Cost for Feds to support it

And if the rigor were stepped up and the fluff courses dropped it would be even cheaper...

This article ignores basic economics. If tuition were "free", (being paid by someone else in other words), the demand for college would increase dramatically and so would the costs.

You fix that by setting entry standards appropriately. Works OK here.

When I went to university, in England in the 80s, not only did I not pay fees but there was a maintenance grant (although well-off parents were supposed to make a contribution to that). Fewer people went to university then than now; it was competitive. One effect was that students felt an obligation to work hard not only because it was in their interests (which as always it was) but also because the taxpayer was paying. One was, in effect, employed by the state, albeit at a subsistence rate. Today's students often have difficulty reconciling "I'm paying for this so I'm entitled..." with "in order to learn I'm obliged...".

Might be good if they set standards, as noted above by ColinsMum. In fact, some public universities already offer free full tuition for good students. Take these two for example:

http://scholarships.ua.edu/types/out_of_state.html

http://admissions.temple.edu/sites/...88_1213_scholarship_info_sheet_FINAL.pdf

I wish that all public institutions (or at least more) would offer free tuition for SATs of 1400+ or ACTs of 32+. Maybe my kid would have gone to a public college and would have saved us a bundle.

I generally agree with your point ColinsMum that having high standards is one good way to control demand. Despite that, didn't the UK recently allow tuition fees of 9000 pounds per year?

Here=Scotland; different system from England, as education is a devolved matter. Scottish students studying in Scotland do not pay fees. By a quirk of EU law, neither do EU-but-not-UK students studying here, but rUK (rest of UK, i.e. not Scotland) students studying here do!

Our costs (NZ) are steadily increasing but still cheap by world standards and there are interest free loans and allowances for poorer students (for a limited period). But really there are too dormant people going to university so now you need a degree to do things that really don't require it and don't pay enough to justify one. For something that used to require a degree you now practically need a PhD. People are expected to study or work after leaving school and with fewer jobs more people study appropriate or not. And there are some courses you can get loans for that traditionally done while working (diving and aviation for a start) and have high fees.

I concur wholeheartedly.

I wish that more schools WOULD 'comp' students whose combined profile places them at "highly likely to graduate" because the pricing in the US is now at a point where a good many of those students are being forced to sign on to a life of basically debt servitude to ATTEND college.

The "best bargains" in higher ed now-- setting income levels aside momentarily and just looking at sticker pricing-- are often 10-20K annually. That is resident tuition and very bare-bones living expenses.

People who are at/above the federal poverty line do not get much help meeting those expenses outside of need-based scholarships, and the majority of THOSE are small dollar values-- $500 here, $1000 there, and often non-renewable, so each year is another round of stressfully cobbling together monies.

My family is NOT wealthy by any means, and our "estimated EFC" is between 16K and 30K annually, depending upon the institution's own calculations. Realistically, we can afford to write checks nearly up to that lower boundary-- by being very careful indeed and paring expenses. But there's simply no feasible way that we COULD come up with 30K a year without selling our house.

Okay, so assuming that a college costs 50K annually...

that's a gap of at least 20K (assuming that we COULD write a check for 30K). DD doesn't qualify for a Pell grant, barely qualifies for work-study (say, $1000), and then there is another $5500 in subsidized student loans annually. The rest? UNSECURED debt, either hers or ours.

It's fairly grim, honestly. If you aren't a low-income household living in a low-cost-of-living area, or a VERY high income one (top 2%), this is a serious problem.

We estimate our out of pocket cost for DD to attend undergrad at one of the nation's "best buy" public universities is going to run about 30K, unless she gets lucky and pulls in a 4y renewable "presidential" full-tuition, merit-based scholarship-- the institution offers about 60 of those a year to the top students in their incoming class of 4000 students. We estimate her odds of that are about 25-40%.

And she will be living at home. We've got something close to that amount saved for this purpose-- which places us in a much better position than many families of similar income and SES.


There's simply no way that we COULD cover the costs of a place like HMC or MIT without debt (unacceptable to us personally) or a second working parent (which was the plan).

I went to the University in Czech Republic. There's no tuition for public universities. They are very competitive and only the best get into those. There's no "general studies" type of classes in college. You go study your major. General studies are done in high school. No reason to repeat them in college. You don't go get an undergraduate degree and then apply for law school, medical school, vet school, etc. You go to those directly from high school based on your entrance exams and your grades. You go to college with serious knowledge already acquired and you build on it. Those who are not good enough to get into the public university can chose a private and pay for it. Great system! Wish we had it here in the US!

Mk13, I did my undergrad in my home country in Asia. And it is the same there. Only the best get into public schools. The rest have to pay to go to a private institution. My total costs (fee, lodging, all expenses) for 5-year undergrad was 3 months of my dad's salary ( and we are a lower middle class family) so he paid for it and I graduated debt free. Came to the US for graduate study with full assistantship. Graduated with $2000 in my pocket and a well paying job. Now I am saving as much as I can so dd can get the same benefits I did.

Here (NZ) for medicine, vet, law, engineering, dentistry etc you go into a "pre" year which is the first year in the degree then if you get high enough grades you age allowed to continue (usually at least A's and some years that doesn't get you a place). If you don't you switch to a BSc or something for your next two years to get your bachelors degree and then can do postgrad. Like the poster above you don't do general stuff at that level and often for the last few years of high school you will have been aiming there. Eg for engineering you may have done English, calculus, statistics, physics, chemistry and biology for the last year, English, maths (not split yet), and 3 sciences for the year before that. Some students may have dropped the English in the last year because 6 subjects at that level is hard to manage.

Eta I really like the idea of a generalist interest course but it does seem to have a profit motive and delay earning excessively.

Ouch! It's actually $60K these days at places like Harvey Mudd and MIT. However, something good may be starting. Has anyone else read about a small (but apparently growing) number of colleges that are slashing tuition costs? It's been in the news lately: tuition cuts at various colleges.

It's a national shame that we soak our young people and/or their parents for everything they've got and more while telling them it's all necessary in order to succeed.

I am from the UK like ColinsMum and I benefited from the same system. I truly cannot understand how this country pays so much incarcerating its citizens but refuses to spend on cultivating its best and brightest.

Once upon a time the California Universities were almost free, only a small amount of "fees" were required. This didn't include cost of living but the cost of attending was very inexpensive. But alas because of politics that is no more.

My DD19 (sophomore) is at one of these smaller, less prestigious schools that is slashing tuition costs. We got a letter this fall that they lowering tuition next year. What they are really doing is "flattening" the fee structure. Currently almost every student has some sort of scholarship that makes the 'real' cost for school less. The amount of those scholarships will go down and fewer scholarships/grants will be given in the future. In reality the school won't be getting less, the cost will be more 'even' and transparent and they are hoping to attract more students to the school this way.

We haven't yet heard how much my daughters scholarship will be slashed but even if it goes down to zero, we will still be saving a little money on tuition. Cost of living (dorm/food) will probably still go up.

Well said!!!

No, I don't want my even more of my tax dollars subsidizing the nonsense in American higher education:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304858104579264321265378790
The Humanities Have Forgotten Their Humanity
When Shakespeare lost out to 'rubrics of gender, sexuality, race, and class' at UCLA, something vital was harmed.
Heather Mac Donald
Wall Street Journal
January 3, 2014

In 2011, the University of California at Los Angeles wrecked its English major. Such a development may seem insignificant, compared with, say, the federal takeover of health care. It is not. What happened at UCLA is part of a momentous shift that bears on our relationship to the past—and to civilization itself.

Until 2011, students majoring in English at UCLA had to take one course in Chaucer, two in Shakespeare, and one in Milton —the cornerstones of English literature. Following a revolt of the junior faculty, however, during which it was announced that Shakespeare was part of the "Empire," UCLA junked these individual author requirements. It replaced them with a mandate that all English majors take a total of three courses in the following four areas: Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Disability and Sexuality Studies; Imperial, Transnational, and Postcolonial Studies; genre studies, interdisciplinary studies, and critical theory; or creative writing.

In other words, the UCLA faculty was now officially indifferent to whether an English major had ever read a word of Chaucer, Milton or Shakespeare, but the department was determined to expose students, according to the course catalog, to "alternative rubrics of gender, sexuality, race, and class."

Such defenestrations have happened elsewhere, and long before 2011. But the UCLA coup was particularly significant because the school's English department was one of the last champions of the historically informed study of great literature, uncorrupted by an ideological overlay. Precisely for that reason, it was the most popular English major in the country, enrolling a whopping 1,400 undergraduates.

The UCLA coup represents the characteristic academic traits of our time: narcissism, an obsession with victimhood, and a relentless determination to reduce the stunning complexity of the past to the shallow categories of identity and class politics. Sitting atop an entire civilization of aesthetic wonders, the contemporary academic wants only to study oppression, preferably his or her own, defined reductively according to gonads and melanin.

Course catalogs today babble monotonously of group identity. UCLA's undergraduates can take courses in Women of Color in the U.S.; Women and Gender in the Caribbean; Chicana Feminism; Studies in Queer Literatures and Cultures; and Feminist and Queer Theory.

Because this country is penny-wise and pound foolish... a philosophy better (and ironically) known as "fiscal conservatism."

You can invest a handful of thousands in someone for a few years (and not just your best and brightest), and then mine them for income taxes for a couple of generations. Or, you can ignore their needs when they're young, then imprison them at far greater expense for a couple of generations. This country has chosen the second option.

What's the real point of an English major, Bostonian? This is a debatable question, is it not? If we want to look at it from a "marketable skills" POV, as everyone really seems to want to these days, then one can learn to write coherently, develop critical thinking skills, and argue a point whether one is reading Audre Lorde or Milton.

I was an English major and I have never read Milton. I don't seem to be dead.

Actually, the classes I took on the sort of thing that article pooh-poohs have been far more useful to me in my daily life than the one I took in, say, Medieval English Literature. That hasn't come up much, but understanding racism, sexism, etc has.

Furthermore, if you want to take a HARD English class, try taking one in literary theory.

I would like to offer an outsider's perspective. Please note that this is in no way meant to be offending. As a bright girl that grew up in my home country in Asia, I was revered. Other children wanted to be my friend. Their parents wanted them to emulate me. I felt like a hero and it really helped my self confidence. This is true for other bright kids in my country too. They are literally worshiped and both parents and the society appreciate and value their intelligence. We are the hope for the country's future. I have now lived in the US for more than 15 years and based on my observations, I do not believe the same is true here. Nerd and geek are not compliments here. Not many want to be friends with a kid in thick glasses and a book in his/her hand. Parents sneer upon such kids and believe their their more "well-rounded" kid is so much better. I find that here as a society, athleticism and beauty are valued more than intelligence during one's youth. Again, I may be completely off with my assessments as I did not attend schooling here.

While I agree that many US English departments have gone off the rails (and that many of the education departments were never even on the rails to begin with), I also think that suggesting that no tax dollars be used to subsidize education is punishing all students as a way to show disapproval for dodgy ideas among a minority of faculty.

Dude was right; our society is being penny wise and pound foolish. Though our university problem isn't limited to the costs of education. Research is also a relatively low priority in the federal government. By this I mean that too few grants are funded, indirect costs (free money to universities) are way too high (e.g. 70% of the total given to a researcher is added on for Harvard), and giant million+ dollar grants restrict what's available for the investigator-led grants that used to be the cornerstone of innovation in the US. And then there is the insanity of the federal government paying salaries of principal investigators via grants. In all but the smallest organizations, the universities should be paying their salaries. Okay, rant off, but this approach is killing innovation in this country.

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66
National Center for Education Statistics
That is $153K over 12 years, for the majority, not just the "best and brightest".

It's not clear that efforts to increase the college attendance and graduation rates of low-SES students improves their overall welfare:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/04/can-upward-mobility-cost-you-your-health/
Can Upward Mobility Cost You Your Health?
By GREGORY E. MILLER, EDITH CHEN and GENE H. BRODY
New York Times
January 4, 2014

...

Among American children there are wide socioeconomic gaps on many dimensions of well-being: school achievement, mental health, drug use, teenage pregnancy and juvenile incarceration, to name just a few. Despite the risks that lower-income children face, we also know that a significant minority beat the odds. They perform admirably in school, avoid drugs and go on to college.

Psychologists refer to these children as resilient, because they achieve positive outcomes in adverse circumstances. They do so in part by cultivating a kind of determined persistence. Often with nurturing from a parent, relative or mentor, they set goals for the future, work diligently toward them, navigate setbacks, stay focused on the long term and resist temptations that might knock them off the ladder to success.

Several years ago, we began studying these resilient young people, trying to find out if their success stories also translated into physical health benefits. We reasoned that, if disadvantaged children were succeeding academically and emotionally, they might also be protected from health problems that were more common in lower-income youth. As it turned out, the exact opposite was true. These young people were achieving success by all conventional markers: doing well academically, staying out of trouble, making friends and developing a positive sense of self. Underneath, however, their physical health was deteriorating.

Our first hints of this pattern came from a study of 489 rural African-American young people in Georgia, whom one of us, Gene Brody, has been tracking for more than 15 years. Most came from families who were working but poor. In 2010, their average family income was about $12,000 a year; about half lived below the poverty line. We found a subgroup of resilient children who, despite these obstacles, were rated, at age 11, by their teachers as being diligent, focused, patient, academically successful and strong in social skills.

We followed these young people until they were 19 and studied their mental and physical health, focusing on depression, drug use, aggression and criminal behavior. As in past studies, those who were rated positively at age 11 had relatively few of these problems when they were 19. When we looked beneath the surface, though, these apparently resilient young people were not faring well. Compared with others in the study, they were more obese, had higher blood pressure and produced more stress hormones (like cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenaline). Remarkably, their health was even worse than peers who, at age 11, had been rated by teachers as aggressive, difficult and isolated. They were at substantial risk for developing diabetes or hypertension down the line.

Err...you're off-topic on both counts there. The thread is about tuition at US public universities, not public school expenditures or the health of low SES people who went to college.

Bostonian, thank you for posting and sharing this WSJ op ed. This underscores a debate which has been ongoing for decades: the value of liberal arts education (sometimes called classical education) -vs- career-oriented education (sometimes called vocational training or vocational education). Over time, the lines may have become blurred.

Some have said the classical education takes the long view and teaches a commonality throughout the centuries. Vocational education may be more specialized to the issues and economy of a particular time and place. Both are needed, but to supplant the classical with the vocational, terming career prep content as liberal arts is the concern.

While another poster shared that their education had furnished them with debate skills, their summative response that they are not dead does not seem to answer or debate any point previously presented.

Lovemydd, yes I observe what you do in the US. Intelligence may not be highly regarded. On the surface intelligence may be denigrated, while the underlying sentiment may be fear of loss of control over those with unusually high intelligence. Breaking a horse comes to mind.

In thinking deeply about the OP's article on free tuition at US public universities, when viewed from many perspectives we are left wondering what has spurred the rapid increase in tuition? Funding research? Shifting costs to some students in order to subsidize others? Paying out lifetime retirement benefits? The most effective answers to controlling costs of higher education may be in identifying the areas of cost growth, prior to considering how growing costs might be financed. As with gifted students, each institution may have a unique profile, and therefore a unique approach, rather than a one-size-fits-all policy.

Yes, exactly.


The easy availability of student loans has been one driver you didn't mention. They raise the price because they can.

When I started college in the mid 1980s, they told us that tuition "didn't begin to cover the costs of your education." This problem was supposed to justify annual increases that were much greater than increases in the cost of living. Thirty years later, they're still saying the same thing. I stopped believing them a long time ago.

As a little thought experiment about costs, a full load of classes is usually 4 per semester. At, say, Harvard, tuition is almost $39,000 this year, which means that a student is paying almost $4,900 per class.* This is a pretty standard price at many private colleges. I find it hard to believe that it really costs more than $240,000 to run introductory biology or chemistry for 50 students. And any class not requiring a lab is going to cost even less.

*Yes, many students get financial aid, but loans are a big part of financial aid, and they go straight into the university's coffers. But even if we knock half of the big number I quoted, I still doubt that a college or university is really spending that much on a single class.

And here I thought we were talking about college...

Naturally. Education is one potential investment that can solve the problems associated with low SES, but it's a wasted effort if the beneficiaries are still struggling with needs much further down Maslow's hierarchy.

Countries with stronger social safety nets yield very different results than those you cite. This country prefers to direct its entitlements and safety nets to the upper class instead.

With the oft-stated goal of US education through high school being the creation of students who are "college and career ready"...

and with previous non-US posters sharing the sense of meritocracy in continuing higher education in their area...

and with other posters comparing incarceration costs to educational costs...

I personally DO see the connection between Bostonian's most recent post and the OP's article...

as well as a strong connection between that post and the overall flow of conversation, addressing concerns raised by several posters...

The US *is* investing in the education of all individuals.

Exactly. A lot of people enter college lacking the basic skills they need to get a degree. These skills are a lot more than just academic skills (which are often also not furnished by the schools).

Our society encourages everyone to go to college, yet many aren't ready for college. We say that we're trying to help them find a better future, but we're really just yoking a lot of them to debt. This is wrong, and damages not just individuals, but the country as a whole.

He's talking about people like my first college roommate who had already been arrested for a felony.

He was not low SES, although he was a bit of a wackadoo.

One of my first memories of college was him ripping off the window screen to climb into bed through his window.

Both he and I had free tuition, so it seems relevant!

I agree, but "free tuition at US public universities" sends the message that everyone should go to college, just as free K-12 schooling sends the message that everyone should finish high school. As an alternative, giving 18-year-olds a grant of say $40,000 that could be used either for higher education *OR* to offset the first $40,000 of their social security and payroll taxes would not biased in favor of college over work.

They can't just be free. They need to be free for the best of the best. The rest can pay their way through private schools or find a job after high school and become "skilled labor" so those jobs that need skills wouldn't be all done overseas.

On the contrary. Easy admissions and our educational establishment send that message. Minimum entry requirements (as noted by ColinsMum) send the message that only people who do well on the test should go to college.

Ireland abolished fees some years ago in attempt to equalize the SES distribution in higher education. It didn't work out as planned.

People who don't enjoy studying are unlikely to go to college if there are 1) reasonable options for employment and 2) there's no general message telling them the NEED TO GO TO COLLEGE!!!

Who defines the best of the best? The SAT? Grades? Recommendation letters? All you get in a system like this is an arms race weighted toward stressed-out tiger cubs. No thank you.

Anyone who qualifies for admission should be allowed to go to public universities for free provided they maintain minimum grades as set by the university.

I'm going back to liking the European system (might not be all of the countries but many of them) where you apply to school with a particular major in mind, you take entrance exams targeted towards that major, prove your knowledge in that field, and get admitted based on those test results. No SATs, ACTs, or other things like that. It's knowledge based. You study really hard in high school, especially in your senior year to do your best on those tests. Some universities have written and oral entrance exams. My nephew just started Law school at the best of the few public universities in the country. He had his eyes on the prize since early middle school and everything he did was with wanting to go to that particular school and program in mind.

The system has it's flaws but I still like it a lot better than the college system in the US. High schools are free to everyone ... college is beyond what's necessary for many people in many occupations.

The problem is, for the free public university system to work, the whole high school system would have to be redesigned too. ... more trade / vocational schools, more selective college prep schools (public, not private costing you arm and leg).

I agree 100% with your previous two messages.

I have degrees from two European universities and one American one, and the European model is much fairer. IMO, the national curricula in the primary and secondary schools are a part of what makes it fairer. Americans don't like the idea of a national curriculum. But...


...oddly enough, this country has de facto national curricula in most subjects --- they're written by the big textbook manufacturers and the big testing testing companies (Pearson, the College Board and its AP exams, etc.). Yet people cling to the belief that there is "local control," presumably because their school board chooses Big EduCo Book A over Big EduCo Book B.

Oh dear.

I'm still not sure what the point of college is in the first place.

As far as I can tell, it was a waste of five years of my life and I took the place of someone who would have actually found it useful and had some interest in being there.

Although I did like the fact that it was free.

They do have local control.

They can dump the current school board and make life miserable for the superintendent who promptly has a stroke.

Bingo.


Loving Jon's observations, however. LOL. I think that in some cases (see Irena's recent thread for details) this is a real winner of a plan, actually.

What do you suggest as an alternative, Val?

The tiger mom/cub arms race already exists today, but fortunately the percentage is relatively small. My kids attend a quite competitive school district and even here most kids just have fun during the summer.

If college were free, the percentage would increase, but I don't see the US becoming like Korea or Japan. For better or worse, most parents don't emphasize education that highly.

If you read the earlier messages in this thread, you'll see.

An arms race is a negative sum game, but Tiger Parents are creating opportunities for others. In my town there is a weekend school of Chinese culture with classes in Mandarin, English, math, and gymnastics. For every Tiger Mom there is a Tiger Dad, and I can say from experience that many Chinese fathers (with advanced degrees in math, the natural sciences, or engineering) are good math instructors. If you can't beat them, join them.

Better maxim: The only way to win the game is not to play.

http://www.livescience.com/18023-tiger-parenting-tough-kids.html

Yes, in terms of sport event ticket sales college athletics may be seen as a profit center whereas academics may be seen as a cost center for that institution. Economics.

NCAA Div I Finances

Methodology

Basically, state and school support are listed in the Revenues column, and also in the Subsidy column, so if the subsidy is greater than profits, sports are a loss generator, not an income generator.

By this rubric, only 23 of the 228 reporting Division I schools generate income from their sports programs. The overall economic impact is a $2B loss.

Thank you, Dude, for illuminating how the US public Universities might significantly lower their costs, possibly affording free tuition: by eliminating collegiate sports and their associated economic losses.

[If collegiate sports were truly a loss, would they continue? No. institutions embark on an upward spiral of optional investment, leveraging ticket sales to drive fundraising and expenditures on infrastructure such as field improvements, addition of practice fields, better lighting, new fencing, enhanced scoreboards, additional stadium seating, luxury box seating, press box upgrades, etc.]

If you say so, but the evidence says otherwise.


Yes, because these things are required to recruit the most sought-after athletes, in order to present the best program, and thus draw the most fan dollars.

Such a collegiate sports arms race could be expected to drive escalating tuitions, fees, and state contributions, with no tangible benefits to education. Such an arms race could be expected to see very few winners, and a great many losers.

Kinda like we're seeing now.

However, colleges remain committed to their sports programs because they make the school look good, helping them in their recruiting for academic students. But recruiting costs don't end there, because prospective students are also drawn towards newer or upgraded facilities, and top ranks in US News rankings. So there's an arms race in those areas as well... leading to MORE escalating costs.

The result is, once again, an arms race that yields escalating costs and an increasing number of losers.

The only way to win the game is not to play.

According to a recent paper

************************************************

http://www.nber.org/digest/nov12/w18196.html
The Benefits of College Athletic Success
Unexpected regular season football victories by NCAA Division I-A schools increase alumni athletic donations … and applications.

In The Benefits of College Athletic Success: an Application of the Propensity Score Design with Instrumental Variables (NBER Working Paper No. 18196), Michael Anderson finds that unexpected regular season football victories by NCAA Division I-A schools increase alumni athletic donations by $134,000. These victories also increase applications by 1 percent, and they improve a college's 25th percentile SAT score by 1.8 points.

Anderson uses data on bookmaker spreads to estimate the probability of winning each football game, and thus to identify unexpected success. He then estimates the effect of unexpected success on donations and applications. He suggests that his observed effects likely operate through one of two channels. First, a team that plays well may be more enjoyable to watch, and if alumni and prospective students spend more time watching a college's team, they may feel more connected to the school. Second, fans and alumni may enjoy winning itself.

Anderson notes that a simultaneous investment of $1 million in every one of these teams probably would generate smaller effects on donations and applications than the surprise victories he studies, because team won/loss records are a zero sum game and improving the level of overall play would not create any more wins for a given team.

About 8 percent of the teams in Anderson's sample improve their season wins by five games over a one-year period. Improvements of that magnitude increase alumni athletic donations by $682,000 (28 percent), applications by 677 (5 percent), and 25th percentile SAT scores by 9 points (1 percent).

--Linda Gorman

************************************************

successful sports teams attract students and donations, so revenue from ticket sales and TV rights do not capture the full economic benefits to a school of sports teams.

Collegiate athletics are often justified on the basis of driving alumni loyalty-- and donations.

I simply have to assume that this claim has SOME validity, though it's probably also somewhat dubious, and difficult to really evaluate. ETA: As in Bostonian's example above, for instance-- if one team has an "unexpected" win, guess what? Someone else has had an unexpected LOSS. (Yes, Captain Obvious, but my point is that we in the Pac 12 states are woefully familiar with this particular process, let's just say.) It's a wash, in the end. Other than the improvement in VISIBILITY, I mean.

Social media is probably a far more effective tool, honestly-- but then again, social media didn't exist 20 years ago when all of the new college athletics facilities capital campaigns really got rolling.

It's also true that a big name-brand athletic presence may drive applications. Then again, places without big name athletics seem to do okay there, too. When's the last time that the UChi or Reed went to the Rose Bowl, KWIM?

Agreeing with HowlerKarma and adding the observation that 1.8 points on the SAT seems, well, negligible to me.

Donations are included under Revenue in the NCAA figures.

Most people don't know what a "Reed" is.

I'm pretty sure that when I hear the word "Reed" the emotional resonance I feel is precisely zero.

Granted, educated people can't tell the difference between Penn and Penn State.

Which is really, really funny to me.

This problem is caused the massive origination of credit that has no business existing in the first place. It's actually *very* adaptive, in the Darwinian sense, until suddenly, it isn't.

Law schools just hit the "isn't" point and it sure is fun to watch.

Hmmm.

You know, I haven't heard any rumblings about going after collegiate football programs for the entire brain damage problem that the NFL just got whacked with.

Hmmm.

Need to look into that one.

There is oneof the major issue, the only selection criteria for education at that level should be purely academic and the only sports spending there is any justification for is for degrees that include a sport aspect and facilities to promote general health and fitness for students. At high school there is a reason to provide sport to keep kids engaged but not at a level that detracts from academic excellence.

I've heard the same thing, Dude, and we live nowhere near one another, thus making it highly unlikely that it's the same source.

I also think that administrators and AD's tend to make "alumni giving" = "promoted by nationally competitive men's athletics program" without considering that not ALL alumni giving which is "uncategorized" is actually related to athletics.

That's what I meant about that particular line item. It's very easy to conflate the two things, but unless you choose to compare, for example... alumni giving at Stanford and UChi, you're not comparing apples to apples there.

That Penn State digression made me curious to see what the profit as a percent of revenue was overall, and when you subtract total subsidies and total expenses from total revenues, you're looking at a loss of 27%.

Only 7 schools had a positive return of 10% or more.

At the other end of the spectrum is Missouri-Kansas City, where expenses already exceed revenues even before you factor out the subsidies. Throw out those revenues, and you're looking at a loss of $10.3M, which actually exceeds revenues ($9.3M). So the taxpayers/students/fans in Missouri are living the old sports saw, "We're giving a hundred and ten (point six-two) percent!"

Okay, this is completely insane. Millions for the coaches, nothing (including classes, apparently) for the players except maybe permanent brain injuries, and it mostly seems to run at a loss. And then we have to have big honking hikes in tuition every year while we hire more and more adjuncts who lack job security and benefits (but they're cheap). I can't help but wonder if some of that tuition money is going to sports. All this at places of higher learning.

Just when you think you've hit rock bottom in the pit of American educational badness, your pick goes through the floor and you discover an entirely new set of caverns to explore.

I just came on line and read the whole thread. It went all over the map, from college tuition, to whether to push trades, to Penn State child molestation and the effect on athletic cash flow.

I think the trade thing is interesting. In planning to buy a house, I have been watching renovation shows and this guy up here, Mike Holmes has this big foundation to push kids going into trades. 30 years ago, people wanted their kids to go to college instead of becoming a plumber. But then you ended up with all these liberal arts degrees in the new millenium without good job prospects. I met a number of young people who, after getting a liberal arts degree -- and in debt, were now going for an Associates in Xray technology or something practical, that could have been had without the 4 years of expensive college prep. I think it is more about parental attitude.

What a fun side conversation this has been. That being said, OP please accept my apologies for straying off-topic. With athletics at stake, how could I resist?

The topic of escalating college costs is important and interrelated with many other aspects of our current society.

Someone mentioned developing a college as a meritocracy with transparency in program prerequisites and grades to be maintained to stay in the program? This may be ideal. As time passes, institutions tend to experience changes in supply/demand.

One example of a change may be an increase in projected job growth by the US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. If the school is at capacity and cannot admit a greater number of students, it may need to establish more selective criteria when the number of applications soars.

As another example of change, a competitor may establish a similar program. Now the two schools may be able to meet projected demand for new jobs, and they may vie for the "best" candidates: those whom they believe will be most rapidly employed upon commencement (or before). As prerequisites, each program may begin to consider what each prospective student has accomplished to date which may indicate they possess the personal and interpersonal skills to help them land a job and get a start in this field, by their graduation date.

If the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates a projected decrease in demand, each program may become even more selective, possibly adding additional prerequisites which applicants must now complete in high school or in a gap year prior to applying at the institution. The pressure is on. The program may change course content or add courses to provide a more market-ready job applicant upon graduation. Those already in the program may feel disadvantaged without the new content; In opting to enroll in new content courses, they may take longer to graduate. Statistics for employment upon commencement may be tracked individually for students graduating under the old program and those graduating under the new program.

By responding to supply/demand fluctuations in the economy, the entry requirements into colleges and the grades it takes to maintain a position in a program may change significantly, diminishing transparency with each layer of change.

Just my 2 cents.

Yes, I agree with you, Wren-- but societal/cultural forces are definitely being brought to bear on parental attitudes.

You're right, of course, that there is NO compelling reason for many people to obtain a "college education" as a substitute for apprenticeships and on-the-job training.

Then again, the same thing which is currently true in law school graduates COULD conceivably become the case with The Next Big Thing in the trades, as well. Just how many ultrasound technicians or plumbers DOES the nation need, anyway?

The problem is that everyone wants to know where the Gold Ring is, and encourage their child(ren) to grab for it. Just like everyone else, which simultaneously devalues the item which was of value largely as a result of high quality and scarcity to start with... meaning that as soon as you have a raft of WalMart consumers seeking any particular "method" then that method becomes the equivalent of a Happy Meal as opposed to a 3-star restaurant experience. KWIM?

The Right Thing For My Particular Child has now become the somewhat abridged version given our relative national deficit in literacy; parents can't be bothered with THAT. Too many words. No, instead they would rather have;


The Right Thing.

They are not "places of higher learning".

They are colleges and universities.

A right of passage for all Americans so that you can get your ticket to work.

So, of course, tuition should be free!

The Right Thing has consistently been dentistry and/or medicine in my family and my wife's family for years. As in three generations of years, beginning prior to WWII.

At the moment, the "Right Thing" recommendation is definitely dermatology, and if that fails, dentistry, preferably orthodontics.

All of the lawyers in the family hate their jobs. This is not recommended to any of the current generation as The Right Thing.

Granted, the pathologist hates his job, too.

The neurosurgeon loved his and the psychiatrist loves his 3 day, six-figure work week.

I think the pediatric dentist is currently quite satisfied. The oral surgeon was quite satisfied.

And the *purpose* of college is to get a medical/dental degree. It's a hoop to jump through to reach your destination.

So, you go to undergrad where you get scholarships and can get close to a 4.0.

Because the *goal* is your ticket to practice medicine/dentistry.

Law school is a pyramid scheme (and always has been, similar to Ph.D.'s) that is crashing (due to the con aspect of the system drawing too much blood from the mark) because demand is cratering because a small bit of transparency has been added to the process.

It's kind of hard to compare being larded up with $150,000+ in non-dischargable debt for a chance at a $30,000 a year (sometimes less) job with anything else.

Architecture school, maybe.

I mean, the entire thing is mind-boggling and I've been watching it for years.

Hmmm... well, currently there are several trades/technical programs in which one can generate 20-30K in non-dischargable debt for a chance to be just as unemployable as before you started. While I realize that isn't quite so daunting, it probably is if you wind up only being employable at (or well below) minimum wage and still trying to pay off student loans. Oh sure, it's lower tuition. It's just two years, in many cases. But it sure does seem like a pyramid scheme to me, and a particularly cruel one which preys on those LEAST able to afford repayment for something that gave them so little.

At least if you've gone to law school, you CAN simply trade on your (potentially more valuable) undergraduate diploma on a vita.

I'm also trying to envision a future in which everyone is a pediatric dentist or orthodontist.

Silly person.

Only a select group of people have the ability to do that in the first place.

For those people, many of whom are in the UMC quest to find The Right Thing, and have the appropriate intelligence and Tiger Parents, that is the answer.

It provides the craved six figure salary (yes, I know that ideally you want *mid-six-figures) along with the social status that will allow you to lead a relevant and meaningful life.

Lawyers do work in minimum wage jobs.

And they they have the additional problem that they are "overqualified" and "failures" at being lawyers. Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Or, if you are my cousin, you try to go to med school and find out that they hate lawyers *and* you lose your corner office in the process.

And if you are my *other cousin* (from my father's non-doctor drunk/abusive farmer family) you somehow run up a $100,000 bill at Penn State and *then* look into being a prison guard like your mother. I'm still trying to figure out that $100,000. Kind of leaves me scratching my head, but if that's what you leave Penn State with these days, whoa, then you're talking about leaving law school with $250,000 in debt!

Even my law school roommate, who first went to Harvard grad school and then law school got cut off at the $180,000 mark.

So, in sum, free tuition is better than larding up people with mammoth amounts of debt.

We need to immediately make college and law school free for everyone!

Penn State is $17K/yr in-state tuition, $30K/yr out of state. Add in another 10K/yr for room and board and it is not hard to see owing $100K. One of the most expensive public schools (for main campus - branch campuses are much less).

As for the athletics, UChi used to be Big Ten football. They won the Big Ten 7 times, and were National Champs (per polls) twice. Reed doesn't even have NCAA teams. Wouldn't matter for some kids but I don't think mine would go to a school that didn't have sports. Eldest sort of wishes that she went to a school with football for that "experience" - she saw the tailgating when her club softball team played U of Maryland and she wondered if she should have gone to Penn State. DD16 is interested in UChi and plans on contacting the coach about her sport.

Different folks want different experiences. But back to the original post - you can get free tuition if you are a good student, so the kids we discuss in this forum could get free tuition somewhere. There are public colleges that already offer this.

just to clarify ... when I mentioned trade and vocation schools earlier (especially in respect to how many school systems in Europe are designed), I meant HIGH SCHOOLS that are trade/vocational type ... so FREE job training schools. Not trade schools you'd have to pay for.

We'd assumed this, too-- the "free tuition" bit, I mean.

That's not as true as it used to be, however. I think I mentioned earlier that of the 4000 freshman students entering alongside my DD, just 60 of them will get full-tuition merit scholarships as in-state residents. Yes, my DD is certainly in the running for one of those-- of course-- but still, that is an awfully small number. NOBODY gets a "full ride" from them.

At the other state flagship in my own state, students like my DD are eligible for an automatic scholarship to the tune of 60% of tuition, and there is another lower tier that comps about 30%.

Yes, there are tuition DISCOUNTS for really terrific students-- but as far as I can tell this is a pretty hit-and-miss thing, and it can change on you almost overnight, depending upon what one's state legislature decides to do. Even five years ago, sending my DD to either of the institutions mentioned WOULD have been virtually free.

Now, that's only true if she were in an NCAA sport.

Here is a new article about the athletic programs at Berkeley.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/...c-damage-expanding-independent-athletics
A Doomed Marriage?
January 8, 2014
By Allie Grasgreen
Inside Higher Education

When describing the approach that administrators at the University of California at Berkeley took to the university's sports program, John Cummins consistently uses a somewhat unexpected term: ambivalent.

Unexpected, says Cummins, a former associate chancellor at the university, because Berkeley, like all other big-time football programs in the major athletic conferences, is in a “spending race” on facilities, coaching salaries and conference-related travel in order to lure – or, as the paper puts it, “in the hopes of luring” – the best recruits.

Because the university continues to admit underprepared students because of their athletic prowess, he says, despite football boasting the lowest graduation rate (44 percent) of athletes of any Division I program this year, and despite athletes consistently graduating at lower rates (especially black athletes) than non-athletes do.

And because administrators have allowed the athletics department to move further and further outside the institution and operate simply as a business, he argues, no matter what deficits, internal conflicts, scandals and National Collegiate Athletic Association violations ensue.

That article is titled "CNN analysis: Some college athletes play like adults, read like 5th-graders". There are college athletes who are literally at the first grade level:

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Education-of-Dasmine/132065/
The Education of Dasmine Cathey
by Brad Wolverton
Chronicle of Higher Education
June 2, 2012

He hid them in a shoebox under his bed. "My own little secret," he said.

Inside the box, he kept 10 thin paperbacks he was given as a child. For years he didn't touch them. But as he reached 19, they became a lifeline.

Each night after dinner, he closed his dorm-room door, reached under his bed, and opened the box. Resting his head against the blanket his grandmother had made him, he pulled out the books: "First Grade, Level 1, Ages 6-7."

Quietly, so none of his teammates would hear, he read aloud, moving his finger across the page.

...

Growing up, Dasmine Cathey hated everything about school—reading, writing, even the smell of books. To him, school was nothing but a needless burden. Once you learned about your ancestors and your heritage, he figured, what else did you need to know?

He still remembers the day a middle-school teacher asked him to read aloud in class. As he mumbled through, clearing his throat on words he didn't understand, he heard snickers around him. "How can you be so good at sports but so dumb in school?" a classmate asked.

His sixth-grade teacher suggested he enroll in a tutoring program to overcome his reading problems. Mr. Cathey's parents didn't have enough money, so an aunt helped cover the cost. He took classes for two or three months before dropping out. "You need the money more than me," he told his mother.

By high school he still hadn't read a single book. It took him hours to wade through a handful of pages, and by then he'd forgotten most of what he'd read. But outside of class, things were looking up. He was a finalist for Tennessee Lineman of the Year in football and played on a state-champion basketball team at Ridgeway High, in suburban Memphis. And so he got a pass. Few people seemed to care if he was learning.

From the article:
No, intensive tutoring, except in unusual circumstances (such as a student who studied in another country and barely knew English), will not turn a student with 380 SAT verbal into one with a 650 or 700. And if a program to greatly increase scholastic aptitude did exist, it ought not to be limited to athletes.

On the SAT improvement, I heard from parents last year, that improved their kids math SAT scores significantly with tutoring. The kid got into Columbia.

I know internists that are finding it hard to get well paying jobs to pay off the medical school debt. And when you say, how many plumbers does a society need? You still build locally. That is still done here. Dental Hygiene still done here, radiology -- they are reading xrays in India and Israel. But the xray tech still has to take the xrays here. Talking about kids that are going to school for some degree but are not going to go to a professional level degree program that gets them a job.

A side comment on Bostonian's whole thing on Milton and Chaucer. Reading Malcolm Gladwell's David and Goliath. He writes about the whole impressionist movement wouldn't have existed if they did not shun the whole establishment and have their own gallery showing. They were not tradionalists. Modern art needed a break with the past in order to be the innovation that it became.

Though I am not sure what English language is becoming with texting and "what up?" It will be interesting what communication skills are in the next 20 years.

This is why every college football fan on this board should be cheering for the Stanford Cardinal: http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/...-hindered-by-intelligence?nclick_check=1

Just so long as everyone is aware, there is no such thing as "free" tuition, someone ends up paying for it, granted, that person might not be you or your family, however, it's likely that eventually you will if you graduate from college and secure a job that pays middle class level.

I'd just prefer if people use the phrase, "Free to me" or "Free to me for the time being."

Wow.

I just have to look at programs like these and wonder... and what would those resources have meant if they'd been applied elsewhere-- say, to economically disadvantaged but academically high-potential students?

You know, those who come in from low-income high schools-- lacking AP coursework, but possessed of otherwise good grades and test scores (albeit not stellar ones due to lack of experience/superscoring)?



Serious question-- how much WOULD it actually cost to reduce tuition by 30-50% at public colleges and universities? COULD it be done? If you raised standards-- say, that a floor for test scores would be something like a 27 ACT or an 1800 SAT, no exceptions-- could that reduce the number of attendees sufficiently to make government support of the institution adequate to the task? I don't really know the answer-- I'm curious.

I don't think that the general public would stand for a floor for test scores as described, that's not politically correct in today's society and it's not viewed by the masses as "fair" There are always going to be special interest groups fighting anything where their special interest isn't proportionately represented even if their test scores are substantially lower than the established floor.

I agree with this and Old Dad's other post. Making tuition free (provided other "fees" are not raised to compensate) makes college a windfall for those attending, and groups will fight over how that windfall is divided.

Since high school achievement is correlated with IQ, and since
high-IQ children come from more affluent and educated families on average, it could be asked why those who have won the genetic lottery should be further favored by free high education.

(Two answers could be that
(1) free college tuition but selective admissions encourage working hard in high school
(2) free college tuition encourages the parents likely to have smart children to have more of them)

That's why I earlier proposed giving young adults a grant that could be used for higher education or to offset income and payroll taxes.

The father of a friend of mine was QB on the Stanford football team. He went on to win the Nobel prize.

Personally, I that each person and their family be responsible for that student's college fees. Who else should be more responsible for paying for someone's education than the person who is receiving it? In this manner, people are much more likely to make the best use of the education they're getting and select an area of study that is marketable to pay the loan they've taken out for that education (if any)

I may be a little tainted of mind as recently one of the state colleges where I live came under fire because nearly 25% of tuition costs from each student were being redirected to fun scholarships of different types. You can imagine the push back from middle class families working multiple jobs to send their child to school learning this.

So now having said that, I have to point the finger at myself and say that we're currently taking advantage of multiple academic scholarships which pay for our eldest DS's tuition. If we can legally use money offered to us by others without needing to pay it back, yes, we're going to and likely so will nearly everyone else.

So what is the most "fair" way? Well, the way I look at it, everyone who "gets ahead" either worked for it or had someone or numerous people in their family who worked for it / invested wisely / made wise decisions. It's not "fair" to force others to pay for the education of someone / some family who didn't work for it / didn't make wise investments / didn't make wise decisions. The most fair way is for each person who attends college to pay for their education themselves or their family to supply the means to do so. Notice I didn't say equal, I said fair.

Well, I think that there's no question that "free" results in the problems outlined by Old Dad and Bostonian-- and while we might (and have, as I recall ) debated the truth of the statement that SES is a good proxy for the cognitive ability distribution...

but what about making it affordable rather than a "windfall" is untenable?

It's still a personal sacrifice to attend, that way-- because I also agree that students who do best tend to be those who have skin in the game THEMSELVES, not just their parents' skin or that of the taxpayers. To a point, I mean-- it's also true that students who are on the verge of homelessness tend also to not do as well.

Societally, we really need to do something about the fact that college is becoming unaffordable to everyone but the highest ~5% (who pay out of pocket and money isn't really a problem) and lowest ~20% (who get need-based aid which covers full costs) of households at all but a slim percentage of institutions. THAT is not helpful in terms of our future as a nation.

So what percentage of the population would we consider "college material" to start with? Is it 20%? 50%? 80% Some states now have a target which is more than 60% of the population, and I'm not sure that such a thing can truly be justified, myself.

What differentiates a "college education" from other kinds of education, anyway? Why isn't secondary education doing more to prepare students for work or further advanced study??

I have many questions-- but few answers.

That's what we have in the current system. How is that working out?

That's part of the debate, it depends on who you ask. In the eyes of many, college material is proportionate with any special interest that wishes to attend rather than what rank / percent one gets on test(s)

For many if not most, it took multiple generations of passing on inheritance / family wealth building / legacy before the first in the family could attend college. Redistribution of that hard eared wealth so that someone who doesn't have a family who did so can have the same opportunities I don't see as the answer nor "fair" To attempt to make opportunities equal we'd have to be unfair.


That's a very fair question. Right now there seems to be a thought pattern that public K-12 schools have the goal of preparing EVERY student for college.....and we all know that's a load of horse hockey. We don't do anyone justice by pretending that's possible.....and we cheat ourselves and others by the thought pattern. Not everyone even WANTS to go to college. Personally I love working with my hands and OJT was a perfectly acceptable option for my profession. As a society we've tossed options other than college after HS way down the ladder when there are plenty of occupations available without 4 year (or more) college degrees.

We have to set aside unfounded a priori assumptions if we're going to have any meaningful dialog here.

- A cursory glance at financial headlines over the past 8 years will indicate that "making it" often has less to do with hard work or good decisions than with taking advantage of others.

- This thread has already demonstrated many reasons why today's runaway university costs have nothing to do with the true costs of providing an advanced education, and everything to do with runaway capitalism.

- The number one cause of bankruptcy in the US is healthcare expenses, even for those who are covered by insurance, and poor health is more often the result of losing the genetic lottery or bad luck than "good decisions."

- The current system of paying for college expects teenagers who know nothing about the employment world to make "good decisions" about their future earnings in a marketplace that may have turned upside down four years later.

Etc.

Well, that depends on who you ask, personally I think it's working out fine. Those who are willing to take responsibility for their debt do so or else their family has done so. I'm a big fan of personal responsibility.

There are other options out there for careers outside of a 4 year degree that are less costly. For some reason as a society we're turning to the thought pattern that everyone is "Owed" the means to pursue their desired path even if they themselves can't personally afford to do so. That's resulted in many going into HUGE debt and defaulting on loans backed by our tax money.....how is THAT working out for us so far?

We're getting to the thought pattern of everyone deserves and "Equal" opportunity, wrong, nothing guarantees that nor does anyone own you or I that, we have the freedom to pursue our path, not for our path to be financed by others.

So you're saying you prefer a rigid caste system to a meritocracy?

I wish we could take charge of the "free" high school education the same way we do with college. Living in one of the states with incredibly high property taxes where a huge chunk of it goes to the public school system, I wish we could take that money and put it where we see fit. Especially since we're now homeschooling and paying. On a house valued at about $200K we're paying almost $9000 (and steadily climbing by $300-$800 per year!) in property tax and out of that about $6500 goes to the schools! Being a lower middle class family, that seriously hurts our pockets. If we lived in a state where schools are funded differently and we could keep this $ and put it aside, it would make the whole college education funding situation a lot different. We will definitely need some creative financing figured out by the time our boys are ready for college if they decide to go to college that is. Unless they get GOOD scholarships and work while in college, there's just no way.

Not to mention, my view has always been that the parents responsibility ends at the end of high school. With that in mind, the kids will need to be serious about high school if they ever want more than a high school diploma. My parents paid for my living expenses while I went to college back in Europe because there were no jobs for students and the studying was so intense there just was no way to work while at school, but there was no tuition and it was fairly easily manageable. Then they paid for my plane tickets for me to come and study in the US and that was it. The rest was up to me. I went with the Grad school that gave me the best deal. I never regretted getting a degree from a University in the middle of nowhere because I absolutely loved the people and the atmosphere and unlike many others graduated debt free.

I'm saying I prefer a system in which each individual and / or their family is responsible for providing for that person's education....call it whatever label you wish, I call it responsibility for me and mine.

...and I agree with the post above, there is no shame in a state college education and it costs a considerable sum less.

Old Dad, I tend to agree with you-- but--

there are certainly households for which even a cash outlay of 16-25K annually (which is what most state universities are running these days) is into the realm of "unthinkable."

Now, if the cash outlay were more like 6-10K, well, then-- yes, "work your way through" seems quite fair to me. It's what I managed without much debt, after all.

But no, not everyone's parents can/will pay for college. I don't think that it is either right or societally wise, even, to just shrug and say "oh well" to those students.

Now, if we quit subsidizing the education of those who probably have no business on a college campus to begin with (and I'm sorry-- but 200-400 on an SAT section is just not college material in most instances) then maybe costs wouldn't NEED to be so high. Of course, there are going to be some VERY unhappy UMC parents when they get told that Very Important Son, the fourth, there, had better look into the possibilities that the armed services or local trade schools afford him... but in an ideal world, honestly, I don't see education as a purchased commodity available to the highest bidder. Which is apparently what we have now, I mean.

I prefer a system which sets standards and says "oh, that's unfortunate" to those who can't meet them-- regardless of ability to PAY. Now, no-- I don't think that "free" is necessarily the right thing, either. But this is rather like a pro-sports stadium in some respects. I completely understand why people living in Shasta County wouldn't want to PAY to replace Dodger Stadium with a new state-of-the-art facility with their state tax dollars, and think that the fans and franchise owners should be coughing up the cash. I also understand that folks in Orange and LA counties do want some of it to come from taxes, because they derive direct economic benefit to keeping a franchise there. I think that both considerations are completely relevant here, too-- there is OF COURSE personal economic benefit to an individual for attending college. However, arguing that a free market system will take care of itself ignores the fact that the entire economic engine of a country depends upon innovation and high educational levels in the working population; so public support makes a great deal of sense, too. Clearly some hybrid is the most sensible thing. It's the details that are murky.


I wonder.

Except that as a practical matter college is the new high school.

And there is no reverse switch to pull.

That's the REAL problem, Jon.

What about the responsibility of others to you and yours? After all, you may be able to finance the education of your children, but how comfortable are you knowing that your "responsibility" is significantly increased because of rampant corruption? (we've already covered what a sinkhole college athletics are... now here's the icing on the cake: http://www.thehoya.com/bcs-system-rife-with-corruption-1.2648473 )

Or what about when your "responsibility" is increased because of cosmetic expenses that have nothing to do with the quality of the education your child receives? Shouldn't the people making those decisions be held responsible?

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-us-news-college-rankings-hurt-students/

Bostonian, your words here sparked something inside for me. I don't believe that nature favors the affluent when bestowing IQ skills. So it must be that the affluent just happen to have a better chance to take advantage of their IQ in this country. Back home, public schools are not funded by property taxes but come from the State or Central Govt's general funds. So, you don't have to be rich to attend a good school district. The public schools I attended were truly mixed SES. So, a high IQ child from a economically disadvantaged family had the same advantages as one from an affluent family. Of course, the affluent sent (and still send) their kids to fancy private schools but still. Same is true for the public undergrad university I attended in my home country. Truly mixed SES with the only common trait among us being higher than average IQ with the dedication to succeed in a very rigorous academic environment. Many of those rich kids with average IQ that paid top $$ to attend the private schools ended up in private colleges and not the prestigious public ones.

I grew up in a system where you got into university if your marks were high enough, and the government paid for it. It's public education, after all. People who weren't university calibre had other career training opportunities. The government paid for healthcare too.

Of course you pay for it through taxes, but it's so much simpler this way.

And it basically works out fairly in the end. People who earn more due to their education will pay more in taxes, so they ultimately pay for their education after all.

Poverty (generally) causes a reduction in IQ scores. Thanks, chronic stress and cognitive load!

And I think when people say "IQ" they really mean "development arc over a lifetime" which nobody seems to talk about.

I think that a lot of the comments espousing college costs and debt as personal responsibility reflect the American "you're on your own" attitude to society. Personally, I think this ideology misses the point that college education in a population benefits society as a whole (crooked bankers notwithstanding). Which is why it's subsidized in many other countries.

Also, I don't get the distinction between personal responsibility with respect to paying for college (or a trade school) and lack thereof in K-12 education. And what about paying for roads, street lights, the fire department, or the police? If you're going to embrace personal responsibility, you should embrace it all the way, not cherry pick. So if you want light outside your house, you should pay for streetlights yourself. And if someone robs you, it's your fault for not having a more secure house and you should pay for the cops to do an investigation. Ditto for your house burning down because of, say, wildfires. Even if the fire was started by someone else and spread to your place, why should my tax dollars pay for putting out your house or stopping the fire before it gets there? I mean, seriously, your house benefits no one but you and your family and maybe a friend or two. BTW, why should my tax dollars fund your kid's K-12 education? Etc.

IMO, there's no difference between the societal need for public fire departments and the societal need for college-educated people. These people typically pay more taxes than they would have otherwise and spend more money in restaurants and shops. They write new software, solve old problems in science and medicine, and so on. Sure, they benefit personally, but so do fire fighters and the people who pave the streets. It's not like those people are working for free.

I suspect that people have these debates because paying for college has mental inertia in the American mind, not because there's some huge philosophical difference between subsidizing college and subsidizing 11th grade or the fire department.

According to you college education benefits society, but that's an opinion that others may not share. It's certainly debatable as to what percentage of a population should be educated to what degree, and at what cost.


A legal distinction has been made. It may be arbitrary, but a line needs to be drawn somewhere.


Why do you say that? A middle ground is often a popular option.


You don't see a difference between a government that:

A) Works to discourage theft, property damage, and other crimes while giving victims a way to recover damages in the form of compensation

and

B) Pays to educate the population for 16 or more years, with dubious benefits?

You might find this interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights

There are those who see the duty of government is primarily to protect negative rights. It's a pretty clear-cut distinction that allows for a middle ground between anarchy and authoritarianism that isn't arbitrary.

Ahhh-- but our government also protects intellectual property, NATIONAL intellectual property, etc.

We also have a federal government to regulate trade and commerce. Yes?

Few people, even hard-core free-market folks, would want our government to step completely out of the business of those two line items in its mandate.

An educated native (non-foreign) populace is essential to those activities, because foreign work-visas do not allow for some work which there is national interest in keeping, well, proprietary.

If we don't really HAVE enough people to do that work, then we risk losing competitive advantage internationally as we lack the means to prevent the dissemination of that information.

An educated populace is also necessary to run a democratic republic, and while the level of that education is certainly open to debate, the necessity of critically thinking and fully literate adults most certainly is not.

When fully 1/3rd of American adults can't embrace basic science I have to presume that this is a function of scientific illiteracy on a breathtaking scale. There are similar examples across many different domains, it's not just STEM.

So while I agree with the personal benefit/personal responsibility mandate to some extent (people tend to devalue what they are given for free), I do disagree that education doesn't produce "benefits" for society as a whole.

The scientific funding that happened during the period 1940-1970 has produced the tech industry-- and to no small extent, the biotech industry-- that powers so much of our economy today. That funding went largely into higher education, national defense/laboratories, and the space program.

It has also been argued that the GI Bill, which educated a generation of veterans (and in LARGE, large numbers) produced a similar economic power-boost.

Without a control group to compare with, I don't know how valid it is to assign causation. But it certainly seems reasonable.

A few additional thoughts on that subject:

http://www.rockinst.org/pdf/education/2010-03-18-A_New_Paradigm.pdf

http://www.ncsl.org/research/education/the-link-between-higher-education-and-economic-dev.aspx

http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ956731


That last one looks quite interesting, as it compares various strategies. Note that I've deliberately avoided those sources which might be best termed "suspect by virtue of conflict of interest-- that is, educational institutions themselves... though this of necessity eliminates much of the more rigorous scholarly work on the subject.

This, I think, probably summarizes my own feelings on this subject quite nicely. It's not entirely liberal/humanist philosophy that drives a desire to fully subsidize higher education.

http://www.nas.org/articles/Higher_Education_and_Economic_Growth

It's also not incompatible with my innate frustration at the ever-lower expectations and quality in primary and secondary education which we HAVE fully subsidized, on the other hand.

As clarification, I separate government (taxpayer) services as opposed to personal responsibility based on whether it's a personal service / benefit or a commonly used service.

The military commonly serves all citizens, all citizens with valid license can freely use roads. It has been determined that a K-12 education is publically available to all citizens and part of which is even required by law, as opposed to medical attention which is a personal good and service (and should remain unsubsidized IMO) a college education (which many, if not a majority of citizens, are not even capable of completing)

We've become a country big on rights and expectations from others and low on personal responsibility and expectations of ourselves, which breeds the next generation of those low on personal responsibility and expectations of self......but that's okay, we can just point the finger at the taxpayer and cry "unfair" and expect them to make up for it.

Our babysitter this year got a completely tuition-free ride to the University of California, Santa Cruz, one of our state schools. Her dad is a teacher and makes under whatever their limit is, so she has free tuition. She has to pay room and board. She got so homesick though that she is transferring to our local community college.

Adding to the debate between Val and Dad22, why not provide debt forgiveness if you get a degree that has long term benefits to the economy and gives back, like civil engineering or biotech.

If you get an A average on graduation from engineering, you get 100% student debt forgiveness, B is 80%. If you take a liberal arts degree, you keep your debt. Like we need police, but we don't necessarily need public decorations at holiday time. The latter is nice but is a cost for prettiness not safety. Treat degree outcomes instead of upfront tuition benefits.

Why wouldn't this work? Then we get people trained for things we need, not just are pretty.

There is a lot of merit to your thought patterns there, however, you're likely to get the argument that the arts are just as much "needed" as anything else. We're a society that has great difficulty understanding the difference between want and need.

What I see as the primary problem with this is that grade-grubbing is ALREADY really horrible in post-secondary. Students won't WORK harder, but they'll surely whine a lot harder. LOL. It'll also simply increase pressure on STEM departments/colleges and push people who are actually mediocre or worse to stick with majors they are completely unsuited for.

Oregon is actually toying with an idea which amounts to the same thing (in terms of the repayment/intent)--
Oregon plan for tuition-free "pay it forward" higher education

but even this is not without its critics:

College tuition plan punishes graduate success (which I have to say, I find more than a bit ridiculous, since its an investment by definition on both sides, and the taxpayers are certainly going to "lose" at least as often as they "win" and without the 'free' college, then a lot of those successful graduates won't go to college to begin with, or will be so larded up with debt that they NEVER contribute meaningfully to the consumer economy... and really, nobody is claiming that those wealthy enough to do so cannot just-- go to an elite college out of state. Whatever, you know?)

I think this is a reasonably cogent view of this kind of plan:

Why free college isn't enough, though I ultimately disagree with his perspective that "college is a universal good." I see it as a hybrid benefitting BOTH society at large (and its economy) and the individual. If it WERE completely individual, then our current system would make complete sense. On the other hand, complete subsidization would make sense if it weren't. I also think that the author makes a hash of it by ignoring the fact that STEM graduates cost more to educate than liberal arts ones. That is simply the case. You can't teach a senior lab in optics without equipment-- expensive equipment. You can on the other hand, teach a senior course in literature with little more than a classroom space and standard access to infrastructure.



STEM students are actually considerably more expensive to train in the first place, so it makes sense to me that their "cost" is higher to the taxpayer, but their repayment rate is ALSO higher. That actually seems completely fair.

As a scientist with a degree in history and who took a lot of other classes in the humanities (plus a reasonable knowledge of IT), I find this sort of thinking beyond depressing.

Knowing how to write some code or answer all the questions on a multiple choice test doesn't make someone educated --- it makes him trained. Sadly enough, I suspect that lack of serious exposure to the great ideas in the humanities feeds the idea that they're just "pretty" and without real value (in other words, the arrogance of ignorance). By "serious exposure", I mean talking about these ideas with other people and writing papers which are then critiqued and often rewritten, not simply reading a book or watching a set of videos or taking a gen ed course. Back in the dark ages before 1990 or so, American K-12 schools taught this stuff and the general population at least got some exposure to the Bronte sisters, John Locke, and so on. These days, we ask our kids to read an excerpt, choose the best answer, and move on.

When we disparage serious exploration of the humanities, we do our society a serious disservice because as a group, we start to ignore important ideas --- including important mistakes --- that have gone before. This ignorance damages a society's ability to reason and question the claims of others, and IMO, it's contributing to our problems today.

Civilizations are built on ideas as well as technology. IMO, too much focus on technology without a solid understanding of who we are and where we came from is a recipe for problems. Bell Labs used to send its leaders off to courses on philosophy/the humanities for precisely this reason.

But if you don't believe me (or Bell Labs), read this. It was written by someone who has been stamped with a Seal of Approval in Something that Matters (business).

Honestly, it's even more depressing to see this kind of shallow thinking on a forum like this one. :-P

It wasn't an argument that art isn't good to have, but you have to roof and provide food first to your children.

And too many go into the arts because you can get a degree in it and then you can't get a job in it. If less went into them, the truly dedicated would and then there would probably be more scholarship money for the truly talented.

What this whole argument was about, was weeding out the ones that really don't need a college education since they were a drain on the country and they should be redirected to vocational training. Hence my solution, which I think works. You want a liberal arts degree and then try and get a job selling in Costco, pay the tuition. If you get a degree in computer science and keep a job here instead of bringing in someone from India or China, then your tuition gets repaid.

Anyone know how many people get a degree in English literature and then not do anything with it afterwards, not teach, not write, not edit? My pure guess is at least 80%. I bet it is in single digits for engineering.

Wren, I have bad news for you. People who write code have no control over outsourcing.


And you clearly missed the entire point of what I was saying.

Multiple choice test.

Which groups should get a college education.
You must choose exactly two options.
[ ] smart rich kids
[ ] dumb rich kids
[ ] smart poor kids
[ ] dumb poor kids

Oo--this is a much more finely crafted question than any I've seen in a long time, by the way.

I think that I know the answer. Well, I know MY answer, anyway.

Now, for the follow up--

which two group are getting college educations currently, and which two are projected to continue doing so as college costs rise?



Thought so.

Maybe we should restrict English majors to only SOME college students.


Please select acceptable college majors for each of the above groups.

Also, I have another question. If I'm neither rich nor poor, what does that signify? What majors are permissible THEN? Do I get to go to college at all?

I guess I'm not the target demographic.

I think that this is a very fair-- and true-- observation.

The bottom line is that what higher education means has been subverted significantly over the past 30 years. While I think that interesting, niche areas of study are a fine thing, I also tend to think that most of the time they are better left for graduate study, not undergraduate degree programs. I'm old school that way. STEM is about the only place where that sensibility has been staunchly retained-- and I think it may be no small coincidence that a degree in "physics" still has value as it always has, whereas one in "early-American Queer studies" lacks the punch (and employability) that "Sociology" once had. At the undergraduate level, one simply isn't (yet) prepared to do the kind of focal study, with a wider foundation UNDER that focal study.

There's a reason why my undergraduate degree was more general than my PhD, you know? The one thing supported the other, and while yes, my PhD is in a fairly arcane and not-terribly-generally-useful thing, it's purpose was far more about demonstrating my ability to APPLY what I'd learned as an undergraduate and take it to the limits of what current technology and my own cognitive abilities could bear. It says something about my potential as a person, not necessarily that the subject area IS what I do or can do.

Anyway. Tangent, that.

I think that without rolling back the clock on what we MEAN when we say "higher education" we are going nowhere with higher ed in this country. You simply cannot allow 17-19yo children, as a cohort group, to pick and choose what they are "interested" in knowing. The problem is that they don't KNOW what they don't know. Catering to them as though they are mostly autodidactic is foolish in the extreme, and yet the "student as consumer" model has done just that.

Well, caveat emptor-- we should have thought about it when faculty were sounding the warning in the early 90's about this nonsense. Who knew that narrow, "self-determined" courses of study devised by students wouldn't turn out to be very good, er-- "education" in larger terms?

Well, any PARENT should have known it. There's a reason why we don't allow second graders to "determine" what their curriculum needs to contain. Because the majority of them aren't capable of knowing, much less implementing it for themselves, that's why.

General education cores at universities have existed for a reason. We ignore that history at our peril-- and we HAVE been ignoring it.

Engineers need to learn communication skills (whether they wish to or not) and social workers need to understand enough physics to appreciate policy challenges and be educated voters. Neither group is especially good about recognizing that need at the time.

By this logic, higher education is a commonly-used service, and therefore should be fully funded by the federal government. Regardless of whether you have a degree or not, you benefit from the higher education of others every time you conduct any transaction for goods and services, either in the private sector or the public. People with higher educations designed that product or service, and ensured its delivery.

Likewise medical services, because we all receive several benefits from a healthier population. For starters, there's an economic output increase. We all benefit from herd immunity when everyone is innoculated. Etc.

There is one issue that hasn't been really addressed here though. While I love the idea of "free" college education for the "smart" ones ... the ones who really should be in college, not those who don't have the potential or go there just to have fun and waste couple more years of their life, the highly selective system that I like in Europe can have one huge drawback. It tends to eliminate a lot of highly intelligent kids who have learning disabilities and various special needs. The system looks for the high achieving, perfect in every aspect students. So as much as I'd love to get our boys into free public university, with their issues, I'm thinking our only chance will be the current system and them being able to get enough scholarships and assistance and jobs to be able to afford it.

BUT-- I'd argue (having been in higher ed) that the huge failing of our system of accommodations for special needs is that the world doesn't always continue to offer those accommodations, nor is it obliged to do so. The working world is task-oriented and highly cost- and time-sensitive, so it can't always offer needed accommodations. I'm torn about whether it is a good idea to offer them unilaterally in a collegiate setting for that reason-- it's not that I don't think them necessary. Far from it. It's that it seems to set some students up for later failure by not developing realistic expectations or individual coping methods. Academia is really bad at addressing that issue, preferring to tiptoe around it instead.


A surgeon or air-traffic controller who needs "extra time" for tasks probably shouldn't be in those fields, YK? On the other hand, a writer or researcher who is willing to work 25% more hours (on salary) in order to provide him/herself with that additional time should be allowed to do that, no questions asked. It's really hard to know what things can be worked around with individual mitigation, but that is often what it comes down to in the end, once a student ends up entering the working world. I may not LIKE the fact that my child is forever barred from military service-- and the lifelong benefits that those who serve are entitled to-- but I understand that she isn't suited for it from THEIR perspective.

I'd say that the disparity also points up a huge failing in BOTH systems (ours and the completely meritocratic, high-performance oriented one)-- that is that there really ought to be a pathway that doesn't seem to exist anywhere currently-- one in which the challenges faced by those with special needs, particular challenges with classroom/book learning, so to speak; well, maybe the answer is to provide a pathway that DOES match their strengths, rather than just "leveling" what doesn't by effectively lowering the performance bar or forcing them to go through 10X as much effort to accomplish an impossible task via bizarre work-arounds. This always just seemed downright PAINFUL to me as a faculty member and student adviser; it was effectively pounding square pegs into round holes, and it was just absurd, on some level to me-- I desperately wished that I had some better advice for those students. They worked unbelievably hard (even with accommodations) and their classmates still thought that they weren't doing the same work (and in some cases, they weren't). I have no idea what happened to them once they left college, but I can't think that employers were going to go to the same lengths to accommodate task completion... which means that college had failed them on some level by not preparing them for adult life.



It's not that I don't think that such people have a lot of high potential-- not at all-- just that maybe university education isn't a great way of tapping into that potential to start with. One of the most unique, bright students I ever encountered was one of them, in fact, and it broke my heart to watch that student struggle to be a "mediocre" major... while I could see full well that without the limitations imposed by the environment (and the field as it exists), he would have been much better off.

So that's my perspective. If I had one scholarship to offer, I'd give it to the high-achiever rather than the high-potential student mentioned... but the reason isn't because I don't value the high-potential student with challenges. It's about educational benefit and which of them is more suited to the environment. The high-achievers have demonstrated that they can get a lot out of the setting (well-- okay, this USED TO BE the case, not sure what an ability to take multiple choice tests indicates... ) and those who aren't high-achieving have demonstrated lower probability in that regard. Societally, that's just the way that it goes, pretty much.

Those who aren't well-suited to higher education, though, they need another path to full potential. A secondary education certainly doesn't get most people there-- much less those with truly high potential. As far as I can tell, NO culture has done very well in this regard; some consider them unworthy, some consider them slackers, and nobody really stops to consider what they CAN do-- only what they cannot.


I'm not even sure what the "something else" needs to look like. It probably needs to look like a lot of things, and mostly like life-experience-based credentialing-- but the REAL kind, not the diploma-mill kind. Maybe like the Guild system used to look; respect for experiential learning as much as for BOOK learning.


Mk13, I think that your point really needs highlighting. It's critical; when you look at the numbers, this is between 1-8% of adolescents we're talking about.

Making something free or inexpensive for some people often makes it more expensive for others:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324049504578545884011480020
More Students Subsidize Classmates' Tuition
By DOUGLAS BELKIN
Wall Street Journal
Jan. 9, 2014 10:32 p.m. ET

Well-off students at private schools have long subsidized poorer classmates. But as states grapple with the rising cost of higher education, middle-income students at public colleges in a dozen states now pay a growing share of their tuition to aid those lower on the economic ladder.

The student subsidies, which are distributed based on need, don't show up on most tuition bills. But in eight years they have climbed 174% in real dollars at a dozen flagship state universities surveyed by The Wall Street Journal.

During the 2012-13 academic year, students at these schools transferred $512,401,435 to less well-off classmates, up from $186,960,962, in inflation-adjusted figures, in the 2005-06 school year.

At private schools without large endowments, more than half of the tuition may be set aside for financial-aid scholarships. At public schools, set-asides range between 5% and 40% according to the Journal's survey.

...

Most public and private universities pool their financial aid from a variety of sources, including endowments, taxes and state scholarship funds. Additionally, public universities have a host of formal and informal subsidies: humanities students subsidize science students, for example, and out-of-state students subsidize in-state students.

The subsidies are taken by public schools nationwide, but there are no figures on the total and very few by campus. The lack of transparency inside university balance sheets makes it difficult to calculate how much one student is subsidizing another. But at least 13 state universities now list the full amount students pay in tuition set-asides.

...

Seeking to expand their student body, schools have increased the amount of funds they funnel to poorer students. In the 2011-12 academic year, public and private U.S. universities gave away $33 billion in scholarships, up from $23 billion in 2006-07, adjusted for inflation, according to the College Board.

Enrolling more students at schools charging higher tuition has led to an explosion in student debt, estimated at $1.2 trillion. Per-student borrowing climbed 55% in inflation-adjusted dollars between 2002 and 2012, according to the College Board. Students with debt now owe, on average, nearly $30,000.

"We used to believe that public higher education benefited all residents of a state, not only the people who were attending, because the more highly educated workforce meant more economic growth," said Ronald Ehrenberg, director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute. "But now our society has moved toward the notion that the people who are paying are the ones who will benefit, so they should pay."

Higher-income public university students in California are taking on debt faster than others. Among students from families earning between $125,000 and $150,000, 39% now graduate with loans, up from 28% in 2005. The average loan amount increased to $19,310 from $13,470.

By comparison, 66% of students from families earning from $25,000 to $50,000 graduated with loans in 2012, down from 68% in 2005. The loan amounts increased to $18,071 from $15,081.

Bostonian: As we've seen elsewhere, the percentage of scholarship money that's going to merit-based (generally associated with high SES) aid has been on a steep incline in order to game the US News rankings, at the expense of need-based aid.

The result being, rich kids who don't need help are capturing a growing percentage of that $33B in scholarship money, so this is somewhat bad journalism. Factor out sports scholarship money as well, and then let's see what portion is actually going to address the financial needs of academic students. My hunch says less than a third.

This cost factor does mean college is more expensive for the rich, who can afford it, and the middle class, who cannot. It doesn't address the overall inflationary insanity, though... just the distribution of suffering for it.

Overall, this is another solid argument for just making it free for all.

A simple and cheap part of the solution would be providing labour market reports free to students and having guidance counselors actually speak meaningfully to students about the probability of success, economic outcomes, and quality of life expected in different professions.

Many friends from my undergraduate years didn't realize they were entering professions with terrible employment prospects. Had they known, maybe they would have chosen to double major to buffer themselves while still studying what they loved. I see fine arts majors studying business as a beautiful example of idealism and pragmatism marrying.

Also, on a more general note, we think of education completely the wrong way, with payment occurring on a front-end basis. There needs to be a tighter link made for jobs outcomes in the financing equation. I predict we'll see student debt securitized by major and class, with differential rates of return by area of study, region. We may even see tuition linked to post-baccalaureate income.

Ultimately, there needs to be a balance between driving market needs and respecting the legacy and integrity of scholarship. Market-based pricing would better align students to current labour market needs, and merit scholarships enable the best students the luxury to pursue a less lucrative field at little cost. A blend of the two is needed. As to whether the blended rates should be paid out of the public purse or out of pocket is a matter of ideological preference-- economic theory could have it go either way.

I support this, but such lending is crowded out by the current system of government-guaranteed loans, which charges all students the same rates and effectively gives the largest subsidies (the difference between a market interest rate and the government interest rate) to the worst students who study the most impractical subjects.

I don't see how financing student debt at significantly higher interest rates is a practical solution to excessive education costs.

Artificially low mortgage interest rates contributed to a housing bubble. Raising student loan interest rates to a level reflecting their credit risk would exert downward pressure on college costs, since many people would not be able to borrow as much.

Perhaps, but I think the real problem there was that credit was too easy to get. This situation led to too many people buying a house, and the effects on pricing were predictable.

But of course, that's not a problem with a college education. It's not like this society encourages everyone to go to college and hands out loans like they were lollipops.

Oh, wait....

Hello everyone - just a reminder to please keep it respectful in this thread.

Best,
Mark

You do know that the cap on government-backed student loans is just 11K annually, for a combination of student (Stafford) and parent (PLUS) loans, right? And that you're into "unsecured debt" territory already as soon as you are borrowing to cover what an institution THINKS you can write a check for rather than considers "need" for your household...



Remind me what tuition is up to at Stanford, again? How about out of state tuition at UW?



The students who wind up (or their parents do) with 50, 60, or 100K in debt didn't get there with government subsidy.

Standard issue credit bubble.

Fortunately, we were able to mitigate the fallout by poofing a bajillion dollars into existence.

Law schools certainly aren't being backstopped by the Fed and demand is collapsing.

There's minimal risk to the lender, because educational debt cannot be discharged in a bankruptcy. That makes this an attractive can't-miss investment opportunity. Any (minimal) risks can be offset by insurance and default swap purchases.

Plus, tuition can only go up!

Sound familiar?

You cannot properly apply the topography of a stock market, housing, credit, or tulip bubble to higher education.

Why?

Because it is not a commodity that can be traded and bid up.

There is some sort of inane illogical economic topography in higher education, but it is not that of a bubble.

This mechanism has already reversed for law school, which may or may not be a bellwether for the rest of the higher education system.

The decline in law school applications was caused by a recognition by an increasing number prospective law students that law school is not a good investment, partially due to an increase in actual transparency regarding employment prospects.

The supply of credit for law school remains effectively infinite.

Here's an example of actual cuts in tuition due to lack of demand for a law degree:

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/u_of_iowa_to_cut_tuition_for_law_students_by_16.4_percent/

I'm using law school here as an example of higher education in general because it's the clearest and biggest example of higher education contraction that I've seen so far.

So, cost *can* decline.

Well, naturally. You could have found prior evidence that housing costs can decline, too, you just wouldn't have heard that very often in 2005.

Most economists are so caught up in crunching abstruse numbers, searching for predictive power in indices, benchmarks, and test levels, that they forget that they're actually trying to predict the completely unpredictable, because at the very base of its nature the market is made up of people, and therefore has a psychology, so sometimes it just goes bleeping nuts.

Two things that people are often unprepared to shop for in a rational way are medical care and their children's futures. Not coincidentally, the prices on those two things are currently running out of control.

No, an education cannot be traded.

A loan, on the other hand, can be bought, sold, traded, and for extra fun, securitized.

I meant that prices could decline even though there was still an infinite supply of credit.

There was not an infinite supply of credit in 2008 when the private credit origination bubble failed.

Health care also stopped growing more rapidly than the general economy recently.

http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/33/1/67.abstract

I would also note that all of these systems are guild-related.

Ph.D's (J.D.'s for law school) and M.D.'s (for health care).

No, SLABS never really launched as a product the way that I thought they would.

If they had, I would be agreeing with you.

Something else is happening here in law school world.

Common sense, perhaps?

Higher rates aren't required, or even inevitable. For fields with above-average demand, rates would actually decline with market indexed rates. Right now the public subsidies are blended average across geographies and domains. You could devise any number of levers to move rates across classes to be responsive to market demand, then use merit scholarships to subsidize high-ability students in low-demand fields to ensure a diverse legacy of scholarship. You would expect that, on net, education costs would decline in aggregate because a portion of students would shift to lower cost programs.

I'm also a fan of in-course scholarships rather than entrance scholarships. I'd like to see financing somewhat back-end-loaded to disincent prep schools from inflating grades so that students have the opportunity to gain more support if they show talent.

Lots of people have a great deal of actual interest in the subject, even if that doesn't reflect in their grades.

Someone who has a great deal of energy and dedication to a certain subject matter should get more money and support than someone like me who is simply coasting on their intelligence and is literally just there because it's free, it's a great way to avoid working, and you need a ticket punched to get to the next stage of life.

Yes, my grades were higher than someone like that, but I didn't even know why I was studying what I was studying in the first place, since the only thing I was interested in was getting better grades than my classmates in order to show them that I was getting better grades than they were getting.

one, I am with Dude on the securitization of student debt. Debt is debt is debt in securitization. It doesn't have to go up or down, the debt servicing just needs to be paid for the investor to be happy.

Second, didn't I say, in more layman terms, that debt relief should be tied to majors? Though I gave the example of engineering.

Job prospects are tied very closely to the major and school you attend in China and people know it. They focus on the job prospect. They take engineering or computer science. They take multiple languages on the side to enhance their prospects.

They do not have a bunch of people going to a liberal arts college and then say, "what kind of job is out there waiting for me?"

This is a negative, not a positive.

Yes, students and graduates of places like Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, and Williams are pretty much parasitic lampreys feeding off the hard-working graduates of Colleges That Matter.

Education is supposed to be about exposing a student to important ideas and getting him to really think about the world around him. Science and engineering have a very important place in education, but when we elevate these subjects to being the only areas that "matter," we become narrow and unimaginative as a society. And we elevate these sorry characteristics the status of virtues.

IMO, the foundation underlying this type of thinking is the same one that leads schools to disparage gifted kids. Which is to say, "Your kid should just be like all the other ones and do what we've decided is best." In this way, they don't want kids who remind them of things they don't like or see as being unimportant. I guess they aren't alone.

Personally, and again, it's very disheartening to see the ideal of a well-rounded, educated mind being replaced with a crass approach that devalues the arts and humanities. It just advances us along our national road to nowhere.

I don't disagree; but indeed, there is an argument that even those who value "useful" disciplines should heed here.

That same crass approach ultimately dries up innovation in the sciences (and by extension, later technology transfer) as well, because it only looks at relative simplistic/short-term cost-benefit and risk analysis. Basic research? Who needs it! All just a waste of money and resources. Those people should be making better widgets and at lower cost...

Jon makes a good point (he makes good ones elsewhere also, to be sure) about that superficial way of viewing things, which SHOULD have made him an ideal candidate for "free education" as a sure thing from the taxpayer perspective. In reality, I think that he's suggesting that from a societal standpoint, that $$ could have been better invested in someone in the top 20% who actually was DRIVEN by love and passion and would stay in the field, rather than the top 1% driven by nothing more than ennui.

Great word, ennui.

Agree-- VERY short-term gains from a societal perspective using that model of things.

There is an excellent reason why so many of the top students in STEM still come to North America for graduate work in those disciplines-- it's not to improve their English. It's also not because they lack the ability to build universities in PRC, or that they lack educated people to staff them.

Indeed and all the more ironically funny in this context because it almost slant rhymes with 'Uni' - LOL

Whenever anyone uses the word "uni" in this context, I assume I'm not talking to an American.

Although I could be wrong. I came up with that geographic tell about 15 years ago.

Do Canadians use "uni"?

None in this thread.

B.C. ones tend to. Which is probably how I picked up the habit.

And yes, I'm an American who says Uni.

You price a failure rate into your scholarship allocations. Ennui students are just the education equivalent of bad debt. The distribution around a top 1%er is going to be tighter than for a top 20%er. Of course you can draw an observation from the 20% population that exceeds the 1% population*, but that will represent a statistical minority. Mathematically, I'd take those odds.

ETA: *=in observed post-bac economic and non-mometary value

If that is the primary purpose, then taking 4 years and paying anywhere from $100K - $250K is an expensive way of doing it in terms of both time and money.

A typical college student may take about 15 hours per semester, and classes will meet for ~16 weeks each semester. That's 480 hours of instruction per year, which if I am doing my math correctly is $52 - $130 per hour of instruction. If it was just about learning to think, I could very easily pair up my children with a few other gifted children and pay talented individual teachers to teach our select group in depth and at a faster clip. They might get more out of that in a year than in 4 years at many universities.

But college has never been about just learning to think. An important part is that a college degree serves as an immediate external signal as to either intelligence (Stanford, Amherst, U. of Chicago, etc.), marketable skills (engineering, CS, business, etc.), or both (e.g. engineering at CalTech).

I would go further and say that that is the trouble with a lot liberal arts programs - they end up brainwashing feeble minded people that have no place being at college in the first place.

Someone ought to already know how to think before even applying to college let alone attending one.

IMO education is about enhancing the mental tool kit, no more. Exposure to new ideas, methods and perspectives is what it is about. But the thinking part should already be there.

( begin rant)
It is just case of enabling a person to draw their own conclusions in a rational manner - not about reciting the latest politically correct (read insecure and hypochondriacal) dogma which is basically all liberal arts programs appear to be these days
(End rant)

You leave this topic for 24 hours and pages are written.

No one said that the arts were not important, but we were talking about job prospects. And if you saw the recent jobs report, they are disappearing rapidly.

Who is suppose to subsidize your kid during and after school because they wanted to learn to be a creative thinker and then let someone else get creative after he/she graduates on how they should put that creative talent to use?

Now with all the creative talent you learned in school, you should come up with a good answer. I, who took engineering, think practically. Job prospects = tuition subsidies. If you want something that doesn't link into job prospects, pay your own way.

And that is the way I was brought up in my middle class neighborhood in Canada. The fathers fought in WW2, got educated, bought a home, had kids and told us that we go to college to get a job, like they did, 95% of whom were engineers. And the kids did. They became engineers, doctors, dentists, physical therapists, accountants. Or, if college didn't work for them, they got a trade like boiler maker, pipe fitter, electrician. I do not know anyone I went to high school that thought about going to get a liberal arts degree to learn to be creative. And even my school roommate, who now has a MFA, chairs the art department at a high school because it pays the mortgage. Practical education.

A practical defense of the value of subjects other than science and engineering is that as society becomes richer, consumers place as much value on aesthetics as technological prowess. Think of Bill Gates vs. Steve Jobs. Neither graduated from college, but the former certainly had the brains to get a math or computer science degree from Harvard (from which he dropped out). Gates' techie skills served him well, but the company founded by Steve Jobs is now more valuable, because it makes beautiful products, inspired in some cases by study of the humanities:

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html
Commencement address at Stanford delivered by Steve Jobs on June 12, 2005.

Bostonian, is this your argument that tuition should be subsidized across all subject matters and majors?

Is it possible that in some subjects, basic research has reached a point of diminishing returns? At Harvard the the very smartest physics majors went on to become string theorists (string theory is a branch of particle physics theory). There are smart people who think string theory is a dead end, and it has not yielded physical predictions. Even if it did, would it matter? The atomic theory of matter had profound consequences, but has the theory of quarks done so? I wonder if support for research in pure math also draws the brightest people away from productive endeavors.

I've started to argue against myself . I'd like education financing to be largely privatized, and student lenders who thought English majors were good credit risks would be free to lend accordingly. I am wary of politicians directly trying to decide which fields of study are useful. Commentators on the right, including me, sometimes criticize the humanities, but in the data I've seen, the earnings of biology majors are closer to those of humanities majors than to the earnings of engineers. If majors are going to be criticized for having lots of low-earning graduates, the problem goes beyond the humanities and social sciences.

I can understand where the hand-wringing about the link between education and future earnings is coming from, which is why I don't like it.

Historically, it was the responsibility of an employer to train employees. A higher education simply made one more trainable for a number of more complex positions. A Harvard graduate who one day hoped to edit his own newspaper might still begin by operating the printing press, and would be expected to master that before being provided with other opportunities.

Today, that Harvard grad expects a junior editing position, and given the outrageous sums the grad has spent on education, can hardly afford to accept anything less. Meanwhile, the employee expects to hire someone at that level who is fully-qualified, which would necessarily include business-world experience. So both sides enter the relationship with unrealistic expectations, and it doesn't typically go well.

Employers hold the key here, but they are not likely to do things any differently, because the current corporate environment heavily rewards top-level management for short-term gains, and such an employer/employee relationship is a long-term investment.

Ha, ha! Bostonian, you sure do say the funniest things sometimes.

{nodding}

It's quite difficult to predict-- even for people with a lot more on the ball than those who have a political interest in grandstanding on the subject. (And by that I do NOT mean anyone commenting here, since we're clearly not in it for the glory. )

I've commented elsewhere that I think it's problematic that so many undergraduate institutions have become educational boutiques. That defeats the entire purpose of such an education, in my opinion. My problem with "sports physiology" and "queer studies" as majors has nothing to do with lack or presence of rigor, or with the relative worth of such endeavors when compared with, say, "physics" or "English."

It's the fact that I firmly believe in a general education core and that I think that undergraduate education is DIFFERENT fundamentally than graduate study. Making students happy by not making them take anything that they don't actually want to take in pursuit of a degree doesn't strike me as being very helpful to most 16-24 yo students. That's often where students are stretched the most and learn the most. I also believe in a broad education because I think it provides a better foundation for advanced study in any area, which serves a person far better for life. It also seems to me to serve the society better as "retraining" is almost never an issue if your universities are turning out lifelong learners and polymaths (at a low level generally, but nonetheless, not one-dimensional in education terms).

Well, this is an easy thing to fix.

We should stop throwing away those bright children as third graders and then maybe there would be plenty of them to go around and the engineering and math and sociology fields could all have a few of them.


PS. As far as I can tell, quantum pairing and some elements of string theory are an area of active (and ultimately practical) research which is being supported for what it may mean for quantum computing. Eventually.

Hahahahahahahaha. String Theory has a problem. It's lost its othesis. You're just reading what's left.

Yeah-- but who knows what that research will eventually spawn otherwise. Serendipity works, but it's darned inefficient to learn things that: a) nobody knew that were technically "unknown" and b) weren't really the point of the investigation.

By my estimates, though, that accounts for at least 40% of citations that a paper eventually earns in some fields.

I am just practical. Chinese supercomputers are already so far beyond the US. US are falling behind. Perhaps then research should just be abandoned here and focus on the arts so we can be more creative.

You're confusing consumption with innovation. The Chinese are now the #2 world consumer of supercomputing technology, as measured in total computing power. This is largely due to their possession of the fastest supercomputer in the world, Tianhe-2, which is capable of 33.86 petaflops/second. The next fastest computer has slightly more than half of that capacity.

The Tianhe-2 runs the Intel Xeon Phi processor. Overall, Intel (based in Santa Clara, CA) processors run 82.4% of the top 500 supercomputers. Other common providers are Cray (Seattle, WA) and IBM (Armonk, NY).

http://www.top500.org/blog/lists/2013/11/press-release/

I am, too-- but just LOOK at the arc of discovery and technology transfer for, say, penicillin. Or nuclear fission.

At some critical point, of course it is possible to cherry pick the basic research for ideas that can be driven to chosen end-use via focused development efforts (like the Manhattan Project, say), but that can't happen in the first place without the basic research that isn't "practical."

That's what I meant about serendipity. Sure, it's grossly inefficient, but it's still far better than anything else in terms of producing large leaps in technology.

There's a reason why it is termed research & development. They have to work in tandem, and usually in about that order, with a little back-and-forth at the interface. "Isn't that interesting" has to come before "what could I do with that."

The problem is that we've gotten a bit confused in the past decade or so and opted to think that development IS research.

We're about to get a major comeuppance on that score in antibiotic development, by the way. Pipeline is drying up there. Why? Too little basic research for too long, that's why.


Materials has had a similar problem-- or did, until recently.

Off topic... Dude - my DS 11 loved your link! Thanks :-)

What part am I missing? The Chinese supercomputer was more than 2X faster than the US model. When you consider Mao destroyed the universities and killed the intelligentia 40 years ago and China has rebuilt to this capacity, what are they now capable of in the next 10 years?

The development of Tianhe-2 was sponsored by the 863 High Technology Program, initiated by the Chinese Government, the government of Guangdong province, and the government of Guangzhou city.[1] It was built by China's National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) in collaboration with the Chinese IT firm Inspur.[1][5] Inspur manufactured the printed circuit boards and helped with the installation and testing of the system software.[1] The project was originally scheduled for completion in 2015, but was instead declared operational in June 2013.[6] As of June 2013, The Supercomputer has yet to become fully operational. It is expected to reach its full computing capabilities by the end of 2013.[5]

In June 2013, Tianhe-2 topped the TOP500 list of fastest supercomputers in the world. The computer beat out second place finisher Titan by nearly a 2-to-1 margin. Titan, which is housed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, achieved 17.59 petaflops, while Tianhe-2 achieved 33.86 petaflops. Tianhe-2's phenomenal performance returned the title of the world's fastest supercomputer to China after Tianhe-I's debut in November 2010. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers said Tianhe-2's win "symbolizes China's unflinching commitment to the supercomputing arms race".[5] China houses 66 of the top 500 supercomputers, second only to the United States' 252 systems.[3]

Also in June 2013, Tianhe-2 is ranked sixth on the Graph500 list of top supercomputers. In their benchmark, the system tested at 2061 giga-TEPS (traversed edges per second). The top system, IBM Sequoia, tested at 15363 giga-TEPS.[4]

Tianhe-2 will be housed at the National Supercomputing Center in Guangzhou (NSCC-GZ) in east campus of Sun Yat-sen University after the completion of the testing procedures.

What you're missing is that said supercomputer is a unique configuration of a whole lot of commercially-available parts (hardware and software) that were not designed by Chinese engineers.

Sure, they needed new circuit boards, but that's the computing equivalent of a car frame. They bought the engines, transmissions, fuel pumps, etc. from other (mostly American) companies, and then designed a new frame that could fit it all.

This project isn't a demonstration of locally superior engineering. Rather, it's a demonstration of what you can accomplish when you treat computing capacity as an "arms race." This project cost nearly $400M. If you had $800M lying around, you could have a machine that's twice as fast.

I think this is all simply a part of a bigger social question, that being, where to draw the line on forced subsidization of other people's needs, wants, ambitions, and goals. There are no easy answers but it's certainly and interesting topic and one that no doubt our children will be debating for their entire lives as well.

But that is the point Dude. They are putting the money in. The Arabs and the Chinese are putting all kinds of money into their R&D and their schools are getting into the top 20 in the world and pushing some American ones out.

And isn't taking all these parts lying around and putting it together in a better way being more creative than the Americans, who are suppose to be these innovators? You sound a little whiny saying they used other type of parts. So they didn't recreate the wheel...they just used it better. And you are saying they used the wheel? Doesn't that sound silly?

The supercomputers in the top 500 list are ranked by their speed in solving dense linear equations in the LINPACK benchmark. Companies like Google and Amazon have created huge in-house data centers to meet their actual needs (and to rent computing power to customers), and this arguably a better use of engineering talent than competing on LINPACK.

This statement says something about you, and nothing about me, because it is impossible for me to sound like anything via text media.


Tianhe-2 does not contain any revolutionary architectural features. It's just bigger. If you build a bigger wheel, have you learned anything?

I will grant you that building a $400M supercomputer does reflect a willingness to invest in R&D, because this computer is a tool that can be used for R&D purposes. But its construction does not reflect a major R&D achievement.

The number one consumer of supercomputing technologies, in terms of capacity and in number of installed systems in the top 500, remains the US.

I am confused.

On the one hand, some people here are arguing against subsidizing "pretty" areas like the liberal arts that can "brainwash feeble-minded people." Hmm. There is also an argument to take "personal responsibility" for your own education, regardless of major --- getting something for free (or for too little) can devalue it in the mind of the recipient! On top of that, China is held up as having the correct focus on higher education (engineering, science!). Students know that they have to study the right subjects so as to optimize their "job prospect [sic]," and they know that.

But... university fees in China are heavily subsidized by the government. People there don't even need loans!! Well, how can their students succeed if they aren't taking "personal responsibility?" Why aren't people there devaluing a university degree?

I am doubly confused because China has a public institution called the Central Academy of Drama. This place is apparently pretty prestigious. Why would such sensible people subsidize something as frivolous as drama and even hold it in high regard? What about job prospect? It makes no sense.

Triply confusing is that the liberal arts and humanities are important in the Chinese university education model. Hmm. Hmm. And then there is this shocking statement:


Why would so many countries (including tech powerhouses China and India) be adding fluffy things like liberal arts to their curricula, when this area is so pointless? Hmm. Hmm. Maybe Ms. Lawrence made up all those references.

Or, maybe...

...something else is going on. Like maybe setting standards and valuing different areas of human endeavor.

Here's a leading argument for more liberal arts education: The Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science

What good is science if you can't communicate it to others effectively?

I think that's why most colleges have a liberal arts core requirement in addition to the specialized area of study is it not?

Well, I won't grant that at all. Not unless you didn't know from the outset just WHETHER it was possible to achieve this outcome, or how precisely to go about the attempt. Neither of those things seems to have been the case. LHC is another example-- that isn't really a "research" thing, at least the construction itself is not, because the method and protocol is pretty well-defined to start with. If I build the world's LARGEST reflector telescope, is that "research?" Not really, unless I'm using some untested/new idea or material in its construction. It's merely "D" not R &D at that point otherwise.


And to add to the notion that communication and "soft" skills matter,

See what Neil deGrasse Tyson has to say about how important this is.

One can argue that he's more educator than scientist, but I doubt that one can dismiss what he is saying there. Science influences public policy-- er, or it should, at any rate. When it doesn't, in the modern age, we are in a lot of trouble, since those without a good grasp of scientific literacy are the ones deciding what makes it into school curricula, what message the CDC is allowed to promote for public health, and the scope of the FDA, DEA, and USDA missions. That seems fairly important.

Precisely. This also cuts both directions-- to earn a B.A. degree in the humanities requires science coursework, too.

Many years ago, Morgan Stanley was looking at super computer power and I was working with them when they thought about using Cray. It was soon after that Cray got bought and left MN. Interesting story on Cray. There were many different solutions being introduced to super computing and continues to this day. There is a conference on these issues every year out west and the biggest names in CIOs that attend are the ones that sounded the alarm to me. It was one of these that heads up the IT at one of the biggest global manufacturing firms in the world, yes US, that said the US is losing. But perhaps you know better. I admit to heresay, I am not longer in the midst of it.

"Losing" what exactly?

The race to...uh...computational utopia?

If I recall correctly, the technical writing course I took was in the school of engineering, not the arts. If you mean to imply that a liberal arts education has a monopoly on teaching effective communication, I think you're mistaken.

I don't mean to imply any such thing.

However, there's a difference in quality. One person can attend a fine culinary institute, and another can attend Burger U, and both can say with 100% truth, "I learned to cook." Yet they're not really saying the same thing.

Funny my son loves to cook. It is a pity that schools don't better cater to multi-faceted interests. If he could choose his college path now, I believe he'd have a math major with culinary science, computer science, and fiction minors. Maybe colleges could have plans to teach "backup skills" for majors with more complicated prospects. Like a Drama & Hospitality.

Well, food science IS a real thing at STEM-oriented schools. Nebraska has an enormous (and very prestigious) program in this area.

I mentioned earlier that I took a lot of humanities courses as an undergrad. Looking back on those years, I estimate that I wrote at least 400 typed pages as part of my coursework. This total does NOT include the lab reports I wrote for my science minor. In later years, all that practice meant that writing my M.Sc. and Ph.D. theses was fun and easy.

I understand that a tech writing course can teach some important skills, but it simply won't teach a person how to write the way it's learned by writing a hundred or more essays. The latter approach teaches how to analyze an argument, how to craft a counter-argument, how to make your main points, and how to put it all in order. The English professors at my (liberal arts) college tore our papers apart and made us keep rewriting them until they were good. They picked on everything: grammar, spelling, style, you name it.

I've worked as a tech writer. I get paid a lot because I'm very, very good and because I can get the job done very quickly. None of the other writers I've worked with seem to have as solid a grasp of writing as I do (which was presumably why they earned half what I did). These people are intelligent people, but they just don't have the mental discipline that I've developed in this area. Obviously, I can't say why, but on my end, I know that my education was a major contributor to my current skill level.

I'm not saying that everyone should write a hundred essays (20-25 might be good). But I do think that the gen. ed. courses offered today are often too heavy on multiple choice tests and too light on rigorous evaluation of each student's essays.

This criticism may also be readily applied to today's Gen Ed courses in STEM, for that matter-- too little analytical problem-solving, and too much memorizing.

Agreed!

hypothesis

Ultimately the issue of free tuition at US public Universities may become one of having a single centralized decision-making body, as opposed to the loosely organized, distributed network of need-based and merit-based financial aid channels in place today. A single centralized decision-making body may take it upon itself to decide on the University assignment and field of study in addition to providing tuition payment.

A point in favor of maintaining a de-centralized approach is the opportunity for individuals to transfer colleges, redress grievances, change their majors, and maintain an internal locus of control.

Students from other lands have often shared that they came to the US to gain additional education which would not have been allowed in their country, where they are essentially assigned to an educational and career track at a young age and there are no do-overs. Some have shared that the concept of adults going back to school and preparing to change careers is a freedom limited to the US, and the availability of this option struck them as highly unusual although appealing. Depending upon your own experiences, you may have other information.

Do the US taxpayers on this forum prefer to have a single centralized decision-making body determining the educational and career trajectory for themselves and their children?

That doesn't work either.

It does work in other countries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Germany

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Soviet_Union

Note the striking similarities between the two, in particular multiple education pathways, including vocational tracks.

ETA: While one could say that comparing capitalist countries to the former socialist countries is not valid, my impression is that the US system of education is an outlier even in the western world.

ETA 1: I see that I cross-posted with HK.

No-- it seems to me (and, apparently to the others who have posted) that a return to higher standards in both higher ed admissions (and instruction) and also in K-12 is really the only way to make education both appropriate and less costly to individuals without making it unconstitutional.

To do that, however, we need to stop pretending that innate intelligence isn't a factor in academic success, and we also need to stop pretending that academics is all that matters in workplace readiness, or adult life, for that matter.

A return to Vo-Tech for those individuals who are neither college oriented nor college material seems to be unlikely, but it is certainly part of the solution. Currently, we're (as a society) unwilling to admit that no, not everyone can be a rocket scientist... and particularly unwilling to unflinchingly say it to earnest young people. Not everything IS possible for a particular individual. I see this as a huge problem in the system, and one that makes free college education a non-starter in this country unless/until we fix it. We have to be willing to set standards and exclude those that cannot/will not meet them-- not adjust our standards to include everyone. This neglects the reason why the standards exist to start with. We treat education as though it is somehow different than, say, issuing driver's licenses. If you don't pass the vision test, you don't get a license. Sorry, but that's that; there are no adjustments to the vision test in order to make sure that everyone can pass it. The road test, similarly-- if you don't pass, you don't pass. I'm not sure why we see 'education' as something so meaningless that we're willing to apply the label "college education" to pretty much whatever a student wants or is able to do. Doesn't that make the entire enterprise more or less a giant diploma mill? This has consequences-- just as it would if driver's licensing were treated that way.

Funny thing about hypotheses, by the way-- correctly constructed and tested, the answers can be "no, that's not right" as well, but that doesn't mean that the investigation yields nothing useful in a larger sense. Just saying.

I find it rather interesting that we're willing to discuss how education should be distributed based on education type, ability of a person to complete specific classes, and any other number of criteria, however, the criteria of, "Did someone earn the right by paying for it?" is so readily dismissed. That unwillingness to consider, "Can I pay for it?" is why the U.S. is in such a state of financial downfall right now, if we can't currently afford it, we still think we should have it by someone else paying for it and we keep on teaching the next generation that's how it should be. That's a poor education in my eyes and sets the next generation up for failure.

I think that horse already left that barn.

So, we're going to need to come up with a new plan.

I'm not in the U.S. so I have little knowledge of your system admissions requirements. Since there have been a number of references to raising admission standards I'm curious, what are the requirements for a mid level college? (I'm not talking Ivy League or Community College but say something where you could get an Engineering degree with a decent chance of getting a job in an average economy as an example)

That's not how educational finance works.

You *do* pay for it.

Lots of usury is involved, too.

If you can't pass engineering courses, you fail out.

I don't think that there is currently any problem with American engineering schools and standards, admission or otherwise, unless someone has some data that shows the opposite.

I think that a problem with engineering schools is that they teach anti-cooperation, which companies who hire them find unhelpful.

It only becomes a problem when the answer to "Can I pay for it?" is a resounding "NO!" by an fast-growing pool of well-qualified individuals.

I do find it interesting that your main concern is, "Can I pay for it?" rather than, "Why should I pay to subsidize outrageous sports programs, unnecessary new construction, frivolous amenities, and tuition discounts for wealthy high-achievers, none of which serve the basic mission of the thing I'm actually paying for?"

I understand from your POV people are distorting the truth. Okay, facts, if that's what you wish I'm happy to oblige. In the U.S.:

Average credit card debt: $15,270
Average mortgage debt: $149,925
Average student loan debt: $32,258

Total nonbusiness bankruptcy filings in 2012: 1.18 million
Total business bankruptcy filings in 2012: 40,075

If that's not people getting things they can't yet afford I don't know how else I can possibly convince you.

Are we certain that's *not* the basic mission of the institution these days?

Many people seem to have decided that the "college experience" is the goal.

I'd be happy to discuss those too when the subject matter switches to them.

You realize that all of that credit was poofed into existence from nothing in the first place, right?

Which thread are you reading?

While I normally enjoy the conversations in this forum, I don't feel that discussing this subject matter any further will yield anything positive. I come from a background where you get what you pay for and you should expect nothing more except by the grace of God. I'll continue to teach my family the same. You're free to teach your family otherwise.

Thanks for for sharing your points of view and I'll look forward to discussions on other subject matters.

I don't think tax money should be used to make college entirely free for students or their families. OTOH, each of my children currently have six-figure 529 college savings plans not because they "earned" them but because they have affluent parents who have chosen to fund those accounts. You don't want to make college tuition so steeply progressive and need-based that it becomes pointless for parents to save and for 2nd earners of couples to work. But it should also be possible for qualified students from poor families to attend college, partly through loans. The question is how to strike the right balance between those objectives.

Isn't that what happens in all courses? If not then I'm starting to understand.

lol, Having gone through Engineering (though not in the U.S.) I think most of us had to cooperate at some point in order to survive. We figured that was part of their strategy - you either had to be an PG+ or be able to work with others (which meant you had to be smart enough to bring something to the trade).

Back to the main topic. I'm in Canada, I can't imagine paying the tuition rates that are paid in the States. It isn't free here but it is still possible for many without becoming insanely in debt. Entrance requirements are reasonably high out of high school. There are lots of scholarships available and most of the top of the class are going for free or close to it. Even full price it is a fraction of what you pay. Then again we don't have fancy foot ball stadiums and sports programs (although you don't really need much when you have 50 fans instead of 50,000).

I agree about the student loan debt; I think that part of the point of this thread addresses that question.

(CC debt is OT, but, average debt is driven up by a small number of people who have very high debt; I'd like to see the median and the SD (if the distribution is normal? Dunno.). More importantly, a large chunk of credit card debt is medical bills and other basic expenses like rent and food. For example, this story in the NY Times breaks it down. The idea that CC debt is exclusively (or even mostly) about buying luxury goods is a myth.)

I don't think that yoking students to large debt is healthy for the nation as a whole. IMO, the easy availability of credit is an important factor driving up college costs (they raise tuition because the loans will just poof the money into existence and the loan won't even go away if the student dies). At the same time, tightening the requirements for getting a loan is also bad, because the poor and lower middle class students will be shut out. IMO, the solution is to cut the costs and make college affordable to people who work a summer job and maybe a part-time job during term (though I'd prefer that everyone could study without working more than ~10 hours per week so that they can focus on, you know, studying.). You know, like things mostly were in the 80s or so and earlier.

This is a question which is easily answered in looking at College Board's college listings--

while this doesn't address what MINIMUMS are for that type of school, you can certainly take a look at what averages are for matriculating students.

https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/college-search

A lot of state flagships will admit mostly students who have SAT's well under 500 (Math and/or Reading), and don't even LOOK at what writing scores are.

________________________________________________

Old Dad, many of us have indicated that "completely free" probably isn't good, either. I happen to be in that particular camp myself. Surprising, I know, given how moderate-to-liberal most of my framework and worldview tends to be. I just think that human beings don't value what they don't have to pay for personally (in some way-- could be monetary, could be service).

_________________________________________________

Jon, that's what I fear, myself-- that the quality issues within the entire system have gone so far over the edge that there isn't an obvious way to recover, but I don't really see anything else emerging to truly replace it yet, either.

I'm hard pressed to see a benefit in a 529 account.

Truth.

"Education" is secondary now to the actual mission of many students AND institutions.

And this is where I happen to agree with Old Dad. Why should I subsidize someone else's 4y ClubMed vacation??

Of course, what I really wish is that rock-climbing facilities, campus dining sushi bars, and the like were something that I could choose to NOT partake of, whilst still obtaining the educational portion of the mission.

THAT seems to be a problem these days.

College is a hoop to jump through at this point to establish that you are employable.

So, there's no reason to not make it free when it's currently functioning as high school.

Really excellent post.

Except that the millions of years of stored sunlight that we are burning at a rapid clip is currently paying for it.

So nobody's paying for much of anything at the moment.

Yeah, someone has to go get it and move it, but that doesn't take much effort, relatively speaking.

I agree, but would prefer that these things were simply not there. They're a distraction, both for the students and the university. Well-equipped athletic facilities are very important. A multi-million dollar horsey barn or a new stadium, not so much. The fifteenth new giant research building in as many years, not so much.

I know that last one must sound odd coming from a scientist, but IMO, we're shoving too many people into research and forcing them to submit too many applications for grants that almost certainly won't get funded (too many applicants), and spending a fortune in the process. All while not doing research (because those hapless researchers are spending so much time writing grant applications).

This problem, I suspect, is what Wren was referring to when she was saying that the US is falling behind. She was right, but for the wrong reasons. It's not because we don't spend money. It's because we spend it on the wrong things.

Hello everyone - please stay on topic and refrain from personal attacks/calling people out. I would rather not lock this thread unless I have to. Per the board rules:

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Who should attend college and what they should study depend on what the purpose of going to college should be, which is the subject of this interesting essay. How many 18-year-olds want
"an opportunity to experience an intellectual awakening"?

http://www.theatlantic.com/educatio...ge-is-the-key-to-social-mobility/283120/
The Danger of Telling Poor Kids That College Is the Key to Social Mobility
Higher education should be promoted to all students as an opportunity to experience an intellectual awakening, not just increase their earning power.
ANDREW SIMMONS
The Atlantic
January 16, 2014

This is unlikely, but states are trying to inform students of outcomes by college major so that they can make better decisions.

Texas Takes On Student Outcomes
Inside Higher Education
January 17, 2014
By Doug Lederman
The University of Texas System on Thursday unveiled an ambitious data tool that gives current and prospective students a wealth of information about how recent graduates like them have fared in the job market.
The website, SeekUT (search + earnings + employment = knowledge), links with records from the Texas Workforce Commission to track 68,000 alumni of the system's 15 universities into the work force, providing earnings and loan debt levels one year and five years after graduation by institution and major.
The website and a related app also provide data on the time to degree by undergraduate major, the proportion of graduates in a major who go on to graduate study and the job and salary outlook in by occupation, educational level and region of the state.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/...ck-graduates-earnings-debt#ixzz2qfJ54Qqc

I can't agree with this at all. First of all, the reasons for going to college reflect the values of the students making the decision to attend, and can be as varied as they are. Secondly, this selling point is rather vague. Perhaps most importantly, I expect focusing on this aspect of college would lead to disappointment for a majority of students. At least we have statistics on the financial aspect of college attendance. This intangible benefit can't even be quantified. Honestly it strikes me as being a little bit religious/cultish, as if attending college constitutes some form of pilgrimage.

Yes, but the point the author is making is that those values are not entirely their own. The students are subjected to a conditioning aspect from society, and from educators in particular.

Basically, the author is describing Maslow's hierarchy. Those from affluent backgrounds are encouraged to seek actualization in college, while those with more basic needs are encouraged to fulfill those, instead.

The main benefit is that gains in the account are not taxed when used for higher education. If I owned stocks in a taxable account I'd have to pay taxes on the dividends each year and pay capital gains taxes when I sold the stocks to pay tuition.

I was aiming more for spiritual enlightenment to the extent that I was aiming for anything.

Darned west coast time difference! I was going to post this here this morning.


I thought the article COULD have made some good points-- but it jumped the shark midway through with this zinger--


Okay, I think I see your problem right here...

ALL students??

Maybe some of them can't be awakened this way. {sigh}


Assuming that ALL students are college material is the problem.

This thread really seems to have touched a nerve with parents.

My point of view is that university exploits gifted students and gives them little in return. Even if tuition were free, going to university will interfere with real success. The big-name schools got their reputations not by exceptional teaching but by admitting and graduating bright students. Less able students have some of that prestige rub off on them, but the top students would have learned as much in lower-ranked schools, or more by studying on their own.

The long-term goal of most parents and kids is for the kids to form their own flourishing families in due time. The resources needed to do that fall into three principal types: financial, social, and emotional. The financial resources are more often a consequence of the social resources than the cause, and likewise the emotional resources are a precondition for the social resources.

Intellectual resources can help support all three, but contrary to the usual supposition, intellectual resources are not so easily affected as the other three. The raw amount a person learns is largely set by their innate capacity, but the particulars of the selection of what to learn and in what order are somewhat free – though limited by one's degrees of interest in various subjects, and interest is a form of emotional resource.

The emotional resources give the impetus to set goals and to allow persistence, confidence and persuasiveness in the face of rejection, failure, and conflict. One crucial emotional resource is the ability to act in one's own interest without undue moral anxiety, in particular: to not be squeamish about business, to regard persuading and directing people as worthy methods and making a modest profit for time and trouble as being only proper (and a high profit, even better). Despite the fact that these are core tenets of our economic system, it doesn't come naturally to most people today to really believe them, as shown by the scarcity and free-thinking character of entrepreneurs compared to the glut of conformist job-seekers. It wasn't always so. Self-employment, sole proprietorships, and small trading were once the norm in the US. Why the change?

Conventional school has as its unstated primary reason for being the desire of adults to reduce youth's competition with adults for money and mates. By teaching certain attitudes and norms in the form of unquestioned assumptions, such as “school is education”, “keeping you apart from the real word is to your benefit”, “profit is wrong”, “you can't succeed except by school” and “school is more respectable than parenthood or any business”, this competition with adults can be prevented even after leaving school. This sets the interests of the students at odds with adults, including their parents.

Natural allegiance is to one's family rather than to one's generation or sex. Setting women against men and children against parents, breaking up these crucial social bonds that existed long before governments – this alienation is not accomplished by chance, but to enable would-be authorities to interpose themselves as intermediaries in every human relation. This alienation starts with schools alienating children from themselves -- their thoughts, their labor, their time, their knowledge, their standards, their goals -- they are taught that nothing is theirs, all depends solely upon the system's judgements.

You can plan a different path for your children, one that has a better chance of arriving at the real goal than schools' empty promises. Plan for them starting independent businesses and think about how they will find and attract good spouses. What do they need to know? What actions, what projects can they do? I have some definite ideas, but this is getting long.

Here is an article on a new study of the earnings trajectories of people who major in various subjects. I wonder if the body of this article backs up the title.

Liberal Arts Grads Win Long-Term
January 22, 2014
By Allie Grasgreen
Inside Higher Ed

...

At peak earning ages (56-60), graduates with a baccalaureate degree in a humanities or social science field are making $40,000 more than they were as recent graduates (21-25). And while in the years following graduation they earn $5,000 less than people with professional or pre-professional degrees, liberal arts majors earn $2,000 more at peak earning ages, when they make about $66,000. (Salaries in both fields still lag behind engineering and math and sciences graduates, who in their late 50s make about $98,000 and $87,000, respectively.)

Liberal arts graduates don’t fare quite as well when they possess just an undergraduate degree, though. The workers with advanced degrees in any field of study – who make up about 40 percent of all liberal arts graduates, and earn about $20,000 a year more for it -- push the earnings averages up significantly. Among graduates with a baccalaureate degree only, those with humanities and social sciences degrees consistently earn less than anyone else, peaking at about $58,000 a year.

And while 5.2 percent of liberal arts degree-holders are unemployed from the ages of 21-30, that rate drops to 3.5 percent among 41- to 50-year-olds. Though they come close, liberal arts graduates never quite close the unemployment gap between themselves and professional or pre-professional graduates, whose rate drops from 4.2 to 3.1 percent among the same age groups.

Part of the salary difference may be explained by another finding that the report authors highlight: liberal arts graduates are far more likely to wind up on lower-paying -- if no less important -- career paths. Liberal arts degree-holders fill half of all social services jobs (including counselors, social and human/community service workers, religious workers and “similar categories”), compared to 26 percent in both the education and “all” professions.

It’s unclear whether liberal arts graduates are pursuing social service jobs because they’re more drawn to them, because they’re suited to a wider breadth of possible fields (which also contributes to a slow start salary-wise) or because that’s simply what’s left after all the other jobs are taken.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/...rt-examines-long-term-data#ixzz2r8Lb9Om7

Holy toledo, what a dog's breakfast of statistics and correlation fallacy THAT is.

"Unclear?" Is that ever a polite euphemism. Unclear what any of it means, from that.

Though I suppose the high unemployment numbers at the outset (and from what cohort is this, anyway?? Times are far different than they were 30+ years back); that probably has a profound impact on lifetime earnings. Hey-- there's a thought. Maybe LIFETIME earnings is the right comparison.

How about apples to apples? Maybe a table with some data in it would have been clearer.

This doesn't even begin to address the problems inherent in the semantics in this-- where at some institutions "Liberal Arts" means anything that is a BA degree and includes a gen-ed core, and at others, comprises a balanced and thoughtful, intentional course of instruction. "Humanities" is "Liberal Arts" at a good number of institutions, as well. At some public undergraduate colleges, Social Sciences doesn't even have its own division/college, and could be counted as either of the above.

Where is this data even FROM?? Who is reporting the values?

There are TWO concepts using the word "liberal" in education, which is confusing. I'm a graduate of a liberal arts college and didn't even get the distinction until very recently.

Liberal Arts: really, a liberal arts college. This is a college (typically undergraduate or with minimal graduate programs, and smallish). The college emphasizes a broad education. At my college, this meant that you had to take at least two 300-level (junior/senior level) classes outside your major (several 300-level classes required). See the Wikipedia. The education you get is not trivial. Examples of these colleges include the Seven Sisters, the Little Ivies, and Harvey Mudd.

Liberal Studies: A bogus (IMO) "major" that can involve little more than spending four years taking introductory-level courses, putting them in a package with a nice ribbon on it, and calling it a degree. A choice for future teachers (ouch). Here's an example. My opinion is that this major is trivial because it doesn't require students to dig into something in depth.

Right-- but what I'm saying is that there are some (similarly, undergraduate focused) public colleges and universities that espouse the Liberal Arts model very well, also.

An economics major from one of them would earn, technically, a "liberal arts" degree.

My own undergraduate chemistry degree is one of those. It's a B.S. degree, not liberal arts, but I did have to complete the same Liberal Arts core as everyone else, and it was definitely not trivial (two years of foreign language, fine arts at the 300+ level, etc.). So how would someone like that be classified for the purposes of that particular analysis?

course in instruction in what? What are you qualified to do? That is the question employers are asking. If you want a job, what skill set are you bringing to the table?

You come out of computer science, you can write code. You come out of materials engineering, you can work on new materials.

And at one time, a B in chemistry made you a professional with an ability to get a pretty good job. Now, that makes you a lab tech. You need a PhD to get a r&D job.

It is about the realities of the job market, not what someone wants them to be.

Interesting. No one from my college would be labelled as having a degree in liberal arts. People have a degree in economics or a degree in biochemistry or a degree in English.

My economics undergrad was part of the arts envelope, but the degree is "BA(Hons.) Economics". I think this is the distinction you meant to make, HK?

Cha-ching!

Now, I'll grant you, not everyone goes to college in order to attain skills needed to secure a job capable of financially supporting a lifestyle of one's hopes, there are certainly other outstanding uses of what one learns in college, however, the vast majority are attempting to acquire the skills needed to support themselves and perhaps a family financially. What that means is doing some research in the market for who is hiring and what they're hiring for. We all have equal value as human beings, however, the job market determines our financial worth, which is why I often roll my eyes at the wealth distribution inequity debate.

One problem with that strategy is that all of the other smart people are trying to do it, too-- so everyone who CAN cut it winds up in the same five majors which are projected to have "high demand" in five year projections.

Only... everyone else did that too...

Well, you see my point. Even if you try to outsmart the employment market, you MAY wind up getting burned and only winding up with a degree and job skills in something you don't really even like, and can't find a good job in either.

I've encouraged my DD to get the broadest degree that she can-- but not in the arts or humanities. Well, not solely, anyway. It's fine if she wants to study psychology or history, but she needs to have a STEM major share top billing.

My preference is math or one of the physical sciences. They are (IME) more versatile ultimately than their engineering counterparts, even at the undergraduate level. Sure, starting salaries aren't as high, but thorough training in biochemisttry, for example, leaves you capable of being more than a tech, and of learning as you go.

They reward divergent thinking and curiosity more regularly, too-- as part of training, I mean. So that seems (to us) to be a far better fit for an HG+ person.

Why do you think math is more versatile than say an degree in English? My BA is in math and when I left school the only things I could figure out to do with my degree was to become a computer programmer, a teacher, or go to graduate school. It was the late 80's, it wasn't that hard to became a computer programmer.

I had a college friend, graduated in biochem in 1978. All she could get was a lab tech job with a BSc. She went and became an accountant.

Comparing the job market 30 years ago to today, Bluemagic isn't relevant. Today, to be a computer programmer is probably more specialized than just having a math degree and figuring out dos and Fortran.

According to the captions of the graphs from the article, the sources are the US Census Bureau and 2012 American Community Survey. The "Note on Methodology" in the press release at http://www.aacu.org/press_room/press_releases/2014/liberalartsreport.cfm says this:

Wall Street wants smart and hard-working employees, but it appears that the technical skills can be learned in a few days:

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/05...-camps-to-bring-new-workers-up-to-speed/
Wall Street Turns to ‘Boot Camps’ to Train New Workers
By LYNNLEY BROWNING
New York Times
MAY 30, 2013, 4:26 PM 37 Comments


It should be possible for someone who loves literature or history to major in those subjects but also fit in a few business courses, get outside training, or simply work through a book such as

Financial Modeling and Valuation: A Practical Guide to Investment Banking and Private Equity (Wiley Finance)
Paul Pignataro

(to list one book of many) that teaches necessary concepts and skills. MBA programs have few pre-requisites other than a BA and last only 2 years (vs. 3 for law school and 4 for medical school). MBA students probably study much less than law and medical students. Not much academic knowledge is needed for business, but the right credentials may be needed to get the first job.

You need to know calculus. So many of the financial models have derivative aspect. If you do not have university level math, I think it would be difficult. And you could not be innovative in your structuring. What if you wanted a derivative to the nth degree and make it equal zero at the end of term.

To be fair, the phrase "technical skills" here simply refers to learning to use the more advanced features of Excel.

The job market has almost no relationship to the distribution of wealth at the very top, but whatever.

What you are saying is true for derivatives specialists and quants running portfolios, but the majority of spreadsheet-wielding MBAs on Wall Street, analyzing companies, are using just arithmetic, with maybe some algebra. I'm not saying their jobs are easy. A good stock analyst has the business models of dozens of companies in his head and is constantly updating his industry knowledge. But the best stock analysts are not using higher math than the weaker ones.

For many professions, math requirements are just a filter. Pre-meds take calculus in college, but doctors never use it in their practice.

I disagree. I headed up an global industry group in the 80s. Then went into derivative trading.

They like engineer undergrad degrees with an MBA for research. You have to be able to understand industries, like I had auto manufacturing.

But now when financing is done, you have to be able to create different structures, not just a simple IPO sometimes. Or deal with creative private investments that were done before the public offering.

And if you are in fixed income, you have to be able to strip and mingle. If you don't know how to create derivatives, then you are not going into fixed income.

It isn't that you couldn't find a place, but if you are going into the "Jet" type program -- that is what they called it at Merrill when I was young. They took the brightest and talented undergrads and then interned them in different departments for 18 months and then let them choose a dept. Not happening today.

And if you are a plain vanilla broker and do not derivatives, then you shouldn't be managing money.

Differential calculus is entry-level university mathematics or high-school level mathematics. So regardless of how important it is, Bostonian is right that an English major should be able to take a couple to a few relevant classes and be easily capable of doing the job.

It isn't clear to me that all this expertise you've spoken of has done the world a lot of good in the last 20 years or so, either.

Silly.

If you were on the receiving end of the massive transfer of wealth, then it was wonderful for you!

Because I expect "college" in general to result in excellent communication skills-- no matter the major.

Also, because writing as a skill (that is, finely wrought rhetorical skill, nuanced persuasive writing, excellent usage and editing ability) is simply not valued much anymore.

While I feel that this is somewhat grotesque, to say the least, in a society which requires every bit as much literacy as it did prior to the internet, I can't change that fact.

Math is valued because too few people can do it well.

English is not because most people have given up caring.

Agreed.


While I feel that this is somewhat grotesque, to say the least, in a society which requires every bit as much literacy as it did prior to the internet, I can't change that fact.


True. And it's quite unfortunate that one reason for the dearth of mathy people is that the people who teach it in our schools (and dthe textbooks they use) do such a poor job.

When did this conversation turn to wealth at the very top? Wealth at the very top has little to do with college, a job, or anything we've discussed in this thread so far, it has much more to do with drive, attitude, and perseverance. I was referring to the "working person" who is employed by others, not those who own the company.

On this much, we are absolutely agreed.

I don't think that a discussion including wealth distribution adds much to this particular topic, myself.

I mean, sure-- wealth disparity impacts college choices, and "free college" very definitely benefits some students disproportionately, but that wasn't the gist of the more recent observations.

The author of this article thinks employers ought to be more flexible, but the story does not paint a rosy picture for recent liberal arts grads and confirms what Wren wrote.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/jobs/reopening-an-employment-door-to-the-young.html
Reopening an Employment Door to the Young
By ROBERT W. GOLDFARB
New York Times
February 1, 2014

Yes, but these days the large corporations that are run by people who are invested in long-term outcomes are few and far between. It's all about quick wins, which is why they're no longer thinking about providing corporate training. Cutting the training budget is a quick win.

Many young people may not need 4 years of college after 12 years of grade school to become productive. Increased tax funding of existing universities and heavy-handed regulation (see story below) may crowd out faster and cheaper (in terms of cumulative cost if not cost-per-semester) alternatives to the BA.

Crackdown on Coding Academies
By Doug Lederman
Inside Higher Education
February 3, 2014
SAN FRANCISCO -- A new type of educational provider has quietly sprung up in San Francisco and several other major cities, providing specialized training in computer coding and other skills that are in great demand from technology companies and other entrepreneurs.
And, a bit belatedly, government regulators are noticing, agitating some of the providers and highlighting anew the tension between educational innovation and government regulation aimed at protecting consumers and ensuring quality.
The issue flared last week in California, where the Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education -- which licenses educational entities to operate, as part of the state's Department of Consumer Affairs -- sent letters warning as many as eight "coding academies" and other training providers that they were operating in violation of state law and threatening fines and potential shutdown if they do not apply for state recognition.
Russ Heimerich, a spokesman for the bureau, said that in the agency's continuing hunt for "unlicensed activity" by providers that "don't have good intentions for students," one of its enforcement specialists -- in a bit of "serendipity" -- recently came across an article about the coding academies, which began popping up two years ago to feed the explosive appetite of technology companies here and in some other high-tech corridors around the country.
The startups -- which include places like App Academy, Dev Bootcamp, General Assembly, Hack Reactor, Hackbright Academy, and Zipfian Academy -- offer intensive, full-time, short-term training programs in computer languages and other programming skills designed to lead directly to jobs. The fees are often steep -- typically between $8,000 and $12,000 for a six- to 10-week course -- and are paid directly by the students, since the classes and programs (which do not award degrees) do not qualify for federal or state financial aid.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/...ed-providers-tech-training#ixzz2sGoitRle
Inside Higher Ed

Yes, corporate short-term thinking and looking for the quick temporary win affects training and may also impact the length of careers as noted in an article linked within the article:

University tuition which is "free at point of service" and funded by taxes paid throughout the lifespan may add fuel to a debate which has been ongoing for decades: the value of liberal arts education (sometimes called classical education, or the education of free people) -vs- career-oriented education (sometimes called vocational training, or the task-oriented training traditionally given to peasants) may be viewed differently depending upon SES.

In a shrinking economy, more families may be drawn to vocational training for employment in manual tasks which cannot be easily outsourced, providing a semblance of job security, financial stability, and more control over career length.

It may bear repeating that some may wonder what has spurred the rapid increase in University tuition. Funding research? Shifting costs to some students in order to subsidize others? Paying out lifetime retirement benefits? The most effective answers to controlling costs of higher education may be in identifying the areas of cost growth, prior to considering how growing costs might be funded. As with gifted students, each institution may have a unique profile, and therefore a unique approach, rather than a one-size-fits-all policy.

Some may say "buyer beware", as 6 to 10 weeks is often not enough time to become adept in coding a new language. Families may wish to see the job placement stats before signing up for such a course or camp.

This is a solid argument for "heavy-handed regulation," as it has been polemically called. The umbrella of regulation in this case serves the interests of the marketplace, because the existence of an accountability measure improves consumer confidence in the product, and boosts its market value. "Buyer beware" becomes "buyer aware."

The amount of money we're talking about here is a good incentive for fraud, and you can be sure there are fraudsters working the same sector as those offering a genuine article.

Consumers sharing information, informally and through consumer organizations, may also help "buyer beware" become "buyer aware", independent of regulation.

To stay on topic, contemplating a policy of University tuition which is "free at point of service" and funded by taxes paid throughout the lifespan may inspire questions as to what has spurred the rapid increase in University tuition: Funding research? Shifting costs to some students in order to subsidize others? Paying out lifetime retirement benefits? The most effective answers to controlling costs of higher education may be in identifying the areas of cost growth, prior to considering how growing costs might be funded. As with gifted students, each institution may have a unique profile, and therefore a unique approach, rather than a one-size-fits-all policy.

IMO (and I believe there is some evidence to support this opinion), the easy availability of credit (student loans) is a huge factor in the costs going up. Turn off the tap, and the costs will likely go down.

But it's so much fun to poof massive amounts of debt into existence!

It's like magic!

It worked with housing...

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/states-looking-0-community-college-tuition-055227772.html
States looking at $0 community college tuition
By STEVEN DUBOIS
Associated Press
March 18, 2014

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Nothing sparks consumer demand like the word "free," and politicians in some states have proposed the idea of providing that incentive to get young people to attend community college.

Amid worries that U.S. youth are losing a global skills race, supporters of a no-tuition policy see expanding access to community college as way to boost educational attainment so the emerging workforces in their states look good to employers.

Of course, such plans aren't free for taxpayers, and legislators in Oregon and Tennessee are deciding whether free tuition regardless of family income is the best use of public money. A Mississippi bill passed the state House, but then failed in the Senate.

The debate comes in a midterm election year in which income inequality and the burdens of student debt are likely going to be significant issues.

"I think everybody agrees that with a high school education by itself, there is no path to the middle class," said State Sen. Mark Hass, who is leading the no-tuition effort in Oregon. "There is only one path, and it leads to poverty. And poverty is very expensive."

Hass said free community college and increasing the number of students who earn college credit while in high school are keys to addressing a "crisis" in education debt. Taxpayers will ultimately benefit, he said, because it's cheaper to send someone to community college than to have him or her in the social safety net.

Research from the Oregon University System shows Oregonians with only a high school degree make less money than those with a degree and thus contribute fewer tax dollars. They are also more likely to use food stamps and less likely to do volunteer work.

********************************************

College graduates earn more than high school graduates in part because they are smarter and more disciplined. Colleges don't create these qualities, so the analyses of the economic impact of sending everyone to at least community college are overstated. Graduating from high school is not too difficult. Free tuition for all high school graduates, as opposed to merit scholarships for the best students, will further discourage high school students from working hard.

No, college graduates earn more because they've got a piece of paper that often acts as a gateway to higher-paying jobs, so the solution is to print more paper.

Community college is basically remedial high school, so other than printing more paper, I'm not sure what Oregon hopes to accomplish here. Community college doesn't even print the right kind of paper.

Community colleges print the right kind of paper in some circumstances (e.g. paramedic certification, different medical technicians, firefighting), and if tuition is free, they can reduce student loan burden. So IMO, free tuition is a great idea (maybe they'll extend it to the public four colleges, as California used to do back when we were serious about investing in the next generation).

But the real problem is too few jobs for semi-skilled people for whom college isn't a realistic option. The idea that we can fix that by making community college free or by sending more people to college in high school is ludicrous. They still won't do well.

Because we have too much stuff.

The answer is more leisure time!

We have a family member who finally passed all tests to receive free tuition to community college. She works incredibly hard.

To now make it free for anyone really would take that accomplishment and diminish it. It would not be valued by most who drifted in for free, that's for sure!

This proposal is like any other competition between children these days. We just can't stand that there be losers. It's not FAIR if everyone can't win, right?

So when do kids learn what the real world is like? Not the first two years of college if this should pass.

Not sure I understand. How would her hard work be affected by someone else?

Um... okay-- this IS my state.

Understand that there are two Oregons.

1. Urban, well-educated, highly compensated OR-- the Willamette Valley residents of the Silicon Forest, and...

2. Mostly rural people who have low incomes (<35K) and often as not, lack completed college education themselves, and find the entire PROCESS of sending a child to college to be a daunting one.


Three, really-- there is also a minority Oregon that is both rural (Hispanic) and urban (more African-American and Asian) that is underemployed or unemployed and poorly educated.

We also have a HUGE drug (meth) problem that is related to some of these same groups, and nowhere to really "rehabilitate" those people in terms of lifestyle, so the LE/corrections system just keeps recycling them. Mental health services are also SEVERELY limited here-- even if you can pay, you can't find a practitioner to help you, and if you cannot pay, forget even trying.


We lack a lot of private colleges and universities, and our "system" is well over capacity already in the conventional Uni/4y sense. There is the additional problem that the state government is currently not ABLE to fully fund even that part of the system. There is also an idea on the table to create a "pay-it-forward" tuition-free option (or mandate? it isn't yet clear) for THAT part of the higher ed system in order to provide a meritocratic system that has a chance of sustaining itself on something other than non-resident tuition rates (as Washington has apparently chosen to do, meaning that most of THEIR students who are most deserving can no longer even get seats at UW, at any price). Also understand that politically, OR is hard-core progressive, and it's in the DNA here. Nothing here breaks purely along conventional party lines-- so this COULD probably really work here, of all places, because it may get bipartisan support.

Anyhow, that's the other part of the backstory here.

The other bit of this is that in the years since 2000 here there has been deeply entrenched unemployment and underemployment. While MOST of the country experienced a nice recovery from the dot.com bust, only to fall back into recession in 2008, that really didn't happen here-- if anything, that merely serves to have insulated us from the very worst of the real estate bubble, I suppose. But on a less happy note, it means that there are a LOT LOT LOT of unemployed adults who have few job skills that are marketable in any way that promotes even subsistence living, and well, when you look at it that way, free job-retraining vis a vis the community college system (which already exists, in terms of "infrastructure") seems like a MIGHTILY good idea to me as a taxpayer. Hass is absolutely presenting the unvarnished reality there-- it really isn't hyperbole to ask "which is more expensive? Social services for the indigent long-term? Or education and support for the short-term?" Not here.

At least then those people are not a drain on public resources (and food banks, independent non-profit charities, etc), and they can start PAYING taxes again instead of just being beneficiaries for a lifetime, and perpetuating the same un-virtuous cycle in their own kids.

I don't favor reducing the E.F.C. if it means increasing federal loans and grants, because government subsidies are a cause of rising college prices. Maybe the calculation of need used to determine eligibility for grants and loans should be done as if no college costs more than $30K per year for tuition, room, and board. Colleges could charge more, but students and parents would not be eligible for more federal loans and grants because they were charging more.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/21/opinion/a-quick-way-to-cut-college-costs.html
A Quick Way to Cut College Costs
By STEVE COHEN
New York Times
MARCH 20, 2014

...

Consider a family of four, earning $100,000 in income and having $50,000 in savings. The [Expected Family Contribution] says that this family will contribute $17,375 each year to a child’s college expenses. A $100,000 income translates into take-home pay of about $6,311 monthly. An E.F.C. of $17,375 means the family must contribute about $1,500 a month — every month for four years. But cutting family expenses by 25 percent every month is unrealistic.

Alternatively, the family could use its savings. But that would deplete their $50,000 before the start of the child’s senior year, leaving nothing for the proverbial rainy day, or for the second child’s education.

...

Since Congress controls the E.F.C. formula, it makes sense for political leaders who are serious about controlling college costs and student debt to start by making the E.F.C. more realistic. But tinkering with the E.F.C. formula won’t be sufficient because there are so many problems with it. For example, it doesn’t take into consideration geographic differences in cost-of-living, or the lack of liquidity in one’s home.

So let’s get serious instead. Congress and the president should drastically cut the E.F.C. — by around 75 percent, to reflect the fact that since 1980 tuition has risen at nearly five times the rate of the Consumer Price Index. Doing so would force colleges to construct financial aid packages without the artificial price supports of inflated contribution numbers — and make paying for college less agonizing.

Bostonian,

That gets my vote!

"Many colleges, particularly private schools, will take other data into account before determining your actual aid amount, but the federal EFC is usually the starting point." - College Confidential.

And from the NYT article: "I also have to explain that the E.F.C. is the minimum a family is going to pay. In many cases, they’re asked to pay considerably more."

So fixing the EFC is no panacea.

Ummmm: "the lack of liquidity in one’s home."

Hasn't the author ever heard of a HELOC?

I did find this line amusing, though: "Much of the college’s contribution comes in the form of a discount from the school’s already inflated tuition, which, with a straight face, administrators call a grant."

Some may favor this approach and/or whatever it takes to have the costs and cost increases clearly understood by the public... was the steady increase in tuition truly due mainly to the availability of credit?

Yes.

The mammoth origination of credit (that had no business existing) was a major factor in driving up the cost of tuition in recent years.

I don't know whether it was 40% or 60% of the reason, but it was the largest of all the factors.

I've seen that hypothesized many, many times-- and while I don't necessarily disagree with it in principle, since I can certainly see a plausible mechanism at work there-- I sure wish that there were direct EVIDENCE to support it.


I'm not convinced that parallels to the housing bubble are accurate since educational debt is effectively unsecured debt any way you look at it, and real estate is not.


If there were clear causative evidence, I'd be a lot more comfortable with solutions like that proposed by Bostonian's link above.

As it stands, though, I'm hesitant, because I can certainly see the potential harm in some of those limitations for lower SES students.

I see it as equally plausible that "because we can" has been reason enough to drive costs and that demand has simply not evaporated because of the marketing industry surrounding higher ed, ergo demand has been driving increases in available credit, not the other way around.

Another theory to throw into the mix -

http://theweek.com/article/index/25...-can-explain-the-higher-education-bubble

Chay, that's the theory that I fear is actually most correct.

It is also the one that makes the most sense of the observations that I have made both as a parent and also as an insider in higher ed-- that the actual PRODUCT (the education itself) doesn't really differ substantially between, say, $55K/yr Private College and $8K/yr State Uni... at least not in terms of the benefit received by the average tuition-paying student.

It's like taking Wonder bread and plopping it onto a paper towel versus a Spode salad plate.

Now, I know that those who are paying for white glove service and Spode want to suggest that it's different bread... but I'm simply not convinced that this is so.

I think that what people are paying for is the IMPRESSION that the bread is better. The impression that OTHERS hold, I mean. I suspect that many of those paying for those "elite" colleges out of pocket or on credit are doing so for the very real phenomenon of social mobility as a result-- or at least for the promise of it, anyway.

We've (personally) decided that the premium isn't worth it since the "social network" probably is mostly illusory anyway if you're not already one of them. (By "them" I mean the wealthy, elite, etc-- those who aren't too worried about their kids getting in, or of paying for it if they do.)

Yes, at elite institutions, no question that the students are more 'striving' types, and many are brighter than the average bear at NoName State.

I just don't see that as being worth a premium of 80-100K.

What really angers me is that I also see NoName State deciding to "rebrand" itself as "Fine Dining" and spending $$ on things that are not central to the mission in an effort to "lure" students there...

which is at least potentially where cost increases are coming from-- "Look! Brand new! In-room Sushi Chefs!"

"New football stadium! Go Team!"

Chay's theory certainly has shown an influence, particularly on private schools and those considered elite. But I think it's only part of the explanation, because for every Louis Vuitton buyer, there are at least ten others who say, "Look, I don't care about status; I just need something that can carry my stuff," and buy a generic, off-the-rack bag at Target. Louis Vuitton has no influence on that segment of the market.

So... state schools, the generic bag of the educational world. Why are they also so expensive?

- College is price sticky, because buyers see it as necessary for maintaining their way of life, or achieving a better one. They are therefore not equipped to make rational decisions on price.

- Arms-race spending to move up in USNews rankings.

- Easy credit to fuel the first two.

Depending on the field the student is entering, $80-100K could be a fair price--even a bargain--for that network. For students interested in politics or business (especially entrepreneurship!), having the right name on their CV can open doors, earn preferential financing, and get deals done that might never otherwise have been made. Within the programs I've attended, there is a surprisingly open and supportive network of support within the alumni community. I can literally contact anyone who has ever attended the programs with the reasonable expectation that I will be given air time, which I think is an amazing asset.

Case in point: I attended a speaker session hosted by a CEO of a tech start-up. Chatting with him after the discussion, we discovered a common undergrad background (albeit about 15 years apart). Moments later, he was making an e-introduction for me to a friend of his who also attended the school and could help me with a start-up I'm working on.

Is the same network worth $80-100K for a literature or modern languages student? Probably not.

This is my point with the "credit has no business existing."

You don't originate mammoth amounts of credit for Veblen goods because such origination is simply stupid.

Also, these loans do have underlying security.

They are simply a re-run of the old American tradition of indentured servitude.

I viewed law school as effectively purchasing a "letters patent." I was quite content to be extended credit to purchase this degree.

And yes, I actually talk about law school this way.

Increased demand for college/uni education may also be heavily promoted precisely because the economy is soft: There may exist a strong motive to drive a delayed entrance of individuals into the job market; Four or more years of college/uni translates to that number of years during which that person is not competing in a dwindling job market.

I'd also argue that a soft economy also drives up demand for the "elite" schools. Picking some random numbers there is a huge difference between the scenario of 80% of people with degree x getting a good job and 8% doing so. It is no longer about just having the piece of paper to get you in a door, the name on the top and (as aquinas highlighted) the network behind it become all that more important to even find the door.

JonLaw - I totally agree with the view of purchasing a "letters patent". I went to an local university and graduated having made money in the process. I had friends that went to the more expensive top school and graduated with the same degree hugely in debt. In the end (at that time) our degrees opened the exact same doors.

To the original post on free tuition, the Veblen(Joneses) thingies would keep status seekers away from the free schools. A profit-motive variant would have people seek out the magic 100% ride at moneyed private schools (the more it costs, the more I make on a free ride?) Later entrance to workforce isn't just for a soft job market it also pays to the frontend (or backend?) for extended retirement age and additional thimble bailing for social security. Intriguing.

Pretending all that stuff doesn't exist... What would be the proposed characteristics a STEM graduate studies bound freshman should base their undergraduate school selection upon?

As an engineer I'd consider the following -
1) find a school with a co-op or internship program - look carefully at how hard it is to get into and percentage of students successfully placed (the program only helps if YOU get a job each work term). I can't say enough good things about these types of programs to gain valuable job experience and while earning money to ease the debt. I can't remember the last time we even interviewed a new grad that don't have coop or internship experience (I'm in Canada - I assume it is similar in the U.S.).
2) class sizes - do they pack 500 freshman into lectures the first year or only 100? Large lectures aren't necessarily the end of the world as long as there are smaller tutorials and/or accessible TA's and profs. Large lectures with limited office hours can mean you're on your own to figure things out. Often 1st year classes are huge and then it gets smaller as people drop out or specialize. If they are still putting hundreds in a lecture in 4th year I would be wary.
3) specialties offered and when you have to pick your specialty - I did two years of common engineering and then 2 years in a specialty (civil, chem, mech, electrical, etc). Other schools make you pick 1st year. Advantages to delaying - you get to have a taste of everything and see what interests you and what you're good at. Disadvantages - you have to take courses like Organic Chem even if you are going into Electrical (I think I'm still slightly scarred...). If you do have to pick going in or early, how hard is it to switch?
4) jobs, jobs, jobs - companies tend to recruit from the same subset of schools. Many large companies hire from all over but smaller companies tend to look at a couple of schools and tend to focus on closer schools. If you're thinking of going into a smaller specialized field then it can be advantageous to know where they recruit from and/or geographically where there are lots of companies in that field.
5) team work - not sure how to put this in words but having a tight knit group to survive the experience was invaluable. Our faculty had an engineering library where many of the 1st and 2nd years would gather (after 2nd you had a homeroom). The first year in particular it was crucial to find people to work with. For most of us it was the first time we were challenged and had to study. Team work was essential to getting through the volume of work with good grades in the end (and it was much more enjoyable). Profs weren't always around to answer questions but that room was usually packed and you could usually find someone who could answer it (and then turn around and help them with something else in return). Many of my friends outside of engineering were jealous of the team work vs the every person for themselves mentality that was prevalent in other faculties.

That's all I can think of for now. I'm sure others will have more.

Thanks for the informative post. I wonder how many internships are open to students who are below age 18 and who may not have driver's licenses. I think many gifted students can handle the academic work of college at a young age, but they may be less prepared for or disqualified from internships and summer jobs. This is a more important consideration for students who plan to work immediately after college than for students who plan to attend graduate school.

Good question...Legally I'm guessing we can't ask about age in an interview and I've never been in a situation where I've thought it was required info. If the person has the maturity to handle university then they likely would be considered regardless of age. I'm in high tech and many years ago we did have a 16 year old working in my group for a work term without issue. The kid could code up a storm and fit in pretty well. At some point there are probably child labour laws that would have to be observed but I'm assuming we aren't talking about kids that young.

The chems and mechs at my university did generally end up working in the oil & gas industry and you did have to have a drivers licence for many of those jobs and relocate to a small town for the work term. That was in a province where you can get your full drivers license at 16. There were some placements at the university or at various head offices in the city that would be a better option for a younger student. Some of the guys out in the field could be a bit rough around the edges (I was 19 my first work term at a gas plant, there was another female student and then ~70 guys that were all over 30, it was an interesting experience...).

ETA - to add context to my previous post an engineering internship up here is one 16 month long paid work term between 3rd and 4th year (2 summers+fall& winter term = 16 months) The other option is co-op which spreads the work terms out generally in 4 month chunks alternating with school terms. My school did internship and I earned 80% of what I earned as a new grad and returned to finish 4th year with a full time job lined up.

I concur with Chay's list of attributes on the S side of STEM, as well-- intimate instructional settings, a peer group, and later specialization are all important components in developing a truly well-educated individual in physics, chemistry, biological or earth sciences. IMO, a robust research/internship experience is also essential.


BTW, even as a HS student, there were quite a number of internship postings that DD was ineligible for by virtue of her age-- about 40-50% specified age 16 or up, and some required a valid driver's license (which in our state almost certainly means being age 17).

With many of those postings, the reasons were twofold- regulatory guidelines are quite different for "children" than for "adults" or "college students" when you are considering a setting involving radiological, chemical, or biological hazards. Secondly, insurance coverage may specify a lower age limit.

Her hard work isn't affected by someone else. Her hard work is being diminished by Oregon in that they are proposing giving away what was previously given only by merit.

Which is a conclusion that comes from a worldview that not everyone shares. Does make these sorts of conversations prone to crosstalk.

So in that worldview a tuition waiver is, in and of itself, a Veblen good; that is, the exclusivity IS the apparent value of the good.



You're right, ZS; I do not share that particular perspective. If my DD's college (within the same state) were to offer 1000 "presidential" scholarships (full tuition) annually instead of the 65 that it does offer, I would feel no differently about the relative value of that award. The true value in my mind is the ability to graduate debt-free, and to focus exclusively on one's STUDIES, without such concern about finances. It might permit an unpaid summer internship, or for a student to study abroad.

What others receive or do not doesn't seem relevant to any of that. In fact, a great many less "able" students will no doubt receive far more "need-based" aid than will my DD. Should I be mad about that??


I anticipate additionally that the "hard work" referenced in order to obtain this particular merit award will pay dividends during post-secondary studies, even if they seem to have been "excessive" in the here and now... again, not really understanding this point-- has such performance come at some substantial (and now regretted?) opportunity cost??

Otherwise, the work ethic and habits formed will more than make up for any loss of prestige if such a benefit were to be extended to those slightly less... illustrious, shall we say. In other words, if you're the top of the top, then you're still going to be there when it matters in two years.

It's not loss of prestige.

It's the embitterment that comes from have put a significant amount of effort in to acquire something that is then given away.

Granted, I consider college and law school to be a substantial opportunity cost. I do wish I had those eight years of my life back.

Does 1000 students per year represent the entire student body, or would this represent merit scholarships?

Is the anticipated effect one of increasing the number of students who would strive and earn the merit scholarship... or would the effect be a disincentive to achieve due to possibly rewarding a lack of skills equally with acquisition of skills?

How would the tuition be funded, in order to be free at point of service?

Ahhhhh-- but that's life, as they say. To plan to out-compete others for an opportunity, only to find that the bar has been moved while you were focused on the (previous) criteria.

Happens all. the. time. Everywhere. Always has.


My daughter gets HER grades without "extra credit" and "re-sets" of assignments, too. But most of her "competition" doesn't.

Should she feel angry that she does it "the hard way?"

I don't think so. Nobody can take that away from her, and SHE knows that she earned it the old-fashioned way-- which is something to be personally pretty proud of, IMO.

I live in Canada where we are hugely influenced by U.S. media, I work for an American company and have many friends and family south of the border. I have visited 30 states but I don't live there so take all of this with a grain of salt.

I find it odd that a country that prides itself on the American Dream is in a situation where tuition costs are increasing far faster than inflation. In a global economy you need to have the best and brightest have access to a higher education, not just the subset that can afford it or can navigate the seemingly complex process to obtain a scholarship. Having people not be able to access education because of the cost or having them graduation 10's of thousands of dollars in debt completely goes against what I would think of as the American Dream.

I personally don't buy the argument that having more scholarships or decreasing tuition decreases the worth of the education. There were several posts early on in this thread from people in countries with free tuition and I don't believe any of them felt their degrees were any less because of it. Having free, or affordable, or more merit based scholarships doesn't mean you'll all of a sudden have 90% of the population getting a degree. It means that the people with the marks CAN apply to go to school. They still need to either put in the effort to get the marks, maintain the marks for 4 years and get the degree. The change is that you remove the "and afford it" from the above equation. The problem is that it is in the best interest of those currently with money to keep it as is when they can afford to pay. Having it more affordable will likely mean the bar will raise and perhaps exclude their kids.

I paid $7000 for my degree (would be ~$30000 if I were starting today) - that is all 4 years combined. The admission process was (and still is) submit 5 grade 12 level marks (some departments specify exactly which 5, others have things like 2 from this group and 3 from another). In grade 12 50% of the class mark for the core classes are based on a provincial exam so they can try to limit grade inflation and regional differences. They then rank everyone based on the marks and go down the list until they are full or they reach their minimum entrance grade. That's it. For top schools the bar might be in the 90's, the rest it is in the 80's. There isn't a write an essay, tell us all of the awards you've won or how many drowning puppies that you've saved part of the application. I paid for almost all of it with scholarships and some of those were based on essays and awards but many were just one thing - what is your GPA? I work with people who went to top U.S. schools and spent considerably more than that. Do I think my degree is worth less? No, I just got to the same spot with thousands in the bank to travel, buy a car and put a down payment on a house. Not bad.

Then again I've chosen to remain in a country where I pay way more taxes and I've paid for more than a few kids to go to university by now with those taxes. So perhaps my degree wasn't so cheap in the end I'm ok with that. We're all socialists and communists up here anyways

and Some may say that the 10% or more who do not go to college, yet pay taxes to fund college for other individuals (under the plan mentioned above) may be seen as a form of servitude or slavery: Taking advantage of less fortunate individuals to fuel greater gains and prosperity for more academically inclined individuals. Creating this additional hardship could be considered an issue of social injustice.

It is my understanding that the American Dream (which may be different for different people) included keeping the costs/benefits together: Those who were attending college and receiving the benefits of higher education also paid the costs, which were rather reasonable until recent years. For decades, it was possible for students from all walks of life to work their way through college.

Many come to the US from other lands to be educated here; Many have been unfamiliar with the American possibility of returning to college as adults to earn a degree.

The American Dream, in literature, has not consisted of utopia created by centralized government control... rather centralized government control has been treated as dystopia. There is a saying that Power Corrupts; Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely.

It seems many would be interested in a college/university experience which would be both free at point of service and also a meritocracy, while not being burdensome to those not personally partaking, and not administered by a centralized government thereby creating a social strata of mandatorily funded privileged government elite.

As I said we're all socialists and communists anyways so we're ok with that More seriously though, yes most people pay taxes but we have a far more progressive tax system so statistically speaking the ones that didn't go to university on average make less and pay far less in taxes than those who did go to university and on average make more. Our education isn't free either so they are paying for some of that as well. You have State schools that don't charge $50000 a year so presumably the real cost of education without subsidies is not $50000 but some schools can charge that so they do.

This however got me curious so I looked up how many people complete post secondary on both sides of the border - http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/090908/t090908b1-eng.htm In the 55-64 age group the U.S. ranked first with 30%. Looking at the 25-34 age group both Canada and the U.S. increased the percentage but dropped in overall ranking (the U.S. dropped to 8th place and Canada went from 4th to 12th) as other countries increased their numbers.

I totally agree with that. It is the concern that it is becoming unreasonable that seems problematic to me. I would argue that the U.S. is still producing a similar number of university grads but when they raise the bar of what afford means to a really high level I think they're missing out compared to countries with similar graduation rates that somehow kept the pool of possible candidates to draw from much larger.

It's pretty much standard-issue Americana.

We're going through a gilded-age period again.

We didn't like the entire European socialist thing, so we scrapped it.

We didn't scrap all of it, so we're kind of in a welfare state-gilded age combo right now where we give the option of debt bondage to our youth if they want it.

Ahhh it all makes sense now. I'll go back to drinking my Timmy's and complaining about yesterday's 15cm of snow like a good Canuck then. Sorry about that, carry on

Just have to high five you for the Canadian content, Chay.

I don't think Canada has a "far more progressive" tax system than the United States:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/09/19/other-countries-dont-have-a-47/
Other countries don’t have a “47%”
BY DYLAN MATTHEWS
Washington Post
September 19, 2012 at 12:43 pm

Canadian income tax rates are at http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/ndvdls/fq/txrts-eng.html (top rate of 29%) and U.S. income tax rates are at http://taxes.about.com/od/Federal-Income-Taxes/qt/Tax-Rates-For-The-2013-Tax-Year.htm (top rate of 39.6%). Many U.S. states also have progressive income taxes.

... in which case, I have to say that I think we Yanks are getting seriously short-changed.

Perhaps, but in those countries, wealthy people actually have to pay the tax. That's not the case here, as you know very well.


All that tax money goes to paying for schools and keeping university fees very low (among other things).

Re: tax rates by income bracket between Canqda and the US, see pp.3. This is from 2000-- I'll see if I can find an updated graph.

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/studies-etudes/75-001/archive/e-pdf/5071-eng.pdf

So my "far more progressive" statement is still wrong but thanks to aquinas my world hasn't been completely turned upside down. My head nearly exploded thinking that everything I've thought about American vs Canadian taxation was completely upside down. I must say I won't complain about our taxes for a while now that I know what a bargain we have (who knew?). I'm still surprised seeing the numbers. We've been indoctrinated to think that we're paying comparatively crazy taxes to pay for all of the perks.

Poofing large amounts of credit into existence is the same thing as taxes.

However, with credit poofing, you make sure that the poofee is the one who is paying the tax.

The data set here comes from 1997, which would have predated the huge tax cuts under George W Bush, which primarily benefitted the wealthy. If the data had come from some time in 2003-2012, it would have skewed even more heavily towards Canada having higher effective tax rates and a more progressive tax structure.

Hi everyone - please keep this thread on topic, specifically education.

Mark, I do think that the fee structure/feasibility of free university/college tuition is still very much in keeping with the topic of the thread. Whether it should be done, and whether it can are both entirely relevant here.

We obviously do not all agree on the particulars, which is leading to some interesting insights as we go along-- but I think that thus far the discourse on the subject has been remarkably civil.

The article below discusses how the EFC depends on income and savings. The effective "tax rate" on savings goes up if you have several children. The article cites a 4-year tax rate on savings of about 23% = (22650/(150000-100000)), but savings left over after the first child graduates will increase the EFC when the second child attends. I estimate the tax rate on savings done before any child attends college to be about 41% = (1-0.77^2) for two children and 54% = (1-0.77^3) for three children. Parents may pay less for college if they have children early, since their incomes and savings may be lower when their children attend college.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/what-happens-if-you-save-for-college/
What Happens If You Save for College
By SHAILA DEWAN
New York Times
MARCH 31, 2014, 10:14 AM

Just to play devil's advocate, most here don't have a problem with student's "competing" for scholarships, however, they're basing that competition in their mind purely on academic merit. I'm sure that mindset would change depending on what else was thrown into the mix in that competition. The measure of success in college is rarely purely about academics. As I'd commented earlier, though in this particular circle competing for additional scholarships based purely on academic merit seems a logical thing to do, you're going to have a very difficult time convincing special interest groups of that.

What (if any) is the downside of having grandparents hold the 529s, instead of parents?

I had the same thought, but it appears that the advantage of doing this was removed in 2007:

http://www.finaid.org/savings/loophole.phtml

Agree completely-- and I'm most appalled that the pool of "pure" merit $$ seems to be an ever-shrinking one, leaving students who are most ABLE (but rather boring, unremarkable otherwise... but-- please note, that also makes them rather more likely to FINISH school predictably as well) competing for an ever-shrinking pool of funds in the face of enormous costs that keep on going up and up.



It shouldn't take being a PG hotshot to get a free ride at a state flagship-- but it often does mean just that now.

Careful there HowlerKarma, you just said a bad word in these circles with "state flagship" With what I read here often I'm lead to believe that the general mindset in these circles is that one has to go to an Ivy League school in order to get a good job, which, of course is silly, in fact, everyone I know with an advanced degree tells me, "To be honest, don't waste your money going to a big name school as an undergrad. Such schools devote very little time and attention to undergrads and you're likely to get a more personalized and better education as an undergrad at a state school or smaller college. The latest to tell me this is currently Harvard researcher with his Phd in Organic Chem.

I'm just asking people who frequent this forum to examine if indeed their child is going to get the most bang for their buck at a particular college and not to go into massive debt and especially not to start your child's adult life in massive debt, for a college pedigree that nobody will every know about once they're in the working world.

I built a home for the head of thoracic surgery at a very well respected state univ. hospital (was recently offered the same position at Johns Hopkins)He told me hardly anybody knows this but he didn't focus very well in college and couldn't get anyone to take him for medical school in the US, he eventually got accepted at a medical school in the Caribbean. Funny things is, nobody yet has asked to see his med. school diploma before he's opened them up for heart surgery.

I know numerous people with similar stories. You can get there from here without being in debt for the rest of your life in school loans or playing the "game" trying to get into big name schools.

That's because the people who care about these things don't bother setting up surgeries with him.

Generally, you pull the medical board information and do your analysis before you select your surgeon.

You pull the educational background and residency information, and then use it as a proxy for intelligence and skill as a first screen before you narrow your search and look for additional information.

Yet I don't now of one person who has done that. Are there people who do so? I'm sure there are, however, it doesn't matter to enough people to make career or make a enjoyable living or not.

Since I've had to do this for family members, I will have to say "yes, there are people who do things like this".

Granted, the two most important pieces of data are how many times they've done the procedure and their age. You want to have a surgeon at their peak.

The entire career/enjoyable living issue has more to do with cash flows and monopoly power within the U.S. medical-insurance complex.

I did this, under DH's guidance, when I had knee surgery. I chose a guy with the right age, school and he had 2 days a week where he ran through knees in a special surgery clinic. DH, who was a physician told me to go with someone who knew recent techniques but wasn't just out of residency and did 100 a week. Maybe not a 100 but he did a lot.

Exactly!

I'd agree with you. It has more to do with cash flow and how one manages what they earn than it does where they went to college. If a person starts their career with 120k+ in college debt it's difficult to build wealth. Better to go to state college and graduate with a min. amount of debt, then you can put some stock into a big name / expensive college for grad school if you really think you need it.

I'd also agree that experience is far and away the most important thing to research on this matter.

This meandering thread has a great unrealized potential. Its stated topic — "Free tuition at US public Universities?" — is a question, but perhaps it should be restated as an exclamation: "Free tuition at US public universities!"

Unfortunately, a question tends to provoke waffling and weasel worded responses that search for angles that are more interesting to ponder, and the meander thus far is proof of that. If the topic were an exclamation (a clarion declaration of rights), it would demand sudden allegiance of some sort, either an actual step-forward commitment to a worthwhile cause or the quick mustering of a counter force adequate to defend the status quo.

So let us here test my theory.

I have proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that explicitly requires free tuition at U.S. public universities for our nation's most gifted young people. My proposal is simple and is also exceedingly fair to all without exception. Indeed, every American who cares about America with any sense of pride and patriotism should fully support my proposal without any hesitation at all.

The language of my proposed amendment that applies to "free tuition" is the following:

Section. 2.
The Congress shall require the States to provide thirteen years of tuition-free public education for all United States citizens and all otherwise legal residents from age five through age eighteen. Public education shall be according to three national standards:
1) Every student shall be literate at no less than age-appropriate-grade-level (plus or minus one year) while being actively challenged and fully facilitated to achieve personal potentials in all core academic subjects, including those of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (“literate” being defined as educated, cultured, and lucid within an American social, philosophical, and historical context as taught in a thirteen-year standard curriculum that explores America from 1492 to the current time, with an ability to read, write, and effectively communicate in the English language using current computer technologies);
2) Exceptional students shall be individually advanced to the academic level at which they can succeed while being challenged; and
3) Students whose academic skills competency and knowledge proficiency are measured in the aggregate minimally either two years below or two years above age-appropriate-grade-level shall be designated as Special Education students and shall receive educational funding at twice the normal rate (competency and proficiency testing shall be done when requested by a teacher, parent, or student).

Thirteen years of tuition-free public education shall not be defined by the completion of a thirteen-year standard curriculum that ends in high school graduation in every case. Some lower-tier Special Education students will remain functionally illiterate despite all teaching efforts while some upper-tier Special Education students will graduate from a community college or a public university before their nineteenth birthday and shall thereby receive their college and/or university education on a tuition-free basis.

The term “tuition-free” applies only in the case of public education institutions, including any school designations that encompass any part of the spectrum from kindergarten enrollee through master degree recipient, that is: inclusive from primary school through public university. It does not include graduate studies at the doctoral degree level.

Students who enroll in private schools of any sort shall receive government vouchers that are the equivalent of their local public school tuition if the private schools they enroll in are accredited by the government. Government accreditation of private schools shall only regard standard subjects that are common to local public schools and shall not regard religious subjects of any sort. A homeschool student shall receive government vouchers to rent textbooks and an educational computer hardware and software package if those items have been approved and accredited by the government for homeschool use, if the student is fully registered according to the laws governing homeschool status and is government-approved in that status, and if the total worth of the vouchers for the student does not exceed the local public school tuition cost.

The government vouchers shall pay the vendor or the private school directly in all cases, and in no case shall government vouchers be redeemable for cash by either a student or a student’s parent or legal guardian.

Section. 3.
The Congress shall require the States to identify all exceptional students who are intellectually either moderately-to-highly gifted or exceptionally-to-profoundly gifted by standard academic measures (“moderately-to-highly gifted” being in the top two percent or 98th percentile and “exceptionally-to-profoundly gifted” being in the top one percent or 99th percentile). The United States shall recognize its most gifted citizens — its geniuses — as a natural resource and a national treasure, and shall maximize the potential of that resource and treasure through its public education system in every individual case beginning at the earliest possible opportunity. However, no interventions shall ever be made against the will of the student, regardless of the student’s potential to excel; the Pursuit of Happiness shall stand as an unalienable Right of every individual citizen, even the citizen who is a minor child.

The Congress shall forbid any notion that the purpose of public education is to socialize the citizenry. The purpose of public education shall be to make citizens literate in useful knowledge, confident in factoring new information into old thinking, and competent in self-directed analysis, so that public education might inspire joy and courage in its graduates through the benefits that derive from life-long learning habits, a purposeful informed participation in America’s future, and an enduring appreciation for political dissent and for the American free enterprise system. Public education in the United States shall work to cultivate this flower: that, in every citizen’s life, the gift to America shall be the citizen and the gift to the citizen shall be America.

* * *

To read my entire proposed amendment concerning "Public Education," go to: http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....ed_Amendments_to_the_U_S.html#Post176327

Steven A. Sylwester

I am sure evidence is not needed in this forum, but I will provide some anyway: http://www.newsweek.com/america-hates-its-gifted-kids-226327

The article's comments are worth reading, too.

Fact is: I think most teachers would be relieved if my proposed amendment were ratified into law.

It is an easy concept to grasp: Every American citizen is entitled to 13 years of free public education beginning on their 5th birthday and ending on their 19th birthday. Ready.Set.Go! If you can earn three university master degrees before your 19th birthday, We The People will pay all of your tuition for you.

If you want to create an incentive to learn and to excel, there it is. Make it better if you can.

Steven A. Sylwester

There's no idea so good that people won't ruin it.

A) Low-SES families will pile on the pressure for their kids to complete at least a bachelor's by then, because there aren't any other good options for them. This gets the low-SES kids into the Tiger Cub game, only without the necessary support structure.

B) Higher-SES families will pile on even more pressure for their kids, regardless of their ability levels, because the new status symbol would be "how many years of school did YOU complete before you were 19?"

Dude,

My proposed amendment includes this language:

3) Students whose academic skills competency and knowledge proficiency are measured in the aggregate minimally either two years below or two years above age-appropriate-grade-level shall be designated as Special Education students and shall receive educational funding at twice the normal rate (competency and proficiency testing shall be done when requested by a teacher, parent, or student).

* * *

The notion of "gifted" is something different than "accomplished" or "piled on" or "pressured." A child can accomplish a lot through relentless determined effort and endless practice, but I am not someone who would ever say that genius can be manufactured, no matter how much will power is put to the effort by the child or a parent.

In other words, though both Mozart and Beethoven were certainly victimized by their fathers' ambitions for them, I contend that both of them certainly had superior natural gifts that were truly extraordinary. The ambitious fathers might have been key in unlocking the musical genius, but the genius was fully there nonetheless and anyway.

Understand this: anyone involved in sports would not be interested in taking advantage of my proposed amendment, and that is a whole lot of people.

Steven A. Sylwester

Confusion: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...y-identified-gifted-in-the-united-states

Clarity: http://cambridgeadvanced.org/wp-content/pdfs/rs-article-dec-2011.pdf

Steven A. Sylwester

Right, so tiger parents have to push their kids into being two years ahead. That's what you'll get. The bottom line is that you can set the barriers to entry as high as you like, tiger parents will still try to either push their kids over them, tunnel under them, or knock a hole through them.

Not sure what "knowledge proficiency" is, though.


Oh, that's an easy one. School districts already have certain age requirements around competitive sports anyway, so it wouldn't be a far stretch to allow 13yo high schoolers to go to the middle school for sports after school. And tiger parents are just the ones to petition/pressure the school districts to make those changes.

They'd even have some parents of legitimate gifties on board, because I wouldn't want my child to have to choose between athletics and an education. She enjoys both, and I think it's important that she be both healthy and well-educated.

Certain universities would also throw their weight behind this. Stanford comes immediately to mind.

Dude,

You use "tiger parents" as your frequent basic argument against change. So I ask: "tiger parents" compared to what? By your definition, what defines the parents that are the ideal parents?

Again back to Mozart and Beethoven. How much does the world of music owe to the ferocious tigers that were the fathers of Mozart and Beethoven? Left to their own devices and to the influences of their childhood playground peers, what would have been the outcomes for Mozart and Beethoven? Would we even know the names of Mozart and Beethoven today if their fathers had not been such beasts in the raising of their sons?

I am not endorsing child abuse, but I am also not condemning a willingness to unlock the potentials of genius if the genius is shackled and chained by society's conventions. I hate school, but school is something we are stuck with. Concluding that, I ask myself: What can be done with what we have to give the greatest opportunity possible to our most gifted young people?

If you ever find time to read my "NASA Academy of the Physical Sciences" proposal, you will find this key measuring stick:
http://nasa-academy-of-the-physical-sciences.blogspot.com/
QUOTE: "NAPS will put an enormous academic and emotional strain on its NASA Scholars, especially during the junior year. Therefore, it is absolutely essential that each and every scholar can relate in a genuine supportive way with his/her classmate scholars especially, but also with scholars from the other two grade levels and with the “high school” teachers. Because emotional maturity is not always on a par with intellectual maturity, gifted adolescents in the transition to adulthood need friends who can understand them. Gifted adolescents are adolescents at risk who are sometimes very vulnerable to social challenges, and they tend to know this about themselves. But, in usual settings, they are alone with their fears. NAPS academies will have the opportunity to create a safe haven in which truly extraordinary young people can experience what it feels like to be ordinary, at least during the while when they are among peer classmates; the importance of this cannot be overstated: a NAPS site will either succeed or fail in its primary purpose by whether or not it can succeed in making its scholars feel ordinary."

* * *

The same applies here: if what I have proposed does not succeed in allowing the exceptionally gifted young person to feel ordinary in an academic setting, then I have failed to achieve my primary goal. If you read the "Santiago's Brain" article that I linked at my previous post ("Clarity" at #186926), this quote should have startled you:
"There are an estimated 72,000 exceptionally gifted kids between the ages of five and 18 in the United States, and almost all attend public schools. What those schools offer — skipping a grade or two, or circumscribed "enrichment programs" — are useless to them. The American educational system is predicated on a conviction that age-peer socialization is developmentally indispensable, radical acceleration is destructive, and tedium is benign. No federal legislation mandates programs for gifted students. Only six states both require and fully fund gifted education programs, and none of those programs focus on the exceptionally gifted. It is practically impossible for an exceptionally gifted American kid to find a public program that will take him or her from elementary school to college. The number of public K-12 schools for exceptionally gifted kids in the United States is one. Based in Nevada, it was founded in 2006." (Santiago's Brain by Jeff Tietz, ROLLING STONE, December 8, 2011, page 81)

The people I care about are the "estimated 72,000 exceptionally gifted kids between the ages of five and 18 in the United States," especially those who are attending public schools. If their parents are "tiger parents" who are desperately trying to advocate for their children in a stifling atmosphere that does not welcome their tiger-like involvement, then I say: "God bless them!"

Dude, the joke in our home was that whenever I telephoned my daughters' public high school a "Red Alert" was immediately issued from the school office that immediately resulted in everybody being unavailable to take my call. But guess what? I have two children, and both of them earned full-ride academic merit scholarships to the public university of their choice. They got free tuition to a U.S. public university because they earned it; they worked hard throughout high school and thereby earned a free ride through a university. Yes, it can be done.

But know this: my oldest daughter took her first on-campus university course when she was 11 years old, and my youngest daughter — a National Merit Scholar — finished high school with 100 credits already earned on her university transcript.

What is telling is this:
http://school-usa-proposal.blogspot.com/2011/06/regarding-tia.html
When I personally gave Tia Holliday a copy of that letter of recommendation, she humbly thanked me for the letter and then very sincerely thanked me for something else, and that was for demonstrating to her how important it was for her to start advocating for her own children's needs at their public schools, that the teachers — her professional colleagues — could not be depended on to always do their best without the clear knowledge that a "tiger parent" was watching from the sidelines.

Excellence is a challenge for everyone concerned: for the student, but also for the parent, and for the teacher, too. Everyone has their role to play, and not one role is easier than another in the final analysis. One lazy uncaring person can easily kaput the efforts of everyone else. You can maybe rightly question the tactics of a "tiger parent," but never question their good intent.

Steven A. Sylwester

Dude,

"Knowledge proficiency" is a placement measure used by universities to correctly place a student within a course of study's defined prerequisite stream.

For example, my children attended a Japanese language immersion school, my oldest entered the school in 2nd grade and my youngest entered in kindergarten. A foreign language immersion school teaches its language in a remarkably different way than does a university. The university stresses the rules of grammar in a very objective and removed way, while the immersion school teaches the same in a way that stresses the intuitive knowing of the language much, much more than the academic knowing. So my daughters knew Japanese through language immersion in Japanese, but then had to be placed in the university prerequisite stream at a place where they could succeed without being bored and without being expected to know grammar structures that they had never learned in a strictly academic way. Such placements were awkward and not entirely correct because they were necessarily conservative, but they had to be done to make the leap from one setting to another. So at 11 years old, my oldest took Second Year Japanese at the university during Summer Term, that is: an entire three-term (one year) sequence in one term. My youngest took two terms of Fourth Year Japanese at the university at the beginning of her freshman year in high school.

Steven A. Sylwester

I define a tiger parent as one who pushes their child to the point of exhaustion, psychological abuse, and an inability to function independently. It also contributes to the development of sociopathic behaviors, as the child learns to value ends over means, and that cheating is a perfectly acceptable method of accomplishing your objectives, because everyone else is doing it, too.

The opposite would be neglect, so obviously that's not ideal.

The ideal is a parent who pushes their child right up to the edge of their abilities and interests, a parent who has a realistic recognition of their child's strengths and weaknesses, sets appropriate expectations and boundaries, and who pushes while also balancing achievement goals with the vital needs children have for socialization, free play, exercise, and rest.


I'm not familiar enough with their personal histories to comment either way. Of course, we only know anything at all about how their fathers treated them because they achieved greatness. We never heard about any of their peers who were pushed just as hard or harder by their parents, failed, and self-destructed.

I could also bring up some of history's greats who weren't relentlessly driven by their parents, like Alexander the Great. Anecdotal evidence, though.


Advocating for your child's genuine needs isn't tiger parenting; it's parenting. Advocating for more than your child can reasonably handle is tiger parenting.

It's probably true-- but--

has anyone else noticed that as Testing-Frenzy (tm) has taken hold in K through 12, college is rapidly becoming the new high school?

I mean, for many people, the federal government is already funding some 13-14 years of education anyway.

Why NOT cram more genuine worth into that time frame?

Would it also not-- just possibly-- reverse some of the endless watering down of content into fluff?


I wonder.

It's an interesting pair of juxtaposed ideas, anyway.

My own definition of TigerParenting fully encompasses what was apparently done to WA and his sister at the hands of the senior Herr Leopold, incidentally.

As for musical prodigy, it might well be a better notion to tease apart the stories of a Felix Mendelssohn or an Eric Korngold to differentiate between parenting strategies that result in "realized potential through respectful encouragement and nurturing" versus-- er-- well, "using the child like a rented mule."

It's quite clear that the Mozart family in particular wasn't averse to delving into the latter realm, and with a 'd*mn the torpedoes' outlook on life balance and mental health. Greatness? Absolutely. However-- not a parenting model that would make many loving parents proud, by any means.

Nope.

Interesting article about free tuition in one town -

http://www.politico.com/magazine/st...american-cities-105366.html#.Uz7LBd9xnv5

Reading through, if your child has potential, you are giving them options. If your child doesn't succeed in world terms, then they didn't have potential and you are a horrid parent for pushing them?

Lang Lang told the story of how his father walked with him at a year old and would draw notes in the sand with a stick to start teaching him music. And also how he almost quit in his teens because it is the teens and hormones come into play but his father pushed. He is now Lang Lang the world famous musician and many debate his natural talent and style compared to others. But even though he was pushed along the path, he is very grateful for the outcome and glad he is not just the average person out there.

Hard to provide the right options for your kid. I want my kid to be happy and we laugh a lot together, there is joy and fun in her life but there is a structure also so that she can take advantage and create options in her. So I expect her to learn Mandarin and do advanced math online, I have broken in a dance routine with her on a subway platform, where some musician was playing. We got a lot of applause, though no money. There is fun, despite how this forum views me as this retched Tiger mom.

Wren, I don't think that anyone sees other parents who post here in that light.


My daughter, too, is provided with a great deal of structure...


but she is also not particularly STRESSED by her life. Some of her peers and agemates, this is clearly not the case.

Thank you for sharing this interesting and thought-provoking article. Kudos to the local home-grown billionaires who came forward and voluntarily funded this program. I especially liked the photo showing the banner in the hall which read "What do Colleges expect from you?"

It appears the Kalamazoo Promise is bringing out the best in individuals... from donors to students!

I suppose the question is whether the goal is "option creation."

The other question would be "Mandarin?", but I'm not getting into that discussion here.

Lang Lang is a very forgiving man and/or someone blessed with the ability to forget bad experiences. From a review of the autobiography "Journey of a Thousand Miles":

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB121642167150766573
A Prodigy's Progress
By JAMES PENROSE
July 19, 2008
Wall Street Journal

Having experienced some mothers at the Special Music School, who are obsessed with creating a Lang Lang, I think he was just a male version of what I see is somewhat common in that venue.

And I was confused because they told me dd had this talent and we were preparing for that concert when she was 7, I didn't call her names, but I crossed the line. I had to step back. And didn't Amy Chua talk about this when she was at the piano with her younger daughter trying to get her to play a piece her older sister had played at the same age? She yelled, called names, hit her hands.

It is horrible but getting from prodigy with potential to international concert tour at 14 requires a horrid parent, in my opinion, having skimmed that world and still have contact with one mother training her violin playing daughter. She has admitted that the kid doesn't have enough to be a star, but she will makes the kid practice 2-3 hours school days, at least 4 hours weekend days. And I assure you the practices are not "please, again".

This long article is not easy to summarize, but it makes the important point that student loans are not "aid" in the way grants are.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/13/e...know-about-financial-aid-but-should.html
What You Don’t Know About Financial Aid (but Should)
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
New York Times
APRIL 9, 2014

Once again, there is no such thing as free tuition or free education, only free education or tuition to someONE, it's still costs others. Let's use the phrase, "Publicly funded education" instead as it's far more accurate.

Perhaps I'm being too picky on the wording, however, there seems to be a lot of word play designed to promote agendas in the last decade or so and personally, I like to see wording used that accurately reflects the scenario presented.

How about "human investments?"

Wanted to make sure both of those posts were on this page of the thread-- I agree with Old Dad that there's not such a thing as "free" tuition in this sense.

But-- I also agree with Dude that it's a societal investment as much as K-12 education is.

Our entire way of life is essentially "free".

Half of our problem is how to allocate the free stuff.

The other half is trying to figure out whether and, if so when, the free stuff is going to run out.

And "investment" in what exactly?

The goal being?????

Oh, there's a lot more to it than that. There's also gathering enough of the free stuff that you can make sure it's not free anymore. Or convincing people to pay for things that they could get for free anyway. It's even better if you can get them to pay for nothing at all.


Monetizing them, natch.

Some may see a play on the word "free" in this conversation.

One definition of FREE refers to things being without cost at point of service.
One definition of FREE refers to people being self-determining, unhindered by law or regulation; having personal liberty.

There may be an ironic balance in that getting more "free" stuff often comes with a tradeoff of being less "free" as an increasing number of life-decisions may be made for a person by an outside entity.

In the case at hand, taxpayers are compelled to provide pre-determined amounts of money to the government, which the government then rations out and redistributes through a variety of programs with various requirements including the providing of private and personal information for the government databases.

There is a fine balance, beyond which a tipping point exists: if given a choice, which form of "free" do you prefer?

Speaking to the article on student loans, "meeting financial need" may be a misnomer. It is difficult to believe that anyone is not aware that a loan actually increases the total amount one must pay. Yet some people react as though they won the lottery when "awarded" a student loan as part of their financial aid package.

It is important to raise awareness that a loan actually increases the total amount one must pay.

I've really enjoyed this thread, it's given me a lot of food for thought and to be honest I'm still not certain where I stand on the issue of use of taxpayer money for education past K-12. There are certainly pros and cons to both sides as Vice Pres. Biden states in the 1st linked articles below. Some interesting reading within the links about how federal grants and aid have caused the price of college to skyrocket.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/vi...dies_have_increased_college_tuition.html



http://www.usnews.com/opinion/artic...nment-is-to-blame-for-high-college-costs

http://www.learnliberty.org/videos/why-is-higher-education-so-expensive/

http://www.cato.org/publications/po...ntended-consequences-federal-tuition-aid

http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/miarticle.htm?id=9565#.U1gL5FVdVu1

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303296604577454862437127618

http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/education/higher-education-subsidies

Ha! I are find more funner blog! WINNING!!!!

"If something can't go on forever, the old bromide goes, it won't. America's small, private liberal arts colleges can't go on forever. Even now, they are in a long slow decline, like elderly widows in small Southern towns, sitting placidly on their verandas and drinking mint juleps while they wait for the disease that will finally kill them."

http://studentdebtcrisis.blogspot.com/2013/09/private-liberal-arts-colleges-are-dying.html

The banks don't like competing with the government for student loans because they won't offer the same percentage rates, but they're eager to get a bigger share of non-dischargeable debt. From an investor perspective, it would be a better deal than mortgages in the 2000s.

Meanwhile, higher interest rates on student loans would have little influence on tuition rates.

Banks are a little smarter than the government, they tend not to like to loan tens of thousands of dollars in unsecured and uninsured loans by the government which can be wiped out by declaring bankruptcy. The government on the other hand isn't as smart and will lend money to anyone regardless of showing any ability to pay it off or have securities. Banks would have to be idiots to have the same percentage rates as the government for this reason. Banks cannot simply just tax the public more when people fail to pay off their student loans....so yeah, the competition is quite uneven and the rates charged aren't going to be competitive.

Back in the olden days of the 80s when I was a student, the entire point of rates on student loans was that they were low. Back then, interest rates were stratospheric (15%+), and student loan rates were 8%. This is one of those facts that people (err, especially banks) seem to have conveniently forgotten as the loans have become big business.

Yes, banks are businesses who's purpose it is to make money. The Federal Government isn't even concerned about a balanced budget so they can offer whatever rate they wish to appease the voters. Not likely to be competitive no.

I'm not sure where you missed the part where student loans are not dischargeable debt. http://www.finaid.org/questions/bankruptcyexception.phtml


The only reason the banks HAVE TO charge a higher rate than the government is because they have to borrow their money from the Fed, though these days they're doing so at zero percent, so until the Fed hikes that, there are no real need... except that a government program is usually designed to make zero dollars in profit, and that's contrary to the mission of a bank. So they don't have to charge more, but they're going to, because that's who they are. If there's no profit in it, they're not interested.

The banks are VERY interested because it's a huge profit pool, which they can pretend is without risk, much like they pretended with housing, due to the whole non-dischargeable thing.

Based on the fact that they repeated the S&L crisis less than 20 years later and exponentially bigger in scale, I can't say I'm in any way impressed by the intelligence of banks.

YES.

+ non-dischargeable debt. Which of course explains why people (or banks) are so eager to forget this point, since after all, forgetting is the only way to make more money NOW-NOW-NOW. Who cares about ten years from now, anyway? Housing, surely, will have recovered since then and we can all go back to making lending decisions irresponsibly THERE.

Much easier for the Fed. to collect on unsecured debt than a bank.
In any case, my links are meant to show that government subsidies do as much harm as good. I'm not completely against them by any means, I'm just throwing it out there that government funded college is far from the end all for an answer to high cost of college, in fact, it's contributed to it.

Perhaps-- it's just unclear what a better solution looks like.

The market forces definitely have not helped this particular problem, historically speaking.

But they are "forgiveable". Banks cannot compete with a lender that will forgive debt for political reasons. The overall cost of this loan forgiveness concerns me, and I am further irked by the special treatment of people working for the government and for non-profits (forgiveness after 10 years of payments, vs. 20 years for other people), as if the former group were more noble.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303887804579503894256072308
Student-Debt Forgiveness Plans Skyrocket, Raising Fears Over Costs, Higher Tuition
By JOSH MITCHELL CONNECT
Wall Street Journal
April 22, 2014 5:56 p.m. ET


http://www.nationalreview.com/phi-b...oy-keep-college-bubble-going-george-leef
“Pay As You Earn” -- A Ploy to Keep the College Bubble Going
By George Leef
National Review
April 24, 2014 9:00 AM


The WSJ Editorial is "Telling Students to Earn Less" http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304279904579517934206301354 .

It's a college education. Of course parents and kids are going to spend more. THINK OF THEIR FUTURES!! You don't want to be digging ditches or serving fries, do you?

Plus, loan repayments are, like, soooo far off, man. Live in the now.

Oh, and a really good sales pitch can make $45k for cooking school seem like a wise investment:
http://news.yahoo.com/culinary-school-grads-claim-were-ripped-off-203350240.html

As I've said before, this is an area where people are not equipped to be rational. So why would they refuse to pay higher sticker prices at 15% interest than they'll pay at 4%?

I got a grant for grad school that was here is the money, teach in a critical needs area after graduation (mine was special ed but it was also math and science back then) and you taught and every year you taught it forgave part of the money...teach in an inner city/title I school and the debt was forgiven even faster. I used my grad school money (that I had saved) for a house down payment instead.

Private lenders should be able to set interest rates that reflect credit risk and depend on the school attended, high school grades and test scores, college major, and college grades (for continuing students). Some politicians oppose that, citing disparate impact:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/07/05/loans#sthash.Oumfgm4U.3NkhNvYh.dpbs
'Redlining' or Reasonable Criterion?
Inside Higher Education
July 5, 2007
By Andy Guess

Indentured servitude was only for 7 years, so we seem to be going in the wrong direction.

Let's see how it works in Tennessee:

http://www.tennessean.com/story/new...ove-free-community-college-plan/7772245/
Eyes on Tennessee as it begins free community college plan
Duane W. Gang
The Tennesseean
April 16, 2014

Higher education experts and states around the nation will have their eyes on Tennessee as the Volunteer State embarks on an ambitious plan to provide free community college to all high school graduates.

The Tennessee Promise plan will make the state a leader in working to make higher education more affordable. The aim is to boost college graduation rates and build a more educated and skilled workforce. The bill is the first of its kind in the nation.

"Governors across the country will be watching to see how the Tennessee plan plays out as they all try to figure out how to best tap into the talents of an increasingly diverse student population," said Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank.

...

Free or low-cost tuition is more likely to come at low-cost institutions, such as community colleges or online universities. Here are articles on two recent initiatives.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/16/u...e-education-to-thousands-of-workers.html
Starbucks to Provide Free College Education to Thousands of Workers
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
New York Times
JUNE 15, 2014


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/18/b...-an-entry-level-approach-to-college.html
A Smart Way to Skip College in Pursuit of a Job
Udacity-AT&T ‘NanoDegree’ Offers an Entry-Level Approach to College
New York Times
JUNE 17, 2014

My husband had an interview at a CC yesterday; he's a librarian. They were talking about open source textbooks and other open source materials in the interview because the librarians know the kids are broke and on a shoestring budget. They're looking to replace expensive textbooks and other materials in the library at this CC. We live in MA.

At least this CC is realistic in addressing the fundamental facts that 1) they're students are broke and often are living hand-to-mouth, 2) don't have hundreds or thousands of $$ to shell out for expensive textbooks, 3) are often older, mature students who somehow cobble together jobs/family/school and 4) actually are interested in learning something but without going further into debt!

MA is very expensive for housing, education, and childcare. It's a recipe for open source, especially at the CC and state college level imo. We're not all on trust funds or kids of Mittens (ie. uber millionaire Mitt Romney in Belmont, MA).

Textbooks one edition older than current are often much cheaper and still easily available used on Amazon and are what I typically buy for my children.

Well, that's true Bostonian. In our city, we're very fortunate to have a free book swap twice a year. I picked up tons of free textbooks and academic books at the last city book swap, even some that were fairly recently published. BUT I'm un/homeschooling and have the time, energy, and patience to wait for this book swap when others may not.

I also occasionally pick up used textbooks or academic books at the used bookstore or on Amazon too. But again, I'm not in a rush or pressure to get x textbook by a certain amount of time.

Still, with CC students, I really think there should be a push to use free/open source materials as much as humanly possible. Too often, there isn't. Instead, the publishing industry still holds a considerable amount of clout as well as the deans or heads of department who cast their orders to faculty.

The president has just proposed free community college tuition:

Obama Announces Plan to Pay for Community College
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
New York Times
January 9, 2015

"Free community college tuition" huh? I wasn't aware that community colleges don't charge for tuition. If they still do, then it's not free, someone is paying for it and that someone is the taxpayer.

Using the phrase "Free college tuition" is insults the intelligence of the public.

Is Free College Really Free?
by Anya Kamenetz
NPR
January 5, 2017

I COMMAND YOU TO RISE!

RISE FROM THE GRAVE!

ONCE AGAIN YOU SHALL WALK THE WORLD OF THE LIVING!