Using your logic, the ‘thermometer’ would be the equivalent of the staff at USNWR gathering statistics on schools/students, and the ‘hospital’ would be the application of those statistics… last time I checked, hospital patients’ temperatures were not being ranked relative to each other, although that would be quite interesting!
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What about states like Massachusetts where the tuition for UMass is $1,714 a year but the fees are around $10,000 a year! Seems like the plan wouldn’t be an advantage to many given the high cost of the fees.
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Good question! Will colleges just raise their “fees”?
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UPitt, Penn State, Temple, etc. are "state-related" universities and are not controlled by the state, but by their own boards.
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The largest state university, IUP, has an enrollment of over 15,000 undergrads and the annual tuition is below 10 grand.
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I don’t think it would matter to this plan. Otherwise, other state’s publics will just become “state-related” to avoid tuition scrutiny.
I think schools will classify as either public or private.
Under the plan, I don’t think it will matter if the school is public or private, but if it meets the ‘no tuition’ requirements, it would get (more) federal money. A school like Berea could get a lot, a school like NYU probably little.
I don’t think there is any way to even out tuition from state to state. Many states fund their universities through the general tax fund. Take Colorado. Taxes are fairly low, so the funding to the universities is rather low. CU can attract a lot of OOS students and even IS students willing to pay a lot. Not a problem. Smaller schools make do on less. School of Mines has a lot of private funding and many employers paying for grad students so it too can charge a lot. Other states, like Florida, charge high real estate taxes and funds the universities well. Tuition is low. Neither state is right or wrong.
@twoinanddone - I don’t understand the need to cap what other people decide to take out in loans. If I can get into the school I want to go to, and if I am willing to bear the cost of the loans, and if I understand that I will be paying them back for a long, long, time - why should anyone get to decide for me how debt averse I should be? What if middle-class or poor kids want to become doctors and lawyers - how are they supposed to do that with such a cap on loans??
Because the government is guarantying those loans. If you don’t want the guarantee, go for it, borrow as much as you want as a private, signature loan. The banks could ask for collateral if they wanted, or guarantors. We are all wailing about the private for profits (ITT Tech, Phoenix, Art schools) and ripping off the students that no one was regulating them so they charged a lot and the students financed it all on the government’s dime. Now that several have failed, the tax payers are left holding the bag. Do you not think those students decided for themselves how debt averse they were? That they wanted to become nurses and car mechanics or even get an MBA from UPhoenix, and should get to take the risk if they wanted to?
Rarely do you read stories about grads who borrowed $25k in Stafford loans trying to file bankruptcy to get rid of the loans. Normally the tales are of students with $50k, or $145k who now can’t make any payments. Those poor and middle class kids need to really watch their borrowing if they want to become doctors and lawyers, or the schools could lend the money to their own students, not guaranteed by the government. Make the schools stand behind their education, pick students carefully, educated them or eat their loans.
Schools don’t expect kids to go to school on $10k per year. They expect students to have saved, to qualify for grants or scholarships, or to take loans. Go to community college, go to night school. No, not the most fun, but the government isn’t responsible for making it the best college experience taxpayer money can buy.
I pay pretty close attention to the issue, and I do not see a huge wave of people defaulting on their government guaranteed loans. The government has made it very difficult to bankrupt those loans or to otherwise be free from them. What student just starting out in life is going to have the assets to take out a private loan? Are they supposed to put their non-existent house up for collateral?
I don’t think the problem with the private for profits was that the kids took out government loans to attend - it was that those places were basically a scam. The fact that there was a scam that took advantage of the existence of government funded loans for schools should be addressed - by regulating those types of schools.
I don’t see the benefit of making loans less available to those students who are attending institutes of higher education that their family background may not have made affordable.
As I have said before, I am one of those who had to take out loans for undergrad, grad and law school. I also had great scholarships along the way (really great). I still ended up with a six-figure debt. My father is a church pastor. No way they could have paid for the education I have had. I do not regret a single cent of the debt I took on in order to become the person I am today and to have had the educational opportunities those debts afforded me.
“The national student loan default rate, 14.7 percent a year ago, stands at 13.7 percent.”
I don’t know what you think is a ‘good’ default rate, but I worked in high risk lending and we panicked at 11%. Mortgage lenders are usually at about 1%. Almost 15%? Ridiculous. Yes, the average is brought up by private, for profit lending, but it is all out of the same federal guaranteed pot, and public universities at 10-12% are not exactly credit stars either. The default rate doesn’t even include those in deferment but not paying, and who will never pay.
The government guarantees home mortgages, but not in unlimited amounts. The VA loans are capped, so even if you aren’t debt adverse (and who is to say the hair stylist isn’t the best credit risk?), you can’t borrow $600k for the home in the best city, the best neighborhood, near the best country club. FHA wants everyone to have an opportunity to get a house, but applicants have to qualify and have to stay within the cap. Not everyone can have granite countertops, and not everyone gets to go to Vassar on the government’s guarantee. The students borrowing wildly have no skin in the game. Once they are at $100k in loans, why not go to $150k or $250k?
In your scenario, CValle, the government should guarantee anything and everything for students at good schools, but probably shouldn’t at third rate law schools or universities that don’t have good grad rates or employment statistics (U of DC? Should they not guarantee loans for students at that under-performing school right in Congress’s back yard?) Who is to say which students are worthy and which schools are producing good enough students? Thousands upon thousands of students feel U of Phoenix is perfect for them, so why shouldn’t they get to make the same decision as you did to borrow whatever they want?
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Using your logic, the 'thermometer' would be the equivalent of the staff at USNWR gathering statistics on schools/students, and the 'hospital' would be the application of those statistics... last time I checked, hospital patients' temperatures were not being ranked relative to each other, although that would be quite interesting!<<<
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Nope, that requires the immense lack of logic you just displayed.
I don’t think I said they shouldn’t get the same opportunity to borrow that I did.
The example you gave was of a school that turned out to be pretty much a scam. So the government is stepping in. Hardly the same thing as a person going to a third tier (accredited) law school.
I think if we are going to take risks with public money, I would rather take risks on students trying to get an education than on almost anything else.
Like I said, my background would not have allowed me to have the educational opportunities I had if I had not been able to take out the loans I took out. I will happily be paying them back for another 20 years. At a very low interest rate. Why shouldn’t other people have the same opportunity to get the best education they can get and pay it back over time at a low rate? Why is that a lower priority than bailing out banks? Or subsidizing farmers? Or any of the other pork projects the government feels are worth the investment?
I really believe that there is a place for low cost loans guaranteed by the government. I would really hate to see what would happen to the student body at the best universities in the US if the government loans were restricted.
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What if middle-class or poor kids want to become doctors and lawyers - how are they supposed to do that with such a cap on loans??
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? Are the proposed caps on grad/med school loans? I would think that this issue is dealing with undergrad issues. If so, then law/med school loans aren’t the target. Maybe I missed something?
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/08/11/clinton-and-other-democrats%E2%80%99-higher-ed-plans-feds-would-play-revamped-role-college?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=0cac71a7a2-DNU20150811&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-0cac71a7a2-198171250 Interesting follow up article. Is there a target set for graduation rates, retention rates, etc to monitor accountability?
There is no such thing as a free lunch (econ101). Do we have affordable health care with A.K.A? Many people are paying much more than they did before. I guess, this is called “affordable” these days, when you pay more…
AKA?? What does that acronym refer to? Do you mean the Affordable Care Act (ACA)?
This conversation is not about healthcare, but for a brief digression, if more people have healthcare, the costs of people without healthcare getting free treatment at emergency rooms at the expense of the taxpayer is reduced. Carry on (about college costs).
If it works like that awesome ACA, then what I pay for tuition will double, and my taxes will go up. Yeah.
I’d be in favor if they eliminated grants to private colleges — let HYPSM spend their own money if they want to attract the hoi polloi – and only used the cc funds for ‘transferable’ courses – not remediation.
Well I’d like to see how this would work in Illinois where the state is already delinquent on teacher pensions. Our state teacher retirement system (TRS) projects it will need 131 billion to cover benefits and there is only 46 billion in the bank.
I like this plan and Obama’s for one reason. Which is that it might be the catalyst to change the basic middle class college expectation to something much less expensive and more appropriate than what we do today.
Basically, making it OK and customary for middle class kids to do 13th and 14th grade for free close to home, then followed by two years of a more expensive university stint.
Personally, I think we way over-invest currently in the expensive model of four years of residential university (with all of the attendant bloat in administration and facilities). If you divert a lot of demand away from the bloated 4 year schools they will have to adjust.
Right now, we individually and collectively could save a lot of dough if we put our kids on the 2+2 college plan. But we don’t do that very much because our neighbors don’t put their kids on that plan.
The beauty of exploring various theories is that it is hardly expected to function as planned IRL. What you wrote, Jym, is the promise, the illusion, and the infomercial. The reality remains the same: the problem of healthcare is not that the uninsured drives the price up, but that the price charged to the insured is high because of a world of 30 dollars Tylenol and $6,000 colonoscopies. To the credit of the care providers, and in a vast departure from the world of academia, there is NO issue of underperforming and lazy doctors and nurses. Those folks work very hard in an inefficient system. Academia, in turn, is not only an inefficient system but also a magnet for the incompetent, the lazy, and the one whose mantra is to do the least possible for the most benefits.
All in all, the services cost too much because most feel helpless about bringing changes, and that the illusion that the money come from somewhere else is rampant. Many get shocked at the price of college because they … never saw a real bill with the mirage of free education. The only reaction --becoming ubiquitous-- is to defeat bond elections but the “system” is resilient and the money hungry elected officials will simply try again and again … until they get what they want and more.
Nothing will change as long as some believe that money can be recreated by moving the chairs of the Titanic. Plans like Hillary’s are pure unadulterated horse manure spread in election campaigns. Redistributing the source of income does not address the spending side. And the latter is where the problem has developed and will continue to do so until people vote with their feet or … are forced to admit they let it go for too long.
PS A good start will include a “redistribution” of the income side, but at the K-12 level with a MINIMUM and modest participation for everyone in school. It does not have to be much to start sharing the real cost of education with the constituency. Start with 1 to 5 percent all the way to 20 percent in high school. Force school districts to show accounts to everyone in a detailed bill sent every August.
*Dear Parent: Here’s what we have to charge. You see that 15,000 figure? Your share is 480 dollars to be paid in 8 installments of 60 dollars to match our 8 months of services. Here’s how we spend your money. If you want a climbing wall at your high school, it will cost you 12 dollars more a month. Please pay attention to exhibit A as it details the hourly cost of instruction. Your teachers work 1080 hours according to their CBA and the average cost if 68,000 in direct costs and 34,000 in benefits. Do the math. We are here to serve you! *
By the time, college starts, the parents will have less of a shock and, perhaps, know where to look to understand how their tuition dollars are spent.
@blossom, for your post #16:
If universities are being sued too much, then we should enact tort reform to limit payouts in lawsuits. (Clinton won’t go for that.)
If athletic expenses are too high, then require disclosure of the financials of unprofitable athletic programs to donors, students, alumni, etc., just like the SEC requires disclosure of unappealing financial information by private companies, and perhaps require that universities ditch those programs as a condition of receiving federal funds.
There are plenty of cuts that can be made before taking money from taxpayers’ pockets like this proposal will do.
The worst part of the Clinton plan, in my view, is capping itemized deductions at 28%. Guess what will happen then to plenty of taxpayers? They’ll give less in charitable donations to colleges–which is the exact opposite of what public policy should encourage.
How about giving unlimited deductions for charitable donations to colleges for various purposes, such as endowment and financial aid programs? That’s what I would do.
And for the record, I voted for Clinton in 2008.