Ben Carson thinks he has a better idea:
Only public institutions?? Hmmm, interesting subsidy to private colleges, that.
Need to keep in mind the difference between the missions of private and public institutions - their missions are not the same, as to constituencies. Thus, I suspect this is to protect the ability for as many as possible lower SES students to be able to attend private schools.
Economically, many private schools do not need the federal loans, but they take them because the loans are part of the overall college tuition payment system. Specifically, these loans allow acceptance of lower SES students without raising out-of-pocket costs of these private schools.
However, if one tells private schools they have to pay the interest on student loans, then all they would do, smartly, is accept less students who need such loans and more who can pay and do not need loans. Simply, it would make no sense for private institution to accept costs it does not have to.
In contrast, public universities have a duty to educate pretty much all students in a state. Additionally, public universities are also on the money bandwagon and raise their rates to match increases in federal loan programs and thus have little incentive to keep rates low.
Overall, one cannot force private schools to keep rates at a certain level because they do not have to take all students, but one can force public schools to keep rates low by: 1) reducing their state-authorized budgets and 2) paying interest on federal loans.
You’ve conjoined actions from two different levels of gov’t which may not even have the same view on what/how things need to be done.
I did not conjoin them. I was just pointing out that there are two different approaches. It is simply a list of possibilities. I did not suggest that both must be done for a program to be successful. If it makes it clearer, then change “and” to and/or."
If states are going to be forced to pay the interest on the loans (or as has been suggested in the past, pay the loans for defaulting students), the states/schools will demand a say in who gets those loans. Currently anyone can take a federal loan as long as the student is admitted and meets the other basic requirements. If schools are going to pay the interest, won’t they favor students who will graduate in 4 years, who don’t need loans at all, who won’t default?
Where in the world would schools get the money to pay accruing interest on student loans?
Public colleges in particular, but also non-profit ones, have no secret slush fund they can hide money that the overly generous state taxpayers are contributing to their operations.
@twoinanddone - that is the deep mystery here … how on earth can underfunded public institutions pay any thing?
Public colleges are struggling to keep programs alive and functioning, to keep class sizes down to less than 1000, to keep student faculty ratios under 20:1, to keep up sometime abysmally poorly maintained facilities (take a tour, looks like the 1960s). And if tuition reaches about 50% of comparable private universities, there is immediate outrage among the middle class. States mostly aren’t feeling really generous either.
State funded school finances are a matter of public record.
Non-profit universities rarely are in the black for their educational mission, the endowments often subsidize operations generously, including both direct funding and grants to students, which then go into the tuition bucket to help pay costs.
Non-profit schools must complete all paperwork related to being a charity, which makes them pretty transparent as well.
For-profit schools - well - that is another thread and I think the root of many issues.
Supply and demand typically refers to having a scarce resource that the profit motive is encouraging you to sell to the highest bidder. How does this remotely apply here? There is a limited supply of outstanding schools, but is that the root of the student loan crisis or the educational crisis or whatever we are calling it. I still think any graduate of a top 100 university can service loans, likely to $50K but possibly higher. Heck, a $30K car is considered a minimum level for many people and it doesn’t last a lifetime or provide any service a $10K used Corolla does not.
I think this whole education debate is co-mingling too many issues and too many constituencies, whether wealthy students trying to get into Harvard, upper middle income students weighing options between state flagships and their private university choices, middle income students trying to afford state schools, lower middle income students trying to go to school at all, and the poor who if they are really, really motivated and lucky may get a spot at a good school with only work-study and summer work required. Then we have the ugly student debt thing, which blends the fiscal messes we have seen everywhere with predatory lending (giving someone $50K loans at a low status school to major in basketweaving or more likely even to take remedial classes) and a weak job market for all young people, including those with shiny diplomas (we hope) and big debt.
I am pro-education and in favor of everyone who is capable of doing the work getting as much as education as they need (I might even say want), both for the sake of fairness and to maximize our world level competitiveness and get value out of everyone. Some poor kid with a Pell Grant might cure my cancer or my kids cancer or invent a better windmill.
I don’t like these blanket non-policies which look at really gross level statistics and then make a play to lay out some new type of program that will probably just make everything a whole lot worse. What is wrong with a FAFSA type system with loans, grants, and parent pay options? The state schools provide a balance to overly rich private schools and a place for most people to go. The private sector competes for quality of programs and provides many of our top schools. Shut down or repurpose the underperforming schools, maybe turn some CCs into remedial education centers with qualified teachers for those students who will actually pay to learn. Turn some CCs into feeder schools to top flagships. Find something the for-profit schools can provide that has value to their students and taxpayers.
actually, if we use the health care system as a proxy, we need students to have skin (repayable loans) in the game or prices will go even higher and quality will go even lower. U Phoenix has had a big downturn precisely because students could not pay back their loans, and they told two friends who told two friends - hey, this is a bad deal.
And the most seminal reason why free college (to be paid by taxpayers) is a terrible societal investment and why too many students today needlessly go into debt is this:
From my current position on several company boards, I not only confirm this situation, but posit it will get worse. In a nutshell, too many students go into debt for employment, which requires no college at all, but they go to college and then expect to get paid as if that job is worth a college degree. Increased pay for the level of high school graduate productivity is not going to happen.
This why the one thread about college providing no income boost is like being surprised to learn that a bank really has no money in it, until people put money in. In the same vein, college cannot provide an income boost unless there is a concomitant job to fill when students graduate. The college degree is virtually empty, even if you have it, until an employer creates, i.e., puts a college degree-requiring job in the mix.
Creating more students with college degrees DOES NOT automatically create more jobs requiring college degrees; they are not connected events, as one is about efficient productivity and the other is about information learning. Put in more simple terms, a college degree does not change the inherent productivity of a particular job, and thus, the degree has no effect on pay.
I notice how many people tout the virtues of free college in Germany et al. However, that focus misses the big picture where societal measures are more telling of the results - that is, the lifestyle of the “free college” graduate in Germany is really equivalent or less than the lifestyle of a high school graduate in the US, who gets a job after high school, any job, and does not have kids before they are married.
In fact, in the US, the lifestyle for such high school graduates is better for a higher percentage of those people have cars, air conditioning, and 40 - 50% larger homes, i.e., they live more comfortable lives in the US. But, the most telling statistic is home ownership in the US is higher. Overall, only some 45% of families in Germany own their own homes, as compared to 65% in the US. So much for free college making one’s life more successful. All free college does is make it so that the jobs, which do not require a college degree and do not pay for having a college degree, get filled by people with college degrees - a bad investment for the holder of the degree.
There is a place for college for sure, but that place does not mean everyone should partake because the majority of jobs, believe it or not, do not require a college degree and many students are better off not going into debt to get a job that will never pay off that debt.
And yet, in other threads I’m on, there have been repeated claims that it’s all those lazy millennials’ faults for not filling all the excess jobs out there. Nice to be able to eat someone else’s cake and have it, too.
Since Georgia has been brought up on this forum I would like to say to get the Zell Miller a high school student must have a 3.7 in high school. Honors points are subtracted from the calculation, classes such as art, pe and drama are excluded from the calculation and there are other requirements. In college a 3.3 is required to maintain it. However, While tuition is free for those students the fees are not. Fees are in the thousands so whether it’s fees or tuition it’s not free like you think. Hope is funded by the lottery system and what the system pays has been cut back and the criteria to qualify keeps getting more stringent. The hope scholarship pays less towards tuition and requires a 3.0 gpa in college. There is a time frame in which it must be used and a limit on credit hours it will pay for.
^^ I think the program in GA is a great program.
The issue is not reducing costs or even providing free tuition via scholarships to a segment of students, as there are students who can take advantage of that and should go to college.
The issue I am addressing is the fact that too many are pushing, including government, that everyone should be striving to go to college. That is a false narrative vis a vis the actual job market that exists. The job market for verified, rigorous 3,7 students and honors students is still bright, so definitely get those kids in college.
Pure hogwash.
Millennials are no less hard workers than anyone else I have known the last 30 years. They do spend their time differently outside of a job, e.g., more time on computers and playing video games, social media etc. so there is less overall physical activity. However, the overwhelming majority of them still want to be good at their jobs (who doesn’t really?) and work hard.
I only brought up Ga because some information posted about this program was not accurate. I’m not complaining as a GA resident with a child in college on the Zell.
However, I do agree not everyone should go to college. As everyone is jumping on the bandwagon to go to college, college has become the new high school degree. Jobs that never required college degrees now do because of the glut of those with bachelors. The curriculum in high school today is only geared for college.
^^ I did not take it as a complaint. Great program, it is. I was just pointing out that free is OK for some, but not something that should be done for all.
And let’s face it, it is not really “free” for a 3.3 and up student, as that student is working his / her buns off to maintain it. Something like that is earned via scholar production and grades.
Okay, I’ll cast a dissenting vote on Georgia’s (and Florida’s, and Alaska’s, and so on) scholarship programs. Yeah, they’re nice to have around, but they’re massive (upper-)middle-class entitlement programs. When I lived in Florida the state was having massive budget issues but it was politically untenable to touch their program (Bright Futures), even though they cut all sorts of aid to the truly poor.
So not saying the programs themselves are a bad thing, but that they have the unintended effect of warping the system down the road.
(p.s. @awcntdb #131, I agree with you entirely there—just pointing out that there are some people out there who are—let’s be charitable—misinformed on that.)
Georgia’s hope/Zell miller scholorships are funded exclusively by the lottery system not by taxes. The lottery was created to do this and also funds prek. It has stopped the brain drain in Georgia and most students stay in state to go to college. Additionally it not only pays for college but high school students wishing to pursue a technical education. It has benefitted untold numbers of students in all income brackets.
I’m a strong supporter of Bernie, plenty of other countries provide free university to their civilians. I don’t see why America should be any different. You did raise a few good questions in the original post, and hopefully Bernie will be elected and we can find out how it goes.
The United States spends over seven hundred billion dollars on the military, so we have the strongest military in the world, yet our public schools are not the best in the world. However, it is widely considered that our higher education system is, yet income inequality in a society where attending most colleges costs the student tuition fees is terrible at the moment, so there is obviously a problem with funding. Research and Development receives the least amount of money from the U.S. annual budget which is what research universities could utilize. Since that is occurring in a relatively limited capacity, Bernie Sanders has looked at other nations and made a plan. In order for the middle class to recover, it seems to me that this is a good idea.
At this point I love Sanders. If this is real and will work, I’ll sell my soul to him. I need something to help me afford college besides tons of unsubsidized loans (I like how my computer thinks unsubsidized is incorrect too). I have a $6,000 bill for my first semester, and another for next semester. This is cheap compared to some and I get that. But I’m a first-gen college student from a poor background. I was convinced that my fafsa would should the government I’m also getting no help from home. But apparently my age is a factor and I guess that means my family is giving me imaginary money. At this point my only way to afford college is loan after loan. So if Sanders is elected and this tax paid college idea is passed and made into law then I’ll continue my college education. Otherwise I’m gonna have to get a crappy little apt, cause I was booted out my house for good, and work wherever I can get money while paying the lovely American government what little I have to avoid punishment.
Tax the rich, have them pay most of the bill. Simple. They’re the ones reserving most of the wealth in the US.