Though Obama received a scholarship to attend Occidental College, the money ran out after his freshman year. He paid the rest of his undergraduate tuition through loans and assistance from his family.
Michelle Obama took out loans to pay for college at Princeton University and Harvard University as well. The Obamas carried these debts for the first 25 years of their marriage.
The president and the first lady also racked up $40,000 each attending Harvard Law School. Including undergraduate loans, the Obamas owed a combined $120,000 after college.
Only one person had to decide they weren’t worth it to change history, one person who had their doubts, and from my experience, there isn’t a black person alive who hasn’t encountered one of those people blocking their way.
So, 80K out of 120K of HLS loans. That sounds like a very economically sound decision.
All that aside, are you really trying to make a policy point with the US president as your anecdotal evidence? Talk about outlier. Based on your position, every single person should be given 100% loans to do whatever they want because they just might be the next president of the US.
Again, as a nation, we do not cover the cost of college educations. That’s a policy decision. Your position doesn’t have any room for anything short of “pay for all college for everyone”. If that’s your view, fine, but it is a long, long way from our current system.
I’m telling you there is no such thing as equality, and if you suggest we’re just going to make the ability to pay a requirement for student loans and not expect minorities, the poor and women to suffer the most from the application, I would challenge you. Your suggestion rips the rug from under the the have nots and keeps the privileged education and not, well not. And I will not allow you to keep that ideal some sort of vague, I wonder if, when we have real life examples of people right now from families that very would likely would have been told no.
And no, that is not my view at all. Let me show you to the Bernie group @ArmandoPenblade who can tell you that.
Doesn’t feel very good when someone tries to control you… does it? What requirements do you want to show to justify your right to continue this argument?
You seem to have mistaken me with yourself. Read your own posts throughout this thread. If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll see that you’ve been a self-righteous idealogue throughout.
You’re damn right I am. When I went to school, I had to send money back to my parents because they couldn’t handle paying their bills. Family contributions of financial aid packages were laughable for some of us. You want to use an abstract to decide that some of us don’t have a right to pursue college educations, that the door should be slammed on our face because our parents couldn’t figure out how to do it right. Most the people in my family didn’t even obtain a high school diploma. The Obamas did not acquire all their debt in graduate school and still you want to take the position that denying them would somehow be okay?
I will not apologize for strongly objecting to having doors to education slammed in the faces of the poor, the uneducated, those who were born to the irresponsible, women, minorities, basically anyone except the “haves”.
People should have loan counseling and there should be much higher transparency for what all this is going to cost. The answer should not be “it’s only $350 a month” and this is only for your first year, then you find out you have to do this 3 more years and all of a sudden you’re looking at $800 - $1,000 a month in loan repayments. I think if people really saw the full cost - including both tuition and room and board, many would take step back and look at other alternatives.
I honestly believe too many people are taken advantage of with the loan structuring. I’ve pointed out previous articles that illustrate this quite well.
Additionally, I do think that we need to take grades into account and that can dictate how much risk a loan is worth. You got a 2.0 in HS? We’ll loan you $3K a year to go to community college for 2 years, and then when you’re done, we can talk about going to get a degree at a state university. If you get a 3.0 or above? Ok, you’re a better risk, but you better damn well keep your grades up.
According to a survey of more than 200 employers conducted in Aug. and Sept. of this year by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, 67% of companies said they screened candidates by their GPA.
We have got to stop throwing money away on kids who just want to party. I have too many friends who I’ve seen throwing good money after bad. It just doesn’t make sense and we need to give these parents and kids more tools to evaluate this & be honest with them. The colleges have too many incentives to give out loans - I agree they need to take on more risk and the market will respond with reasonable controls.
More people need to go the junior college route for at least two years. Four year schools need to work with the JC’s to make their classes transferable.
A quick google search for California shows that 70% of JC students fail to graduate or transfer. Another shows that 48% of UC Graduates transferred in from JC’s. I don’t remember the exact number (and couldn’t find it on google) but something like 30-40% of JC students are on a free tuition program that is tied into their continued school attendance.
You know, I fall closer to the liberal side on most things, but I feel like you haven’t been very clear here. If your position is not “free college for everyone” I don’t think you’ve offered an alternative with your arguments.
At some point, college loans are, you know, loans. There’s an expectation that they will be paid back someday, and someone has to risk that loan in the first place. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the business issuing a loan to base their offer on the chances of getting paid back in a timely manner with interest.
There is this weird attitude in the U.S. of “I should be able to go to any school I can get in to, even if I can’t possibly afford it”. As mentioned, most states have very good local colleges. Back in the 90’s, I went to University of Nebraska because 1) my scholarship covered the tuition and 2) it was close enough that I could continue to live at home and make enough at my job to pay for expenses. I had been accepted to Duke on a partial scholarship and we were poor enough for a Pell grant, but even with all that I would have been looking at $20k - 30k/year in student loans.
Why is it wrong to make the practical choice when it comes to college?
As for student loans, here is what I would do, from a high level, if I could craft legislation. All student loans are handled by the federal government. Loans are given out based on projected future ability to pay them back. Everyone starts with a base availability of X dollars, to which a multiplier is applied based on major and academic performance. For example, let’s say everyone is auto-qualified for a $5k/semester loan. The loan is then increased by a major-multiplier (say, 15% for a English Lit major vs 78% for an MIS major). This would reduce risk which should, in practice, increase the rate of return for student loans. All profit from student loans (no expenses, just Paybacks - Defaults = Profit) is put in to a grant pool which gives out college grants similar to the Pell grant system.
With the loans being tied partially to academic performance, there would be opportunity to lower your risk profile at a state school, increasing your loan pool to then move to a more “elite” college if you wanted to.
Between an increase in grants and more control over how much everyone can be loaned, we would hopefully see an overall decrease in the amount of debt that most people end up saddled with when they graduate.
I went to a public school; I don’t have an issue with them. My parents, they couldn’t really pay their bills then, they couldn’t when I was in college, and they can’t now. if someone has a dream to go to Georgetown University, they shouldn’t be excluded from the choice because their parents aren’t good at life. He said whether or not they get loans should be dependent on whether they can pay. I asked him based on what, we’re talking about 17/18 year olds who don’t have jobs and don’t have credit.
If we want to use grades, fine. If we want to make it easier and cheaper to go to public schools, fine but that’s already happening. The highest achievers can often receive better scholarships at the privates schools than they can at the public. And the underprivileged, they should’t have to be in the top 5 or 10% to get a chance at some of our better programs in this country.
College is supposed to be a way out. It’s what’s you hope for when you watch your family struggle to pay the power bill, or try and get the paycheck deposited in time to avoid a foreclosure. Taking that away… you might as well just tell them to give up now. I’m talking about options, real choices.
I fully support alternatives like apprenticeships, trade work, internships but don’t ask me to tell kids who watch their parents struggle their entire life to accept that now the doors to some colleges are closed because their parents can’t get it together or don’t care.
There has to be a way to provide opportunity without quashing the dreams of young people in the process.
If you borrow, you should have high, very high incentive to repay that. I think there should conversations about costs but I think there needs to be a reality check here. 350 dollars is food, a power bill, a water bill, gas money, rent money… 350 month is terrifying to someone who knows what having nothing is like.
What we need are people trying to do what is best for the student, helping them without an incentive to get as many bodies through the door or brag about how many students went to college from their high school.
I might be misunderstanding, but I don’t get what you are proposing. If we assume the best programs have 10% of the total incoming students slots, why shouldn’t you require grades to be on the top 10% to access those spots? given there’s going to always be a limited demand for the top quality programs and degrees, what other metric you suggest should be used?
I come from a different culture. University here is cheap enough the vast majority of people can afford it. Yet if you want to go to medical undergrad you have to be on the top 1% (maybe even 0.5%) of students. Simply because we don’t need more doctors than that and therefore spots are limited. I am perfectly fine with grades limiting access to demanded programs, as long as you have a path (free secondary education of quality) so everybody has equal chance of working towards those grades.
I’d argue it’s the other way around these days. The scientists are what keeps the liberal arts around, but scientists do need some of the liberal arts if only to improve their well-roundedness.
Georgetown and the other top unis, they do reserve some spots for the top performers- that’s what the all expenses scholarships are for. We can encourage those schools to make things more income-based, that’s about it.
That said, flagship state schools are cheaper, just as good for undergrad in most cases. A degree from UNC or NCSU is a very good degree, and nowhere near as expensive for an in-state student. You graduate in four years, you won’t have a giant mountain of debt.
Folks also have the GI Bill as a way to avoid college debt. 4 years of national service to get a 4 year degree is reasonable- it saved my ass.
I am not saying we can’t use grades; grades can be a component… I am saying we shouldn’t use “the ability to pay” requirement. Grade should be a component but there should also be a consideration that someone who is not in the top 10% of their class can still do well in college, still has potential… still have value. I am 100% opposed of using the “ability to pay” as a top criteria which is just code for the haves get the best programs too bad for the have nots.
My Argument is more simplistic. Labs and other specialized research is expansive, but students pay for the credit hours only. If you go into an engineer program, and the institution requires specialty labs, then you should be paying more for those courses then if you are taking an English Course. There is no way that a History Major is as expansive to train as a Biology Major.
