<p>After the months of teeth gnashing and media panic over America's ballooning student debt burden, what I'm about to suggest will strike some readers as a bit ... nuts. But consider this possibility: U.S. undergraduates aren't deep enough in debt. They should take out more loans.</p>
<p>Hmm. It goes back to the “skin in the game” discussion we’ve seen on these boards.</p>
<p>What a ridiculous article. The kids who take out the most loans that they cannot afford, given parental assistance and economic possibilities are the ones who tend to drop out the most. Anyone counseling this group of students, ex students, and wanna be students can tell you this. I know so many young and not so young people who CAN’T go back to school because they CAN’T get aid because they defaulted on loans already or in other bad status at some college or other and have some loan issue. Talk to Sybbie about that one as she deals with this all of the time too.</p>
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<p>It seems to me that the point of the article is that borrowing to go to school full time, versus working while going to school part time, makes it more likely that one will graduate - and that having a degree will enable one to earn more, and thus able to pay off the loans, and that the net financial effect from earning the degree will be positive. </p>
<p>The article does not advocate taking on excessive debt - just avoiding “an irrational aversion to debt.”</p>
<p>For a student who does not have “parental assistance and economic possibilities,” then a moderate amount of debt to go to school full time may be a better option than working while going to school part-time.</p>
<p>That’s certainly not “ridiculous.”</p>
<p>(I would argue that this only makes sense if a student cannot afford go to even the most affordable school in any other way. There’s no reason to borrow, or to go part-time while working, just to go to a more prestigious school.)</p>
<p>When you look at who is borrowing the most, it is ridiculous. Perhaps, the article should say that students who don’t have to borrow should be borrowing some as well. Though working too many hours does endanger school performance, every study out there says that some work helps it. I don’t know any students pounding salt terribly on the job and refusing to borrow. Those students are doing BOTH.</p>
<p>I always wonder if a teenager understands how much “skin” they really have in the game when they borrow. These are people who are simply too young to have any personal experience with living beneath (what would seem to be) one’s current means for years, in order to whittle away at an old debt.</p>
<p>It’s not their fault that they don’t understand it, and I’m not saying that nobody should ever borrow, but does the fact that debt is accruing have the effect of sobering them up and making them more aggressive about their studies and work experiences? I have seen many cases where it did not seem to work that way. I think the loan balance out there is too abstract and remote for a lot of them to really be influenced by it on a day-to-day basis, when the distractions of daily life with peers are so much more compelling.</p>
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<p>Perhaps. But that doesn’t make the article and its recommendations ridiculous.</p>
<p>^^Most of the people I knew in school had no idea how much debt they even had out, or what the payments would be. There is very much a head-in-sand mentality. It’s just immaturity, I think some people are just not mentally developed enough yet at that age to comprehend what real debt means.</p>
<p>I knew exactly how much debt I had and that it was going to be “really hard,” but I was still guilty of having my head-in-sand moments. My friends thought I was REALLY on top of everything because I actually knew what kinds of loans I had, how many, how much they were, when they’d be due, what my repayment options were, what Plans A B and C would be for repaying them, etc and so forth… and really I wasn’t all that on top of things, I’d never sat down and done the math to realize I wouldn’t be able to afford the payments and still be financially self sufficient. And I was still lightyears ahead of everybody I knew that had student loans. It’s really kind of scary how little the kids are paying attention to this.</p>
<p>I can attest firsthand that there comes a point where all the doom and gloom about student loans and the economy becomes so much, that you start to develop an attitude of, “oh well, I’m screwed anyway, might as well take the big loans if it might give me a better chance someday.” Which is really, really not a good way to be thinking. This is an attitude I hear a lot.</p>
<p>The problem with the author’s pov, is that it only addresses ONE issue wrt to four-year graduation (albeit, a large issue). Many of those students who do not graduate in four years attend public colleges, where advising tends to be poor (or really bad as in California), the colleges accept students who need remedial education before they can even take the prereqs for their major, and many other social-educational issues. Thus more loans is only a possible, partial solution.</p>
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<p>This is not unique to public colleges – indeed, how many colleges that are not super-selective-reach-for-everyone in admissions do not have any students needing remedial course work?</p>
<p>^^they may, but private colleges also tend to offer much better advising. Private colleges can be proactive when a student takes a minimum load. </p>
<p>And since private colleges costs xx more than their public counterparts, the 'rents don’t allow much dawdling (since any finaid typically runs out after 8 semesters).</p>
<p>I suppose articles like this come out as part of the natural reaction to articles about how much debt students have taken on. </p>
<p>When I skim stuff like that, I think of how easily we make the mistake of generalizing from personal experience or other anecdotes. I did it, so you can too. As a relatively extreme example, a GOP congresswoman on the relevant education committee told a witness that she worked her way through school. She did. Bravo. Someone looked up her degree and when she went to school and the cost of school then. It was something like $72 a term. You can work for pennies and make that.</p>
<p>When I went to Yale, my total cost per year was about $5-6k. That was a lot then, but it was still achievable by an ordinary family: pay some, take the rest in a loan, etc. A kid working in the dining hall could make an actual dent in the amount owed. You can’t get a year of pre-school for that money. As an irony, Yale is now cheaper for many kids because they have so much money they can afford more aid. That imposes a double penalty on more average kids: the sticker price of Yale is over $50k but the sticker is fake except for the rich but that sticker helps keep the cost high at schools which don’t have Yale’s money so those kids end up paying more. </p>
<p>This is why I argue from anecdote very carefully. Gee, when I was a kid, a new car was less than $2k and used cars were in the hundreds. You could get a car at 16 by delivering newspapers or mowing lawns. I’m not talking about a piece of garbage junker. When I turned 16, car prices were about $4500. You could still get a new car for less. A little more than mowing lawns but not out of reach. Now a new car starts well over $10k. That’s a lot of money.</p>
<p>^You can also find a job that pays your tuition. My current job pays, but I do not need it anymore and many other previous employers paid for my education, both BS and MBA, and I even do not need MBA at all, it is just a nice free thing to have in your pocket while looking for a job. My H. had the same, did not pay for his MBA either, got it only bacuase of “why not as it is free”. D. choose the UG that gave her full tuition Merit award, she could have chosen a different one. So, we paid only for our S. who went cheaply to state public. No student loans here, who needs them?</p>
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<p>You’re talking about a handful of elite private colleges, not private colleges generally. SMU has a 6-year graduation rate of 74%, Baylor 71%, Drexel 68%, St. Louis University 72%, Howard 64%, Catholic U 69%, Loyola Chicago 67%, Hofstra 60%, Seton Hall 65%, Polytechnic Institute of NYU 55%, St. John’s U 58%, Pace 58%, St. Mary’s (MN) 59%, Widener 48%, Barry University 37%, Clark Atlanta U 42%, Nova Southeastern 41%, National-Louis University 14%. And those are “national universities.” Some LACs are pretty bad, too: Agnes Scott College 68%, Berea College 64%, Millsaps 68%, Hendrix 60%, Cornell College 66%, Sweet Briar 59%, Bennington 60%, Ohio Wesleyan 63%, Randolph 60%, Alma 63%, Wesleyan College (GA) 49%, Guilford 58%, Northland College 52%, Ave Maria 52%. Once you get down into “regional” colleges and universities, most have 6-year graduation rates well under 50%, and that’s true whether they’re public or private.</p>
<p>I don’t know whether it’s the caliber of students they’re admitting, or poor teaching, or poor advising, or financial constraints, or the parents not giving that proverbial kick in the pants, or some combination of these, but the vast majority of private colleges and universities in this country are not doing a very good job of educating their students and getting them out the door degree in hand—on the whole, no better and no worse than their public counterparts, which span a similar range from excellent, to mediocre, to downright awful.</p>
<p>We sometimes forget on CC that most private colleges and universities, like most public ones, are in the mediocre-to-awful range. You’re fortunate indeed if you or your kid gets to attend one of the excellent public or private schools we spend all our time on CC fretting about.</p>
<p>There have to be better ways to reduce drop out rates other than suggesting students take on more debt. I don’t count not having enough debt as being a core issue to the problem and I find it hard to take such suggestions seriously. Strikes me as just another one of those articles begging for attention for its own sake rather than offering any tangible solutions.</p>
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<p>I don’t agree with what appears to be your basic premise - that it is the responsibility of the college to educate the student and get them out the door, degree in hand. I think it is the responsibility of the student to avail themselves of the services of the university, get an education, and get out the door degree in hand. Certainly colleges are responsible for making the right resources available, ensuring that those resources are doing a good job, and encouraging students to use them - and I have no doubt that some are better than other at it. </p>
<p>But I believe that the primary determinant of graduation rate is the makeup of the freshman class. Do you really believe that if in some year, Yale enrolled the students who normally go to UConn, and vice-versa, that the graduation rates of the two schools would flip-flop? Colleges that admit a large number of students who are at high risk for not doing college-level work are going to have low grad rates. Those that admit only students who have shown by their high school records that they are serious students are going to have high grad rates.</p>
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<p>Well, that pretty much makes my point right there. Look, of course I agree that it’s ultimately the student’s responsibility to get the most out of their educational opportunities, whatever they are. But in many cases those opportunities are not great, because the colleges and universities don’t have the right resources or aren’t deploying them effectively. I think it’s just flatly false to say, as the poster I was replying to did, that private colleges across the board or in general have excellent advising. Some do, some (probably most) don’t. Some have great teachers, others not so much. Some have great financial aid, most don’t, which puts many or most students in a squeeze financially, and that plays an enormous role in graduation rates because a student who is forced to attend part-time or takes semesters or years off to work is far less likely to graduate at all than one who is in a secure enough financial position, either with her own (or her family’s) resources or with help from the college, to go straight through in four years.</p>
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<p>No doubt there’s a very strong correlation between the qualifications of the entering class and graduation rates, but it’s far from a perfect correlation. How do you explain the fact that at #71 Virginia Tech the 6-year grad rate is 80%, while at #75 Baylor–where entering class stats are almost identical–it’s only 71%? Could it be partly that while in-state tuition at Va Tech is only $11,000, tuition at Baylor is $34,000, and that school meets full need for only 15% of its students and on average meets only 68% of need, so that most of its students are in a serious financial squeeze from day one? Similar discrepancies abound. Sometimes it’s factors other than money. The University of Tulsa (#75) and Marquette (#81) are both private schools, similarly priced, similar entering class stats, and Tulsa actually has somewhat better FA than Marquette; yet Marquette graduates 80% of its students within 6 years while Tulsa graduates only 65%. What goes on there, I don’t know, but it’s not the quality of the entering class. </p>
<p>A lot goes into this besides the makeup of the freshman class. Most of the rest of it falls on the school to diagnose and fix. But the sad truth is, most U.S. colleges and universities have neither the capacity to do the diagnostic work, nor the resources to fix what’s broken.</p>
<p>I don’t really disagree with anything you say. I do think it’s way oversimplifying to look at two graduation rates, even of similar institutions, and make judgments about the quality of the education based on the differences in those rates. I’m not saying that graduation rate should be discounted completely - only that it doesn’t tell the whole story and can even be misleading.</p>
<p>For example - the University of Tulsa vs. Marquette. Could it be that Marquette has a higher graduation rate because its academic standards are lower, and that it therefore lets more marginal students slip through? At Tulsa, you really have to work for the degree, whereas at Marquette a good college try will get you through with a wink and a pass? (I’m not suggesting that any such think is true - I know next to nothing about either school - only that it would be a feasible explanation of the data.)</p>
<p>What an interesting conclusion to draw … </p>
<p>Clearly, the author has never worked in the financial aid office at an urban public university. If he had, he would know how ridiculous his hypothesis is. I saw students in debt over their heads … they had significant financial need, and they borrowed a significant amount. And guess what? The school’s graduation rate is awful. I can tell you without hesitation that there is no correlation between borrowing and graduating. But I can tell you that students who borrow and do not graduate have a very strong likelihood of not being able to repay their loans.</p>
<p>I do not understand the path of one who goes to college that he/she clearly cannot afford. There are ways to make it affordable and there are choices. It is just like everything else, cannot afford it, do not buy it. If CAN afford debt, then there is no issue, right? I am confused. Don’t kids need a parents’ signature when they blorrow for UG?</p>