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And then there was Mr. Gokcek, who said that he believed that the Islamic State was created by the United States. As proof, he offered President Trump’s assertion that former President Barack Obama had founded the group as well as the observation that the Islamic State had never attacked Israel, which it would have done, he said, if it were truly an Islamic organization.
It's like what you say and do might have consequences ? !
Who knew !
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
Buried in AHCA there's also a slew of cuts to public health programs. Half the money for the s317 vaccine programs will go. 80% of the money for health programs that prevent heart disease will go. The Centre for Disease Control will lose $890 million.
Whether this is because Republicans just hate the idea of governmnent anything this much, or the need to balance the budget with the big tax cut I don't know. I'm not sure which would show the Republicans in a worst light.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
With el Trumpo's federal hiring freeze, AND the recent firing of a number of attorneys from the AG office, are they going to "thaw" out a bit and start hiring again, or are they just gonna say, "feth it, we don't need no stinkin' lawyers anyway!"
Prestor Jon wrote: A big part of the problem with the insane growth of tuition costs in recent decades is that the government will make unaffordable tuition costs affordable through loans. We have more colleges and universities than ever and more college students than ever and instead of competition bringing prices down prices have skyrocketed while colleges indulge in an amenities arms race funded by tuition that would price most students out of attending except the .gov makes up that shortfall. Higher Ed doesn't have to be this expensive but it has been enabled to be this expensive and the people that have to bear the brunt of the cost are the students the institutions are supposed to be helping.
There is a serious problem with exploding costs in the US tertiary sector, and it certainly is dependent on people accepting very large amounts of debt, but that isn't down purely to the loans available. Consider getting a car loan, for instance. I could go out tomorrow and get a loan for $200k and buy an unbelievably nice car to replace my 10 year old Mazda 6 that just got a really bad tinting bubble on my driver's door window. But I won't because even though I can borrow the money I able to value the utility of that car against all the other ways I might spend $200k, and against the utility of not having that debt at all.
So it isn't the ability to borrow in and of itself that is causing the issue. Rather there's three reasons;
1) The massive increase in total sector debt is largely driven by the large increase in people getting a tertiary education.
2) While the nominal price for tuition has exploded, this isn't actually representative of the actual price paid. Colleges have massively increased their discounts at the same time, it's all basically a marketing ploy. Just as a car that costs $20k doesn't seem as good a deal as a $25k with a special $5k discount, there is also a feeling of greater value from a $50k tuition with 'scholarship' of $20k, compared to a $30k tuition.
3) While the two issues above have led to an overstatement, there is still an undeniable issue. But to return to my car example above, this isn't driven by debt, but by how hard it is to judge the utility of a tertiary education. Because unlike a car your college education also drives your income. People who study this for a living have been able to more or less form a consensus that college is worth the price paid, if you graduate, but nothing any more concrete than that. Given experts have such scarce information, students who are asked to assess whether a $30k tuition per year will give a greater payoff than a $20k tuition are basically left guessing. Human nature typically associates price with value, and so people take the more expensive college, so there is no consumer choice keeping costs down, and hey presto there's your tuition price explosion.
It's a classic area where conventional economics just don't work, because consumers aren't able to make a rational decision on the value of one college compared to another, and compare that against price, because that kind of knowledge really just doesn't exist.
I don't disagree with the other points you made but I still think you're underestimating the impact Federal loans have on the price of tertiary education. Yes it is difficult to assess the true value of getting a degree from one school versus another and getting a BS or BA is never going to hurt your job prospects so its worth getting but even if you could create an accurate metric for determining the value of a degree from a given school there still wouldn't be any pressure on schools to make tuition affordable. If the Federal govt stopped providing FAFSA loans a significant plurality of college students wouldn't be able to afford to attend the school they're enrolled in. If you want to replace your Mazda with a new expensive car then regardless of whether or not the new car gives you good value for its price your ability to get a car loan to buy it is dependent on your income, if you can afford a down payment, your credit score, etc. With college loans the govt is giving you a loan to cover the cost of tuition at the school you got accepted to even though you have no income, no guarantee that you'll earn a degree there and no guarantee what income you'll earn at whatever job your get after you graduate if you do graduate but you'll still have to repay the govt tens of thousands of dollars. There's no pressure on schools to make college affordable for people straight up, like there is with cars. I can't get a car loan to buy a Bentley but I can get a loan to buy a Camry. With college students they can all get loans to go to a Camry school even if it charges the price of a Bentley. While attending Harvard or Ohio State should cost more than attending a local community college it doesn't need to cost so much that graduates face crippling student loan debts but that won't ever change under the current system.
With el Trumpo's federal hiring freeze, AND the recent firing of a number of attorneys from the AG office, are they going to "thaw" out a bit and start hiring again, or are they just gonna say, "feth it, we don't need no stinkin' lawyers anyway!"
For several administrations now we've seen every new President clear out most or all of the US attorneys appointed by the previous administration. Usually its somewhat delayed because their replacements have to appointed and confirmed but all of the US attorneys serve at the discretion of the PotUS so dismissing holdovers from previous administrations is normal. Is the hiring freeze about limiting expansion of new Federal hires or just any Federal hiring at all? Turnover in existing roles isn't creating new jobs just changing faces in pre existing jobs. Who knows, Trump's administration seems to prefer to just make things up as they go along.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/03/14 15:50:44
And then there was Mr. Gokcek, who said that he believed that the Islamic State was created by the United States. As proof, he offered President Trump’s assertion that former President Barack Obama had founded the group as well as the observation that the Islamic State had never attacked Israel, which it would have done, he said, if it were truly an Islamic organization.
It's like what you say and do might have consequences ? !
Who knew !
Well, I guess there are a ton of organizations out there that aren't truly Islamic then, if that's the standard of measurement.
And then there was Mr. Gokcek, who said that he believed that the Islamic State was created by the United States. As proof, he offered President Trump’s assertion that former President Barack Obama had founded the group as well as the observation that the Islamic State had never attacked Israel, which it would have done, he said, if it were truly an Islamic organization.
It's like what you say and do might have consequences ? !
Who knew !
Well, I guess there are a ton of organizations out there that aren't truly Islamic then, if that's the standard of measurement.
I'd posit that any "X"-ist/ian organization that routinely commits atrocities contrary to the teaching of it's holy book isn't truly "X"-isc/ian.
We were once so close to heaven, St. Peter came out and gave us medals; declaring us "The nicest of the damned".
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
Um, ISIS did at one time lay claim to Israeli soil (calling itself ISIL IIRC), but seeing that that region included competent armies like the Jordanians as well, the group downsized themselves a bit...
Because starting another proxy war between that area of the Middle East and the rest would go well.
sebster wrote: Buried in AHCA there's also a slew of cuts to public health programs. Half the money for the s317 vaccine programs will go. 80% of the money for health programs that prevent heart disease will go. The Centre for Disease Control will lose $890 million.
Whether this is because Republicans just hate the idea of governmnent anything this much, or the need to balance the budget with the big tax cut I don't know. I'm not sure which would show the Republicans in a worst light.
The AHCA is a hot mess of incoherent policies and does nothing to bend the cost curve of health care spending. It doesn't help fix any of the unresolved issues from the ACA. The ACA made more people eligible for health insurance and helped more people get covered by health insurance which is good but it didn't drive down costs and now neither does the AHCA.
In 2015, U.S. health care spending increased 5.8 percent to reach $3.2 trillion, or $9,990 per person. The coverage expansion that began in 2014 as a result of in the Affordable Care Act continued to have an impact on the growth of health care spending in 2015. Additionally, faster growth in total health care spending in 2015 was driven by stronger growth in spending for private health insurance, hospital care, physician and clinical services, and the continued strong growth in Medicaid and retail prescription drug spending. Lastly, the overall share of the U.S. economy devoted to health care spending was 17.8 percent in 2015, up from 17.4 percent in 2014.
WASHINGTON — The nation’s health care tab this year is expected to surpass $10,000 per person for the first time, the government said Wednesday. The new peak means the Obama administration will pass the problem of high health care costs on to its successor.
Growth is projected to average 5.8 percent from 2015 to 2025, below the pace before the 2007-2009 economic recession but faster than in recent years that saw health care spending moving in step with modest economic growth.
National health expenditures will hit $3.35 trillion this year, which works out to $10,345 for every man, woman and child. The annual increase of 4.8 percent for 2016 is lower than the forecast for the rest of the decade.
In 2015, total federal revenues in fiscal year 2015 are expected to be $3.18 trillion.2 These revenues come from three major sources:
1.Income taxes paid by individuals: $1.48 trillion, or 47% of all tax revenues.
2.Payroll taxes paid jointly by workers and employers: $1.07 trillion, 34% of all tax revenues.
3.Corporate income taxes paid by businesses: $341.7 billion, or 11% of all tax revenues.
Health care spending already exceeds total Federal revenues and is expected to increase at 5.8% annually. Even if Congress was capable of figuring out a way to smoothly transition from our current system to a single payer system we'd still be faced with the issue of needing to make it affordable.
While Sean Spicer sort of walked back the Trump claims of Obama wiretapping, Kellyanne doubled down, which is because she understands you can get 62 million votes no matter how ridiculous or stupid anything you say sounds, so why not have fun with it.
lord_blackfang wrote: Respect to the guy who subscribed just to post a massive ASCII dong in the chat and immediately get banned.
Flinty wrote: The benefit of slate is that its.actually a.rock with rock like properties. The downside is that it's a rock
Prestor Jon wrote: A big part of the problem with the insane growth of tuition costs in recent decades is that the government will make unaffordable tuition costs affordable through loans. We have more colleges and universities than ever and more college students than ever and instead of competition bringing prices down prices have skyrocketed while colleges indulge in an amenities arms race funded by tuition that would price most students out of attending except the .gov makes up that shortfall. Higher Ed doesn't have to be this expensive but it has been enabled to be this expensive and the people that have to bear the brunt of the cost are the students the institutions are supposed to be helping.
There is a serious problem with exploding costs in the US tertiary sector, and it certainly is dependent on people accepting very large amounts of debt, but that isn't down purely to the loans available. Consider getting a car loan, for instance. I could go out tomorrow and get a loan for $200k and buy an unbelievably nice car to replace my 10 year old Mazda 6 that just got a really bad tinting bubble on my driver's door window. But I won't because even though I can borrow the money I able to value the utility of that car against all the other ways I might spend $200k, and against the utility of not having that debt at all.
So it isn't the ability to borrow in and of itself that is causing the issue. Rather there's three reasons;
1) The massive increase in total sector debt is largely driven by the large increase in people getting a tertiary education.
2) While the nominal price for tuition has exploded, this isn't actually representative of the actual price paid. Colleges have massively increased their discounts at the same time, it's all basically a marketing ploy. Just as a car that costs $20k doesn't seem as good a deal as a $25k with a special $5k discount, there is also a feeling of greater value from a $50k tuition with 'scholarship' of $20k, compared to a $30k tuition.
3) While the two issues above have led to an overstatement, there is still an undeniable issue. But to return to my car example above, this isn't driven by debt, but by how hard it is to judge the utility of a tertiary education. Because unlike a car your college education also drives your income. People who study this for a living have been able to more or less form a consensus that college is worth the price paid, if you graduate, but nothing any more concrete than that. Given experts have such scarce information, students who are asked to assess whether a $30k tuition per year will give a greater payoff than a $20k tuition are basically left guessing. Human nature typically associates price with value, and so people take the more expensive college, so there is no consumer choice keeping costs down, and hey presto there's your tuition price explosion.
It's a classic area where conventional economics just don't work, because consumers aren't able to make a rational decision on the value of one college compared to another, and compare that against price, because that kind of knowledge really just doesn't exist.
I don't disagree with the other points you made but I still think you're underestimating the impact Federal loans have on the price of tertiary education. Yes it is difficult to assess the true value of getting a degree from one school versus another and getting a BS or BA is never going to hurt your job prospects so its worth getting but even if you could create an accurate metric for determining the value of a degree from a given school there still wouldn't be any pressure on schools to make tuition affordable. If the Federal govt stopped providing FAFSA loans a significant plurality of college students wouldn't be able to afford to attend the school they're enrolled in. If you want to replace your Mazda with a new expensive car then regardless of whether or not the new car gives you good value for its price your ability to get a car loan to buy it is dependent on your income, if you can afford a down payment, your credit score, etc. With college loans the govt is giving you a loan to cover the cost of tuition at the school you got accepted to even though you have no income, no guarantee that you'll earn a degree there and no guarantee what income you'll earn at whatever job your get after you graduate if you do graduate but you'll still have to repay the govt tens of thousands of dollars. There's no pressure on schools to make college affordable for people straight up, like there is with cars. I can't get a car loan to buy a Bentley but I can get a loan to buy a Camry. With college students they can all get loans to go to a Camry school even if it charges the price of a Bentley. While attending Harvard or Ohio State should cost more than attending a local community college it doesn't need to cost so much that graduates face crippling student loan debts but that won't ever change under the current system.
How do you balance this out with the idea that an educated citizenry is a societal good and valuable regardless of what major the degree is in and should be encouraged?
I'm pretty sure we all know that she was talking about the government hacking into your microwave and using a hidden camera that is somehow present to spy on you.
She was pulling her typical non-answer (Q: Do you know if Trump Tower was wiretapped? A: Start talking about an article and reference spying TVs and microwaves turning into cameras). She just used slightly more absurd falsehoods than usual.
Also, maybe Transformers. Who would also be illegal immigrants.
-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!
Prestor Jon wrote: A big part of the problem with the insane growth of tuition costs in recent decades is that the government will make unaffordable tuition costs affordable through loans. We have more colleges and universities than ever and more college students than ever and instead of competition bringing prices down prices have skyrocketed while colleges indulge in an amenities arms race funded by tuition that would price most students out of attending except the .gov makes up that shortfall. Higher Ed doesn't have to be this expensive but it has been enabled to be this expensive and the people that have to bear the brunt of the cost are the students the institutions are supposed to be helping.
There is a serious problem with exploding costs in the US tertiary sector, and it certainly is dependent on people accepting very large amounts of debt, but that isn't down purely to the loans available. Consider getting a car loan, for instance. I could go out tomorrow and get a loan for $200k and buy an unbelievably nice car to replace my 10 year old Mazda 6 that just got a really bad tinting bubble on my driver's door window. But I won't because even though I can borrow the money I able to value the utility of that car against all the other ways I might spend $200k, and against the utility of not having that debt at all.
So it isn't the ability to borrow in and of itself that is causing the issue. Rather there's three reasons;
1) The massive increase in total sector debt is largely driven by the large increase in people getting a tertiary education.
2) While the nominal price for tuition has exploded, this isn't actually representative of the actual price paid. Colleges have massively increased their discounts at the same time, it's all basically a marketing ploy. Just as a car that costs $20k doesn't seem as good a deal as a $25k with a special $5k discount, there is also a feeling of greater value from a $50k tuition with 'scholarship' of $20k, compared to a $30k tuition.
3) While the two issues above have led to an overstatement, there is still an undeniable issue. But to return to my car example above, this isn't driven by debt, but by how hard it is to judge the utility of a tertiary education. Because unlike a car your college education also drives your income. People who study this for a living have been able to more or less form a consensus that college is worth the price paid, if you graduate, but nothing any more concrete than that. Given experts have such scarce information, students who are asked to assess whether a $30k tuition per year will give a greater payoff than a $20k tuition are basically left guessing. Human nature typically associates price with value, and so people take the more expensive college, so there is no consumer choice keeping costs down, and hey presto there's your tuition price explosion.
It's a classic area where conventional economics just don't work, because consumers aren't able to make a rational decision on the value of one college compared to another, and compare that against price, because that kind of knowledge really just doesn't exist.
I don't disagree with the other points you made but I still think you're underestimating the impact Federal loans have on the price of tertiary education. Yes it is difficult to assess the true value of getting a degree from one school versus another and getting a BS or BA is never going to hurt your job prospects so its worth getting but even if you could create an accurate metric for determining the value of a degree from a given school there still wouldn't be any pressure on schools to make tuition affordable. If the Federal govt stopped providing FAFSA loans a significant plurality of college students wouldn't be able to afford to attend the school they're enrolled in. If you want to replace your Mazda with a new expensive car then regardless of whether or not the new car gives you good value for its price your ability to get a car loan to buy it is dependent on your income, if you can afford a down payment, your credit score, etc. With college loans the govt is giving you a loan to cover the cost of tuition at the school you got accepted to even though you have no income, no guarantee that you'll earn a degree there and no guarantee what income you'll earn at whatever job your get after you graduate if you do graduate but you'll still have to repay the govt tens of thousands of dollars. There's no pressure on schools to make college affordable for people straight up, like there is with cars. I can't get a car loan to buy a Bentley but I can get a loan to buy a Camry. With college students they can all get loans to go to a Camry school even if it charges the price of a Bentley. While attending Harvard or Ohio State should cost more than attending a local community college it doesn't need to cost so much that graduates face crippling student loan debts but that won't ever change under the current system.
How do you balance this out with the idea that an educated citizenry is a societal good and valuable regardless of what major the degree is in and should be encouraged?
Put that value in monetary terms and see if it is equal to or greater the level debt it leaves college graduates in. Do community colleges provide their students with a quality education in their chosen major? If they do then they're doing it at a greatly reduced cost compared to public and private universities. Granted, there are facilities and opportunities for study at universities that can't be matched at community colleges and increase the value of university education, especially in STEM subjects but that's a gap we could work to close and STEM degrees can result in jobs whose salaries would make the debt incurred to achieve a degree that's modestly more expensive than a community college degree. We can also generate an educated citizenry by giving everyone a high speed internet connection and a library card granting them access to the sum total of human knowledge. If college degrees were really as valuable as the price to achieve them would indicate then student debt wouldn't be a problem yet student debt is clearly a widespread problem. College graduates who may not have even landed a job yet end up behind the 8 ball, owing the govt a sum of money equivalent to a new car or sizeable down payment on a home. The govt is issuing student loans for college educations under conditions that imply that obtaining such an education will lead to the graduates getting jobs with wages high enough to allow them to make their monthly loan payment on top of the cost of their housing, utilities, transportation, food, clothing, etc. which doesn't appear to be the case given the number of graduates that find student loan repayment to be a hardship. Somewhere along the way the monetary value of a degree got skewed but the system we use to fund the obtaining of those degrees doesn't respond to that kind of error so it remains and becomes compounded (pardon the pun there).
Prestor Jon wrote: A big part of the problem with the insane growth of tuition costs in recent decades is that the government will make unaffordable tuition costs affordable through loans. We have more colleges and universities than ever and more college students than ever and instead of competition bringing prices down prices have skyrocketed while colleges indulge in an amenities arms race funded by tuition that would price most students out of attending except the .gov makes up that shortfall. Higher Ed doesn't have to be this expensive but it has been enabled to be this expensive and the people that have to bear the brunt of the cost are the students the institutions are supposed to be helping.
There is a serious problem with exploding costs in the US tertiary sector, and it certainly is dependent on people accepting very large amounts of debt, but that isn't down purely to the loans available. Consider getting a car loan, for instance. I could go out tomorrow and get a loan for $200k and buy an unbelievably nice car to replace my 10 year old Mazda 6 that just got a really bad tinting bubble on my driver's door window. But I won't because even though I can borrow the money I able to value the utility of that car against all the other ways I might spend $200k, and against the utility of not having that debt at all.
So it isn't the ability to borrow in and of itself that is causing the issue. Rather there's three reasons;
1) The massive increase in total sector debt is largely driven by the large increase in people getting a tertiary education.
2) While the nominal price for tuition has exploded, this isn't actually representative of the actual price paid. Colleges have massively increased their discounts at the same time, it's all basically a marketing ploy. Just as a car that costs $20k doesn't seem as good a deal as a $25k with a special $5k discount, there is also a feeling of greater value from a $50k tuition with 'scholarship' of $20k, compared to a $30k tuition.
3) While the two issues above have led to an overstatement, there is still an undeniable issue. But to return to my car example above, this isn't driven by debt, but by how hard it is to judge the utility of a tertiary education. Because unlike a car your college education also drives your income. People who study this for a living have been able to more or less form a consensus that college is worth the price paid, if you graduate, but nothing any more concrete than that. Given experts have such scarce information, students who are asked to assess whether a $30k tuition per year will give a greater payoff than a $20k tuition are basically left guessing. Human nature typically associates price with value, and so people take the more expensive college, so there is no consumer choice keeping costs down, and hey presto there's your tuition price explosion.
It's a classic area where conventional economics just don't work, because consumers aren't able to make a rational decision on the value of one college compared to another, and compare that against price, because that kind of knowledge really just doesn't exist.
I don't disagree with the other points you made but I still think you're underestimating the impact Federal loans have on the price of tertiary education. Yes it is difficult to assess the true value of getting a degree from one school versus another and getting a BS or BA is never going to hurt your job prospects so its worth getting but even if you could create an accurate metric for determining the value of a degree from a given school there still wouldn't be any pressure on schools to make tuition affordable. If the Federal govt stopped providing FAFSA loans a significant plurality of college students wouldn't be able to afford to attend the school they're enrolled in. If you want to replace your Mazda with a new expensive car then regardless of whether or not the new car gives you good value for its price your ability to get a car loan to buy it is dependent on your income, if you can afford a down payment, your credit score, etc. With college loans the govt is giving you a loan to cover the cost of tuition at the school you got accepted to even though you have no income, no guarantee that you'll earn a degree there and no guarantee what income you'll earn at whatever job your get after you graduate if you do graduate but you'll still have to repay the govt tens of thousands of dollars. There's no pressure on schools to make college affordable for people straight up, like there is with cars. I can't get a car loan to buy a Bentley but I can get a loan to buy a Camry. With college students they can all get loans to go to a Camry school even if it charges the price of a Bentley. While attending Harvard or Ohio State should cost more than attending a local community college it doesn't need to cost so much that graduates face crippling student loan debts but that won't ever change under the current system.
How do you balance this out with the idea that an educated citizenry is a societal good and valuable regardless of what major the degree is in and should be encouraged?
Put that value in monetary terms and see if it is equal to or greater the level debt it leaves college graduates in. Do community colleges provide their students with a quality education in their chosen major? If they do then they're doing it at a greatly reduced cost compared to public and private universities. Granted, there are facilities and opportunities for study at universities that can't be matched at community colleges and increase the value of university education, especially in STEM subjects but that's a gap we could work to close and STEM degrees can result in jobs whose salaries would make the debt incurred to achieve a degree that's modestly more expensive than a community college degree. We can also generate an educated citizenry by giving everyone a high speed internet connection and a library card granting them access to the sum total of human knowledge. If college degrees were really as valuable as the price to achieve them would indicate then student debt wouldn't be a problem yet student debt is clearly a widespread problem. College graduates who may not have even landed a job yet end up behind the 8 ball, owing the govt a sum of money equivalent to a new car or sizeable down payment on a home. The govt is issuing student loans for college educations under conditions that imply that obtaining such an education will lead to the graduates getting jobs with wages high enough to allow them to make their monthly loan payment on top of the cost of their housing, utilities, transportation, food, clothing, etc. which doesn't appear to be the case given the number of graduates that find student loan repayment to be a hardship. Somewhere along the way the monetary value of a degree got skewed but the system we use to fund the obtaining of those degrees doesn't respond to that kind of error so it remains and becomes compounded (pardon the pun there).
See, the monetary value of a degree, especially a non-Stem degree, is hard to quantify. It is different than how much money someone with that degree can earn.
Your idea of a library card and internet connection being the equivalent of an education is quite wrong. There is a difference between knowing things and having an education. Too much is put on knowing 'things' rather than having the ability to think critically and learn. Rote memorization is not an 'education'. Not to mention, there is stuff like Breitbart on the internet
Stem degrees help answer that 'what' and 'how' questions. Non-Stem degrees answer the 'why' questions that are arguably more important to society. They encourage outside the box thinking. Stem degrees are black and white, non-stem are all the shades. We, as a society, need to be able to see all the shades.
Prestor Jon wrote: A big part of the problem with the insane growth of tuition costs in recent decades is that the government will make unaffordable tuition costs affordable through loans. We have more colleges and universities than ever and more college students than ever and instead of competition bringing prices down prices have skyrocketed while colleges indulge in an amenities arms race funded by tuition that would price most students out of attending except the .gov makes up that shortfall. Higher Ed doesn't have to be this expensive but it has been enabled to be this expensive and the people that have to bear the brunt of the cost are the students the institutions are supposed to be helping.
There is a serious problem with exploding costs in the US tertiary sector, and it certainly is dependent on people accepting very large amounts of debt, but that isn't down purely to the loans available. Consider getting a car loan, for instance. I could go out tomorrow and get a loan for $200k and buy an unbelievably nice car to replace my 10 year old Mazda 6 that just got a really bad tinting bubble on my driver's door window. But I won't because even though I can borrow the money I able to value the utility of that car against all the other ways I might spend $200k, and against the utility of not having that debt at all.
So it isn't the ability to borrow in and of itself that is causing the issue. Rather there's three reasons;
1) The massive increase in total sector debt is largely driven by the large increase in people getting a tertiary education.
2) While the nominal price for tuition has exploded, this isn't actually representative of the actual price paid. Colleges have massively increased their discounts at the same time, it's all basically a marketing ploy. Just as a car that costs $20k doesn't seem as good a deal as a $25k with a special $5k discount, there is also a feeling of greater value from a $50k tuition with 'scholarship' of $20k, compared to a $30k tuition.
3) While the two issues above have led to an overstatement, there is still an undeniable issue. But to return to my car example above, this isn't driven by debt, but by how hard it is to judge the utility of a tertiary education. Because unlike a car your college education also drives your income. People who study this for a living have been able to more or less form a consensus that college is worth the price paid, if you graduate, but nothing any more concrete than that. Given experts have such scarce information, students who are asked to assess whether a $30k tuition per year will give a greater payoff than a $20k tuition are basically left guessing. Human nature typically associates price with value, and so people take the more expensive college, so there is no consumer choice keeping costs down, and hey presto there's your tuition price explosion.
It's a classic area where conventional economics just don't work, because consumers aren't able to make a rational decision on the value of one college compared to another, and compare that against price, because that kind of knowledge really just doesn't exist.
I don't disagree with the other points you made but I still think you're underestimating the impact Federal loans have on the price of tertiary education. Yes it is difficult to assess the true value of getting a degree from one school versus another and getting a BS or BA is never going to hurt your job prospects so its worth getting but even if you could create an accurate metric for determining the value of a degree from a given school there still wouldn't be any pressure on schools to make tuition affordable. If the Federal govt stopped providing FAFSA loans a significant plurality of college students wouldn't be able to afford to attend the school they're enrolled in. If you want to replace your Mazda with a new expensive car then regardless of whether or not the new car gives you good value for its price your ability to get a car loan to buy it is dependent on your income, if you can afford a down payment, your credit score, etc. With college loans the govt is giving you a loan to cover the cost of tuition at the school you got accepted to even though you have no income, no guarantee that you'll earn a degree there and no guarantee what income you'll earn at whatever job your get after you graduate if you do graduate but you'll still have to repay the govt tens of thousands of dollars. There's no pressure on schools to make college affordable for people straight up, like there is with cars. I can't get a car loan to buy a Bentley but I can get a loan to buy a Camry. With college students they can all get loans to go to a Camry school even if it charges the price of a Bentley. While attending Harvard or Ohio State should cost more than attending a local community college it doesn't need to cost so much that graduates face crippling student loan debts but that won't ever change under the current system.
How do you balance this out with the idea that an educated citizenry is a societal good and valuable regardless of what major the degree is in and should be encouraged?
Put that value in monetary terms and see if it is equal to or greater the level debt it leaves college graduates in. Do community colleges provide their students with a quality education in their chosen major? If they do then they're doing it at a greatly reduced cost compared to public and private universities. Granted, there are facilities and opportunities for study at universities that can't be matched at community colleges and increase the value of university education, especially in STEM subjects but that's a gap we could work to close and STEM degrees can result in jobs whose salaries would make the debt incurred to achieve a degree that's modestly more expensive than a community college degree. We can also generate an educated citizenry by giving everyone a high speed internet connection and a library card granting them access to the sum total of human knowledge. If college degrees were really as valuable as the price to achieve them would indicate then student debt wouldn't be a problem yet student debt is clearly a widespread problem. College graduates who may not have even landed a job yet end up behind the 8 ball, owing the govt a sum of money equivalent to a new car or sizeable down payment on a home. The govt is issuing student loans for college educations under conditions that imply that obtaining such an education will lead to the graduates getting jobs with wages high enough to allow them to make their monthly loan payment on top of the cost of their housing, utilities, transportation, food, clothing, etc. which doesn't appear to be the case given the number of graduates that find student loan repayment to be a hardship. Somewhere along the way the monetary value of a degree got skewed but the system we use to fund the obtaining of those degrees doesn't respond to that kind of error so it remains and becomes compounded (pardon the pun there).
See, the monetary value of a degree, especially a non-Stem degree, is hard to quantify. It is different than how much money someone with that degree can earn.
Your idea of a library card and internet connection being the equivalent of an education is quite wrong. There is a difference between knowing things and having an education. Too much is put on knowing 'things' rather than having the ability to think critically and learn. Rote memorization is not an 'education'. Not to mention, there is stuff like Breitbart on the internet
Stem degrees help answer that 'what' and 'how' questions. Non-Stem degrees answer the 'why' questions that are arguably more important to society. They encourage outside the box thinking. Stem degrees are black and white, non-stem are all the shades. We, as a society, need to be able to see all the shades.
Yes, true. Doesn't change the fact that costs of post-secondary education is rising faster than the rate of pay most of those degrees provide, and the fact that a lot of colleges are glorified daycares at best, and outright scams at worst.
We were once so close to heaven, St. Peter came out and gave us medals; declaring us "The nicest of the damned".
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
I suspect if students could discharge student loan debt via bankruptcy, and the Feds didn't give or guarantee the loans, loans for majors without decent earning potential and for students without good grades/performance would be much more difficult to obtain.
Without guaranteed loans to cover inflated tuitions, I suspect universities would find ways to keep costs down.
Every time a terrorist dies a Paratrooper gets his wings.
Prestor Jon wrote: A big part of the problem with the insane growth of tuition costs in recent decades is that the government will make unaffordable tuition costs affordable through loans. We have more colleges and universities than ever and more college students than ever and instead of competition bringing prices down prices have skyrocketed while colleges indulge in an amenities arms race funded by tuition that would price most students out of attending except the .gov makes up that shortfall. Higher Ed doesn't have to be this expensive but it has been enabled to be this expensive and the people that have to bear the brunt of the cost are the students the institutions are supposed to be helping.
There is a serious problem with exploding costs in the US tertiary sector, and it certainly is dependent on people accepting very large amounts of debt, but that isn't down purely to the loans available. Consider getting a car loan, for instance. I could go out tomorrow and get a loan for $200k and buy an unbelievably nice car to replace my 10 year old Mazda 6 that just got a really bad tinting bubble on my driver's door window. But I won't because even though I can borrow the money I able to value the utility of that car against all the other ways I might spend $200k, and against the utility of not having that debt at all.
So it isn't the ability to borrow in and of itself that is causing the issue. Rather there's three reasons;
1) The massive increase in total sector debt is largely driven by the large increase in people getting a tertiary education.
2) While the nominal price for tuition has exploded, this isn't actually representative of the actual price paid. Colleges have massively increased their discounts at the same time, it's all basically a marketing ploy. Just as a car that costs $20k doesn't seem as good a deal as a $25k with a special $5k discount, there is also a feeling of greater value from a $50k tuition with 'scholarship' of $20k, compared to a $30k tuition.
3) While the two issues above have led to an overstatement, there is still an undeniable issue. But to return to my car example above, this isn't driven by debt, but by how hard it is to judge the utility of a tertiary education. Because unlike a car your college education also drives your income. People who study this for a living have been able to more or less form a consensus that college is worth the price paid, if you graduate, but nothing any more concrete than that. Given experts have such scarce information, students who are asked to assess whether a $30k tuition per year will give a greater payoff than a $20k tuition are basically left guessing. Human nature typically associates price with value, and so people take the more expensive college, so there is no consumer choice keeping costs down, and hey presto there's your tuition price explosion.
It's a classic area where conventional economics just don't work, because consumers aren't able to make a rational decision on the value of one college compared to another, and compare that against price, because that kind of knowledge really just doesn't exist.
I don't disagree with the other points you made but I still think you're underestimating the impact Federal loans have on the price of tertiary education. Yes it is difficult to assess the true value of getting a degree from one school versus another and getting a BS or BA is never going to hurt your job prospects so its worth getting but even if you could create an accurate metric for determining the value of a degree from a given school there still wouldn't be any pressure on schools to make tuition affordable. If the Federal govt stopped providing FAFSA loans a significant plurality of college students wouldn't be able to afford to attend the school they're enrolled in. If you want to replace your Mazda with a new expensive car then regardless of whether or not the new car gives you good value for its price your ability to get a car loan to buy it is dependent on your income, if you can afford a down payment, your credit score, etc. With college loans the govt is giving you a loan to cover the cost of tuition at the school you got accepted to even though you have no income, no guarantee that you'll earn a degree there and no guarantee what income you'll earn at whatever job your get after you graduate if you do graduate but you'll still have to repay the govt tens of thousands of dollars. There's no pressure on schools to make college affordable for people straight up, like there is with cars. I can't get a car loan to buy a Bentley but I can get a loan to buy a Camry. With college students they can all get loans to go to a Camry school even if it charges the price of a Bentley. While attending Harvard or Ohio State should cost more than attending a local community college it doesn't need to cost so much that graduates face crippling student loan debts but that won't ever change under the current system.
How do you balance this out with the idea that an educated citizenry is a societal good and valuable regardless of what major the degree is in and should be encouraged?
Put that value in monetary terms and see if it is equal to or greater the level debt it leaves college graduates in. Do community colleges provide their students with a quality education in their chosen major? If they do then they're doing it at a greatly reduced cost compared to public and private universities. Granted, there are facilities and opportunities for study at universities that can't be matched at community colleges and increase the value of university education, especially in STEM subjects but that's a gap we could work to close and STEM degrees can result in jobs whose salaries would make the debt incurred to achieve a degree that's modestly more expensive than a community college degree. We can also generate an educated citizenry by giving everyone a high speed internet connection and a library card granting them access to the sum total of human knowledge. If college degrees were really as valuable as the price to achieve them would indicate then student debt wouldn't be a problem yet student debt is clearly a widespread problem. College graduates who may not have even landed a job yet end up behind the 8 ball, owing the govt a sum of money equivalent to a new car or sizeable down payment on a home. The govt is issuing student loans for college educations under conditions that imply that obtaining such an education will lead to the graduates getting jobs with wages high enough to allow them to make their monthly loan payment on top of the cost of their housing, utilities, transportation, food, clothing, etc. which doesn't appear to be the case given the number of graduates that find student loan repayment to be a hardship. Somewhere along the way the monetary value of a degree got skewed but the system we use to fund the obtaining of those degrees doesn't respond to that kind of error so it remains and becomes compounded (pardon the pun there).
See, the monetary value of a degree, especially a non-Stem degree, is hard to quantify. It is different than how much money someone with that degree can earn.
Your idea of a library card and internet connection being the equivalent of an education is quite wrong. There is a difference between knowing things and having an education. Too much is put on knowing 'things' rather than having the ability to think critically and learn. Rote memorization is not an 'education'. Not to mention, there is stuff like Breitbart on the internet
Stem degrees help answer that 'what' and 'how' questions. Non-Stem degrees answer the 'why' questions that are arguably more important to society. They encourage outside the box thinking. Stem degrees are black and white, non-stem are all the shades. We, as a society, need to be able to see all the shades.
If a person has gone through their K-12 education and still can't read and think critically and analytically then their chances of getting a good tertiary education through any means is highly suspect. While some of the benefits of a BA can't be given a clear monetary value, the negative impact of owing tens of thousands of dollars can be valued. There are a ton of liberal arts lectures and discussions available on youtube, in long form podcasts, TED talks, blogs and websites that you can access for a tiny fraction of the cost of attending a semester at a university and plenty of the major texts that would be studied can be found at libraries. The tertiary education bubble is going to burst in the near future because it doesn't make any sense to keep supporting it's over inflated value in the current system.
-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!
CptJake wrote: I suspect if students could discharge student loan debt via bankruptcy, and the Feds didn't give or guarantee the loans, loans for majors without decent earning potential and for students without good grades/performance would be much more difficult to obtain..
See, the problem right there is that majors without 'decent earning potential' being difficult to obtain is a very bad thing for society.
CptJake wrote: I suspect if students could discharge student loan debt via bankruptcy, and the Feds didn't give or guarantee the loans, loans for majors without decent earning potential and for students without good grades/performance would be much more difficult to obtain.
Without guaranteed loans to cover inflated tuitions, I suspect universities would find ways to keep costs down.
Except in many cases Universities are charging high prices for other degrees to fund their Science degrees (i.e. the degrees with some of the highest earning potential) due to how much more expensive those degrees are to put on.
By eliminating their means of funding those degrees through tuition for less expensive to offer degrees (as people now cannot afford to go on such courses as they do not have the funding available), it is entirely possible that you will actually lead to a reduction in the amount of your institutions offering such degrees as they cannot afford to run such courses. Alternatively they have to raise the prices of these degrees, which can put people off as now students who are going to be doing these degrees with decent earning potential are facing greater debt at the end of it than they were before.
The Laws of Thermodynamics:
1) You cannot win. 2) You cannot break even. 3) You cannot stop playing the game.
Colonel Flagg wrote:You think you're real smart. But you're not smart; you're dumb. Very dumb. But you've met your match in me.
CptJake wrote: I suspect if students could discharge student loan debt via bankruptcy, and the Feds didn't give or guarantee the loans, loans for majors without decent earning potential and for students without good grades/performance would be much more difficult to obtain..
See, the problem right there is that majors without 'decent earning potential' being difficult to obtain is a very bad thing for society.
Why?
-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!
CptJake wrote: I suspect if students could discharge student loan debt via bankruptcy, and the Feds didn't give or guarantee the loans, loans for majors without decent earning potential and for students without good grades/performance would be much more difficult to obtain..
See, the problem right there is that majors without 'decent earning potential' being difficult to obtain is a very bad thing for society.
Why?
If an organization needs employees with those majors, why not set up scholarships, offer loans, or otherwise incentivize good candidates to pursue those majors and then take a position in the organization? Or offer other training which could replace a degree for the organization? Or offer internships in which a degree completion program is part of the internship? Plenty of ways to skin this cat without the Feds giving out loans like candy on Halloween.
Why should it be on the Fed gov't to do so?
Every time a terrorist dies a Paratrooper gets his wings.
If a person has gone through their K-12 education and still can't read and think critically and analytically then their chances of getting a good tertiary education through any means is highly suspect. While some of the benefits of a BA can't be given a clear monetary value, the negative impact of owing tens of thousands of dollars can be valued. There are a ton of liberal arts lectures and discussions available on youtube, in long form podcasts, TED talks, blogs and websites that you can access for a tiny fraction of the cost of attending a semester at a university and plenty of the major texts that would be studied can be found at libraries. The tertiary education bubble is going to burst in the near future because it doesn't make any sense to keep supporting it's over inflated value in the current system.
There is definitely a problem with the K-12 education system right now. Lack of funding, teachers constantly under attack from politicians, political football with what is taught (IE discouraging critical thinking), and concentrating teaching towards a test (IE making it too black and white) are definitely an issue.
Non-Stem learning is really hard to do by yourself. It almost requires a teacher and differing view points to really understand it. A youtube video will teach you how to build a house (Was reading an article about someone who did that today). But you need interaction to really do well in areas that involve lots of shades of grey rather than a black and white, right or wrong thing. A youtube video or a book will not give you feedback on you attempting to explain your views and defend them. Trying to do that on the internet just gets you shouted down and called names
Really, you'd be better replacing all Stem degrees with a library card and an internet connection and leave colleges for non-Stem degrees.
Not saying that the thousands of student loans aren't an issue. Yes, the cost can be quantified. However, the value cannot. So you have people with Stem degrees and ways of thinking looking down on BA degrees as the benefits can't be quantified.
CptJake wrote: I suspect if students could discharge student loan debt via bankruptcy, and the Feds didn't give or guarantee the loans, loans for majors without decent earning potential and for students without good grades/performance would be much more difficult to obtain..
See, the problem right there is that majors without 'decent earning potential' being difficult to obtain is a very bad thing for society.
Why?
If an organization needs employees with those majors, why not set up scholarships, offer loans, or otherwise incentivize good candidates to pursue those majors and then take a position in the organization? Or offer other training which could replace a degree for the organization? Or offer internships in which a degree completion program is part of the internship? Plenty of ways to skin this cat without the Feds giving out loans like candy on Halloween.
Why should it be on the Fed gov't to do so?
Because non-stem degrees bring a larger societal good than they can receive in a paycheck. The only way to effectively have an educated populace is through the government doing it.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/03/14 18:57:00
Those degrees ARE being quantified, you just disagree with that quantification.
What it boils down to is there is a glut of graduates with those degrees compared to positions requiring those degrees, driving the value down while the costs to gain the degree are still high.
Again, if the banks could lose THEIR money on student loans, a lot of this would work itself out.
Every time a terrorist dies a Paratrooper gets his wings.
CptJake wrote: Those degrees ARE being quantified, you just disagree with that quantification.
What it boils down to is there is a glut of graduates with those degrees compared to positions requiring those degrees, driving the value down while the costs to gain the degree are still high.
Again, if the banks could lose THEIR money on student loans, a lot of this would work itself out.
See, there's the problem. You only see it as how much money can that earn someone. Economics is not the only way to value something. When dealing with people and society, it is, in fact, a very bad way of valuing something. Economics is amoral and places no value on human dignity or a just society.
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