<p>Whoot whoot one of my kids’ schools from the link above. I loved this place and clearly its alumni love it too. They have fully funded two buildings and an athletic team since 2008 without any state assistance. These are the hidden gem schools that data might uncover.</p>
<p>Sometimes I think everyone is “afraid” of losing their CC favorites. What happens if it turns out that St. Olaf is a better deal than Carlton? Or Lawrence is the better choice than Oberlin. Horrors. I shudder to think what the reaction will be other than a stampede for those "lesser"USNWR colleges. Buck up it won’t be as bad as everyone thinks. USNWR was “bad” this won’t hurt…much.</p>
<p>This I can maybe agree with. Our oldest graduated in the midst of all the crap in Spring of 2011. He was employed by fall, but at barely above minimum wage. However he’s had two promotions and another one in the works for fall so while it’s been a slow start it’s all about compromise and we’ve quit wringing our hands. My advice to kids: Get in…go from there. The “losers” were the kids who thought they were “too good” to take what was offered or tried to “hold out” for what they thought they were worth. My son said to me last week and I quote “I’ve been lucky because there are so many people pushing, pushing which turns off management because they don’t have many positions to fill, I decided to just keep my head down and my nose to the ground, not make big scenes and do what people wanted as best as I could and it’s going to pay off.”</p>
<p>While the default rate is high on surface, I suspect against the total number of actual graduates each year it’s probably not as bad as the media makes it. My oldest had to go through 2 days/almost 8 hours each day about his loans and what it meant before he walked through graduation.He brought home an envelope of spreadsheets and documents. Every senior who had taken any kind of loan was required to attend to grasp their diploma that weekend. Again, somewhat unique I suspect, but his college was very cognizant of what the future might hold. The burden should still remain on the student, not the college IMO. It’s the price you pay to reach financially. </p>
<p>I don’t believe for one minute…I don’t believe for one second…that that poor performing colleges exist to serve poor performing students. That’s a USNWR myth and metric…that ONLY the top ranking college produce capable/income earning/tax paying national citizens. Drink the Koolaid Madboutx, it’s yummy and you feel good after you drink it.</p>
<p>My read on this is that the government wants to reign in ‘scam’ schools like Everest, and other marginally accredited schools like D’youville and the like- including the growing number of ‘for profit’ schools.<br>
You take an underperforming high school student, for example. Let’s say he has a 2.1 GPA, but his parents want him to go to a four year college, not a CC, although a CC is where he ought to go. Well, there are many fourth tier ‘colleges’ which will take his money and allow him to enroll. Will he graduated? Probably not, and even if he does, a degree from -say-D’Youville-will not garner him much success.
The problem with this is that many of the schools with the highest debt, and lowest graduation rates are traditionally black colleges: Moorhouse, Spellman, Howard, Florida Atlantic etc.</p>
I’ve been posting labor force figures in “underemployment” threads for a while now, but apparently political leaders don’t read CC…or listen to the BLS…or maybe they do but find rhetoric more convenient than data…;)</p>
<p>Status quo higher education policy is a poor workaround for America’s defective K-12 system.</p>
<p>“should UVA be “punished” for higher tuition than the University of Georgia (with its HOPE scholarships) or UF?”</p>
<p>This has nothing to do with the presidents plan.
The hope scholarship is only for kids that graduate from a Georgia high school with at least a 3.0. The Zell miller version requires a student graduates with a 3.7. On top of that they have to keep a 3.0 or 3.3 in college to keep the scholarship. This is a scholarship that the state of Georgia funds from lottery earnings. It has nothing to do with the tuition charged at a Georgia colleges. Virginia is free to set up a scholarship program for their high school graduates if they want.</p>
<p>However I think this whole idea that the president has is wrong. There are plenty of kids that need the pell grant/fin. aid to go to a “third tier” school so they can get a job. The only thing this plan is going to do is hurt the lower middle class. There will be something for the poor and meanwhile the upper middle class and above will find a way to get their kids through college.</p>
<p>However, we don’t know if they will use Tuition or “Cost to attend” or “average net price”, which is what they use in the current Federal college scorecard. I would think they continue to use this measure, which takes into account grants. See the link below, using Georgia as the example:</p>
<p>“The average net price for undergraduate in-state students is $9,693 per year. Net price is what undergraduate students pay after grants and scholarships (financial aid you don’t have to pay back) are subtracted from the institution’s cost of attendance.”</p>
<p>In George, the public schools with the best performing students, would have the lowest net price (due to in-state grants, hope and Zell). So those schools (and students) would be award higher Pell Grants and better rates on loans…</p>
<p>Of course, Georgia would be free to game the system by changing how the in-state grants are assigned…but who would ever try to game the system?!!</p>
<p>I believe the national government should just stay OUT of this issue. They are sure to mess it up & we have far more pressing issues to worry about like getting past this “recovery.”</p>
<p>I do like the gist of the questions Xiggi’s asking. I think there is room in the system for some of them. I have one son graduating in 3.5 years, one son who hit it in 4 and one son at a large public university (for which I’m paying more annually than the 4 year kid and the 3.5 year kid) who is being told to count on 5 to which I say “why 5, what is the problem.” I’ve also questioned why our kids go to high school from 7:30 to 2:30 PM. Why not 3:30 or 4:30…why are they out of school from the first week in June to after Labor day? </p>
<p>You don’t solve problems without cutting through to the basics. You don’t answer questions without questioning. Heck the first thing I learned at age 18 at my LAC was it’s not knowing answer, it’s knowing how to ask the right question."</p>
<p>momofthreeboys…
It really depends on the college major.<br>
The College Major is a key factor in how much time it requires to graduate. Most liberal arts majors can be completed in three years. Engineering students can finish in four, but many push it to five years and sometimes longer. </p>
<p>Of course, the year or semester abroad is not really necessary to obtain a degree. It’s just an interesting and educational experience to do. </p>
<p>Also, so many students are taking summer courses. If a student is enrolled year around, including summers, for two years, it that counted as 2 or 2.5 years? The typical student who takes the summers off counts two 9 month sessions as 2 years. It’s not the same.</p>
<p>so, if colleges graduate a higher percentage of their students, then they will score higher in this new ranking, which will allow them to get more money from the government?</p>
<p>i’m sure this will not lead to any grade inflation at all, and definitely won’t further devalue the BA and BS degrees.</p>
<p>The proposed rules will cost colleges a lot of money. It takes a lot of work to gather the statistics that will be needed to comply with the regulations … and it will add a lot of federal program reviewer jobs to come in & check program compliance. Not sure that the result will justify the time & expense.</p>
<p>In addition to a cyclical downturn, the government has continued to promulgate rules and legislation that make employees more expensive to employers.</p>
<p>In Europe, where gasoline and oil are more expensive because they choose to raise their tax revenue that way, people have responded rationally by minimizing their use of energy. The same thing is happening here: if employees are more expensive, we’ll get by with fewer. That’s a big part of what’s going on.</p>
<p>Amen. The president more than has his hands full ensuring smooth and timely implementation of the Affordable Care Act. By every account I’ve read, that is an ongoing fiasco.</p>
<p>@Xelink, no “formulae” created by the federal government will be done via machine learning/AI…or whatever. It will be a political process, driven by lobbyist and focus groups.</p>
I don’t see why its disturbing to give money to institutions that pay you back. We have some for-profit colleges out their with default rates of more than a third, when the national average is less than 10%. Are you really arguing that it’s not rational to withhold money from them ? This is the principal every bank operates on.</p>
<p>I don’t have an issue with congress putting in place rules/laws to limit government exposer to bad loans. The current student loan model breaks down when dealing with such high default rates (at mostly for-profit schools).</p>
<p>However, the President’s proposal is not targeted to address this issue, instead it goes “BIG” and puts all institutions of higher learning into the same bucket. It then compares NYU to Georgia State University and based on whatever criteria, it will pick a winner and a loser. GSU has lower tuition, so they get bigger Pell Grants, but wait, NYU students earn more after graduation, so they get the bigger Pell grants and pay lower interest rates on student loans…but wait…</p>
<p>@mitchklong: I have serious concerns that a federal bureaucracy staffed with probable political appointees could create a fair ranking system (and what constitutes “fair” opens a whole new can of worms) and allocate funds to colleges in an unbiased manner. Call me a skeptic, but not that long ago I wouldn’t have believed the IRS capable of targeting political opponents, or NSA staffers using their access to spy on love interests. (And that’s only the tip of the iceberg - far more revelations are forthcoming.) The potential for abuse in any government-devised college ranking program that disburses aid (MONEY) is just too enormous. </p>
<p>Moreover, I recall the mortgage crisis which awarded loans not based on creditworthiness or responsibility, but in order to reach political goals. Why expect anything different in education? Look at this administration’s record in picking energy companies. Solyndra et al have gone bellyup with our taxayer dollars. The WSJ is also arguing against price controls which just dont work.</p>