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Education

87% in New Poll Say Cost an Important Reason For Halting Studies (thehill.com) 167

Posted by msmash from the state-of-the-union dept.
A new Gallup survey released Tuesday found cost and work conflicts are the top reasons Americans choose to discontinue their higher education. From a report: In the poll, 87 percent said cost was a "very" or "moderately" important reason for pursuing further institutional study, while 81 percent pointed to work conflicts. The other two leading reasons were the time it takes to complete a degree at 73 percent and lack of remote options at 70 percent. Cost tops the list among all demographic groups, including across racial and ethnic lines.

"For many of these Americans, their time enrolled in these courses represents significant opportunity costs and financial investment. Given that they lack a degree or credential to show for their time enrolled, they are often worse off than if they never enrolled to begin with," Gallup said. Colleges prices have been surging for decades, with some estimating a 180 percent increase between 1980 and 2020. The cost of Ivy League schools is nearing $90,000 a year, and the average student debt held in the U.S. sits around $30,000. "Today, approximately 41.9 million Americans have some college experience but no degree or credential. The percentage of Americans who have taken some college courses, but who have stopped out and not completed their degree or credential, has increased significantly over the past five years," Gallup found.
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87% in New Poll Say Cost an Important Reason For Halting Studies More

87% in New Poll Say Cost an Important Reason For Halting Studies

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  • ... buyer beware... Educational institutions are businesses, your tuition is their operations budget and profit. So... it about being in business.

    Oh... what? you thought you'd get a job?
    That's your problem, we did our job.

    • Educational institutions are businesses, your tuition is their operations budget and profit.

      Perhaps in the US but in Canada and elsewhere universities are non-profit organizations with charitable status but tuition where I work in a major research university tuition only costs $10k/year and that's in Canadian dollars. For international students it is ~$36k/year for a science honours degree but that's only US$26k/yr - about the US average - for one of Canada's top universities. In the UK Cambridge quotes 40k pounds tuition/year for a science degree which is US$50k/year or about half the cost of US

      • yep, I remember when Universities in the US were not for profit... but what really changed was when University Presidents and other high ranking staff started making hundreds of thousands to millions each year in remuneration. When my mom attended Columbia in the 50's, it was actually a very affordable school. When she got her masters at BU a decade later, it too was an affordable school. Shit changed during the Reagan years. Schools started getting outrageously expensive as well as Reagans economics bozo's

      • Educational institutions are businesses, your tuition is their operations budget and profit.

        Perhaps in the US but in Canada and elsewhere universities are non-profit organizations with charitable status but tuition where I work in a major research university tuition only costs $10k/year and that's in Canadian dollars. For international students it is ~$36k/year for a science honours degree but that's only US$26k/yr - about the US average - for one of Canada's top universities. In the UK Cambridge quotes 40k pounds tuition/year for a science degree which is US$50k/year or about half the cost of US ivy leagues for an institute that gets ranked higher than most and sometimes all of them. So perhaps you should start looking outside the US if you are getting fleeced there?

        Not necessarily. People who have business being in college here can afford to pay off their loans. Those that took courses that don't have much in the way of gainful employment of their skillset will have a hard time. It's not that we here in the states didn't turn our educational system into a trainwreck with demand causing the incredible inflation of costs, but if a person pans and does the math, they can do okay.

        • Not necessarily. People who have business being in college here can afford to pay off their loans.

          That's not true though. Some low paid jobs like teacher, nurse etc. need a university education but do not get paid enough to pay off their loan. The result is that in places like the UK that relatively recently switched from free tuition to expensive tuition (though not at US levels yet) are finding that students are eschewing low-paid jobs like teaching and nursing and they are having realy trouble filling all the positions. This is particularly true for science teachers since with a science degree you c

          • Not necessarily. People who have business being in college here can afford to pay off their loans.

            That's not true though. Some low paid jobs like teacher, nurse etc. need a university education but do not get paid enough to pay off their loan. The result is that in places like the UK that relatively recently switched from free tuition to expensive tuition (though not at US levels yet) are finding that students are eschewing low-paid jobs like teaching and nursing and they are having realy trouble filling all the positions. This is particularly true for science teachers since with a science degree you can get much better paid jobs than a teacher.

            We have a nursing school here. Well funded, and quite a few nurses graduate. Rather than pay - which isn't all that bad, there is high attrition based on not liking the work. So they are always looking for new recruits. I have several relatives and some friends who became nurses, then left because they were disillusioned.

            Then there is teachers. Supply and demand. Teaching has become a really weird career path, after chasing males out of the schools, they've been replaced mostly by young ladies. And the w

            • You look at the prospects. I would not suggest to anyone to go into teaching.

              That's fine for individuals but if everyone does as you suggest then how are you going to run the school system and educate the next generation up to the standard where they are even capable of going to university?

              Don't get me wrong - school systems everywhere seem to be in severe decline although I would put this down to the fact that many parents and governments look on them more as "free" daycare and a social service providers than as a place providing education. However, if we ever hope to fix this

              • You look at the prospects. I would not suggest to anyone to go into teaching.

                That's fine for individuals but if everyone does as you suggest then how are you going to run the school system and educate the next generation up to the standard where they are even capable of going to university?

                If there is a shortage of teachers, wages will tend to go up. They will have to pay more.

                What is more, what is an acceptable salary for a Teacher? - In Bucks County PA, the average salary of teachers was $99,707 in 2017-2018 They vary quite a bit, but here's the sauce. https://whyy.org/articles/what... [whyy.org] .

                I'm sure the ladies would like 7 figure salariesand up, but the idea that Teachers are all poverty stricken people is as legitimate as the claim that Trickle down theory will make everyone wealthy.

                • What is more, what is an acceptable salary for a Teacher?

                  Like most things it is set by the market and it depends on the quality of teachers that you want to have, the subject they teach and on whether they have to pay off expensive university loans. In the UK the average teacher salary is 34,400 pounds which is too low to attract enough teachers with science degrees when they also have expensive loans to also pay off.

                  If you are happy with a crap standard of education, particularly in the sciences, then current salaries with large student loans are fine but th

                  • So a couple of pieces of extra information and thoughts.

                    That average teacher salary is very close to the average STARTING salary of someone with an engineering degree (presuming they stayed in engineering). That likely indicates why we have a mixture of teachers who are passionate about teaching and teachers who decided to do the extra year to train as teachers as they couldn't get anything else.

                    A lot of the anxiety about student loans is misplaced. It's really just a graduate tax run by a government that h

      • I'm not in the system as you are, so my perspective and experience is not deeply informed. I am viewing this from the outside, admittedly... says a Big Hairy Canuck.

        In this Canadian city, at least 1 of the universities, which I drive by daily for some years, has been building rampantly. I'm going to say, business is good... no, it's great. Towers, parking garages, sports facilites all seem to be going up all the time... the green space it had is now pretty much full, they were building all throughout the pa

        • I get the impression that kids are still taking light duty programmes like .. please don't get unhinged... PolySci, Criminology, English...

          I'm in physics so no offence taken and, in fact, I can see what you mean. These subjects are important but the number of graduates in many of these subjects far exceeds the needs of society and hence there is a problem while on the science, engineering and medical side we need more graduates than we can provide.

          In a lot of ways it appears today's undergrad degree is yesterday's high school diploma equivalent.

          I've noted that too but what you say is sadly true in more ways than one: the average education level that you get from high school has dropped significantly. Even in the time I have been teaching

    • Capitalism (much like religion) poisons everything it touches.

    • Public universities are not for profit institutions and in general neither of the people running them. I say in general because there are some extremely corrupt Republican governors that have put cronies in charge of the public universities. Arizona's public university system currently has a massive budget problem because the previous Republican governor put a crony in charge and he bought a diploma mill using the universities cash... A diploma mill that he personally had a stake in. The now Democratic gove

    • Even public schools?

      You realize the state school system is ---huge--- and most kids go to a public university/college, right?

      • I'm talking universities and community colleges... in Canada, Ontario.. while roger.w.moore says they are non-profit, and I don't doubt that, but I'm saying you can see the expansion, around here the big boys, universities are doing great business... the budgets are hundreds of millions... look at the jobs... the staff at one local U is around 5000 ... 15.000-20,000 students... construction of new buildings going up constantly ... it's business... good for the local economy in many ways... rental housing...

        • Yes, my school is/was overbook staff and 40k students. Public university, not private. Yet they cranked costs along with the private school when the government stepped in to the student loan business.

          So my tax dollars went in from the job I had to pay my fees, which went up, so I had to work more to pay more taxes to cover my fees from both sides. At a public school. Non-profit. Government run/owned.

          No business. Just ganking students because they could, thanks to the government.

          • That's "over 20k staff".

            • There you go. I call that business.
              I think most people would imagine "non-profit" somehow means "charity". It doesn't.
              They didn't raise your tuition out of charity.
              Non-profit, in Canada anyways, is a legal designation you can assume when filing taxes.
              and: "The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) tax services offices are responsible for deciding if an organization qualifies for tax-exempt status as a non-profit organization."
              The ciiteria that CRA uses is quite vague, so there is plenty of room for the accountants to

  • There hope for the public yet (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @01:17PM (#64558587) Journal

    Apparently Americans are getting smarter!

    There are EXACTLY two reasons to study anything, or pursue education in a given field.

    1) Personal interest and satisfaction (and with that comes a personally assigned valuation)

    2) Opportunities it may afford.

    Cost should be the PRIMARY factor when it comes to deciding what to study and where to do it.

    • (3) At some point, aptitude and compatibility (for lack of better words) for the chosen field should play into continuing those studies. For example, some people just aren't going to be great, or even good, brain surgeons (and you want yours to be great, trust me) no matter their interest and/or ability to pay for that education.

    • Re: There hope for the public yet (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 1s44c ( 552956 ) on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @01:31PM (#64558621)

      People want the opportunities, they also like to eat and pay rent while getting educated. Other countries have this figured out.

      An educated person is an asset to the entire country, not just themselves. An uneducated person is a burden to the entire country, not just themselves.

    • Yeah if it's in the interests of the nation to have an educated population (thus making better workers and perhaps better voters) then national policy should reflect that. It was a big mistake to try to save money by guaranteeing student loans instead of subsidizing education directly, that's where all the problems stem from.

      And it doesn't help that this has become politicized -- one team tries to prevent education because the uneducated vote for them, other team wants education for the sake of getting more

    • would say that education today is really more of a trade school, and you don't need to worry so much about cost as you do about ROI. If it is a cheap degree (is there such a thing in the US today?) does the job outlook support your getting that degree? I have met a bunch of Liberal Arts Majors that never in their life thought about whether a job would be there for them with their degree, just presumed it to be so, and now are stuck in jobs that pay shit and don't cover their loans

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dargaud ( 518470 )

      Cost should be the PRIMARY factor when it comes to deciding what to study and where to do it.

      I COMPLETELY disagree. CAPABILITIES should be the primary factor when it comes to deciding what and where to study. In many countries studies are free but you have to go though one (or more) grueling exams before you can, usually at 18. I'm not saying it's a perfect system, but it eliminates the rich trust fund kid (who will anyway find some other way to fake his way up) and allows poor but bright kids to study. Unfortunately those who are bright but fare poorly under the stress of exams are left by the roa

      • Re:There hope for the public yet (Score:4, Interesting)

        by HiThere ( 15173 ) <charleshixsn@@@earthlink...net> on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @03:02PM (#64558913)

        No. While capabilities are extremely important, so is interest. E.g., I am a capable artist...but I don't like working at it. (I developed the skill as an excuse to spend more time with my wife. Now that she'd dead, I have no real interest, even though I intended to keep it up as a memorial to her.) [FWIW, my profession was programmer/analyst. And I think I was pretty good at it. And that's where my interest remains.]

        You don't want professionals who aren't interested in their jobs. I've seen the pictures I turn out when she's not around to motivate me.

      • So average kids can't go to school?

        • No, average kids shouldn't go to university, they should go to school and finish school. That's what makes them average. The greatest lie anyone ever told is every parent saying their kids can be anything they dream of. The reality is many lack the discipline to build the required intelligence early on and it hampers them in higher education.

          I've seen "engineers" get through engineering degrees nearly getting kicked out of university in the process, then go on to cause real damage and have their engineering

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      That's a terrible idea because you end up with too many people in some fields, and not enough in others. Fields that don't pay particularly well but which are still important get neglected. For a nation it causes skills shortages.

      It also prevents us from getting some really talented people in one field, because they decided that another field they were less good at was likely to pay more. Many important innovations have come from relatively poorly paid engineers, and a lot of good work has been done by low

  • This is America, and no one will hold your hand and stop you from wasting your hard-earned dollars on booze, slot machines, and now legal weed and useless academic credentials.

    Colleges and universities have absolutely zero incentive to control costs because they exist in a system where the customer and the payer are no necessarily one and the same. Whether it's Mom and Dad footing the bill for Junior to fuck around in Bullshit Studies and Find Himself(TM) for six years or Biden to "cancel" student loans, th

    • "Bullshit studies" are another red herring in education. If you look at the hard data, the problem majors are the ones that sound like they carry a career path to the uninformed but actually don't. The most popular majors are business and psychology. But a business degree doesn't really get you anywhere in business (outside a few top programs like Penn Wharton) and a psych degree doesn't really qualify you to do anything other than go to grad school.

      The student loan defaulters overwhelmingly attended for-pr

      • Psychology, Communications, English, and Business were well-known bullshit majors for decades.

        • Those were also well known majors for the hot crazy chicks.

          Mmmm, mmmm, mmmmm, I especially loved those psych chicks. They had a special kind of crazy going on.

        • Plenty of people (especially people who are the first in their family to attend college) genuinely have no idea that a business major is not a great path to gainful employment.

      • And, alas, the amount of real information for young people to find out what degrees are useful is out there but you have to know you need to seek it out. Many (most?) listen to youtube videos and who on earth is the 'internet influencer' in them? They listen to guidance counselors, maybe, and that's pretty useless. And so on. What a charlie foxtrot.

    • Colleges and universities have absolutely zero incentive to control costs

      Today's students are extremely price-sensitive and competitive pricing is essential for all but the top-tier elite institutions (who can basically charge whatever they want because they can easily find enough students to fill the seats).

  • Ivy Tuition is a Red Herring (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nealric ( 3647765 ) on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @01:40PM (#64558651)

    Statements like "Ivy league universities now cost $90k a year!" are eye-catching, but not particularly helpful to understanding the college cost dilemma. The Ivies practice extreme price discrimination. The only families actually paying those numbers are earning $400k+. Plus, any student capable of getting into Harvard could almost certainly get a full-ride scholarship somewhere. Almost nobody drops out of Harvard or Stanford purely because of cost. Add to that, only a tiny minority of U.S. students attend such extremely selective schools.

    For the middle and working class, the biggest cost barrier is more about the opportunity cost from having to devote yourself to school instead of paid employment. College presents a devil's dilemma: if you go full-time, you are going to have to borrow substantially to support yourself. If you go part time, you risk life getting in the way of completing your studies. That's not going to change regardless of what tuition costs (though tuition can add insult to injury, especially in states where public funding for universities has been replaced by tuition). That's one reason why people are willing to pay big $$$ to for-profit colleges of dubious merit. The primary selling point of for-profits is that they will work around your schedule.

    Though not mentioned in the article, the luxury dorms and fancy gyms you see universities putting up are also a red herring. The reason why they put those in is to attract full-fare out of state students, which are extremely lucrative for many state schools. The idea is that they are net money makers for the schools. Those full-fare out of state students tend to be the children of relatively wealthy parents who can't get into the most selective private schools. Those fancy gyms aren't really the things putting more average middle class students in debt.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by skam240 ( 789197 )

      College presents a devil's dilemma: if you go full-time, you are going to have to borrow substantially to support yourself. If you go part time, you risk life getting in the way of completing your studies. That's not going to change regardless of what tuition costs

      I worked my way through college with zero debt when I was done in the 00's. It wasnt easy and I was broke all the time but I did it. The problem today is that it's even harder to do as such but a lot of that has to do with the increased cost of living, rents have gone up everywhere. Two years at a junior college and two years at a state school really isnt THAT expensive (when one considers what one is receiving) even today. The problem is people want that 4 years at one school college experience and thus sp

      • The data on JCs isn't particularly good as a path to a 4-year degree. About 16% of JC students get bachelor's degrees within 6 years of matriculating. If there is a problem, it's not that students are failing to start at JCs.

        https://www.highereddive.com/n... [highereddive.com].

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        That's great for you, but also some students need more time than is allowed if they have to also work. Some people just need longer to learn stuff, maybe because they learn better through practice rather than reading, or because they need to learn more around the subject than someone who has more of a background in it.

        In many European countries, university is either free or at least subsidised to the point where students don't have to work much, if at all. That's how it should be, countries need skilled wor

  • Meanwhile in Belgium... (Score:3)

    by Koen Lefever ( 2543028 ) on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @01:44PM (#64558657)

    The cost of Ivy League schools is nearing $90,000 a year

    The cost of a university bachelor/master degree is a bit over €1000 per year for EU citizens [www.vub.be] (or between €128 and €600 for those in a low income category [kuleuven.be]), and between €4000 and €8000 for non-EU citizens.

    If you go to a really expensive private (non-subsidized) school, enrollment can cost up to €15000 [study.eu], but those are really exceptions.

    A PhD costs between €500 and €600 (no missing zeroes!) for the first and the last year, the years in between are free (as in beer).

  • Any time in STEM is likely valuable (Score:3)

    by drnb ( 2434720 ) on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @01:46PM (#64558661)

    Given that they lack a degree or credential to show for their time enrolled, they are often worse off than if they never enrolled to begin with

    Nope. Any time in STEM is probably valuable. Here's a CS example. A friend, both of us among a group that started out as hobbyist programmers in high school and continued while we attended two local colleges, never graduated. He had about two years of CS and a couple EE classes. His resume was honest, it said something like:

    "Attended such and such university focusing on CS. Classes included "Data Structures", "Analysis of Algorithms", "Computer Architecture", and Embedded Systems".

    He did well on any programming test he was given and no one really cared he did not have a degree. He had what most employers considered the most important part of a degree program. The foundational first two years.

    • Software is a relatively unique field in that many employers are more interested in hard skills than a degree (perhaps in-part because hard skills for software development can be tested in the context of the interview process). By contrast, I don't think 2 years of a biology degree (or even non-software engineering) really gets you much in the employment market.

      • Historically, sure... I've had a lucrative 30 year career in IT without ever having had a degree.

        But the rise in middle-man sites like Indeed has made shortlisting your applicants to those with a degree as easy as checking one box. And no matter how great the rest of your resume is, the heartless efficiency of the automation will kick you to the curb without any chance for intervention.

        And with the flood of folks being ejected from large organizations, the number of applicants to any position has made those

        • People have been complaining about that stuff ever since online applications were a thing. Before automation, it was mindless HR drones who didn't understand tech. But software remains one of the few professional fields open to non-degree holders. The most skilled applicants don't need to apply through automated sites. They've made connections in the industry.

          • That is true. Who you know matters. It's how I got the position I'm in now, after spending a few months applying cold and hearing nothing but silence, despite being a perfect fit for many of the positions. This summer I officially retire, so it's no longer a concern for me. But educational inflation is real.

          • Wouldn't a truly skilled programmer submit their resume *despite* the automation filters?
            "How did this get in here?"
            "Hire me and I'll tell you." :-)

            • Well, you could straight up lie, I suppose. And people do. Having been in hiring positions in my career, I've seen lies on all scales. And that might be fine for some industries. But let's say you're applying to one where the position actually has danger associated with it. Imagine you're a developer on the MCAS software for Boeing. Then when the shit hits the fan, the lawyers descend, and it turns out that a team member lied about their credentials... even if not one line of code in production is tied to y

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by drnb ( 2434720 )

        By contrast, I don't think 2 years of a biology degree (or even non-software engineering) really gets you much in the employment market.

        It depends. If applying for a job as a technician rather than engineer I expect if would help.

  • I'll start this little anecdote off with my own lackluster credentials: I only have an Associate's Degree from a community college. (That's the two-year degree that practically nobody cares about, in case you've forgotten.) I earned that degree over twenty years ago, and my reason for stopping there? Quite bluntly, it was nothing more than I had absolutely no interest in continuing my "higher" education beyond that. For the most part, it bored me, and I viewed it as a waste of my time.

    Thing is, recruiters/human resource critters basically stopped asking me about my degree at least ten years ago. Oh, I still to this day see the occasional job listing that "requires" a higher degree... but in my field, (software engineering) years of experience usually trumps any lack of a degree. Experience and various other qualifications that you can pick up along the way while you're in the work force quickly become far more critical than whatever the heck you did during those few short years after high school.

    All of that is to say: for most people and for most careers, college is little more than a single bullet point on a resume. It means that you (probably) know some things, and that you're (probably) capable of completing assigned tasks. Competent HR people are well aware of this, and really only accept that piece of paper as a proxy for experience for their low-level positions; higher level positions necessitate an interview from someone who definitely knows some things and who can (usually) sus out candidates who are just pretending to know some things.

    I make a very decent living, these days... and I don't regret abandoning academia "prematurely" in the least. Could a Bachelor's degree have jump-started my career, better than what I managed without? Maybe... that's not at all certain. Would I be any better off today? Extremely unlikely.

    But critically: would I still be paying off student loans? Almost certainly.

  • ...when if you wanted to learn things beyond a basic education, College was your only viable choice. Now we have the Internet, where you can pretty much learn anything you want to, on your own, if you put your mind to it. Now, there are clearly still professions, such as becoming a Medical Doctor, where College still has clear advantages. But for every case where that still applies, there are probably a dozen where it doesn't.
  • Personally I think part of high school graduation requirements should be a course on how to calculate Return On Investment, with a mandatory project to calculate ROI on going to college for whatever the degree the student is thinking of pursuing. Make sure they include not just real costs but also opportunity costs, chances of finding a job in an area where those students would like to live (demand vs. number of people in the field), etc. Then have a final group project where classmates compare ROI's for di
  • Cost of living is going up and up so less people have the luxury to follow their passions if there's insufficient income at the end of the study journey... Unfortunately that means that many study options are a poor return on investment or simply a waste of money.

  • "lack of remote options at 70 percent"

    I imagine that almost no student who applies to a traditional four-year college thinks about remote options. The demographic that desires remote options is very different, probably older and already working and looking more at online degrees.

  • 700 dollars. That's what a year of university costs in Belgium.

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