For your grim reading of the day, you might take a look at this analysis in Inside Higher Ed of the Obama Administration’s recent release of the higher education data they’d assembled for their now-defunct college rating site. The bottom line is that more young people are in more debt than ever before without a great deal to show for it.
In some circles this is referred to as “being less materialistic”. In others it’s being a debt slave.
Wonder why it takes the government to generate a site like this where you can actually compare prices and outcomes? This was opposed, according to the article, on a bipartisan basis. Why? My guess is that politicians want to protect the schools in their own states, but you would think some free marketeers or some liberal do gooders would want this data out there for folks to see. Should have been done long time ago. Seems somewhat akin to the exchanges with the ACA where there was opposition even though it would actually create a real market where you could, for the first time, see prices and directly compare them. Almost as though no one really wants competition.
Steve
For anybody who has not been to an Open House sales event, it is worse than being on a used car lot. The professors, department heads, administrators, and groundskeepers will tell the parents and potential students anything to get asses into seats.
When we went for my stepson, I was astounded, but maybe it was always like this. Since I always knew where I was going, I never bothered with the sales events, but back then, they did not have enough room to house all the students.
The Inside Higher Ed article posted by Dave is a continuation of what has been “grim” stats for some time, regarding the growing fiscal burden of college education tied to the dubious benefits afterwards of achieving such a costly degree. However this “revamped” site, in spitting out some stats, also leaves out others. The example given was limiting the earnings data to federally subsidized students which can skew the bottom line earnings by over or under stating it. Also, many colleges don’t report students “technically in default,” who drop out or graduate — again something that taints the real reality of paying back these highly inflated loans.
However, one of the most tragic points made in this article was the following:
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Dovetailing into this current dismal report is a George Mason Commentary, a few years back, assailing the Government’s role in education, by asserting it was actually the subsidized loans which drove up college tuition student debt to record levels.
Somehow government intervention always seems to have a way of eventually deepening costs, rather than reducing them. And, when this happens, it’s the average Joe who is punished, not the elite government bureaucrat who had the light bulb subsidy idea in the first place!
Based on the description this sounds like nothing new.
Anyone want to bet that whoever the next set of presidential candidates win out we’ll hear nothing but talk of the need of more young people to go to college? Though I’ll grant that The Donald may pass on that buffoonery.
I put my daughter on a plane to NC to immediately withdraw her application to Wake Forest. Upon her return I insist she complete her apps to Texas Permian and Louisiana State Ag and Mechanical.
The value of education may stand as an interesting argument, but this “study” or compilation isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.