Will Obama or any future president of America do anything about higher education?

[ducks]

more gov is not going to help
ask candana about their heath care

[Jacob1983]

So you're gonna tell me that nothing should be none to higher education? The costs and interest rates on college loans should just stay the same? Poor students shouldn't receive any type of help at all? They should just suck it up and get ed in the ass by a huge amount of debt right. Sometimes I wish there would be a scenario where I save Obama's life and he would owe me for life. That would be sweet.

I went to college hoping that it would change my life for the better. So far, it's kinda made it worse.

[SonOfAGun]

If you cannot afford college out of high school, you don't go to college.

Work for 2 years, then go to community college, then transfer to good state univ, then get an entry level job because you are green, then work your way up, then pay off debt as much as possible, then put money into appreciating assets, then get promotions, etc etc

Life is suppose to be hard. You turn out stronger than the rest if you can survive it.

Obama has talked about programs for doctors/nurses/teachers/etc where they go into low-end communities after school and work there for so many years to get their student loans forgiven.

[coyotes_geek]

So you're gonna tell me that nothing should be none to higher education? The costs and interest rates on college loans should just stay the same? Poor students shouldn't receive any type of help at all? They should just suck it up and get ed in the ass by a huge amount of debt right. Sometimes I wish there would be a scenario where I save Obama's life and he would owe me for life. That would be sweet.

I went to college hoping that it would change my life for the better. So far, it's kinda made it worse.

What would you like to do to make college more affordable? And who's going to have to pay for that? Presumably not people like you, so tell me, who do you think needs to be financially responsible for funding your college education?

[sam1617]

You got a freaking psychology degree. You should have known that without at least a masters it was going to be worthless. If you didn't do some research before you blow 40k down the drain.

[Creepn]

Is it really such a bad idea to have some of our tax dollars go to help make college more affordable? If college was more affordable, more people can get a job and possibly reduce the percentage of poverty and crime. Also welfare social programs will decline as well thus saving us money. It pays for itself.

[baseline bum]

It would be nice if higher education was less expensive. I don't understand why some universities charge 400 dollars a credit hour. I just want a degree, not a sport arena, and certainly not some space-aged building that just hikes my tuition. I can understand private universities charging an arm and a leg, but a public one? Asinine. I am paying for red tape and bad professors' tenure. IMHO, that is wrong.

You're probably not paying a lot of that for the tenured professors, as they're not paid huge salaries by any means. You're paying because as a college student you're a peon that universities can use to grow their own wealth. At my uni my money was going to like

1) Let's have a state of the art gym costing millions of dollars.
2) Let's build an overpriced physics building with architecture tailored to fit in with the overpriced library building and the overpriced performance hall and the overpriced bookstore and so on.
3) Let's pay out the ass to have famous guest speakers like Bill Clinton and Mikail Gorbachev or to get that Al Gore to teach for a quarter.

Not to mention the money for student groups. And then they went and fired the best computer science professor I ever had because his salary wasn't in the budget. For the same reason they went and fired a professor in the humanities department that was so well-liked and respected by his students that they protested on campus for days to get the school to keep him (never had him for a class though, so I can't personally comment). Then they lost my probability professor who was also a top-notch teacher with a Ph.D from Cambridge to a school with a much lesser reputation. It disgusts me to see the actual education as first on the chopping block when money becomes a concern to these schools.

[baseline bum]

This is one of the few times I'll ever agree with Jacob, but he has a bit of a point. Look at school textbooks: the prices are completely off the ing wall. If you want a disgusting illustration of how badly students are exploited by textbook companies, check this thread I made a few months ago about a $60 book that was sold for about $110 when used for a class (the $60 version was from MIT Press, the $110 version from McGraw-Hill for classroom use)

http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=115596

Here's what a professor who used this textbook had to say:

http://www.amazon.com/Press-edition-...sin=0262011530

As I tell my students, the MIT press version uses dark blue ink (really violet) on the cover, whereas the McGraw-Hill book uses light blue ink. Obviously, light blue ink is so much more expensive than dark blue ink as to more than double the price of the entire book.

Snark aside, the real reason is that textbook publishers gouge the textbook-buying public, and specifically the bulk-buyers. I tried to bulk-buy the MIT Press version, hoping to save money for my students, but I was told that only the McGraw-Hill version could be purchased in bulk (e.g. 100 copies at a time, for a course). I find this system reprehensible, but don't blame the authors; they've put the entire contents of the book on the MIT Press website where it can be read for free. I've met two of the authors and they are wonderful people.

Note that there is exactly zero, zip, nada difference between the two editions. They are identical except for the cover.

[ElNono]

Are some colleges, book publishers, etc ripping students off? Possibly.
Does that means the government has to go in there and start regulating? Maybe.
But I think that's the extent of it.

[baseline bum]

Are some colleges, book publishers, etc ripping students off? Possibly.
Does that means the government has to go in there and start regulating? Maybe.
But I think that's the extent of it.

10 years ago I used to think Rice sounded prohibitively expensive for something like $12,500 a year. Now scrub-ass UTSA is around $8G a year in tuition and fees for a reasonable courseload.

[elbamba]

Study hard and get scholarships. There are so many out there that only get a few applicants. Scholarships will cut your student loans way down. I also suggest going to public schools where the education is just as good. I went to private school for my undergrad and a public school for my graduate degree. I graduated with 0 debt. I also worked throughout college. Nothing glorious, but I delievered pizzas, worked for mentally handicapped centers and I washed cars. It can be done.

[elbamba]

amazon and half.com are two great sites that can lower your book expenses.

[MannyIsGod]

Its funny to hear people dismiss the cost of higher education in this thread with things like "why should we have to pay for it" because I'm fairly certain that people without college degrees cost more on average than the cost it would take to education our country's population properly. Its rampant nearsightedness that leads to everyone just looking at the upfront costs of having an educated population.

[jacobdrj]

more gov is not going to help
ask candana about their heath care

I do. They complain. Ask if they wish they had ours (US), they say 'Oh, no!'

[jacobdrj]

You're probably not paying a lot of that for the tenured professors, as they're not paid huge salaries by any means. You're paying because as a college student you're a peon that universities can use to grow their own wealth. At my uni my money was going to like

1) Let's have a state of the art gym costing millions of dollars.
2) Let's build an overpriced physics building with architecture tailored to fit in with the overpriced library building and the overpriced performance hall and the overpriced bookstore and so on.
3) Let's pay out the ass to have famous guest speakers like Bill Clinton and Mikail Gorbachev or to get that Al Gore to teach for a quarter.

Not to mention the money for student groups. And then they went and fired the best computer science professor I ever had because his salary wasn't in the budget. For the same reason they went and fired a professor in the humanities department that was so well-liked and respected by his students that they protested on campus for days to get the school to keep him (never had him for a class though, so I can't personally comment). Then they lost my probability professor who was also a top-notch teacher with a Ph.D from Cambridge to a school with a much lesser reputation. It disgusts me to see the actual education as first on the chopping block when money becomes a concern to these schools.

Well, that's the thing. I have absolutely no problem if the behaviors your are describing (albeit reprehensible) are being preformed by private ins utions. Private universities are either a benevolent dictatorship or an outright corporation. But it is the State funded universities that have these exorbitant costs that do these things that pisses me off (my school is no exception). Being that these are taxpayer funded, they should be regulated. It is already 'big government' because the school is government.

I actually work for my university as well as a work study. I got to see some of the 'behind the scenes' stuff that goes on. They have money. They just spend it badly, as any government ins ution will tend to do.

[Extra Stout]

Why is higher education so expensive?

1) It can be: In America, the number of jobs paying enough for a person to enter the middle class without a college degree has shrunk to virtually nil. Meanwhile, the population keeps growing. Supply and demand.

2) Stratification by school: For the most part, undergraduate degrees are the same from one school to another (graduate programs are something different altogether), but what is not the same is the prestige behind the name of the school on the diploma, and the networking opportunities among one's peer group at a school. There are a ton of companies out there who won't give you a first glance for a job unless you graduated from a particular school. Didn't matriculate at an Ivy? Don't bother asking.

Even my own company, which is hardly Goldman freaking Sachs, won't let you in the door if you got your degree from the University of Houston or Lamar rather than Texas or Texas A&M.

The more prestigious schools become vastly more valuable.

3) Arms race: This creates a vicious cycle where schools have to stay ahead in the race for prestige. Attracting a particular scholar or research project, or having the most up-to-date facilities, determines whether a school stays a "first-tier research school," or some backwater commuter school. And this filters all the way down the food chain to the UTSA's and TAMU-Commerces of the world. Schools are spending tons of money so they can build the best facilities and attract the best scholars (who by the way come in shorter and shorter supply as America declines), so they can turn around and charge students more to have those facilities.

3A) Arms race, part II: Gone are the days when students attended university because they were interested in learning. Students today are paying money (OK, their parents are paying money) to receive a product called a diploma with the name of the university on it, which they can then show to an interviewer and get hired somewhere. And students don't have any intention of living with a roommate in an 8 x 8 room with bunk beds and a little sink, with a bathroom down the hall. They don't have any intention of eating on long wooden benches in a mess hall with poor-quality food on plastic trays. There is no way they are going to work out in a drafty old convocation building with a couple of vent fans where the equipment consists of a medicine ball and some ancient free weights. They have no interest in old classrooms with peeling paint on the walls and wooden desks that have been there since 1965.

No, today's students are discriminating consumers, and they demand luxurious, private living spaces, complete with all the amenities, including granite countertops. They demand gourmet-quality food in aesthetically pleasing dining spaces. They demand the latest fitness facilities -- dozens of machines for weights, treadmills, elliptical machines, elevated tracks, rock-climbing walls, racquetball courts, beach volleyball, you name it, they demand it. They want comfortable well-padded theater seating in their new classrooms, complete with Wi-Fi and cupholders.

All those things cost money. Guess who pays for it?

4) Funding: State support for public universities is far less than it was in years past, so students would have to pick up the slack even if all the other craziness hadn't set in.

[Creepn]

Even my own company, which is hardly Goldman freaking Sachs, won't let you in the door if you got your degree from the University of Houston or Lamar rather than Texas or Texas A&M.

The more prestigious schools become vastly more valuable.

Thats ed up right there. That should be a form of discrimination. Guy that went to UoH probably studied more than the guy that went to an Ivy League. Maybe he didnt want to go to an Ivy school to be close with his family. Or maybe it was family tradition to go to a certian school.

[iggypop123]

use half.com, go to community college and trasnfer. (community colleges are a joke you can walk into a room and get an A) and problem solved. chose a major that isnt impacted or that every single person in the world takes. people either take psych or sociology so you have a bunch of compe ion.

[Extra Stout]

Thats ed up right there. That should be a form of discrimination. Guy that went to UoH probably studied more than the guy that went to an Ivy League. Maybe he didnt want to go to an Ivy school to be close with his family. Or maybe it was family tradition to go to a certian school.

Part of it is "quality control" -- it is so hard to discern from an interview what a candidate is really like, and so companies play it safe.

Part of it is "class control" -- people from the upper class know that those graduating from the elite schools either are members of the upper class like them, or if they aren't in fact blue bloods, then they're probably quite exceptional if they're rubbing shoulders with the progeny of the elites.

[Extra Stout]

On the topic of interviews -- at the one for the job I recently got, my boss was convinced that in hiring Extra Stout he was getting a engineer of moderate technical talent, but fantastic interpersonal and leadership skills.

Yeah, he kind of missed the mark there.

[spurster]

You are in a similar boat with all those people who bought houses too big for them. Just like them, you were way too optimistic about the future. When you take out a big loan, you are making a big bet, pure and simple. Now you've lost the bet, so the bank has you by the gonads, and is hoping to squeeze you dry for as long as possible. The CEO's multi-multi-million salary depends on suckers like you.

What you need to do is do some real research for once, and figure out how you can get a break from the banks. And please, please don't pay out to any of these con artists who say they will be able to reduce your loan for a fee.

Along the way, you'll have to learn to live like a pauper: no iPhone, no eating out, no bars, no clubs, nothing above basic cable and internet and phone. Don't run up your credit card. The credit card companies want to suck you dry, too.

[Wild Cobra]

So you're gonna tell me that nothing should be none to higher education? The costs and interest rates on college loans should just stay the same? Poor students shouldn't receive any type of help at all?

There's plenty of help out there. Pell grants for example are not paid back. You just need to maintain good grades and so many credit hours.

Hard work is a necessary step. If one is not willing to work hard, then why should we waste tax dollars on them?

I could go on, but I'm low on time. Doing other things as I'm in the web as well.

Stop complaining and do what it takes.

[Jacob1983]

There is one thing that Obama and fellow politicians can do that would help college graduates deal with their debt from loans. They should make it easier for students to get into programs that let you erase some of your college loan debt by volunteering. I know you're going to say "they already have those". Yes, they do exist but they are very specific on which type of loans they will erase or be counted toward to. If I tried to do that, it wouldn't work because I don't have the specific loans that you have to have in order to have them erased or have some money taken off of. I know that teaching will pay off your loans but like I said before, they only cover certain kinds of loans. And the type of loans that I have are not covered. Teaching and volunteering will not help me because my loans are not covered by the programs. You should be able to get into some type of volunteering program and have some part of loans erased or at least lessened. And the rules shouldn't be as strict as they are right now. They need to ease up on the specifications of the loans that are covered.

[MannyIsGod]

When 50 years down the line the United States is lagging far behind much of the world you need look no further than the at udes in this thread.

[Extra Stout]

There won't be a United States in 50 years.