Concerns That New Department of Education Earnings Test Could Undermine Arts, Public Service Degree Programs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is crazy. We had an awesome student loan program with almost zero defaults. We should not have changed a thing.

I am not sure if you are sarcastic or truly not aware. Here is a pretty good article from the Motley Fool (funny name, serious topics) - https://www.fool.com/research/student-loan-debt-statistics/?msockid=107a8323f45165f2061e9783f5f96456
Here is another one - https://thecollegeinvestor.com/39673/does-the-government-profit-off-of-student-loans/

Can you think of any business that can sustain up to 20% loss each time they sell something? I can agree with government breaking even on the loans, but losing money every year requires action. Best not to provide loans to customers who are at a high risk of not paying back in the first place.

The government isn't a business! It's a mechanism for society to maintain and advance itself. Education should be free, because why would we want to live in an uneducated society? Arts education should be free, because why would we want to live in a society where few people make art because most people can't afford to do it? What kind of life do we want for ourselves?

You are about to describe socialism. Not a single socialist regime proved to be a long term viable system. Not sure what to call what China has right now. Socialist authoritarianism? Not saying that pure capitalism is all that great either.

Nothing should be free. Free invites waste. Also, nothing is free anyway. Public schools are not free - taxes pay for them, etc, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Social workers should not be burdened with $200,000 in college loans.

Who would choose to attend a masters program in social work for that much?? MSW is a two-year degree. I just looked **very** briefly at GMU website and for in-state VA residents it looks like the tuition is roughly $20k a year. There's an online option. Of course you have to add living expenses, but you're still nowhere close to $200k.

[Anonymous]

I know of someone who comes from a a very poor family. Thankfully, her COA to a decent private university was close to 0. Her major is dance. She will be graduating in a couple weeks.

What she wants to do with that degree - be a choreographer or a yoga teacher.

If choreographer - she'll want to live in a big city but her family is poor so she won't be able to have family helping her out those first few years after college. She won't be able t live in that big city.

If yoga teacher - not like they earn money either and did you really need a college degree to be a yoga teacher?

Look I get it - I was also poor growing up and had my share of student loans. But I also knew I didn't have a family social net helping me upon graduation. I had to pick a practical major that would ensure me a good enough paying job. I didn't have the luxury of choosing a major like Theatre or Dance. I wanted to use my degree to break my cycle - not continue the being poor cycle.

But...we need all types in this country. Not everyone can major in business/engineering/nursing/science. We need humanities majors too. It sucks it has to be this way but right now the people who can major in the humanities are those wealthy enough to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Professors. administrators and other support staff are criminally underpaid at colleges like UVA, Va Tech, UConn, UMass, Delaware, etc. We need more tax-payer backed loans to flow through students to support our near-pauper professors, deans, provosts, etc.

I assume that’s sarcasm. The layers of administrators and their salaries, many of which exist mainly to harvest government funding, are what has changed since I was in school. Agree the teaching staff and professors aren’t seeing the benefits of the huge run up in college costs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This will be good for admissions to humanities for those who are full pay I imagine.

Not at the best schools where all graduates do pretty well.

A lot of humanities majors either go into consulting or they are basically pre-law.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fine with me. Schools should not be offering degrees that never pay off.

Like education?

I don’t know… I kind of feel we should help people who are interested in serving others over self.

We can’t all serve ourselves.

They can get their degree from a public university like UCLA. They don't need to go to USC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fine with me. Schools should not be offering degrees that never pay off.

Well, we shouldn’t be financing such degrees with public loans. If some heiress wants a degree in studio art, she should absolutely be allowed to spend daddy’s money on it, even if the degree will never pay off in a narrow economic sense.

What a self-own this is.

Your family clearly doesn’t have any talent in the arts and you don’t have a home where art, music, dance, and drama are present. If you did, you would support arts education. How sad.

DP.

You don't need 4 years at a private college to study painting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fine with me. Schools should not be offering degrees that never pay off.

Like education?

I don’t know… I kind of feel we should help people who are interested in serving others over self.

We can’t all serve ourselves.

Who is going to become a teacher now???

State school tuition for teaching programs in Virginia are about 10-15K/year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fine with me. Schools should not be offering degrees that never pay off.

Well, we shouldn’t be financing such degrees with public loans. If some heiress wants a degree in studio art, she should absolutely be allowed to spend daddy’s money on it, even if the degree will never pay off in a narrow economic sense.

What a self-own this is.

Your family clearly doesn’t have any talent in the arts and you don’t have a home where art, music, dance, and drama are present. If you did, you would support arts education. How sad.

I don't think they don't support arts education. They just don't think the American people should be financing it for students who will most likely default on their loan (as history has shown). There are plenty of full pay families that can continue to pay the tuitions for these humanities programs.

What about financing an education degree? Elementary English - reading?

state colleges have all this. In state tuition for teaching degrees are cheap.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s just a myth that college major correlates exactly to career. English majors become lawyers, bankers as well as teachers and communications professionals. So now we’re turning college into trade school?

WHat were colleges before federally guaranteed loan programs? Because that is what will happen to schools that can't justify their tuition with earnigs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fine with me. Schools should not be offering degrees that never pay off.

Well, we shouldn’t be financing such degrees with public loans. If some heiress wants a degree in studio art, she should absolutely be allowed to spend daddy’s money on it, even if the degree will never pay off in a narrow economic sense.

But if a banker wants to take out a loan and not pay it back, taxpayers damn sure better bail them out!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a scientist but I don't think that every student should major in science/technology.

Maybe the solution is not to discontinue these majors but rather to value and pay public servants, educators, and others more appropriately.

Even during the Great Depression, our federal government recognized the value of humanities and arts, and found ways to support them.

The only reason we have recordings of formerly enslaved people talking about their experiences is because the government paid historians to do this work during the Great Depression. I’ve listened to some of these recordings at the Library of Congress while doing my own research. I’ve seen and appreciated the WPA-funded murals showing the history of indigenous people in the US at Griffith Park Observatory. Documenting history, creating art—a healthy culture understands that this is critical work and believes in paying people to do it.

A sclerotic, fascist-friendly culture seeks to stamp this work out by shutting off the paths for historians and artists and philosophers to exist in the first place. Those of you cheering this on, claiming that low pay for this work is evidence that the work isn’t valuable, are making clear how sick our culture is. You think you’re being virtuous, but you won’t like where we end up.

NONE of those people took out government loans to become historians or artists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am a scientist but I don't think that every student should major in science/technology.

Maybe the solution is not to discontinue these majors but rather to value and pay public servants, educators, and others more appropriately.

Even during the Great Depression, our federal government recognized the value of humanities and arts, and found ways to support them.

Nobody had during the great depression had a college degree that was paid for with government backed loans.

[Anonymous]

How is everyone missing the point?

These huge loans are just cause the huge tuition costs!

We aren't "funding education", we are funding country clubs and bureaucrats and edtech corporations.

Pull the free money out, and watch tuition plummet to sane 1970s levels. Government should invest in education directly, not handouts to corporations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a scientist but I don't think that every student should major in science/technology.

Maybe the solution is not to discontinue these majors but rather to value and pay public servants, educators, and others more appropriately.

Even during the Great Depression, our federal government recognized the value of humanities and arts, and found ways to support them.

Nobody had during the great depression had a college degree that was paid for with government backed loans.

If this is the literacy level of a college graduate, then I'm favor of cutting funding for it.