Posted on 12/06/2011 7:27:48 AM PST by SeekAndFind
How do you solve the problem of young adults earning worthless degrees and a truckload of debt? Three ways. One: The Chinese way, which, while characteristically direct, is probably too authoritarian for most Americans’ tastes. Two: End federal student loans. Let kids take their chances with private lenders, who’ll need assurances up front before they lay out the cash that they’ll get a return on their investment after graduation. This idea would, I assume, die a grisly death after the first round of “all Jimmy/Sally wanted to do was go to State but he/she couldn’t get the money” stories. Three: The Reynolds way.
This is a simple case of inflation: When you artificially pump up the supply of something (whether it’s currency or diplomas), the value drops. The reason why a bachelor’s degree on its own no longer conveys intelligence and capability is that the government decided that as many people as possible should have bachelor’s degrees.
There’s something of a pattern here. The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle class people.
But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay in, the middle class.
Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them. One might as well try to promote basketball skills by distributing expensive sneakers…
For higher education, the solution is more value for less money. Student loans, if they are to continue, should be made dischargeable in bankruptcy after five years — but with the school that received the money on the hook for all or part of the unpaid balance.
As our Republican frontrunner once famously said, this smacks of right-wing social engineering. And I love it. Or rather, I love the basic idea: Colleges can either pare down their curricula to majors that impart actual marketable skills or continue to push crapola on their own dime. The thing is, I’m not sure it would end up producing more skilled grads than we have now. If forced to choose between revamping their course catalogues and continuing Critical Identity Theory Studies programs, I’d bet 95 percent of colleges would go the latter route and try to absorb the resulting cost of guaranteeing their grads’ loans. Culturally, they simply can’t part with super-soft humanities programs; even if they agreed that some are expendable on their educational merits, they’re not expendable politically. Which school would want to be known in liberal academic circles as the one that thought “Marxist Symbolism in the Music of Badfinger” wasn’t important enough to save?
So what’ll happen, I take it, is that they’ll backstop these loans but shrink their student bodies accordingly to limit their overall exposure — which means some kids who really would have benefited from a college education may be locked out. And after all, the fundamental problem here isn’t that colleges offer degrees in one crap major after another; it’s that students choose to take degrees in those crap majors even though they know, or should know, that it puts them at a heavy disadvantage in a tenuous economy. If you make loans dischargeable in bankruptcy and put the old alma mater on the hook for them, the personal-responsibility calculus arguably gets worse, not better: Students will be even more free to major in crap, which in turns means fewer grads with marketable skills. I guess Glenn is thinking that once you reach a critical mass, where some huge percentage of students is majoring in crap because they know their loans are backstopped, the school will have no choice financially but to eliminate some of those majors. And if student bodies do shrink, the results won’t be entirely bad: Many kids will be spared the loan burden of a B.A., willingly or not, with more cost-effective alternatives to college sure to appear in the market to meet the new demand for higher education. Exit question: Second look at the Chinese system?
“For higher education, the solution is more value for less money. Student loans, if they are to continue, should be made dischargeable in bankruptcy after five years — but with the school that received the money on the hook for all or part of the unpaid balance.”
Sounds like an excellent idea to me. Or force the Ward Churchills, Noam Chomskys and other left wing professors to pay for the education of the students they brainwash out of their own salaries.
“Can’t” or “Won’t” repay?
T4P.
Unfortunately there’s both.
It’s more screwed up than this.
If you were to go in to buy a truck, and the only Dealer in the state said “We want you to be a ‘well-rounded’ driver, so you also have to buy a motorcycle and a car” - naturally, you will pay full price for these extra vehicles, what would you do?
We take eager minds, set to invest years of their lives in pursuit of technology, or Medical Science - and we FORCE them to purchase an obscene number of credit hours (nearly equal to the number of hours of their chosen profession) in meaningless mish-mash of “Humanities” and “Social Sciences”. These courses cost money, and some arrogant ingnoramous says “it makes them well-rounded”. No, it does not. What makes a person ‘well-rounded’ is a personal decision to learn and read into areas outside of their primary area of interest - not extortion to take a foreign langauge, learn about pre-WWII politics or an introductory course on music appreciation.
Everything costs money - even the meaningless time-wasters that we burden students with.
The author misses an important point.
The middle class is not losing because they don’t have degrees.
The middle class is losing JOBS to outsourcing and anti-American “free trade”.
Degrees didn’t build America’s middle class.
Jobs did.
Which would only lead to periodic university bailouts.
2. Direct them to the nearest mop store.
I worked my way through eight years of college without going into debt.
I made sure that I had practical degrees and marketable skills.
I also paid for four years of college for my wife. Though she was from a wealthy family--and I was from the opposite--I paid for her college after we were married because her parents were screwed-up royally, opposed the marriage (frankly, I didn't blame them), and I knew we'd never hear the end of it if they gave her the money. We slept on box springs on concrete blocks and cooked on a hotplate.
I set up a scholarship program to provide practical degrees and marketable skills to indigent people. I have no idea how many people I sent to college, but there were many!
I PAID FOR IT ALL AND NEVER WENT INTO DEBT! Worked nights--holidays--weekends.
I was a millionare at age 40. A multimillionaire at 42. And retired to live on my investments at 52!
If I can do it, anyone can.
Herman Cain did something similar. If anything, what he accomplished was tougher! He prevailed over poverty, racism, cancer, and the corporate world--and told the world how EVERYONE can do the same!
Democrat Politicians and their henchpersons in their Propaganda Machine (the MSM) have done their best to destroy him! They had to! He is the antithesis of everything they are, believe, and stand for. Cain is ascendance. They are decadence. They are the Forces of Decadence!
I know the Secret of Happiness! And the secret of ascendance. Submit to the forces of decadence at your peril.
Believe in The American Dream: liberty, justice, and prosperity for all of the people of the world.
But know well that the Forces of Decadence--The Left, the Democrat Party, Democrat Politicians, and the Democrat Propaganda Machine--will destroy it if they can.
Spot on. This is why colleges are afraid of technical certification programs.
Your also right. The USA is short 10-20 million jobs.
More degrees won’t fix this.
Their students are not allowed to take out government loans. The College has their own sources of funds and approved pools of lenders who understand that Hillsdale graduates actually learn something useful, become productive members of society and are at a very low risk for default.
Other conservative colleges (the relative handful of them) are taking a look at what Hillsdale is doing successfully and seeking to emulate them.
I know a few people who are really in trouble with student loans (and don’t even realize it yet).
A common theme of mine: Loans should only pay for tuition, not rent, the cable bill, a new I-Phone, etc....because at that point, they become elaborate credit cards.
Response - everybody deserves an education, and that includes a place to live.
My reply - work through school, take semesters off to earn money.
Response - a look in the eye like I just kicked Tiny Tim’s crutch out from underneath him.
For a large portion of our society, pursuit of higher education is viewed as a human right, which in their opinion should be free. This whole loan charade is bothersome to them - alot of paperwork to get what the government should outright give them.
I’d like to eliminate the entire program...but that’s not gonna happen. But how about some reasonable controls - tuition only, collateral, co-signers.
I know, I know, too capitalistic and too practical and too much reality for academia. We wouldn't want to sully the schools with the introduction of reality.
American college students are the new sharecroppers in our country. The university professors enslave the students with loans to pay the bloated salaries of the professors.
>I’d like to eliminate the entire program...but that’s not gonna happen. But how about some reasonable controls - tuition only, collateral, co-signers.<
To actually fix the system, it would be helpful to look at the financial aid offered to one segment of the student population at the expense of those whose parents make too much money, according to the liberal powers that be, to qualify for any discount whatsoever.
As long as you punish some students because their parents have too much (at least according to the faceless powers-that-be), in order to be “fair” to others, the system will continue to burden many young people with huge debts unimaginable just a few decades ago.
American college students are the new sharecroppers in our country. The university professors enslave the students with loans to pay the bloated salaries of the professors.
I've also been advocating this. Deferred cash flow: the college makes the loan, perhaps using the government to service the loan. Instead of getting their tuition money at the start of the semester, they finance their yearly operations from loan payments collected. If a student declares bankruptcy, the loan cash flow stops.
A large part of the mess comes from the EEOC, the various Civil Rights Acts, and the "Griggs v. Duke Power" supreme court case, which prohibited the use of written tests if they had a "disparate impact" (lower pass rate for blacks).
What is really needed is for Congress to change the Civil Rights acts so that employement placements tests are once again allowed AND that disparate impact is DISALLOWED as a basis for declaring discrimination. An employer could then administer a placement test for job openings (or use test scores from an independent testing company). A high school dropout who scores higher than a college grad gets a higher preference than the college grad.
Suddenly, if the sheepskin becomes irrelevant to the job market, fewer people will bother with the degree, and instead take whatever courses (if any) that they think are useful and helpful.
really easy, after three years student loans are dischargable in bankruptcy and the university then becomes the primary responsible party. (like a cosignor)
This will kill off worthless studies degrees.
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