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?
there are more first year seats than first year law school applicants.
law schools are high profit because it has low costs. computers, a library, classrooms, professors and presto instant profit.
some of these schools need to close.
So let me understand:
If someone pays cash-as-you-go for a degree, and it turns out worthless, “sucks to be you”.
BUT...
If someone pays put-it-on-my-tab for a degree, and it turns out worthless, the student can just eject the debt at a time s/he can afford to cycle thru bankruptcy (hey, Dad will foot housing & healthcare ‘til 26), and the school has to pay the creditor for the ACCREDITED services rendered in full? WT*?
Look, there is no guarantee that a given degree will have a workable return on investment. In fact, the whole classic POINT of a “liberal arts” degree is to acquire advanced skill and knowledge in something which does NOT have any expectations resembling marketability; makes the student a “better, well-rounded person” yes, but a far cry from a profitable trade.
At a key point, my father asked me the pointed question “do you want to make software, or do you want to make money?” Not a snide slam on programming, but a reality check that if you want to “make money” then do something for that purpose as anything else is not guaranteed to do so. Likewise getting a degree: if you want to make money, learn how; if you want to write about the obscure ailments of newts, don’t expect a lot of funding. Acquiring an unprofitable degree is laudable in and of itself, but don’t expect anyone to pay for it if you can’t pay the bill for what you signed up for.
Upshot: NO, the school should NOT be obligated to pay any of what a student didn’t, so long as the service of education has been rendered as accreditation deems correct.
NO THEY DON'T.
The professors are paid to teach a subject. The students sign up to learn the subject. If the student wants it bad enough, s/he can go into debt to pay for the education before having the money for it, at which point paying up is the student's problem; if the student makes life choices which are financially idiotic, that's not the professor's problem. If the professor teaches something which a large number of students are willing to pay high prices to acquire, the high salary is warranted; this is NOT "slavery".
If I want a high quality education in music appreciation, I'll write a large check (or a long loan) for the opportunity to have the best minds on the subject fill my mush-containing skull with everything they believe is needed for said education without the long process of discovering said material the hard way - and I will NOT expect a robust salary as a consequence.
Supply and demand. If students are willing en masse to sign up for huge loans of dubious repayment potential, that's their problem - NOT the professors', whose only involvement is to teach the given subject well.
If you're paying list price or more for college, you're doing it wrong. She & I together paid under $100K for 5 degrees - cash.
RE: “do you want to make software, or do you want to make money?”
Tell your dad that I’ve been making software for 20 years from old languages like PASCAL and FORTRAN under older operating systems like OpenVMS to C# and ASP.NET under newer operating systems like Windows 7 today and I don’t find making software and making money to be mutually exclusive... (especially if you do software for the financial industry)
RE: If I want a high quality education in music appreciation, I’ll write a large check (or a long loan) for the opportunity to have the best minds on the subject fill my mush-containing skull with everything they believe is needed for said education
______________________
Or you can go to your library and simply borrow a course taught by a great professor on a CD or VIDEO... FOR FREE.
I have this course in my library on Long Island ( and many other courses as well ). Why do I have to PAY to learn this when It is FREE and I can learn from the comfort of my screen or car?
See here:
http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/Course_Detail.aspx?cid=700
How to Listen to and Understand Great Music,
Taught By Professor Robert Greenberg, Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
Professor Greenberg teaches the powerful influence of social context on musical creation. Bestselling author James Collins, writing in Inc. magazine, explains: “The Greenberg series combines a history of Western civilization with a history of great music from ancient Greece to the 20th century. Greenberg’s 48 lectures come alive with passion and knowledge. The course illustrates the interplay between societal change and innovation and offers a unique perspective on the acceleration of change wrought by the 20th century.”
If you have the motivation and internalized direction to do so, and are satisfied with the results, fine.
If you wish to seek out personalized attention by certified experts at an accredited institution devoted to imparting such knowledge in an efficient manner with subsequent personalized certification, that's gonna cost you. And it's not "slavery".
I'm quite the advocate of self-motivated learning. At any opportunity I'll suggest the free ivy-league education offered at http://ocw.mit.edu for the self-motivated (personal attention & certification costs extra).
But good luck to most people going from zero to certified within a few years for most subjects short of paying some serious money for it. A lot of subjects really do need a non-trivial amount of hands-on assistance for efficient learning. I've worked with/for some who didn't get formal training, and while they were pretty good there were some large gaps in their abilities which any accredited education source would have covered.
Supply and demand. There's a demand for big-price educations, so a supply has grown to match it.
Doctor Gall...became a specialist, specializing in diseases of the rich. - Tom Lehrer
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