[hotlap]

Originally Posted by BuckeyeROC

You have some of the best posts on here man, absolutely love reading your stuff. I was going to ask what your data found about college debts while reading your first paragraph, then you wrote about it. It seems that is one of the biggest issues for Millennials. The rising cost of college seems to have about outpaced everything else, save maybe health care.

+1 Martin is must read material

[Bongos2U]

Originally Posted by hotlap

+1 Martin is must read material

Agree 100%.

[arpad_m]

Originally Posted by fastball

College rates today are absolutely unacceptable. That needs to be reigned in somehow. Frankly I don't see how a university can justify paying a professor of any subject that doesn't cover substantial matter vital for a major degree more than $40k/yr. Math, science, and English profs? Sure, absolutely. History profs? Art profs? No way.

I agree with having to rein this in, college costs are becoming prohibitive. Not sure about the razor sharp classification of subjects and so heavily curtailing professors' salaries by area, though, as it will obviously water down the quality of those and eventually lead to their elimination. There needs to be a balance of skills and knowledge in alumni, of course maths and science are very important, but history and art are also essential to our humanity.

At work I'm surrounded by people unable to communicate meaningfully, empathize or understand societal trends despite their excellence in coding or design, and this heavily impacts team productivity and morale. Being good at maths or computer science no longer suffices without the ability to engage others, and although one may say this falls into the area of English rather than arts or history, how can you teach language without the artifacts it's used to create? And then those artifacts are products of their eras, heavily influenced by historical events. It's all intertwined.

I'm not saying everything is of equal importance everywhere, far from it, just that we need to have a broad mindset about declaring skills "essential". (For the record, of course I'm also totally against any frivolous junk that is peddled as highly valuable.)

[Norm Peterson]

Perhaps it's time for the pressures to "publish or perish" and perceived values of "prestige" to be dialed back a bit.

Originally Posted by arpad_m

At work I'm surrounded by people unable to communicate meaningfully, empathize or understand societal trends despite their excellence in coding or design, and this heavily impacts team productivity and morale. Being good at maths or computer science no longer suffices without the ability to engage others, and although one may say this falls into the area of English rather than arts or history, how can you teach language without the artifacts it's used to create? And then those artifacts are products of their eras, heavily influenced by historical events. It's all intertwined.

That's where a co-operative work/study system holds an advantage. Alternating periods of study with periods of gainful employment grows the skills needed in the workplace, ideally while using the technical skills acquired during the periods of study out in the real world. It's kind of like getting an internship in pieces.


I still have a (quarterly) tuition statement from 1969. You younger guys probably don't want to see it, but a quarter at work fully covered it and the books I needed.


Norm

[fastball]

Originally Posted by arpad_m

I'm not saying everything is of equal importance everywhere, far from it, just that we need to have a broad mindset about declaring skills "essential". (For the record, of course I'm also totally against any frivolous junk that is peddled as highly valuable.)

I think right there is the problem. Far too many subjects are considered essential when they are not. There are far more elective requirements today than there used to be. Universities need to quit indoctrinating students with copious amounts of frivolous information.

I had a big problem being required to take arts and humanities classes for my engineering degree. To me they were absolutely wasted classes, a waste of my time when I could have been working on my projects, and I told my professors flat out their class was a waste of time and I'm only there because I'm required to be. I got straight Cs and didn't care.

I guess you and I will see this very differently.

[oneredry]

Originally Posted by fastball

When I attended the University of Toledo 1995-99 tuition was about $7500 all in including books and room/board for an in-state student.

I count my blessings that my Mom was able to pay much of it, and I had very little to pay off on my own. But even if I had all 4 years on loan on my own, if I had graduated with only $30k in debt it would have been doable with a $40k/yr job.

Today it's about $22,000. And people's salaries haven't increased near as much in the 20 years.

I have no idea how kids can make it today, getting out into the real world without scholarships, financial aid, or landing a job making 6 figures starting the day they graduate, in almost $100k or more in debt.

College rates today are absolutely unacceptable. That needs to be reigned in somehow. Frankly I don't see how a university can justify paying a professor of any subject that doesn't cover substantial matter vital for a major degree more than $40k/yr. Math, science, and English profs? Sure, absolutely. History profs? Art profs? No way.

holy S.... I graduated from UT in 2003 and my student load debt was 84K and still paying for it. Then the interest rates for student loans was 7%. I make decent money but I've been drowning for a while now.

[fastball]

Originally Posted by oneredry

holy S.... I graduated from UT in 2003 and my student load debt was 84K and still paying for it. Then the interest rates for student loans was 7%. I make decent money but I've been drowning for a while now.

I really do feel for you guys who came in right around that time. That's when the s--- hit the fan in college tuition. There's no way tuition should have ever erupted to that in that short of time frame. I remember in the news there was a lot of talk how tuition was going up in $5k increments every single year, not just at UT but all over.

For comparison, my Mom graduated from Ashland University (then Ashland College) in 1972. Her tuition including room and board was $850/yr.

The trend is unsustainable for our country.

[whiteboyblues2001]

I believe that tuition went up so rapidly because of all of the scholorhips, grants, loans, govt. assistance, etc. and not so much because of professors salaries. The leadership of the universities and the football coach are the ones taking in millions, not so much the professors.

When I went to school in the late 80's, my state school tuition was about $1000-$1200 per semester. I paid for it myself working construction (and other things) in the summers. Took me a while, but I left school without much debt.

Another one of the bigger problems is that, in my situation, I make some good money. I'm not a 1%'er or anything, but because of my income, my son gets no help, and I don't even get a tax break. So, while a lower middle class person may get a bunch of help in paying, the upper middle class has to pay the full amount, which is WAY too expensive to afford even as an upper-middle class family. So, a ton of kids walk away with $100k in debt.

So while all these wonderful scholorships are great and all, all that did was just enable the prices to skyrocket, and suck all the finances out of the middle class. Between that and healthcare, you can make $150k and still live paycheck to paycheck (if you have kids in college, and you are going to pay their way).

[Emoto]

The price of college has risen many times higher than inflation by the market distortion caused by low interest government loans. Make borrowing money cheaper and people will be able to borrow more and the "seller" (in this case colleges and universities) can raise their prices because now the buyer can afford it. The same thing happened to house prices when mortgages were dirt cheap. Although many schools lavish some of their professors with high salaries for a variety of reasons, the bulk of the bloat comes from high-paid non-teaching administrative staff. If I were coming up these days, I would enter the trades instead of going to college.

[GroundhogSS]

When I graduated from Texas in '67, I was paying about $250-350 per semester for tuition and books. Don't know what that would be in 2018 dollars. I was able to pay most of it with after school jobs and summer work and my folks helped a bit. I got out with no loans. Now that place costs thousands per semester just for tuition.

[arpad_m]

Originally Posted by fastball

I think right there is the problem. Far too many subjects are considered essential when they are not. There are far more elective requirements today than there used to be. Universities need to quit indoctrinating students with copious amounts of frivolous information.

I had a big problem being required to take arts and humanities classes for my engineering degree. To me they were absolutely wasted classes, a waste of my time when I could have been working on my projects, and I told my professors flat out their class was a waste of time and I'm only there because I'm required to be. I got straight Cs and didn't care.

I guess you and I will see this very differently.

You are probably right about the proliferation of filler electives, this wasn't as bad in my day. Otherwise I respect your stance on those wasted classes, but disagree in general, one doesn't always know in his teens and twenties what will be useful in their future.

(I taught computer science classes in a college for a total of 9 years, and heard this same argument from students nearly every week. You don't want to end up one-dimensional when you graduate. At the same time those random useless courses that are shoved in because professor XYZ loves them gotta go. Ironically, debates over this and other dubious department policies was one of my reasons for quitting...)

[fastball]

Originally Posted by arpad_m

You are probably right about the proliferation of filler electives, this wasn't as bad in my day. Otherwise I respect your stance on those wasted classes, but disagree in general, one doesn't always know in his teens and twenties what will be useful in their future.

(I taught computer science classes in a college for a total of 9 years, and heard this same argument from students nearly every week. You don't want to end up one-dimensional when you graduate. At the same time those random useless courses that are shoved in because professor XYZ loves them gotta go. Ironically, debates over this and other dubious department policies was one of my reasons for quitting...)

From my perspective, if you’re one dimensional when you graduate and don’t like that dimension you can always go back and go in another dimension. Although today that’s almost cost prohibitive. That whole “don’t want to be one dimensional” thing is bogus because no one cares if you know the history of Eastern philosophy when you’re interviewing to repair medical equipment.

[redcoats1976]

i agree that the cost of college is prohibitive,however if you join the armed forces the government will foot the bill.

[Lafourche1]

This is a competitive disadvantage for the United States versus most of Western Europe. In many EU countries, college is free (Germany, Finland, Ireland, Denmark, Austria, etc.) or inexpensive (~$200 semester - France). These costs are for any EU student going to any state university in any EU country. I see this as an investment in the future versus our mortgaging the futures of college students.