View Single Post
 
Old 11-12-2019, 11:36 AM
Love2Swim Love2Swim is offline
Veteran member
Join Date: Mar 2013
Posts: 806
Thanks: 1,031
Thanked 811 Times in 275 Posts
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Boomer View Post
Thank you. You wrote what I think, too.

Unfortunately, the preaching of platitudes from a narrow, dated perspective is the name of the game for those who refuse to acknowledge that this is not a simple issue.

This mess will strangle segments of the economy — the housing market and retirement savings for starters. And it will eventually contribute to the erosion of the middle class.

The percentage of an average family’s income that even one year of college tuition represents is an obscenity. This is not how it was “back in the day.”

The beginning of this century saw banks getting way into getting a piece of the student loan action, along with the rise of those for-profit “colleges” that sprung up all over the place, with empty promises.

Established universities need to be held accountable for rising costs. Many must be swimming in money. I was shocked to learn that installing lazy rivers is the latest trend. That is plain insane.

A lot of young people are like lambs to the slaughter.

This mess is a horrible stew with many ingredients, some of them pure poison.

The solution is in finding a compromise through forward economic thinking and planning — not in waving an imaginary magic wand.
Exactly. This is a huge mess that has significant impacts on our society. Most of the students WANT to pay it off, and they are. But in the meantime, they are not buying new cars, they are not buying houses, they are not spending money that would benefit other portions of the economy. The people profiting are the banks and the for profit colleges. When I went to school, even a two year community college was about $350 per semester, plus an additional $100 or so for books. I worked summers and was able to finance it myself. Now this same school is $2200 per semester, $600 for books and supplies. And that is a state government sponsored school.

Private schools are another whole ball of wax. The school I went to is now $25000 per semester plus $8000 per semester housing/meals plus $1400 for books. That is per semester i.e. nearly $70,000 per year. If one is fortunate enough to get government student loans, there are provisions that tie repayment plans to income. In contrast, private loans are much more expensive, may not be able to be consolidated for repayment and may not have any options for lowering loan payments over the life of the loans. There may be prepayment fees. Forbes did a big article on Student loans and how the shift from greater public funding of higher education to individual financing has negative social and economic effects and are an enormous drag on nationwide economy. It ends up being a vicious cycle. Having students bear the risk means colleges can keep raising prices and push the costs onto the students, who then take out more loans, often from predatory lenders.

My point is, the system needs to be fixed. If our society values and requires college education for people to be successful and to contribute to said society, then we need to find a way for people to attend college with incurring hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt that will take 20 years or more to pay off.