<p>Your feeble ad hominems and snide ridicule are tiresome, ED. I’ve presented some facts, laying out in rather precise detail how even a 30% graduation could easily represent a hugely positive ROI if we’re measuring average lifetime earnings of those who are enabled to attend college–not with a “free ride” as you so erroneously state (facts don’t really matter at all in your hermetically sealed ideological cocoon, do they?), but with a modest co-investment of public dollars that enables people to pick themselves up by their bootstraps. Refute the data I’ve presented if you can. I think you can’t. That’s why, when confronted with facts, you resort to bombastic rhetoric, sarcasm, and ad hominem attacks. The last refuges of someone riding a losing argument.</p>
<p>Ah, you are either a professor or a professional student. Seriously, the cost of running a university that only graduates 30% of its students has a good ROI. Hence, my belief that you are a professional student devoid of any real world experience. Too funny.</p>
<p>Poet, not saying they shouldn’t give the Pell, they simply need to, like any private enterprise, examine the worth of the system and determine if they can do it in a better fashion so as not to waste BILLIONS of dollars. Alas, as with any government entity, that will never, ever happen. Just keep spending the money without any accountability. Please refute that my dear (i.e. show may any, and I mean any government program that is efficient).</p>
<p>QED. More snark, sarcasm, and ad hominem, based on nothing but your leaping to an unfounded conclusion that comfortably fits your hermetically sealed, ideologically driven worldview. And just dead wrong. But hey, who needs facts? Who needs to lift a finger to investigate before leaping to conclusions?</p>
<p>Well, Edad, I know they have reduced the number of semesters a student can receive the pell. But, you are not going to get me to be the one to defend government efficiency.</p>
<p>In a lot of cases, there are things I believe the private sector can and does do better, but it doesn’t always turn out to be the case. For example, in Chicago, the privatization of the parking meters not only did not make it less expensive, but more expensive, AND cost the taxpayers additional money, also took away no meter sundays.</p>
<p>So, you never know.</p>
<p>In the case of the pell, I’m not even sure I want to spend LESS, but I would like to see those who are achieving get MORE, so they could finish more expediently. I just think this is a place where we belong. In a language I am sure you will understand, we have mortgaged these kids futures already, and we ought to at least support those who want an education in order to be able to stay ahead of the coming tax onslaught. ;)</p>
<p>I’m not an apologist for government, just a big believer in those who work hard. The money they pay in taxes will more than offset the cost of the pell, imho.</p>
<p>Those studies are outdated and the subjects studied were from previous generations, not my younger generation where a far higher percentage graduate from college and 50% of us are unemployed or underemployed even with a college degree. The reason why the federal government started lending programs was to encourage more people to go to college; now that has driven up college costs and also devalued the college degree by letting anyone in my generation to attend. This is partly why 50% of my generation who have college degrees cannot find a job that requires a college degree.</p>
<p>College is no longer the “golden” ticket that it used to be and too many idiots are given the opportunity to pay for college or have taxpayers pay for their college. Most colleges are not even remotely selective. How is encouraging the young generation to incur student loan debt to obtain an unemployable college degree going to help them? We are only devaluing the college degree even more while having more people in my generation take out nondischargeable student loan debt.</p>
<p>And yes, I think more people should be encouraged into a vocation. Unfortunately, most students who receive loans from the government have no intention or desire to pursue a vocation. Plus, vocational schools by and large are far more affordable than 4 year programs at a university and are generally affordable without the government lending money.</p>
<p>The fact is MY generation is NOT in the same position as the OLDER generations. A much higher percentage of us attend college, but college is no longer an “obvious” good decision. 50% of us are unemployed or underemployed after graduating college. I am eager to see the studies on my generation over our lifetimes and how much more on average a college graduate earns from my generation; I would assume that the difference is far more infinitesimal than it was for the previous generations. </p>
<p>Please stop citing out-of-date studies for support that do not apply to the current state of higher education and do not apply to my generation. This is why my generation faces problems like we do and will struggle far more than the Boomers did – the Boomer generation keeps shoving propaganda down our throats without understanding that different variables are at currently at play and without comprehending that the circumstances have changed. Remember, a higher percentage of us go to college, therefore the college degree is devalued; the skyrocketing cost of college tuition and student loan debt makes the decision of attending college dubious; 50% of my generation with college degrees are unemployed or underemployed; and the US job market will likely continue to decline and make it more difficult for us to find jobs that make the degree worthwhile.</p>
<p>Look, I won’t dispute that your generation has had it tough . . . so far. But I wouldn’t leap to the conclusion that this erases the lifetime employment and income advantages of a HS diploma over no diploma, and of “some college” (but no degree) over no college, and of a college degree over anything else. Everyone’s had it tough, but the patterns have been pretty persistent and true to form: those with less education always have it tougher.</p>
<p>According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of November 2012 the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of those with a Bachelor’s degree or higher stood at 3.8%; for those with “some college” at 6.5%; for those with a HS diploma but no college at 8.1%; and for those with less than a HS education at 12.2%. </p>
<p>Those are enormous differences, but even those figures understate the real difference, because of differences in labor force participation rate, which range from 45.3% for those without a HS diploma, to 59.4% for HS grads with no college, to 68.4% for those with “some college”, to 75.5% for those with a Bachelor’s degree. In short, when you hear about unemployment statistics masking the “true” unemployment rate because they don’t take ino account “discouraged workers”–well, those discouraged workers are overwhelmingly concentrated in the lower rungs of educational attainment. And these patterns have persisted over many generations, through boom times and economic downturns. I wouldn’t so lightly assume the paradigm has shifted–at least not until we’ve seen another 10 or 20 years of data.</p>
<p>Here in Minnesota, we’re seeing some encouraging signs of economic recovery. Our unemployment rate currently stands at 5.7%, not great but well below the national average. Construction firms have recently hired thousands of workers to meet pent-up demand for housing, especially in the higher-end rental market; I guarantee they’re hiring more HS grads than HS dropouts, and probably more with “some college” than with none. Retail sales are up sharply, and seasonal hiring in retail, e.g., at the Mall of America, is reported to be the strongest it’s been in 10 years. I guarantee those stores are hiring more applicants with “some college” than with just a HS diploma. And the biggest employment uptick has been in the health care sector. They’re not necessarily hiring more doctors, but they are hiring more nurses and nurses’ aides and medical technicians and medical records managers and clerical employees, and those jobs are going to people with 4-year degrees, or 2-year associate’s degrees, or “some college,” depending on the particular job. </p>
<p>Bottom line, people who are better educated remain more employable, are employed at far higher rates, and qualify for better-paying jobs than those with less education, and there’s every reason to believe that in the aggregate those long-term patterns will persist well into the future, notwithstanding any anecdotes you may produce about particular individuals who found rough sledding, graduating from college into the worst economic downturn, and the worst job market, since the Great Depression</p>