Posted on 01/20/2011 7:35:50 AM PST by tosh
So, State schools can still con kids into amassing $80K debts for degrees in Womyn’s Studies?
I agree. My ex-BIL went to the Scottsdale Culinary Institute, took loans out for some 36K and ended up in a back kitchen somewhere chopping vegetables. An illegal who crossed the border last night could do the same thing. The ex-BIL was an idiot and ultimately left my SIL stuck with that loan, but to be fair, he was promised all kinds of future employment by the school recruiters. Obviously, there are people at these schools getting very, very rich but making unreasonable promises.
I agree, but why stop with for-profit colleges? The vast majority of art majors, theater majors, music majors, history majors, political science majors etc., at not-for-profit colleges and universities will never get a job in their field of study that pays enough money to pay back their student loans, psrticulalry if they went to a private school.
The again, a friend of mine went to Le Cordon Bleu here in Pittsburgh back when it was Pennsylvania Culinary.
He’s now the executive chef at one of the more exclusive, (read ‘expensive’), country clubs in western PA and he makes enough money that his loans were paid off years ago.
But he tells me not everyone has that ‘special gift’ for cooking which goes beyond following recipes.
Most culinary school graduates start out chopping vegetables in the back kitchen. Those who are diligent workers progress rapidly and become cooks, chefs, and executive chefs. Those who are not so diligent continue to chop vegetables.
My son graduated from the Pa. Institute of Culinary Arts in Pgh. in the mid 1990’s. It cost me about $20,000 for his tuition. He worked his way up through various jobs and now owns his own (highly profitable) restaurant in Virginia.
Most of his classmates have done well. Please do not paint all trade schools with the same brush. For those considering a trade school, they can be very valuable - but you must do your research and homework
“I agree, but why stop with for-profit colleges? The vast majority of art majors, theater majors, music majors, history majors, political science majors etc., at not-for-profit colleges and universities will never get a job in their field of study that pays enough money to pay back their student loans, psrticulalry if they went to a private school.”
I don’t disagree with you, but this proposed regulation is looking at school-wide defaults, not programs within schools. And overall, publics and privates do far better than proprietary schools at avoiding student defaults.
And just a note on the original article in this thread: The LeCordon Bleu school in Pittsburgh is not threatened by these proposed regulations. It has a default rate lower than the average default rate in the country. The LeCordon Bleu schools are owned by Career Education Corp, which owns some of the most notorious offenders of student loan default, so overall, CEC is going to take a big hit if/when these regulations go into effect. CEC is looking at their bottom line in making decisions about which schools to close. This particular school is not at risk of losing it’s federal aid, at least not for default.
Actually I kind of agree, why are tax dollars being spent to subsidize the education of people (50k -100k) etc to get jobs that will probably not pay them much more than minumum wage when they graduate?
The schools can exist, but why should tax dollars be subsidizing educations with such little cost to benefit?”””
Let’s look at this problem from another angle entirely.
Getting a ‘student loan’ is another perk that kids are getting hooked on these days.
They don’t want to actually WORK- they want to ‘have a great summer’, & they spend money in ways that most of us who paid for all our own way thru our college courses never did.
How about making a kid pay for their own college- with work or family funds- for the basic degrees. ONLY give graduate students access to paxpayer & bank funded ‘student loans’.
It might take a person 6 years to get a 4 year degree, but IMO, they will have a much greater appreciation of the success of their efforts in the long run.
I know a woman who is in her late 50’s.
She got student loans to go to college & law school. One rumor says she could not handle the intensity of the workload as a new member of a legal staff & quit. Another rumor says she didn’t pass the bar exam on the first try & just quit. Then she got MORE student loan funding & make a complete change into the medical field.
She made the comment some time last year that she ‘had been paying on her student loans since 1991 & they never seem to go down’.
I can assure you that she owns 3 vehicles—all of which are less than 19 years old & were bought new. She also has a camper—which is only 3 years old & bought new. She has other objects of her hobby & all of them are less than 19 years old. In short- she has not taken seriously the idea that she must pay back her student loans.
She makes over $50 an hour, lives rent & utility free & is ‘always broke’. She has declared bankruptcy to clean off her credit card debt.
In Short—this person never should have had any student loan money in the first place.
IF she had had to pay for her own cost of her 4/5 year degree out of her own pocket, perhaps she would have had a better handle on how to manage her money & life.
She is an aquaintance & I cannot speak to her for any length of time any more. I have learned to avoid contact with her at all costs. I have all I can do to keep from attacking her for her level of irresponsibility.
Cordon Bleu grads make a tad more than minimum wage. Not to mention that the service industry is one of the few still showing growth.
I’ll go you one better. A judge in Ohio just ruled that a law school grad could not take the BAR exam because he had no way to pay back the $170,000 in law school loans he took out.
Take the government money out of any endeavor and prices will drop to much more reasonable levels.
That goes for colleges, health care, agriculture price supports, etc.
Those old enough to remember life before, or in the early years of Medicare know that the cost of medical care was very reasonable, probaly no more than 25% of today’s, and usually much less. The health insurance industry was very small because most people didn’t have any - they could afford to pay for reasonably priced medical treatment out of pocket.
Once the federal government started pouring billions into the health care industry prices skyrocketed. If the government will pay a certain amount for something you can bet the price will jump up to that level or higher.
The same thing happened to the “education” industry. Once government subsidies and loan guarantees began at a high level prices skyrocketed.
In agriculture, many products have government price supports. This is done by various methods in different programs but they all work the same way - they eliminate price competition and guarantee prices will stay above a defined level.
Almost all of our difficulties with rising prices or diminishing supplies of anything are caused by the abandonment of free market principles, government meddling and market controls of various types.
We all know the basics of supply and demand but they don’t work when the government distorts the markets in attempts to make social policy or acheive political objectives.
Sorry, but they really don’t.. out of school most of these kids will be lucky if they see 24k a year in their first jobs. That is not worth the 40-50k for a 2 year “degree”.
I can point you to plenty of grads from this School in Pittsburgh and I know exactly what they are bringing home, and it ain’t much, and certainly not enough to justify the cost.
Yes, same is true of the “art institutes”.
That’s because most of the for profit schools, like this one and the Art Institutes charge obsurd tuitions and rarely have their grads working for any sort of money.. They are largely scams.
The US ‘schools’ are fakes.
According to Wikipedia the original school in France was purchased in 1984 and the same people have now opened 11 or 12 schools on five continents. Le Cordon Bleu International licenses their name to a company which runs the US schools.
I know that, but the original Le Cordon Bleu, the one that is famous, is only in Paris.
Since the ‘takeover’ it is run by hacks and these schools are cut rate fakes.
BTW, my father was trained at THE Le Cordon Bleu
As soon as I see the name Le Cordon Bleu associated with a school in the US, I wonder what they teach:
How to surrender to your stove???
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