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<p>I blame the parents far more than the students. The culture instilled at home has a tremendous effect on the success of the students.</p>
<p>hebe, agree with most of what you say but a little confused by this statement: “Some may say that the lowest quintile in the US is worse off due to the lack of a safety net available in other countries.” So, welfare, food stamps, government housing, free school breakfast/lunch/dinner, three plus years of unemployment benefits, and on and on and on, isn’t a “safety net”. Then again, perhaps you are right, it’s not really a safety net these programs are more like an anchor that keeps generation after generation of families beholden to the government.</p>
<p>hebe, I’m not blaming the students either. It’s a conglomeration of things including the proliferation of single parent or no parent homes in the inner cities and elsewhere. Betting that almost 100% of those that drop out in Chicago fall into this category.</p>
<p>Our German buddies work bank hours but they put in a full day’s work. Here in the good ole’ USA many people have figured out that as long as 50 hours a week for 40 hours pay is the new way, by golly they will work their ‘50’ hours a week. </p>
<p>Interestingly enough, the yo-yo staffing levels in the USA vs more stable teams in Europe has resulted in Europe taking a lead in technology and r&d. I have seen it happen in several companies so far. Not sure if I can generalize…</p>
<p>They seem to be quite noticeably healthier than us by nature of leaving at 5 pm rain or shine…</p>
<p>And before anyone rushes to conclusions, I could not stand living in Germany for more than a couple weeks at a time. It’s like having grand kids. </p>
<p>As a not-quite mature 50something year old, the USA offers great opportunities to nurture my ‘inner teenager’, while in most parts of the world I would need to be a lot more conformist and ‘play along’…</p>
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<p>However, don’t many countries in Europe have an insider-outsider labor market, where “permanent” jobs really are permanent (i.e. employers are very limited in being able to terminate employment), but employers are reluctant to hire “permanent” employees for fear of being stuck with excessive payroll costs during downturns, resulting in new entrants to the labor market finding it very difficult to get jobs other than short term contractor type jobs?</p>
<p>Historically, many European countries have had persistently high unemployment rates, with a high percentage of it being long term unemployment. The US does seem to have the dubious “achievement” of having “caught up” to European unemployment and long term unemployment rates in the most recent downturn. Whether the slow recovery will bring US unemployment and long term unemployment rates back down to US-normal (as opposed to Europe-normal) is something that remains to be seen.</p>
<p>turbo, now you are contradicting yourself. Are you fleeing the U.S. or does the opportunity to “nurture your inner teenager” keep you here? If it does, as you state, then it appears that you prefer living here but would like to have the best of both world’s. Wouldn’t we all. I want to live in the Bahamas, work 40 hours a week and make a similar living as I do here in the U.S… but simply haven’t figured out how to do it…</p>
<p>UCB, you are spot on with regards to the employment situation in Europe, particularly in Germany. Their entire country operated like the U.S. Auto Industry used to where they had to pay thousands of folks not to work. Pretty nonsensical.</p>
<p>ED,</p>
<p>I personally think the US safety net is sufficient, perhaps overly generous, with the exception of health care. I do believe that health care should be universally available.</p>
<p>ED, let’s just say that I raise a few more eyebrows in Germany than I do here 
If I took life more seriously, maybe. As it is, I have to hold back tears of joy every time I land at Newark…</p>
<p>turbo, I guess you’ll have to live with the old American motto, “work hard, play harder”…</p>
<p>“As it is, I have to hold back tears of joy every time I land at Newark…”</p>
<p>Now that’s saying something about lovely, scenic, Newark!</p>
<p>Took us a while to figure out that from our city to Chicago to Munich nonstop then Hanover is a bad idea… Too long and too costly. We usually fly to Newark from our city then Amsterdam then Hanover. </p>
<p>Anything to avoid the dreaded Airbus A-340…</p>
<p>What I think needs to happen is universities need to work harder to train kids better for the job market. It should be the K-12 school systems job to train kids to learn to learn. When you’re paying for university, you want to be trained for a higher salary/more interesting job position in your field of choice. The Government needs to closely monitor which schools allow students to get government backed loans. While I don’t think the government should determine what people study, they should be leery in sinking our tax dollars in wasteful majors and schools which don’t help students one bit.</p>
<p>Schools should also be required to report long term statistics on graduates’ employment by major. Currently the schools enjoy infinite government funding and can flat out ignore consumer protections, the best of both worlds. This will inevitably deflate tuition prices (which are indirectly inflated by easy government money) and force colleges to give students more “real world” experience, internships, and counseling so as not to lose funding.</p>
<p>The rest of the children should be encouraged into more technical “trades,” many of which are experiencing shortages of Americans. The stigma behind the trades is also quite confounding–even though many pay very well. </p>
<p>Also the government should at the very least give bigger tax breaks to companies that don’t outsource and strictly limit H1-Bs and immigration at least until our unemployment falls.</p>
<p>“Anything to avoid the dreaded Airbus A-340…”</p>
<p>What do you dislike about the A340? I don’t fly it, just curious of why to avoid it.</p>
<p>
This is just flat-out not true. Government funding for higher education is far from infinite, and in many states, is dropping.</p>
<p>Between 2000-01 and 2010-11, California cut its higher education budget by 10 percent, or $1.6 billion. In the same timespan, the state’s prison budget went up 26 percent.</p>
<p>“This is just flat-out not true. Government funding for higher education is far from infinite, and in many states, is dropping.”</p>
<p>I’m not talking about direct funding endowments from the states to the schools. I’m talking about the student loan pot. Easy loan money caused tuition to rise to unsustainable levels. Today even wealthy kids need loans. And the complete willingness to give loans out willy nilly results in the large number of graduates with no job skills and large debts.</p>
<p>If the government tracked graduates and only gave TAX PAYER FUNDED loans to students in major areas and at schools where the education benefited them then a lot of problems would be eliminated. Crappy third tier private schools can only charge $40,000 a year for women’s studies majors thanks to the government backed non-dischargable loans. Eliminate the government loans to fraudulent for profit institutions in useless majors and many students would be saved huge loans and instead likely find work in trades where their training will benefit them. The schools and majors that remain would be forced to work harder to get students internships, give real counseling, and teach real skills in order to maintain student funding. I’m not saying the government should decide what and where kids study, only how they will use OUR tax money to fund debt-fueled education.</p>
<p>Accurate, transparent long-term studies about economic earnings and careers of alumni of institutions also need to be made available on a major by major and school by school basis to the students so they can better decide. This deceptive marketing backed with tax payer funded loans is what assures schools their money. Some of this money is flat out squandered by administrators at these universities. I’m currently at Rutgers grad school. Look up the wall of administrators all making over 250k a year and getting amazing perks right off YOUR tax money. The current president makes almost 800k a year, gets a free mansion, car, healthcare for life and other perks. If you’re going to run an institution like this you shouldn’t claim “non-profit” status and get huge tax breaks. But these schools lobby congress right alongside the sleaziest of corporations.</p>
<p>(apologies for the side bar discussion)</p>
<p>The A-340 as configured for LH has about as much passenger seat space as a Fiat 500 back seat. Not fun in a nearly 9 hour ORD - MUC flight. LH food is good, free beer/wine even in econ. Strange bathroom location in the ‘basement’ Seemed noisy.</p>
<p>Give me Air Elbonia 747’s era 1980’s… 36" seat pitch in economy, self service from the galleys, frequent in flight entertainment by fellow college students packing guitars… The good days! </p>
<p>To return to the original topic, tho, it is ironic that many of us ‘escaped’ our birth countries for something better in the USA (in terms of job opportunities and, why not, lifestyle opportunities) only to have exactly what happened in our birth countries follow us to the US, and playing out MUCH faster.</p>
<p>In 1980’s Elbonia a college degree meant very little. One would easily get into a cab where the cabbie displayed a law or science degree from a good college next to his cabbie license. Those of us who could, packed up and moved out of the country in search of some more ‘employable’ major. Computer Science was cool, till too many Elbonian kids did it (esp. 1-year MS degrees in the UK) and we ended up having more computer people than computers to program. Punt.</p>
<p>We also let lots of immigrants come in to do the tasks that ordinary Elbonians found uncool. Apparently it became derigeur for respected Elbonians to have a maid from Farawaystan. Soon imported workers in other sector of the (near hopeless to begin with) economy began to be flooded with immigrants or shut down altogether. The government kept growing in size, and taxes (with the exception of VAT) stayed flat (or if you were the 50% that avoided taxes altogether, stayed at zero). </p>
<p>Just for positive measure, we stopped buying anything remotely made in Elbonia and like most of the rest of Europe, ran massive debts. Then the fat lady (Frau Angela) sang.</p>
<p>I was amazed it all went to the gutter in a quarter century . I was even more amazed that I saw these very things happen in the USA, much faster than they were happening back in Elbonia, with a key difference. Where the bulk of the borrowed money went, and who benefited from it. </p>
<p>I never thought that in max 10 years we’d be racing to the bottom like this. But we are.</p>
<p>Somehow, complaining about 31.5" seat pitch of the A340 is superfluous.</p>
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<p>The information is out there for parents and students to make the right decisions, but as with so much else in life, many will not take the time to collect this information. So even though I am not a fan of big government, all taxpayers pay for people making decisions with incomplete information, so in this case the benefits outweigh the costs. </p>
<p>I think that five pieces of data would tell potential students and parents much of what they needed to know about a school:</p>
<ol>
<li>What is the graduation rate in four, five, and six years (over the last five years)?</li>
<li>What is the loan default rate for those that do not graduate?</li>
<li>What is the loan default rate for those that do graduate?</li>
<li>What is the risk-adjusted interest rate the student/parent must pay given these default rates? I am specifically proposing that interest rates should be higher (possibly much higher) for programs that have high default rates.</li>
<li>What is the average income for graduates five and ten years after graduation?</li>
</ol>
<p>If the government collected this and put this as the front page of a student loan form to be signed, it would certainly make parents and students pause before entering some programs.</p>