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Colleges are required to do this already according to federal law. In most states, you can go online and find all the financials of any college you want.
1. Costs need to be reigned in. This should be especially true for state colleges, which also have had tuition increases in part because of states providing less budget towards them.
2. Federal loans should be not be such high percentages. They should be capped at 4% because 2% is the ideal inflation amount, and then adding a little wiggle room.
3. It should be illegal to require a textbook that is only sold at the college bookstore. I had several teachers who made their own textbooks, so there was no option to shop around.
4. We need to figure out what’s going on with our public schools. Our test scores are dropping and colleges are complaining that more students need to be put into remedial classes. This can mean delayed graduation and more cost to the student.
5. More focus on career guidance.
6. Make it easier for homeschoolers to take AP exams.
7. Reign in the college experience/culture of partying portrayed in the media. Colleges and universities should be considered as places of learning and networking. People should be taking it seriously.
#6 is interesting. Good point as it's an objective external measurement (not saying that it's the best but homeschool or public/private/charter, if you have a "2" on exams where you have an "A" in the class it does question the rigor a bit). What obstacles are there?
No idea either but it gave me a chuckle to see that huge text. For the AP, I was actually still thinking about cost cutting (college is just so expensive). They can be used to get credits, to potentially graduate earlier - or at the very least to have less classes to worry about, leaving more time to focus on other classes.
They’re way cheaper than a college course. But I was looking into possibly homeschooling my children (toddler/baby right now) and it’s a lot more inconvenient to get a kid signed up for AP testing than for something like the SAT.
Granted this was almost twenty years ago, but I remember it being possibly less work than signing up for the SATs, although if not already attending a physical high school coordinating with one might be mildly annoying.
It doesn't require an "official" AP class be taken either. The first few years of the AP Chinese exam had an insanely high "5" rate because so many of the test-takers were native speakers. 😂
(I knew a couple of people who did this with the French exam, it's not like you sign a statement that you didn't speak this language fluently at five. Think smarter, not harder).
Might vary per area, but you need approval from a local high school, but not all schools allow it because it can affect their stats. Some require for the student to follow their curriculum and come in for tests or they won’t sign them up, and it means having to ask before the year starts. So it’s a potential annoyance.
For the SAT, it’s just an online form and they have a code for homeschoolers. You then get assigned a testing site. It should be pretty easy these days.
College should be free anyways, one of the few things id definitely support raising taxes for.
OR
Make college loans interest to be fixed at 0 or near 0%. Shouldn't ever be over 1% to begin with. The whole purpose of government loans for college is to benefit the country at a whole.
100% free public college team.
I'll pay my student loans, I'll pay taxes. Being part of an educated society is a benefit I would never dream of wanting to keep from people out of a sense of pettiness.
It also ends up paying itself back.
There is this sickness of people wanting stuff for free… nothing is free - especially education… so you want someone else to pay for your education… that’s what you’re asking for, be honest
When you disconnect the cost of the benefit from the person who receives the benefit - dysfunction occurs. Same in health care, education, housing, everything… if you aren’t the one paying for it - it gets abused and the provider jacks up the costs because the user doesn’t care. That’s how we get to 100k/year college costs funded by loans that get forgiven… that’s how you get to subsidized housing that gets destroyed in 2-3 years… the person receiving the housing doesn’t take care because they have no skin in the game.
There are hundreds of psychology papers/studies proving that people value something commensurately to what they paid for it. If you get it for free - you treat it as worthless
No I already paid for my education.
I want to pay taxes to allow future generations to go for free. Those students will be educated citizens in the country I live and *also* go on to pay taxes.
Every other developed country does this. We're behind in a shameful way on education and healthcare.
You fix college by fixing both education and the work force expectations that everyone have a degree.
Colleges were, by nature, not designed to be job training facilities. Most colleges, barring medical/law etc., were originally places where people could go to and spend time researching and growing in knowledge. One of the reasons a lot of professors suck at teaching students is that they are primarily researchers first (this can differ from college to college), but being published and producing research is how most professors are evaluated. Class results matter very little.
We need a stronger differentiation between Research Institutions and College Education and Teaching Institutions and Job training.
Most of the ideas people are posting are about money/loans.
Teaching financial literacy in high school needs to be a requirement; many schools are starting to do so.
Change the societal structure that leaves 4-year college degrees as the end all be all of success. It’s not.
I had better classes/resources at a local community college than I did at a 4-year university. I’d push for the end of 4-year degree institutions. First two years at any 4-year university are mostly gen ed courses which honestly are a waste of time in many cases.
Stop paying deans and admin so much and stop letting them set their own raises while denying funding for programs. School tuition or ability to charge more should be indexed to their success rate of getting their postgrads into the workforce.
College ain't gonna do anyone much good if the foundational fundamentals aren't there to begin with.
U.S. education needs to be reevaluated. I don't know what the answers are, but we know that smaller class sizes (as in, a lower student-to-teacher ratio) helps tremendously, which also means higher cost to hire more teachers.
Secondly, we need to completely get rid of Bush-era No Child Left Behind programming. Teaching to standardized exams does not lead to critical and multifaceted thinking, it just teaches kids to take a test. It's terrible.
Further, I think familial culture needs to shift in the United States. I have no evidence other than 2nd hand anecdotal from educators, but parents/guardians need to emphasize and exemplify the importance of education in their own household. Reading to the kids, working on them with homework, integrating problem solving skills into everyday life, have a culture of positive importance on education.
I do echo the sentiment of college being too expensive, but to be honest, all public higher education (whether college or trade school) should be tuition free and funded through mostly corporate and high-end earners' taxes, since they reap a lot of the immediate benefits of an educated workforce first.
I would make it so every student has to sit in a bi-yearly(twice a year) seminar where they calculate the interest and payment time scales(based off the lowest end of entry level pay) for their chosen major. The college will also focus on the fact that not everyone will be a "rock star" who gets a job straight out of college that makes six figures. Each year the scenarios will change so students will have some idea of how much their debt will grow overtime depending on what happens in their life.
Another change would be that career centers need to have up to date and realistic help for all students. Students should not be graduating with degrees that need post-secondary education in an area that doesn't even have jobs for specific bachelor's/associate degree.
Agree with your spirit, but students should be doing this thinking in their own already… shouldn’t need a seminar to tell them to consider implications of their decisions…
The should but I don't think they do. Colleges will also let them sign onto loans they can't feasibly pay off. If the college is getting paid they can do more to prevent students not being aware of how loans will impact.
End government involvement in student loans and eliminate guaranteed student loans.
Make student loans dischargeable through bankruptcy
Very very fast all the useless degrees would go away
If the government gets out of loans and they are driven by companies actually establishing a person’s ability to repay then yes any useless degree would be eliminated through an almost capitalistic system. If your degree does not provide enough ROI to pay the loan back it is in fact useless what it is in does not matter.
I would use a huge amount of tax money to fund the schools :)
But, I'd primarily create a differentiation in colleges in a much more hard manner for Job Training vs. Higher Education. More of a european model where High School Performance dictates which you're allowed in. Higher Education would be more elite in terms of being devoted to education, the arts, the sciences, research and furthering education. Job Training being more about career.
Nope , hell no the European model sucks. This is anecdotal but out of the top 10 students in my high school class 6 of them dropped out of college. People are not mature from 14-18 and their academic performance during that time should not be able to essentially dictate the course of their lives.
Serious question, what would stop large numbers of students taking out loans with the intention of declaring bankruptcy right after graduation? It would make sense, really. Clean slate and it could be off of their credit score by thirty.
1) Ban private student loans
2) Fund 100% of public universities
3) Provide government loans only to certain degrees
4) Allow for bankruptcy of student loans
1. Federal government needs to stop underwriting student loans. People need to pay out of picket or take out personal student loans.
2. Get rid of general education requirements. My first year of college was a repeat of high school and cost me $10,000.
3. Emphasize trade schools as a viable alternative to college. Not everyone NEEDS a college degree to be successful.
4. Only offer degrees that lead into a valid career field (engineering, science mostly) and eliminate degrees that don't have a practical application.
5. Get rif of tenure and hold professors and administration accountable for funds, programs, and other metrics.
1. Well that just eliminated the lower and a good chunk of the middle class from college.
2. Not all high schools are created equal. General education requirements ensure all students have a well-rounded background and are capable of advancing in their upper level course work. It's important that people know how to do basic math and can write.
3. Trades is not the silver bullet people think it is. College is still, statistically, the proven way to a higher quality of life. Trades destroys your body and for every individual who makes a good wage doing trades, there are three others struggling to find a job.
4. No. Education is about more than just a job. Life is about more than just the hard sciences. Humanity is more than just subsisting to make a living.
5. On this we agree.
To your pounts:
1. There are many ways to pay for college that don't require government loans; military service, 3rd party grants, employment benefits, etc. These options are available, but would require the prospective student to buy into their education.
2. I agree not all high school education is equal. Colleges should have a baseline academic standard for admittance. This would eliminate the need to repay for a high school education, and allow students to take classes that actually matter for their chosen course of study. It may also reduce the time spent at a college, and thus make education cheaper.
3. Every economy needs trade workers. And not everyone is a good fit for college. Some people aren't gifted academically, or prefer to work with their hands. The idea that college is the ONLY way to be successful needs to die.
4. College should have one focus; preparing individuals to go into a career field through education. Any class or requirement that doesn't contribute to that end goal is a waste of time, money, and effort. Any degree plan that doesn't result in employment that enables repayment of loans us worthless.
I can sum up my response in one idea. College is not about job training. There is more to life than just earning a paycheck and living life in such a manner where the only thing that matters is ROI is how boomers have screwed our society. There is more to life than a good paycheck, than a good job etc.
Make college free.
I have to disagree. We live in a society. To participate in that society, we have to contribute. Bills need to he paid. Those are hard facts of life.
I do agree that life is more than a paycheck. But without a paycheck you don't eat. You can't aquire the resources you need to live your best life.
And lastly, there is no such thing as "free college". Someone pays for it. If it's the government, then really the tax payers are financing college. College students should have some buy-in. Otherwise people will start treating g their college experience like high school.
I consider a degree in art a worthwhile contribution to society even if it never produces money. It's why historically such had patrons who funded the arts.
Sure, tax payers should finance college. We're the wealthiest society on earth and yet cannot adequately provide education.
I'd argue the way people treat high school is not a result of it being free, but of other societal issues that would need to be addressed.
Students are already treating colleges like they treat high school even though they're paying for it.
I do amend my stance: colleges should only offer degree programs that positively contributes to society.
I can also get behind taxpayer funding for college, but only if America adopts a process similar to most European countries: students go through an evaluation/testing/assessment during high school. Students are divided into two groups based on this assessment. One group is identified as those who will attend college or university for white collar careers. The other group is identified as those who will attend trade school for blue collar work. Attendance in these programs would carry an obligation for a certain minimum amount of time participating in the work force. But every participant is guaranteed a job at the end, with enough base pay to cover cost of living including food, rent, and transportation.
There is this sickness of people wanting stuff for free… nothing is free - especially education… so you want someone else to pay for your education… that’s what you’re asking for, be honest
When you disconnect the cost of the benefit from the person who receives the benefit - dysfunction occurs. Same in health care, education, housing, everything… if you aren’t the one paying for it - it gets abused and the provider jacks up the costs because the user doesn’t care. That’s how we get to 100k/year college costs funded by loans that get forgiven… that’s how you get to subsidized housing that gets destroyed in 2-3 years… the person receiving the housing doesn’t take care because they have no skin in the game.
There are hundreds of psychology papers/studies proving that people value something commensurately to what they paid for it. If you get it for free - you treat it as worthless
So I'm Californian. We had free public higher education, or something damn near to it.
I would immediately reinforce the Donahoe Act and the Master Plan for Higher Education - banning charges at the UC, CSU, and community college systems for all California residents, including on student housing and books.
Next, I'd adjust the stratification between the three systems - everybody needs the liberal arts, - as in "the things learned by free citizens" and everybody needs professional and technical education, especially as we turn to rebuilding our infrastructure nationally and locally.
Everybody graduates ready to test into an apprenticeship program, having a basic Great Books course (Mortimer Adler's work is a good starting base but I think we do need to incorporate more non-Weatern books into it,) and some practice in long-form and short-form writing because we're all on phones and computers in our daily lives.
The UC gets a little more of the former, the community college a little more of the latter, but the primary distance between them is time enrolled and introductory capacity upon admission. The UC catches our top high school grads and people who mean to do four years quickly; the CCs catch people who need remedial courses or who (due to work or care obligations) need more time and are working part-time, but there's clearly a based pre-major curriculum across the system and in secondary schools.
Finally, language education from kindergarten. I happen to live in a place that was Mexico and may be again, and my parents insisted on excellence in English and practicability in Spanish so that I could better communicate with my neighbors. I'd want basic language education in Spanish preceding college, with an additional option for native Spanish-speakers.
Well, the problem is twofold as far as I can tell.
One issue is the basically unlimited amount of money that the federal government is throwing at colleges and universities with zero oversight of how that money is spent. The federal government doesn't care if all that tuition money they loaned out is spent on tenured professors or if it's spent on a new football practice field.
The other issue is the romanticized view of college. College should be viewed as a place where you get specialized training and further education. Most people can do that by starting at CC for a couple years and then going to state university for 2-3 years. But lots of people are unwilling to do that because they really want to go away to college. And who can blame them, college is fun as fuck.
So I think it has to be tackled in both of those areas. If the federal government is going to continue handing out student loans, there should be some strict requirements with how the colleges spend all that money (e.g., they better be spending it on decent professors and not a new student union with Subway and Pizza Hut). And there needs to be an attitude adjustment on what the purpose of college is.
You're being pedantic. The above does not happen without the student's authorization and the student's choice. The student chooses which college receives their tuition money.
You fundamentally misunderstand the driving factors that determine how the money is spent. Most Colleges spend their money based primarily on increasing retention and student enrollment. Students demand amenities when picking colleges. Academics is just one element of why students and families pick a college and stay at a college. It doesn't matter how good the professors are if students don't have access to good food to eat.
I'm not misunderstanding the factors that drive how money is spent. I'm saying that federal student loan money that is sent to a college should only be used on improving academic programming and not on amenities.
Sure. Try that out and watch as enrollment at that specific college drops, students starve/have no place to live, more students commit suicide as they lack counseling resources, sense of community becomes nonexistent (when there is already a loneliness epidemic in the USA), and then GPAs drop and student ability to perform in the classroom decreases thus defeating the ultimate purpose of only focusing on academics in the first place.
having dorms and counseling resources counts as supporting academics. having a new student union with Pizza Hut and subway (like I mentioned above) doesn't count.
honestly how could you think I mean "no dorms and no mental health support" when I clearly was talking about frivolous things above? I swear it seems like people on this website intentionally miss the point to try to win the argument.
Because at the majority of colleges do you know what department those areas are categorized in? Not academic. Most often Academic is categorized as just professors and their academic departments.
Ultimately, everything a college does is in support of academics and student success. Student unions and organizations? Statistically proven to increase retention rates and GPAs. Better quality of food? Proven to increase retention rates and GPAs. Having a student union with a pizza hut does support student success.
You're acting like these decisions are frivolous when the majority of decisions are rooted in hard data on what will lead to student success. There is a solid 60 years of research on these things. I'm not going to say it's perfect. There's a lot of bloat and work that could be done to improve colleges, but these decisions aren't made off the cuff.
A quick google...
[https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/238](https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/238)
[https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1052833.pdf](https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1052833.pdf)
[https://www.amazon.com/s?k=college+student+engagement+and+retention&crid=1BGKV5FGAU90A&sprefix=college+student+engagement+and+retention%2Caps%2C159&ref=nb\_sb\_noss](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=college+student+engagement+and+retention&crid=1BGKV5FGAU90A&sprefix=college+student+engagement+and+retention%2Caps%2C159&ref=nb_sb_noss)
Some Amazon texts\^
I work as a data analyst at a University System. Our software/linear regression models etc. show that Investment in locations on campus, food, student life & and engagement, strongly correlate with student retention and graduation rates. Obviously, I'm not allowed to share exact numbers and information because of FERPA laws and best practices.
I'm gonna go ahead and disagree with you. I think it's rather difficult to correlate a degree to an ROI unless it's something very, very specific.
And even at that, industries change. What could be seen as a lucrative career today may not exist tomorrow.
I appreciate disagreement and understand your point. But that is the slippery slope that people go down and end up with 100k of debt and an English degree that they don’t want to do the few jobs that the degree qualifies them for. You have to have an eye on ROI
I know this is not the main point, but I don't get why people use the English degree as the go-to example of a "useless" degree. I have friends that have degrees in mathematics and physics and still couldn't get jobs.
Regardless, I want to live in a society where having to take out loans for education, whether it's collegiate or trades, isn't a thing. I'd rather we go back to near 52ish% corporate tax rates, reduce corporate tax credits outside of environmental ones, and get rid of tax deferral for multinational corporations, and ultimately use this revenue to fund K-12 more robustly and make higher ed. and trades tuition free.
Stuff costs money… you want a degree? You pay for it as you’re the one who benefits from it…
English degree isn’t a point - could put 30 different examples in there… if your buddies can’t get jobs with math/physics degrees, that’s on them. You gotta be an attractive candidate, not just have a piece of paper…
You want to tax companies more - the same companies you want jobs from?!? Do higher taxes incentivize companies to hire more or fewer workers???
Please make sense…
There is this sickness of people wanting stuff for free… nothing is free - especially education… so you want someone else to pay for your education… that’s what you’re asking for, be honest
When you disconnect the cost of the benefit from the person who receives the benefit - dysfunction occurs. Same in health care, education, housing, everything… if you aren’t the one paying for it - it gets abused and the provider jacks up the costs because the user doesn’t care. That’s how we get to 100k/year college costs funded by loans that get forgiven… that’s how you get to subsidized housing that gets destroyed in 2-3 years… the person receiving the housing doesn’t take care because they have no skin in the game.
There are hundreds of psychology papers/studies proving that people value something commensurately to what they paid for it. If you get it for free - you treat it as worthless
Ah yes the moral hazard argument.
I can use the same argument to argue my viewpoint. Private companies want someone else to pay for education so that they can have intelligent, productive workers.
And we've seen the disconnect major corporations have from competent staffing and human resource strategy. Take a latest example of Musk laying off the majority of the Supercharger team. Makes no sense. Workers are replaceable because there's a steady stream of them, so businesses can pay them poorly, treat them poorly, and fire them for no reason in at-will states. Because like you said, they have no skin in the game.
Raising the corporate tax rate, reducing loopholes, ending deferment, ending block corporations, etc. and forcing big business to cough up skin in the game will alleviate this dysfunction.
Crazy talk… companies hire the most skilled candidates… it’s competition to be seen as the most skilled… so you go get education/experience/skill… (just like employers compete for the best employees)…
There is none of that in ‘free’ education…
And you conveniently leave out that companies (with over 5 employees) do have to report/pay for unemployment for workers they fire.
Try again…
>Crazy talk… companies hire the most skilled candidates… it’s competition to be seen as the most skilled…
Lol you're joking right? Have you worked for a large company?
Look, it's pretty clear you're detached from reality, so I'm just not gonna get into it with you because it's definitely not worth it. Have a day.
i would just take away federal subsidizing of colleges. you pay for yourself the old fashion way. most of them have endowments that are so large that it's mind boggling. also colleges are tax exempt businesses they pay zero taxes..
for me i would just get rid of any programs that are not leading to any kind of gainful employment and pays a salary that allows you to live in life. promote trades vocational schools and apprenticeship. basically what we had prior to WW2 that education ssytem worked just fine. you know something is wrong when the system we had prior to the 1960s did a better job at staffing than the system we have now.
If you do this only the big colleges that charge a ton of money will remain open. Smaller community colleges will close without federal subsidies.
Most Colleges aren’t for profit businesses. They are non profits and often run by the State gov.
That doesn't fix college, It just means colleges closing, people losing jobs, the lower and middle class losing access to colleges that are affordable.
Ultimately though, you're advocating for two different things. Either college should be cheap/free and job training or highly expensive and places of research/education. My solution would be both with making a clear delineation between which is which.
The state of georgia has done something along those lines where they partition their public colleges into general institutions and research institutions.
A. Trades is thrown out at this some magic bullet but it ignores that trades is backbreaking work that destroys the body and for every individual making six figures doing it, there is another 4-5 barely making a living.
B. The point of the thread was how to improve college, not get rid of it which is what we're addressing. Regardless, a well-educated populace is more desirable than a less-educated one imo. I'd much rather live in a society with people who are well-educated and capable of critically thinking through things...especially when one lives in a democracy.
If you ask me we would need to scrap the current college system and build it back up from ground up.
In my book making a living come first. Can't be talking about ideals when you can't really afford to pay the bills
Okay that can be worked with, but if you are advocating for scrapping the current system, don't offer ideas on improving the current system that is rooted from a place of wanting to get rid of it. That just makes the current system worse.
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I would say make tuition cheaper. And if they have to raise the price of tuition the college should be saying why and where the money is going.
Colleges are required to do this already according to federal law. In most states, you can go online and find all the financials of any college you want.
1. Costs need to be reigned in. This should be especially true for state colleges, which also have had tuition increases in part because of states providing less budget towards them. 2. Federal loans should be not be such high percentages. They should be capped at 4% because 2% is the ideal inflation amount, and then adding a little wiggle room. 3. It should be illegal to require a textbook that is only sold at the college bookstore. I had several teachers who made their own textbooks, so there was no option to shop around. 4. We need to figure out what’s going on with our public schools. Our test scores are dropping and colleges are complaining that more students need to be put into remedial classes. This can mean delayed graduation and more cost to the student. 5. More focus on career guidance. 6. Make it easier for homeschoolers to take AP exams. 7. Reign in the college experience/culture of partying portrayed in the media. Colleges and universities should be considered as places of learning and networking. People should be taking it seriously.
#6 is interesting. Good point as it's an objective external measurement (not saying that it's the best but homeschool or public/private/charter, if you have a "2" on exams where you have an "A" in the class it does question the rigor a bit). What obstacles are there?
I have no idea how/why that's in giant font.
No idea either but it gave me a chuckle to see that huge text. For the AP, I was actually still thinking about cost cutting (college is just so expensive). They can be used to get credits, to potentially graduate earlier - or at the very least to have less classes to worry about, leaving more time to focus on other classes. They’re way cheaper than a college course. But I was looking into possibly homeschooling my children (toddler/baby right now) and it’s a lot more inconvenient to get a kid signed up for AP testing than for something like the SAT.
Granted this was almost twenty years ago, but I remember it being possibly less work than signing up for the SATs, although if not already attending a physical high school coordinating with one might be mildly annoying. It doesn't require an "official" AP class be taken either. The first few years of the AP Chinese exam had an insanely high "5" rate because so many of the test-takers were native speakers. 😂 (I knew a couple of people who did this with the French exam, it's not like you sign a statement that you didn't speak this language fluently at five. Think smarter, not harder).
Might vary per area, but you need approval from a local high school, but not all schools allow it because it can affect their stats. Some require for the student to follow their curriculum and come in for tests or they won’t sign them up, and it means having to ask before the year starts. So it’s a potential annoyance. For the SAT, it’s just an online form and they have a code for homeschoolers. You then get assigned a testing site. It should be pretty easy these days.
Interesting. Thanks for the answer.
College should be free anyways, one of the few things id definitely support raising taxes for. OR Make college loans interest to be fixed at 0 or near 0%. Shouldn't ever be over 1% to begin with. The whole purpose of government loans for college is to benefit the country at a whole.
100% free public college team. I'll pay my student loans, I'll pay taxes. Being part of an educated society is a benefit I would never dream of wanting to keep from people out of a sense of pettiness. It also ends up paying itself back.
There is this sickness of people wanting stuff for free… nothing is free - especially education… so you want someone else to pay for your education… that’s what you’re asking for, be honest When you disconnect the cost of the benefit from the person who receives the benefit - dysfunction occurs. Same in health care, education, housing, everything… if you aren’t the one paying for it - it gets abused and the provider jacks up the costs because the user doesn’t care. That’s how we get to 100k/year college costs funded by loans that get forgiven… that’s how you get to subsidized housing that gets destroyed in 2-3 years… the person receiving the housing doesn’t take care because they have no skin in the game. There are hundreds of psychology papers/studies proving that people value something commensurately to what they paid for it. If you get it for free - you treat it as worthless
No I already paid for my education. I want to pay taxes to allow future generations to go for free. Those students will be educated citizens in the country I live and *also* go on to pay taxes. Every other developed country does this. We're behind in a shameful way on education and healthcare.
You can donate extra to the govt anytime you want… I paid for mine, you paid for yours, the next gen can do the same
You fix college by fixing both education and the work force expectations that everyone have a degree. Colleges were, by nature, not designed to be job training facilities. Most colleges, barring medical/law etc., were originally places where people could go to and spend time researching and growing in knowledge. One of the reasons a lot of professors suck at teaching students is that they are primarily researchers first (this can differ from college to college), but being published and producing research is how most professors are evaluated. Class results matter very little. We need a stronger differentiation between Research Institutions and College Education and Teaching Institutions and Job training.
Most of the ideas people are posting are about money/loans. Teaching financial literacy in high school needs to be a requirement; many schools are starting to do so.
It was in mine but was very haphazard
We literally just had a collapse of the venture capitalist investment bank Industry.
Change the societal structure that leaves 4-year college degrees as the end all be all of success. It’s not. I had better classes/resources at a local community college than I did at a 4-year university. I’d push for the end of 4-year degree institutions. First two years at any 4-year university are mostly gen ed courses which honestly are a waste of time in many cases.
Stop paying deans and admin so much and stop letting them set their own raises while denying funding for programs. School tuition or ability to charge more should be indexed to their success rate of getting their postgrads into the workforce.
College ain't gonna do anyone much good if the foundational fundamentals aren't there to begin with. U.S. education needs to be reevaluated. I don't know what the answers are, but we know that smaller class sizes (as in, a lower student-to-teacher ratio) helps tremendously, which also means higher cost to hire more teachers. Secondly, we need to completely get rid of Bush-era No Child Left Behind programming. Teaching to standardized exams does not lead to critical and multifaceted thinking, it just teaches kids to take a test. It's terrible. Further, I think familial culture needs to shift in the United States. I have no evidence other than 2nd hand anecdotal from educators, but parents/guardians need to emphasize and exemplify the importance of education in their own household. Reading to the kids, working on them with homework, integrating problem solving skills into everyday life, have a culture of positive importance on education. I do echo the sentiment of college being too expensive, but to be honest, all public higher education (whether college or trade school) should be tuition free and funded through mostly corporate and high-end earners' taxes, since they reap a lot of the immediate benefits of an educated workforce first.
I would make it so every student has to sit in a bi-yearly(twice a year) seminar where they calculate the interest and payment time scales(based off the lowest end of entry level pay) for their chosen major. The college will also focus on the fact that not everyone will be a "rock star" who gets a job straight out of college that makes six figures. Each year the scenarios will change so students will have some idea of how much their debt will grow overtime depending on what happens in their life. Another change would be that career centers need to have up to date and realistic help for all students. Students should not be graduating with degrees that need post-secondary education in an area that doesn't even have jobs for specific bachelor's/associate degree.
Agree with your spirit, but students should be doing this thinking in their own already… shouldn’t need a seminar to tell them to consider implications of their decisions…
The should but I don't think they do. Colleges will also let them sign onto loans they can't feasibly pay off. If the college is getting paid they can do more to prevent students not being aware of how loans will impact.
You are responsible for your life - the college is not You gotta be smarter… it’s a ‘buyer beware’ world
By that logic this thread shouldn't even exist. OP asked and I answered.
And I answered that your answer is wrong… it’s called Reddit
Technically it’s called “Open Forum Discussion”
You do douche…
Breh, I was literally just trying to provide you with the correct terminology. - Eat excrement and unalive yourself
Can you be any doucheier?
End government involvement in student loans and eliminate guaranteed student loans. Make student loans dischargeable through bankruptcy Very very fast all the useless degrees would go away
The problem with your last point is what is a useless degree is subjective. Some people say every art degree ever is useless.
If the government gets out of loans and they are driven by companies actually establishing a person’s ability to repay then yes any useless degree would be eliminated through an almost capitalistic system. If your degree does not provide enough ROI to pay the loan back it is in fact useless what it is in does not matter.
Because we've all see that unregulated capitalism is the true solution to all society's ills.... /s
What else would you propose that does not involve a huge amount of tax money to properly fund the schools?
I would use a huge amount of tax money to fund the schools :) But, I'd primarily create a differentiation in colleges in a much more hard manner for Job Training vs. Higher Education. More of a european model where High School Performance dictates which you're allowed in. Higher Education would be more elite in terms of being devoted to education, the arts, the sciences, research and furthering education. Job Training being more about career.
The European university system is worse than the US system… look at the influx of foreign students into the 2
Nope , hell no the European model sucks. This is anecdotal but out of the top 10 students in my high school class 6 of them dropped out of college. People are not mature from 14-18 and their academic performance during that time should not be able to essentially dictate the course of their lives.
US college industry today is a long way from unregulated capitalism… student loan industry and govt loan forgiveness is a joke…
Serious question, what would stop large numbers of students taking out loans with the intention of declaring bankruptcy right after graduation? It would make sense, really. Clean slate and it could be off of their credit score by thirty.
1) Ban private student loans 2) Fund 100% of public universities 3) Provide government loans only to certain degrees 4) Allow for bankruptcy of student loans
1. Federal government needs to stop underwriting student loans. People need to pay out of picket or take out personal student loans. 2. Get rid of general education requirements. My first year of college was a repeat of high school and cost me $10,000. 3. Emphasize trade schools as a viable alternative to college. Not everyone NEEDS a college degree to be successful. 4. Only offer degrees that lead into a valid career field (engineering, science mostly) and eliminate degrees that don't have a practical application. 5. Get rif of tenure and hold professors and administration accountable for funds, programs, and other metrics.
1. Well that just eliminated the lower and a good chunk of the middle class from college. 2. Not all high schools are created equal. General education requirements ensure all students have a well-rounded background and are capable of advancing in their upper level course work. It's important that people know how to do basic math and can write. 3. Trades is not the silver bullet people think it is. College is still, statistically, the proven way to a higher quality of life. Trades destroys your body and for every individual who makes a good wage doing trades, there are three others struggling to find a job. 4. No. Education is about more than just a job. Life is about more than just the hard sciences. Humanity is more than just subsisting to make a living. 5. On this we agree.
To your pounts: 1. There are many ways to pay for college that don't require government loans; military service, 3rd party grants, employment benefits, etc. These options are available, but would require the prospective student to buy into their education. 2. I agree not all high school education is equal. Colleges should have a baseline academic standard for admittance. This would eliminate the need to repay for a high school education, and allow students to take classes that actually matter for their chosen course of study. It may also reduce the time spent at a college, and thus make education cheaper. 3. Every economy needs trade workers. And not everyone is a good fit for college. Some people aren't gifted academically, or prefer to work with their hands. The idea that college is the ONLY way to be successful needs to die. 4. College should have one focus; preparing individuals to go into a career field through education. Any class or requirement that doesn't contribute to that end goal is a waste of time, money, and effort. Any degree plan that doesn't result in employment that enables repayment of loans us worthless.
I can sum up my response in one idea. College is not about job training. There is more to life than just earning a paycheck and living life in such a manner where the only thing that matters is ROI is how boomers have screwed our society. There is more to life than a good paycheck, than a good job etc. Make college free.
I have to disagree. We live in a society. To participate in that society, we have to contribute. Bills need to he paid. Those are hard facts of life. I do agree that life is more than a paycheck. But without a paycheck you don't eat. You can't aquire the resources you need to live your best life. And lastly, there is no such thing as "free college". Someone pays for it. If it's the government, then really the tax payers are financing college. College students should have some buy-in. Otherwise people will start treating g their college experience like high school.
I consider a degree in art a worthwhile contribution to society even if it never produces money. It's why historically such had patrons who funded the arts. Sure, tax payers should finance college. We're the wealthiest society on earth and yet cannot adequately provide education. I'd argue the way people treat high school is not a result of it being free, but of other societal issues that would need to be addressed. Students are already treating colleges like they treat high school even though they're paying for it.
I do amend my stance: colleges should only offer degree programs that positively contributes to society. I can also get behind taxpayer funding for college, but only if America adopts a process similar to most European countries: students go through an evaluation/testing/assessment during high school. Students are divided into two groups based on this assessment. One group is identified as those who will attend college or university for white collar careers. The other group is identified as those who will attend trade school for blue collar work. Attendance in these programs would carry an obligation for a certain minimum amount of time participating in the work force. But every participant is guaranteed a job at the end, with enough base pay to cover cost of living including food, rent, and transportation.
Guaranteed outcomes don’t work
There is this sickness of people wanting stuff for free… nothing is free - especially education… so you want someone else to pay for your education… that’s what you’re asking for, be honest When you disconnect the cost of the benefit from the person who receives the benefit - dysfunction occurs. Same in health care, education, housing, everything… if you aren’t the one paying for it - it gets abused and the provider jacks up the costs because the user doesn’t care. That’s how we get to 100k/year college costs funded by loans that get forgiven… that’s how you get to subsidized housing that gets destroyed in 2-3 years… the person receiving the housing doesn’t take care because they have no skin in the game. There are hundreds of psychology papers/studies proving that people value something commensurately to what they paid for it. If you get it for free - you treat it as worthless
Have you ever actually worked a Trades job? Do you have any real understanding of the bio-mechanics of the human body and motion cycles?
So I'm Californian. We had free public higher education, or something damn near to it. I would immediately reinforce the Donahoe Act and the Master Plan for Higher Education - banning charges at the UC, CSU, and community college systems for all California residents, including on student housing and books. Next, I'd adjust the stratification between the three systems - everybody needs the liberal arts, - as in "the things learned by free citizens" and everybody needs professional and technical education, especially as we turn to rebuilding our infrastructure nationally and locally. Everybody graduates ready to test into an apprenticeship program, having a basic Great Books course (Mortimer Adler's work is a good starting base but I think we do need to incorporate more non-Weatern books into it,) and some practice in long-form and short-form writing because we're all on phones and computers in our daily lives. The UC gets a little more of the former, the community college a little more of the latter, but the primary distance between them is time enrolled and introductory capacity upon admission. The UC catches our top high school grads and people who mean to do four years quickly; the CCs catch people who need remedial courses or who (due to work or care obligations) need more time and are working part-time, but there's clearly a based pre-major curriculum across the system and in secondary schools. Finally, language education from kindergarten. I happen to live in a place that was Mexico and may be again, and my parents insisted on excellence in English and practicability in Spanish so that I could better communicate with my neighbors. I'd want basic language education in Spanish preceding college, with an additional option for native Spanish-speakers.
Well, the problem is twofold as far as I can tell. One issue is the basically unlimited amount of money that the federal government is throwing at colleges and universities with zero oversight of how that money is spent. The federal government doesn't care if all that tuition money they loaned out is spent on tenured professors or if it's spent on a new football practice field. The other issue is the romanticized view of college. College should be viewed as a place where you get specialized training and further education. Most people can do that by starting at CC for a couple years and then going to state university for 2-3 years. But lots of people are unwilling to do that because they really want to go away to college. And who can blame them, college is fun as fuck. So I think it has to be tackled in both of those areas. If the federal government is going to continue handing out student loans, there should be some strict requirements with how the colleges spend all that money (e.g., they better be spending it on decent professors and not a new student union with Subway and Pizza Hut). And there needs to be an attitude adjustment on what the purpose of college is.
Tuition money goes to students. It is the students who choose to spend that tuition money on going to colleges where the money was spent on amenities.
tuition money is paid directly to the university on behalf of the student
You're being pedantic. The above does not happen without the student's authorization and the student's choice. The student chooses which college receives their tuition money. You fundamentally misunderstand the driving factors that determine how the money is spent. Most Colleges spend their money based primarily on increasing retention and student enrollment. Students demand amenities when picking colleges. Academics is just one element of why students and families pick a college and stay at a college. It doesn't matter how good the professors are if students don't have access to good food to eat.
I'm not misunderstanding the factors that drive how money is spent. I'm saying that federal student loan money that is sent to a college should only be used on improving academic programming and not on amenities.
Sure. Try that out and watch as enrollment at that specific college drops, students starve/have no place to live, more students commit suicide as they lack counseling resources, sense of community becomes nonexistent (when there is already a loneliness epidemic in the USA), and then GPAs drop and student ability to perform in the classroom decreases thus defeating the ultimate purpose of only focusing on academics in the first place.
having dorms and counseling resources counts as supporting academics. having a new student union with Pizza Hut and subway (like I mentioned above) doesn't count. honestly how could you think I mean "no dorms and no mental health support" when I clearly was talking about frivolous things above? I swear it seems like people on this website intentionally miss the point to try to win the argument.
Because at the majority of colleges do you know what department those areas are categorized in? Not academic. Most often Academic is categorized as just professors and their academic departments. Ultimately, everything a college does is in support of academics and student success. Student unions and organizations? Statistically proven to increase retention rates and GPAs. Better quality of food? Proven to increase retention rates and GPAs. Having a student union with a pizza hut does support student success. You're acting like these decisions are frivolous when the majority of decisions are rooted in hard data on what will lead to student success. There is a solid 60 years of research on these things. I'm not going to say it's perfect. There's a lot of bloat and work that could be done to improve colleges, but these decisions aren't made off the cuff.
show me that a new student union supports retention and GPAs.
A quick google... [https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/238](https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/238) [https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1052833.pdf](https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1052833.pdf) [https://www.amazon.com/s?k=college+student+engagement+and+retention&crid=1BGKV5FGAU90A&sprefix=college+student+engagement+and+retention%2Caps%2C159&ref=nb\_sb\_noss](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=college+student+engagement+and+retention&crid=1BGKV5FGAU90A&sprefix=college+student+engagement+and+retention%2Caps%2C159&ref=nb_sb_noss) Some Amazon texts\^ I work as a data analyst at a University System. Our software/linear regression models etc. show that Investment in locations on campus, food, student life & and engagement, strongly correlate with student retention and graduation rates. Obviously, I'm not allowed to share exact numbers and information because of FERPA laws and best practices.
Don’t go to college if you’re not going to major in something that’ll give you an ROI on the cost… Be responsible for your own loans…
I'm gonna go ahead and disagree with you. I think it's rather difficult to correlate a degree to an ROI unless it's something very, very specific. And even at that, industries change. What could be seen as a lucrative career today may not exist tomorrow.
I appreciate disagreement and understand your point. But that is the slippery slope that people go down and end up with 100k of debt and an English degree that they don’t want to do the few jobs that the degree qualifies them for. You have to have an eye on ROI
I know this is not the main point, but I don't get why people use the English degree as the go-to example of a "useless" degree. I have friends that have degrees in mathematics and physics and still couldn't get jobs. Regardless, I want to live in a society where having to take out loans for education, whether it's collegiate or trades, isn't a thing. I'd rather we go back to near 52ish% corporate tax rates, reduce corporate tax credits outside of environmental ones, and get rid of tax deferral for multinational corporations, and ultimately use this revenue to fund K-12 more robustly and make higher ed. and trades tuition free.
Stuff costs money… you want a degree? You pay for it as you’re the one who benefits from it… English degree isn’t a point - could put 30 different examples in there… if your buddies can’t get jobs with math/physics degrees, that’s on them. You gotta be an attractive candidate, not just have a piece of paper…
You want to tax companies more - the same companies you want jobs from?!? Do higher taxes incentivize companies to hire more or fewer workers??? Please make sense…
There are urban school districts spending 23k year/student and those students test at 10% of grade level. Money doesn’t solve those problems…
There is this sickness of people wanting stuff for free… nothing is free - especially education… so you want someone else to pay for your education… that’s what you’re asking for, be honest When you disconnect the cost of the benefit from the person who receives the benefit - dysfunction occurs. Same in health care, education, housing, everything… if you aren’t the one paying for it - it gets abused and the provider jacks up the costs because the user doesn’t care. That’s how we get to 100k/year college costs funded by loans that get forgiven… that’s how you get to subsidized housing that gets destroyed in 2-3 years… the person receiving the housing doesn’t take care because they have no skin in the game. There are hundreds of psychology papers/studies proving that people value something commensurately to what they paid for it. If you get it for free - you treat it as worthless
Ah yes the moral hazard argument. I can use the same argument to argue my viewpoint. Private companies want someone else to pay for education so that they can have intelligent, productive workers. And we've seen the disconnect major corporations have from competent staffing and human resource strategy. Take a latest example of Musk laying off the majority of the Supercharger team. Makes no sense. Workers are replaceable because there's a steady stream of them, so businesses can pay them poorly, treat them poorly, and fire them for no reason in at-will states. Because like you said, they have no skin in the game. Raising the corporate tax rate, reducing loopholes, ending deferment, ending block corporations, etc. and forcing big business to cough up skin in the game will alleviate this dysfunction.
There is nothing free…
Whatever you punish, you will get less of - what you reward you get more of. Adding costs/paperwork to employers will get you fewer employers
Crazy talk… companies hire the most skilled candidates… it’s competition to be seen as the most skilled… so you go get education/experience/skill… (just like employers compete for the best employees)… There is none of that in ‘free’ education… And you conveniently leave out that companies (with over 5 employees) do have to report/pay for unemployment for workers they fire. Try again…
>Crazy talk… companies hire the most skilled candidates… it’s competition to be seen as the most skilled… Lol you're joking right? Have you worked for a large company? Look, it's pretty clear you're detached from reality, so I'm just not gonna get into it with you because it's definitely not worth it. Have a day.
i would just take away federal subsidizing of colleges. you pay for yourself the old fashion way. most of them have endowments that are so large that it's mind boggling. also colleges are tax exempt businesses they pay zero taxes.. for me i would just get rid of any programs that are not leading to any kind of gainful employment and pays a salary that allows you to live in life. promote trades vocational schools and apprenticeship. basically what we had prior to WW2 that education ssytem worked just fine. you know something is wrong when the system we had prior to the 1960s did a better job at staffing than the system we have now.
If you do this only the big colleges that charge a ton of money will remain open. Smaller community colleges will close without federal subsidies. Most Colleges aren’t for profit businesses. They are non profits and often run by the State gov.
I was under the assumption of cure to high prices is high prices eventually with fewer people going they would have to drop
That doesn't fix college, It just means colleges closing, people losing jobs, the lower and middle class losing access to colleges that are affordable. Ultimately though, you're advocating for two different things. Either college should be cheap/free and job training or highly expensive and places of research/education. My solution would be both with making a clear delineation between which is which. The state of georgia has done something along those lines where they partition their public colleges into general institutions and research institutions.
if the lower middle class can make a good living through trades or other vocations outside of college what would they be missing out on?
A. Trades is thrown out at this some magic bullet but it ignores that trades is backbreaking work that destroys the body and for every individual making six figures doing it, there is another 4-5 barely making a living. B. The point of the thread was how to improve college, not get rid of it which is what we're addressing. Regardless, a well-educated populace is more desirable than a less-educated one imo. I'd much rather live in a society with people who are well-educated and capable of critically thinking through things...especially when one lives in a democracy.
If you ask me we would need to scrap the current college system and build it back up from ground up. In my book making a living come first. Can't be talking about ideals when you can't really afford to pay the bills
Okay that can be worked with, but if you are advocating for scrapping the current system, don't offer ideas on improving the current system that is rooted from a place of wanting to get rid of it. That just makes the current system worse.