How America’s universities became debt factories

Yes but I’m conflicted on this for a couple reasons.

The second part, became less true for anyone graduating after 2004 or so.

Where I still get -vexed- are the people I know who, about to hit or are into their 30s, start in a program for (or, wind up finishing with) a non-marketable degree as their first degree.

And the best example I can think of, was a specific not-colleague that started in some sort of program because they wanted to get into prostetics (I warned them about 3d printing upsetting the industry, they yelled at me for raining on their parade,) the 3d printing paradigm shift, surprise surprise, caused an upset into the marketability of their program, and they shifted into, at least last I was on speaking terms with them, women’s studies.

I think part of the reason for the second half however, is an odd balance of ‘younger people can be naive’ and it’s better to have them think that and finish than drop out a year or two because their major isn’t panning out, i.e. switch to something else.

I say -that-, mostly because I know a lot of folks in my school would wash out from Engineering into Business or something else and while it’s possibly not ‘ideal’, finishing some semi-useful degree is better than dropping out with some percentage of the full debt and nothing to show for it. I will note that almost everyone I saw ‘leave’ an engineering/CS/STEM type major flipped to something that was still, on some level, marketable.

> 3) Have next-to-zero standards for public funds used in grant and loan programs for college education, meaning people can take out loans for any sort of degree program at almost any sort of institution

This is a large blowback effect of various laws to prevent discrimination/etc against historically ethnic universities and programs. Unfortunately it’s led to the ‘Underwater Basket Weaving’ meme.

> 4) Hold these debtors to standards that aren’t applied to other types of debtors. You cannot discharge them through bankruptcy, it’s very difficult to renegotiate, and SCOTUS has said that the chief executive of the note-holding institution (in this case, the President of the United States) cannot use discretion in deciding who he gets to forgive for loans.

Well, there’s the ‘flip’ side, which ironically, due to all the other arms of the Kraken, contributes to the problem.

They are difficult to negotiate but have various outlying circumstances, i.e. IBR and time periods associated with that, certain discharge conditions (I have a colleague who’s student loans were completely forgiven because she had ADA paperwork and they neither offered her a reasonable accommodation nor warned her when she started said program, at least -that- part of the system worked,) and the lovely ‘indentured servitude with extra steps’ Nonprofit forgiveness program, where if you work for a nonprofit long enough, you can get a discharge.

But then, you do get all these folks that ‘wash out’ into non-marketable degrees, they keep working at Starbucks or low paying jobs so they get the IBR, what does that do to the rest of the system though? it puts a fuckton of stress on it that we see in the rates.

All of that said, I feel like there’s a ‘number’ where the loan should just be treated like any other debt. e.x. oh you’ve got $4000 in student loan debt and $50,000 in other debt? Fine wash it too. Or ‘hold’ the degree till it gets paid back, IDK.

However, removing that does not fix the underlying political goal of assuring access to higher education, which Johnson back in 1965 described as “no longer a luxury, but a necessity”. https://archive.org/details/4730960.1965.001.umich.edu/page/…

US schools are increasingly extractive because if higher education is indeed necessary then it is economically beneficial for someone to go to college – so long as the result is more profitable than not going to college. If the college charges less than that (or rather, the college + debt industry), then they leave money on the table.

There is little interest in providing quality low-cost education because it is capital intensive, and capitalists want to maximize their profits. As the recent news about rent collusion shows, capital owners will collude to extract more profits.

> the pendulum swung too far

This has been a trope since the 1960s when the right started their culture war against college education as the post-GI bill era meant college was no longer a place primarily for the children of the privileged classes.

That is, be specific – when was the pendulum enough in the other direction that you wouldn’t have complained thusly? It seems you like the 1960s, when the right complained about ivory tower academics filling student brains with anti-American nonsense.

> reductions in permanent salaried academic positions

We have that. These are called adjunct professors. “Editorial: U.S. colleges are overusing — and underpaying — adjunct professors” / “The American Assn. of University Professors reports that 70% of faculty are adjunct, most of them without benefits, job security or union representation; they teach more than half of all college courses in the U.S.”

They are also poorly paid, exactly as you would expect from an extractive industry.

How low should it be? 20% 10%? But in the 1960s in the era you praise, those numbers were much higher, back when academic positions included significant administrative responsibilities.

If you really want to remove “administrative bloat”, remove administrators.

> garnished wages from placed-into-their-trained field employees

Ahh, so you follow the meat widget model of college education. Got a degree in physics but decide to open a chocolate boutique? Sorry, you’ll need to pay back your education first.

It costs a lot to go to med school, so those who go often end up in debt, which means they need to get jobs which pay enough to pay back that debt, which means they can’t afford to provide medical care to poor communities.

It costs a lot to become a lawyer, which is one of the factors for public defenders are 1) needed, and 2) so overworked.

Besides, we’ve had similar policies for a long time. I had teachers back in the 1980s whose agreed to debt relief for their teacher education which contingent on being a teacher for enough years.

I’ve also heard stories about the consequent problems in such a bureaucratized system.

> see both European and US models collaborate harder on job and work placement as part of ensuring student success

There is no “European model”. The UK has a very different system than Germany, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_education_system

In Germany: “After passing through any of the above schools, pupils can start a career with an apprenticeship in a Berufsschule ( vocational school). Berufsschule is normally attended twice a week during a two, three, or three-and-a-half-year apprenticeship; the other days are spent working at a company. This is intended to provide a knowledge of theory and practice. The company is obliged to accept the apprentice on its apprenticeship scheme.” – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Germany

How is that not exactly what you are asking about?

> The common bailiwick that needs to die is that Europeans don’t pay for college

I’m really tired of people doing the “I’m so clever” comment that “you know that ‘free health care’ isn’t free, right”? That extends to people pointing out that “free college education”, and “free K-12 education” and “free school lunches” and “free tampons” and “free condoms” aren’t actually free.

Like, duh. It’s just name-calling implying I’m ignorant, and therefore you don’t need to take me seriously.

Did you know that freeways aren’t actually free, but depend on tax funding?

(1) Liberal Arts and Sciences. If you have the money/smarts, can go for a Bachelor’s degree at an Ivy League university, maybe also join a fraternity, and, thus, get some more understanding of history, civilization, and people and meet some people likely good to know for a good career/marriage.

The Ivy professors are expected to publish a lot of research and, hopefully, get that research funded. The university may take 60% of the research funding for overhead.

I’m shocked, shocked to find
US National politics going on here. Here is your 60%, Sir.

The universities like getting the 60%, e.g., for the white table cloth restaurant or the the President’s limo. US politicians like funding education.

Due to WWII with radar, sonar, the Bomb, the US government liked to fund research in the STEM fields and, soon, medicine, agriculture, etc. Due to the research, the profs stay bright, with brains active, but otherwise their research has not much to do with what is in the Bachelor’s degree courses.

(2) State Colleges. Could get a Bachelor’s degree and also a Teaching Certificate which would enable a career in K-12 teaching that could be good for wives and mothers. Low tuition.

(3) State Universities. Could continue and get a Ph.D. Could use that (A) as a union card for a career in college teaching that did not require research, (B) a career in research, maybe as an Assistant Professor trying to publish enough and build reputation enough to get promoted to tenure, (C) whatever else could use the work for. Can regard (C) as speculative with best results quite good for career, wealth, US national security.

One academic direction: Get a good background in math (probability, statistics), physics, and chemistry, and then do research in some other field, e.g., what is happening on the floor of the Gulf of Maine.

(4) Broadly, children need to grow up, and that can involve lots of inputs and experiences. Then they can go fourth into the great US society, lands, and economy and try to be successful. Some Bachelor’s degrees might help.

Bachelor’s, …, Ph.D. as job training — has not been very popular, respected, or successful in the US.

Broadly one effect for young people in the US economy is the economy might continue to grow and develop with new directions; so, …, a young person can try to select a direction that is or promises growth, get a first job, and go ahead and grow.

E.g., my education concentrated on math and physics. Early career was in US national security which liked math and physics. Soon there was also a lot of interest in computing, so got into that — right, quick sort, heap sort, AVL trees, numerical issues in matrix inversion and curve fitting, …. At one point, the US Navy was HIGHLY concerned about the US labor force in computing, especially for work in math and physics, and I got well paid to sit, learn about computing, and do some on some Navy sonar data, the FFT (fast Fourier transform), power spectral estimation, etc. As US computing grew rapidly, so did my career. Now, doing a startup in computing using some original math — that is, combining what I’d gotten like the novel ingredients for a popular new pizza.

So, if job training, trade school, education with good “ROI” for good careers does not work well DIRECTLY, maybe (A) pick some of the best of what is in the libraries and (B) make what can with it — yup, it’s risky, speculative, etc.

My recommendations:

(A) If you can afford (1), fine. Otherwise, don’t spend a lot of money on that Bachelor’s … Ph.D. education. I.e., for the OP here, don’t take out student loans, and if go to state schools might not need the loans (might not apply to careers in law or medicine). By the way, for grad school, Master’s and Ph.D., I never paid anything and did get paid for doing ugrad math teaching.

(B) For a Ph.D., at some schools, courses are optional, the main point is the dissertation, the definition is “an original contribution to knowledge worth of publication”, the main criteria for publication is “new, correct, and significant”, a cheap way to get the background for such research is independent study, and might do enough of that on evenings and weekends before going for a Ph.D. E.g., not a lot of need for “student loans”.

(C) Get some basics, e.g., in the STEM fields, and then look for opportunities in the US economy.

(D) Meet people, especially the right people: It can be better who you know than what you know.

(E) If you are doing really good work as an employee, then maybe see if can do much the same work but for much more money as an owner.