Before I switched out of CompSci, my school charged lab fees when they were required (and the course was also 4 credit hours vs the normal 3, though full time students didn’t pay by the credit hour). I’m sure those fees didn’t cover much more than continued maintenance but I also expect the faculty involved in those labs were bringing in a lot more grant money than their soft science counterparts to help cover costs.
It’s a loan. Likelihood of timely repayment should always be a consideration in determining the terms and issuance of a loan (at least if you care about it being paid back). Likelihood of timely repayment undoubtedly involves the job prospects for the major and the amount of hte loan, at a minimum.
If the decision is that repayment is not relevant, then make it a grant (i.e., free college education). Keeping it a loan, not linking it school, major, grades, etc. is a recipe for default. Note that grants can, and are, targeted to benefit underserved groups.
Again what are you using to determine that. If your answer is their parents, forget it.
As I mentioned in the very post that you got all riled up about: " But that doesn’t mean that the process should be free of scrutiny with respect to what college you will go to or what major you select." Similar factors are taken into account, all the time, when issuing car and house loans. What you’re borrowing for, and how much you’re borrowing, is normally scrutinized to determine likelihood of repayment. For a college loan, what you’re borrowing for is primarily defined by your school and your major.
You have, however, in this thread been vehement about also decoupling loan risk from major.
Your parents will undoubtably affect your freedom of choice: but that’s because wealthy parents can choose to apply their wealth to pay for part/all of their child’s education (thereby avoiding or reducing the need for loans and scrutiny).
I completely agree with JFrazer when he says this:
We leave too much choice in the hands of 18 year olds and then enable that choice by granting loans free of the realities of repayment.
Your using secured loans to compare to unsecured loans. In addition, college loans bank on earning potential, the future, not the here and now. You want to treat these like just any other loan, they’re not for too many reasons to list. Since you don’t know what someone’s earning potential can be you and Jfrazer can’t possibly say they can’t afford it.
When I went to uni in the 90s, there was a nominal extra fee for those courses, though it wasn’t that much, think it was $25 or something.
This is a puzzling comment. The historical data exists for earning potential by major (and even by school, though I trust that data less given the schools’ incentives on reporting). Sticking our heads in the sand and ignoring the statistical data puts us right back in the boat of leaving it up to the 18 year olds to make the decision on whether they’re taking on too much loan to handle.
Your comment on secured vs. unsecured is equally puzzling. If anything, the unsecured college loan argues for increased scrutiny on the individual’s earning potential, not less, since there is no securing property. And yet, even for the secured loan, factors like value of the loan vs. the property are taken into account. No clue why the loan being unsecured means we shouldn’t care about major and college (i.e., what you’re borrowing for).
Back in the day when schools charged by unit it cost more for a class with a lab, as they were generally 4 units and not 3. Today, the JC’s here do that, the state college system has a 11-12 unit cut off. Two costs, one above that, one below.
A large reason to go to college is to expand your earning potential. You’re comparing secured loans based on today’s’ income as somehow apples to apples to an unsecure loan based on potential income. That’s not even in the same ballpark.
And I’m not saying you can’t use average incomes, but that should not be the only criteria. Also, if you say you’ll throw 100,000’s at students trying to get engineering or medical degrees… that just has the potential to lead to a lot of students flunking out of those majors. How is that better?
JFrazer’s post laid out a nuanced way of handling both the impact of majors and performance over time. Obviously it doesn’t have to be as simplistic as “STEM majors get all the money they want, others can suck it”.
What’s important is challenging 18 year olds with the likely/possible realities of the decisions they’re making by hitting them with concrete manifestations of how their decisions (e.g., what college, what major) affect their loans, whether that’s loan amount, loan interest rate, or some other parameter. As it stands, we’ll write students the same loan check, regardless of their school, their major, or their academic performance, all factors that impact their earning potential and thus their likelihood of timely repayment.
Heck, you go to McDonalds and you see concrete examples of how your engagement with the menu affects cost. That’s not the case right now with student loans, at all. I get that there is value in not turning college decisions solely into economic ones, but reality has to creep in to a fair degree.
In this country we have decided that 18 year olds aren’t even mature enough to handle alcohol or pot, now there is a debate about cigarettes even. 18 years olds can’t drive semi-trucks. 18 year olds can’t hold certain political offices but we want them to make life-long perfect decisions in regards to their earning potential and how much of a loan they can carry? Some of these kids are so poor their parents can’t even by them lunches each day others are so rich they get credit cards and cell phones when they’re 10 or younger.
What’s important is having someone help them make these decisions who has their best interest in mind. Many of these students don’t get that from their parents, and they certainly don’t get it from high school advisers or college admission counselors. STEM is great, for those who are passionate about it and can do the work. It’s not the only viable option. Degrees are not the only limitation or door opener… so there needs to be flexibility there.
And what would these advisers provide significantly beyond having data-driven tables of risk/return guiding approaches like the one proposed by JFrazer?
A student comes in with mediocre grades and tells the adviser that he/she wants to go to a private college for a degree in Art History at 60K a year, covered mostly by loans. Are there situations where the adviser should tell the student that that’s a good idea? Will the adviser be liable or somehow help out if the student later finds themselves in crushing debt? If the adviser’s advice is relatively consistent (“don’t do it!”) than it seems better to turn that into actual loan parameters.
I’m missing how advisers, on a national level, provide significantly more value than government-defined loan parameters. The main reason to rely on advisers rather than sweeping parameters is when one thinks that the variables are highly subjective or otherwise difficult to access. I don’t see advisers, without any signficant authority, will address 18 year olds borrowing more than is prudent. Now, if these advisers had more authority, that would be a different situation, but again, a dramatic change from our current system.
And I don’t see how most 18 year olds are going to be mature enough to make that decision, a group we’ve already determined as a nation isn’t responsible enough to make decisions in a number of scenarios. You think we have a gap now between the poor and the rich, just wait until funnel all the poor kids to one school and all the rich to another. You ever see what that looks like in the K-12 scenario? At least now, the poor kids have a chance, they have an opportunity.
You and Jfrazer don’t seem to appreciate how valuable that opportunity is. This is the chance to get out of poverty, out of trying to figure out how to get the next meal for the rest of your life… and all you know is college is a way to do that and this is a good school. So now you have someone sending you to community college or a public school down the road and it doesn’t even offer the program you want, the career placement stat is terrible, and you’re wondering if that’s the right choice or not. Sometimes it is… but not always.
I have no problem with poor kids having a chance. Give out need-based grants for that, particularly if we don’t want timely repayment to be a factor in deciding to provide aid. If we, as a society, see value in more individuals from population X going to college, then give them grants to do it.
What’s clearly causing problems is trying to address that with a one-size-fits-all loan approach that fails to take into account all the variables that are relevant to a loan. Rich, poor, under-served, over-served: everyone gets an equal chance to take loans that are completely decoupled with what they’re taking the loans out for.
So you are making an argument that all 18 year olds do public service or the military for a few years after high school. Let them earn some money, get some life experience, then go to college.
Doesn’t sound like you think they should be making decisions that could haunt them financially for the rest of their lives.
I’m all on board with giving loans out that cover a public college education. Public colleges aren’t exactly frowned on when it comes to employment in most jobs. Sure, if you want to compete in a highly competitive high-paid lawyer market, you are going to have an easier time with a Harvard law degree vs most other degrees, but that is the exception not the rule. Colleges like UC Denver and Michigan State have degree-based job placement rates that are better than most private universities that cost 5x as much (Princeton, for example, has the 20th best job placement rate vs 10th for Michigan State). Public College vs Private University isn’t like the difference between inner-city Public High School vs private prep school.
All I’ve been spit-balling is that all people are given a standard loan amount available to them that will allow them to attend their state run college at the in-state tuition rate. I’m sure there are some states where the local state college isn’t that great, but again, I believe that is the exception to the rule. To go above the standard loan amount, you need some measure that ensures you aren’t screwing up the next 20 - 25 years of your life in doing so. That could be through exceptional grades and/or registering for a high-demand major. If you don’t qualify right out of high school, you still have the option to attend the state school for 1 - 2 years, receiving good grades and using that to increase your available loan pool.
I am in no way advocating preventing anyone from going to college, nor preventing them from getting a loan. The limit is purely the amount of the loan. If don’t care if your family makes $28k/year or $280k/year, I don’t feel it’s right to allow an 18 - 23 year old to literally ruin themselves financially with no way out of the situation. Nor do I think allow bankruptcy is the answer; then it’s just a system of “4 years under-grad, 4 years grad school, graduate, declare bankruptcy” which would just destroy the whole student loan system anyway.
If that’s your idea, own it. I didn’t come up with it.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect them to make decisions that seasoned adults can’t make today. The average American has less than $1,000 dollars in emergency savings, and you think the average 17/18 year old is going to make a good long-term potentially lifetime long financial decision… why do you think that? The only thing Americans find more uncomfortable than talking about sex is money.
Yes some of the Public schools do very well, not all of them and vice versa.
If you are a smart kid (top 10% of your class with good SAT scores) you will very likely get admitted to an elite college. If you come from a poor family your chances of acceptance go up, and you will almost certainly get financial aid. In most cases, they can graduate with under the max limit $57,500 in direct subsidized student loans. It is beneficial to society to make sure that these kids get a chance to go to a good school.
The problem is for mediocre students from poor families. That combination has a particularly poor record of graduating from college because they are probably challenged both academically and financially.
This often results in the worst of both worlds a lot of debt and no degree. Even if they do graduate, they often will switch to academically less challenging majors with poorer employment prospects. Often they will need to take out private loans to pay the high tuition cost for their private college. (It is important to note that none of the discussion about loan forgiveness covers private loans)
In an ideal world, it would be nice that if we could afford to give these poor kids a chance to follow their dream and get out of poverty. But the opportunity cost of doing so is much too high. Forgiving somebody 50K in student loans means that’s 10 kids hooked on opiates who can’t get treatment.
That’s today. You want to change today right? Today’s no good. We’re talking talking about NOT keeping the current system . Why do you think this piece would stay the same?
What data are you using for this though? The examples I’ve seen presented so far don’t say they were medoicre, but they do mention a complete lack of financial support from their families and inability to pay while they’re in school, not even after they graduate but while they’re going.
Sorry, sarcasm doesn’t always work in the intrawebs.
Although I do think maybe the public service and delayed college might not be a bad thing.
And no, I don’t think the average 18 year old should be able to mortgage their future on an education.