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Re med school, I really have no sympathy for doctors who come out with $400K in debt. If you are smart enough to get into med school, you are smart enough to get a scholarship for an undergraduate college. Not doing so and taking out loans instead suggests a lack of wisdom.
The average medical school debt is about $183K, roughly in line with what a primary care physician can make each year. That doesn’t seem overly onerous.
Edit: Adjusted average debt from $167K=>$183K.
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I am just sick after speaking to a mom this morning who is insisting on co-signing $40k of loans EACH year so that her premed DD can go to the school of her choice. She could go to instate GA school using HOPE and pay minimally. $160k of undergrad loans…for premed! Ugh!! And, really, there’s only about a 20% chance this student will ever get to med school because her test scores are good, but not high (which is why she didn’t get merit anywhere except HOPE).
$160k debt for undergrad
$200k-350k+ debt for med school
Oh my!
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I don’t like having an income limit set to it. I think the program should be open to all kids regardless of how much their parents make or don’t make. We’ve all seen so many kids on here that parents can’t or refuse to help pay for college. I don’t think parents bad financial decision should hold a child back from a college education. The young lady who didn’t want to file for financial aid because she believed her parents were trying to commit some type of fraud and she didn’t want to be a part of it comes to min
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I agree. There are just too many situations where a so-called high income can’t/won’t pay. Here on CC we’ve seen divorced/remarried families with paying-for-college issues…either because divorce wiped them out or left them with debt…or new spouse’s income is high, but won’t help with college costs.
Just get the instate public rate down for everyone…some way…some how.
I don’t understand the “woe is me” for doctors. Pharmacists require 8 years of school. 8 years to be a Vet. Attorneys 7. A lot of other careers now require grad school (6+ years of school). Yet the salaries compared to doctors (even primary care docs who average about $200k/year) are significantly lower (many times lower in many cases). Looking at debt to future income ratios, I would put doctors at/near the bottom of the list of people deserving of sympathy.
We do need doctors. But one thing they have been great at doing is regulating their numbers. Every year, kids who would make great doctors do not get accepted at any medical school and thus pursue something else. If there is concern about numbers (and still way more apply who do not get accepted so seems to me there isn’t a concern that we don’t have enough people willing to apply to medical school), increase the number of med school spots. Don’t expect much support from the medical community for that though. And I don’t blame them. Just don’t feel sympathy for them (and I have a lot of friends who are doctors).
That is the $64k question. What do you suggest? We could try community college for the first two years. But being honest, they tend to me mediocre at best. And who pays to build more CCs because the ones that exist right now presumably cannot support having large numbers of fresh/sophs now going to 4 year colleges. And what happens to 4 year state colleges who lose large numbers of their fresh/sophs to CCs?
If we start anywhere I think it should be in k-12. We have kids for 13 years but too many kids are not getting enough out of that time. College has become too often remedial education for stuff that should have been learned in k-12. That dilutes the value of college. College presidents are very happy with the current approach.
^ the issue is that k-12 depends on states and districts. The national resolutions to help k-12 (nclb, common core) have not solved anything.
We could envision a federal mandate that all states guarantee minimal, nationally-decided, per-pupil funding, with freedom for each district to do what they want as long as it’s within the law but that sure would not go over well.
We could invent places that aren’t colleges and serve as places for remedial education for high school graduates who want to go to college - no need to take on debt for that. That’d free up space for all the freshmen and sophomores now attending community college.
'fixing the educational system ’ is a noble goal but fixing the debt issue is independent from that, and fixing the k12 system can’t be a reason to do nothing about debt required to attend your own State University.
The context of my statement about k-12 is critical. Statement was made that rather than providing “free” state tuition for people from families with certain levels of income, we need to “just get the instate public rate down for everyone…some way…some how.” My question is how we do that. I think addressing issues with k-12 would help a lot. Though the biggest issue I see with k-12 is parents/kids who simply don’t make education a priority. That though is a very difficult issue to address because of the nature of it.
But putting k-12 aside, what can we do to get the public rate for state colleges down for everyone? Presumably significant changes must be made because not only are costs not decreasing currently, they are actually increasing – in many cases by a lot year over year. And the plan that is the subject of this thread amounts to large subsidies which as a matter of basic economics will increase demand for state colleges and put upward pressure on prices of state colleges. So if reducing the cost of state college is the goal, the “latest proposal” in the OP would appear to be the wrong way to go.
You could argue the reverse though - there could be safeguards. Imagine this, for instance:
Public colleges, on the condition that their tuition+fees not exceed 10% (?15%) of the average household income in the state, would get subsidized partly by the federal government. Others wouldn’t. It means that states would go back to 2000-levels of funding and those colleges would benefit enormously too. It’s create a virtuous circle.
A matching system that is tied to a measure of family prosperity and provides incentives to reduce instate rates and would maintain costs low.
Any form of automatic adjustment should be linked to an increase in average income or to something tangible.
Bonus, it means many private colleges would have to figure out a way to rein in their costs too, but since they’re not the main problem that’s incidental.
I’m sure we can imagine more - looking forward to hearing your ideas. 
(considering that the adults on cc are experts at college our collective wisdom should produce amazing stuff and I’m quite excited about what that’ll be.)
I just read that part of the proposal is that the state pays for half the tuition and the feds will pay half. That won’t work for a lot of states. Colorado instate tuition (not CU Boulder) is about $10k. So under this program Colorado would have to come up with an extra $5k per student. Where would that come from in the state budget.
While the K-12 system needs fixing, the “go to” answer of throwing more money its way has not worked. Otherwise, Wash DC public schools would be phenomenal.
they’re spending $30,000 per pupil!!! Yet the overwhelming majority (over 80%) are not proficient in math and reading.
Money ain’t the answer.
The real point is to make post secondary education more widely available, without depending on loans. But the sub context is making it so for kids who can benefit, by both the education and by graduating. Not just throwing more kids into “college.”
So, I’m afraid some selectivity is needed. It’s not enough to send Susie off, if she can’t hack it or learn to, quickly. Just looking at free or lower cost is too simple. Trying to set it by family income doesn’t consider outcome. Maybe remedial should be a separate 1-2 years, registered in a program, as opposed to matriculated toward a degree that may be unrealistic, at this point.
Yes, improving k-12 would resolve more of these issues. But that’s an example of how “free” isn’t always productive, just for being available. And with the (still) volume of pre-college kids and the range of different learning challenges the system faces, there are no simple answers.
That’s the core of my concerns.
“You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make her drink.”
Looking quickly at income data by state for 2014 (most recent I found), you are looking at a range of about $40k to $70k for median household incomes. Looking quickly at a high income state (New Hampshire) and a low income state (West Virginia), tuition costs at U. of NH is about 23% of household income and U of WVa is about 17.5%. Both a long way from 10% and NH isn’t close to even 15%. Average household incomes may well be less than median making the percentages of the average even higher. How do those states (and presumably many others who are above various percentages of median household incomes) reduce tuition sufficiently to qualify for the federal subsidies?
Without federal subsidies and without going into debt (which states typically cannot do), the choice is cutting other spending, raising taxes or a combination of the two. Many states have budget issues now (especially with state pensions). The “free” college tuition will only make that worse.
Why does it necessarily mean they will go back to 2000 levels of funding? What if they don’t? And again, if they decide to do so, they will need to raise taxes, cut other spending or a combination of the two. And how will the colleges benefit enormously too? They are still getting their funding. Its coming more from students today than it did in the past but they still have the same revenues (and based on price increases, higher revenues). Any increases in state funding will be offset at least to a degree by reductions in tuition to get to the required percentage of state household income.
So richer states will be able to spend more on college for their kids than poorer states? Costs likely will be higher in those richer states but not necessarily dollar for dollar meaning the haves will get more and the have nots less.
If you look at changes in median household incomes for states from 2000-2014, many states had decreases. Others had pretty small increases (along the lines of 5% over 14 years (not 5% per year for 14 years). What happens when there are recessions? State colleges must decrease their tuition to keep federal subsidies? Do we expect costs of colleges will increase by such small amounts per year? You always see the average family income over the past couple of decades has largely been stagnant. How do we get the cost of college to follow the same path? And again, the plan being discussed in the OP will increase the demand for college and put upward pressure on price.
Maybe. But they are doing just fine with higher costs than state schools now. Isn’t clear how many would need to decrease their costs if state schools do. I am shocked that a lot of private schools can get kids to pay the tuition levels they pay now.
Some states have constitutional restrictions on raising taxes, especially real estate taxes. It would take years to change their constitutions and raise the taxes, then more years to collect those taxes and get the money to the state colleges.
If this proposal passed congress, and I do not think it ever could, it would be an unfunded mandate to the states. I think the quality of education would suffer as the state colleges would have to have huge classes, adjunct professors to save on benefits and pensions, upkeep of the facilities would be minimum. Stretching a dollar would have a whole new meaning.
Average (mean) incomes are generally higher than median incomes, because one person with a very high income (e.g. $1,000,000) will pull the average (mean) up by more than the median. Although negative incomes are possible, large negative incomes are less common than large positive incomes.
I’m not a policy maker so I’m sure there are lots of issues, but surely I can’t be the only one here trying to imagine something better than what we have now?
@ucbalumnus : what do YOU envision?
Offering college at lower cost really comes down to one or more of these things:
A. More money to be able to offer college at lower cost to some or all students.
B. Cutting unnecessary expenses that are not part of the core purpose of college.
C. Doing the core purpose of college in a more cost-efficient manner.
Conceptually, these are simple. Practically, they are hard. For A, there are so many other things that compete against funding of public colleges and financial aid and scholarship programs for budget space in state and national government budgets. For B, many things unnecessary to the core purpose of college are popular and would be politically difficult to cut (e.g. intercollegiate athletic programs). For C, some of the potential cost efficiencies may not be popular with students and faculty (e.g. larger class sizes); for some students, that can make learning more difficult.
Risk of trying to make things better is making them worse. There are often unintended consequences of efforts to help. Faced with high prices, subsidies are often suggested. But subsidies increase demand and put upward pressure on prices. So when prices continue to rise, more subsidies are often touted as the answer. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
The label given to the OP concept is wrong. “Free college.” College isn’t free and never will be. Someone has to pay for it. And if you want to know what happens when you divorce the person paying for something from the person getting it (which is what would happen if large numbers of people are getting “free” college because other people are paying for it), look at what has happened with medical care costs. Why would I care how much college costs if I am not paying for it? Just like why should I care how much a given medical procedure or prescription costs if I am only paying a small co-pay for it?
@saillakeerie,
I am the OP, and I withheld my opinion about the topic at first to let the thread develop.
But I agree with you that “free college” is far from free. This is a fiscal disaster in the making.
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Cutting unnecessary expenses that are not part of the core purpose of college.
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This is part of the painful reality. States could provide lower-cost BA/BS degrees if it could simply provide classrooms/labs and not have to provide fancy fitness centers and other frills.
The reality, though, is that could mean that the flagships and other top publics that have those frills will not be affordable to the masses.
I imagine that many CCs do not have many or any of those frills.
Some CCs have a lot of amenities. In California our high school played football games at the stadium at the local CC (even though we had a $40 million sports complex at the high school, no stadium). The CC had a pool, large gym, art studios, theater. It looked like a small directional college with lots of parking.
Many in Colorado have big gyms and stadiums with tracks with climbing walls and art displays. I’ve been to a number of conferences at CC’s and the facilities are nice. One CC shares a campus with a university so many of the facilities are open to the CC students.
Intercollegiate athletic programs (which may have fancy fitness centers and training staff specifically for the athletes) may be much more expensive frills than fancy fitness centers for all students. But intercollegiate athletic programs seem to be among the most popular non-academic aspects of colleges, even among those who are just spectators.
But maybe the art displays do not cost that much. Perhaps they just let their art students display their art there.