US student debt question

[mr friendly guy]

I have seen this issue come up on the Alyona show a few times, but perhaps this latest video from RT might sum it up better despite a somewhat sensationalist title. So as a non American I thought I might ask fellow members a few questions about this issue.

My questions are

1. Will there come a point (due to economic conditions and the size of the debt) where its simply more "bang for your buck" for poor / middle class people to simply get right into the work force without a degree? In which case

2. Does it lead to a significant "dumbing down" of society, particularly with things like science, an issue particularly problematic in some areas of science given the propensity for anti science ideas to pop up, eg climate change denial, Intelligent Design etc.

3. In the video some students are suing their university for "exaggerating how easy it is to get a job once you get this degree". For those more versed in law, is there actually a case to be made here?

4. When I graduated in 2003/04 my outstanding student (HECS) debt was around $37 000 AUD. One of the students in the video had $150 K which dwarfs mine at the time of graduation. One of the students in the video had less (using exchange rates) than mine.

So what seems to the mean student debt graduates are saddled with?

5. Are there politicians proposing measures to tackle this issue? How likely are such measures to be enacted in law, ie how likely to pass both houses?

[Purple]

1. Will there come a point (due to economic conditions and the size of the debt) where its simply more "bang for your buck" for poor / middle class people to simply get right into the work force without a degree?

If I may, I would like to suggest a corronary to #1. That being:
1b. Considering that there are not enough jobs for people with degrees and that much of the industry has been taken to the 3rd world. Is there actually a sufficient number of jobs for non college educated people at all that would enable something like that to happen? Or is it more of a case of there being few jobs for college educated people but even fewer for the others? And if the case is the later, what effect will that have on the general status of the working class?

[Simon_Jester]

I have seen this issue come up on the Alyona show a few times, but perhaps this latest video from RT might sum it up better despite a somewhat sensationalist title. So as a non American I thought I might ask fellow members a few questions about this issue.

My questions are

1. Will there come a point (due to economic conditions and the size of the debt) where its simply more "bang for your buck" for poor / middle class people to simply get right into the work force without a degree? In which case

2. Does it lead to a significant "dumbing down" of society, particularly with things like science, an issue particularly problematic in some areas of science given the propensity for anti science ideas to pop up, eg climate change denial, Intelligent Design etc.

3. In the video some students are suing their university for "exaggerating how easy it is to get a job once you get this degree". For those more versed in law, is there actually a case to be made here?

4. When I graduated in 2003/04 my outstanding student (HECS) debt was around $37 000 AUD. One of the students in the video had $150 K which dwarfs mine at the time of graduation. One of the students in the video had less (using exchange rates) than mine.

So what seems to the mean student debt graduates are saddled with?

5. Are there politicians proposing measures to tackle this issue? How likely are such measures to be enacted in law, ie how likely to pass both houses?

1) Some would argue that this is already the case. It depends almost entirely, and will likely continue to depend almost entirely, your specific choice of what you get a degree in (nuclear engineering makes it easier to pay off your loans than art history).
2) Very possibly. Then again, it's not clear that society was significantly more ignorant back when only 25% of the population was going to college instead of 50% or 60% or whatever it is now. Scientific illiteracy is a complicated problem, and the modern "diploma mill" approach taken by universities is ill equipped to solve it. Increasingly, American universities model themselves as businesses, in the business of selling credentials and certification to paying students. Students understandably place a lot of pressure on the professors and the system to pass, because there's not much worse than blowing fifty thousand dollars on a degree you never actually get. But to ensure passes, you get pressure to dumb down curriculum, expose the students only to material they 'need' which often doesn't include scientific literacy training, and inflate grades in the science courses they do take to the point where you can get an A and wander off to forget everything you ever learned in a week.
3) Probably not. The university is not legally liable for the state of the job market several years in the future, at the time you graduate, when they talk to you at the time you enter the university.
4) Wish I knew.
5) Most of the obvious ways to tackle this issue are politically impractical unless the government can find more money and less deadlocking. So as usual, I'm betting that the answer is "no, nothing is going to be done about this except possibly bureaucratic reforms the president can do on his own, or actively counterproductive moves by the Republican Party."

[Dave]

5) Most of the obvious ways to tackle this issue are politically impractical unless the government can find more money and less deadlocking. So as usual, I'm betting that the answer is "no, nothing is going to be done about this except possibly bureaucratic reforms the president can do on his own, or actively counterproductive moves by the Republican Party."

What solutions were you thinking of, and why are they impractical?

Since the government is presumably spending money guaranteeing loans that default, perhaps they could save money by extending fewer loans? (and passing laws that allow students to use bankruptcy to escape debt)

Of course, as you say, the current state of Congress makes this difficult, and doesn't deal with the failures in education at the high school level that presumably lead to employers seeking college degrees rather than high school diploma.

[HMS Conqueror]

On 2., most peoples' education is worthless and certainly doesn't teach them anything about science.

This is really the only interesting point. If education really improved economic productivity for most people, they wouldn't complain about the (already subsidised) cost, and the worthwhile education will survive the removal of subsidy. There is some education in the US that will pay back tremendously even at the market rate for a lot of people - EMT training for instance - but sending everyone to study liberal arts and pretend to be 19th century gentlemen is a cultural brainbug that only wastes time and money.

[Spoonist]

I don't know if it is misleading enough for a legal case, but the universities definitely aren't telling the whole truth in these commercials.

see here:
http://www.collegiatetimes.com/stories/ ... ng-schools

Earlier this month, eight law firms took to the allegations and banded together to sue 12 law schools. The main allegations revolve around the premise that these law schools lured in graduates with high percentages of employment post-graduation and inflated salary statistics.

That is not just the students but proffessional law firms.

[Broomstick]

1. Will there come a point (due to economic conditions and the size of the debt) where its simply more "bang for your buck" for poor / middle class people to simply get right into the work force without a degree?

That has always been the case for some people. There are a certain percentage of entrepreneurs who establish a successful business THEN go off and get a degree. There are a certain percentage of people who start college then drop out to become extremely successful (Bill Gates, for example). There are companies that are less interested in the modern MBA and still do their own in-house training and education (McDonald's)

However, right now, college degrees are so common that even if a degree is not required or needed for a job, having one confers a significant advantage. This will remain true for some time. Thus, those who get no college at all will continue to be at a disadvantage, even if some folks overcome that obstacles spectacularly. The only way someone going directly into the workforce instead of college is going to increase their odds of success is if they are unusually literate in regards to economics and personal finance - which is not a characteristic common among the middle class/poor in the US. That, and have some means of starting their own business - right now college graduates are having a terrible time finding work, much less someone without them. You can't enter the work force if no one will hire you.

The current situation almost forces one to get a degree, crushing debt or no.

2. Does it lead to a significant "dumbing down" of society, particularly with things like science, an issue particularly problematic in some areas of science given the propensity for anti science ideas to pop up, eg climate change denial, Intelligent Design etc.

No. I read/saw something recently where it was stated the majority of anti-vaxxers in the US are college educated. Most degrees in the US require only a bare minimum of dumbed-down science. A college degree is no guarantee of critical thinking, logic, or a good base in science/math/any other subject.

3. In the video some students are suing their university for "exaggerating how easy it is to get a job once you get this degree". For those more versed in law, is there actually a case to be made here?

That is currently being tested. There really is a group of law students taking their college to court over this. On a related topic, some colleges have been threatened with loss of accreditation and/or being forced out of certain government programs due to such a low percentage of their admitted students graduating. The question is partly what does and does not constitute fraudulent advertising.

4. When I graduated in 2003/04 my outstanding student (HECS) debt was around $37 000 AUD. One of the students in the video had $150 K which dwarfs mine at the time of graduation. One of the students in the video had less (using exchange rates) than mine.

This is situation is partly a matter of changes over time. When I graduated I had just a few thousand in debt which I was able to pay off on time even while working minimum wage jobs with occasional episodes of unemployment. It would have been impossible for me to acquire $30,000 getting an undergraduate degree at the time because no one was lending students that kind of money. No one. If you couldn't get enough money to pay your tuition you dropped out until you could earn more, resulting in some people taking 10 years to get a "4 year degree" but that's how you did it back then. Then again, in those days people really didn't give a rat's ass if you took a year or two extra to get that degree, it just showed grit and determination. Now, with college degrees being as common as dirt, if you didn't get that undergrad degree in 4 years you're scum and if you took 4 years, instead of cramming it into 3 by never taking a summer break and/or massive class load you're just barely acceptable. The only way to get a 4 year degree in 3 is being doing literally nothing else for three years, including working for a living, so you get people running up six digit debt due to not only needing to pay for tuition and books/supplies but also every other damn thing when they have absolutely no other income other than loans.

Back when I was going to college only someone like a doctor could run up $100,000+ student debt, because only someone heading into something like medicine could convince anyone to lend them that sort of money - an MD is as close to "guaranteed job" as you're likely to see, and the jobs paid extremely well, so there was relatively little risk in lending huge sums to someone in medical school. Then they started lending money like that to art history majors. Fast forward to current mess.

So what seems to the mean student debt graduates are saddled with?

According to US New and World Report (which does considerable reporting on education and rates schools yearly) the average US student debt on graduation is $25,250 which I assume is what you meant. If you meant the actual "mean" I don't know.

5. Are there politicians proposing measures to tackle this issue? How likely are such measures to be enacted in law, ie how likely to pass both houses?

There are proposals to allow repayments based on income rather than a set amount, to allow debt discharge in bankruptcy, and various other proposals but their prospect of actually being enacted don't look good at this point.

[phongn]

Now, with college degrees being as common as dirt, if you didn't get that undergrad degree in 4 years you're scum and if you took 4 years, instead of cramming it into 3 by never taking a summer break and/or massive class load you're just barely acceptable. The only way to get a 4 year degree in 3 is being doing literally nothing else for three years, including working for a living, so you get people running up six digit debt due to not only needing to pay for tuition and books/supplies but also every other damn thing when they have absolutely no other income other than loans.

Uh, what? That's not true at all.

[El Moose Monstero]

On 2., most peoples' education is worthless and certainly doesn't teach them anything about science.

This is really the only interesting point. If education really improved economic productivity for most people, they wouldn't complain about the (already subsidised) cost, and the worthwhile education will survive the removal of subsidy. There is some education in the US that will pay back tremendously even at the market rate for a lot of people - EMT training for instance - but sending everyone to study liberal arts and pretend to be 19th century gentlemen is a cultural brainbug that only wastes time and money.

Surely it's better to have an educated populace than an ignorant one? Education doesn't necessarily have to be economically feasible to have worth. I'm just giving an opinion here, but I've often felt that the danger of people only doing degrees which are explicitly going to lead to some sort of financial careers is that it says education is only a pathway to money rather than something desirable in of itself or something which offers cultural enrichment. I don't think that the government spending money to let people do something other than make money is a waste; if that were the case, why not simply cut all arts funding full stop?

Also, would you then get an ivory tower going? If only the people who are going to go on to be economically sucessful go to university, and the majority does not, then you'll end up with all the information being in the hands of a minority rather than more evenly distributed. That reminds me of the priests reading the bible in latin, to be honest. I think it would promote an anti-intellectual feeling, and I think given a choice, I'd rather have people complaining about layabout students than about those dirty intellectuals.

Under an attitude like the above, I'd never have become a volcanologist. Statistically, the chances of ever getting into volcanology successfully in the UK were pretty remote. I got the chance to do a PhD, I knew it probably wouldn't go anywhere and I knew that something so specialised as volcanoes might be difficult to translate back into the working world afterwards. I chose to do it because it meant I got the chance to study volcanoes for three years, even if it never came to anything, I thought it was worth doing. This is where UK tuition fee rises come in for me; if I'd had the debt that students will now (even though it is less than the US), I'd not have done a PhD and would have gone off to find a job to pay off the loan straight from the BSc. As it happened, I turned out to hit a lucky jackpot and managed to actually go beyond the PhD, and have got a well paid job out of it. But if I'd taken a more economically oriented attitude, I'd never have gone into it in the first place. I'd be working in one of the environmental consultancies or environmental chemical labs, I expect. Probably equally happy, but I'd say I'm probably a lot more spiritually enriched this way.

EDIT: I do feel that if you are doing a degree where it is going to be difficult to find work afterwards, this information should be communicated to you. If someone wants to do a degree in 'David Beckham studies', that's up to them, but they should be given the best careers advice possible to go with it. I feel that this is something which *is* lacking.

[Broomstick]

Now, with college degrees being as common as dirt, if you didn't get that undergrad degree in 4 years you're scum and if you took 4 years, instead of cramming it into 3 by never taking a summer break and/or massive class load you're just barely acceptable. The only way to get a 4 year degree in 3 is being doing literally nothing else for three years, including working for a living, so you get people running up six digit debt due to not only needing to pay for tuition and books/supplies but also every other damn thing when they have absolutely no other income other than loans.

Uh, what? That's not true at all.

There is this thing called "exaggeration to make a point", sometime abbreviated to "hyperbole".

In my post-lay-off seeking of work I actually WAS told, multiple times, by both head hunters and HR people I contacted for tips on job seeking that yes, in fact, taking more than four years to get a four year degree IS, in fact, held against you by quite a few employers, and that most would instantly pick someone getting a degree in three years over four, to the extent they'd shit-can the four-year students as soon as a three-year showed up. They won't tell you that during an interview, of course, but that's reality these days.

Of course, some companies don't give a damn how long you took to get a degree or other credential, just that you have it. Just don't assume that's the given any more.

And yes, some people can do a four year degree in three years without going into ruinous debt and/or while holding down a job but they are EXCEPTIONS, not the rule. I also suspect they aren't going for a particularly rigorous degree, either.

[Broomstick]

EDIT: I do feel that if you are doing a degree where it is going to be difficult to find work afterwards, this information should be communicated to you. If someone wants to do a degree in 'David Beckham studies', that's up to them, but they should be given the best careers advice possible to go with it. I feel that this is something which *is* lacking.

Agreed.

I went in to such a degree, but my college was quite upfront about the difficulties in getting a job in a related field. A point was made that most of the professors were teaching because, despite being full-time artists with professional success (many of them participating in international shows and invitationals) they weren't making enough money to get by without a "day job", in their case, teaching. There was a constant emphasis on fall-back skills, how to juggle a day job and the arts, mandatory courses in small business/personal finance, copyright law, accounting, and other related subjects, and so on. It other words, it wasn't just about smearing paint on a canvas, we actually had an education that would help us turn our passion into a career, but cautioned that there were no guarantees of success.

From what I hear about the place today that is no longer the case. Oh, the professors are all still artists with day jobs to make ends meet, but the up front honesty about the downsides and pitfalls to choosing that college path seems to be lacking. Sad, really.

[HMS Conqueror]

Surely it's better to have an educated populace than an ignorant one? Education doesn't necessarily have to be economically feasible to have worth. I'm just giving an opinion here, but I've often felt that the danger of people only doing degrees which are explicitly going to lead to some sort of financial careers is that it says education is only a pathway to money rather than something desirable in of itself or something which offers cultural enrichment. I don't think that the government spending money to let people do something other than make money is a waste; if that were the case, why not simply cut all arts funding full stop?

Also, would you then get an ivory tower going? If only the people who are going to go on to be economically sucessful go to university, and the majority does not, then you'll end up with all the information being in the hands of a minority rather than more evenly distributed. That reminds me of the priests reading the bible in latin, to be honest. I think it would promote an anti-intellectual feeling, and I think given a choice, I'd rather have people complaining about layabout students than about those dirty intellectuals.

The most cost effective way to obtain information (and imo also the most effective) is to buy books from Amazon. I don't expect that is going anywhere. The fundamental problem is most people are neither capable of nor interested in learning what scientists and engineers think is important. Most degrees are about producing essays summarising other essays, and students grudgingly do it because they expect a financial reward and social status at the end.

So absent the economic aspect, degrees are hobbies. I think that, first of all, it is wrong to make other people work to subsidise what is essentially a hobby. And secondly, I think it is wasteful to subsidise a hobby that most of the participants do not enjoy.

Under an attitude like the above, I'd never have become a volcanologist.

1. Vulcanology is a specialised technical field. Most people are going to study media studies or psychology, which impart no particular skills.

2. While it's important to your life no doubt, what's the loss to society from you not being a vulcanologist?

[Broomstick]

While it's important to your life no doubt, what's the loss to society from you not being a vulcanologist?

Society benefits from vulcanologist because volcanoes can be quite hazardous and increasing our knowledge base about them has, in recent decades, enabled timely evacuations to occur prior to eruptions, thereby preventing tens of thousands of potential deaths and injuries, and in some cases also allowing for preservation of material items that might have otherwise been destroyed. This, I believe is a net benefit to society. Because our knowledge of volcanoes is imperfect we still need people to study them, which is why we need new vulcanologists in the pipeline.

That said, we don't need a LOT of vulcanologists to get the job done. While we need them no, we don't specifically need El Moose to be one of them. There are ways to address the problem of needing new vulcanologist students but not wanting too many of them, but that's not something I wish to address in this post.

Time was, having a degree in ANYTHING conferred a job search advantage, so that someone who had been studying volcanoes but either didn't get a related job or decided that no, this wasn't for him after all could get a decent job and live comfortably. That is less and less the case. In the old days maybe you couldn't use your degree as originally intended but you could recoup some value out of it, merely by the advantage it gave you in job seeking elsewhere. Nowadays, the "wrong" degree subject is neither a small advantage nor even neutral, it can represent a loss where you wind up worse off than if you had never gone to college because you're working in the same minimum-wage shit jobs you would have had anyway, but now you've got crushing debt on top of it.

[evilsoup]

Jesus fucking Christ.
DO you really see all of human life in these little boxes, HMS fuckhead? SCIENCE and cold industrial metal and fuck everything else? Can you not see the blatantly fucking obvious benefits of an educated population? I mean, yes, it would be nice if more people were taught a bit more critical reasoning skills and about the scientific method etc (I'd put this more down to schools than universities) but fucking hell. A hobby?!

Now see, I think providing for people's education is something the state should be doing. It brings about better civil discourse, less willing to bow down to authority, all that good stuff. And poetry speaks to the soul; the arts provoke and change and, yes, entertain - and that is important, because I don't want to live in a world of pure profits and the machine.

Oh, and buying books from amazon? Shit, that's no way to go about getting educated: you need to talk things out, bounce ideas off of other people. Now, that could easily be done outside of the university system (I would prefer a society where it did), but it doesn't - and there's something to be said of learning from experts.

SO in conclusion, nationalise the universities.

PS I'd rather speak to a media studies student about literature and film and so on, than an engineer.

[El Moose Monstero]

Who writes the books to buy from Amazon in fifty years time if every subject not deemed to be financially viable is confined to a hobby, to be investigated in your spare time? Not every hobbyist can afford access to the kinds of resources you can get access to at the universities. I'd only need to buy as few as 3 or 4 research papers online a month, depending on the journal admittedly, to equal the cost of my student loan repayments. A weekend trip from where I was born to the British library to get access to photocopy journals (after all, why would universities streamlining to financially beneficial subjects keep the old subscriptions around) would cost more.

Your point about people not enjoying their degrees is, in my opinion, more about improving access to information and making choices clearer. If someone doesn't want to go to university, they shouldn't feel pressured to do so and there should be just as many opportunities for them without a degree than with one. I'm not responding to your first point because I feel that the argument could be applied to any aspect of education after you've taught someone to read and write - why teach french when you can learn it yourself on your spare time after you've got a job?

Whether society has anything to lose by me not being a volcanogist, I don't know. I've made a significant contribution to the specific area I work in, which has implications for a number of areas - including ash impacts on jet engines, volcanic climate effects, and environmental impacts of ashfall. Although there's no immediate monetary impact, I'd say that the contribution is a part of a greater whole which does ultimately benefit society. However, you could equally argue that anyone reasonably competent could have done the work I did and come up with the same conclusions. Although if any degree which isn't monetarily sound is confined to hobbies in your spare time, I'm not sure how that research would ultimately have come about.

[evilsoup]

No moose you don't understand, it doesn't have an immediate monetary value and is therefore worthless.

[phongn]

In my post-lay-off seeking of work I actually WAS told, multiple times, by both head hunters and HR people I contacted for tips on job seeking that yes, in fact, taking more than four years to get a four year degree IS, in fact, held against you by quite a few employers, and that most would instantly pick someone getting a degree in three years over four, to the extent they'd shit-can the four-year students as soon as a three-year showed up. They won't tell you that during an interview, of course, but that's reality these days.

Of course, some companies don't give a damn how long you took to get a degree or other credential, just that you have it. Just don't assume that's the given any more.

And yes, some people can do a four year degree in three years without going into ruinous debt and/or while holding down a job but they are EXCEPTIONS, not the rule. I also suspect they aren't going for a particularly rigorous degree, either.

If we're going to have a war of anecdotes here, in some of the rigorous degrees (e.g. engineering, computer science, etc.) they don't really care if you take the full four years, or if you take five. And in these fields it is often expected that students should get work experience (including but not limited to paid internships). And for further anecdotes, yes, I know people in rigorous degrees who get it done fast (or even dual-major).

[Spoonist]

Isn't broomy in the chicago area though? I mean its not like the US is the same all over.

[Phantasee]

I've been told repeatedly that being 23/24 when I finish my degree, with all the various life and work experiences I've accumulated along the way, make me more employable than the 21/22 year old who went to school for three or four years and did nothing else. If nothing else, the difference in maturity gives me a leg up. So…

[HMS Conqueror]

Who writes the books to buy from Amazon in fifty years time if every subject not deemed to be financially viable is confined to a hobby, to be investigated in your spare time?

That's not what I said. You seem to have gone from 'most people shouldn't go to university' to 'the top few % of people who want to pursue an academic career shouldn't go to university'. The dramatic expansion in university enrollment in recent decades has had very little impact on this tiny proportion of students.

My point had to do with general knowledge among the vast majority of people who do not pursue academic careers and are mainly at university for the job prospects. If they are interested, knowledge is not barred to them. If they're not, university will only take more of their time and money, not give them lasting benefit.

Your point about people not enjoying their degrees is, in my opinion, more about improving access to information and making choices clearer. If someone doesn't want to go to university, they shouldn't feel pressured to do so and there should be just as many opportunities for them without a degree than with one. I'm not responding to your first point because I feel that the argument could be applied to any aspect of education after you've taught someone to read and write - why teach french when you can learn it yourself on your spare time after you've got a job?

I don't think making schoolchildren learn French is useful, and I would end compulsory education at the stage of being able to read, write and perform simple arithmetic.

Whether society has anything to lose by me not being a volcanogist, I don't know. I've made a significant contribution to the specific area I work in, which has implications for a number of areas - including ash impacts on jet engines, volcanic climate effects, and environmental impacts of ashfall. Although there's no immediate monetary impact, I'd say that the contribution is a part of a greater whole which does ultimately benefit society. However, you could equally argue that anyone reasonably competent could have done the work I did and come up with the same conclusions. Although if any degree which isn't monetarily sound is confined to hobbies in your spare time, I'm not sure how that research would ultimately have come about.

It depends what the value of that knowledge is to other people. Perhaps engine manufacturers or insurers want to know about the effect of ash enough to fund it? I do not know. Vulcanology is a technical field so not mainly the sort of thing I have in my crosshairs, but with the current system it is very difficult to tell in individual cases.

[El Moose Monstero]

No, I know, I got heated. My apologies. I was toying with it on the journey home from work - strawmanned you a bit there. Coming back to the rest after dinner.

[Col. Crackpot]

I've been told repeatedly that being 23/24 when I finish my degree, with all the various life and work experiences I've accumulated along the way, make me more employable than the 21/22 year old who went to school for three or four years and did nothing else. If nothing else, the difference in maturity gives me a leg up. So…

Precisely. As someone who is the ultimate decision maker when hiring to maintain the staffing of my bank branch, i look at seasoning and relevant work experience ahead of educational background. Given two candidates for an entry level banker position i'll take the 24 year old recent grad with some work history over the kid who finished his/her degree in 3 years. That is just logical.

Edit: stupid smartphone

[phongn]

Isn't broomy in the chicago area though? I mean its not like the US is the same all over.

Northwest Indiana, IIRC. I'm in Chicago.

[Broomstick]

If we're going to have a war of anecdotes here, in some of the rigorous degrees (e.g. engineering, computer science, etc.) they don't really care if you take the full four years, or if you take five. And in these fields it is often expected that students should get work experience (including but not limited to paid internships). And for further anecdotes, yes, I know people in rigorous degrees who get it done fast (or even dual-major).

However, a lot of people aren't in the rigorous STEM category and if you're seeking a degree in, say, marketing, accounting, or a number of other degrees that, until the Great Recession, were in demand in corporate America to one degree or another yes, it can definitely be a factor.

There are certain degrees that actually are still a pretty solid lock on getting a job but they're getting to be fewer and not everyone is in that category.

Also correct is that I am in the greater Chicago area and not everything applicable here will be applicable elsewhere, either in the US or in other parts of the world. However, Chicago is the third largest city in the US last I heard and thus represents a significant slice of the US experience.

[Simon_Jester]

5) Most of the obvious ways to tackle this issue are politically impractical unless the government can find more money and less deadlocking. So as usual, I'm betting that the answer is "no, nothing is going to be done about this except possibly bureaucratic reforms the president can do on his own, or actively counterproductive moves by the Republican Party."

What solutions were you thinking of, and why are they impractical?

Massive government tuition subsidies (impractical because there's no money), harsh government tuition limits (impractical because the federal government arguably doesn't have the right to set tuition at state or private universities) are the ones that come to mind.

Nothing else will really solve the problem in a socially acceptable way, given the apparent commitment to sending everyone to college whether they can get an economically useful degree when they get there.

Of course, as you say, the current state of Congress makes this difficult, and doesn't deal with the failures in education at the high school level that presumably lead to employers seeking college degrees rather than high school diploma.

If the federal government had the willingness, mandate, and constitutional authority to fix public schools (rather than privatizing and testing them to death) this would be fixable too...

3) Probably not. The university is not legally liable for the state of the job market several years in the future, at the time you graduate, when they talk to you at the time you enter the university.

But they are liable about lying about the odds. I can't think of a commercial where they say outright, "you will have a job after graduation", but there's plenty of misleading ones.

"95% of graduates have a job within one year of graduating". That might be a fact, but if 2/3 of those jobs are "server at the corner diner", it is pretty misleading anyway!

One private university, in their commercials, show testimonials (90% of the time from minorities and immigrants) about the great success it brings and how it was worth every penny... but don't give any statistics at all. While it might be technically true that these individuals giving the testimonials feel it was worth it, it is very misleading to imply you'll get the same results.

edit: you know, I think it says in the fine print "results not typical", but still, the narrative doesn't say anything about it.

I don't know if it is misleading enough for a legal case, but the universities definitely aren't telling the whole truth in these commercials.

Sure, but it's incredibly unlikely that any court would say that students have grounds to sue for their tuition back. A university is not a job placement agency; it is not their responsibility to see to it that you get a job, or a good job, after you graduate.

Surely it's better to have an educated populace than an ignorant one? Education doesn't necessarily have to be economically feasible to have worth. I'm just giving an opinion here, but I've often felt that the danger of people only doing degrees which are explicitly going to lead to some sort of financial careers is that it says education is only a pathway to money rather than something desirable in of itself or something which offers cultural enrichment. I don't think that the government spending money to let people do something other than make money is a waste; if that were the case, why not simply cut all arts funding full stop?

The problem is that we don't have the money as a civilization to send every single person in America to a four-year university. Not as the universities are organized, and especially not after the opportunity cost of taking all those students out of the labor force is concerned.

The current system simply 'loans' the students the money to do this, which just means they end up racking up piles of debt that only a fraction of them can pay off with a realistic amount of time and effort.

At some point we have to concentrate our resources- if we're going to subsidize education, subsidize it for the most promising students, or for the areas where our society is short on people who have the knowledge in question. We cannot afford it for everyone, and flooding the schools with mediocre students in or below the 50th percentile isn't doing anyone a lot of good- not least because to accomodate them, we're dumbing down the curriculum, and the value of that college degree is shrinking.

The most cost effective way to obtain information (and imo also the most effective) is to buy books from Amazon. I don't expect that is going anywhere.

Bullshit. For the majority of people, just gratuitously buying piles of books does not work; there's a reason we don't just plunk seven year old children down in a library and lock the doors until they're eighteen and educated.

Under an attitude like the above, I'd never have become a volcanologist.

1. Vulcanology is a specialised technical field. Most people are going to study media studies or psychology, which impart no particular skills.

2. While it's important to your life no doubt, what's the loss to society from you not being a vulcanologist?

A lack of vulcanologists can lead to things like people getting burned alive in lava, which is a considerable loss in my opinion.

Jesus fucking Christ.
DO you really see all of human life in these little boxes, HMS fuckhead? SCIENCE and cold industrial metal and fuck everything else? Can you not see the blatantly fucking obvious benefits of an educated population? I mean, yes, it would be nice if more people were taught a bit more critical reasoning skills and about the scientific method etc (I'd put this more down to schools than universities) but fucking hell. A hobby?!

Under neoliberalism, an educated population isn't necessarily desirable. In the neoliberal paradigm, for most of its population the state wants consumers and laborers, not citizens. Citizens will put limits on how much they're willing to be pushed around, and know enough about politics and history to recognize abuses and fight back. Consumer-peasants and laborer-peons do not.

If you're an Entrepreneur (TM), you need to be very informed... in specific things. But a real entrepreneur will educate themselves in everything they need to know to command and manipulate the market, whether they get a subsidized education or not.

And sure, there may not be any art in fifty years, and the sciences may atrophy one by one. But who cares? Jeff Bezos made his pile.