The Higher Education Bubble

Based on some responses, I'm wondering how many people watched this in its entirety. Anyone note the Dentist who needed to make over $250,000 in a small practice in a rural area of a Midwestern state according to her payment plan? Or the hyper-inflation comment that commits all of us - every single US money holder - to paying back your (current college students) student loans if the sh** hits the fan like it did with real estate? Or the professors telling people to run away from the college paradigm and just start working/investing money?

I must be the only person I've met who refuses to go back for a graduate degree after being accepted to 2 different schools, based on the payment scale after I graduate with said degree. I'd be over $250,000 in debt when all I would want the degree for is to learn and then help benefit others. There's no way a non-profit organization could ever afford to hire me or offer me enough to pay back that level of debt. I don't want to be a scientist, I don't want to be an engineer - I wanted to study, biology, ecology or sociology to use for work in places like The World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, World Parrot Trust, National Geographic, etc.

So much for those plans...
 
Lerxst said:
Based on some responses, I'm wondering how many people watched this in its entirety. Anyone note the Dentist who needed to make over $250,000 in a small practice in a rural area of a Midwestern state according to her payment plan? Or the hyper-inflation comment that commits all of us - every single US money holder - to paying back your (current college students) student loans if the sh** hits the fan like it did with real estate? Or the professors telling people to run away from the college paradigm and just start working/investing money?

I must be the only person I've met who refuses to go back for a graduate degree after being accepted to 2 different schools, based on the payment scale after I graduate with said degree. I'd be over $250,000 in debt when all I would want the degree for is to learn and then help benefit others. There's no way a non-profit organization could ever afford to hire me or offer me enough to pay back that level of debt. I don't want to be a scientist, I don't want to be an engineer - I wanted to study, biology, ecology or sociology to use for work in places like The World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, World Parrot Trust, National Geographic, etc.

So much for those plans...
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yeah, I probably should have specified that I live in Canada, where taxpayers pay 75% of the tuition anyway and the payment plans adjust to your income. So myself I only have to borrow 6 grand a year for tuition (plus another 8 grand for books, living expenses etc.) And because I'm over the age where my parents can be expected to help out, I get a certain portion of it as a grant and then another portion of it voided when I get my degree. All in all I'll likely have about $8-10k of debt per year of school. Easily doable considering it's zero-interest until I get a job (at least for 6 months after graduating) and starting salaries for compsci/psych graduates are in the mid 40s to mid 60s depending on where you look and how hard it is to get.
 
Lerxst said:
Based on some responses, I'm wondering how many people watched this in its entirety. Anyone note the Dentist who needed to make over $250,000 in a small practice in a rural area of a Midwestern state according to her payment plan? Or the hyper-inflation comment that commits all of us - every single US money holder - to paying back your (current college students) student loans if the sh** hits the fan like it did with real estate? Or the professors telling people to run away from the college paradigm and just start working/investing money?

I must be the only person I've met who refuses to go back for a graduate degree after being accepted to 2 different schools, based on the payment scale after I graduate with said degree. I'd be over $250,000 in debt when all I would want the degree for is to learn and then help benefit others. There's no way a non-profit organization could ever afford to hire me or offer me enough to pay back that level of debt. I don't want to be a scientist, I don't want to be an engineer - I wanted to study, biology, ecology or sociology to use for work in places like The World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, World Parrot Trust, National Geographic, etc.

So much for those plans...
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Hi Lerxst, I actually did view the video, and I agree there are major problems with college fees and debt. I don't blame you at all for your decision.

I did have a couple of issues with that video because I thought it erred on the side of being overly dramatic and pessimistic. (Ex: the scary music and people burning their diplomas. Oh brother.) That professor who told people to buy silver rather than get a degree, was, in my opinion, and based on the evidence I see around me, being highly speculative at best. Did anyone else find it ironic that he was comfortably ensconced in a system he says is corrupt, and he was telling people he personally wouldn't hire them if they had a degree.... but he was not mentioning at all that other companies wouldn't hire them if they didn't have a degree? (And, he also didn't seem to be in a position to hire anyone or offer anyone a living, anyway.)

I felt really sorry for the dentist too. I know that dentists and doctors have some of the highest education expenses and many take years and years to pay off college debt. However, something that has been well-publicized recently is that medical professionals make up a large chunk of the "1%" http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/20/who-are-the-one-percent/?iref=allsearch The dentist in that video was not necessarily representative of most people who get medical degrees. I still felt sorry for her, though.

Yes, the system has big problems. The main problem, in my opinion, is people simply do not understand loans and sometimes horribly abuse debt. Otherwise no one would buy a half-million dollar home with no money down, people wouldn't take out loans to buy cars that cost a year's salary, and people would think twice or three times before going into $250,000 of debt for an education. (like you... good for you.) That sort of mixed-up thinking is a large part of what caused the RE bubble, and it may very well be causing an education bubble.

I do hope people beware and do not go into too much debt under false expectations. The only point I wanted to make was that a person can get a higher education without going into mountains of debt -- I thought that video implied that debt was the only way, and it is not. Many people work throughout college and high school, they sometimes live at home while getting an education, rather than on campus, or they start at a community college and finish up at a larger university. Working adults also aften get degrees. Some parents are able to help their children financially. Here is an example: http://money.cnn.com/video/pf/2011/10/24/pf_hd_millennials.cnnmoney/

Now that video I just posted is probably overly optimistic. The video with the angry professor was probably overly pessimistic. I think reality is somewhere in the middle.

This is all my opinion and I have no intention of hurting or insulting anyone, so please don't take it that way! I know things are hard. I graduated in the middle of a recession too and struggled to make a living or work in my field for a long time, and have generally put up with a lot of crap over the years. I am still glad I got a degree, it has really helped me. This recession is worse, though. Wishing you best of luck, sincerely.
 
Resonance said:
yeah, I probably should have specified that I live in Canada, where taxpayers pay 75% of the tuition anyway and the payment plans adjust to your income. So myself I only have to borrow 6 grand a year for tuition (plus another 8 grand for books, living expenses etc.) And because I'm over the age where my parents can be expected to help out, I get a certain portion of it as a grant and then another portion of it voided when I get my degree. All in all I'll likely have about $8-10k of debt per year of school. Easily doable considering it's zero-interest until I get a job (at least for 6 months after graduating) and starting salaries for compsci/psych graduates are in the mid 40s to mid 60s depending on where you look and how hard it is to get.
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Canada and a lot of other European countries have a lot of practice at blending social policies with capitalist systems - Healthcare, Education, etc. Us Americans still want to pretend we're all good ol' Cowboys... YEEEHAW! We don't need no stinkin' help! If you're sick, die and make room for a more productive member of society! If you're poor, go dig a ditch so a "real person" can get a job.
 
The problem with education is that we have pretended that everyone must/should get a doctorate.

This is only in the interests of the education bodies who milk it as a cash cow.

In the 60's/70s apprenticeships even for Engineers etc. was standard.

In the UK you now need a DEGREE to be a NURSE.

WHAT?
 
For far too long young people have been steered away from going to a technical college and learning a trade.
Plumber, Electrician, Machinist etc. Now there is a shortage of people with those skill sets entering the workplace. It would be nice if there were a crystal ball that could help a person see what skills will be in demand down the road, since what is a hot in demand career now, may be cold 2-4-6 years down the road when you graduate.

When a student is planning their education they need to take costs into consideration. Maybe what they think they want to major in simply isn't the best choice if it is going to be so expensive. Too many these days think just because they want something, they are entitled to it. Or, parents push them in a direction that may not be the right one. Parent living vicariously through their child.
I feel for these graduates that the jobs aren't there right now. But they will be someday.
Maybe you have to flip burgers for a while until things turn around. There is no shame in that. Opportunity is where you find it, and what you make of it.

I think those in the Occupy Movement that are protesting the costs of secondary education would be better to storm the steps of the Universities and Colleges that have been raising tuition by several times the rate of inflation the past 30 years.
The education system in the US has an insatiable appetite for money. The answer to all their problems they always say is more money. But, it is never the solution.
What are they doing with your tuition dollars?

In the end though, the student has to assume responsibility for the debt they racked up. No one forced them to sign ze papers.
 
All right, if anyone wants to explore this further here are some numbers and thoughts to go over. (They are both pro and con.)

Numbers: http://www.smartmoney.com/borrow/student-loans/colleges-that-pay-off/

More numbers on how much higher education actually costs and how much the typical loan balance is when you're finished with your bachelors, associates, masters, etc. degree: http://www.finaid.org/loans/

Long article with even more numbers and the interesting comment, which is worth pasting
Degrees are poor proof of learning
Students want jobs and respect. Degrees bring both. Employers, meanwhile, want smart, capable workers. A degree is a decent enough proxy for intelligence, but we want it to be more than that. We want degrees to mean that students have learned the foundations of human knowledge: literature, chemistry, physics, composition, metaphysics, psychology, economics and so on. If we didn't, we'd replace degrees with inexpensive vocational exams.

Charles Murray, a fellow at American Enterprise Institute, calls for just that in a recent book, "Real Education." He argues that too many kids who lack the ability to complete a liberal-arts education are being pushed into four-year liberal-arts schools, because there's a steep societal penalty for not getting a degree. Schools, in turn, have made their degree programs easier. Murray provides a sample of courses that students used to fulfill core degree requirements at major universities in 2004, including History of Comic Book Art (Indiana University), History and Philosophy of Dress (Texas Tech University) and Campus Culture and Drinking (Duke University). He documents not only falling standards but also rampant grade inflation.

He's not alone. In 2005, the Department of Education created a commission to study the college system and recommend reforms. A year later, the Spellings Commission (named for then-Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings) reported a long list of shortcomings, including "a remarkable absence of accountability mechanisms to ensure that colleges succeed in educating students." It found "disturbing signs" that degree earners "have not actually mastered the reading, writing and thinking skills we expect of college graduates." Literacy levels among college graduates, the commission noted, fell sharply over the 12 years ending in 2003.
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http://money.msn.com/college-savings/is-a-college-degree-worthless-smartmoney.aspx?page=1


And then this: http://www.smartmoney.com/borrow/student-loans/the-best-colleges-for-making-money/?page=all

Obviously, I wanted more information, and found it! :D
 
And...
This page: http://www.finaid.org/loans/troublerepayingdebt.phtml
Has a section that says your loan can be forgiven/cancelled, if:

Loan Cancellation

Federal education loans can be discharged or cancelled in a variety of circumstances. These include:


Closed School Discharge. If the college closed while you were in attendance or up to 90 days after you withdrew.
False Certification Discharge. If the college improperly certified your ability to benefit from a higher education or you are the victim of identity theft.
Death Discharge. If the borrower (or the student on whose behalf a parent borrowed a Federal PLUS loan) dies.
Total and Permanent Disability Discharge. If a doctor certifies that the borrower is totally and permanently disabled, the loan will be subject to a 3-year conditional discharge. At the end of this period the loans may be permanently discharged.
If any of these circumstances apply to your federal loans, contact the servicer to obtain the necessary forms. You can also call the US Department of Education at 1-800-4-FED-AID (1-800-433-3243) or TTY 1-800-730-8913.
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Since the OP says many people in his field are employed without a degree, and that wages have been stagnant, I would think this could qualify as False Certification Discharge, if the school told him he could benefit from a higher education and that turned out to be blatantly false. I don't know for sure, but it would be worth looking into.
 
This is a dangerous video, because it mixes pertinant facts that people really DO need to know, with a lot of paranoid nonsense. It is true that a college degree is not worth the money you need to get it. But my "nutcase alarm" started going off when they stated things like "Lawyers become Congressmen in order to create bad laws that will provide work for their lawyer friends." Yikes. Basically, there is enough nonsense in this video that it LOSES CREDIBILITY, and so when it does make points that are worth learning, why should we trust them?
 
[I do not] carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books. ...The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think. - Albert Einstein
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Student Loan debt is notoriously difficult to get released from due to the intangible value that is placed upon it. Bankruptcy, in general, will not release one form student loan debt. This fact also makes it unlikely that the valuation bubble of student loan debt will suddenly 'pop'.

Since the OP says many people in his field are employed without a degree, and that wages have been stagnant, I would think this could qualify as False Certification Discharge, if the school told him he could benefit from a higher education and that turned out to be blatantly false. I don't know for sure, but it would be worth looking into.
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I believe that false certification discharge relates only to the institution's legal/certifiable status as regarding its function to administer a higher education, and not so much a subjective valuation of its function.

I've seen the video before, but found it to be highly misleading and, quite frankly, downright belligerent.
 
The quality of information being conveyed by universities does not seem as high as one would expect. Information may not be going too far down in quality, however one would expect it to be rising exponentially given the apparently scientific (but probably not) method of information processing. As quality falls, eventually people simply move out in mass and eventually new quality is created. Higher education is heading towards this collapse in information quality, however there is still much to be salvaged. Do what you do because you feel you should be doing it, not because others have judged it some particular way.
 
I think that for a lot if people, college puts them in a bubble, and doesn't give them the experience necessary in the job force. Some of the most successful people I know, went to college AFTER the traditional 18-21age window. They already had a career per say, were good at it, and used a degree as leverage for more pay and advancement opportunities. That being said, if I could I would be a lifelong student. I like learning new ideas and facts, many of which will be NO help in actually making money.
 
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It really depends on what field you want to go into, if you look at it purely from a money standpoint college is a complete waste of time. Find a marketable Niche, manufacture and test your product on a small scale, Start an LLC, outsource manufacturing costs, pin shipping on the customer, reap the profits. However not everyone is solely interested in money, this is where the fallacy comes in. Some people want to be teachers because they want to teach, some people want to be doctors because they want to save peoples lives, some want to join the armed forces because they want to protect and serve. It's very near sighted to think that everything simply comes down to how much money you can make (while still exercising minimum risk mind you (the point of college)) If I want to be a doctor because I want to be a doctor then the only reasonable course of action for me is to go to a university to make that dream a reality.
 
GracieRuth said:
This is a dangerous video, because it mixes pertinant facts that people really DO need to know, with a lot of paranoid nonsense. It is true that a college degree is not worth the money you need to get it. But my "nutcase alarm" started going off when they stated things like "Lawyers become Congressmen in order to create bad laws that will provide work for their lawyer friends." Yikes. Basically, there is enough nonsense in this video that it LOSES CREDIBILITY, and so when it does make points that are worth learning, why should we trust them?
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I saw that too when they started the gold and silver arguments, especially towards the end. What I *think* the argument with lawyers was, was similar to what I mentioned earlier in the thread. Why have a profession whose job it is to create laws that need another person in that same profession to translate. Shouldn't the laws the average person is expected to abide by be written in a language we can all understand without 6-8 years of college? If that were the case though, there wouldn't be a need for lawyers! They're a self-propagating group that only exists to ensure that more like them will continue to exist.
 
Without watching the movie and only reading half of the comments, this is what I have to offer you. Go to college, pick any major that is not poly-sci, philosophy, psychology, or anything liberal arts related. For the best results chose a major that benefits a field that needs more workers and one that compliments your skill set.
 
Artsu Tharaz said:
The quality of information being conveyed by universities does not seem as high as one would expect. Information may not be going too far down in quality, however one would expect it to be rising exponentially given the apparently scientific (but probably not) method of information processing. As quality falls, eventually people simply move out in mass and eventually new quality is created. Higher education is heading towards this collapse in information quality, however there is still much to be salvaged. Do what you do because you feel you should be doing it, not because others have judged it some particular way.
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totally agree with you there the problem is the quality of the information

they are and will continue to loose the battle on that front because they no longer have the monopoly on the creation of information and it^s dissemination.

long live the internet
 
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