<p>"In my opinion, she would have had the opportunity for a better education at Middlesex Community College (14 miles to the southeast for the Lowell campus and 30 miles southeast for the Bedford campus) for $3,500 per year tuition as a commuter student for two years. I think that the opportunities for academics are better and they offer a wider variety of technical training if the student finds that they'd prefer that over a four-year program."</p>
<p>It is more difficult to get into the nursing program at Middlesex Community College-Bedford than it is to get into Harvard, and your ECs, legacies, alumni connections, or sports prowess won't help in the least.</p>
<p>I didn't know about the different requirements but looking through them, it doesn't look like the requirements themselves are that difficult. Fall 2009 is closed for the evening program. They are still enrolling those looking for the day school. One could just enroll and take classes for prereqs into the nursing program if there isn't space.</p>
<p>It looks like a good program. $7,000 for schooling + books and transportation with the ability to get staff RN positions. That's quite a bargain. Students have to be pretty good in science and math though.</p>
<p>HiMom, it's one of those "Prisoner's Dilemma" things regarding colleges and facilities: if the colleges <em>don't</em> have the facilities, they lose top students who have other options to those colleges that do.</p>
<p>There are something like 3,500 colleges in the US (someone will probably correct me with the number of four-year colleges) but it should remembered that once you get outside the range of the 150-200 most competitive, a lot of the questions and associated angst disappear.</p>
<p>What I find to be a <em>really</em> bad decision is those who---usually at the behest of parents, I suspect---will pay a lot of good money to attend a third-rate private college instead of a public school where the education is as good or better by virtually any set of metrics you care to propose. </p>
<p>As for A/B students who don't know what they want to major in, it still depends. (Fwiw, my own sole degree is a BA/Political Science ex Engineering.) To keep their options open, I'd still suggest a school with the best "fit" so that they can shine, but I've come around to the point of while "fit" is important for many students, others will probably have more or less the same qualitative experience no matter where they go.</p>
<p>As a benchmark, I hate to see undergrad <em>students</em> take on more than $15-20K debt period for four years. Parents, it's a different story and that, too, depends on circumstances.</p>
<p>The prereqs are not that difficult though. They require chem, bio, english and algebra at the high-school or college level. A student with APs in those four subjects would seem like a slam-dunk.</p>
<p>You mentioned Bedford specifically. Bedford is the suburban campus while Lowell is an urban campus. My kids have indicated that the mix of students is quite different between the two campuses. Perhaps there are far more students from the affluent burbs in the area scarfing up the slots in Bedford.</p>
<p>I've already dealt with all of the admin stuff for our daughter for the Spring but maybe I'll ask her advisor about it before the summer session if she does summer.</p>
<p>XSteven; The problem is that the colleges are often quite content to push such programs as theater while operating them in a manner which makes these programs not credible for any useful end. At that point the moral condemnation should be more upon the colleges than on the students. The latter is a poor choice in career studies, the former could arguably be considered a form of macro-parasitism. </p>
<p>Payne; Whatever judgment of others you chose to pursue is your decision. But when enough people who've been taken for a collegiate joy ride are unable to pay excessive debts there will be an economic tsunami. And it could be much worse than the mortgage debacle insofar as the social/economic solution will have to be either be massive bailouts for these companies, or a very serious political counter reaction from the public which would force at the very least reinstatement of the bankruptcy laws regarding these debts. Either alternative could cause major economic damage as bail outs will cost too much in initial costs, and massive numbers of bankruptcy filings would cause economic troubles for years to come. And at either of those junctures no one will be immune from the effect-no matter how blase they might have been about the precursors to the situation. </p>
<p>Or what could develop is an increasing number of intelligent people looking out entirely for their own interests in a system which they perceive as rigged against their aspirations to succeed. At that point, welcome to economic and social chaos. One of the functions of academe, when its working correctly, is to provide a channel in which these potential resentments can be directed to more productive ends. Without functional counteractive mechanisms such as academe, social trouble is inevitable. </p>
<p>And indications are that our country is heading to a point where this potentially very dangerous social disconnect is close to happening. Or hasn't anyone noticed such disturbing trends as the recent massive ammunition and firearms buying binge? Societies do such things when the structures which provided belief in its credibility are beginning to break down.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Whatever judgment of others you chose to pursue is your decision. But when enough people who've been taken for a collegiate joy ride are unable to pay excessive debts there will be an economic tsunami. And it could be much worse than the mortgage debacle insofar as the social/economic solution will have to be either be massive bailouts for these companies, or a very serious political counter reaction from the public which would force at the very least reinstatement of the bankruptcy laws regarding these debts. Either alternative could cause major economic damage as bail outs will cost too much in initial costs, and massive numbers of bankruptcy filings would cause economic troubles for years to come. And at either of those junctures no one will be immune from the effect-no matter how blase they might have been about the precursors to the situation.
[/quote]
I wonder how this will jive with Obama's "college education for anyone who wants it" idiocy.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Or what could develop is an increasing number of intelligent people looking out entirely for their own interests in a system which they perceive as rigged against their aspirations to succeed. At that point, welcome to economic and social chaos. One of the functions of academe, when its working correctly, is to provide a channel in which these potential resentments can be directed to more productive ends. Without functional counteractive mechanisms such as academe, social trouble is inevitable.
[/quote]
Intelligent people should be looking out for their own interests. That's what I did. That's why I got an engineering degree. Because it paid more. Because I could get a job easily.</p>
<p>
[quote]
And indications are that our country is heading to a point where this potentially very dangerous social disconnect is close to happening. Or hasn't anyone noticed such disturbing trends as the recent massive ammunition and firearms buying binge? Societies do such things when the structures which provided belief in its credibility are beginning to break down.
[/quote]
I've never owned a firearm but I'm thinking that will change in the next few months.</p>
<p>Mini, the young lady did not go through a nursing program. Had she done so, she would be making much more than she is at her current low paying, low level insurance company job. A registered nurse is much in demand, and though it would still be tough to pay off that $85K debt that she assumed, she would have a much better start at it with a nurse's salary.</p>
<p>She went to a private school borrowing lots of money to get a degree that no more prepared her for a job than her high school education. She is not making college grad pay. I think BCeagle is right on to say that she could have done much better at a community college and state school as she would not be owing so much money and the debt would be more manageable.</p>
<p>
[quote]
She went to a private school borrowing lots of money to get a degree that no more prepared her for a job than her high school education. She is not making college grad pay. I think BCeagle is right on to say that she could have done much better at a community college and state school as she would not be owing so much money and the debt would be more manageable.
[/quote]
What exactly is "college grad pay"? Like the specific number.</p>
<p>"Intelligent people should be looking out for their own interests. That's what I did. That's why I got an engineering degree. Because it paid more. Because I could get a job easily."</p>
<p>M. Payne; You were working within the system. Once intelligent people perceive that they cannot benefit their interest within the system what happens are the situations common to failing systems. Good examples would be the attitudes and actions in the waning days of the USSR, in certain third and fourth world countries and etc.</p>
<p>Rivier offers two and four year nursing degrees so she could have majored there with much better job prospects. I think that a 2-year degree is a good approach if you can't pay for a four-year degree easily. You could then work as a nurse with a pretty good income and work on courses part time towards a four-year degree if that's your goal.</p>
<p>A friend of mine is a school teacher and he was lamenting how poor his step-daughter's prospects were because she didn't put a lot of effort into studying. She went to CC for a while and then got into a program at a local hospital (about three miles from Rivier) where they have a nursing school at community college rates. She's on her way to a degree through this program. I don't know if there are any strings attached but it seems like a good program and I'm happy for my friend that it's working out for her.</p>
<p>There are good programs that provide job skills and decent job opportunities out there but it's a lot of work looking for them. I think that CC is a good way to go if a student doesn't know what they want to do in life or major in at college. $30K to $50K per year is a lot of money to do personal exploration.</p>
<p>I've always thought that Federal help for higher education is quite the joke. There are the IRS deductions but the amounts cover, at best, really inexpensive community colleges. I personally think that tuition should be deductible to level the playing field with those that get scholarships and with public education in general at the K-12 level.</p>
<p>What needs to change is the job markets requirements for hiring. As it stands right now, college is a necessary step if one intends to pursue white collar positions. It's extremely difficult to obtain an interview, let alone a job, without a college degree.</p>
<p>Yet in most instances, outside engineering, law, and medicine, a particular profession's job skills aren't reflect in the academic curriculum (this case can be even made for engineering education where almost the entirety of the coursework is esoteric and theoretical rather than the hands partical aspects of industry engineering). Why does a pharmaceutical salesperson need to be familiar with the European romantic era, trigonometry, or any other obscure topics that have no real world relevance? Why does an advertising executive need that same knowledge? Most careers would be better suited providing on tje job, specific training for their employees. College, especially for the generalized bachelor's degree holders who dominate much of the white collar landscape, does almost nothing to enhance graduates job readiness.</p>
<p>Basically, employers use a college degree as a proxy for intelligence (correlated highly with the difficulty of the school), maturity, and work ethic. I believe standardized tests, training programs, and a high school degree (before it was made useless) should serve this purpose. Furthermore, as stated in the 20/20 segment, the prestige of a college degree, contrasted by the degradation of hard working blue collar jobs, deludes kids who have no business, intellectually, into pursuing college work. But that's a somewhat tangential point.</p>
<p>And don't tell me about college being an intellectual nurturing ground. Only a handful of students, almost exclusively amongst the very brightest, experience college in this manner. For most, it's primarily an expected step in social maturation and secondaryily (that's a not a word, but fizuck it), a means by which to obtain a white collar position respected in suburbia.</p>