The college bubble: The next economic crisis?

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If you're lucky enough to have that option. Not everyone does.

The best option now might be to emigrate if the debts become too large to handle.

Prior to Ronald Reagan, the government really did try to make it possible for people to go to college.

When the government doesn't help with education, the church can move in and "educate" the people. This is why the conservatives are against public education, they wish to establish a theocracy through absence.

For some schools, I'll have to agree with you.





Stop drinking the kool-aid, Conservatives are for the public being educated so people can find jobs and/or work their way into becoming rich.

No they aren't

To my knowledge, this is what has happened...don't know if Obama can honestly be credited for any part of this.

1. Creation of new repayment plan...Income Based Repayment (IBR). A totally senseless move since there was already ICR (Income Contingent Repayment). As far as I know of both programs, they are 100% identical.

2. Possible exception to the above. IBR offers a debt forgiveness program if you work for a local, state or federal government agency, or for a "qualified" charity. After 10-years of eligible payments, your remaining debt is 100% forgiven...TAX FREE. This offer is offensive for the following reasons.

First, any government job TENDS to pay better and include benefits as compared to private sector. So, all these government workers get a perk that ordinary workers are denied. It's fine to have such a perk for charity workers who typically take a massive pay cut as compared to working comparable private sector jobs, but government workers, on the whole, don't need or deserve it more than others.

Second, for payments to qualify, you must be employed full-time, something ending for most government jobs which have gone to part-time to avoid having to pay benefits. So, get a job that could qualify but still loose out because you're not full-time. Most charities don't hire people full-time due to budget limitations, and other than being high up in a charity organization, fluctuations in funding means any full-time slot at a lower position might be here today, gone next year, back again 2 years later.

Third, "loan forgiveness" for everyone else is 100% taxable after 25 years. A slap in the face for those who have to wait longer to get loan forgiveness.

3. People are pushing Congress to amend the tax code to make "student loan forgiveness" 100% tax free. The reasoning being that if you could not pay off your student loans in 25 years, you certainly won't have the means to handle the tax liability.

Then colleges have to pass those costs of not getting paid on to other students causing the costs to go up even higher in a vicious cycle.

I would agree with this in the sense that, with such a high demand for college in potential students and a high supply of potential students it is more of a possibility for a college to merely be a business rather than a place of learning. Consider the cost versus benefits for students: the cost is tens of thousands of dollars and the benefit is the mere possibility of employment with better pay. Consider it with regard to the colleges though: the cost is what? Building, payroll, utilities, equipment, just like with any other business. The benefits for colleges though is much better than for the students in that there is little to no uncertainty that they will be paid regardless of whether students graduate or fail.

No. The solution is to abolish all student lending. Easy credit is why costs are skyrocketing. So long as a source to pay the ever growing tuition and fees is available, schools have no compunction against raising prices. When students don't show up because they can't afford it, schools will get serious about controlling costs and providing what students really need without all the senseless bells and whistles.

America wants kids in high school to have personal laptops to do their work on. Most countries with kids outperforming ours still use pencil and paper. We focus on the wrong things to "improve" education.

So true. We cry about funding and class size but this has not been a key to success. I recently saw a statistic about performance actually dropping as class size decreased. The problem goes much deeper than resources.

Let us teach reading and critical thinking. The computers will take care of themselves later on.

All of my kids were reading by age 4. My youngest grandson was reading by age 3 taught by his dad (my baby boy) who was reading by age 4.

ruveyn

I think the part in bold is why colleges are, at least with my unfortunate experience at Rasmussen, behaving like businesses rather than a place where education ought to be the goal.

I would rather not be enrolled at Rasmussen, gaining $12,000 of debt per year, when the textbooks are craptastic and the classes are basically an internet forum into which files can be submitted.

They need to bring more focus to trade schools. How many people go to college and get a degree just as a status symbol or because their parents "made them" go? How many people would be better off going to a trade school and learning how to be a plumber or an electrician than going to a 4 year school and getting a generic liberal arts degree?

Need it matter so much whether they learn a trade or learn how to write random essays in a manner to appease the random temperament of a teacher? For the schools, all that manners is that students sign all the right papers in order to obligate their contractual students to their debt.

This is one of the things I hate the most about college. It has such a pervasive effect on our society that most good/high-paying jobs aren't available to us unless we submit to their system.
A couple of people have told me I should get my Master's. What's the point? All the jobs that are left require at least a few years of experience that I don't have. Plus by that time, the jobs would probably start requiring a PhD, 50 years of experience, and the ability to play a piano with no hands.


I think there need to be more apprenticeships, instead. Nowdays we just have internships which are virtually slavery (no pay), and you don't learn anything valuable (fetching coffee is not a useful skill).

I'm going to be graduating with an Econ degree in March, and I'd have to say it was the most expensive mistake of my life. The only reason I really went to college was because my dad was constantly telling me that if I didn't, I'd end up shoveling asphalt like him for the rest of my life. Funny thing is, I might end up doing that anyway. I pretty much just failed to get into my local electrician union recently. I might not have any other choice!
I wish my dad or somebody would've shown me other options besides college. If I had gone the trade route beforehand, I wouldn't be in this mess right now! College is extremely overrated, and it needs to stop being pushed on every single human being in existence.

I almost want to try to get a refund out of my college, and say that I wasn't satisfied with the education (which is true)... just to see what they would say...

To be fair, in their day, being white collar and college educated was the dream many of them could never have. They think blue collar is low class (which it is in the eyes of elitists), but really, white collar workers, on the whole, are not necessarily happier people.