Colleges Face New 'Gainful Employment' Regulations For Student Loans 331
HughPickens.com writes: Education Secretary Arne Duncan says the Education Department wants to make sure loan programs that prey on students don't continue their abusive practices. Now Kimberly Hefling reports that for-profit colleges who are not producing graduates capable of paying off their student loans could soon stand to lose access to federal student-aid programs. In order to receive federal student aid, the law requires that most for-profit programs, regardless of credential level, and most non-degree programs at non-profit and public institutions, including community colleges, prepare students for "gainful employment in a recognized occupation" (PDF). To meet these "gainful employment" standards, a program will have to show that the estimated annual loan payment of a typical graduate does not exceed 20 percent of his or her discretionary income or 8 percent of total earnings.
"Career colleges must be a stepping stone to the middle class. But too many hard-working students find themselves buried in debt with little to show for it. That is simply unacceptable," says Duncan. "These regulations are a necessary step to ensure that colleges accepting federal funds protect students, cut costs and improve outcomes. We will continue to take action as needed."
But not everyone is convinced the rules go far enough. "The rule is far too weak to address the grave misconduct of predatory for-profit colleges," writes David Halperin. "The administration missed an opportunity to issue a strong rule, to take strong executive action and provide real leadership on this issue." The final gainful employment regulations follow an extensive rulemaking process involving public hearings, negotiations and about 95,000 public comments and will go into effect on July 1, 2015.
"Career colleges must be a stepping stone to the middle class. But too many hard-working students find themselves buried in debt with little to show for it. That is simply unacceptable," says Duncan. "These regulations are a necessary step to ensure that colleges accepting federal funds protect students, cut costs and improve outcomes. We will continue to take action as needed."
But not everyone is convinced the rules go far enough. "The rule is far too weak to address the grave misconduct of predatory for-profit colleges," writes David Halperin. "The administration missed an opportunity to issue a strong rule, to take strong executive action and provide real leadership on this issue." The final gainful employment regulations follow an extensive rulemaking process involving public hearings, negotiations and about 95,000 public comments and will go into effect on July 1, 2015.
Robot factories (Score:2, Interesting)
"Career colleges must be a stepping stone to the middle class. But too many hard-working students find themselves buried in debt with little to show for it. That is simply unacceptable," says Duncan.
This is the billboard with neon flashing lights we've all been waiting for: the college degree is the new high school diploma.
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Why else would you go to college?
Most people aren't independently wealthy, and can go to academia just for academia and knowledge's sake....most people go with the intention of getting a degree that will open doors to them for making more money when they get out, than a HS diploma will allow for....no?
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Why else would you go to college?
Education. And education is not just so you can get a job, but so you can be a well-rounded human being and have an understanding of the universe around you.
People who just want a job should go to trade schools.
Most people aren't independently wealthy, and can go to academia just for academia and knowledge's sake....most people go with the intention of getting a degree that will open doors to them for making more money when they get out, than a HS diploma will allow for....no?
True, and then colleges turn into poor imitations of trade schools, making it more difficult for intelligent people to find a real education.
Perhaps employers should stop requiring you to have pieces of paper so often, and actually offer job training and test their potential employees. It used to be
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Education for education's sake, is something that has pretty much always ONLY been reserved for the wealthy that didn't NEED a job when they got out of college.
The days of college only being for education for most of its attendees, ended about the same time Plato did.
Re:Robot factories (Score:4, Insightful)
Only in order to cover the cost of labor, a burger goes up in price ~$0.12.
Mean while, the employee gains $3/hr, $24/day, $120/week. That $120/week then gets spent on groceries/entertainment/rent/etc... which increases demand on those products/services.
The increase in demand of the bottom 5% of our workforce getting a nearly 50% raise has an immediate and significant impact on gross revenue and employment demands, which causes that same burger flipping joint to need to hire an additional burger flipper just to keep up with all of the new customers.
This is a true scenario so long as demand lags behind supply (which it currently is). Raising the minimum wage when supply lags demand causes immediate inflation (the same volume of goods are available, but more people have the purchasing requirements, so the purchasing requirements raise).
This has already been proven (many thousands of times over through out history) numerous times in the last few years in the US. One town in Oregon (IIRC) raised their minimum wage to $15. The same companies that screamed bloody murder before the wage hike (a restaurant and a hotel) have actually seen the biggest boosts to their business. States that have already raised their minimum wage north of $10/hr are seeing lower unemployment and faster economic growth than states that are still sitting on the federal minimum wage.
Economics is an incredibly complex field. But there is a pretty clear picture painted by case study after case study: raising the minimum wage does not cause a significant spike in inflation.
-Rick
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Re:Robot factories (Score:5, Insightful)
That someone made bad choices in no way entitles Mickey Dee to be effectively subsidized by tax money in their quest to give as many people as possible various horrible metabological illnesses. Minimum wage needs to be high enough that the employee doesn't need any kind of additional support, otherwise you're simply building a corporate welfare state.
Also, I'm not entirely certain what you mean by "deserving" here. Are bad - by which I presume you mean economically unsuccesfull - choices some kind of sin that needs to be punished?
An intelligent human should also realize that a society where people can't afford to have children is doomed. A Mensa member might comprehend that it's not possible to know your economic fortunes for two decades or so it takes to rise a kid. And a once-in-a-century genius could even hypothesize it's cheaper to ensure children have a stable and safe environment to grow up in than to deal with the consequences if they don't, even after we factor in the horrendous consequence of poor single mothers not having maximally miserable lives.
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Be shocked [thinkprogress.org].
56.5% of workers over 20 in fast food are women, 52.6% under 20. Around 35% have a kid to take care of, though it doesn't mention whether said workers are single or not.
'Most' fast food workers are not single mothers, though I have the feeling that the rate is disturbingly high.
Re:Robot factories (Score:4)
Why didn't they go to college? Community college even.
Why should college, specifically, be the gatekeeper for 'living wages'? I'd argue that we've pushed college so hard that it's lost much of it's value as a gateway towards a 'good life'.
Besides, somebody has to do the work, we're busily automating away many of the other jobs.
It is a global economy (Score:3)
Businesses will need millions of newly-trained, skilled laborers every year; they can't have them if nobody is able to afford college on their own. This causes businesses to hire them from other businesses, and then lose them to other businesses, as salaries run through the roof: $250,000 Web designers, accountants, and programmers.
No, the actual result would be any company which has the option to flee this country would leave within a generation. And businesses which can't move will see their customer base erode as the multinational companies have all moved overseas. And not just move their profits overseas, their employees would be overseas as well. No one is going to pay US-based web designers, accountants, and programmers $250k per year when they have other options in countries that find value in training their workforce. We alrea
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whos at fault? the feds or the institutions??? (Score:5, Insightful)
lets face it, college is not for everyone. but since the failure known as the dept of ed, and the student loans for all, the colleges have little incentive to ensure their students do well, their only goal is to ensure the students can pay. and if the government is footing the bill, its in their best interest to enroll as many people as possible, as they will get paid regardless by the feds (the tax payers)
unintended consequences seem to sneak up everytime the feds try and do anything
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Re:whos at fault? the feds or the institutions??? (Score:5, Insightful)
This isnt about your typical state college or university though.
They have student loan issues well, but this isnt aimed at them.
This is aimed at predatory "institutions", ie the for-profit colleges.
This is aimed at the Pheonixes, DeVrys, and similar for-profit "colleges" that prey on how easy it is to get student loans.
There's hundreds of them now. Places that charge ridiculous tuitions and fees, more so than your typical actual college, and basically treat the students as a means to getting their hands on federal dollars via the student loans, and give them a worthless degree in return. And if you've got something like the GI Bill as well, theyll suck that dry too.
These are the same people after all that got busted just a few years ago for Pell Grant fraud.
Re: whos at fault? the feds or the institutions??? (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is that universities should not be expected to be trade schools, and trade schools should not be expected to be universities. And there needs to be an additional category in the middle for things like chemists and doctors.
The trouble is, each of those kinds of school needs to have the classes that each of the others has, just with a different center. This used to be handled by the different colleges within the university, but they have become homogenized under the stress of an administration that wants to make administering them simpler, where what they really needed was to become more distinct.
But note that an artist who wants to learn metal welding shouldn't need to learn that in the art school, there should be a "transfer class" in a trade school that teaches welding. The art school should decide (in advance) whether to allow units to transfer for that class. (It should probably decide yes.)
Think of this proposal as splitting the university (plus the trade schools that have been killed off) into separately administered colleges that allow students to flow between them, but each one has its own requirements for what it takes to complete a major.
Now paying for this.... I think that student education should be totally subsidized. Not room and board. Not materials. But the education itself.
I also think that inventions developed with public funding should be available to the public, and free to use for any company chartered and paying taxes within the geographic area controlled by the particular government. This includes drugs. This doesn't mean that the government should pay for safety testing, but it means that no company should be able to prevent another from qualifying a drug that has been developed with public money. I know that this cuts off one major source of funding that has been developed by many universities, but my feeling is "This is a rip-off!", and they don't deserve to control the patents. If they pay for it, of course, it's a totally different matter. But universities that take federal money for non-teaching purposes should not then be able to claim the results other than prestige and copyrights. (And I'm even dubious about copyrights. That could grow into another area of corruption.)
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I like a lot of what you said there, especially the public money funding private patents.
I think another avenue though would be to limit federal student loans to some arbitrary cost per credit hour. Structure it so that if you want a Federal loan you had better be going to a very good value institution like a community college for the first couple years.
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Because society doesn't need access to education, right?
Most people shouldn't go to college/university. So at the very least, we need to be more selective about who we hand out loans to.
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Welcome to DeVry
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These idiots are trying to (and succeeding in some places) turn colleges and universities into half-assed job training facilities. Their purpose is (or was) education first. This just makes it more difficult for people who want an actual education to get one. People who just want a job should go to a trade school. Idiots who go to a college/university just because they want a job pollute the environment with their existence and cause colleges to slowly change into awful mockeries of real trade schools. And
Re:Robot factories (Score:4, Interesting)
Not a slapdown at all, they'll just get money for programs the government approves, to be good little corporate droids. Arts, philosophy, humanities, history...what civilization needs that extraneous bullshit, there are products to be made, moved and sold!
Re:Robot factories (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, if someone comes from a wealthy family and can afford it, sure they can take nothing but philosophy and underwater basket weaving all they want.
But it makes sense that if loans that need to be paid back are being given out, it makes sense that you lower the risk of default (or misery of lifetime debt) by loaning to those that are studying something with real potential to go on in life and repay the loans.
It doesn't make sense to give $120K in loans to someone taking Medieval Lesbian Literature studies as a major, does it? How the hell will they ever pay that back with their glorious career as a burger flipper at McD's?
Most people go to college to get a degree to get them a foot in the door at a good job at the end. It makes sense to loan out in amounts equitable to what they likely will make at the end of their degree run.
Re:Robot factories (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't make sense to give $120K in loans to someone taking Medieval Lesbian Literature studies as a major, does it?
It makes even less sense to take out $120k in loans to study Medieval Lesbian Literature. Let's put some of the blame where it belongs -- on the students who take out ridiculous loans to study financially worthless subjects.
If you tie government funding of colleges to the salaries of the graduates, you pretty much eliminate the option for someone to take Medieval yada yada because the college won't be able to afford to offer it. This will be just one more step into turning colleges and Universities into trade schools.
How the hell will they ever pay that back with their glorious career as a burger flipper at McD's?
By arbitrarily raising the minimum wage, of course.
It makes sense to loan out in amounts equitable to what they likely will make at the end of their degree run.
It makes more sense to take out loans only "equitable" to what you expect to make in income.
Well, if someone comes from a wealthy family and can afford it, sure they can take nothing but philosophy and underwater basket weaving all they want.
"I'm sorry, but the philosophy and basket weaving departments are being eliminated because there is insufficient funding to hire the professors that teach those topics."
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You say that like that's a problem?
Yes, when a University closes a philosophy department, it is a problem. You say that like you don't think it is.
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boil the frog slowly, guidelines for student loans for non-profit is coming. That's how the federal government controls things via federal funding
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Making sure that students can repay loans seems reasonable. So why should for-profit schools be required to hit targets for student ability to repay loans that non-profits can't hit? That seems unfair to target businesses for regulations based on their form of incorporation, rather than on the substance of what they do.
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Why should non-profits get a free ride? If a University wants to retain their underwater basket weaving department then they should either find donors or students willing to pay cash.
Non-profits have escalated their tuition at brutal rates and have been doing so for decades. So I really don't have much sympathy for them either.
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Which is kind of sad.
Graduating with a degree in Fine Arts from your local state school still leaves you with a ton of debt, poor job prospects, and a high chance of default. The only good thing is that you are ahead of the people who took got a degree in the Preforming Arts.
If they are going to apply it private colleges they should also apply to state colleges as well.
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If they are going to apply it private colleges they should also apply to state colleges as well.
That puts state schools in a bit of a bind, because many of them are required by their states to accept in-state applicants with low qualifications as part of their existing state funding. Now you want those same schools to lose funding if the unqualified applicant you forced them to accept doesn't work out well in the labor force after graduating (or dropping out.) Lose-lose for the state schools.
Re:Robot factories (Score:4, Insightful)
They're just lazy and making a life choice to be poor
Ignoring the trollish intent for a moment - if you graduate with a degree with "studies" in the name, as opposed to one with "engineering" in the name, or a handful of others, you have made a life choice to be poor.
The fundamental problem, and it's one of America's worst right now, is that you made an uninformed choice to be poor! If the point of a specific university program is to make you a wonderful well-rounded person with no marketable skills, then great, offer that, but tell the high school kids (and their parents) honestly "you have $100k in debt and no employment prospects with this program". Truth in labeling! (And maybe some trust-fund babies will take you up on it.)
Where I went to school, you didn't have to commit to a major right away, and several of the engineering programs made a visit to all of the student dorms to recruit, which was always a mix of "look at the cool things we do" and "we're the Nth best paying major the year after you graduate". IIRC, Materials Science was on top, followed by Chemical Engineering (this was in Texas), followed by CS. But the point is we knew that a non-STEM degree, other than accounting, was the bottom half of that list, and a really poor career prospect.
BTW, apparently an Anthropology degree give you the highest chance to still be working retail after graduation, with Arts/Graphic Design, Sociology, English, and "anything Studies" all on the to-be-avoided list, at least if you're planning for a career outside of the fast-food industry.
Holding all universities' funding hostage to their graduates actually finding work (beyond retail) would be a vast improvement to American life!
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Solution: Fail the students their senior year (Score:5, Funny)
You got all their money, now make senior classes impossible to pass except for only the best and brightest.
Re:Solution: Fail the students their senior year (Score:4, Insightful)
Damn, you're right...a quick and easy solution for the colleges to continue business as usual, and the students who would've had a hard time finding a job before as graduates may have an even harder time finding one as dropouts.
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A lot of schools now do this actually.
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Well, first, that's the feedback we deliver to tech schools all the time. Fail more students. Their degree is made more valuable if it means something.
Secondly, I'm 99% sure that dropout rates are easier to understand for the average potential student, so at least that's a positive.
Re:Solution: Fail the students their senior year (Score:4, Insightful)
Damn, you're right...a quick and easy solution for the colleges to continue business as usual, and the students who would've had a hard time finding a job before as graduates may have an even harder time finding one as dropouts.
Those higher standards would make the college degree mean something, and dissuade people from spending time in college if they weren't going to finish.
Objective still accomplished.
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Don't fuck with DeVry!! (Score:2)
They will go MEDIEVAL on your ass!
Great idea (Score:2, Informative)
Finally we are coming to some sort of sense when it comes to education in this country. I feel for the college students that don't know any better and major in something only to find themselves working a minimum wage job with a hefty loan to repay. At least we have a check and balance now and hopefully colleges will alter their programs to provide more marketable skills in the future.
Re:Great idea (Score:4, Interesting)
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Emphasis on "for-profit"? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why the emphasis on "for-profit" schools. Are non-profit and/or state-sponsored schools immune from irresponsible and predatory behavior, in the authors opinion? Is a 100K student loan and a useless degree in Whatever-Studies from Big-State-U any less of a swindle than a 100K student loan and a Whatever-Tech degree from DeVry?
Re:Emphasis on "for-profit"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not a swindle at all, it's a person's choice as to what they will study and if they want to consider present or future job market. A person is responsible for their own choices in this world
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While we're at it, lets get rid of mandatory food labelling and mandatory car air bags. Lets get rid of all this nanny state BS and just do what the hell we want. Oh, you like those things? Well too bad, test your food yourself, and buy opt into the expensive life saving features option during your next car purchase. If you aren't a genious, then you're a fucking moron. Everything is quite clearly all or nothing in this world, you know?
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No. But the scale of the abuse going on at the ITT techs and Phoneix U's completely dwarfs that of the "non-profit" schools.
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And nothing to be said about "non-profit" schools? (Score:3)
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you're saying the arts have no value? Thats complete and utter bullshit.
as is the notion that an arts degree will not yeild a return.
further, the purpose of education is to be educated, not to get a job.
an educated populace is good for the nation. but people who only learn in order to work are little more than drones, which may be good for a business that wants wage slaves, but not so good for a free society with a government by, of, and for the people.
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If you go to university to get job training you are doing it wrong. That is not what university is meant to be.
Re:And nothing to be said about "non-profit" schoo (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And nothing to be said about "non-profit" schoo (Score:5, Insightful)
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Tell that to the employers.
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Re:And nothing to be said about "non-profit" schoo (Score:4, Interesting)
I think that's hardly the college's fault. It's one thing if they don't give you practical knowledge in the field, but a different thing if YOU CHOOSE a field with poor job prospects. I don't understand why people don't do a little research into the job prospects for their major. Yeh the market fluctuates, but in 2 years its not going to change that much. (you spend two years on course class work, and can change your major without a lot of trouble and do the final 2 years) There's tons of sites that give you an idea of what potential salary would be.
Some people make the choice fully knowing of the poor job prospects. You want a burger with peanut butter and pineapple on it? fine, that's what you get, but you eat and don't blame the cook if it's gross. That's a calculated risk you are taking. Investment firms have no responsibility to prevent you from buying stocks that will do poorly.
On the other hand, if you want to make an argument on the basis of public universities being partially funded by tax dollars, and they have an obligation to this or that to contribute meaningful skills to the community etc., then that might be a valid train of though.
I started looking into my major interests while I was in high school. Between then and the first two years of college I changed my mind 4 times on what I wanted to do.
1. Should be something you don't hate to do all the time. It doesn't have to be something you love, but at minimum not hate.
2. Should be something that can make money. Doesn't have to be alot, just enough that you aren't constantly struggling.
3. Should be something you are somewhat good at. You don't have to be the greatest, but if it is something you struggle at then you may have trouble keeping jobs.
Those are the three simple things that guided me. I love my job. I make plenty of money. I feel I do a good job.
Anything like game design, art, or music is going to have more people competing for fewer jobs because it is something people really want to do. Doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, but maybe if it's what you really want to do you should apply some of that passion to finding alternative learning resources, because you are taking a risk going down that path and a huge debt isn't something you should be accumulating if you are uncertain of your employability. Maybe get a computer science degree, get a job, and stretch your game design muscles in your free time.
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Among first-time, full-time undergraduate students who began seeking a bachelor's degree at a 4-year degree-granting institution in fall 2006, the 6-year graduation rate was 57 percent at public institutions, 66 percent at private nonprofit institutions, and 32 percent at private for-profit institutions. --nces.ed.gov
Also
It was found that 14 out of 15 times, the tuition at a for-profit sample was more expensive than its public counterpart, and 11 out of 15 times, it was more expensive than the private counterpart. --wikipedia
Seems the biggest issue is a lack of a degree of ANY sort at for-profit colleges. Let alone a worthwhile ($) one. After which you're stuck with a lot more debt. For-profit colleges are clearly the target that the gov should go after first when deciding how to dole out federal aid.
This is the latest in a long unfortunate evolution (Score:5, Interesting)
A liberal arts or pure science education is not meant to be a professional degree. It's a way to learn a lot about a particular topic, independently of whether that directly helps your employment chances or not.
Historically, there was a fairly sharp delineation between universities and vocational schools--even "white collar" vocational schools like engineering were at separate institutions (often A&T or A&M schools), and lawyers and doctors were primarily apprenticed. At some point doctors, and later lawyers, became highly skilled professions that needed more formal training. To a degree it made sense to combine medical schools with pure sciences under one university, since some of the basics overlap.
But it had the unfortunate side effect of starting the thought in people's minds that universities are vocational institutions, rather than institutions of higher learning. I certainly don't mean to insinuate that a liberal arts degree has no application in the real world--quite the contrary. But it's intentionally targeted at longer-term learning rather than particular vocations per se, and not everyone who pursues a higher degree does so as a job entree.
Nonetheless, the law schools and med schools were followed by a spate of mergers between technical institutes and universities. Suddenly non-university vocational institutes were looked on as crappy and inferior, and it became a mantra (for no good reason) that you needed a 4-year college/university degree to succeed at jobs that historically had been done quite successfully without it. Even a shorter professional program started to become more prestigious if allied with a 4-year college, for no good reason (e.g. nursing schools at universities being, generally, valued more highly than independent nursing colleges).
The result was a massive spike in the number of people going to 4-year colleges--that number has sextupled or so over the past 60ish years--and a massive decline in the number of people going to vocational and technical schools. The latter have become a joke to the point where vocational school brings to mind TV commercials for Devry or Andover tractor trailer driving or dental hygeniest schools.
The downfalls of this are manifold. University prices skyrocket as everyone seeks to get in, whether they are really interested in a university degree or not. Vocational schools fold and a large percentage of the people who'd have attended them are forced into universities, exacerbating #1. Jobs see more and more college degrees, and start expecting them, making people start viewing colleges and universities as professional/career prep schools.
And universities become disincentivized to teach pure liberal arts or even theoretical mathematics, as they start being judged based on how good they are as job factories rather than as educational institutions; the result is a short-term focus that harms long-term research and eventually job opportunities (much akin to eliminating R&D budgets, but on a national scale).
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Actually, there wasn't. Universities *started* back in the Middle Ages as vocational schools, and the modern liberal arts degree is based (very roughly) on their curriculum and philosophy. The idea that universities were purely institutes of higher learning is actually (historically speaking) a rather recent development aimed mostly at separating those institutions who wished to place themselves a "cut above" (I
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Great post. One point you missed, though:
Suddenly non-university vocational institutes were looked on as crappy and inferior, and it became a mantra (for no good reason) that you needed a 4-year college/university degree
It's the "no good reason" part that's the real problem - because there are reasons and they are good for some people, if not most.
First, there's an oversupply of workers for an undersupply of jobs, so why not be picky with your applicants if you're an employer? A stupid regulation like "4-
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I agree with many of your individual statements, but I think we'd disagree on the good/bad ratio of resultant trend and how they should be guided.
With the proviso that "college costs money to attend,";
Attending college in preparation for a career is a financial investment with an expected return.
Attending college to indulge yourself in an area of interest is not an investment, it is a luxury.
From these two simple statements, we can say that anyone wh
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Symptom, not cause (Score:2, Insightful)
In theory restricting by college is a good idea, but it's complex and doesn't hit the root cause.
What allows availability to loans to go nuts is the fact that you can't use bankruptcy to get out of loans. If bankruptcy were an option, lenders would be significantly more careful about who they lend to, and we wouldn't need an extra law aimed at specific questionable institutions.
Why is this limited to "for-profit" schools? (Score:2)
It appears that "non-profit" schools as well have responded to the increased loan $ available over the past couple of decades by raising tuition to absorb all of it - which is a big part of why graduates are in so much debt.
Any school accepting governent-tied money should have to pass this test.
Disturbing (Score:5, Insightful)
What I find disturbing is that at age 18, we're allowed to go to war, vote, enter contracts and do just about anything (except drink alcohol... that's another weird one). Yet, we still seem to treat these same 18-year-olds like children when it comes to them understanding the loans that they voluntarily enter into. I never found loans to be a difficult concept. You borrow money now, you pay it back later with interest.
If you don't want massive loans, pick a state school. There's a lot of state schools that offer in-state tuition rates to out-of-state students, in addition to your own state's schools. There are a lot of choices without picking private for-profit schools. Now, there might be some more niche degrees only offered by a limited number of colleges, but those are much, much more fewer than the number of students who claim to be victimized by student loans.
I'm not saying that *no* colleges have predatory loan practices, or that *no* students are victimized. I'm just saying that a great deal of students who claim to be victimized are experiencing something closer to buyer's remorse at the first major, adult decision. Some of the blame for the student loan situation *should* sit with the students who entered into these agreements.
Re:Disturbing (Score:4, Interesting)
In-state tuition of the University of California is over $10K per year. My daughters averaged $27K (ncluding room and board) per year.
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Holy shit does University of California have a horrid website. It's like Geocities had a bastard child with sulphuric acid and jizzed it in my eyes.
That said, California is the gold standard for the government fucking things up, which it looks like they did for tuition too. She may want to consider an out-of-state school that offers low out-of-state tuition - an increasing number of them charge the same as in-state residents - or an online school.
As for room and board, that's a trickier comparison. If she's
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Sure, they should have known better than to voluntarily sign up for something they could not pay back. Thats easy for me to say being someone who's always had an aptitude for these things, but to a certain extent we've all failed to provide most high school graduates with the tools to be normal well adjusted and functional adults. The first time I learned to balance a checkbook was when I got a checking account, the first time I saw a car loan was when I bought my first car, the first time I learned how tax
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I agree that the main failing is in high school. There's too much focus on "preparation for college" - which, as it turns out, has nothing to do with college - and absolutely nothing about life skills, particularly financial. Perhaps if we revamped high school, we wouldn't have so much trouble with college loans in the first place, and we'd have skills to help with all of those other pesky financial situations as an adult.
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at the first major, adult decision.
Perhaps there should be fewer opportunities for that first big decision to be one that can potentially screw you over for 30 years?
And don't for-profit colleges usually target older people that skipped a chance at college right after highschool? Every commercial I've seen is all "learn from home on your schedule". Doesn't promises of a 50% higher salary on your schedule with no money up front sound inciting to a working single mom? Maybe they deserve some blame for not realizing whats too good to be true b
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The reason you see those commercials probably isn't so much that the college as a whole is targeting the been-out-of-school crowd, but because that's the crowd that needs convincing. High school grads are already convinced to go to college, so they're already actively seeking out the colleges and don't need to be advertised to. There are predatory colleges out there, but it's not *all* of them like many people seem to think.
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I think what is driving this issue is the ballooning of student loan debt in recent years that some are speculating will be the next financial bubble to burst(up to something like 1.5 Trillion in recent years). This is especially scary as you cannot avoid student loan debt through bankruptcy. As a measure to ensure that the government can stop the hemorrhaging of money this might have an impact, but as a measure to help students all it will end up doing is make the competition for scholarships that much h
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Yes, I'm saying that student loans that stick to you through much of your adult life is a very bad idea in supporting a healthy society. If you enter a program under the assumption of getting $X at the end of the program, one can plan and budget a rational justification for taking the course. Now if you assume the graduation is significantly less than 100% and employment rates for graduates are very low, would that same assumption apply? Would me as the 18 year old kid picking his program know the employmen
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What I find disturbing is that at age 18, we're allowed to go to war
You know why? Because 18 year olds are dumb enough to want to. I don't say that to slag on service members - I was one, too - but it's the reality. By the time someone's in their late 20s, they start to have thoughts like "wow, it'd suck to die before I've had a family" and "man, I hope I'm not the one coming home as a quadruple amputee", and for most people that marks the point when you can no longer give them stupid orders and expect them to be rigorously followed. But at 18, they're still thinking "hey,
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How is someone with only high school as experience expected to assess how well they will be doing in 401 Statistical Mechanics down the road, what job they will have, how difficult it will be to make their student loan payment on top of a carpayment, rent check, groceries, etc.? Up to this point in life most of them have lived at home, had no job, no responsibilities, and are used to having all the important decisions made for them. Their first real life decision shouldn't concern whether to sign up for a
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I can't speak for the politics, but a lot of state schools spend way too much money on extracurriculars, such as sports. For the very small number of major state colleges that do earn a profit off sports, that's ok. However, for community colleges and most smaller four year state schools, sports is a money pit. The problem isn't so much cutting funding as it is cutting funding in the wrong places. Not long after I graduated, the small ag/tech school I went to spent $5 million on revamping the football stadi
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Our high school economics class did have us balance a checkbook... a skill I've never actually needed in this electronic age. My state college, however, had a mandatory one-credit class that was basically a "life skills" class - loans, mortgages, credit cards, buying a car, buying a house, family finance planning, etc. Unfortunately, only the IT majors were required to take it. That shit really should have been covered in high school.
Fuck college. Learn a trade. (Score:2)
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What the exemption? (Score:4, Insightful)
from the summary:
A secret about those private "not for profit" colleges which the Department of Education exempted from that regulation. They are for profit. Huge profits. The distinction is not that these institutions do not earn profits, but rather that they are exempt from business taxes on those profits and the income accrues to the administration and faculty instead of to business owners.
So I had a friend in college who worked part-time in the payroll office and had access to the campus salary database. From her dorm room. So one evening she asks if I want to know what any of my professors make. Looked them all up. In 2014 dollars the mid-level salary for recently-tenured faculty was about $300,000 / year. Deans, provosts and presidents made much more.
Subsidized college loans have created a glut of education dollars and "not-for-profit" educators are raking them in. They are not opposed to earning huge profits themselves, the just do not want competition from other colleges which are run as business. So they lobbied Arne Duncan to enact a regulation which, for no legitimate rationale, applies only their competition.
Don't believe me? Universities try to keep this information locked away tightly but occasionally it leaks out. Here [nytimes.com], for, example, is what Treasury Secretary Jack Lew received as severence pay from New York University:
NYU is a [nyu.edu] private "non-profit". And, as that link indicates, as such they receive additional benefits from the federal government beyond tax exemption.
Re:What the exemption? (Score:4, Insightful)
"In 2014 dollars the mid-level salary for recently-tenured faculty was about $300,000 / year"
I'm extremely skeptical. Look at the below link for data on the Ivy League (not exactly the bargain basement when it comes to faculty). Average salary for a FULL professor at Yale is $192k. Newly tenured faculty would be associate professors - average salary $118k.
http://oir.yale.edu/node/87/at... [yale.edu]
"recognized occupation" (Score:2)
does that mean we shouldn't train people to be poets or unobtainium miners? besides, just recognizing "bus driver" as an occupation doesn't mean that it grants a living wage. how to define "gainful employment"?
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Excellent news! (Score:2)
A major problem has been that tuitions have risen alongside the ability of students to get loans to pay for them. This would go a long way toward a college charging $150,000 for an art history major. It's perfectly OK to still take those majors, but it's predatory for a college and bank offer to sell a kid (and at 18, yeah, they're still kids) a hugely expensive degree with little expected return on investment.
I feel strongly that college should not be a trade school. Nonetheless, that's how they're treated
College is a scam (Score:5, Interesting)
I went to a state college (twice!) and the graduation rate was bellow 33%
That's a scam... flat out scam. You have to go, they know you have to go, and they abuse you to squeeze as much money out of you as possible.
Yes, there are those that just drink themselves out. But the colleges offer absolutely no help with anything at all.
You're paying a fortune for classes, and the schedules make little to no sense at all. I'd go to a 30min English class, then have to wait an hour and half to take a 4 or philosophy class, then wait 2hrs for my 1 hour programming class. There were thousands of students studying for the same degree I was! What's the point of having these nonsense schedules?? Can't I just get into the 8am-5pm compsci course and be done with it?
On top of that, what's with the books scams? I'm required to buy a book my professor wrote but we never open it in class? Really? I was so broke I'd literally go without eating some days, but my professors ripping me off for $89.95?
Then the campus police... Constant unending harassment. Granted, I was a long hair... but, for example, they decided to raid the door rooms over xmas break and leave me a ticket for underage drinking for having an empty wine bottle in my room. It took me 2 months and 2 visits to court to get it cleared up that I was 23 I had enough going on, I didn't need to be dealing with them.
I will be steering my son towards one of the well established local community colleges we have around here when the time comes. They seem to be the best value, and the least likely to rip you off. I'd stay away from any "online" schools, TV offers and State colleges. They are the worst. The only difference between those and the state collges is the State ones only rip off maybe 80 to 90% of their students as apposed to 100% for the university of Phoenix and the like.
Government enforced monopoly (Score:2)
Good for the goose... (Score:3)
This is a decent idea, but it doesn't go far enough - every non-profit college and university shuld be held to the same standards if they get tax subsidies or federal loan money.
It's popular to bash the for-profit schools, but there are plenty of over-priced, in-effective 2 and 4 year schools that saddle their graduates with mediocre educations and excessive debt loads.
WRONG!!!!!!! (Score:2)
One way to resolve this... (Score:4, Insightful)
Make the school jointly liable for their students' loans. So, if the student defaults, the college is on the hook. R
What middle class? (Score:2)
Career colleges must be a stepping stone to the middle class.
Too bad "the middle class" is a rapidly shrinking island and the nearest stepping stones are increasingly far from its shores. With the possible exception of building trades, traditional middle class jobs are increasingly being exported, filled by poorly-paid H1B wage slaves, or eliminated altogether. The solution to these problems has little to do with college courses, (AKA 'job training', AKA 'shaping the peg to fit a non-existent hole'), and a lot to do with fixing massively unfair concentration of wealth.
Additionally, education should not be primarily about job training - it should be about producing well-rounded, creative, thoughtful, aware citizens who can solve problems and who can adapt readily to a variety of roles as required. Our society is not a production line for widgets, and it's time we stopped treating it as one.
As problematic as it is... it is interesting. (Score:2)
I think SOME loans at the very least should work this way. Especially loans for poor people that really are looking at college as a stepping stone to some sort of job skills in their life.
I'd also point out that in the undergraduate courses there has been this infestation of political and advocacy courses that are pure propaganda. I won't get into them because we all know what they are... and maybe this requirement might compel college administrators to at least make those classes elective rather then waste
Inescapable debt (Score:2)
The entire problem with college loans is that you cannot escape them with bankruptcy. If you take a school loan, you have that loan no matter how messed up your financial situation gets. If college loan debt were the same as any other debt, those giving out loans would be very hesitant to hand 120k to an underwater basket weaver.
It makes no sense for college debt to be inescapable. We allow people to declare bankruptcy after taking a million dollar loan to open a high end spa in an 8k person logging down. T
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We can't have any pressure on public colleges to stop producing $useless_degree graduates, can we.
Re:That's a howler (Score:5, Informative)
cite [insidehighered.com].