Archive through August 25, 2021
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Non-Game Discussions: Let's Fix Student Loans:
Archive through August 25, 2021
How many kids go to college (and become burdened with student debt) because, "It's what's expected of you?"
How many of those kids knew what they wanted to do with their lives?
When I got out of high school, I too followed the route to college because, "It was what was expected of me," and promptly flunked out by the end of my freshman year.
Why? Because at that time in my life, the only thing I cared about doing was escaping from the world of reality.
I should never have gone, but, "It was what was expected of me."
Quite a few of my high school teachers knew I had problems (admittedly none had a clue as to just how bad I was), but they were still just a part of the whole, "Grind `em through" education system.
How different would my life have been if someone noticed and took action on my behalf? How different would my life have been if someone recognized the need I had for professional psychological help early on?
Admittedly, I'm probably an unusual case, but the same idea applies; many kids are just being run through an educational process that demands they be crammed into one conformal hole or another with little, if any recognition as to what their strengths, weaknesses, and desires might be.
Addressing these ideas in high school might help kids better prepare for the realities of life, and maybe help keep so many from ending up with crushing debts and useless degrees.
@Jeff: Good points. I definitely would add mental health/career counseling for high schoolers to my list.
@Ginger: Agree. The point is you serve society, and society will help you get a better education.
In 2000, Western NC was offering $20k+ for School Bus Drivers....
During the migrant protests in CA, a lady was offering $68 an hour for landscapers (planting trees etc)...
Late '90s WA State was giving a year ? class for Flaggers at construction sites, another job that started at $60+ an hour...
Well paying jobs are out there, just have to look for them.....
Don't take for granted, that the current Extra Unemployment is causing all the job openings, long as I can recall, people have just refused to work, given the chance.....
I feel that the root cause of the problem is the same as the one that leads to US health care costs: Both have become an *industry*.
Both are now *designed* to suck as much capital away from the public as possible, when they should *never* have been taken from the position where they belong: owned and operated by society, for the good of society.
I know that I'm a pinko Canuckistani with ?extreme? socialist views, but if society invests in education and healthcare, they have an educated and healthy society, capable of much more than the US does now.
In my opinion, unfettered GREED is what has killed the American Dream.
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@Paul: "Actually, it's pretty easy."
The easy part is figuring out which careers earn the most. The hard part is equating that to an appropriate cost for the degrees.
There is danger in deciding which kinds of education/degrees are "useful" or "useless".
Aside from the fact that someone gets to decide what criteria determine "uselessness"...you can only make these judgments on data from the past - when the future is changing more rapidly all the time. I've lived through a number of talent shortages (and gluts) that were created because of mistaken emphasis on what degrees students should pursue in order to be most productive for society.
I know someone who majored in Parageography (the geography of fictional places) at UT Austin and this study inspired him to develop new avenues in computational topology. Art history is the typical undergraduate degree for those aiming for an advancced degree in museum curation. I don't want to say goodbye to expertly maintained museums. If you want to major in law (an advanced degree in the US) you must first get an undergraduate degree. Most law students first get a degree in history, literature, classics, and the like. Coming from 3 gerations of lawyers, I can attest that these degrees can serve to enhance the practice of law.
While I recognize that there is a problem with student debt. I'm not quite yet ready to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
I'm not convinced the problem rests with the types of degrees being offered - but rather the financial incentives that are increasingly pressuring schools to behave more like profit centers than institutions of education.
Ginger
Isn't it just 3-7 years of Uni fees divided by the lifetime salary that will be estimated to be earned?
So a good Law Degree which costs double the cost of a normal Degree is worth it....
Ted
1. Control spending by colleges. Good idea, part of my original proposal, good luck making it happen.
2. Students have an approved plan to pay back the loan. Sounds good, also sounds like something college admission salesman can easily evade.
3. Easier to discharge in bankruptcy won't happen. Doing that means nobody will issue loans.
4. Government help paying loans has been a disaster, agree nothing more needed here.
5. Military service as a path to paid college, that exists in the GI Bill, nothing else is needed. Note to Ginger, we absolutely do NOT need to give free college to every government employee. Mailmen don't need college anyway and libraries can fund their own scholarships out of DVD rentals since they seem to have no other reason to exist in 2021.
6. apprenticeships for skilled trades (e.g., electricians). Agree, it was part of my proposals.
7. Stop mandating college for everyone. Agree, I don't think I explicitly stated this but I thought it was obvious.
Paul, remember that the UK medical industry is totally different from US. Over here, doctors and nurses are paid really really well.
Daniel E: I didn't say get rid of art history, I said we only need to give loans for art history degrees to the number of people who got museum/gallery jobs last year.
There really isn't much danger in deciding that degrees in English or History exist only to train teachers of English and History and we only need as many as we need. There really isn't much danger is assuming that a degree in women's studies or left handed polka playing is never going to be worth squat. If the jobs go begging one year the students will get the degrees the next year.
Paul, there are endless studies in the US showing that the university where you got your degree does not correlate at all to how successful your career is. More expensive schools do not produce better paying careers. They just don't. (I am quoting Dave Ramsey who hasn't ever been proven wrong.)
All the studies I've seen that indicate a degree produces better income at all (regardless of school or degree) are fatally flawed.
They compare income per year or lifetime for those who finished college to those who didn't. Those doing lifetime earnings do NOT take into account the costs of the degree or the time value of money. They're nonsense on those grounds alone.
But, far far worse than that, they treat who gets a degree and who doesn't as if it were RANDOM! Or at least as if the characteristics that let you get a degree were uncorrelated with later income. Which is blatantly false!
The population that ends with a degree is different PRIOR to the start of school from the population that never gets a degree in ways that corelate strongly with later income.
SVC
Dr's can earn a lot in the UK (lots of Dr's work for both the NHS and have Private Work to) - 20 years of Doctoring can get to well over £150K pa in total earnings.
I bet 90% of which Uni you go to doesn't make a difference - and that will be going up...
… However, I bet the 'Old Boy Network' does still exist - and so probably does make a difference (mainly for the wrong reasons) in some professions.
The opportunity cost of Uni is often taken into account in some surveys (3 years of work+promotions v 3 years of study and costs - which might or might not get you a better starting position etc).
But saying that (and I admit my own profession taints the view) - those with Degree's generally own more than those that don't- and outside of probably two professions*, high earners in the UK
are primarily those with Degrees.
* - Sports and Sales.
So the question is (and it can be in Dollars) - what is considered a Good Salary and what is considered a high Salary (and whats considered a very good salary) per annum?
Got feeling is $70,000, $120,000 and $300,000?
(Ignoring Sport Star Wages...… 
)
Doubt anyone in the US has stats/numbers for it...
Though, it seems a large majority of law students end up in politics (starting with elected DA positions, up to US Attorney General, not to forget the common politician at all levels).....
How do all those positions end up counting in the salary of Law Students....
@Mark Hoyle: Yes. I don't know the current statistics, but I would not at all be surprised if the MAJORITY of law students who GRADUATE do not go on to careers in law. They become politicians and business people primarily.
Note that DA and AG positions you mentioned *are* practicing law, so they don't count in the "non-law practicing" bunch.
As for your salary, the average salary for lawyers in the U.S. is $122,960 per year (per my Internet search). However, that is misleading. Your starting salaries are closer to $60K, unless you happen to get lucky to land a big law firm job. Public interest lawyers earn ridiculously low salaries. On the high end you can get into $500,000+, but that is rare and generally you are really actually a business person who has gotten good at recruiting rich clients who are willing to pay your excessive fees.
>> I didn't say get rid of art history, I said we only need to give loans for art history degrees to the number of people who got museum/gallery jobs last year.
This is a really interesting side effect of greater financial intervention in college by government. The cost of schooling goes up and for those folks who perhaps in years gone by might have worked their way through what was at the time less expensive schooling now may have a greater or absolute need for financial aid (mostly loans).
As the privater payers are progressively driven out by rising costs, the government effectively steps into the role of picking winners and losers based upon which educations get financial aid.
So SVCs very reasonable proposal to only give loans based on hard job availability may appear harsh in a population of n jobs in a field, where college applicant n+1 is turned away. In todays “kinder” system, applicant n+1 is granted financial aid, as well as any number of potential applicants in the field up to n + infinity.
The reality is still the same, any number of graduates above n probably won’t be finding work in their field. So then they must find work elsewhere, very possibly at lower pay, and become part of the student loan “problem”.
We were “kind” enough to give the > n applicants financial aid into a job market that doesn’t support what they are learning.
--Mike
There's some difficulty with defining what jobs use your degree.
I got a BS, MS, and PhD, were the BS and MS used at all for anything but graduate assistanceships? The PhD is in Applied Math (minor in physics), the job was computer modeling of missile systems for DoD, most of my coworkers were physics degrees (often PhDs) but the work was all computer work, was my mathematics background being used?
I'd clearly have not gotten the job without an advanced degree, and math is very useful for that work, but I've never written Mathematician for what my job is and it clearly wasn't required for the job since most of them were physics.
Similar questions for a history major going into Law or Medicine (yes, there are history majors who go to medical school).
Under my system schools could do evaluations to say who gets enrolled in art history and who has to find another field.
Too many students regard college as a four year party paid for with student loans.
@Steve
I have to sheepishly admit to that. My dad worked in the mail room at my college and I lived with him. Books and supplies were my only educational expenses. We were the opposite of well to do so Pell grants covered those. I honestly have no idea how many thousands of dollars I spent on magic the gathering, RPGs, and booze during my 5 years of "metriculating."
"I'd clearly have not gotten the job without an advanced degree, and math is very useful for that work, but I've never written Mathematician for what my job is and it clearly wasn't required for the job since most of them were physics.
Similar questions for a history major going into Law or Medicine (yes, there are history majors who go to medical school). "
Note - I never went to Uni...
...but from an Employers view, isn't the whole point of taking on someone who has 'any degree'* that they have demonstrated the ability to learn rather then being taught?
So if you need to learn a new skill (or knowledge) for a job, it's probably easier for Degree educated people to do that, rather than those without?
* - Accepting some Media based courses are not viewed as strongly
Some professions (Law and Medicine) do require a more directly relevant Degree (or MS or Phd etc) - but the ability to apply the knowledge earned is worth something?
Pre-law and pre-med students are going to have to be carefully screened and allowed to get degrees relevant to their grad schools, but we cannot allow somebody who wants to take a stupid degree to have it by claiming it as a basis for medical school.
Just saw a Dave Ramsey vid about a new doctor just out of residency getting her first real job at a low paying government hospital. She is going to start first day, at $200,000 a year. That is 140,000 pounds.
Mike Dowd and Ted Fay hit the nail on the head IMO. (maybe others too,... i didn't slog through the whole thread...I wish we could reply to each other).
Colleges are out of control with staff and facility expenses. One only has to visit a major college to see it. They are a money making machine who has teamed up with the government, and IMO high school guidance counselors to suck in 100s of thousand of students who don't benefit from incurring the debt.
Meanwhile, the trades in this country are dying on the vine. But that's another discussion