Higher education and student loans. It all seems pretty messed up. :/ Pages 1 2 3 NEXT | |
In Australia, you don't have to pay for your university education until you are have a job and are earning a certain amount. That seems a reasonable idea to me. | |
Thankfully, the student loans and fees are still quite humane in Sweden, all things considered. It's odd, you'd think the current government would be madly trampling each other underfoot to crank up the costs, but they haven't gotten that far yet. But then again, there are very few jobs left that doesn't require education to some degree. The big industries have all moved out, and those that remain still require some education under your belt. So I suppose that's why it's remained as humane as it has. Yes, depending on how much you loan, you will be paying back for quite some time (My dad was still paying his off at the age of 60), but it's in rather small amounts and only while you're actually making money. | |
Higher education isn't required to function in society, so no. I like the whole "keep your grades above this, and we pay for your schooling" thing called scholarships. Student loans aren't that bad, really. People probably just took out more loans than they had to, studied something that isn't really in demand, or just made the minimum payment, which is a bad idea for any debt with interest. Maybe my view will change once I get out and have to start paying them, but there's my thoughts on that. It's boring as shit, and I'm pretty damn tired of being in a classroom, so I'm starting to think it is, in fact, a load of crap. Maple-bacon chocolate sounds pretty delicious. All I can recommend is Google, Amazon.com, and things like that. Good luck in your quest, my friend. | |
I think one of the major problem causing problems are loans that include living expenses. These are the loans that end up resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Does anyone else know of any other country in the world where this is seen as an acceptable practice? It is just insane. Of course you are going to have debt problems if you live for 3-4 years on loan money. If you want to go to a college that you cannot live at home for then you should get a part time job and have your parents help you out. If you cannot do that then accept that you have to go to a college close to home. It is that simple. | |
I'm not sure what to say about American student loans, as I'm not terribly familiar with other countries' solutions to paying for higher education and the popular proposals in America often seem to be too simple to solve a complex problem ("Let's have all existing student loan debt forgiven! That's great for me but it sucks for you if you've just paid yours off or if you enroll next year.") I think the best way to do it is for the American government to at least partially subsidize higher education in industries that we need growth in. If you're going for a degree in nursing, a lower engineering degree, or something that would foster green energy jobs, your degree should be free as long as you keep up a certain GPA and should be discounted as long as you are on-course to graduate. The same should be true of people willing to major in Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Persian or Urdu. While I'm sure massive tax breaks for graduates making loan payments would stimulate the economy, as I spent last year mostly unemployed, a tax break wouldn't personally help me much. | |
this is mainly a societal issue in America. if your still living with your parents when your over 20-21 your considered a loser and a bum. but the more intelligent people still go to school and pay for their own living costs, by living in a group of friends. | |
From what I've seen, the higher learning stuff has been getting more and more disgusting as the time goes on. And from what I'd say it should be? Higher Education (college/university) should be state paid until you get your Bachelor's Degree for your Major. After that, if you want the Master's/PhD degree, you should be paying it yourself. | |
Actually in California right now with the economy a lot of university graduates can't get work so they're forced to move back home and work minimum wage jobs, it sucks but it's totally understandable. | |
yes right now its semi-acceptable but still not entirely yet. i dont think anyone will cut me slack once im done with medical school since according to the general view of the public i'll probably get a job right away (or paid internship which isn't much but it pays as well as a teacher and thats only for four years) | |
I did not go to uni, I have no intention to go to uni. I worked straight after high school, and during. I did the shit jobs that others did not want to. I got wages where uni students knocked back the opportunity. No one gave me a hand out because of the path that I chose, I had to work my way through. I am doing my dream job now, but why should someone who wants to analyze literature get government money where I did not? Here is my solution. Lets take the degrees that will directly benifit the public, medicine, psych, engineering etc and pay for those degrees on the condition that they will be used to benifit the state. Given a degree in medicine, work in a free hospital for a few years. Given a degree in engineering, serve in the army engineers for a while. Given a degree in city planning, work in the city planning office for a while. Let companies do the same thing, scout talent based on scores, give them a contract and a degree and then employ them for a few years. If, however, you want to study the history of lesbianism in classical france, pay for it your own damned self. | |
I'm not sure I agree with this. We shouldn't be deciding the intelligence of people or building educational models around how personal living arrangements.
I disagree here as well. The state should not be required to pay for every BA. For example, a simple business BA doesn't really offer the state anything of value- What did you actually learn that other people don't know? This goes likewise for (and I really regret saying this as it was one of my majors) Fine Arts. And kids who want to get a BA in video game design? I'm sorry, but I hope you don't get one thin dime from the US government. OTOH, post-graduate degrees in the hard sciences form the backbone of American research and the development of new technologies. Such BAs should absolutely be supported by the government- because I hear increasingly the sciences in academia are dominated by international students who are also increasingly unlikely to stay in the US after completing their degrees. In other words, we're educating people from the rest of the world who will one day be teaching folks from their country to compete with us. If we want to keep our technological edge, the government needs to support Americans who want to get into research (especially because a lot of scientific research does not pay well...) | |
We have just made a culture that has made college seam like a step in life. Go to highschool, get into a college, get a degree, get a job, have 100% success for the rest of your life. However, with the huge amount of people going to college, and the world's current economic standing, the degree now is worth squat in the real world. The main problem is that the government is started subsidizing college loans BIG TIME. It created this nice little cycle. With any kid being able to go to college, college now have higher admission, and thus charge more for books/housing/etc. Then the government has to give more money, which allows colleges to charge more and you see the cycle that is forming here? The government needs to stop subsidizing things, it only makes the problem WORSE. There are so many places you can go, things you can do, that aren't just in college. We know have the technology that should allow us to stop this madness. Why aren't we seeing a greater transition to internet based universities? It would be cheaper, and it would allow students to do school work while holding a full time job. MIT has recently put ALL there lessons online, FOR FREE. You can't get a diploma, but what difference does that make? You got the education you wanted, without paying a cent. | |
Oh thanks, I'm 22 and still live with my mother because to live elsewhere would cost too much. Society, why must you suck so much? I'm in better financial shape then most of my friends because I stayed at home and went to a community college. This does not make me a bum, any financial analyst would probably say it's the right thing to do. | |
Agreed. I love the system here. | |
Oh, I also think the costs tends to be way cheaper in Australia than in the US as well anyway. Also, the legal drinking age is 3 years less here. Yeah, lots of overseas students for some reason. | |
The problem is there are too many idiots going to university. They go in there, demand the state pays for it then leave unemployed. There isn't enough jobs for the amount of degrees that are being given. If you want to apply for some liberal arts degree, you should pay every penny back. I agree with Katatori-Kun. I think specialisations should be selected by the government that are "priority" and students who major in those subjects should have their university paid for. This means higher standards of nurses, teachers, etc. | |
CAN'T IMAGINE WHY. But yeah, it's awesome. | |
Also, at Macquarie University where I went, they had/have guard emus. | |
(Fair warning, I'm running off 4-5 hours of sleep here. So please understand if this little soapbox makes little sense) I think another problem is how heavily university degrees are pushed on adolescents, from a young age even. I understand the importance of impressing on these kids that they have a great array of educational and career opportunities at their disposal, but it can set a precedence where you'll have flocks of kids going to university level education, with barely a clue as to what they want to do, and having an even greater difficulty finishing it. As a university student myself I've become more and more disillusioned with the system, being split between that genuine thirst and curiosity for knowledge, and yet still having to jump through pointless hoops and trying to complete specific requirements for a degree I'm still undecided on (and even less confident about being able to use). After having discussed this with a variety of younger people who haven't started college or decided it wasn't for them, I'm realizing that the system is really... kind of tangled. You have a lot of bright, young kids, who actually are interested in learning, but they don't believe the end-result can justify the work required. You might call that lazy, and in some ways it kind of is, but what it also shows is that as it is now, college is essentially an "all or nothing" game to a lot of people. And I believe that's a major problem. What it means to me is lost potential. And I'm not simply talking about a generation of "uneducated students". I'm talking about a generation of students who have completely missed out on a chance for some seriously life changing and life inspiring experiences, experiences that are unique because of the environment from which they come as well as some of the brilliant and amazing professors who help pass this onto their students. I'm not even sure where I'm going with this just yet, but I think there's got to be a change. A change to where you might have a lot of these younger students working in somewhat lower-earning jobs can still gain at least some enlightenment, even if it's not with the purpose of earning a career-rewarding degree. | |
Also Tafe college diplomas and advanced diplomas are ridiculously cheap with concessions. A $10,000 course for 200 bucks? | |
Well, as education is the backbone of the economy, it should ideally be free if the society can afford it, and there's a democratic majority behind it. The idea that the government should decide which educations should be subsidized based on its political preferences is loathsome though. Political ideology have nothing to do in the educational system, and it'll be favouring degrees useful for green technology and mastering obscure foreign languages one year, and favouring degrees useful for locating oil and the development of better weaponry the next. Education will simply become another political battleground, teaching positions will depend on whether their subjects are politically favoured or not (and there are hence a host of students to warrant retaining them), and academic neutrality will be compromised. As for student loans, the interest should be low, but otherwise it'll have to be people's own responsibility not to put themselves in debt they can't repay. The ordinary mechanisms used when people can't ever pay off their debt should be used when they fail at doing so. | |
In britain our Fees have recently gone up from 3000 a year to 9000 a year yh id say its pretty messed up (especially since most people in parliament got their university education for free) | |
Higher education is a business these days. They want to get as much money out of people as they can. Luckily, more and more employers realize that degrees don't mean shit. You can learn just as much by sitting on the internet (well, maybe in scientific fields, where professional equipment and tools are necessary, it's different, but that's just a fraction of the higher education courses), by talking to people who already have the job you want or maybe even applying to work at a company for free for a while (it's still better than paying a boat load of money for school and it takes way less time). | |
I sort of support the new tuition fees in the UK on the grounds that it's going to get rid of a lot of the courses that are useless, and make a degree worth a bit more, but really hate the amount of debt that's been forced upon students to achieve this. £3k a year with £4k for maintenance loan is already some pretty sizeable debt, even if you are likely to get a job. The problem is that university has been forced upon society as basically the acceptable way to get into professional jobs, even though most of these jobs arguably don't directly require the knowledge or skills acquired from a degree. We need more vocational courses, and to get rid of the crappy advice that tells students to do what they want, then end up with £20k of debt and a useless degree. | |
Grrrr. Browser ate post...forcing me to rewrite.... To give you folks some perspective: here in Germany higher education is completely free the first time you study. The only thing you have to pay are administrative fees of maybe about 300 Euros (ca. 400$) per semester.[1] When right-wing coalitions in the Länder-parliaments[2] started to impose mandatory study fees of about 500 Euro (ca. 700$) per semester, there was a big outcry and protests among the students. Turns out, when left-wing coalitions came into power again the fees were quickly abolished in almost all states around here. As such, I really do feel privileged, when I read stuff about students in the US and Britain having to take loans as big as 100K $ to finance their studies, while I remain debt-free to this day. As for the question if this policy is actually a good one I'am still largely undecided: For one, developed nations increasingly rely on high-quality labour and innovation fuelled by academic jobs. There is just no way that traditional blue-collar jobs can compete with the cheap labour provided by places like, say, China or India. As such, subsidizing higher education is, probably, a smart policy to retain economic competitiveness in a globalized economy. Also there is this notion that one should study not for increased pay or a secure job but out of passion for the subject. I agree with that sentiment. I imagine that studying in such a way will also provide better and more motivated workers. Thus, keeping higher education free could also be a way to boost productivity. On the other hand, is it really fair to have the state and by extension people who never studied pay for the benefits of a few? And is it really such a good idea to subsidize niche degrees like , say, roman archeology which are, by all accounts, not in economic demand? Also keeping higher education free devalues the degrees themselves by boosting their output. The Economist even had an article about that maybe a year ago, lamenting the oversupply of doctoral degrees. As for me, I'd probably favour keeping higher education free - in certain economically viable subjects, that is. Education is a public good. As such, I don't see why free higher education shouldn't be. No matter the subsidies, being a student is not the easy-going lazy-fest opponents usually try to paint it as and one shouldn't forget that people who worked instead of studied already earned considerably more than a student. On the other hand, I don't think the number of students going for degrees in e.g. law or german studies is economically viable in the long run. As such I'd propose fees for these kinds of subjects to combat any oversupply[3]. As to how much these fees should be and how exactly they are going to be imposed is up for debate. | |
Whew! It's lucky then that absolutely no one in this thread said it should be based on political preferences. I'm saying it should be based on economic reality. We know that certain fields are going to be important for the future economy. If America does not have a skilled work force that is able to nimbly get trained for the jobs the economy will need, we will continue to fall as we are already. It's an absolute travesty that we have such high unemployment right now, while simultaneously having skilled jobs that are sitting unfilled because there's no one available with the skills needed to work them. The military has been unable to find a sufficient number of Arabic speakers for a decade now. This is unacceptable. Funding training in target growth sectors is a key way to introduce a bit of nimbleness. We've got conflicting approaches to academia right now which are driving this problem. On one hand, we have people who believe higher education should be about academic curiosity and the desire to learn as much as one can for the advancement of human knowledge. Then we have people on the other hand saying that college is just a new requirement for anyone who wants a job that keeps them above the poverty line. And students from both camps tend to get all lumped together. And from what I've seen at large, state-funded schools, counseling is atrocious. You can go through the whole 4 year process racking up loads of debt never once hearing a realistic assessment of what your career prospects are with a certain major. I'd like to see the state provide some direction for the "I just want a good job" camp so the Universities can focus their resources on the "I'm here because I love learning" camp, which gets them back on track to what Universities used to be. | |
Ha, 4K, that's it, most Universities will charge your ass the maximum (9K) if they think they can get away with it. In Scotland universities are free and the Scottish can come down to England and still get free universities. If an English student went to Scotland they still have to fork out to be educated. | |
Really? You know without fail that something like green energy technology - rather than say, nuclear power - will be huge in the future, no matter where the political winds may blow? There is no such thing as being a passive observer; When spending resources - certainly on the scale you're suggesting - on jumping onto the "green energy" wave, then you're affecting and enabling that process as well, favouring it over others, like nuclear power or a focus on a more efficient extraction on the until now harder-to-get fossilized fuels. ...something I believe is not without political controversy.
No disagreement there, though free education in all fields would solve that just as well as your suggestion. And provide a talent mass to draw from when other unexpected economic winds blow over the country.
And when too many students get pumped out, because that's where everyone who couldn't afford anything else went? Surely the military don't need 30,000 people with a major in Arab. And should the green energy tech development you predict without fail happen, it certainly won't need them for the next 50 years, as interest in the Middle East would drop significantly. Heck, even just come 2014 the need won't be the same as it is now. You'll have to put up quotas from the start, and alter them regularly to serve the needs of the state.
Or you could allocate the considerable resources to improve the counselling instead, since it'd be nice if the other group were eventually able to provide for themselves too. Turning education into sponsorship affairs, whether subsidized by the state or by private companies, probably wouldn't sit well with the first group either. | |
From a Canadian perspective... I think tuition needs to be increased greatly, and then I think more needs to go into student aid. This would take us closer to the model of schools like Harvard that accepts the best students and then if they have money, they pay through the nose, and if they don't have money, they get a free ride for tuition. Student loans are appropriate for covering housing and other living expenses. I don't see any problem with that at all. Forgiving student loans will not boost the economy. Do you really think that you can just write those off without consequence? It will put a few more bucks into the hands of those who haven't paid their loans (and from then on, no one will) and what you would really be doing is jacking up tax rates for everyone, which of course is bad for the economy. | |
My ability to predict what future jobs will be important is irrelevant. This is an issue of economics, not politics. I'm not an economist.
It would not. A legion of people with video game design degrees would not help our economy for example. The reason education needs targeted financial incentives is because a huge chunk of undergraduates choose majors that they personally find interesting (or easy), not because those majors have any practical benefit. Look at all the people who study literature just because they like reading books. Now don't misunderstand- non-targeted majors would still be available. If you want to get a phony major like "Communications" ;), you're welcome to it. You just don't get subsidized by the government, you'll have to pay for it through traditional means: scholarships, loans, and cash.
Arabic, if you please. And I think it's highly unlikely such a scenario would take place, especially in the US with our cultural aversion to learning new languages, dealing with outside cultures, and recent demonizing of pretty much anything coming out of the middle east. But it's obvious that the middle eastern world is going to be an important sector in the future. Being fluent in Arabic will be a valuable skill in the future, even if one is not employed by the military.
Quotas, no; regular alterations, yes. Absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Doing this does not preclude my proposal. | |
Yet you claim to be basing your opinion on whatever you know "we" know of the economy, and what it'll need to recover in the years to come.
...a rather harsh assessment. Those more esoteric degrees might not have many professions which are immediately obvious attached to them, such as degrees in chemistry or law might have. But that doesn't mean they can't contribute to society, including the economy. Sure, a student of literature will have to get creative if he/she wants to find footing in the commercial world, but as a study of literature is also de facto a study in culture, some should be able to carve niches in things like marketing or the entertainment industry for themselves. I don't know what exactly a "Communications" degree entail (...something about negotiation and marketing strategies?), I assume you do to be able to brush it off as phony?
Well, "important sector" might be a bit of a stretch once the oil runs out, but it's true that a better generator of tiresome problems have yet to be found. I don't see many major military ground operations any time soon though.
It'll be pretty hard to ensure that you don't get more people than you jobs ready for if you don't put a quota on how many can be educated for free. Free education in a land with so little welfare should draw moths aplenty to the flame.
Not if the resources for both initiatives could be found, no. However, to my knowledge the US is not known for its generous spending habits in the area of public education. | |
Well I'm a second-year and got before the fees rose, my university currently charges £9k/year for all courses, but only for new students. It's also very much getting away with it, we had a rise in applications.
I doubt there's going to be a sudden massive demand for arts degrees as opposed to science/engineering. Therefore we should be educating people who are thinking of entering what the employment rates are for graduates - as long as they're getting on a course with an informed decision, that's fine. | |
Well, employment rates can be a fickle matter. The economy and employment prospects back in 2006 looked rather different than they did in 2011, so if you'd accorded free 5 year master degrees based on the data available back then, you'd hardly end up with what was needed in the middle of this recession. And informing them on their chances, and exclusively sponsoring those the state believe will be useful to its planned economic policies, are rather different matters. | |
It's not what "I" know. It's what economists know. If a plurality of respected economists say we don't need to invest in green energy to compete with China, I'll happily revise my suggestion. I'm not fussed about the specific fields, I just want targeted training to get our economy moving.
I didn't say they didn't contribute to the economy. But when the government is investing in education, I'd rather they pick something that's more sure to make a return than Johnny Liberal Arts. And this is coming from someone for whom one of his degrees is a fine arts degree.
"It's phony major. Lubchenko learn nothing! Nothing!"
Wow. Just wow. I see a lot of flippant rudeness to people of other cultures on this board pretty routinely. But that's twice you've implied the only value to learning a language with 310 million speakers is if they have oil. That's pretty damn arrogant.
I'm finding it very hard to see how you can argue there isn't enough money to fund better counselors while simultaneously claiming all college education should be subsidized for everyone. If I didn't know better, I'd think you were arguing for the sake of arguing. | |
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So, I was recently reading this thread. I knew student loans where messed up, but I never knew how. So, I decided to ask the escapist community opinions on the topic of higher education and student loans. Specifically, should universities charge tuition fees for higher education, or should it all be paid for by the state? Are student loans fine as is, should they be lowered, or should they be forgiven to help boost the economy, like OWS wants? Is higher education a load of crap? How does maple-bacon chocolate sound? And why can't I seem to find a good price on a Twin Peaks box-set?