Expert Predicts 25% of Colleges Will 'Fail' in the Next 20 Years (cbsnews.com) 199
For the first time in 185 years, there will be no fall semester at Green Mountain College in western Vermont. The college, which closed this year, isn't alone: Southern Vermont College, the College of St. Joseph, and Atlantic Union College, among others, have shuttered their doors, too. The schools fell victim to trends in higher education -- trends that lead one expert to believe that more schools will soon follow. From a report, shared by a reader: "I think 25% of schools will fail in the next two decades," said Michael Horn, who studies education at Harvard University. "They're going to close, they're going to merge, some will declare some form of bankruptcy to reinvent themselves. It's going to be brutal across American higher education." Part of the problem, Horn explained, is that families had fewer kids after the 2008 recession, meaning that there will be fewer high school graduates and fewer college students. "Fundamentally, these schools' business models are just breaking at the seams," he said.
That's what happened to Green Mountain College. When Robert Allen became president of the school in 2016, he realized "very quickly" that the school had a problem. "I'm a mathematician by training, a financial person," he said. "And I realized that we were going to come up short." The main problem was shrinking enrollment. By last year, just 427 students remained on campus, leaving the school broke. "At Green Mountain College this past year, we didn't have one full paid student," Allen said, adding, "Our published tuition was $36,500, and the average student paid just a little over $12,000." Unable to find a school with which to merge, Allen announced in January that the school's 184th graduation would be its last. "I've had a long professional career, not all of it in education, and it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do," Allen said. "As you can imagine, many parents were really angry."
That's what happened to Green Mountain College. When Robert Allen became president of the school in 2016, he realized "very quickly" that the school had a problem. "I'm a mathematician by training, a financial person," he said. "And I realized that we were going to come up short." The main problem was shrinking enrollment. By last year, just 427 students remained on campus, leaving the school broke. "At Green Mountain College this past year, we didn't have one full paid student," Allen said, adding, "Our published tuition was $36,500, and the average student paid just a little over $12,000." Unable to find a school with which to merge, Allen announced in January that the school's 184th graduation would be its last. "I've had a long professional career, not all of it in education, and it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do," Allen said. "As you can imagine, many parents were really angry."
Let's think about this... (Score:3)
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And keep them alive even longer?
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Not necessarily, there is a new article in either NYT or WPost (I think) that says colleges are well-coming older people to help fill in the empty spaces....something about them having money and in need of a retirement home. I think that's a very good idea. And then can take courses so their mental faculties don't decline so rapidly.
There probably aren't enough of them that can afford the dosh, but maybe their SS checks are enough, I don't know.
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Re:Let's think about this... (Score:4, Insightful)
And where will you find the doctors to work in those hospitals?
Immigration. Oh, wait.
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Wait until we have free college for everyone!
Evil Euro-Communist (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait until we have free college for everyone!
oh, you're intending to move to here in Europe ?
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F-1 and M-1 visa are down 40% (Score:5, Insightful)
Seemingly a lot of Eurpoean countries (and others) are allowing everyone to go to college, and have become a compelling alternative to a U.S. degree. That's the real problem for our colleges, not enough foreign students.
https://qz.com/1267351/f-1-and-m-1-visa-data-show-international-students-are-turning-away-from-us-universities/
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It might have something to do with being a dick to them.
Good thing the Hungarians got better treatment...
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Even those that used to have free college for foreigners are now increasingly adapting "pay to attend" model. I.e. my native Finland switched from free university for foreign students to paid tuition a few years ago, causing a fairly major domestic brouhaha.
And then there are of course major university countries like UK, which charge a very healthy premium for tuition from foreigners.
Re:Evil Euro-Communist (Score:4, Funny)
In the US here.
This is why my kid's school could provide, if qualified, an IB (International Baccalaureate). They are in French immersion (not full immersion but they can speak secretly with my wife, I don't let on that I know some of what they say...).
Once they finish school I will unleash, onto the continent of Europe, the full insanity of the children I have raised.
Europe, beware. You have been warned.
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Don't forget it will likely be free college for state universities, public institutions, not free college for private for profit institutions. Like health care, public health care for public hospitals and private insurance for private hospitals as for higher education, free for public centres of learning and private fees for private colleges. Pretty clear cut really.
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You haven't been paying attention to the Republicans who believe everything should be done by the private sector, even accepting government funds.
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Yeah, whatever will we do without the stream of doctors stepping food across the border and having little baby doctors!
Nobody is concerned with immigrating doctors.
Re:Let's think about this... (Score:5, Interesting)
A funny thing happened with the political parties. It used to be the right that was in favor of immigration as it brought down labor costs and allowed them to expand their businesses more easily and the left that wanted to restrict it because they realized the threat it posed to labor and the segments of the U.S. population that has to compete for the low-skill positions that first generation illegal immigrants often occupy.
Somewhere along the lines this started to change. The left not only moved to a pro-immigrant position, but they seemed to take it to an even more extreme level. I suspect that the reason behind this is that the far ends of the political spectrum really, really hate each other to a point beyond reason. Unlike the Republicans, who spun off the Tea Party in a fashion, the Democrats have let the far left part of the party dictate the direction of the party as a whole. And that group seems to care less about policy that makes sense or even happens to align with other positions of the party, as long as they get to show each other how not-Republican they are because to even agree with the political right on anything might make them a Nazi too, or something along those lines.
The Democrats need to jettison that part of their party in the same way that the Republicans spun off the tea party, because it lets the core party actually appeal to the group of voters in the middle that both parties have to fight over to win an election. The dirty secret is that the Tea Party loons are still going to vote for the mainstream Republican candidate just like the crazy Marxists are going to vote Democrat (can't let the Republicans win after all) but it means that the Democrats can have candidates that don't need to pander to the far-end of the party at the expense of losing voters in the middle. Trump even seems to have picked up on this which is why he gives some much attention to people like Cortez. He knows that she's not popular with moderates and that if he can make people associate Democrats with her, it will turn off a lot voters.
And everyone knows that it's true just by watching the debates and the talking points. Candidates are talking about things like completely open borders, reparations for slavery, and other policy positions that are only favorable among the far the left and in some cases outright unappealing to moderate voters. There's always the argument that the candidates may just be trying to appeal to the base and will shift back towards the center for the general election, but Trump has actually tried to implement many of his idiotic campaign promises (whether he's been successful is another matter) so I'm actually forced to believe that the Democrat candidate wouldn't behave differently.
Re:Let's think about this... (Score:5, Interesting)
Thank you for your respectful and intelligent response.
My position on this is in part shaped by going to an elite technical university in the 1970s. At the time an extraordinary number of the faculty were still WW2 refugees.
I think we've had a hypocritical immigration policy; we need the labor, but we don't want the foreigners, so we take a legal stance which leaves the sources of immigration untouched: employment. If you seriously cracked down on employers, the jobs would dry up and immigrants would stop sneaking in. We actually have created an illegal *immigration problem* where once we had a valuable migrant labor *resource*. Mexicans didn't want to live in the US, why would they? They wanted to make some money here then go back home. That's what they overwhelmingly did until around 1970. It wasn't until we made it hard to get in to work that Mexicans decided to stay here.
As for the people sneaking in, sure they aren't sneaking in to be doctors. But think about what it takes to leave everything behind and sneak into a country where people don't like you, just to make your life better. A lot of what we flatter ourselves are American virtues are actually *immigrant* virtues. Immigrants start businesses at a much higher rate than native residents. And they tend to be more *socially conservative* than US natives. If you gave them a path to citizenship and stopped demonizing them as rapists and gang members, most of them would easily be persuaded to vote Republican.
Immigration is actually a solution to the Republican's long term demographic problems, if only the party hadn't embraced nativism.
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I think we've had a hypocritical immigration policy; we need the labor, but we don't want the foreigners, so we take a legal stance which leaves the sources of immigration untouched: employment.
Actually, I think we want immigrants on the whole, but ones who will contribute much more than they consume. If you can make the US a better place, if you have the skills, talent, and background to succeed - you're going to get in.
I think the biggest opposition is that much of illegal immigration directly attacks the bottom end of the labor pool and makes it increasingly difficult for citizens and residents already here to start climbing the ladder. And I say that as an individual living in Ventura/Oxnard
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I was thinking of the waves of European and Asian immigrants in the XIXth century... the original cultures of native Americans and Dutch or British religious colonies were wiped out and transformed into some nostalgic school musical numbers, replaced by business and industrial practices of Irish, Italians, Polish and Chinese. But I don't see American conservatives complaining about that cultural change caused by immigration.
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Every political party is a coalition. The ideology is cobbled together later to rationalize why all the various groups belong together.
What do a LGBT activist, a union organizer, an environmentalist and a health care reformer have in common? They want to change stuff, but there aren't enough of their particular kind of people to get it done without allies. If you start saying, ignore B until you've done A, and C before you've done B, there aren't enough people to get A done.
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Include all those people with the ones I suggested. My list was not exclusionary.
Re:Let's think about this... (Score:4, Insightful)
It goes beyond that. US appears to be in a middle of political transition similar to one that last occurred there in Great Depression. Remember, that time when Democratic party was the party of rich and corporate interests and Republicans were the working man's party?
This was exceptionally visible in last presidential election. The democratic coalition broke down entirely. Poor working people came out in favour of Republicans in droves, which is what gave him the victory. Working people? That means unions are next on the line to turn, and this churn is already somewhat visible in recent news about worker's union politics in US. At the same time, this was the first US election where business money wasn't just "unwelcome for PR reasons" but straight up declared illegal. Business community is effectively politically homeless, and we're seeing a slow drift toward Democratic party with all the corporate bowing to various issues primarily relevant to Democrats, such as extreme political correctness and enforced gender equity over gender equality.
This sort of a realignment of parties is normal for twice a century. Healthy even, as it upends much of established political ties that tend to calcify into corruption. But we don't really know how it will end up in the end. All that's really marginally visible seems to be that Republican core seems to be slowly forming around socially conservative voter blocks, which include the traditional Democratic blocks like Unions and second generation onward Hispanic immigrants and Baptist African Americans. All while traditional Republican voting blocks like National Security people and Business elites are increasingly drifting toward Democratic party.
It's going to be interesting to see what coalitions end up as after the political icebreaker that is Trump is done breaking the calcified political structures in US.
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Funny thing about people about people immigrating to the U.S. They don't start out as doctors or scientists. Yet, generations following immigrants turned into precisely these. So yes, let's cut off the seed corn the U.S. will need. Lest you have forgotten, the native U.S. pop. is not reproducing at a rate to sustain itself.
Re:Let's think about this... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Let's think about this... (Score:5, Informative)
Immigration.
We've been fed that line in Europe during the early years of the refugee crisis: "We're getting all these highly skilled people thanks to refugees and immigration!".
A few years later it turned out these alleged "doctors and engineers" are barely literate in their own native languages with an education on par with our elementary schools.
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And where will you find the doctors to work in those hospitals?
Immigration. Oh, wait.
The more progressive countries with free college will get tired of training your doctors pretty quick anyway. Many already have "return of service" requirements where the training is funded only if you agree to practice domestically for some length of time. If you plan to leave right after you graduate, you pay for your own education.
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Oh, you mean those "extra" people that SS and Medicare will need to help fund the Blue Haired? Now, now, they are being turned away at the border for a very good reason, our stupidity.
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Good (Score:5, Interesting)
Failure is part of progress. Without a "natural selection" of the schools that are actually preferred by students and have an impact, and the ones that fail to do so, we would have students "fail" in life instead.
It is sad to see things not working out, however it is better to "fail early".
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
This school was publishing triple what they were charging too.
I suspect they could have had more students if they didn't price themself out of people even applying.
I don't know if the tuition was sustainable at any number, but it seems to me that they probably shouldn't have published their price at 38,500 if they were actually only charging 12,000
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I don't know if the tuition was sustainable at any number, but it seems to me that they probably shouldn't have published their price at 38,500 if they were actually only charging 12,000
Perhaps. There might have also been a problem in finding qualified students. Remember, many of the big for-profit "colleges" that have been the scourge of the student loan debacle don't really have standards, anyone can get in to those, and many of the larger brick-and-mortar colleges have fairly strong reputations for their various departments so the quality of the education for the money is considered acceptable.
If this small college didn't have a good reputation (not the same as having a bad reputation
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Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
But somewhere along the line we as a nation decided that everyone needed to go to college or at least they really ought to go to college. Thus began a period of steady increases in college enrollment that outstripped a growth in the population or even continued as population growth slowed as the population of the U.S. increased in average age. There are two main effects of this change.
The first is that many college courses and degrees have become watered down. Even when I went to college there was already a math course aimed at people who couldn't pass high school math classes, let alone the supposed "higher learning" math classes that were necessary for the types of advanced degrees colleges were supposed to offer. The second is that increased demand, naturally led to increased prices. It's not quite this simple, but the government agreeing to subsidize loans also fed into the cost increases.
But college is not some kind of machine you can just feed a person into and expect the output of an individual with the qualifications to perform some type of skilled labor. If it were, you could take people with mental retardation and put them through college to get a genius after graduation. Clearly we can understand why this doesn't work, yet we somehow thought the trick might work if we just took someone of slightly less than average ability and fed them through the same machine.
Instead what we've done is saddled a group of people who should never have gone to college (at least not straight out of high school) with crippling debt and nothing of value to show for it. Employers want a skilled employee, not a piece of paper. A diploma does not imbue you with knowledge. At best it might just get you an interview. Perhaps worse, we've taken a group of people and made them feel like failures because we stuck them into a system they were ill prepared for and left them to the mercy of the machine, and they feel as though they're the ones to blame because they couldn't succeed.
The party was always going to come to an end. Sorry Cinderella, but the clock has struck midnight and the illusion has become undone. Reality cares nothing for good intentions, but rather than trying to correct our views and align them with reality, we've only been screaming at the problem expecting that trying to do more of the same will fix it in some way. I wish that the current or even the near future generations were wise enough to see and understand this, but I suspect that they're not much better than we or the generations before us were in this regard and that society is going to have much slower struggle forward. I think humanity will eventually get it right, but we just haven't exhausted all of the wrong ways of doing things quite yet.
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I think you're missing a key step there. Having a college degree is a really good proxy for being white and middle/upper-middle class. If an employer wanted to filter out a lot of "those people" without overtly looking like they were discriminating, they could just start requiring a 4-year degree. And boy howdy did they ever...
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Not the whole story (Score:3)
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This is like saying "no pain, no gain." Just because you hurt yourself doesn't mean you're doing yourself any good.
The incipient failure of so many institutions of learning indicates that those institutions are not adapting themselves to the future needs of society. Fair enough. But that is *change*, not *progress*. Where is the evidence that society's educational needs are less? Or that society is evolving a different, better system for advanced education?
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Without a "natural selection" of the schools that are actually preferred by students and have an impact, and the ones that fail to do so, we would have students "fail" in life instead.
I'm thinking that the schools who can arrange the best loans for their students will survive.
A lot of schmoozing between university officials and politicians. Gifts of season tickets for sporting events, positive PR and other stuff.
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GenX is not only smaller, they are also way less stable financially which meant that not only did they get fewer kids because kids are a financial risk, they also can't support their kids as much as the boomers could which means fewer GenZ going to colleges.
Add that GenZ ain't dumb and have seen just how long it takes to pay back the student loans, if you can at all with the lack of jobs and eternal internship bullshit going rampart. And then they saw just what rates craftsmen are charging, at a MUCH cheape
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There are plenty of Gen-Xers that are the children of Boomers.
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Re:Cost, plus the echo is over. (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite honestly, we need more no-college jobs.
Germany has an interesting system of apprenticeships. After the equivalent of high school, you can choose to learn an occupation for three years, or try your luck at college. After the apprenticeship you can either work in the occupation, or go on to college.
As an example, you can do an apprenticeship as an electrician, and then maybe go to a university and study electrical engineering.
From personal experience, my girlfriend did an apprenticeship as a "Druckvorlagenherstellerin", an occupation in the printing industry . . . at Gutenberg in Mainz! Maybe a few folks here are old enough to know who Gutenberg . . . but certainly not personally. She later went on to study graphic design.
Her experience in the factory proved to be extremely valuable. When she was working in a graphic agency, the management would always ask her to call up the printer to haggle about details. The folks at the printer respected her because she knew what she was talking about. The printers said that people who had just studied graphic design were completely clueless.
I've been reading The Economist since the early 80's and they praise this system every few years.
I, however, have no clue how you could implement this in the US.
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That might work, though I dislike the European system where they make you choose a path at 14 years of age. They're mostly the same, with some different HS tracks geared toward different social classes.
First, whatever you choose at 14 can be corrected / undone at 18. If you finish your apprenticeship, you still are able to get a college degree later, if you feel like it. It happens quite often and those deciding to go for a higher education after an apprenticeship usually do quite well. Perhaps because they know what they want.
As to people nor being ready to make a decision at 14 / 18 / 31, one needs to learn and practice making decisions, just as it's with any other skill.
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It would require cooperation and coordination. Sounds like commie faggot shit, so it won't happen.
What's the cost of running a school? (Score:2)
Post Real Prices (Score:5, Insightful)
we didn't have one full paid student," Allen said, adding, "Our published tuition was $36,500, and the average student paid just a little over $12,000."
Well, maybe if you have published your average price as your REAL price, you know, the $12,000, you would be able to attract more students.
Most families are going to look at your published price of $36.5K and say "WTF?" and move on. If you published "$12K", they would be beating down your door.
Re:Post Real Prices (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Post Real Prices (Score:5, Interesting)
Some college I never heard of is $36.5k.semester?
A nit but generally tuition is published for the year, not semester or quarter.
Having just had my second daughter graduate, my impression is this is entirely normal. Virtually every private school has a published tuition and the vast majority of students don't pay it. It's the Marketing Max Number Never To Be Exceeded. For the top-of-the-line schools (Ivys and comparable), published tuition is around $65-$75k/year. IIRC, the nice people at Havahad said something like 20% of students pay nothing and 70% pay less than full tuition. But Harvard has more money than God so they're a bit of a special case.
State schools tended to be around $30k for in-state tuition, $40k-$65k for out-of-state. I don't know what second tier private schools charge, probably in the $30k-$40k range. We didn't look at them much because we felt UC was a better value.
This, to put it mildly, drove me nuts. How in the world are you supposed to know which schools you can afford if the pricing is so customized?!? My daughters didn't want to waste the time and effort applying to schools they couldn't afford but you don't know how much they will actually cost until after you're accepted. It's bonkers.
If you talk to any of the admissions staff, the general line is "we'll find a way for you to afford it." That's a polite way of saying "how much you got?"
Re: Post Real Prices (Score:2)
This was my point. This kind of pricing, which amounts to, âoehow much do ya got?â Is bullshit. Itâ(TM)s seen in many industries too.
The purpose of course is to stick it to those who can pay, and discount it for everyone else...but homie donâ(TM)t want to play that game. If I call and ask your price and you give me some bullshit number and figure on negotiating it down, guess again.
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Price differentiation is a fine, time-honored tradition. it's taught in first year marketing classes. It's what every business wishes it could do and what most of them do all the time. Is there really a huge difference between a Toyota and Lexus or Honda and Acura? It's all about price differentiation.
If you don't want to play that game, knock yer socks off. Good for you. Seriously, vote with your wallet, it's the most potent weapon out there.
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What happened to college is similar to what happened to health care. Scholarships, grants, and financial assistance insulated consumers from the real price. It's also similar to housing, in that loans became the accepted way to finance. When a loan is involved, it's like a financial arms race that drives prices higher--if other students are using loans, you have to use loans too otherwise you fall behind trying to work a job and go to school so you can pay cash.
Unlike health care and housing, people are
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It also insulated the providers of education against what students and their families could actually afford.
In the late nineties, full-time in-state tuition at my local major university was something like $2000 a semester. It was low enough that college part-time jobs could pay for it. It's now closer to $20,000.
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Maybe not... (Score:2)
If Bernie or Warren are elected or are able to sufficiently alter the main democratic platform on the issue (and a different Democrat is elected) we might need a lot more colleges with their plans for free higher education.
Of course that would all depend on the whims of Johnny Filibuster, Mitch McConnell. We can argue all day about the merits of the filibuster but the Senate's massive spike in filibusters under Obama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] surely had everything to do with his clearly stated polic
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I doubt it, the US has a pretty high college attendance rate.
Free college doesn't mean more people necessarily, compare Germany to the US for example.
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When you take something life changing in a positive context and then change its price tag from "expensive" to "free" you're bound to see increased demand.
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Sure, but state schools are already some of the best (especially for the price), I suspect they don't have massive amounts of extra capacity.
There's certainly some, but probably not huge amounts.
Unless someone was proposing free tuition for everyone at every school, it's likely just going to mean that better students get to go to the state schools rather than it being a mixture of quality and money.
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Obviously increased demand means we'll need increased supply.
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Like in Germany?
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Sure, but state schools are already some of the best (especially for the price)
if both public and private schools are $0/year, they lose that qualification. In that case, I'm virtually certain to pick a private school. OTOH, I think I saw one of their proposals and it was $0 tuition but only at public schools (which will cause demand for private colleges to collapse). Either way, it will be very disruptive. Either demand dries up and the school might close or you're swamped with applicants.
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"if both public and private schools are $0/year, they lose that qualification. In that case, I'm virtually certain to pick a private school.
Why on earth wouldn't you chose a school based on its credentials? Most private schools are rubbish in such context which is exactly the reason for a lack of enthusiasm for their sky high tuition. Congratulations, you've established yourself as the completely absurd.
"Either way, it will be very disruptive. Either demand dries up and the school might close or you're swam
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Why on earth wouldn't you chose a school based on its credentials? Most private schools are rubbish
I really shouldn't engage since you turned this personal but I can't resist.
Where did I say I wouldn't pick a school based on credentials and reputation? There are some good state schools. There are a lot of rubbish ones. Same for private schools. IMHO, private schools have a somewhat better reputation, on average, than public schools. Thus, if the price is the same, I expect many more people who can't afford private now would start applying.
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Am I missing where someone is proposing making private schools free too?
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Am I missing where someone is proposing making private schools free too?
I may be reading more into "cancel all student debt" than the candidates meant. I took it to be the literal proposal.
I don't see why you'd make public schools free and not private ones unless you really want to shut down virtually all private schools. It's very hard to compete with free. That might actually be the plan.
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They're talking about cancelling all debt, yes, but that's not the plan going forward.
From the Sanders website:
Pass the College for All Act to provide at least $48 billion per year to eliminate tuition and fees at four-year public colleges and universities, tribal colleges, community colleges, trade schools, and apprenticeship programs. Everyone deserves the right to a good higher education if they choose to pursue it, no matter their income.
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I couldn't disagree more. As far as I can tell you're coaching "ignorance is bliss". The general education one gets from a college degree is invaluable. I've dealt with enough educationally "stunted" individuals to know the value of the GE one gets in college. For every person who has managed a well rounded education on their own I've run into a couple dozen that think they have but are ignorant as shit outside of their core focus.
You equate a college degree to material desires and thus betray your ignoranc
He's a mathematician? (Score:2)
So, publish a $15,000 price and reduce subsidies dramatically. I'd bet you'd attract a lot more students (i.e. scare away fewer).
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For a long time college was a Veblen good- the higher the tuition the better the institution was perceived to be. Over the last decade, the expensive colleges hit a wall where fewer and fewer were willing/able to pay the sticker price, so they started discounting. But they were afraid to outright cut tuition as there were SOME students were were willing/able to pay full sticker. Plus, some schools likely felt that a decrease in the headline number would be an admission they had been overcharging before. Hen
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So, publish a $15,000 price and reduce subsidies dramatically. I'd bet you'd attract a lot more students (i.e. scare away fewer).
But, but, but, that's treating a College as a Business! We can't taint education with distasteful financial considerations!
Mostly declining birth rates & lack of subsidi (Score:2)
I think if we hadn't been slashing state and federal subsidies to public Universities for 40 years it would be less of problem [fivethirtyeight.com]. Loans don't really help anyone except private, for profit diploma mills lik
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College isn't some magical place that takes any person and makes them an intelligent, well-adjusted individual capable of high skill labor. So now we've got a
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I can see a "learning just in time," via the Internet.
Your profession doesn't rely on calculus? Fine. What does it rely on?
Gather those few specialties and lean hard on them and get them down and do it quickly.
Some skill sets are available on YouTube and work better than OJT.
Spending is only up in aggregate (Score:2)
And did you even bother to read my post? I linked to an article showing that the majority of degrees _aren't_ the useless kind. We graduate abou
It's called "saturation". (Score:2)
See also "GameStop Closing 200 Stores".
The low hanging fruit will be no real loss. (Score:5, Interesting)
25 percent of the colleges is not 25 percent of educational capacity. Fun little schools in rural settings and other marginal schools will close. That's the market correcting itself and it's long overdue. Schools should not be expensive. Most expensive activity is not education, it's entertainment and other things peripheral to learning.
It's been a long time coming. (Score:5, Interesting)
Many years ago I was asked to participate in the development of a report on the future of higher education for President Clinton's "President's Council on Sustainable Development". I was a humble worker bee, but most of the other participants were rock star academic environmentalists. It probably won't surprise you that privately there was a lot of pessimism about higher education's future in the US. For many of them doom and gloom was their bread and butter.
But it shouldn't surprise you either that they had a lot of criticisms that were legit. The consensus was that US higher education wasn't sustainable, because it was too expensive and elitist. By "elitist" they meant that universities act like their mission is to support a kind of conspicuous consumption. A university degree signifies to employers that your parents can spend what a median worker earns ever year on sending you to what increasingly looks like a high class summer camp.
In the 20 years since that reports was drafted, increasing reliance on US News and World Report rankings has only further corrupted the educational mission of colleges (see Campbell's Law [wikipedia.org]. Colleges have become more expensive, pouring money into amenities to attract the wealthy and talented. At the same time, an aging US population would have put the smaller institutions at risk anyway.
So we're in for a contraction as financially weak players are squeezed out.
But I ask you: do we really need *less* education to be happening than we did twenty years ago? Aren't ignorance, parochialism, and naivete *growing* problems?
I think the fundamental problem isn't keeping schools open, it's keeping people educated. Universities date from a time when a young aristocrat could spend a few years at school then return home with a passing acquaintance with every branch of human knowledge; an education that would last him a lifetime. Now education tends to be more specialized, and a specialized education is like fish -- it doesn't take long before it starts to stink.
Diminishing RoI of education? (Score:2)
I probably would have given you an informative rather than interesting (with the usual reservation that I never get mod points to give).
I actually found your comment by searching on "rank" because I just checked my own schools in the US News and World Report rankings that you cited. (My schools are both "safe", it seems. (Within the top 50, but I actually found it more interesting that both of them still have relatively low tuition.)) I strongly agree with you about the damage of the rankings, but the lotte
Private universities are dumb (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Because private universities are not about education, they're about money, status, and making connections with the skull & bones set that will get your incompetnt ass a high-paying job despite you doing nothing but jerking your fellow frat boys off for 4 years.
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Because private universities are not about education, they're about money, status, ...
Well, they're not entirely about status and signalling, I hope. But they're not not about it either. Point taken though, what you learn in the classroom is only a part of the value proposition.
Campus and class size (Score:2)
Private colleges tend to have a smaller class size than public universities. Some people prefer a more intimate learning environment (instead of lectures in auditoriums).
And then from a lifestyle perspective, private universities also tend to have smaller campuses, which can be important if you choose to live on campus.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, as others have said, it's about the connections. It took me many years to realize that.
(I suppose you could change your sig now.)
Fix the student loan system!!! (Score:2)
Fix the student loan system!!!
Re: (Score:2)
Sure. Out of curiosity, what do you think the problem is and what are possible solutions? I've got my opinions but I'd like to year yours first.
Re: (Score:2)
chapter 11 and 7
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chapter 11 and 7
Meaning allow people to restructure or just not pay their debts through bankruptcy? OK. You realize that will come with a cost, right? Loans will be harder to get and have higher interest rates. If the loan was guaranteed by the Feds, we'll wind up paying more taxes to cover defaults. I'm not convinced this is a good tradeoff.
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start with private student loans.
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Not the person you were replying to, but I've been thinking about how to reform student loan programs. According to some studies, increased administration and extravagant construction projects are not the primary reasons that tuition is increasing so wildly (although I think you could easily argue that those items should be reduced). The primary issue is that state contributions to universities are dropping.
From 2001-2011, average annual tuition at public research universities in the US increased by about $
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Fix the student loan system!!!
They already did that. The student loan system was nationalized under Obama, and has accelerated the problems that already existed.
well... (Score:2)
Sane Person Points Out (Score:2)
Sane person points out most have already failed.
Have you seen the shit generation they've churned out?
Govt subsidized the business model (Score:2)
The cost of a college education has skyrocketed. I am an old man now, and when I attended a state university in the 1070s, the tuition was around $1200 a year. This amount was typical for state universities across the USA. Private schools charged double that amount, about $2500 to $3000 a year. Now, these amounts all have been multiplied by a factor of 20 at least. Professor salaries have not risen by a factor of 20. The main thing that has risen is the university bureaucracy, with dozens of administr
Why pay for expensive degree (Score:2)
Ponzi schemes seem ok until (Score:2)
Big University (Score:2)
Welcome to the age of Big University. Pretty soon it will come down to the battle between Walmart U and Amazon.edu. And I will bet that both will have statues of Bernie Sanders on their campuses.
Re: (Score:3)
Burlington College won't have a statue of Bernie since he wife ran it into the ground.
Lack of detail... (Score:4, Interesting)