Sorry, bad analysis. Correlation does not equal causation. What the authors compared was marriage rates among those that had more loans vs. fewer loans for four years after grads in '07/'08. In other words, right at the height of the great recession. (yeah, sure, the recession and high joblessness of recent grads had nothing to do with marriage rates?)
But regardless of cherry-picking data years, a better and more correct analysis which would be to compare the marriage rates of those that graduated in '07/'08 with the marriage rates of those that graduated in a different time period to see if there was any change. Maybe, just maybe, the marriage rate of the indebted has not changed at all over say, a decade. Or, maybe its been declining for years, and its a societal trend, not a school loan trend.
btw, mwfan, the article did say that they found no difference in home ownership.
I’m starting to wish that instead of talking to parents about paying for college during the kids’ junior year of high school they should be doing it during first grade and every few years after that.
Entry level high school graduate jobs are less viable as a means of self support and saving for college than they were a generation ago, so doing (a) may be more difficult than before. Military service with veterans’ benefits to pay for college afterward is an exception, but the military is more selective these days (only about 29% of young people in the US are eligible).
(b) can be a viable option in places where the community colleges are good and inexpensive. Unfortunately, this may not be true in many states.
Correlation vs. causation: The article cited above explicitly uses an instrumental variable strategy that’s whole purpose is to try to identify the causal impact of holding student debt. Correlation evidence rarely gets published in economics journals.
UCB- I wouldn’t describe it as the military being more selective. Do you want to be supplying drug addicts with weapons of mass destruction at their disposal? Suicide is a big enough problem in our armed forces today without actively allowing kids with a drug problem to enlist.
Fewer kids qualify for the military (can’t pass the fitness test, medical exam, etc.) That’s a societal issue. The college payment stuff- just a sidebar.
yeah, I get that, but that still doesn’t mean that they succeeded. What they have is a snapshot in time. While one can certainly make observations/comparisons (between a and b) for that snapshot, it is nothing more than a correlation. (Think about taking a snapshot of measles in the US in 2019…)
There is a ton of social science research that would never hold up under strict scrutiny of the scientific method that all STEM majors know very well. Just bcos its published, doesn’t make it analytically correct.
@JoelShoe I’ve yet to see a high school grad job allow one to save enough for college after expenses are taken out. Perhaps there are more in your area. There are kids who still do this though, just the numbers who make it to college are low. There are more I end up seeing in the drug abuse category TBH. The few I’ve had a chance to ask about it tell me, “What else is there in life?”
Many still start at cc. That’s definitely not uncommon. There are two years needed beyond cc and some majors (around us) can’t be started at cc. Our local cc doesn’t even offer chemistry, much less engineering.
It’s very uncommon to see kids with six digit loans in our area. I agree with those who go that high, there are often regrets - esp when they had a less expensive option.
Your area might be different than mine. Are there stats out there showing the average Parent Plus loan (or family student loans)?
Well since we have 6 million job openings in this country to fill maybe the corporations should start kicking in some money. Seems like they would benefit if they have jobs to fill.
There’s two issues wrt to loan repayment by Corporations.
it’s taxable income. (yeah, I get free money in still free money). But, it’s just a cash bonus.
And, 2), it treats employees in the same job differentially (‘equal pay for equal work’?), which can mess up the comp program. If one widget counter has student debt and receives extra money from the corporation while another widget counter has no debt and receives no bonus… Or imagine if male software engineers had more debt than female software engineers. FAANG would pilloried if they even thought about giving the former extra money (to help pay down loans) and not the other. (or substitute gender for race/ethnicity)
The military isn’t that selective, except in specific fields. In general they do want you to:
graduate high school
Not have a criminal record
Not use drugs and be able to pass a drug test
Be in good enough physical condition to pass a pt test.
Not have used ADHD medications in the past year.
I consider 1-4 a pretty low bar. On 5, more ineligibility may be less a result of the military being more selective than the skyrocketing rates of ADHD medication prescription.
This is the economic fallacy of composition. When lots of college graduates are available, employers may choose to hire a college graduate, not because the job requires the skill set of their degree, but for its signaling value. With credential creep, a college degree’s chief value may be in signaling to employers that you are more intelligent than the people who did not go to college. If more people go to college, the signaling value declines. While an individual may win a higher paying job with a college degree, if it prevents someone else from getting that higher paying job, aggregate GDP stays the same.
@roethlisburger Then why have college grads almost always - throughout history - been paid more with lower unemployment rates than non-college grads?
Both of my parents fit the mold well. They went to college and did well. Later siblings who could not afford college (parents paid for the first couple, then ran out of money) didn’t do well and are struggling now in retirement because their savings aren’t high enough - never had that high of a salary at any time in their lives. Loans could have changed their lives.
Personally I think more companies are looking for college grads now because a high school diploma is pretty darn worthless with as much as we have to lower the bar for everyone to pass - low graduation rates are a big no-no.
Doubtful that high school graduation standards have been lowered generally. What I remember from my high school days decades ago (in a regular public school where about a third of graduates went to four year colleges at the time) was that it did not take much to graduate from high school:
Needed to pass courses with D or higher grades.
Subject requirements were lower than needed to qualify for public universities (now, many school districts set their graduation requirements to be the same as the minimum needed for public universities, at least in California).
Academic standards were quite low in courses not commonly taken by college-prep students.
What really may be behind employers wanting college graduates (credential creep) is that it is just a convenient way to screen out what they consider less desirable potential employees (either less academically capable, or from lower SES backgrounds who have more difficulty affording college), even if they would be capable of doing the job. Employers also prefer employees to already be educated, trained, certified, or licensed at the employee’s expense, rather than have to do that on the job for the employee.
@ucbalumnus What you write could be true where you are. My only CA experiences have been from travels. In PA where I’ve worked in the same school for 19 years and in NY where I went to school myself and my parents/aunt/uncle were teachers, the bar has certainly lowered for graduation. The grade needed to pass has remained the same. What one has to do to get that grade is not. Teachers have been pushed to make sure there are no or very few failures. The easiest way to do that? Remove anything hard from the test.
@creekland, How are students in your district passing the NYS Regents exams if teachers are dumbing down the coursework? NY has different levels of diplomas. Kids who don’t pass the Regents can still get a local diploma, but plenty of students still get the higher one.
Why are they taking the easy way? An alternative would be to actually teach the students the material. It’s more difficult, but that’s what we’re hiring them to do.
We aren’t talking about the college bound kids. They always graduated. We’re talking about those who, for whatever reason, can’t or won’t handle the academics. Those are the students who increase the graduation rate (or decrease it). Statewide tests (Regents, etc) that have to be passed by all graduates have also lowered the content bar. This also doesn’t affect those who need to know more (for AP or SATII, etc).
@austinmshauri the Regents exams are way easier than they used to be. And there really aren’t local diplomas anymore, just an IEP diploma which is extremely watered down.
The expectation that everyone would benefit from college is just wrong. Our school district used to have Voc-Ed - auto mechanics, small engine (motorcycle/snowmobile) repair. plumbing, electronics, building trades. Every year the Voc-Ed class built a house which was sold to finance the program.
Kids got work as apprentice mechanics or tradesmen during an just after high school. Since it was working so well, the district eliminated all Voc-Ed because of the idiotic notion that everyone would benefit from college.
In many cases, these are the kids who take on college debt. That and the kids in the fields that don’t pay well, or require a Ph.D to do anything of consequence. No one should be attending college without a clear idea of how they will recoup their investment.