"End student loans, don't make them cheaper"

[Exterous]

These things will take care of themselves though. Once the nation hits the point where there isn't increasing enrollment anymore, prices will go down. Also, as wages in china rise, the cost disparity of services will go down as well.

IMO it doesn't look like it will happen until after we have a generation saddled with excessive debt and is unable to properly save for retirement leaving a mess that will take decades to resolve. We also risk that the population is unable to bear the burden of continuing education before companies shrink their demand for it. We already outsourced labor, I don't think it would be beyond the realm of possibility that we would outsource positions that 'require' higher education especially if the local supply is no longer there but the perceived requirement for a degree is. (some jobs more readily lend themselves to this than others)

 

[Infohawk]

These things will take care of themselves though. Once the nation hits the point where there isn't increasing enrollment anymore, prices will go down. Also, as wages in china rise, the cost disparity of services will go down as well.

Things always take care of themselves if you don't do anything about it. In this case though, things will reach equilibrium when we have reduced our standard of living somewhere closer to China's. They have an enormous population.

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

Maybe in some areas. In tech it is truly hard to find qualified candidates. Big tech companies will hire anybody, as long as they meet the bar. However, only a percentage of recent grads are able to pass the interview.

I don't know if it's the colleges to blame, or we simply have a lot of people in the wrong field - but it is extremely hard to find strong tech talent these days.

The reason is because by the time someone goes through school for a tech type job, the tech has changed since the course was started. IT really is a field of on the job training trumps school work.

As far as the OP and saying Graduates are unemployed or under employed, it's not a black and white issue. Having a Bachelor degree in General or "Liberal Arts" doesn't mean you are qualified for anything. It means you went to school for 4 years and didn't devote your time to a particular field to prepare for when you graduate.
More people are going to college now than ever before, That creates an overage of candidates. Like mentioned, many of them still don't posses the skills needed to perform a specific task.

 

[CountZero]

The reason is because by the time someone goes through school for a tech type job, the tech has changed since the course was started. IT really is a field of on the job training trumps school work.

I'm in EE. I've been involved in phone screening and interviewing entry level folks. Our question sets always start with very basic stuff you'd have learned as a sophomore and applied frequently through graduation (basic R/C stuff), then transistors/cmos and then tricky stuff. There might be a few difficulties thrown in if they are cruising through but not too bad and we don't really expect everyone to get the difficulties. We expect essentially no tool experience, nothing that looks like job training, just fundamentals.

The number of people that completely bomb on the basics is insane. I can't fathom what they spent the last four years doing. If you can't intuit parallel R, or even give a reasonable idea of a C discharging through an R, I don't know what to think. We weed them out with the phone screen but these are the folks with the best resumes.

I don't know if it is the schools or what but a person with 3.5+ GPA that doesn't know the basics is a failure of the educational system. I do think when it comes to experienced positions companies are probably in the wrong but when it comes to recent grads finding good candidates is not easy.

 

[sm625]

I don't think we should go back to the days when only wealthy people could afford to send their kids to college and perpetuate undeserved class distinctions.

How is that worse than what we have now? College education as it exists now is basically worthless. I'd rather it be worth something and not be able to get it than have it be worth nothing and be able to get it.

It comes down to the simple fact that college campuses are half-filled with total screwoff jerkoffs who have no business being there at all, and are only there because of a bloated festering oozing stinking system of corruption. Tens of thousands of school administrators and other non-teachers are sucking trillions off the taxpayer, like maggots feasting on a rotting corpse. Get out the power washer. Take them all out. Better yet, just bring in a truckload of dirt...

Another serious consequence of govt totally ruining college education is the fact that truly smart individuals come out with their accomplishments cheapened, because of the aforementioned screwoffs and jerkoffs and the way they are shoveled through. Too many passing grades given out. It cheapens the value of a Degree, which then blows up when a company hires someone with such a degree and they end up having to waste $50k training and retraining because they should have never gotten that degree in the first place.

 

[IGBT]

why should your next door neighbor have to finance your worthless tat/nose bolt spawn to go to school?? And get a degree with a zero ROI (return on investment).

 

[Jaskalas]

why should your next door neighbor have to finance your worthless tat/nose bolt spawn to go to school?? And get a degree with a zero ROI (return on investment).

Cause it's a checkbox on the employment form and the computer will screen out everyone who doesn't check it.

 

[CountZero]

why should your next door neighbor have to finance your worthless tat/nose bolt spawn to go to school?? And get a degree with a zero ROI (return on investment).

The overwhelmingly vast majority of degrees do not have a zero ROI. Not for the individual and not for society.

 

[unokitty]

Until I saw the Occupy Movement complaining about how they went $XX,000 dollars in debt to get their Humanities/Sociology/Psychology/Whatever degrees, I had never really given the loan programs much thought... (My three degrees were financed by an athletic scholorship, GI Bill, and myself...)

Now that I've thought about it, it does seem that many of these 'students' can't handle the responsibilities that come with the loans.

Likewise, it seems that many (but not all) schools can't seem to consistently produce graduates that can pay off their loans.

What the solution is isn't clear to me. However, it is clear that the status quo can't hold... Going forward into the future with a program that is this troubled wouldn't be my first choice...

Uno

 

[unokitty]

The overwhelmingly vast majority of degrees do not have a zero ROI. Not for the individual and not for society.

If you look at historical data, you are correct; though, redundant.

May I point out that we won't know the ROI for recent degrees for a few more years. As we all know, historical performance does not guarantee future performance.

I am quite confident that the earning of many current majors are not going to perform up to historical levels. And there are already studies that indicate earning graduate degrees in certain fields actually have a negative impact on your lifetime earnings. (Not so much that your salary goes down, but that you never make up for the salary you could have been earning while you are in graduate school.)

You are free to believe differently.

The future, and the future data, will arrive when it arrives. And then, we will know how well the current data resembles the historical data. Until then, I maintain that your historical data isn't particularly relevant to the current situation. (If it was relevant, why are so many people complaining so bitterly about the school loan debt?)

Uno