Education Fix, Guaranteed to Work

Outside The Beltway
84

Because of money issues. Many have to work while going to school and don’t take a full academic course load every semester.

Again, money is very often the reason. Better planning? How many 18 yr olds do you know that can accumulate the money necessary to pay tuition while in high school? Some also realize college is not for then.

Did you read what you quoted? These drop outs aren’t enrolled in 4 yr college. They are at 2 year community colleges.

Students whose only choice for going to college is a community college (who accept everyone) are often not very good students and cannot succeed in even a community college program.

85

I misspoke there. The point is that if after graduating high school one still has to take remedial classes then is college really for you?

86

Thst depends.

Some kids, as they mature, are able to turn things around.

Just an antidote but my cousin’s step daughter was a ■■■■ up in high school and my cousin and her father didn’t even think she’d make it through community college. But during that time a light bulb went off and the rest as they say is history.,

She is now in her mid 30’s, has a Masters in Higher Education and is now Director of Student Affairs at one of the UC (California) universities (after positions at one of the Claremont Colleges.) She is also working on her PhD in Philosophy and just started teaching.

Community colleges also have many non academic programs. A friend’s grandson did a two yr program in HVAC at our CC. The same CC also has a program which trains students for jobs at a massive Nanochip facility in my area.

87

I found this a bit perplexing. It is implying that a child from a poor family will not be able to go to ANY college due to their not having someone to cosign what ever loan they might need?

88

If you are an undergraduate student, the maximum amount you can borrow each year in Direct Subsidized Loans and Direct Unsubsidized Loans ranges from $5,500 to $12,500 per year, depending on what year you are in school and your dependency status.

https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/types/loans

There are limits a student can borrow without a co-signer.

Tuition at even CC are more than $5500 a year.

If one’s parents won’t co-sign because they just refuse to, or their credit is too bad they aren’t eligible - all a student can borrow is limited to be direct subsidized or unsubsidized loans. Ditto for the Parent Plus loans because of bad credit or parents refuse to take them out.

Except for the very elite wealthy schools, most colleges/universities do not give institutional aid in the amount necessary for poor students to attend.

The low SES student I work with have the stats and EC’s necessary to get them accepted into these types of schools. These schools only give need based aid. My students’s packages last year came in at around $60k-65K/yr in institutional aid (not loans.) The rest is then made up of Pell (if they qualify) and the direct subsidized loan. We encourage students to work summers and all are eligible for work study jobs on campus. These funds are often needed for travel expenses to their college and books. And yes, even for some for fun things.

I have been working with students for 8 years and I guarantee I know way more about Financial Aid and issues surrounding affordability than you or the OP.

89

Great comments. (You didn’t answer my question. There’s something inconsistent with “best country” and “worst education.”)

True: Worst education system and check out how many industrialized countries even have 12 years of school. It cannot be more than a dozen. Our schools just pass them through and the calculator has dumbed them down.

A dozen years ago I went to my daughters college orientation and I was outraged because the students were being talked down to like they were elementary students. Years later I realized that the college had to do that because the students they get are totally unprepared for college.

Case in point a few days ago I mentioned that I had been giving the same $9,999.99 question for a cash prize for many years and nobody got it. Today a student did it and Get This. He was an Asian kid new to the country and that speaks volumes in itself. He did it \in about a minute and told me it was easy.

90

I never claimed to know more about financial aid issue than you. When I went to college I didn’t use financial aid, I went to the military and had the GI Bill and that covered my tuition and I worked part time and commuted. Regarding my views on Higher Education, those have been been shaped by the time I spent teaching in high school for about 20 years along with much reflection on my time in college.

91

The upper level students at my old school would have answered that easily, the middle level students, likely a mix, the lower level students, likely none. The misguided nature of our education system is believing that we need all students to be “high level” thinkers, when the fact is that our economy only needs a small portion of its population in those areas.

92

Question for you. Aren’t in some cases middle class students in the same or even a worse off situation? Here is something I found for example:

“The students and families I’ve heard from recently are in the income bands just above the Pell Grant cutoff, between $50,000 and $100,000. According to federal statistics, their amount of unmet need—the difference between what a college costs and what a student can afford to pay—is some $10,000 a year, nearly as much as the lowest-income families in the United States.”
““They are getting squeezed on both ends because they barely miss Pell Grants and they are not the types of students getting grants from colleges themselves,” said Robert Kelchen, an assistant professor of higher education at Seton Hall University and an expert on student aid.”

93

Yes, it’s very often middle class families have it the most difficult (unless their kids are super smart etc., and also get accepted to the best schools with the most generous need based FA!

For example, HYPSM et al give students whose parent’s income is as much as $150k. Obviously not the full COA but enough to get the cost down to approx the COA of the students state universities. TBS, it depends also on what other assets the parents have.

Another example, last year I had a student of a single mom (a nurse) with an income of $75K. Student was valedictorian of her class, 35ACT, involved in a few EC’s (president of student body was one.)

She was very stubborn and several of the schools she applied to (Boston College, NYU, for example) I kept telling her we’re not going to give her enough to attend. But she applied to Dartmouth which would have given her grant in amount of COA and a Nescac school I had to convinced her to apply to as she had a better chance of acceptance than Dartmouth.

She got rejected at Dartmouth but thankfully got accepted at the NESCAC school. COA last yr was $70K. They gave her $65k/yr in grants.

Her packages from the other schools were ok (except NYU which sucks when it come to FA) They all had grants in them, but not enough $, and but they all had loans in the amount of $10-15k/yr - meaning either the mom would have to take out Parent Plus loans or co-sign.

We strongly recommend our students don’t take any loans, except the Federal Direct Subsidized loan, which is capped.

Many schools (but not the elite) also give generous merit aid, to try to attract very good students to improve their USNWR ranking. Some give quite a lot. My son got $30k/yr and $28/k a year in merit award from two schools he would have been happy to attend, but weren’t his first choice. Even his safety schools have him merit on avg of $15k/yr.

All this is harder if your student is avg (like B student) with anything under a 30ACT. Their state university is usually the most affordable option or 2 yes CC and then transfer to 4 yr school.

None of this is easy though and many parents simply cannot afford to save for their retirement and college for several kids.

My state (NY) now has a program that gives free tuition to every kid whose parents have incomes up to $125K for state Uni ans sone private schools that opted into the program. But that only covers tuition, not R&B. But with so many state schools almost everyone has one in commuter distance from where they live.

94

To be honest I can’t imagine how these schools are going to stay in business charging such outrageous (at least in my mind) tuition, especially with a shrinking middle class. Unless my son excels in high school there is no way I am going to consider paying for a four year tradition college.

95

Some won’t stay in business. Colleges are forced to close every year because of declining enrollment and small endowments. They rely on tuition to keep them afloat.

The rich elite schools have massive endowments, but enroll just a tiny percentage (1%-2%) of all college students. And most who apply, even with outstanding stats/EC’s etc. do not get accepted. In addition, approx 40% of these students come from families that can pay the full tuition without blinking an eye.

Imo, people need to vote for state representatives who support fully funding their state’s higher education system. Many legislatures have been cutting off funding and now many state schools (for example PA - where COA is now $35k+ at Penn State) have to raise their COA to make up the difference. Wisconsin is another state that has drastically reduced their state university system.

Keep voting for Republican State Reps, Senators and Governors and it will only get worse.

96

First political comment I have seen here. Yeah! Free College and Health Care for everyone. Let the government pay it. Yahoo!

97

IMO a hundred years from now most students will be going to college online.

In fact right now I would recommend those who want a degree to go to Excelsior college online all the way.

Also someone posed a good question, something like how can the best country in the world have some of the worst student test scores among industrialized countries? Good one. As a teacher I can say that students are not stupid, they are just not good in math, and science. Companies like Apple just import the ones they need with those skills, and probably even pay them a bit less starting out.

We do have the best country in the world and I hope it stays that way forever. But, it will not. With the continued mass illegal immigration of people from all over the world we are doomed. The majority will vote Democrap and so our future is doomed. Unfortunately, but IMO, true.

98

This is one area I see things differently. This is another article I found regarding the issue of funding for higher education:

“The rapid disinvestment by states this century in public higher education happened not because of one event, but a confluence of factors that has made it more expensive for students and their families to attend most state colleges. First, funding levels failed to keep up with the influx of students to public campuses last decade because of the rising numbers of high school graduates.”

“At the same time, spending in other parts of state budgets started to crowd out higher education. Public colleges and universities have long been known as the balance wheel in state budgets. Lawmakers know, for instance, they can always raise tuition for students and their families to pay for higher education, but they can’t do the same for prisoners when it comes to corrections. In the last decade, lawmakers used higher education as a bank for other needs, mostly state and local public welfare programs. “State Medicaid spending is the single biggest contributor to the decline in higher-education funding at the state and local level,” according to Webber.”

First point the number of students going to college went from less than 10% in the 1960’s to over 34% today. Taxes would have to more than triple to keep up with those figures. Look, I don’t know where you live but in NJ taxes haven’t been going down because of cuts to higher education. In other words taxpayers haven’t been living high on the hog because of these cuts.

99

Here is the full article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/09/08/states-decision-reduce-support-higher-education-comes-cost/?utm_term=.a57db5ac76e1

100

Part of the problem in particularly in middle and upper middle class districts like the one I taught in is that many of the students want to go out of state to college, which virtually doubles the costs! It’s like they literally have no concept of the amount of debt that they and their family are going to incur. Personally I would love to see schools take a more practical approach to higher education (and by that I mean both high school and college) and get people into the work force in a total of 4 years instead of eight. Not sure if that will ever happen though. If my son does go to college what you have proposed is clearly a better and less costly approach to take.

101

I’m not going to debate this issue with you.

But I will suggest is you do more research in this area.

Now, I’m going to bow out of this conversation as it will just become a waste of my time.

102

Here we do agree a fruitless debate is indeed a waste of time. Nonetheless I definitely have a better understanding of how financial aid works than I did before.

103

The “recall” of the information is not the responsibility of college professors. If you want to fix the 50%-80% statistic you’re quoting, then how about changing up primary and secondary educational formats? Bake a quick review of the previous day’s lessons into the schedule. There you go!

In case it’s not obvious by my response, I don’t believe that this will, in and of itself, fix the problem.