@okon2122 Sure, remove the incentive to strive for success. That’ll work.
Want free education? Go into the military, and get paid while doing it. Or better yet, work hard in high school so that you don’t have to pay a dime in college. University of Alabama would grant full tuition to a majority of the people here on College Confidential <:-P
Things don’t come free and easy in life, so the sooner you learn that, the better.
I’m not disagreeing with you entirely, but I do question your complete reliance on the idea that human beings are ever entirely economically rational beings.
Humans are never entirely economically rational beings in real life.
However, even high school students are sufficiently economically rational to clear the very low bar that is set by comparing scenario (1), where their classmates receive a full ride scholarship only if they have a 4.0 UW GPA and a 1600 SAT, with scenario (2), where their classmates receive a full ride scholarship regardless of performance, courtesy of Bernie Sanders.
Obviously not, or else socialism wouldn’t exist. 
8-}
(I’m kidding, for those of you who will take what I’m saying far too seriously.)
@MrTongueTie I would agree with you only if teenagers can develop the cognition to accept, at that age, textbooks being shoved at them and then having someone tell them ‘learn it’ in the midst of developmental and social inundation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY
Kids just haven’t ‘grown up’ enough to realize the economic benefits of doing what they’re told. You can’t blame them for that-- they’re children. Not mature (though I hate to consider maturity being something where you go against your intellectual curiosities because of the financial benefits… but for the sake of conversation we’ll say).
Also, you’re completely ignoring those with disabilities or different styles of learning, who get lost in the huge industrialized ‘academic’ environment, along with teachers who are too dense to understand these disabilities and oblige them normally (for example, plenty treat gifted students or non-verbal autistic students like dunces if they don’t exhibit the conventional model of intelligent)
@okon2122 I would expand on your argument, and agree that our current education is very flawed. We have shifted away from teaching/informing/educating people of the advantages of a vocation, and instead have put a “gold star” per se on the guarantee of success from a college education. There is not only one way to succeed in life, and it is completely possible without a college or “formal” education for those who desire it.
As a person who has struggled greatly with developmental disabilities, I think I can understand pretty well the issue that you bring up. By the age of 6, I literally could not speak. I had over 12 years of speech therapy in order to fix my “tongue-tie.” I still can’t even pronounce all of the alphabet. And yes, I do learn differently than other people. Not being able to speak, I have and probably always will be a quiet person who does not learn by classroom discussions nor interactive education. But, this is my story. Each person is different, but hopefully this anecdote helps to show you that a disability and/or different ways of being taught are not the end of everything. And as for my experiences with education, I have found willing teachers that always aid me in my development, even though I learn quite differently from others in the class. ~O)
His intentions are humble, but reality for his tuition proposal is just not there, especially in my state. Say he was to get nominated, elected, and sworn in to office of the President next year…what then? So much attention is put on a presidential candidate and their proposals yet the other key to government is often overlooked…congress. Assuming the continuing control of congress by Republicans, it may be YEARS before democrats take control and make some attempt with any of his proposals. Then the reality of funding comes into play…my state of Colorado is by far one of the most conservative anti-tax states in this country. We designed our own constitution to make it that the government can only take in a certain amount of tax each year and any new tax must be voted by the citizens, not the representatives. In practice this makes our state highly sought as a haven from taxes. However, in my state the practice of budget control after the Great Recession was to cut everything that wasn’t deemed necessary. Thus, the result was gutting higher education and making Colorado officially (that I am aware of) the most underfunded state in America for higher education state spending per student. For 25 years we never raise taxes once for higher education…this brings back to Sander’s plan. The 1/3 state support is politically impossible in my state. As much as Colorado is stereotyped as being the hippie liberal state, the citizens in this state DESPISES taxes and the only new tax we were able to levy on was weed…go figure.
My point is the intentions for getting people affordable college completely ignore the political realities at the Federal and State level for funding. Only a handful of states actually maintain per capita spending on higher education. The rest cut what they can…
I really do not believe simply putting more money will help the system we have set up. Easy loan money caused the college bubble as we know it. Just as the subprime loan crisis caused one of the worst financial disasters in history, so too will student loans be a destructive force on young people’s lives. More than anything, we need to restructure how we give out loans and grants to students that may or may not make the best use of taxpayer dollars. Controlling the supply on the money side of college costs will help way more than feeding the fire. We need a proposal that both sides of the political spectrum can get behind. I have a few suggestions that may bring support from both sides…
—Students and families making better choices on the types of college they pick—
A central tool that compiles all information of the respective college, major, time to graduation, COE, % met, financial aid profile by income (more detailed than out there), and more importantly ROI (I will explain the importance of this later on).
A central tool would help ease the emotional college process and give a more objective understanding of college costs and ROI by major/degree.
Essentially, the more informed the public is on good and bad degree/college choices, the more they can protect themselves from information asymmetry that could destroy family finances.
—Change the student loan/grant program in the US----
Just as subprime loans without proper credit lead to devastating loan defaults, so too must caution be placed on student loans for educations that don’t justify the taxpayer’s money.
ALL COMMERCIAL STUDENT PRIVATE LOANS BECOME BANNED. The US federal government becomes the sole lender to students
ELIMINATE ALL PARENT PLUS LOANS. All loans are only taken by the students for the student
Loan maximums:
–$6,000 freshman year
–$7,000 sophomore year
–$8,000 junior year
–$9,000 senior year
–$10,000 fifth year
Grand total max student loans for undergraduate: $40,000
Increase pell grants amounts to fixed amount of $10,000 that scales with EFC. (Ie EFC of $0 = $10,000 pell grant and EFC of $10,001+ = $0 pell grant)
Tie interest rates to the riskiness of the degree from the college. Not all educations are worth the same amount of risk. A mechanical engineering major from MIT has a better chance at paying back their debt than a liberal arts major from a degree mill. Therefore a committee with the US department of education would set interest rates based on conceived risks of the education and degree. The interest rate hikes will help cover the loan and pell grant increases over time (among other funding considerations).
Tie the new loan/grant programs to high school success, specifically with GPA and ACT/SAT scores. There should be a cutoff from where students coming straight out of high school would not have access to all available loans/grants or none at all. Instead, they may be directed to a local CC to improve grades and required to take tests again in order to receive government support.
Introduce universal student loan refinancing and fixed 10% gross income repayment on the precondition that students graduated in 4 years.
The hallmark of what I would like to see is a “10% plan”. Essentially colleges must maintain an overall ROI of 10% for all educational degrees. This would put heavy pressure to get these students proper career skills and invest in student career centers to get these students jobs when they come out. If the ROI falls below 10%, then the school LOSES ALL LOAN AND PELL GRANT SUPPORT. PERIOD. I do not care if private LAC or a number of public schools go under. Inaction cannot be tolerated any longer and if these colleges don’t do enough, they will sink.
Tuition and fees caps of 4% for any college that receives federal support through loans and pell grants. This pushes pressure on colleges to maintain cost effective practices and limiting enrollment target increases that have fueled the college cost bubble. The cap also addresses the fundamental shift to higher paying degrees that push pressure on colleges to increase costs of expansion to meet demand. Rather, each college will have to choose what they can do with that 4% cap, if that means lower enrollment targets or becoming more efficient and specialized. That puts pressure for new colleges to be explored or built to meet for the demands of high ROI degrees to meet market demand.
Essentially, a low ROI and high default rate (20%+) among debt borrowers will lose all federal support for that college. That should make these college admins sweat knowing that the good ole days of just recruiting more and more students is over.
The fundamental mechanism with exploding college costs is the college’s incentives to boost enrollment targets and compete each other with arbitrary rankings. The government needs to shut the tap and make it clear that students will only get the support they need if they work their hardest to perform well in high school, all the while forcing colleges to be more attentive to what happens to their students after college. No more giving away tax payer money to anyone willing to go to school. They need to earn it with specs to show they have the competent ability to finish. This reduces high risk students from going straight to college with no plans and let them try CC at least before going to a more expensive 4 year college.
My ideas would just be a start and may hit a note with some. My concern with college costs is fixing the root of all the problems…easy money pumping colleges with unreasonable demand. It’s a start. At least these ideas have more feasibility than any of the current candidate’s ideas…I just hope someone brings this to congress and our politicians unite as one to the liberal and conservative values in here. I just hope America isn’t too late to make change happen.
The result of pumping more money into the college system is more expensive college. We need only look at the rampant inflation in college tuition as various governments (state and federal) have made more money available via loans, grants, tuition waivers, etc. The first thing that happened is that colleges raised tuition, expanded programs to attract more students, grew in size to capture more of that money, raised salaries among professors and administrators, invented degree programs with dubious public merit, etc., etc., etc.
Very few government programs are considered effective at delivering on their mission. Typically, private industry does a better job because there is a risk/reward for them.
As long as we keep looking to the federal government to solve our problems, we will just have more problems. College tuition issues are a state/local problem, best addressed by state/local voters. There are many reasons, but the most easily understood is simply the micro economies. The cost of living in California is different than that in North Dakota. Trying to put in a one-size fits all solution is worse than stupid.
There are few missions that are better done at the federal level. The Constitution was pretty clear on what those would be…some have stretched meanings to broaden the federal role, but that can be fixed, too. The easy ones are the military, border security and interstate disputes. Some things are best left to the feds. If everyone realized that the federal overreach hurts all sides of the political spectrum, we could all have the country we want. If you wanted to live in a state with free tuition, that could be an option. Put the power back in the hands of the local people and we would all be a lot better off.
^ You’ll have to show me the analysis that shows how the lack of change in Direct Loan amounts has caused the price of colleges to go up over the last 8 years. http://www.finaid.org/loans/historicallimits.phtml
And just a reminder that this thread shouldn’t devolve into a political discussion.
It’s difficult to state definitively where a state’s population stands with regard to taxation. Alaska was long regarded as the ultimate in a tax-averse population—no state individual income or wealth tax plus no statewide (and very few local) sales taxes, and it has long been the conventional wisdom that proposing either of those is political suicide for any politician of any party.
Well, recent polling finds that majorities of Alaskans are now in favor of an income or sales tax (or both). Is this the result of the electorate slowly changing over time? Or is it more sudden, with an electorate recognizing certain weaknesses in Alaska’s fiscal situation that can’t be papered over anymore, and reacting accordingly? Can’t tell. It does underline, however, that what the citizenry is willing to contribute on the revenue side isn’t a static thing.
Do I think the support would be there to fund Sanders’s proposal? No, I agree, probably not. But making that claim based simply on past behavior doesn’t really work.
@dfbdfb Alaska is experiencing a revenue shortfall due to the drop in the price of oil which will lead to a massive reduction in state services. If Alaskans want to maintain services they will need alternate revenue sources and that is a problem shared with the other oil producing states. I don’t think this reflects the population at large.
Bernie’s proposals are unconstitutional and will result in a defacto nationalization of education. If the federal government pays for college they will control it. I’d like to see the federal government out of the education business entirely; it wasn’t long ago that student loans were mostly private, and the department of Education (1979) was a smaller office. Even if you remove any ideological issues, how does it make sense to send money to Washington and send a fraction of it back to your local college after paying federal bureaucrats and having funds diverted to other colleges? It is far more efficient for the family to pay the college directly which keeps the college accountable to the students and parents.
I like the Georgia scholarships (and similar) because they are an active incentive for students, regardless of their school system or family income, to perform well. You can see the results in the improvement in average GPA and ACT scores at GT and UGA, as well as the rest of the UG system.
Forgive me for my rant if it seemed divisive or overgeneralized with the situation in my state and the nation. It was midnight where I was at and felt like ranting my heart out. I guess this is what I really wanted to say to…the government bureaucrats back in the early 90’s “ingeniously” decided that more people needed to go to college in order to compete with the emerging global economy. They felt that in order to lift the poor and middle class to new wealth that the fed government should step in to make college more affordable. These geniuses believed that anyone with an interest for college would not be shut out from receiving federal aid, whether it be loans or pell grants if they were eligible. They did not consider the student’s aptitude for finishing. They did not consider rapid inflation by free money pumping up an unsustainable business model. They were more concerned about people going to college than outcomes. The results? Massive inflation of college costs. Massive increases in student loans by students. Reduction in quality of education as schools focused on enrollment targets than specializing funds to fewer students. And most unfortunate the states figured that the federal government can continue to pump up their respective colleges with loans and pell grants that they avoided any real discussion of raising per capita spending for their instate students and rather cut their state schools as deemed “unnecessary discretionary spending”. The mess of uncontrolled cost inflation would not be as severe or noticeable if the feds never started pumping the system in the first place. Their effort to put people in college made everyone worse off.
The problem though is the loans and grants are now part of the system. Our society and culture over the last 20 years have accepted these as the way college is paid for. Simply getting rid of fed loans and grants would cause such a backlash as many would have to drop out and the disgruntled masses would surely go after the politicians trying to shut the tap. Rather, all the proposals are about pumping more money in various ways. They rarely address controlling and regulating money at the very least. The goal is to wean colleges off easy money from the government and make them more self-reliant on state programs. If the fed continues to increase its role, the states are discouraged to do anything to address the needs of their state. @TooOld4School I agree with you. States like Georgia and Florida are forefront what we should be looking at to helping in-state students. The best and brightest get the help they need from the state all depending on their merits, rather than income. The money flows to those who worked for it and because they pay state taxes they get the support from their respective state.
Again, I apologize for any rife I may have stirred with my other post. Deep down I felt that the feds should be regulating loans rather than giving it to whomever, if getting rid of the whole loan program is unfeasible to do as the system stands. I guess this summarizes my view of this whole federal student loan mess: “It is hard to change the system you made. It’s even harder to get rid of it and start over.”
@atomicPACMAN07 , returning the student loan program to private hands would impose some discipline ; the old system prevented discharge of loans in bankruptcy which reduced interest rates while still not burdening the taxpayers with enormous liabilities. It will also result in a net reduction of high risk (for repayment) colleges who do not provide value to their student clients. It will further help students make rational decisions based on different interest rates for different colleges and/or majors. There is clearly more value - and therefore lower risk to lenders - in certain areas.
The problem with, as you say, “accepting” and subsidizing federal student loans is eventually the system will collapse and need to be balled out. It’s very hard to point to any successful program , perhaps with the exception of the GI bill, but I would hesitate to call that social engineering; more like a cheap and effective way to help vets reintegrate into civilian life.
very good points you brought up @TooOld4School My one and only concern right now with private loans is that they’re heavily contingent on a parent’s credit history. If the student has a promising chance to attend college and succeed, but cannot borrow on their own because they lack a credit history of their own and that their parents have a poor credit history, then effectively that child is shut off from college from the circumstances of their parents. I would know as I was in my local bank discussing private loan options for a number of colleges I was considering and I was flat out told I would not qualify because my father’s credit worthiness was too low. A majority of private student loans in this country require co-signers and would not be given to families with adverse credit. A huge cornerstone of stafford and pell grants was to address those in the lower and middle classes that were shuttered away from private loans because they could not qualify for them. Anyone could go through the fed and at least get loans if they would otherwise be shut away by the banks. As we have seen, however, giving loans to EVERYONE who asked for one was not the best choice and just pumped easy money to the system. Rather than make the system of student loans be contingent on the credit worthiness of the family, make it tied to academic merit instead. Make a strict cutoff and that students need a certain GPA/ACT to get loans. Stats like GPA and ACT together relate strongly with work ethic and aptitude. A number of colleges follow this logic for awarding scholarships for attracting high stats students. We just got to make the benchmarks high enough that only the best and brightest get to go to college with any loans and the rest need to find funds somewhere else.
Again, @TooOld4School private student loans are not inherently a bad thing. They just have a tendency to harm lower class citizens since they have a harder time acquiring one for their kids. There just needs to be a balance. Just like Sander’s plan to give everyone “free” tuition is a slap in the face for students like me who worked their tail off for a full tuition scholarship, the same care needs to be made to ensure that students can get loans but make proper use of it, whether it be through the government or banks. Strict benchmarks for borrowing through merit rather than solely credit would give equal chances for lower and higher income individuals alike. Thankfully I don’t need student loans because I got the merit scholarships I need to attend, but not everyone is so fortunate.