Dear Log,
«"We've given the youngest members of society permission to get into debt to get an education... it's no longer a sign of inadequacy."»I love how the "lifetime earnings" argument always comes up when one is defending governments making people pay for their university schooling.
-- Young people 'boast about their debts'«The Barclays graduate debt survey last year estimated that most students would graduate owing ã10,000. The NUS estimates ã12,000.
The Department for Education and Skills condemned the NUS claims as "irresponsible and untrue".
A spokesman [irrelevently!] said: "Graduates can expect to earn on average 35% more in earnings than the national average - an extra ã400,000 over a lifetime. Thankfully, most students have not been deterred by such scaremongering."»
-- "Students 'would be better off on [unemployment] benefit'"
The problem
is that one could clearly extend this argument to all of schooling:
"Why should we taxpayers bother to pay for elementary schools at all?
Studies show that if you don't go to elementary school, you'll make a
bazillion dollars less in your lifetime earnings! So it only makes good
financial sense for you to borrow yourself senseless!"
Yow! Do I live in the third world yet?
<generalization mode="on">
I sometimes wonder if this debt accounts for some of the differences between my generation (graduated from college 10 years ago) and my parents' (baby boomers). When they went to college they generally didn't have to worry about being $20K in debt after graduation -- and that's just for undergraduate education, in a public state school! So they were freer to mosey around the country, go to rock concerts in new york, fart around for a few years trying to experience life and figure out what they wanted to do. And then they criticized us because we didn't have any big dreams when we got out of school while never acknowledging the luxuries they had.
</generalization>
Not that my parents did any of that, I'm just saying...
Re:generational differences
ziggy on 2002-03-04T00:19:01
Speaking with my Merican hat on...There are a lot of differences between the generations. The economy was way different a generation or two ago. Colleges were a reasonable way to absorb a large number of GI's coming back from WWII, and they were also a haven for those who didn't want to go to Vietnam. What was once a blessing became a luxury, and is now almost a requirement to participate in the economy.
Of course, this too shall pass. When I was in high school, practically everyone was preparing to go to some college or another. Perhaps even just a community college. Very few people decided to go into the trades. Today, I'm hearing more about parents who see what they pay for electricians and plumbers, and start to think that there's a lot to be said for picking up a trade instead of a bachelor's degree...
It'll be interesting to see how higher education will evolve. Unfortunately, it'll be generations before we see if universities price themselves into obsolescence, or if some radical refinancing of university education is in order.
It's not quite as bad as made out to be
Wodin on 2002-03-05T00:24:25
Well, at least not if you're ingenious. My college just crossed the 30K a year boundary. Of that, I pay 6 or 7K, my parents pay 5 or 6K, and scholarships, grants, and work study pick up the rest. Admittedly, I'm something of a special case because I get $18K in academic scholarships from various sources, but it's still doable even if you don't have that.The problem is only going to get worse, because these days you essentially need some sort of graduate degree to get the really cool jobs that you used to be able to get with just a BA or BS.
Thankfully, graduate school is sorta paid for by the schools themselves. That makes life easier.
Re:It's not quite as bad as made out to be
ziggy on 2002-03-05T14:00:30
$30,000/year! Kee-rist! I laughed when my dad predicted that he'd need to cover $100,000 for tuition alone for my two brothers -- at a cheap school! Sad thing is that he was right, but that was just a ballpark figure.When I started, my school was fluttering just over $8,000/year for tuition. Upperclassmen were complaining about how high that was. When I left, tuition was pushing (or just over) $13,000. Oh, and this was the original Macintosh University, so lots of people were complaining about the obligatory $2500-$4000 tax to buy a glorified typewriter that wouldn't last 5 years...
The really sad thing is that I had professors that went to that school. It has a big 5-year co-op program, and it was not unreasonable for students to work for six months and manage to pay tuition, room and board for a year. When I was there, salaries were such that I could pay room and board for most of a year (for the middle three years), but certainly couldn't cover tuition from my co-op job.
The sad thing is, I didn't graduate that long ago. Inflation hasn't reduced the value of the dollar is half of what it was ten years ago, and paying $13K out-of-pocket per year is unbelievable. Especially compared to the European systems.
I spent three years in university. It did provide me with a solid ground of knowledge which has never ceased to be of help, even though I gave up (I was studying philosophy). Much of that knowledge was gained through the time it gave me to muck around and meet interesting people that had weird ideas.
One of the reasons I wasn't afraid of mucking around and spending time thinking on my own or talking to interesting people was because a year in university (and not any university, La Sorbonne) cost only circa 1.000 francs (~$150). And that included full social security.
If it had cost that much more -- $20k seems gigantic to me -- then I would probably have felt guilty or forced in some way to -- as stupid as it is -- get something out of that money. By now I'd be some stupid professor, giving lessons on topics I've long since stopped believing in instead of some weird guy doing all sorts of things that may not be directly beneficial but at least tend to make him happy (and hopefully others as well when they're successful).
That feeling is part of the rant I recently made in my journal. People need time and lack of pressure to consider what it is they want to do. People also need nice parents that don't pressurize them into "succeding" immediately. Life is too complex a thing for most to know what they want to do by age 18 (or whatever approximate age it is people enter university at in the reader's country). Low cost university is definitely a part of a better society (even if it's hard to create, and means long terms engagements from the state).
PS. factoid that may be relevant to my beliefs: the three largest "corporations" in the world are in order 1) the russian army; 2) General Motors; 3) the french Education Nationale (France being a 60 million people country).
Re:It scares me...
lachoy on 2002-03-04T01:34:18
Wow. I think if college cost that little in the US I'd never leave:-) (Or at least my wife's graduate school student loan payments would be nonexistent...) Re:It scares me...
darobin on 2002-03-04T01:47:08
Hehe. Some people pretty much never leave (or take their time doing so) but they're a tiny minority. I'd be willing to bet that you might want to take advantage of it a little and stay there, say, a year more than you would have otherwise, but that you'd eventually get bored with hanging around and not "doing something of your life" (I don't know how to express this in a way that sounds positive
;). I could've stayed there. In fact, young as I am I could still be there, probably doing a thesis or something like that. But the fact that it costing so little having encouraged me to "test things" outside the scope of university I quickly wanted to test more and eventually left. Of course, today I'm broke as my company went bust but who knows, tomorrow will probably bring a better day and whatever comes of it I certainly won't regret having had the time to experiment pretty much all over the map
;) Re:It scares me...
ziggy on 2002-03-04T21:35:01
That sounds typically French.:-) Pity more of the world can't be that way... There was a human interest story about a reporter this past summer. (Must have been a slow news day.) His wife was was very ill while they were visiting Paris. So they go to the hospital, and the Doctors manage to treat her condition (whatever it was).
As they're about to leave the hospital, the husband (the reporter) askes the lead physican "How much do I owe for my wife's treatment?"
The physician, dumbfounded, responds by saying "It's already paid for by the national health care system".
The husband responds that he's neither a French citizen, not a resident and isn't paying into the health care system. So how much should he pay?
The physician responds, "well, we'll send you a bill then," and starts to walk away.
The husband then stops the physican again and asks, "Aren't you going to ask me where I'm staying, or where I live? How are you going to know where to send the bill?"
Apparently, it wasn't a concern. His wife had been treated, and it was time to move onto the next patient.
