the country. I'm proud of myself but not full of myself to think I pulled myself up by the bootstraps and all of that, since I received Pell grants and loans back in undergrad, like many users here.

I say all this because as a low-income kid, I entered senior year of high school with no plans to even attend college at all. No one in my whole family ever had been, and our high school counselors were overloaded and weren't pushing most students toward unis as it was. It just wasn't really seen as a possibility to me. If Tulane hadn't sent me a random postcard waiving their application fee if I applied early, I may well have ended up on this forum like most other users, working my way up through these very compelling, very interesting alternative approaches, because I also always loved learning and growing.

As an admissions counselor now, I understand that their random postcard was really just a perverse strategy to game their perceived prestige in shitty rags like U.S. News, by attracting a buttload of applicants to toss in their application so that the school looks competitive. (If anyone lives up north, this is also partly how Northeastern has rocketed up those rankings from a middling ~Top 160 to waffling around ~40). I also understand that those campus amenities, popping up at both private and public institutions, are also meant to highlight the "campus experience" of being a student there. Admin costs have definitely ballooned, probably as a function of requiring staff to run the programs, but I haven't really explored research to learn more. 

My university was and is one of those private unis that sees itself in a cost-of-attending arms race with other competitive unis around the country, but just like those Ivies will meet all demonstrated financial need for applicants, they also did take affordability pretty seriously. I didn't know anything about university prestige or essay strategy or loan terms back then; I just got a random postcard that ultimately led me around the whole world, eventually learning about the needs of both highly privileged kids and those who were much closer to who I was back then.  

Even though my university was quite literally underwater for half a year since Hurricane Katrina happened on my first day of class, like many other users here, I got around the vagaries of life, worked hard, and graduated in about 2.5 years with 5 years' of credits to save a bundle. I paid off all the loans by age 22 (I think $20K total?), working as a teacher while paying rent like other people here. I also paid off the recent Walden MS degree as I chugged along, with no kind of workplace tuition reimbursement. Hell, they wouldn't even pay for either of the affordable college access certificates, directly connected to my job performance. So much for welfare capitalism.

Still, I fully see the value of clearing out those loans for other people who are underwater. I have met the mythical bad apples who abuse the system--they do exist!--coworkers and other foreigners abroad who overtly try to avoid their loans back home, since they don't expect to build a life there. This leaves a bad taste in my mouth, since like you, I see everything that I put in and paid off. 

However, just as is the case with the documented low abuse rates for welfare recipients, I also think that a greater amount of people are simply trying their hardest to start a life post-graduation. Even though they should have known better or done more research or been better-prepared, like me and probably several other voices here, they probably didn't know too much about college or financing it, and wouldn't have even gotten onto the path of higher education if it weren't for any number of seemingly random push/pull factors cropping up in their lives.

Yes, it is ultimately their responsibility and even their fault, and they did legally agree to loan terms. Still, with so many other bailouts going around willy-nilly, the economic boon of wiping out a good portion of student loan debt would allow kids to invest on big-ticket items like deposits on homes, cars, further studies, or any other number of items that would get the economy churning. My own background allowed me to experience the relief of getting out of a loan, and even though I paid it off on my own, I'm very aware that most people in a similar background may not have been so fortunate.