What's the way forward for Democrats?
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Make college tuition a % of future income instead of an $ Amount and you would introduce pressure for colleges to maximize the income of their students which would lead to a pressure to improve their services instead of rent seek.
I turn 54 tomorrow, and I am there as well. But I'll be damned if my Boomer parents couldn't retire early on their pensions...
So maybe the way forward is.... class warfare? Ding ding ding!
The rich already play it anyway.
As we've seen with voting patterns in recent elections, you want as many people to go to college as possible.
That is what conservatives have noticed as well, so they're all "people don't need to go to college!"
Keep them dumb and stupid in dead end jobs is their ploy.
That is what conservatives have noticed as well, so they're all "people don't need to go to college!"
Keep them dumb and stupid in dead end jobs is their ploy.
What friends do I have in high places? It's pretty tough to live and work in NY without making friends with people who work on finance and tech.
If you work in tech, should I be talking about how you pal around with Thiel-types?It's a lazy and - more offensively - completely inaccurate characterization. I have more in common socioeconomically with a teller than a banker.
A higher education is still a huge earnings multiplier and a "winning move at scale." It's a poor system - college tuition should be rights against future earnings, not a fixed fee - but it's hardly a losing proposition.
But that basket weaver will be competing against people with more relevant degrees (by definition), so we would expect them - on average - to be passed over for professional work.
What you're suggesting is cutting college tuitions to the point where a private school education can be covered by a barista with no professional prospects. That may or may not be viable, but let's be honest about the goals.
To prevent misery the right abpproach seems to be to loosely align degrees with skills in demand (through college incentives), with subsidy of the arts for certain individuals talented in humanities. Granted, cutting off art school for those without talent creates Hitlers...
My gut instinct is that college tuition inflation is like "waste and fraud" in government: obvious to all but really difficult to slash without creating concentrated offense.
OK, we'll cut counseling services to align more with the "boomer ideal" tuition levels / education model they were paying for. No? OK, diversity and inclusion is new and can be reverted to nothing. No? All right let's stop paying for all of this expensive tech stuff and go back to pens and paper. No? All right, let's cut administrative staff for academic outreach and put more of the onus on students. No?
You could probably cut a chunk of duplicative administration out, but that would likely still put you closer to current tuitions than previous ones. And might be impossible with current contracts.
No, public schools. I don't really care what happens at private, for-profit institutions, as long as our public ones can handle the demand they need to at a price that's fair.
Of note, there are fewer administrative support staff per student now than there was in the 1960s. So you're arguing against yourself here.
Or to ensure we have a diverse, adaptable and proficient workforce for future generations we make college free for all, forgive existing student loan and make higher education a public good and stop worrying about edge cases.
This is our true holistic solution. And while we're at it, vocational schools too. We need good plumbers and electricians, and those jobs pay well.
Yep same here. We put our retirement into a slot machine sanctioned by this GREAT country of ours (the stock market). I'm almost to the point of putting money in mattresses like someone out of 1930's depression era. Probably be better. Or in guns/bullets. Those might actually be the best currency going forward.
I think it's been fairly explicit in this thread that's the goal, but it's both the wrong thing to do and would not work as advertised because it would identify the Democratic party as a party that only cares about college educated Millennials.
That's very much a perception we should be trying to kill.
edit: also on the "It's not all about perception" side, it should be a priority set we are trying to kill. Focus on the working class, the poor, and effective government, not on people who are going to get by OK no matter if you help them or not.
This is part of the story but I don't think all of it. Availability of student loans made is part of what made it politically palatable to two generations of Americans that funding for state colleges was being cut while university systems were being expanded. Their kids were still going to go to college; they'd just have to get loans that they imagined would somehow pay off. At the colleges, the steady and increasing flow of money allowed an expensive build-out of liabilities (that is, campus infrastructure) that makes them increasingly expensive to run. In addition, they've massively increased other overhead: https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2021/11/ ... 0-percent/
In 2003, when 5,307 undergraduate students studied on campus, the University employed 3,500 administrators and managers. In 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on student enrollment, only 600 more students were living and studying at Yale, yet the number of administrators had risen by more than 1,500 — a nearly 45 percent hike.
At public universities, the same thing was happening:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinesi ... 7c66c4456a
During the 1980-1981 school year, public and private institutions spent $20.7 billion in total on instruction, and $13 billion on academic support, student services and institutional support combined, according to data from the National Center for Educational Statistics. By the 2014-2015 school year, total instructional costs had climbed to $148 billion, while the same grouping of administrative expenses had risen to $122.3 billion.
Put another way, administrative spending comprised just 26% of total educational spending by American colleges in 1980-1981, while instructional spending comprised 41%. Three decades later, the two categories were almost even: administrative spending made up 24% of schools’ total expenditures, while instructional spending made up 29%.
So the ratio of administrative expenses to instruction increased from about 63% to about 82%. But note that administration as a percentage of the total actually decreased in that period. Instruction+administration in 80-81 totaled 66% of total HE spending. In 14-15 that had decreased to 53%, as the portion of spending not used for instruction or administration grew.
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Biden leans towards a compromise of student loan forgiveness with income caps: https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-polic ... ent-loans/
As someone who will likely lose out with a cap, I fully support the modification.
As someone who will likely lose out with a cap, I fully support the modification.
What is the support spend per head? *Of course* there are fewer entry level clerical roles in the mailroom, with the typists, etc cetera... We had an entire information revolution!
I feel a bit for the poor sod who's $10,000 poorer for having bothered to pay off their loans and additionally poorer to the tune $10,000 * number of children they're going to try to put through college who also won't benefit from this at all.
I'm sure you're really broken up about it.
Of course, if this system as currently implemented is still around 20 years from now there are going to be a lot more problems than someone not being able to pay for their children's college.
Also, if you can help your children pay for college at today's rates, let alone 20 years from now, you're doing pretty fucking well. Many millennials with children are still paying off their *own* student debt.
Our society just isn't prepared for scenarios where each generation is LESS well off than the generation before it.
No you're not. You're just any random person who thought to save a little bit of money over a long time planning to try to help your kids out, and the further down the ladder you are in that regard, the worse it will sting when you and your kid aren't going to get this windfall for no reason other than they're a semester late.
Yes, and?
edit: Unless the Biden Administration figures out a way to make this be both retroactive AND persistent going forward, then it's going to piss off way, way, waaaaaaaaaay more people than the votes that it buys.
Ooooooooooor they could cancel the loans every year until a long term solution is implemented.
Hahahaha, we all know there won't be a long term solution but just like the Medicare Doc Fix and continuing budget resolutions we could kick the can down the road forever.
Instead we'll just keep saddling up and coming generations with ever increasing debt and putting college out of reach for many.
That ought to pay off in the 21st century world economy.
Now that is bullshit. After all, you couldn't possibly provide the boomer ideal education model on the same tuition, after all, back then the school was mostly paid for from the state's general fund. So, they didn't need to charge much tuition to pay the bills, because virtually everything was already paid for by the government through taxes.
Since then, Boomers decided that they don't like paying taxes, so state governments have cut the taxes that used to fund the university; states today pay less on University than they did back when the Boomers were going to school. The difference has been made up in support staff cuts and raised tuition. The problem isn't some kind of "bureaucratic inefficiency" it's the Boomer's demand that everything government do the same work with less money.
Also, this is ignoring the fact that more people are going to college than ever were back then, leading to a whole bunch of new infrastructure that needed to be built. So, it's more of a "do more with less" kind of thing. Of course tuition is getting precious; that is what happens when the government decides to stop paying for something that is under increased demand.
Another way to handle this short term is to keep the interest rates for all student loans at 0% and just forgive all accrued interest. That way the borrowers would still need to pay back the money they borrowed but are not stuck in the interest spiral where even though they make a payment the balance keeps increasing. All payments would go directly to principal and would start actually decreasing the amount owed. If you want to push the boundaries a little more your could reduce the balance by any interest payments made in the last X months.
If a car company can give a person a 0% loan to buy a car, there is no reason the government can't do the same with a college loan.
If a car company can give a person a 0% loan to buy a car, there is no reason the government can't do the same with a college loan.
This makes too much sense, so of course it will never happen. Probably half the sob stories about student loans that make the news are people who have already paid more in interest than the value of the loan, and would see their loan balance go to zero.
So... the answer to there being too much cheap money available to finance something with extremely inelastic demand which causes the price to keep shooting up and up and up is... to make the money be even cheaper?
Control Theory should be required curriculum in K-12 education.
Control Theory should be required curriculum in K-12 education.
That "support staff cuts" definitely isn't true. See the article I quoted upthread. The ratio of support staff spending to instruction spending has increased, not decreased, in recent years. Also I wonder if the required building is as different as you think -- a MASSIVE amount of money went into building the universities Boomers went to school in because not only did a larger proportion of Boomers go to college than previous generations, that generation was way bigger than all previous generations.
The part about cuts to state support are very true. Boomers (led by St. Ronald Reagan and ilk - yes I know he wasn't a Boomer) along with SG and Gen X ALL voted to cut public education. It hit younger GenXers hard and Millennials harder.
Not really news to most here but student loan asset-backed securities are a thing and there are incredibly wealthy people making a lot of money in that business. It's really gross and it'd be nice to see those people take a haircut.
All these moralistic arguments about some people who make less than half a million a year possibly getting a break from the government ring hollow when this country's entire history laws have been written for, and by the owner class.
Remember that giant tax cut for the wealthy in 2017? Neither do most people. Yet somehow we had the (fake) money to do that.
Weird how that works for "defense" spending, oil subsidies, etc., etc., but not generally for material improvements to the average person's life.
On a completely different topic, Democrats should start pushing to nationalize oil, gas, mineral rights, and every other natural resource.
All those resources could be sold by the federal government instead and *gasp* they could use that money to fund social programs. But it would piss off a lot of rich people so... Too bad for us.
All these moralistic arguments about some people who make less than half a million a year possibly getting a break from the government ring hollow when this country's entire history laws have been written for, and by the owner class.
Remember that giant tax cut for the wealthy in 2017? Neither do most people. Yet somehow we had the (fake) money to do that.
Weird how that works for "defense" spending, oil subsidies, etc., etc., but not generally for material improvements to the average person's life.
On a completely different topic, Democrats should start pushing to nationalize oil, gas, mineral rights, and every other natural resource.
All those resources could be sold by the federal government instead and *gasp* they could use that money to fund social programs. But it would piss off a lot of rich people so... Too bad for us.
Here's the thing, the supply is essentially infinite, if we're talking purely formal education. Many (if not most) of these lectures are recorded these days. There's basically no reason why you can't just offer the classes for free to individuals (and a very small taxpayer hit), and just have students pay for proctored exams. (in fact, that seems a great use-case for a public library)
Hell, that's exactly how my continuing education credits for my career work now. I pay about $500 every two years to pass my certs, and recorded education sessions are included.
Now, there's a lot in that worldview that doesn't include the benefits of full university, but if you're looking for education as a breakthrough to better standard of living, it would serve just fine.
What is the collateral for a college loan? It's certainly not an auto. What is the interest rate for an unsecured six-figure non-education loan for 17-year-olds?
Why are you framing it solely from a profitability standpoint? I can get 20k consumer debt and buy a ton of crap and sell it all for drug money and have that debt wiped out. Why on earth is there not a similar system for college debt?
The collateral can be that students value as a productive citizen.
Why is college a profit/loss calculation is a better question.
Except it isn't essentially infinite for precisely the same reasons that the demand is so inelastic. Because we've collectively decided to establish and maintain that credentials received from traditional university attendance are more valuable or legitimate than those of non-traditional receipt of the same curriculum, at least as far as the social signaling is concerned that gives those credentials their economic value to begin with.
I don't think that SLABS are made up of public loans (outside of the FFEL), so Biden's debt forgiveness wouldn't affect them.
I think we're already seeing those assumptions challenged by the social changes of the pandemic and having multiple generations being used to online-first education options. Plus, it's not fundamentally different than the economic questions around community colleges, which continue to provide valuable education on a budget.
Combine that with the most prestigious universities already banking on the concept, but trading on their name for a price premium, I think it's only a matter of time before state systems start doing the same.
I don't think it would. Education isn't a one-way process like that. To really do it well the student needs to interact with the teacher.
I'd say they're paying for different things. Less of their money goes to instruction and support staff. More goes to I don't know what. That part hasn't been detailed in any reports I've read. I would say that when the ratio of support staff to instructors goes down, that probably means poorer education.
From the government's perspective, an increase in their future earning ability.
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