Anonymous wrote:The fancy stuff isn't what made the colleges expensive--it's what colleges did to attract students in a competitive marketplace. And alum like to donate for the sports and the gyms and the like more than other things. Big costs are research libraries, research equipment, updated classroom spaces, health insurance, administration to deal with ever-f regulations/liabilities, support staff needed for the wider array of students going to college (lot easier to educate just UMC kids with adequate resources in the past than a greater swath of the population that attends now). US colleges are highly regarded around the world, we should recognized the public value they hold and just fund them the way we used to.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There needs to be a quality metric. The government should only give student loans to students at schools where the student loan default rate is below a certain threshold. This would immediately knock out most for-profit schools and incentivize all schools to get their grads into good paying jobs with strong academic programs and career support. To meet this threshold, schools may choose to cut or reduce the size of programs where grads can't make a living wage, i.e., majors that aren't a good investment. They may also bulk up and market majors with good career options.

Loss of for profit programs will disproportionately impact low income and minority students, so this should be coupled with more aid for community colleges or other public schools.

I see comments like this constantly on DCUM and it's weird to me because a person with an English degree can do everything from spend a fruitless decade "writing a novel" while working odd jobs, to becoming a teacher with a steady income and benefits, to becoming a consultant or going to law school and making a very high income.

There are also a lot of people who get pushed into "marketable" majors like engineering or business and do poorly because it doesn't suit them, get bad grades, and struggle to find jobs upon graduation.

At a liberal arts college, the goal is to turn out students who can do a broad variety of professional work, and who all have a baseline skill level in reading, writing, math/statistics, and logic, and a broad exposure to history, the sciences, politics/government, and the arts. With that education you can do lots and lots of things, whether you majored in Ethnic Studies or Accounting.

The push to make liberal arts colleges more like pre-professional school is weird. That's what pre-professional schools are for! But lots of jobs do not require specialized education -- they require smart, capable, literate people who can learn the specifics of that job fairly quickly. I.e. liberal arts graduates.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There needs to be a quality metric. The government should only give student loans to students at schools where the student loan default rate is below a certain threshold. This would immediately knock out most for-profit schools and incentivize all schools to get their grads into good paying jobs with strong academic programs and career support. To meet this threshold, schools may choose to cut or reduce the size of programs where grads can't make a living wage, i.e., majors that aren't a good investment. They may also bulk up and market majors with good career options.

Loss of for profit programs will disproportionately impact low income and minority students, so this should be coupled with more aid for community colleges or other public schools.

I see comments like this constantly on DCUM and it's weird to me because a person with an English degree can do everything from spend a fruitless decade "writing a novel" while working odd jobs, to becoming a teacher with a steady income and benefits, to becoming a consultant or going to law school and making a very high income.

There are also a lot of people who get pushed into "marketable" majors like engineering or business and do poorly because it doesn't suit them, get bad grades, and struggle to find jobs upon graduation.

At a liberal arts college, the goal is to turn out students who can do a broad variety of professional work, and who all have a baseline skill level in reading, writing, math/statistics, and logic, and a broad exposure to history, the sciences, politics/government, and the arts. With that education you can do lots and lots of things, whether you majored in Ethnic Studies or Accounting.

The push to make liberal arts colleges more like pre-professional school is weird. That's what pre-professional schools are for! But lots of jobs do not require specialized education -- they require smart, capable, literate people who can learn the specifics of that job fairly quickly. I.e. liberal arts graduates.

Anonymous wrote:There needs to be a quality metric. The government should only give student loans to students at schools where the student loan default rate is below a certain threshold. This would immediately knock out most for-profit schools and incentivize all schools to get their grads into good paying jobs with strong academic programs and career support. To meet this threshold, schools may choose to cut or reduce the size of programs where grads can't make a living wage, i.e., majors that aren't a good investment. They may also bulk up and market majors with good career options.

Loss of for profit programs will disproportionately impact low income and minority students, so this should be coupled with more aid for community colleges or other public schools.

Anonymous wrote:Better idea is to require colleges to guarantee the loans. Maybe then they will stop encouraging students to take out hundreds of thousands of dollars for a degree that does not support that investment.

Anonymous wrote:There needs to be a quality metric. The government should only give student loans to students at schools where the student loan default rate is below a certain threshold. This would immediately knock out most for-profit schools and incentivize all schools to get their grads into good paying jobs with strong academic programs and career support. To meet this threshold, schools may choose to cut or reduce the size of programs where grads can't make a living wage, i.e., majors that aren't a good investment. They may also bulk up and market majors with good career options.

Loss of for profit programs will disproportionately impact low income and minority students, so this should be coupled with more aid for community colleges or other public schools.

Anonymous wrote:Data shows that kids with community college degrees don’t get to 4 year degree and never make as much money.

Also, sort of opposite of PP, I want all kids to have the opportunity to spend four years somewhere, have teams to root for, and put down roots in a community they are proud of. There has to be a way at least some state schools could do this. It is not about bells and whistles but pride of place.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is not feasible due to how colleges/universities (even public ones) are set up right now, but I whole-heartedly agree. I would have loved an inexpensive (or free) education that just involved going to class and doing my homework, reading, some practical internship/externships, etc. You can build a social life and hobbies outside of school, I didn't need school to provide those for me, and I actually enjoyed leaving campus to do things with mixed-age groups and get out of the campus bubble.

Private colleges can of course do whatever they want, but I don't understand why public universities don't make cost-effective but high-quality learning a goal. It's one thing to spend money on labs, excellent professors, and hands-on programming. But most schools are spending enormous funds on student life and I don't understand why. 18-22 year olds are historically pretty good at finding ways to entertain themselves.

Because a system where poor kids can't eat in the dining hall with their rich classmates or can't use the gym (or are the schools to build two gyms) to exercise, is awful. (And if the rich kids can use the poor facilities but not vice-versa, that's pretty gross, too.)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I say get rid of BS classes, aka core classes.

What do you really need to be an accountant? It’s not all 120 credits.

So basically make college trade school? Why not have AA programs that are more trade focused and let folks who want a rounded college education still get that? I see your point but I disagree that college is merely to train students in career knowledge.

Anonymous wrote:The fancy stuff isn't what made the colleges expensive--it's what colleges did to attract students in a competitive marketplace. And alum like to donate for the sports and the gyms and the like more than other things. Big costs are research libraries, research equipment, updated classroom spaces, health insurance, administration to deal with ever-increasing regulations/liabilities, support staff needed for the wider array of students going to college (lot easier to educate just UMC kids with adequate resources in the past than a greater swath of the population that attends now). US colleges are highly regarded around the world, we should recognized the public value they hold and just fund them the way we used to.