I thought the clip from “Poltergeist” fit here: Welcome back, Dana!
The New Republic, biased and dishonest as usual, bleats, “Trump Moves to Cut Off Student Loans for Tons of Degrees: Under a new rule, if your degree doesn’t make enough money, you won’t be able to get a student loan.” It terms this as “President Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans.”
Oooh, banning students! Sounds like a mad dictator to me!
The President isn’t “banning students” or degrees. This is a financially and educationally responsible move that should have been done decades ago. If a student wants to waste a college education on majoring in “Queer History,” or “Slavik Literature” (Plymouth State University allows students to major in “Adventure Education” by taking “Rock Climbing Fundamentals,” “Canoe Paddling Fundamentals,” “Wilderness Expedition,” and “Whitewater Kayaking”) that’s swell: they just can’t use taxpayer funds they will never be able to pay back to do it.
The Department of Education, or what is left of it, tweeted in response to that unethical New Republic analysis,
“This is fake news at its finest. First off, we’re not ‘banning’ any program. The federal government doesn’t set curriculum or programs. Here’s the truth: we are holding colleges accountable for leaving students worse off than if they never enrolled. Too many graduates report delaying major life milestones like buying a home or starting a family. Why? Because low return-on-investment programs saddled them with unmanageable debt that was never going to translate into a real-world job. Federal student loans are not a welfare program for failing college programs. American students deserve education and training pathways that prepare them for the workforce – and transparency about programs that will never pay off.”
There is a strong case to be made that college itself is now a high-cost scam that doesn’t prepare students for the work force, just anti-Israel rallies and pro-illegal immigration riots, but okay, let’s go with the hoary myth that college is essential to life success. The student debt crisis in this country has reached levels that never should have been permitted, and higher education is as expensive as it is because the schools realized that could charge absurd tuitions and the US government would enable it by backing bigger and bigger loans. Taxpayers and the government subsidizing degrees only makes sense if it incentivizes the development of skills from which the the nation and society will derive tangible, quantifiable, practical benefits. Those are also skills that have a fighting chance of translating into jobs with sufficient compensation to allow reasonable loans to be paid back.
Declaring that the government will only back a student’s loan when 1) that loan is likely to be repaid and 2) when the loan is paying for a benefit to society rather than a self-indulgent frolic is responsible leadership. Unique among U.S. Presidents, Donald Trump sees his most responsible acts reflexively condemned through a combination of misrepresentation, bias and animus. I’m surprised there isn’t a college major in that.
“Because low return-on-investment programs saddled them with unmanageable debt that was never going to translate into a real-world job. FEDERAL STUDENT LOANS ARE NOT A WELFARE PROGRAM FOR FAILING COLLEGE PROGRAMS.” (bolds/caps/italics mine)
THAT will hit the Good Ship Lefty broadside and below decks, leaving them listing dangerously, and to no one’s surprise, aport…
PWS
Amen.
So, students complain that they can’t find a job or pay off their student loan with their worthless degree. Students also complain if they can’t get a student loan for the worthless degree.
The problem in this for academia is the same one that they faced when Trump tried to change the overhead percentage on research grants from the insane 60% to a more reasonable 15%. Where was that 60% going? Well, how do schools pay for all those worthless programs? Those programs aren’t bringing in NIH or NSF funding. Corporations are funding grants for them. Who pays for the faculty to do their ‘research’? Well, my strong suspicion is that they divert the ‘overhead’ to pay for those areas.
These areas exist to agitate. They don’t have any useful purpose to society or the economy. To jsutify justify the existence of these programs they need (1) students declared in those degrees and (2) money to pay the faculty, travel, etc. Without the overhead, I suspect #2 goes away. Without the student loans, #1 goes away. If either one goes away, the entire field goes away because you can’t get the research for tenure without the money and you can’t justify having the degree if there are no students studying it.
Indeed, the New Republic article is being tweeted ad nauseum by freaked-out Trump-deranged leftists who see this as an attempt to wipe out the arts and humanities by a cold-hearted greedy dictator taking the first of many steps toward totalitarianism. Last week, it was “The first thing Hitler did was ban the free press” (actually, no, that was not the first thing he did). I’m betting this week, it’ll be “The first thing Hitler did was control what could be taught in schools” (no, it wasn’t that, either.)
It’s shameless propagandizing.
Absolutely no student is prohibited from taking courses in whatever study a college offers. What’s at issue is who is going to pay for it, just as the issue regarding health care is about the payor. Students are free to go for scholarships, grants, private loans or saving money and paying for tuition themselves.
Everytime the coffers of government largesse are opened (read: taxpayer dollars), there is a potential for fraud, waste and abuse. That’s why we had wrenches and toilet seats charged at exhorbitant prices by defense contractors back in the day (and probably still do). It’s why Medicare and Medicaid fraud is sapping millions and millions of dollars away from the genuinely needy. It’s why students are going into debt in the nine figures over degrees that will only get them slightly more compensation than recent high school graduates.
For years, the Democrats and their allies have screamed about unsustainable student loan debt (as well as bankrupting healthcare costs) and their only solution is to forgive the debt and make everything free. They ignore the inevitable lure of free money handed over by the government to pay for artificially-inflated medical costs and almost certainly opportunistic tuition, housing and meal costs by colleges and universities which have no stake in whether the money is paid back or not.
We had this discussion on EA sometime within the last year or two. I advocated for a cap on the amount of student loans per person to encourage tuition costs to lower rather than restricting loans for specific fields of study. But, I suppose, one has to start somewhere.
Not looking forward to the next conversation with my Trump-Deranged college professor sister, though.
Your perspective on fraud in government spending seems reasonable to me. Now I’m contemplating ways to hold government requisitioners and negotiators accountable for being thrifty while also making sure vendors provide service of sufficient quality.
If you’d like to have a more pleasant conversation with your sister (and have her take your perspective seriously), I can help make that happen. By demonstrating that we understand and appreciate other people’s concerns about outcomes, we show them that we’re reasonable and have perspectives worth listening to. By identifying our own concerns about outcomes, we can more easily listen to others nonjudgmentally and express ourselves when they’re ready to listen. Identifying those concerns and separating them from the assumptions surrounding them is the part most people struggle with, which is why I created a way to do it simply and systematically. You can schedule a meeting here: https://www.visionaryvocabularies.com/.
Visionary Vocabularies is a cool idea, EC.
That’s very kind of you, EC. Perhaps, I will take you up on your offer. I will think about it.
Some years ago when my daughter was in the process of choosing a college during her senior year of High School we did what I think every parent should do with a their college bound student, weigh all the cost and benefits of the their chosen degree. If they don’t have a chosen degree, it’s my opinion that they shouldn’t go to college yet. If they’re not ready for college then get some kind of job, do an apprenticeship, save as much money as reasonably possible, and start building a life, etc. If college works out later, that’s great, I didn’t start college until I was 31.
My daughter has always been an exceptional student (clearly genetic) and has been driven towards one profession since about 7th grade, nursing. Since nursing is a profession that pays well, you can find good paying nursing jobs anywhere in the USA, and she was/is an exceptional student we weren’t too concerned about the cost, but doing the cost benefit exercise was still necessary because she was actively considering a private college as one of her choices.
I set up all the costs of each college on a spread sheet for a four year degree and at least 4 years post graduation and put it in a spread sheet so it was easy to see everything. In the end she chose the private college for some very good reasons, got a decent scholarship, got student loans to cover costs beyond what we were willing to provide, graduated in less than 4 years, got a good paying nursing job in the field she wanted, which was a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) – this was her dream job, and payed off all her school loans in a few short years post graduation.
Parents that “allow” their 17-18 year old children to enroll in college without some kind of reasonable financial planning up front and going deep into debt are doing their children a disservice.
Let’s not confuse vocational schools with larger education, though there often is an intersection in the Venn diagram of the two.
For transparency, I’ve just retired as chair of a business and economics department.
A proper change would be if you wish to take out a loan for an education not likely to produce an income capable of covering the principal and interest the borrower should have to put up collateral or have a co-signer to support the loan.
This would filter out the goofballs partying on our collective dime.
I am not sure what you intended in your first statement about vocational schools and larger education.
In recent days, AOC the fearmonger told college age persons that AI was going to eliminate their jobs and all the “spoils” would go to the rich. Forgive me but she graduated with an “Economics” degree from a private university.
Given that I taught Econ 201 and 202 for many years as an adjunct faculty member at a community college, I found that statement to be either a lie or from utter ignorance. To be sure there is value in information and the beneficiaries of AI 1.0 will be marketers who develop methods to identify potential customers and ideal price points to maximize sales or profits. AI 2.0 will help researchers develop novel treatments and methods to achieve better results and decrease morbidity. Every iteration of AI or SI will help people be more efficient. Those whose positions might disappear will retrain with skills that add value that people will pay for.
With that said, most jobs require human involvement. Vocational schools will always be in demand even if AI replaces the instructional staff because AI cannot climb under a kitchen sink to unclog a drain, diagnose and repair an automobile or aircraft, let alone build housing. Even if AI is employed to help the technician it is simply a capital asset to be wielded no differently than a socket wrench or a hammer. In AOC’s case AI can not replace the good bartender.
As far as I know every state requires a minimum number of Gen Ed courses – English, Math, Science and Humanities. These are designed to give the student a well rounded education. Here is the problem that I found. Most academic schools graduate students who pass courses but do not have to master the subject matter. Conversely, vocational students must prove mastery of the subject matter which means that they can use the math they learned in solving problems in order to get skill certifications. Many of our business students in my Economics classes could not understand the fundamentals of an elasticity formula which is merely a ratio of different percentage changes between to related variables. To get them to a point where they could do a first order derivative to find inflection points of a linear function was laughable.
The bottom line is this: People will exchange dollars for value and only if the value received exceeds the expected opportunity costs. When government intervenes and alters the value to cost proposition the markets are distorted by lowering the opportunity costs of the decision. In my estimation, colleges and governments are complicit in the imposition of of often insurmountable debt loads to benefit themselves. Only until the true value to cost proposition is restored so that individuals can make rational choices the insurmountable debt loads will become manageable
“… misrepresentation, bias and animus.
I’m surprised there isn’t a college major in that.”
In the modern age, that’s the definition of every major except possibly STEM, and quite possibly even those.
The humanities faculty love to add humanities courses to the required list for all majors, but they scream bloody murder if you try to add a math course. You should hear what happens if you suggest that the ‘honors’ students should have to pass Calculus I to get an ‘honors’ degree.
“Not everyone needs calculus.”
“You are just trying to monopolize honors for science and math majors.”
“We won’t get anyone applying for honors.”
“You can’t do that because most of the honors students would need to take Algebra and Trig first. You can’t add 3 math classes to honors.”
STEM degrees are the last liberal arts degrees.
For a very long time we have needed this fearless business man to bring rational analysis to Federal spending and ruthless trimming of fraud, abuse, waste. Leftists who operate on emotion and failed ideologies will bankrupt us.