#WWJVD: The High Costs of Education

a reply to: anshgujral

It's weird that this is your very first comment on ATS. Care to explain how that happened?

SPAM removed by admin

SPAM removed by admin

a reply to: JesseVentura

Very true. Can never pay them off!

SPAM removed by admin

I think higher education has a few problems:

1. Government has stepped in to make it affordable which, of course, means that the colleges quickly priced their services into the government's pocket and very quickly no one could afford college without government assistance. Very few have pockets deep enough to compete with government and government never says, "Sorry, you are now too expensive for me." so there is no incentive for colleges to keep their costs low or stop hiking them.

2. Larded down degree programs and useless degree programs. Because everyone has their college paid for and just about as much college as they want paid for, universities can afford to keep huge staffs full of faculty for every kind of academic minutiae acceptable, like underwater basket-weaving (the old joke), but since they have them, they also have to justify them. So entire classes are added to degree programs as electives or degree requirements and entire departments created with whole new degrees attached to them to justify those staff members salaries and very academic existences beyond producing papers in obscure journals only read by others with their specific areas of academic minutiae. I myself have a class on my own syllabus about obscure female playwrites in Elizabethan (and later period) England.

3. As a result of 1 and 2, too many kids can graduate with a ton of debt and a degree that isn't going to get them much more than a job as a barista at Starbucks. There are simply too many degrees available that are either outright useless unless you are good enough to actually land a job as an obscure academic in that field or could be useful but are so larded down with extraneous degree requirements that the amount of debt you pick up just earning it will guarantee that you will never earn enough at that career in question to justify having taken it up.

IMO, there is nothing wrong with expecting a person to pay their way, but we need to stop the incestuous relationship between the government and the institutions of higher education. Government, of course, has no problem with this. They get an extra indentured tax slave. Not only are people in college debt paying them on the college debt, but they are also in it for taxes, too. Those people (and my husband is still one) are being doubly screwed and my husband is in a STEM field with a respectable salary so we have some rate of return.

Degrees should be streamlined to their purpose. I understand that everyone likes the idea of education to be well rounded, but perhaps that should be a degree option in its own right and not part of every degree program like it is now. I have also always thought that the purpose of our primary and secondary public schooling was supposed to be to "provide a well-rounded education." Of course, I understand that we are also failing at that on many levels, but that is a whole other discussion.

yes, like in the first two years at a university, one is required to take phys ed.
if ya don't have the prescribed outfit and shoes every day....clean....then ya get a failing grade. it's hard enough to keep up all the other bills and an extra expenditure is stupid....so I took water safety instructor classes instead, all ya needed was swim trunks....

a reply to: ketsuko

originally posted by: GBP/JPY
yes, like in the first two years at a university, one is required to take phys ed.
if ya don't have the prescribed outfit and shoes every day....clean....then ya get a failing grade. it's hard enough to keep up all the other bills and an extra expenditure is stupid....so I took water safety instructor classes instead, all ya needed was swim trunks....

a reply to: ketsuko

Oh, yes! I even had to take the stupid phys ed thing and I was an athlete. At least I got to test out.

.

a reply to: MabelKing

..what is this? a scam?

a reply to: JesseVentura

You want to talk about the high cost of education? How about when education fails and all your plans are wrecked because life just got in the way? Life takes you for so many twists and turns that a low 17,000 college loan turns into 65,000 after you took all the forbarences and deferments you can take. The IBR program is still costly. Everytime you start to think you might be able to save some money the IBR payment plan goes up.

How about a cap on interest that can accumulate on a federal school loan? When things go bad, why should we be penalized by paying the loan almost 4 times over. The interest is still accumulating so it will be 4 times over and more. In another 20 to 50 years 6 or 7 times over. I may end up with a loan over 100,000 before long.

If you stay on the IBR for 25 years, the loan is suppose to be forgiven. I don't trust that. They will find a glitch or loophole somewhere. Somewhere they will say you don't quaify now so u still owe everything plus some and will not forgive it. If they actually did, the IRS will hit you for the forgiveness of the loan, because somehow in their twisted thinking the forgivness is now considered income.

Unfortunatly I believe this will be a burden until the day I die. I already live pay check to pay check. I suspect I will not be able to retire. When I have to quit work, I may have to join those other lost souls on the streets. I know I won't survive being homeless especially as a senior.

I can get much bleaker than this. This is my positive side. For right now I live one day at a time.

originally posted by: musicismagic

originally posted by: sdcigarpig
I think that we need more trade schools, that are more affordable than college's.

You are absolutely right.

I also agree with this. The government should at least try ways to make education affordable.

This thread is so old.

But anyhow, the govt doesn't need to intervene. People just need to stop going into debt and stop going to college. The issue will correct itself when enrollment of colleges plummets.

I agree with you and thanks for creating such a beautiful discussion. So many students leave their study for high costs and it's now a big problem at all.