I truly think he ended up exactly where he's supposed to be, but man that woulda been sweet...

to raise prices by 600% and have provided their members with the forms for qualifying for Federal Student Loans.

College is too expensive, thanks to easy government loans. And AI looms over many existing jobs. If I were 18 today, I'd look hard at trade schools. ** Edited by WestyHokie at 9/24/2024, 3:31:31 PM

And those people make as much or more than a WHOLE BUNCH of college graduates.

Got a job apprenticing for electricians building the huge data centers in Loudon. Got in the union and the official program and is making good money and is finally happy. Moved out, paying rent and bills, and has some $$$ left over to train BJJ.

...for them. A very well paying job. The same goes for a lot of the different trades.

called a local electrical firm he was asked if he was a current customer. When he said no, they told him that they weren't taking new customers at the time.

because hiring someone is almost impossible. I tried to hire someone to do some drywall work a couple of years ago and literally couldn't do it. I had nine different recommendations and managed 5 who never returned any calls, 1 didn't show up when promised, 1 said they could do it, but changed their mind, and 1 said they could but were booked out four months. I'm currently having someone building a workshop on the back of my property. It was supposed to be a six-week project, and it has been dragging along for four months now. I'd like to fire the guy and get someone else, but it took me six months just to find someone who was willing to do the work this year at a price that wasn't deranged.

To do with my degree in Exercise and Sports Science. I eventually took classes to get my teaching license.

the fish out of water experience I got at VT.

And colleges are creating more worthless degrees every year. Colleges should publish the employment of their grads in their field at 1 year, 10 years, and 20 years, and the average salary of those jobs so students can made a decision on their major. If I was king for a day, would force colleges to delete courses of education if they prove to be worthless, but colleges like sucking the cash out of their students, even if they aren't training them to be productive members of society.

graduate people who can't find a job. Sure a lot of that is on the students afterwards, but colleges have no problem promising high school juniors & seniors the moon and then not delivering. And, the colleges are the ones who accepted the students to begin with. So if a student graduates and takes out loans to pay the school, then the college is also on the hook to pay back the student loans since they are partly responsible. Think that would get rid of a lot of worthless degrees. ** Edited by RUHokie at 9/24/2024, 4:19:59 PM

It's not either/or and one path isn't right for everyone. The reason we have "worthless" college degrees is people decide to major in them. It's clear to me as a brand new college professor who my customer is, and what they want is determining what we provide. They may be wrong but they are largely paying the bills. We need more good well-trained engineers, scientists, teachers, and doctors, and nurses, --- and more welders, plumbers, electricians, techs, aides, --- and more people who just want to work hard and go home. And even some artists, musicians, poets, philosophers and priests. All of these are needed for our society to thrive.

ROI should absolutely be paid attention to but it isn't the end all be all. When my daughter wanted to be a middle school teacher, which our world desperately needs more of, I talked to her about the cost of her degree compared to what she would earn because it was important. She was considering an important career path that didn't provide a high wages, but that only means she needed to be smart about where went to school. Too often I see discussions around treating college like a trade school, where the only degree paths that matter are the ones that provide lucrative salaries. We shouldn't ever lose sight of the value of liberal and fine arts. Artistic development is important ** Edited by MAHokie69 at 9/25/2024, 8:36:09 AM

potential of the degree. A kid wants to get an engineering degree, he or she should have access to more loan money than a kid getting a women’s study degree. Schools also need some skin in the game when their students default. They should be akin to a co-signer on the loan.

The student loan program should be limited to STEM, Business, Teaching, or any other field of study that has jobs waiting for them. BS degree students shouldn't get a dime!

Personally, I think anyone who wants to get a liberal arts degree and can do it without federal student loans is free to do whatever they want. But once we start subsidizing education with tax dollars, we probably do need to limit that to majors that have job prospects. But I've no idea how to implement that in practice. Who gets to be the arbiter of what is a worthy degree and what isn't? I've not put much thought into it, but I expect there are quite a few degrees that fall into some gray areas of how useful they are. Plus, I'm not a fan of the symbolic message that society only values STEM, business, law, and medicine. We absolutely need art and literature and music and performance and a better understanding of social behaviors even if those fields usually don't do a good job of generating GDP. If only the wealthy and those who can manage to get a scholarship are the only ones choosing those majors, that would be a net-negative for society.

should be in some way tied to the median salary of people who have that degree and have been out of school ~ 10 years. The arts absolutely positively affect society - and should be funded at some level - but priorities must be the physical needs of society - man didn't make cave paintings until he was under shelter...

It started with with Greatest and Boomer generations beating into their kid's heads that a college education was the golden ticket of life. There was a time when a college degree...any college degree...was an enormous asset in your employment future. And that's what they taught their kids. So Gen X (and later generations) started doing whatever they could to go to college. Then the government hopped on board and tried to make it easier to pay for college by subsidizing student loans. Then colleges made getting into college easier because there was a lot of money to be made in admitting more students. The combination of the government giving away money, colleges trying to gather up as much of it as they could, and students feeling like they were spending someone else's money instead of their own led to zero consumer price pressure on higher education, and thus runaway tuition prices. Meanwhile, no one bothered to notice that a whole lot more people were getting college educations than in years past, so being educated isn't nearly the differentiator it once was. Sure, a STEM or business or law or medical degree is still a pretty solid meal-ticket in life, but degrees in social sciences and the arts just don't have tremendous value in business. So now we have a couple generations of people who thought a degree in anything was a can't-miss investment in their future, and they were willing to borrow a silly amount of money to do it. And while they were doing that, the value of many degrees was depreciating very quickly in the marketplace. And they are saddled with crippling debt and a service job that doesn't pay all that well. And now here we are in a world where some are wising up to the idea that college is too expensive and learning a skilled trade is more lucrative than getting a degree outside of STEM/business/law/medicine.

You HAD to go to college in order to be happy and successful. There was no other path. If you didn't go then you were going to end up homeless or working at McDonald's. Your parents drilled this into your head and your teachers and guidance counselor agreed. ** Edited by HokieNoVA at 9/24/2024, 1:34:10 PM

wasn't really an important thing to teach kids so none of those kids were ever required to take a class about how damaging borrowing money with no way to pay it back is. Thanks Boomers! (see, it goes two ways!)

without a means to pay it back is a bad idea - you don't belong in college anyway. Now being told an underwater basketweaving degree is going to do that is a concern....

...keep spending like there's no tomorrow?

Money just isn't the same as spending your own.

...forfeit their paycheck until spending is under control. Oh, and any member of congress who does "insider trading" gets the same punishment as anyone else doing it.

university foundation that doesn't spend some of their foundation dollars. They raise that money for a reason, to subsidize students cost of education, not to let it build up into the stratosphere year after year. Some college foundations have more assets than some small countries.

...assistance at any time should get hit with a 10% tax on their foundation...lol And yes, there were several Ivy schools who asked for pandemic relief funding...schools with billions of dollars in their foundations.

After a certain period of time, with the college's endowment funds covering part of the balance leftover