When work doesn't pay for the middle class

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

I'm going to take this statement out of context and save it for future purposes.

Yeah, it ain't one that's likely to come up very often

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

the vast majority of those schools don't have anywhere near the "poor+working class" enrollment of even your typical private college. they'll have a token kid or three in every class (unless it's an athletics-heavy school), and that's about it.

Originally Posted by Dark Cloud

In New England that's the case. Outside of there, it's less so. Obviously that's their primary audience, but 10-15% of their student bodies are surely kids who'd never be able to afford it without help.

Here are some stats, as I'm not pulling my assessment based only on my work and what I've seen, but from numbers.

Nationally, for NAIS day schools (not counting boarding schools) the number is 19.7% of students on financial aid with the average financial aid grant at $11,141 and another 4.6% recieving tuition remission, which of course almost never do this for undergraduates.

In Colorado, ACIS schools have 22.6% of their students on financial aid with the average financial aid grant $10,426 and average day school tuition and expenses at $18343.

Where do these kids who can afford to pay tuition (or even partial tuition) going to come from in the absence of a student loan system?

If we're legislating what the Ivies already have, effectively saying "you will graduate college with no debt, if you come from a family making lower than ________ amount of dollars," then it would be up to the institutions to figure out how to bring more kids into the fold or else, they'd never have enough students to keep themselves open.

I agree with the earlier comment someone made about how we've shifted what used to be grants to loans and that's the big problem and I agree. I just think you'd have a hard time convincing folks to shift money from some other government scheme into some sort of larger grant program. Does no one else see a problem with allowing people who haven't earned much in their lives, who you'd entrust with much of nothing to amass debts of 40, 50 or 100,000 before they've stepped foot into Day One of work? That's the problem here. The reason there's no much of an outcry, is because tuition inflation has really only become a problem in the past decade or so. The people affected are too busy drowning and certainly don't have the political capital to say much.

Enough serious talk. Time to gear up for a bit of FM 2010.

[flere-imsaho]

Originally Posted by Dark Cloud

In New England that's the case. Outside of there, it's less so. Obviously that's their primary audience, but 10-15% of their student bodies are surely kids who'd never be able to afford it without help.

Rough numbers, but...

At private high schools, 18.7% of students receive some sort of financial aid.

At private colleges, 84% of students receive some sort of financial aid.

At both public and private colleges, 65% of students receive some sort of financial aid.

I just don't think the model you're seeing (with which I am also familiar) is scaleable, unless you shift everyone in public schools to fully taxpayer-funded (like public high schools), and maybe not even then.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

Rough numbers, but...

At private high schools, 18.7% of students receive some sort of financial aid.

At private colleges, 84% of students receive some sort of financial aid.

At both public and private colleges, 65% of students receive some sort of financial aid.

I just don't think the model you're seeing (with which I am also familiar) is scaleable, unless you shift everyone in public schools to fully taxpayer-funded (like public high schools), and maybe not even then.

I get your point. The money has to come from somewhere and without the private and federally backed loan programs, it's hard to see how it'd manage to work. Fair enough. (Didn't want to keep using the word "schemes" as people might think I meant it differently than I actually did.)

[flere-imsaho]

Originally Posted by Dark Cloud

If we're legislating what the Ivies already have, effectively saying "you will graduate college with no debt, if you come from a family making lower than ________ amount of dollars," then it would be up to the institutions to figure out how to bring more kids into the fold or else, they'd never have enough students to keep themselves open.

If we legislate that we'll have:

X number of colleges who can afford to keep enrollment the same by subsidizing kids who can't pay full price, with their endowment (read, Ivies, small but rich liberal arts colleges - i.e. Williams).

Y number of colleges who can afford to hang on only by cutting enrollment to those kids who can pay full price and cutting costs.

Z number of colleges who balance the above two approaches.

I'd say X + Y + Z would still equal far, far fewer colleges than we have now. Since the public universities (for which not everyone can pay full price either) couldn't handle the influx without massive increases in tax revenue, the only conclusion I can come to is that you'd have a very considerable number of kids who simply wouldn't go to college at all, or at least not until they could scrape together the money to pay for it by themselves.

[flere-imsaho]

Originally Posted by Dark Cloud

Does no one else see a problem with allowing people who haven't earned much in their lives, who you'd entrust with much of nothing to amass debts of 40, 50 or 100,000 before they've stepped foot into Day One of work? That's the problem here. The reason there's no much of an outcry, is because tuition inflation has really only become a problem in the past decade or so. The people affected are too busy drowning and certainly don't have the political capital to say much.

I agree 100% with this part of your analysis.

[RainMaker]

The article is good and bad. There is truth to the notion that you do get punished much more for being upper middle class. There was a point where I made around $80k and it disqualified me from writing off student loan interest, getting rebate checks, and a slew of other credits/tax breaks that were available if I had made $10k less.

I look at my brother who will leave Florida next year with a phd in Biochemistry. He'll probably get a job for around $80,000 which is about average for his degree. But it took him 9 years counting undergrad to get this degree. He has probably $75,000 in student loans. The fact he makes $80,000 instead of $50,000 means he can't write off those student loan interest which will be a lot. Why punish him who went and got a degree in something valuable?

But that article has some fuzzy math. What they don't mention is that they had 18 years to save up for her college. That there are currently in place tax benefits for those who do. So if they saved $2000 a year growing up ($36,000 total) that happened to make $25,000 in interest/dividends/etc, they made $25,000 that they don't have to pay taxes on (based on the most common college savings plans laws).

Also, education level has a distinct correlation to how much money you make. So if you are receiving financial aid in college, you are much more likely to be paying that back later in life since you'll be worth much more in revenue to the government since you'll be making more. Take the amount of money paid in by the average high school graduate and then the average college graduate. I bet you that even with the aid that is given to the average college student, it turns out they make much more off of them. So in essence, they're in the black on this transaction.

[gstelmack]

Should we argue the whole "public education up through high school sucks so bad that kids need to go to college to get enough education to survive in this economy" hypothesis of mine?

We have way too many kids going to college that shouldn't, aren't ready, and/or should really be in a career that doesn't require college. We do a poor job of vocational education. Seems like fixing education at the lower levels would help refocus college on its advanced education curriculum, rather than so much on basic survival education.

I spent the first two years of my college education bored out of my skull, because Florida wouldn't let the university kids get too far ahead of the JUCO kids when both hit their junior years. Aside from that, I am a fan of JUCOs for those who shouldn't be in a full 4-year school but would like additional education.

We just flat out waste so much money on education with not nearly enough return.

[Honolulu Blue]

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

With increasing tuition costs and increasing lifespans we may see more kids wonder why they have to rush to get a college degree by the time they're 21 and then pay for it for the next 20 years. Maybe it makes more sense to try a bunch of things for the 3rd decade of your life (especially when you'll have another 6 or more decades for everything else), figure out what you want to do, save some money, and maybe even get in a position to have an employer pay for your (now very relevant) education.

There are a couple of other sides to this:

1) Increasing tuition costs and increasing lifespans also put a premium on making a choice ASAP. The sooner you get that college education, the less you have to pay for it and the more $$$ you'll make from it (or you can retire sooner instead).

2) The employment options for those without a college degree aren't very good now and are likely to get worse.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

Should we argue the whole "public education up through high school sucks so bad that kids need to go to college to get enough education to survive in this economy" hypothesis of mine?

We have way too many kids going to college that shouldn't, aren't ready, and/or should really be in a career that doesn't require college. We do a poor job of vocational education. Seems like fixing education at the lower levels would help refocus college on its advanced education curriculum, rather than so much on basic survival education.

I spent the first two years of my college education bored out of my skull, because Florida wouldn't let the university kids get too far ahead of the JUCO kids when both hit their junior years. Aside from that, I am a fan of JUCOs for those who shouldn't be in a full 4-year school but would like additional education.

We just flat out waste so much money on education with not nearly enough return.

Well said. It also goes into the curriculim. I mean if you're going to study Biochemistry, why do you need to spend your first two years taking classes on Eastern Asian Religions and pre-Roman Geography. Just seems we have kids who do know what they want to specialize in and then tell them to waste all these hours on courses they'll never use and that don't add much at all to them.

If we cut out the filler and fluff, kids could get more education in their field and/or finish much faster.

[JPhillips]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

Well said. It also goes into the curriculim. I mean if you're going to study Biochemistry, why do you need to spend your first two years taking classes on Eastern Asian Religions and pre-Roman Geography. Just seems we have kids who do know what they want to specialize in and then tell them to waste all these hours on courses they'll never use and that don't add much at all to them.

If we cut out the filler and fluff, kids could get more education in their field and/or finish much faster.

For a lot of reasons I completely disagree with this. Kids specialize too soon as it is. If I ran a college I wouldn't let a major be declared in the first year.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

It also goes into the curriculim. I mean if you're going to study Biochemistry, why do you need to spend your first two years taking classes on Eastern Asian Religions and pre-Roman Geography. Just seems we have kids who do know what they want to specialize in and then tell them to waste all these hours on courses they'll never use and that don't add much at all to them.

If we cut out the filler and fluff, kids could get more education in their field and/or finish much faster.

We're largely in agreement on this. Just noting it

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

For a lot of reasons I completely disagree with this. Kids specialize too soon as it is. If I ran a college I wouldn't let a major be declared in the first year.

The point is that you're going to college to earn a degree in a specialty. You want to be a doctor, lawyer, accountant. I have no problem with other courses being offered, but I do have a problem with it being required. Sure I think everyone should take a basic English, Speech, and Math course. But I don't see why we need to force students to pay for Art classes when they are there to be doctors. If the kid wants to be more well versed and take that Art class, then so be it. Otherwise let him throw on a few more medical classes and make him much more prepared.

I finished with a Computer Science and Statistics Degree. Math and computers was all I went there for. I could have taken more math classes and more computer classes which would have benefited me but instead had to take a course on the Civil War, Intro to Art, Marketing 101, Accounting 101 along with others in political science and English. Wouldn't it benefit me if I was able to swap a few of those out and take a higher level math course that I could use when I get out of school? Companies didn't give a shit if I knew about the Civil War, they wanted to know what computer languages I was proficient in and what math classes I had taken.

[miked]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

Well said. It also goes into the curriculim. I mean if you're going to study Biochemistry, why do you need to spend your first two years taking classes on Eastern Asian Religions and pre-Roman Geography. Just seems we have kids who do know what they want to specialize in and then tell them to waste all these hours on courses they'll never use and that don't add much at all to them.

If we cut out the filler and fluff, kids could get more education in their field and/or finish much faster.

Well, as somebody who teaches graduate students, the ones who perform the worst are the ones who have only taken classes in one discipline (or similar disciplines). In order to succeed with a PhD in Biochemistry you need to be more than proficient in writing, reading comprehension, analytical skills, and other very important skillsets. I learned a lot from my "unneeded" English, History, and Psychology class. Even a good amount from my philosophy classes.

As to one of your earlier points, I've been able to deduct my student loans with a job >60k and I even got to defer them with no interest in graduate school. Plus, in the sciences, your graduate education is paid for and you get a decent stipend. When I was a student, we got about 14k per year. Now they get 24k in most places.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

The point is that you're going to college to earn a degree in a specialty. You want to be a doctor, lawyer, accountant. I have no problem with other courses being offered, but I do have a problem with it being required. Sure I think everyone should take a basic English, Speech, and Math course. But I don't see why we need to force students to pay for Art classes when they are there to be doctors. If the kid wants to be more well versed and take that Art class, then so be it. Otherwise let him throw on a few more medical classes and make him much more prepared.

I finished with a Computer Science and Statistics Degree. Math and computers was all I went there for. I could have taken more math classes and more computer classes which would have benefited me but instead had to take a course on the Civil War, Intro to Art, Marketing 101, Accounting 101 along with others in political science and English. Wouldn't it benefit me if I was able to swap a few of those out and take a higher level math course that I could use when I get out of school? Companies didn't give a shit if I knew about the Civil War, they wanted to know what computer languages I was proficient in and what math classes I had taken.

No.

And you could take those extra classes if you wanted to, they'd just be electives and not classes that necessarily count towards degree requirements.

Teaching at a community college the past year, I've come to discover how woefully unprepared so many of these "kids" who'll be heading to vocational careers are. A lot of them aren't kids at all, though.

It's astounding how poorly people write and generally communicate. This isn't everyone, some do quite well. But it's crazy to me how much people want to avoid stuff simply because they think they know more than the professional teaching the class and I actually teach in what amounts to a vocational certificate program, not a degree area, though some of my students are just people pursuing an AA.

That said, most colleges these days are still embracing the liberal arts even if in name only and this is necessary. Trying to make college more like vocational school is a bad idea, because hiring managers at the higher levels are looking for folks who don't just "know the job," because it's a given you know the job. It's about how well you think, too.

Liberal arts courses provide that. I can understand the school of thought that says they're not interesting or a waste or so forth, but to try to shift higher education to what amounts to glorified vocational finishing school is the wrong way to go.

Or you know, what miked said. heh.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Dark Cloud

That said, most colleges these days are still embracing the liberal arts even if in name only and this is necessary. Trying to make college more like vocational school is a bad idea, because hiring managers at the higher levels are looking for folks who don't just "know the job," because it's a given you know the job. It's about how well you think, too.

From what I've seen over the last 20+ years in the work force, it definitely shouldn't be "a given" that anyone knows the job anymore. The fact that it is often contributes to a lot of our problems.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by miked

Well, as somebody who teaches graduate students, the ones who perform the worst are the ones who have only taken classes in one discipline (or similar disciplines). In order to succeed with a PhD in Biochemistry you need to be more than proficient in writing, reading comprehension, analytical skills, and other very important skillsets. I learned a lot from my "unneeded" English, History, and Psychology class. Even a good amount from my philosophy classes.

If those skills are required, they should take classes on it. I did say I have no problem with English, Speech, etc if it somehow benefits the overall goal. But if you look through a school's requirements, there are a lot of classes that don't offer anything that is beneficial. You more or less spend your first two years of college taking these general courses. There is no benefit to me having to take two art classes, or a class on European georgraphy, or bowling/golf to meet my physical education requirements. I enjoyed a lot of these classes such as the political science ones but it did not help me get a job and it does not help me in my daily job.

Originally Posted by miked

As to one of your earlier points, I've been able to deduct my student loans with a job >60k and I even got to defer them with no interest in graduate school. Plus, in the sciences, your graduate education is paid for and you get a decent stipend. When I was a student, we got about 14k per year. Now they get 24k in most places.

You can't deduct student loan interest if you make over $70,000 (I believe it's more if you're married). You can defer them while in school but you still have to pay them when you get out. If you get a job over $70,000 a year (which I'd imagine a lot of highly skilled phds and MBAs do), you don't get to write off your massive loans.

You do get a stipend but I don't know if I'd call it decent. I can only speak for my brother at Florida, but I believe his is under $20k. Enough to get by if you don't run into any problems but really tight and a lot of students do get outside loans to help with their living expenses. You have to remember that these are also people who are going straight into this after getting their undergrad where they may have run up credit cards and other debt to get by. But it beats a lot of other areas of education where you aren't getting any of that.

Edit: I'm also pretty sure certain private student loans are not allowed to have its interest deducted either. It has to be a qualified student loan so those who have to take out private ones for rent and living expenses cannot be used as a deduction.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by Dark Cloud

No.

And you could take those extra classes if you wanted to, they'd just be electives and not classes that necessarily count towards degree requirements.

Teaching at a community college the past year, I've come to discover how woefully unprepared so many of these "kids" who'll be heading to vocational careers are. A lot of them aren't kids at all, though.

It's astounding how poorly people write and generally communicate. This isn't everyone, some do quite well. But it's crazy to me how much people want to avoid stuff simply because they think they know more than the professional teaching the class and I actually teach in what amounts to a vocational certificate program, not a degree area, though some of my students are just people pursuing an AA.

That said, most colleges these days are still embracing the liberal arts even if in name only and this is necessary. Trying to make college more like vocational school is a bad idea, because hiring managers at the higher levels are looking for folks who don't just "know the job," because it's a given you know the job. It's about how well you think, too.

Liberal arts courses provide that. I can understand the school of thought that says they're not interesting or a waste or so forth, but to try to shift higher education to what amounts to glorified vocational finishing school is the wrong way to go.

Or you know, what miked said. heh.

But is that college's job to teach these basics? I think the fact that colleges are forced to teach basic reading and writing skills is a failure on our high schools and lower education levels. I guess that's the point I'm trying to make. College is "higher education" and should be for those who have the basics down and can focus on their particular area of study.

In the early 70's, 50% of students went to college after high school. Now it's around 70%. So unless high schools have dramatically improved, colleges are accepting lower quality students into their schools. That leads to having to re-hash these basic courses that should have been covered in high school.

I guess I look at college differently. I think of high school as your basics and getting you a wide range of knowledge from various proficiencies. College is where you pick one and hone in on that. Offering courses to those who want to broaden their horizon is fine and should be encouraged, but I don't think a Chemistry major needs to know where Prussia was.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

But is that college's job to teach these basics?

Increasingly (or at least I assume it's increased) it is now.

What was is, I guess now about 13 years ago, I sat in a freshman English class at Georgia State and will never forget hearing about "doing words". When you can't even expect freshmen to know what a verb is, I'd say it's pretty safe to say they're revisiting the basics and then some.