quote:

Originally posted by trapper189:

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:
But without the federal money so freely available, the competition would be stiff between schools. That would force schools to become more competitive, to improve... or close.
Of course, you'd have leftists whining about all the schools closing.

OK, I’m starting to catch on. Kids with low grades, poor test scores, and no money won’t be able to afford the schools that would admit them and those schools would close. Schools like UoM, UF, UCLA, UT, etc. would be unaffected.

There are hundreds of small liberal arts colleges with high acceptance rates on the brink of failure. Some provide excellent educations. Some not so much. They enroll kids and offer generous aid to get kids in the door. They can write off half or more of their inflated tuition as scholarships. Come the end of sophomore or junior year they take away some of that generous aid. The kids are invested now. They have friends and lives on campus. They’re halfway or more to graduating. Leaving might set them back a year because not all of their classes will transfer. They’re now stuck between losing the lives they’ve built on campus and their forward progress towards degrees or taking out tens of thousands of dollars in private loans offered by the school on top of the fed loans they already signed.

The school takes it away or the student loses it? On the other hand, it's wrong either way if the school makes the offer strongly suspecting the student won't be able to keep the terms of the offer.

That could be the situation one of my daughter's friends is in. I hope not. The girl did OK in high school and picked a private university she can't afford without the offer the school made rather than a public university she could afford.

quote:

Originally posted by trapper189:
The school takes it away or the student loses it? On the other hand, it's wrong either way if the school makes the offer strongly suspecting the student won't be able to keep the terms of the offer.

That could be the situation one of my daughter's friends is in. I hope not. The girl did OK in high school and picked a private university she can't afford without the offer the school made rather than a public university she could afford.

There are scholarships contingent on grades. There are grants tied to nothing. A kid can lose a merit based scholarship by not maintaining a 3.0 or whatever the terms are. Those terms are spelled out in the reward. The other case is the school withdrawing funding because they can. They can claim whatever caused it to go away but it can simply be a case of them wanting to devote the write down to an incoming freshman to entice their attendance rather than a continuing student who they can make pay closer to full freight through private loans.

quote:

Originally posted by trapper189:
Kids with low grades, poor test scores, and no money won’t be able to afford the schools that would admit them and those schools would close.

The world needs ditch diggers, too.

I agree with chellim. Not every kid can go to (and succeed in) college, or trade school for that matter. But, even those as you describe can go to (and succeed in) college. With the proper motivation, most people can raise their grades, improve their test scores, and find the finances (work, scholarships, GI Bill, grants, and loans) to get through college. Problem is, many/most kids nowadays don't have the motivation or work ethic to put in what is necessary.

Beg to disagree. As George Carlin said the average IQ is 100 and half of the people are dumber than that. If your IQ is 100 you will have a difficult time completing your coursework. No amount of studying is going to change that.

quote:

Originally posted by reloader-1:
Hey umm I know this is a forum, but there’s an actual proposal in the first post.

Do any of you want to perhaps read it and let me know what you think?

Sounds like indentured servitude.

How about if you get a 3.0 or better in high school the state agrees to pay 80% of your tuition to an in state school. If you get 3.70 or better it’s 95%. You have to maintain the grade point average while in college and you only get 120 hours paid for.

This is a the state of Georgia’s system. Paid for by the lottery. I pay less than $1,000 in tuition and lab fees a semester. And of course room and board.

My Daughter had some college credits accumulated in high school so she started with credits towards he degree so she can apply some of the 120 hours to a graduate school credits.

The systems not broken the states are.

The proposal suggested by the OP is doomed to failure. Too much money and powerful people do not want change. Having worked in a University I can attest to the fact that academics absolutely detest change.

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There are no loans now, in the proposal. Colleges are now underwriting the tuition for students, with the 20% yearly salary repayment....

Why in the world would they ever want to do that? To make a lot less money?

Even if they did go along with it... Med students maybe. They're not going to keep the lights on getting 20% of what an Art History major makes in their first 4 years.
What if I graduate law school then go sell coffee at Starbucks for the next four years just to screw ya?

quote:

reloader-1

Good thoughts and observations.
I think

- the Academia reward system (based on papers published and citations)

- the uncontrolled growth of the administrative state within universities

- the competition of affordability between the US citizen vs foreigners

- the significant cost and effort for students to study/pass non-core subjects

- the university demand for staying in dermaturiums for a portion of education

- the acceptance criteria based on race, social outreach achievements, etc


all of this is broken.

As students and parents, though, we have found that our politicians do not lead or even represent our needs in the above.

I think the existing system cannot be organically 'upgraded' (again, because our legislators are not able to understand, lead, address this).

My view is that this system has to be broken before it is rebuilt. So we should celebrate employers who do not ask for what university a person attended and what degree they received.
(Unless additional certifications such MD, etc require the specific courses).

quote:

Originally posted by reloader-1:
Hey umm I know this is a forum, but there’s an actual proposal in the first post.

Do any of you want to perhaps read it and let me know what you think?

A bit of a summary:

Your proposal is based on the premise that tuition is too expensive and thus loans are required to pay for a college education.

My post on page 1 below the one quoted above refutes that in the case of Florida and GAgator’s post on this page, page 4, above does the same for but for Georgia. It seems to be a state level problem.

There are a couple of posts by folks who successfully used loans to fund their educations.

If tuition costs and loans are not the problem, then your proposal cannot address the problem.


The problem seems to be that for a variety of reasons people are putting the taxpayers on the hook for government guaranteed loans they have no chance of paying off. The solution is get rid of government guaranteed loans. No need to make it more complicated than that.

quote:

Originally posted by Gustofer:
The world needs ditch diggers, too.

You need a Geology degree for that?

There’s a downturn in oil and gas and guy with a bachelors degree in Geology applies at McDonalds. The assistant manager is impressed and tells guy she needs to talk to the manager and leaves. When she comes back, she tells the guy she’s sorry but all of the other employees with Geology degrees have their masters.

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The solution is removing government intervention, and letting the universities and students come to a market setting rate.

Your proposal is the opposite of this. It's impossible to implement without government involvement and subject to the same problems you mention in critiquing Georgia's system. Each state's public universities are run by: the state. You want the state universities to borrow money to pay their employees and the collateral for those loans is the promise that the funds from graduates will pay it back. Who is on the hook when that doesn't work out?

Voluntary compliance with your proposal will never happen at the university level. Chances are slim any state would ever adopt it. That leaves the feds who have zero control over what state run universities do except for the feds' ability to cut off the flow of money.

chellim1 is going to love this: the answer is no public universities. It's the only way to get government out of the college education business.

quote:

The problem seems to be that for a variety of reasons people are putting the taxpayers on the hook for government guaranteed loans they have no chance of paying off. The solution is get rid of government guaranteed loans. No need to make it more complicated than that.

Yes.

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chellim1 is going to love this: the answer is no public universities. It's the only way to get government out of the college education business.

And yes.
BUT I know it's not going to happen. States have a long history of running universities (UVA was started by Thomas Jefferson), and it is Constitutional, at the State level.
At the federal level, it's not. So just get rid of the Department of Education and Pell grants and federal guaranteed student loans and any other form of federal funding or regulation.
Read the 10th amendment.

reloader.

I bought a welding helmet from a kid who went through school, became a welder, got a good job.

Made it two weeks. Quit. Became and office worker "where there is air conditioning" is what he told me.

I can point to countless people who start one thing and then change gears. Teachers often only make it one year (some not even through student teaching). Some become nurses (not easy) only to make it a short while and change their minds. Same for all sorts of jobs. Heck, online exist because of these career switchers.

Imagine the headlines, UVA holds students hostage until they work off the degree they no longer want. I know a guy who has a degree in linguistics from Texas and to this day works in a bicycle shop. Just today I saw an add for an 'influencer' that helps people get started in Tech. He has a degree in Math and mocks that he could get 'no interviews accept teaching.' This is what happens when you tell people to "do what you love" which is bull. you like math, great get a degree in it. Accept, you must ask, what do you 'do' with a Math degree. And is this a good market to go into. Look at the fine arts, get a degree in performance, and you may be the best or in the top 5% but even then getting a steady paying gig playing clarinet is not an easy life.

Mike Rowe said it best, "find what needs doing, do it, and then you will always have work"

I believe anyone that wants to should be able to go to school, make the grades fine, you get to continue. But I dont think you will be able to make the universities 'indenture' them and that system hold up. It would only work if they pay up front.

The only college that I am aware of (there are two) that do not accept federal aid of any kind is Hillsdale College and the much newer University of the People.
University of the People is essentially free, but you pay a 'service' fee if you pass the class ($450 IIRC).

I show this to my students: Not to discourage them but to create a dialog, it is not just about 'hard work' it is a lot more complex than that. And technically, the Rock was not wrong.