The sound of the tiniest violin...

Colleges and universities should have to disclose to students the value of their education in the real world before they take a dime of their money. During the Occupy Wall Street stupidity, a young woman was protesting the "corporate greed" that kept her from getting a job. Her major? Early Middle Eastern literature. Really??????? She couldn't find a job????? And she will surely default on her student loans, so I will be paying for her worthless degree.
 
the problem here is kids are not educated on real life issues such as finances, debt, etc. There should be some sort of mandatory classes taught in high school that teach kids how to live on a budget, how to manage college loans, how to manage debt going forward, how to save for retirement, etc. we'd be in such a better place if kids were legitimately educated in real life topics.
 
One of the most useful courses I took on the 40 acres was a Home Economics class. However, it wasn't the HomeEc I remembered seeing in Jr High. It focused on learning how to prepare long-form taxes with pencil, paper and a calculator. It taught how to decide between term and whole life insurance, paying yourself/saving plan before working up a budget, and other items I regularly think back on.

I think every student that takes student loans should be REQUIRED by the Universities and banks to enroll and PASS a course like this, preferably while an underclassman.

Meanwhile, I can't believe that people who struggle to get by and bemoan their massive student debt, haven't heard of the economic booms going in in the Dakotas, Montana, heck even in Colorado and Texas, all from the energy sector. I'd rather drive a crude oil truck and make $100k in Bozeman, Montana than work at a Hardees in Long Island.
 
Montana is a no brainer. God that place is beautiful.

I took that home econ class and it was great. I disagree with the idea of schools quantifying the economic value of their degree. That should be up to think tanks and magazines. Here's the fundamental problem behind this...people don't understand that college, save for technical institutes, is for the sake of intellectual enlightenment. Even the technical institutes like MIT are first and first foremost dedicated to the pursuit of science.

Kids today don't want to think, they expect a meal ticket or waste their opportunity to grow intellectually by studying some bogus made up identity politics malarky.
 
The irony is that the president - and to be fair everyone else involved, apparently - will not talk about the real problems.
- Going to college for the sake of going to college is useless
- College tuition will continue to go higher as long as we make student loans easy and relatively pain-free
- Your lifestyle has to be molded to meet your financial situation - NOT the other way around. (I wish I'd learned that lesson earlier!!) If you're fresh out of school with mountains of debt, maybe you don't go live somewhere and pay $1200 a month in rent. Whenever I walk around the city now I see the massive number of 20-somethings that live there, and I KNOW most of them can't afford to live in NYC. And the percentages say most of them are living there while paying off substantial student loans at the same time.
- We cannot continue to blame the lending institutions for these issues of crushing debt when our answer to every high school kid (and by OUR, I include the president) is to make student loans easier to get and encourage people to go apply for one.
- Being 18 is not an excuse for being stupid. If we are going to treat kids as adults, we need to prepare them to understand these decisions we're asking them to make. That's not on the lender - you can't give someone a crash course in economics, budgeting and compounded interest when they walk in and ask for a loan. Even if you could, it doesn't help that person to understand how their own lifestyle will impact their budget.
 
Four years in the Univ. of Wash. to be a nanny?? She could have gotten that job without a degree. Maybe Tierney Cooke can't afford to live in NYC. Maybe she needs to move back home and get on her feet and save some money before moviing to the big apple.

Kids these days want it all and they want it now. My son just bought a brand new, 4WD, Z71, diesel pickup that he can't afford. He was already in debt up to his eyeballs before this purchase. His mother gave him a Dave Ramsey book to read for Xmas. Either he didn't read it or he didn't understand it.
 
Its funny when Liberals dismiss the slippery slope theory on government programs yet it continues to get proven correct over and over. So now it is not enough for the tax payers to subsidize secondary education but it is also unreasonable to expect folks to pay back their student loans. Let's just cut to the chase. Let the government pay for everyone's tuition so the American secondary education system can become as inept as its primary education system.
 
Plenty of good options, just very few good decisions. This is what happens in a society where every kid gets a trophy. It breeds the mentality that they deserve things that takes decades of hard work to achieve. It doesn't matter because I'm a winner anyway so someone should give it to me.
 
There are still plenty of great options for American's with a good work ethic, personal accountability, and a modicum of entrepreneurial spirit. However, if the entitlement society continues to grow then I am not so optimistic for the next generation.
 
I get so confused.
So many articles and talking head segments dwell on the fact the college graduates earn on average one million more than non college grads.

so they can't pay that debt out of the extra million they earn?
I am really sure the terms of the loan are spelled out on the loan papers.
so is the problem really bad ol conservatives who expect the paid back instead of the taxpayer eating it?
 
I don't think the problem is that a lot of those graduates CAN'T pay back the loans, it is just that they want to live in a cool condo, drive a nice car, go to concerts, bars, great restaurants etc. which uses up too much of their disposable income, so college loans go to the rear of the line. I did not come from a wealthy family. They paid my tuition ($100 a semester!) and books, and I lived at home my first two years. I was able to live in an apartment (with 3 roommates in a 2 bedroom apt.) for my junior and senior years. I had to earn all my spending money, and worked part time during the school year and full time during the summer. I wasn't deprived - I developed a pretty good work ethic. And graduated debt-free. I know people who are still subsidizing their kids in their late 20's. I was kicked out of the nest and made it on my own.
 
Good posts by Mich and BI. I have one daughter out, and two still in college. It's expensive no matter how you cut it. They are all working toward degrees that have a job market. Education, business and physical therapy. My wife and I are doing all we can, but we can't pay for it all and need loans to pay for it. I'm not asking the government to bail me out. I signed on the dotted line and I'll pay every last dime back. If they give me the opportunity to refinance at a lower rate I'll do it. That just makes good business sense. If you had a high rate on your mortgage and didn't refinance a couple of years ago, well, that was a no brainer. College is expensive, it has become a racket, especially the textbook side of it.
 
BI, the rising cost of UT isn't less subsidies from the State, it's the out of control growth of extraneous capital projects used to attract these vapid millenials who are increasingly less likely to graduate.

The New Gregory Gym, as awesome as it is, is a perfect example of the capital intensive amenities arms race taking over higher education. When we were in school, we just got along fine without a Las Vegas Resort pool across from Jester. In this day and age, no matter how superfluous a resort pool and 5 star luxury dormitories (where every student has their own room) are to the educational mission of the University, you're dammed if you don't. Speaking as a banker in the higher education space, only the sterling Ivy League schools with colossal endowments and the blue chip public schools backed by financially strong states (basically UT and UNC), are the only no doubt investment grade names. Everyone else, the Georgetown/UC Berkley/Williams/Illinois of the world are struggling mightily to keep their investment grade ratings.

College and tuitions prices are a bubble, and it's being driven by the behavior of leverage tolerant millennials. Another offshoot of this problem is real estate. Google takes a lot of flack from shareholders for their rent expenditures. They have these huge millennial dream pads in the swankiest parts of NYC and DC. These are completely unnecessary, mind you, for actually doing what they do...except Google sees these expenditures as a necessary cost to attract the pick of the millennial litter who demand working at only the fanciest Renzo Piano designed Class A office in the trendiest part of town so they can live their fabulous lifestyles at 5pm. It's driving up commercial and residential real estate prices. Up as in, unaffordable to renter millennials without significant leverage. Mind you, a lot of smart people are getting rich off this bubble and the clueless folks feeding it...and they ain't the millenials.

So what do you think will happen after Obama's student loan forgiveness plan - when debt becomes even more meaningless to these kids?
 
Texas_Ex2000,

Yes there has been an "amenities arms race" to a degree. But you grossly overstate the issue.

For example, you cite the "5 star luxury dormitories (where every student has their own room)." According to the UT website, "There are very few single spaces and they are usually assigned to returning residents."

You also cite the Gregory pool. I've never been to it, but I have seen photos and it seems nice but not extravagant. Regardless, I find it hard to believe that this is a significant contributor to price escalation.

I've read a lot about escalating college costs recently, because my son is getting near that age. Most people in the know say that "nonacademic amenities" are a small contributor to the price inflation.
 
And by the way, give me a break about that "vapid millennials" BS.

I graduated high school in 1987. The majority of my classmates chose colleges based as much on the Playboy "party school" rankings as they did on academic or financial concerns. One friend borrowed a ton of money to go to UCSD because he wanted to surf every day. Another borrowed even more to go to NYU because she wanted to live the Manhattan life.

What has changed is the job market. It used to be that a college degree in anything was a ticket onto the path towards success. The UCSD guy studied something really liberal artsy (sociology??), but then got a job with a bank and has worked in various aspects of the financial world. The NYU girl studied theater (or maybe it was dance), and got a junior-executive job at a major department store chain. Both have gone on to have successful careers. I'm sure there were some, but I can't remember hearing about anyone who was still jobless a few months after earning a college degree.

Realty is different for today's kids. The majority of sociology graduates from UCSD or theater graduates from NYU can't find a job upon graduation. They aren't different. It is the reality they find themselves in that is different.

I don't mean to excuse them for how they act, by the way. Today's kids need to adjust to current realities. I just don't think it is fair to castigate them as a group for making the same decisions that we made how ever many years ago.
 
NJ,

The UT System Building and Improvements from '09 to '13 are up 46% from $10B to $15B. It's been growing at a 10% 4 year annualized rate. The UT System's Total Net Fixed Assets (after depreciation) over the same period is up 27% from '09 at $10B to $13B in '13 and has grown at a 6% annualized 4 year rate.

The System's annual depreciation, a function of new construction, has grown 49% from '09 to '13 at an insane 11% annualized rate. That's by far The System's fastest growing expense line item.

Double digit annualize growth, especially over 4 years is ridiculous. To put that in perspective Texas' population in '09 was 24.8 million. In '13 it was 26.5 million. That's a 7% increase at 2% annualized rate over those 4 years. WTH are we building so much crap?

Your examples of friends back in the day also doesn't account for the role of debt in education. Students back in the day weren't nearly as levered and so their choices were different.

And BTW...Liberal Arts and even Theater degrees are SUPERB if they're from a good school and if you have a plan. Chanel would hire a Plan II major from Texas/English major from Yale/Theater major from NYU every single time over a Fashion Merchandising major from that Bay State school in the NYTimes article. I was a COLA grad and am proud of it.

NJ, if your kid is looking at colleges and programs, I can't recommend enough the Plan II Honors program at UT. Recruiters in all industries kill to get those kids. You may think you're not getting any "professional training" in a potential career, but that couldn't be farther from the truth.
 
Texas_Ex2000,

It may be that building and improvement expenses are a key driver of tuition inflation. But building and improvement does not necessarily equate with frivolity. I doubt, for example, that the pool is more than a tiny blip in the overall budget.

It strikes me as much more likely that the "building and improvement" costs are a reflection of modern times. At many colleges (I don't know about UT in particular), there is a push to build fancy science and engineering facilities that enable students to prepare for the modern world. That stuff is expensive, but well worth the cost.

Regarding Plan II, I couldn't agree more. I was in the Plan II class of '91, and am glad my parents pushed me to chose it over Wash U, which would have been about $100,000 more expensive.

My son is shooting for the likes of Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Duke, etc. If he gets into one of those schools (unlike his dear ole' dad), the fat tuition bills would be worth every penny. But if he doesn't get into any of those, I think it would be a waste of money to go to the comparably expensive schools that are ranked a half notch lower. Those schools aren't enough (if at all) better than the Public Ivies to justify the price difference. This is especially true in light of the National Merit Scholarships offered by the likes of USC and U Az, which hand out free rides like candy.
 
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