<p>You brought up the issue of colleges matching the US population. Now you go on yet another tangent. In the meantime, my example of Asians undermines that argument of matching the population, and as far as the SES matching, why stop at Harvard and other privates? The Carnevale study describes the situation at more than 200 elite schools with rather similar results. </p>
<p>Bottom line? Obama’s plan is his usual. A solution in search of a problem. a sign of a rudderless administration. Yet, there ARE plenty of problems regarding the cost of education, starting with the spendthrifts in K-12. The biggest culprit is our national self-esteem and the illusion that every child should have a similar college degree and that our one size fits all is the answer of choice. This leads to a subpar and boring K-12 and many worthless college degree. The cost is one part of the equation. The market value of a degree is a bigger issue. When the government becomes the best paid and largest hiring group, one knows we are in trouble.</p>
<p>Beliavsky…
Here is a podcast from 2009
[University</a> Endowments Spending and Tax Policy - Podcast » Publications » The Federalist Society](<a href=“StackPath”>StackPath)</p>
<p>It also has links to read more about it. </p>
<p>Basically, the NACUBO survey (from 2007) did not reveal the endowment payout rates of individual institutions as they were “coded for secrecy,” yet “parents, donors, and all taxpayers deserve to know how tax-free endowment funds are being spent.”</p>
<p>xiggi,<br>
Are you complaining that there is a too high concentration of Asian Americans and/or Asian raced people in our university system compared to the whole US population? Maybe you should look at the WHOLE system of colleges (all 3500 of them) and see if you still come up to the same conclusion. </p>
<p>The reason Asians over-represent the population in University of California system is because their culture (just saying this as a whole… knowing the diversity in the various Asian cultures) is pro-education based and they believe that a higher academic education is the road that leads to a better life.</p>
<p>ariesathena says “keep Pell grants in place for low-income students; for other loans, money will be lent directly to the university. The university will then issue loans to its students. If the students can’t repay, the university is on the hook for it.” </p>
<p>interesting idea.<br>
It would force colleges to reconsider charging exorbitant tuition prices for degrees that lead to low income jobs, especially, for students of the middle income families as they wouldn’t be able to pay off the loans. </p>
<p>though, sometimes, those initial lower income jobs turn locative over time. Not everyone runs fast out of the starting blocks.</p>
<p>You’re right, and that’s one of the largest faults in this proposal. You can’t treat all 3,500 institutions of higher learning the same. Many have different missions and goals. Don’t punish the local CC because it’s graduates have a lower average salary than the state flagship university, and don’t punish the small religiously based schools that’s focused on low SES students, because it’s students have a higher loan default rate than Yale.</p>
<p>Strawman much? I am not complaining about the high number of Asians in college, be it in elite schools or in the 4,000+ so-called institutions of high learning. What I did is … answering directlty to your argument, which is reproduced below:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You talked about elite private colleges and their “obligation” (as in HAVE) to accept a diversified student body. My answer is that, if they see this as an obligation to avert taxation, the elite schools do not do such a great job, and surely do NOT have a student body that represents the USA population. They do not achieve that objective for racial distribution, and even less for SES distribution. </p>
<p>However, to be clear, the elite schools are seeking to increase their diversity, but not to avoid taxation or the outright confiscation that has been proposed by leftist idiots in Mass or California. The schools do it because it is the right thing to do, and because they want to play a role in reversing the abject failures of our K-12 system that exacerbates the racial and social inequities. </p>
<p>That is for admissions and access. The real problem of rapidly increasing costs is a different problem, and one vested in the explosion of unneeded expenses to transform most schools into glorified country club, and offer sufficient off-time to their academic divas to be the best customers of the said country clubs as they enjoy a life of research, sabbaticals, and little to no teaching duties. The “doing less” for “more money” is a cancer that afflicts the entire education world, and colleges are not immune to its growth. As long as we cling to a model of 9-12 hours a week and single digit hourly teaching assignments for fewer than 9 months a year, we will NEVER see a reduction in costs.</p>
<p>A new study by Dennis Epple, Richard Romano, Sinan Sarpca and Holger Sieg for the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that the impact of these aid programs is clearly different from what federal policy makers intended. We show that private colleges game the federal financial aid system, they conclude. Every dollar in new financial aid to students leads to about 40 cents less spent by the colleges on institutional financial aid – so students benefit far less than federal policy makers intended.</p>
<p>I would not be shocked if this new proposed federal government program to collect and publish data regarding the success of colleges at placing alumni in well paying jobs that enable them to service their college debt - and tying the accessability to government backed loans to that data - fails to achieve the intended impact.</p>
<p>The President should realize that it is time to stop campaigning and start governing. Rather than looking for more bandaids to stick on wooden legs, he should use the resources of the government to analyze in EARNEST what education has come to in our country.</p>
<p>How hard would it be to evaluate the following elements:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>How much of a week do college students spend on … education matters. If the answer is about 24 hours, it means that 6/7 of the time is spent on entertainment, sleeping, or having fun. And this for about 2/3 of the year.</p></li>
<li><p>How much of the year is spend by faculty in teaching students, as opposed to wasteful administrative matters, or simply wasting time.</p></li>
<li><p>Is a four year college degree really needed? Why has Europe converted to a three years bachelor’s and a two year master’s program? </p></li>
<li><p>Why do we cling to a 2 semesters/4 years system if the objective is 32 courses? The same could be accomplished with a three years, three quarters system of 13 weeks with 5 weeks off from Thanksgiving to New Year, and two three/four week vacation time. All that would be needed is to make universities a whole year affair. Obviously, fat chance to convince professors that teaching might be more than a dilettante affair! </p></li>
<li><p>If money needs to be saved, what would be wrong to limit the grants such as Pell to THREE years? Would the schools not bend backwards to create three years degrees? One benefit from switching to 2 years master’s? There are no Pell grants and it becomes an economic evaluation for the schools and the candidates. Decisions of the worthiness of the graduate education would be harder to make than the current way a senior year is evaluated. As far as the undergraduate goes, it should be easy to graduate students in three years. All that would be needed is to drop most BS classes that are nothing but fillers towards the minimum credits, and evaluate is all requirements still make sense. For instance, is it really necessary for everyone to take and pass Calculus? Really?</p></li>
<li><p>What could be done with the infamous fourth year? Since an all-year program would curb the current sick obsession with internships, the fourth year could be dedicated to real-value internships or transitions to full-paying jobs. Incentives that replace the Pell grants could be created for both empioyers and employees. One immediate one would be the SUSPENSION of SS and FICA taxes on that first year of employment. Obviously, something a government that is TAXING need-based scholarships might frown upon! </p></li>
<li><p>All in all, time has come to really evaluate the merit of higher education. It does not take a Rhodes Scholar to figure out that the situation is rather bleak:</p></li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li>And college should just be the beginning. The transition to an all-year program should start at high school and before. We no longer live in an agrarian society that needs farming helping hands. We need to realize that the process of education requires a lot more than 20 to 30 hours of attention from both the students and the service providers.</li>
</ol>
<p>European universities have 3 year bachelors programs because their high school is not the same as American high schools and the last year of gymnasium lyc</p>
<p>USA highschool students in IB/AP/DE/AICE type programs would match/be the equivalent to a 13th year. Of course, many K-12 students can’t handle the rigor of these programs. It always seems to come back to our issues with K-12…</p>
<p>lagunal: “though, sometimes, those initial lower income jobs turn locative over time. Not everyone runs fast out of the starting blocks.”</p>
<p>I don’t disagree, which is why I like my proposal: all that the university cares about is eventually getting its money back (and having alums who donate). Any measure that the federal government uses will be akin to the 9-month employment rate that law schools are graded on: blunt, gamed up the wazoo by schools, and unable to capture long-term data. A very simple, “Hey, you’re on the hook for it” ensures that schools will be able to invest students if the outcomes benefit in the longer term.</p>
<p>^^
The organization of education from kindergarten to college varies among European countries, and it is hardly universal to have a 1 to 13 grades system. The average is closer to 12 years. The years leading to the Abitur have been reduced to 12 in most German states. For other examples of well-performing systems, note that Finland uses a 9+3 system, and Belgium a 6+3+3 system. In other words, students move into tertiary education after 12 years of primary and secondary education. France’ use of Terminale is misleading and it not a thirteen year. It is a 5+4+3 system. </p>
<p>Regardless of the number of middle and high school years, it remains that the college years have now reorganized according to the Bologna Process:</p>
<p>xiggi, I think you misunderstood my original statement. The reason that I wrote the income levels in parenthesis was to point out that I was talking about INCOME diversity. Sorry if you missed that point. </p>
<p>However I disagree with your statement," to be clear, the elite schools are seeking to increase their diversity." I am assuming that you are speaking of, in, OVERALL Diversity. When 20% or more of a particular class are legacies, that is NOT diversity. Not at all. Not at all…</p>
<p>Wow this topic is getting way more traction here than over in Financial Aid. Couple thoughts. </p>
<p>First the rating system is nothing new. The White House has a “College Scorecard” website that has been up for a while. The new part is that they plan to actually do something meaningful with it. </p>
<p>I think most of you miss the point though. Elite schools do pretty well on the scorecard, as do flagships. The real target appears to be for-profits or any other schools that generate defaulters. The more people who default, the more restrictive loans get, and its the student loan rates which are really costing us.</p>
<p>The sick obsession is evidenced by the current narrative that shares that students should have internships to “help” in admissions at selective schools while in high school, but that internships have become a sine qua non condition to obtain a job after graduation from college. In turn, companies have seized the opportunity of a ready and willing workforce that is prepared to make financial sacrifices to spend their summer --or even school year-- to work for free. </p>
<p>Check the various discussions about the underemployed college graduates, and you will see that a common denominator to “explain” the lack of success is often the absence of the “necessary” internships. </p>
<p>Fwiw, the unpaid or lowly paid internships is often out of reach for the students who “used” to need their summers to meet their students’ financial expectations. In so many words, in 2013, you know have to be reasonably wealthy to afford to … work as a college student, and especially to seize the better opportunities. </p>
<p>All in all, while internships offer opportunities, the pendulum has moved in a dangerous zone, as it has become a necessary evil for many college graduates.</p>