that cry croc tears over the po that can’t pay tuition but that never offer to cut their salaries to reduce tuition for the po. The vicious cycle of student loans going up followed by tuition, leaving the poor in the same place but with the universities like a union getting govt union dues.

This is a free country, and private universities can set their tuition as high as they please (public universities need to be reigned in by their respective states). However, tax payers have no obligation to subsidize and guarantee loans for those insanely high tuition rates. The bottom line is that there is almost no job open to a Harvard grad with an english degree that will offer a salary reasonable to pay off $80k or more in student loans. Nevertheless, banks give said english major the $80k knowing full well that if they don’t pay, the American tax-payers will. Universities across the nation are sitting on billions in endowments and paying tenured faculty six figures to teach a class or two per semester while average students (and tax payers) get killed with insane tuition rates. It’s time to demand accountability, and draw the line on government backed student loans. Cut off the flow of unlimited money and the market will adjust.

college in its entirety. I think some online based higher educational system (so that more students would get access to the best profs at a lower cost) would dramatically cut down on costs with little compromise to education. Now, it may cut down severely on alcohol sales in college towns and curtail college sports, but a huge expense of college for most people is the room and board that can be greatly reduced.

what passes for education these days. As a parent of a college junior, I can tell you that most of what I’m seeing for our hard-earned dollars spent on tuition is liberal speak. I’m hoping and praying that the real world education he gets after getting his degree, i.e., working and rubbing elbows with others who actually work) will be the hard dose of reality needed to point him in the right direction. At least he’s matured enough to be willing to listen to us present the other side. Or at least he listens to his dad. Me, not so much as we push each other’s buttons a little too much, but I’m trying.

Anyway, my point is that it wouldn’t quite be so bad if we were getting more value for our dollars, but that’s just not the case.

and he told me how the department emphasizes helping to keep students in the program.

It used to be that they would “weed out” weaker students. I am sure many here have recollections of that in college courses.

It sort of bothers me that these demanding fields might be trying to keep people in the program, because it might not be the best area of study for some of those students, and thus, not the best profession for them.

The bigger half is that the quality is equivalent to the leftovers found in a catbox.

And specifically, with respect to the picture, my son is a former Marine. He’s currently a junior at UC Santa Cruz, majoring in Math and Economics, has a 3.9. When he graduates with his Masters in either Econ or Math – or one of each – his student loan balance will be zero.

He works, lives frugally, and is very financially responsible. He also is the recipient of several fairly high dollar scholarships ($3,000 range) that help make ends meet.

Sympathy for people with high balance student loans at our house? None.

The real reason why costs are rising is because far more students are going to college now than ever before–while the supply of universities and colleges has increased only slightly. (Can you name the universities that were chartered in the last 10 years? There are just a very few.)

That’s happening for two reasons:

Parents have grasped that real inflation-adjusted wages for men with just a high-school diploma have actually declined.

And the U.S. has thrown open its doors to foreign students, who come here with tuition paid by their governments.

In the past, many public colleges offered a higher tuition rate to students from out of state. Students from the state in which the college was located paid less tuition.

But now, many public colleges now attract foreign students by offering them the in-state tuition rate, even though they don’t intend to live here after graduation.

Why?
Because they’re a sure thing.
Students from the Middle East or Asia come to American universities with their tuition, room and board, and everything else paid by their governments. Cash-strapped state governments don’t have to worry about providing financial aid to them.

And after they graduate, they go back to their countries and make their countries stronger and more prosperous. And we paid for it with our tax dollars to support those colleges.

Alot of people get advanced degrees which is good but they don’t get super high paying jobs and are left with a lot of debt. I can imagine a lot of parents getting guilt-tripped into send their kids to a 4 yr school as opposed to spending the first 2 years in community college which would cut the bill way down but don’t want to hamper the ‘experience’ of college.

It’s a tough deal, bc the experience part is great but its not worth the kind of money people are paying these days.

The problem isn’t the amount of debt they have or how they got it, it is their critical thinking skills (both the student and their parents) deciding which college and which degree and how to pay for it. I don’t feel sorry for these people since they chose an uterly useless degree and that they chose to put themselves in debt for the rest of their lives to pay for it.
I went and got a double bachelors degree from a smaller liberal arts college, double major in Business Administration and Accounting. I knew that I would need the Bachelors degree to be able to get the job I wanted to pay off the loans. If I wouldn’t have been able to pay off the loans, I wouldn’t have gone to school and instead worked for some extra time at smaller jobs, saved up the money to go, and then gone back. But the money was always the front and foremost consideration both before going and afterwards with being able to pay it off. My parents and I were discussing all sorts of options because they did not have the money to help me go. So if I wanted to go, it was MY responsibility and therefore the loans were MY responsiblity too. And I finished paying off all of my loans about 5 years ago.
Why hasn’t anyone just considered that the free market would correct this problem if people would just start making rational decisions regarding financing? But this is something they don’t teach anyone and most parents just don’t want to be parents to their kids and teach them they have to earn what they want and not just have it handed to them.
I have no problem with student loans not being able to be discharged in bankruptcy. The reason this was set up was so that people couldn’t rack up thousands in debt and then just declare bankruptcy to get out of it. I think it puts the responsibility of the debt on the people who CHOSE to accept it and not on the taxpayers.
The problems identified above would all be fixed if parents and students would start making rational decisions based on what they “NEED” versus what they “WANT”. I see no reason why I should feel sorry for their stupidity when I acted responsibly and they did not. And this is the bottom line – Why do people who chose to act responsibly always seem to have to fix (or pay for) the problems of those who do not act responsibly? I have no house seeing as I know I cannot afford one, but yet I had to help bailout people who thought they should have one because they wanted one, but didn’t want to earn it. This is just another way to make those who act responsible pay for those who don’t.

college tuition being a big problem is a valid one, I have a hard time feeling sorry for those who have the student loan debt. I went to a private university and subsequent professional school.

I knew when I graduated that I would have a mountain of student loan debt to pay off. I am still paying it off to this day. No one took advantage of me nor did they lie to me. Maybe it is because I went to an honest university or something.

Regarding the person holding the sign, why on earth would you accumulate 99,000 in debt and then be a teacher where you will not make enough to pay it off? That is not using common sense.

You have tenured professors that teach only one class and leave the rest to assistants. So many useless teachers like Gender Studies chair, etc. The researchers that do earn their keep with scientific breakthroughs don’t even own the patents to their own discoveries.

I’m searching for a punchline for this joke: how many students does it take to pay for a university football coaching staff?

“The protestor pictured below is a prime example.”

What…? Wait a second, that kid looks barely old enough to be *IN* college. He does not look anywhere near old enough to be a vet **AND** have a masters degree on top of that.

escalating. I wish I knew where to begin but here in Nevada the “higher” educrats are turning blue.
1. As loans and scholarship money increased so did tuition.
2. As entrance scores were lowered enrollment went higher.
3. As enrollment increased expansion occurred increasing costs.
4. State scholarship funding depleted sooner than expected ( just needed C average to qualify) raise tax to cover shortfall.
5. Pay absentee profs outrageous salaries of over $100,000 plus perks.
6. Create white elephant (above) have recession hit.
7. Be home to countless diploma mill schools that would enroll a dead man in order to get their student loans.

The college and university systems will have to change the way business is done. It cannot maintain the way it lives now. We may actually have to require legitimate entrance scores for starters and progress to degrees that are actually marketable. I also believe that trades schools or apprenticeship programs are good when run by private enterprise and not govt. are good things.

n/t

Is it just me, or did tuition start its steady climb when student loans became a must have for everyone…just like the cost of medicine climbed following the inception of the Medicare and Medicaid programs? Just like the price of homes when the government said everybody should own one and loosened financial regs. to allow all sorts of “creative accounting” which we all know ended in total disaster. Why can people not see that the further from our own pockets our dollars get, the more expensive and risky the things we want become?