<p>I’m gonna stick out my neck out big time here and suggest that maybe, if all kinds of loans, in addition to scholarships and grants that students got, were solely tied to 3 factors that much of this resentment and frustration on all sides could be avoided. Those 3 factors would be 1. caliber of the student, which means not just grades and test scores but an overall ability to demonstrate that the student has capability to use what she/he learned in college to maximize her/his success at finding a better job than what the would have gotten right out of high school 2. Practical vs non practical majors - note that this is clearly not at all the same as saying STEM vs non STEM majors since the most useful and practical majors are clearly not always gonna be STEM as those with actual knowledge of universities could tell you 3. Caliber of the school - by which I mean the success rate of the school in question at preparing kids for jobs other than menial ones they could have gotten with only a high school diploma. This way, there would be no need to worry about blindly following their rankings - students and their parents could judge which colleges are best at prepping them for the real world by how much subsidies they get for grants, loans and scholarships as opposed to now where it is more of a universal, across the board system.</p>
<p>And, mind you, I am not saying this will eliminate the problem of students and families with large loan debt they struggle to pay off, as that problem would not be eliminated as long as we even have loans for colleges. But the idea behind this is about keeping this problem at an absolute minimum and drastically reducing the problem relative to where it is now.</p>
<p>Of course, what may have a hot job market now may have a job market flooded with job-seekers four years from now, due to all of the people going into that major as frosh.</p>
<p>That is true, the definition of what is a practical major would have to be centered around majors that have the highest employment rate, for jobs other than high school level work, for a consistent length of time and it would periodically have to change as the employment markets change. Therefore, I of course realize that such a system would hardly be perfect, but in my personal opinion I do feel it would be way, way better than what we have now. And if your goal in college is to attend the most elite, expensive school you can in order to get cultured, travel and take memory photos and discover yourself, it should be on your own time and on your dime or your family’s if they decide on their own they are willing to cough up that money for you to do that. I may be totally wrong about this, but I had actually thought that it used to be naturally understood that college was about first and foremost preparing you for a job that would actually take advantage of a college degree, which meant that many schools did not even have the slew of majors we have now with unusually low rates of employment. And for the colleges that did have these kinds of majors, it was naturally understood that if you chose them, you were doing it with money you had and/or money your family voluntarily provided you with. maybe I am 100 % wrong but this was my understanding.</p>
<p>“Have a practical major” sounds very logical, but keep in mind that many many students change their proposed major. That incoming engineering major may switch to any number of other fields. If a student starts out freshman year intending to be a mechanical engineering major, but by the end of freshman year switches to history or film studies, what then? Do the parents insist on cutting their losses, and tell the kid to switch to a different, cheaper school?</p>
<p>If I read the history of universities correctly, the universities of centuries ago were mainly about the quest for knowledge in the liberal arts and theology. Of course, far fewer people attended them back then.</p>
<p>Of course, today, most people do not have the luxury of spending a lot of money to attend a university without at least considering the job and career implications. About 59% of the bachelor’s degrees in the US today are awarded in pre-professional majors, and many students who choose liberal arts majors choose them for pre-professional reasons (e.g. math or statistics as preparation for actuarial work, biology and political science on the (somewhat mistaken) assumption that they are necessary for pre-med and pre-law, any major with a career aim of teaching that subject, etc.).</p>
<p>^^^ Slithey, That is true, which is why I acknowledged that what I proposed would not be flawless at all. My intent was t merely to suggest ideas that are more ideal than our current situation, where we now have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, kids and families buried in college debt and with jobs they could have gotten straight out of high school and pressure being placed on Washington to simple forgive all that debt. I would have to say that a truly perfect solution to this problem simply does not exist.</p>
<p>Thanks for explaining that to me. I think the problem was that at one point, going to college to become cultured, in centuries past, was considered a privilege and not a basic right and a necessity. Maybe what happened is that going to college to learn skills that you would need to become more productive members of society became considered a necessity, which I think was fine, but then going to elite colleges on a quest for liberal arts and theology knowledge and to travel the world and “discover yourself” became a necessity and a basic right and now colleges are flooded with kids who want to do that, regardless of how qualified they are and whether or not they can afford it. And I am not entirely sure this is such a good thing. I know for some people on this forum, saying college is not for everyone could be tantamount to denying the Holocaust but I cannot help but have some genuine concerns about this issue.</p>
<p>There are not that many elite colleges, and they are not that big, so there are not exactly floods of students there. Plus, many of those students come from wealthy families, so they can “afford” to disregard job and career prospects of their majors (if the investment banks and consulting companies don’t recruit them anyway).</p>
<p>Most college students do have pre-professional motivations in their choice of college and major, so the “problem”, as you see it, is not what you think it is. More practically, the actual problems involve the large numbers of college students who do not graduate, or who choose pre-professional paths with overly-optimistic ideas of their job and career prospects, and taking on too much debt in that context.</p>
<p>ucb, I had residency in three states (rules for military brats back then), so UGA, UMissouri and Texas A&M were on the list, and Duke was the reach. Of course, in 1979, folks didn’t apply to a long list of schools. My parents encouraged me to go for things that would help me get scholarships vs. working. I needed to do both. </p>
<p>+1 for Design Dad’s post. Slithey Tove, we have done a LOT of camping! :)</p>
<p>Might it be both? I.e. might it be that students have delusions about job opportunities in their majors and that they believe they need 4 years to travel and “discover themselves”? Might it be that they are both issues? In any event, while we may disagree on the extent to which one of these issues is more prevalent, I think the merit based solutions I initially brought up could solve many of the more dire issues. As for elite colleges, it is true there are not many of them but more and more are looking to go to them whether they can afford it or now; after all, this whole thread was started in the first place by someone who thought everyone should be an elite college even if they cannot afford it, and I doubt he is alone in thinking that. And with the cost for these elite colleges, especially when students from from out of state, the cost of this type of thinking is going to be significant.</p>
<p>Another ideal course of action : demanding more of colleges when it comes to being realistic about job prospects for all majors - and throwing the book at colleges that don’t comply. If a college lets its students get the idea that they can major in art history, literature, sociology, anthropology, gender or african studies or drama and that a comfortable, high paying job in this field will be waiting for them with a bow on it when they graduate, I do think said college needs to know there will be severe consequences. Granted, that goes for all majors, but yes, I do think it goes more so for some majors than others. You can see the employment rates of certain majors which will probably back that up.</p>
<p>It seems like Engineers will probably be best able to pay off college loans than some other majors. Ironically that’s a major that provided decent prospects from most ABET accredited schools.</p>
<p>If we didn’t care about our children and their education, we wouldn’t be spending our free time on a website devoted to college issues. We’d be too busy wasting all our money on yachts, fancy cars and vacations. :)</p>
<p>Please tell us where we can get a 3%, 30 year loan for $80,000.</p>
<p>My kids adore their memories of camping.<br>
When we talk about the more lucrative majors, there somtimes is some tunnel vision. You don’t have to be an engineer to work for an engineering firm; what keeps those guys working is often the sales and marketing folks, negotiators, project managers and more. That doesn’t require an engineering degree.</p>
<p>And, the NYT article ucb linked is informative- but you can’t skim it. It is plain about the many factors in “success.” As well as about the age of the studies.</p>
<p>Try to remember that H claims it’s final review for admits is a pool 3x the size of the seats available. Ie, maybe 6000 super kids. 4000 go elsewhere. Not all of those on to to other Ivies, MIT, Stanford, UCB, whatever. Are they behind some 8-ball? Are they disabled?</p>
<p>This isn’t entirely a well-thought out reply to the issue at hand in this thread, but I just want to go ahead and take this time to say this.</p>
<p>Thank you, all of you, for spending your time on here debating this issue. And really getting into it at that. As a current high school senior trying to work on applications and figure out what is realistic for my family to accomplish, I’m having a really hard time getting a grasp on what all these numbers, statistics, sticker prices, etc actually mean. And my parents are too.</p>
<p>So the topic of what is financially feasible/ to what extent my parents should stretch their finances in order for me to attend a larger state university (in lieu of a closer to home, less prestigious college) has been one of great debate at my home. But I just haven’t been able to come across enough information to really be sure what I might be getting myself into.</p>
<p>So thank you, all of you, for sharing your stories, for giving your opinions, for linking to YouTube videos, for citing studies, for analyzing the sample sizes of said studies, for pulling the emotional card, for pulling the unemotional card, for everything. You’ve given me alot to think about. I haven’t made my decision yet (and won’t, until I know my acceptances/denials and offers in the spring), but you’ve given a great view of several sides and I promise to try and take as many factors into account when I figure out how I’m going to fund my education.</p>
<p>There are probably many reasons why a parent would decline to go into 80K of debt** per child** for college. We’ve seen them all on this thread. </p>
<p>collegehelp, I’m pretty sure that because they don’t love their children is NOT one of them. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>I’m not disagreeing with your point here. But that was not the initial OP argument - And I am of the same thought - I do not want my child to be burdened with college debt that I was. (poor family - dad working two jobs as manual labored and ignorant of the college process…just very proud of everything I did – that was support enough – I did not have the luxury of a guidance counselor who pointed me in the way of scholorships ----before the web so hard to do searching on my own)</p>
<p>The senario was that the child could get a grand education pretty much debt free but thought it was a shame they couldn’t get MORE. A great example of not being thankful of what you have.</p>
<p>You buy your son/daughter a brand new 40K automobile…the kid looks at it and sneers…
“You must not love me because it is not a Tesla or a Ferrari…”</p>
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