
Education is Our Generation's Big Problem. Let's Fix it. - hanibash
http://blog.bloc.io/education-is-our-problem
======
Kaedon
"Do I even need to mention which segments of our population rely on student
loans the most, and thus are getting screwed the most by the student loan
crisis? Hint: It's not the happy white suburban family of 4."

Actually, according to the Wall Street Journal
([http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044424690457757...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444246904577575382576303876.html)),
the upper-middle class has seen the sharpest jump in student debt since 2007.
Households with less income have an easier time finding student aid and those
in the upper class can more readily afford the rising costs. This puts the
upper-middle class in a kind of purgatory for financial aid.

~~~
slurgfest
If a private college wants to give financial aid to a student who is poor,
that is its business and it gets to define what 'poor' means for its purposes.

Kids from households making $200,000/yr may not be Maybach rich, but they
don't need Pell Grants. and I certainly wouldn't describe their state as
"purgatory" just because they aren't getting handouts.

The basis for giving this kind of handout (which I understand along with the
general opposition to any handouts) is to improve class mobility and give poor
kids a chance (after all, they did not choose to be born to the 'wrong'
family). What reason is there for people with plenty of money to get that sort
of handout? This I don't understand.

~~~
LockeWatts
_If a private college wants to give_ financial aid _to a student who is poor_

 _just because they aren't getting_ handouts.

Why is it when the kid is poor, its financial aid, if the kid is middle class,
its a handout? The language seems twisted to articulate your point, rather
than the point speaking on its own.

Also, let's take my situation. My mother made $102,000 last year. We're well
off, by any metric. Making 100% over the median income makes you upper middle
class.

My in-state total costs for my public university are $10,099 a semester. I
didn't choose the crazy private school, I didn't go out of state, I'm at
literally the cheapest school I can be at.

It still cost 27% of her net income per year. That's a reasonable amount of
money? I don't think it is.

Now, you can say you're supposed to save beforehand, except back then we were
poor as dirt and couldn't afford to. Does that get factored in into any kind
of federal aid? Nope. Last years tax return, only.

I have enough merit based scholarships that she can afford to send me there,
but I think it's ridiculous to ignore that there is a larger problem in
academic costs.

EDIT: The argument could also be made that students should be working through
school to offset the costs. I personally find that rather backward, (Why is
college the only education not funded by taxes?) but it's the most practical
solution currently available.

~~~
mgkimsal
$102k must have had a hell of a lot of taxes taken out such that $11k is 27%
of the net income.

~~~
hansef
There are two semesters in an academic year. ;)

------
patdennis
There are serious problems with the for-profit university model (like the
University Of Phoenix) as outlined in this article.

I think it's worth pointing out that these businesses are aware that they may
have a problem, and have stepped up their political giving massively to
protect their interests. Mostly, to Republican candidates, and especially to
Mitt Romney. [1]

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/us/politics/mitt-romney-
of...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/us/politics/mitt-romney-offers-
praise-for-a-donors-business.html?_r=2&ref=politics)

~~~
yummyfajitas
Similarly, the non-profit education sector donates heavily to Democrats.

<http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=W04>

Also, purely coincidentally, non-profits are exempt from the "gainful
employment" rule and all the other new rules being levied against competitors
to the non-profit education sector.

Weird. It's almost as if the politicians don't care much when _their_ cronies
rip students off, only when other guys do it.

~~~
patdennis
The chart you linked to doesn't refer to giving from educational
_institutions_ themselves. The chart is tracking contributions from
_individual employees_ [1] of those institutions. Seems to me that simply
represents the fact that professors tend to be Democrats.

On the other hand, with for profit colleges, _institutions themselves [2]_ are
contributing _directly_ to superpacs and other political groups. It's a
totally different metric.

[1] from your link: _"Since school districts, colleges and universities are
generally prohibited from forming political action committees, political
contributions from the education industry generally come from the individuals
associated with the field."_

[2] _The Apollo Group, which owns the University of Phoenix, contributed
$75,000 last month to Restore Our Future, a super PAC run by former Romney
aides. The pro-Romney super PAC is one of the biggest players in the GOP's
long-running nomination fight, pumping more than $38 million into commercials,
direct mail and automated phone calls that promote Romney and attack his GOP
rivals._
[http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012-03-26/romne...](http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012-03-26/romney-
for-profit-colleges/53865654/1)

~~~
yummyfajitas
One chart measures which party gains if more money flows to the non-profit
sector. The other chart measures which party gains if more money flows to the
for-profit sector.

You can nitpick the details of exactly what entities the money flows through,
but the politicians aren't.

~~~
patdennis
It is a valid difference, and politicians _are_ aware of it.

Organic giving from individuals who work in the educational sector doesn't
come hand in hand with _organized, well financed political pressure_ in the
same way that a lobbying effort/targeted giving coming directly from a
specific industry does.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Yes, clearly the non-profit sector is far less influential than the for-profit
one, in spite of donating vastly more money. Education as a whole donated
$6.3M to Obama, the for-profit sector donated $145k to John Kline and $107k to
Romney [1].

Clearly the for-profit sector is vastly more influential.

This influence is proven by the fact that the politicians are making special
rules for the non-profit sector and explicitly exempting the for-profits from
them.

Oh wait, my mistake - I live in the real world, where $6.3M > $145k, and
politicians target for-profits for special rules and throw more money at non-
profits.

[1] Unfortunately OpenSecrets doesn't explicitly break the non-profit sector
out of education as a whole.

~~~
LockeWatts
_Yes, clearly the non-profit sector is far less influential than the for-
profit one, in spite of donating vastly more money. Education as a whole
donated $6.3M to Obama, the for-profit sector donated $145k to John Kline and
$107k to Romney [1]._

This argument doesn't make any sense. He just spelled this out for you, but
I'll try it again.

 _Individual donations from non-profit education employees_ are not lobbying
on the part of an industry. They're citizens playing an active role in
politics.

 _Corporations in the for-profit education business_ are lobbying in an
attempt to further increase their profit margins despite providing a product
that is comparatively worthless.

 _Oh wait, my mistake - I live in the real world, where $6.3M > $145k, and
politicians target for-profits for special rules and throw more money at non-
profits._

Just as they should. For profit schools are student farms, churning them out
and providing predatory loans to their uneducated students.

Nobody gives a degree from a for-profit school any kind of respect, it carries
no more prestige than a high school degree. That makes their product
_worthless_. They're attempting to legislate around their failings, not
improve their product to a competitive level with the non-profit education
system.

Seeing as the non-profit schools are _supposed_ to be public institutions
created to better the country, it's appropriate for them to receive federal
funding.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_Just as they should. For profit schools are student farms, churning them out
and providing predatory loans to their uneducated students._

I'm confused. The "gainful employment" rule seems to target low quality
schools. If, as you assert, non-profits are of higher quality, why exempt them
from the "gainful employment" rule? After all, the rule won't affect them (if
you are right).

The answer is, of course, that if you are wrong and some non-profits are also
low quality, the employees of those schools will have less money to donate to
Democrats.

But I'm sure no politician anywhere cares about that.

~~~
LockeWatts
First, let me point out rather amusingly that you did not respond to any of my
points on the nature of campaign contributions. I'd ask again for you to do
so.

As for your questions.

 _I'm confused. The "gainful employment" rule seems to target low quality
schools._

Incorrect. Your false assertion here completely derails the remainder of your
post, making it irrelevant. If you would like a correct explanation of the
gainful employment rule, let me know.

------
JumpCrisscross
Allowing lenders (or providing greater incentive for them) to modulate rates
on loans based on (a) the institution attended, (b) the major chosen, and (c)
individual performance metrics, e.g. GPA, would be a solid step towards
resolving education debt insolvency.

This could be achieved by switching government subsidies from loan guarantees
to payment-share plans by which the government pays a portion of each payment
but ceases to do so in case of default. These loans should be absolvable in
bankruptcy - an immature decision made in one's adolescence shouldn't be a
lifelong burden. Thus, the credit risk is retained by the lender while
financial impact lessened on the student.

Unpopular as measures radically increasing costs on liberal arts majors may
be, the present situation is a clear example of artificially locked markets
producing inefficient outcomes.

~~~
jmtame
I was just about to suggest the same thing. The degree seems like a very
important piece of information to a creditor making a decision. If I know that
60% of students of a particular degree will default within 4 years, why would
I continue to loan that money out? If it's impossible for them to get out of
it, that'd be good enough a reason.

It seems that most of my engineering friends have a very existentialist
perspective on it: the person is entirely responsible for the actions they
take. If they got themselves into debt, then they should figure out how to get
themselves out of debt.

That's valid. The student wasn't forced to go study art history, but they were
lied to by a lot of people, including their parents and society, which are two
difficult groups to ignore. I think it's good that we're airing out some of
college's dirty laundry--it needs to be known that if you go study art
history, there may be a greater than 50% chance that you will be jobless or
working as a waiter or waitress. I had this debate with someone last weekend
where I made the same argument, and she got very defensive. It's hard to get
specific and criticize certain degrees without being offensive to somebody
because people feel they need to defend their choices. I later found out she
studied art history, she was a waitress, and she had just quit her job. To her
credit, she probably didn't realize her job options were grim when she chose
to do that. If this issue is spoken about publicly, it should at the very
least make the decision easier for people. Every graduating senior in high
school should hear both sides of the story and fully understand they can't
arbitrarily pick any degree and expect the same results.

~~~
rmk2
Maybe _everyone_ should become an engineer, so everyone can be happily living
in a technocracy were we make everything remotely tangible into money.

Maybe we should tell people to stop doing psychology, art history, history,
political sciences, theology, literature etc. I mean, it's on Wikipedia,
right? You can just go there and read about it, you know, as a hobby, so, why
bother studying it?

Maybe we can all become engineers and convert everything into profit. What do
you mean I probably shouldn't track someone's every movement? Why? It's the
logical solution, it's possible, it's doable, it gives the greatest monetary
return. And it's the best developmental solution! It's perfect!

~~~
marknutter
That's a false dichotomy. Nobody is suggesting that _nobody_ should choose a
liberal arts degree. What's being suggested is that _less_ people should be
doing it because there's more supply for those professions than there is
demand. There's very high demand for technology degrees and trade skills
(welders are in desperate demand, for instance). These truths aren't being
communicated to college freshmen as well as they should be, and that's causing
a major crisis for a lot of liberal arts college grads who enter a job market
that simply doesn't need them.

~~~
rmk2
Why is it a false dichotomy? Do you honestly believe that people will all of a
sudden flog to STEM subjects just because somebody tells them they will
forever be unemployed otherwise?

We might just have this arguement because this is, after all, HN, but it still
astounds me how hard it seems to grasp for many here that not everyone is
actually even remotely interested in programming or "building a product".

I am absolutely convinced that ultimately a society as a whole can only
benefit from a workforce (how I hate that word) that is educated _beyond_ the
requirements of their day jobs. The more you are interested in outside of your
actual occupation, the more these interests will also play into your work and
thus influence its outcome.

We have a constant stream of articles here that tell us how people became
programmers without studying CS etc. Why however do people always assume
everyone else is incapable of learning something else after studying something
in the humanities? I know only very few people who expect to work directly
with their field of study. In fact, most of the people who do are the ones who
will at least try to go on and go into academia. Most other people I have ever
met were very aware of the fact that there might be quite a disjunction
between their area of study and their future job.

------
trafficlight
It's not a financial problem (well it is), it's a cultural problem. American
culture just doesn't value education and learning in general.

Isaac Asimov articulated this very well:

 _Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our
political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means
that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge'._

~~~
j_baker
I don't buy it. We have a culture that rewards everyone going to college, even
if they'd be better off not going to college. And your explanation for this is
that we don't value education? I'd argue the exact opposite. We value
education _too much_.

~~~
Jtsummers
That's inaccurate. We have corporate cultures which value the possession of a
certificate of achievement, not a culture which values education.

Depending on the survey you have up to 50% of the US denying evolution. A
process that is clearly evident without any leaps of faith. That's not
indicative of a culture that values education. There are many other aspects of
math, science and technology that large swaths don't understand or
misunderstand that would not occur if education were truly valued.

~~~
NoPiece
People who are religious can still value education, even though certain
religious beliefs are in conflict.

~~~
Jtsummers
I won't disagree with that as there are many aspects to education beyond the
technical (literature, art, philosophy, etc). I used evolution as an example
because the statistics were easy to find. I also find it strange that the
Roman Catholic church can express an acceptance of it, but so many people in
the US still deny it.

It's not the only scientific or technical concept that's grossly misunderstood
in this country (or the world in general).

How about the false connection between autism and MMR?

I've removed other examples that tended to fall back on showing religious
groups as particularly in conflict with science.

Here's a still controversial but areligious one: WTC collapse. A 'model' using
chicken wire and gasoline was used to persuade a non-negligible percent of the
population that planes filled with fuel crashing into the upper half of 110
story buildings would be unable to cause the collapse of said buildings. A
fundamental failure in education has occurred when you get engineers accepting
things like this.

------
rflrob
> Why administration had to grow 4x the pace of enrollment is beyond me.

While I won't claim that every single administrative dollar has been well
spent, between 1993 and 2007, this would cover things like on campus tech
support and IT staff and equipment (email, online registration, transcripts,
etc), more broadly available and diverse student support (counseling, LGBT
support organizations, ombudsmen, etc), and presumably tutoring services that
help the growing fraction of the population in college thrive, rather than
simply prep-school graduates. Again, I'm not going to claim that 4x increase
relative to enrollment is the right amount, but compared to universities 20
years ago, they are providing more services.

------
onitica
One thing that really bothers me is how much universities are allowed to raise
their tuition on existing students. I started college paying about $6k a year
in tuition my freshmen year. My senior year cost me $11k. The difference in
tuition raises overall probably increased my total loan amount by ~$10k by the
time I graduated. This is huge and there is no way students can take this into
account when applying for college. I don't know why there are no laws
protecting students by requiring fixed tuition rates for students?
Universities are notoriously bad for raising rates by thousands a year, which
students must take into debt or leave.

*Edit - Ok, the tuition when I first went to college was $20k a year. I had a $14k scholarship, so it was a manageable $6k a year. Now the tuition, 5 years later, is over $27k. That is a 35% increase at about 7% a year. Pretty ridiculous if you ask me, especially for a state school which should be affordable.

~~~
newbie12
The federal government's Medicaid mandate is destroying state education
budgets-- Medicaid is literally crowding out state public university education
spending.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-
klein/post/medicaid...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-
klein/post/medicaid-squeezing-higher-education-
funding/2011/10/31/gIQAKIWOZM_blog.html)

~~~
onitica
I'm talking about out-of-state tuition though, which from my understanding was
not subsidized by the state government at all. The funny thing is, the
university I went to was still cheaper and better than my in-state
alternatives.

~~~
danielweber
It's all the same pie, from the point-of-view of state government. They need
to make their budget balance, and the school is a target-rich environment for
them.

------
japhyr
I was excited to read this article, because I want to see more attempts to
improve education. But then I saw that this is a for-profit education company.

I know there is a place for private educational endeavors in our society. But
if you really want to fix education for everyone, you've got to focus on
public education. Yes, it's a big ugly political seemingly unchangeable mess.
But it's the only system that reaches everyone.

Every generation has a revolution waiting to happen. Improving public
education might be the next significant social revolution in the US, but it
won't be led by for-profit education companies.

~~~
jerf
How much failure would it take from the not-for-profit public education system
before you'd consider the possibility that it is the very incentive system
created by their non-profit status that has a huge hand in the failure?

We've created a system in which the reward for being an excellent teacher
is... what, exactly? More paperwork? More friction from the ever-larger
administration for not doing the same as everybody else? More frustration with
not being allowed to be the good teacher because they have to teach ever
harder to the test?

Until you fix the incentive system you're not going to get better teaching,
and yeah, that's probably going to involve someone making some money, because
it's beyond me how to fix the incentive system in the presence of an open-
ended promise to keep the money hose opened and pointed at them no matter how
much they fail. I suppose we could always try giving the same people _even
more_ money if they just promise to try really, really hard to do something
else a couple of times until they give up.

And I am also pretty sure that true 21st century education isn't going to just
a tweaked 20th century education. It's going to be something totally
different, and the non-profit system simply won't get us there. Why would
they? They don't get defunded for using decades-old totally outdated education
systems. (In contrast to the decades-old non-outdated parts, which do exist,
but are not 100% of the curriculum by any means.) We know that, because that's
already the current situation. They've got no reason to move.

~~~
japhyr
_How much failure would it take from the not-for-profit public education
system before you'd consider the possibility that it is the very incentive
system created by their non-profit status that has a huge hand in the
failure?_

That is part of the failure, and I am deeply affected by it right now. I am a
pretty good teacher, and I watch terrible teachers get paid more than me
because they've been at it longer. I can't pay off my family's student loans,
and I can't afford anything more than a small condo.

But I still don't think privatizing education is the answer. There is always
the possibility of taking education back from the politicians, and setting up
a system that does incentivize good teaching. It's not as simple as paying
teachers more if their students pass tests.

One fix that would go a long way is restructuring our approach to tuition in
service sectors. If you take away my student loans, I would be a happy, hard
working teacher the rest of my life. I will get some portion of my loans
forgiven for teaching in a high-need area, but that won't go a long way. The
same goes for other service sectors, where a reasonable job will leave you
paying off student loans until you are past retirement age.

There are bureaucratic fixes. You can give more professional freedoms to
highly-effective teachers. Measuring effective teaching is difficult, but not
impossible.

As soon as you give up on public education and only see privatization as the
answer, you give up on addressing the education gap between different
socioeconomic groups.

~~~
jerf
"It's not as simple as paying teachers more if their students pass tests."

That's not the interesting thing that privatization allows. What it allows is
the doing of something fundamentally different.

I don't see privatization as "the current school system, just private". Yes,
that is what it is now, mostly, unless you poke around what are currently very
fringe bits. What I see is a world in which (in a nutshell) self-serve
homeschooling becomes easier and easier and more effective until it eats the
current system from the inside. Give it about 20 years. Public schooling will
survive, but as part of a large ecosystem, instead of the whole.

"As soon as you give up on public education and only see privatization as the
answer, you give up on addressing the education gap between different
socioeconomic groups."

No we don't. Vouchers may not be 100% "free market", but it's not going to
keep me up at night.

------
nicholassmith
I'm not sure that education is the big problem, but it's definitely up there.
I think probably the financial climate leading to unemployment/underemployment
is a bigger one, but significantly more difficult to fix.

~~~
jfarmer
Imagine a world where you can retrain yourself on the order of months, not
years, and take on little or no debt to do it. How would that impact
unemployment or underemployment?

When Obama stands in front of a bankrupt auto factory in Detroit and says,
"We'll retool these factories and retrain these workers to produce wind
turbines, solar panels, and electric cars!", how do we do it?

People are desperate to answer that question and services like bloc.io,
Udacity, Coursera, Khan Academy, University Now, etc. are just our best first
answers.

Education is more than a big problem: it's the root problem.

Caveat lector: I help run <http://devbootcamp.com> and the bloc.io guys work
out of our offices 2-3 days per week.

~~~
jellicle
>Imagine a world where you can retrain yourself on the order of months, not
years, and take on little or no debt to do it. How would that impact
unemployment or underemployment?

It would have very little effect on un- or underemployment, since un- and
underemployment are driven by demand, not supply.

There is zero evidence that unemployment in the United States today is driven
by a mismatch between skills-employers-want and skills-workers-have, for
instance.

Paul Krugman discusses this in a few of his columns.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_It would have very little effect on un- or underemployment, since un- and
underemployment are driven by demand, not supply._

Funny - demand is doing just fine. It's only employment that is suffering. See
stats here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2240468>

The Keynesians haven't been proven wrong on their claims that increased demand
-> increased production. It's the part where increased production -> increased
employment that they have been shown conclusively to be incorrect.

~~~
jellicle
I feared that mentioning Krugman would bring out the Krugman-haters with their
nonsense. Sadly, I was right to fear.

You know that the Fed statistics that you cite show that, for example, durable
goods production is down 6% since 2007? Even though population has increased
in that time. That is to say, the graphs support what I said and what Paul
Krugman says, not the nonsense that you think you've learned from Fox News.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/opinion/27krugman.html>

[http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/a-structural-
bla...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/a-structural-blast-from-
the-past/)

~~~
yummyfajitas
You are completely ignoring the point - if demand increases but producers
don't need to hire people to produce more, employment does not increase. I.e.,
demand may be correlated with production, but production need not be
correlated with employment.

If you looked at the fed stats I cited, they show precisely a lack of
correlation between production and employment.

Nothing you have cited disputes this fundamental point. Krugman doesn't even
try, he just declares victory and insults those who disagree.

~~~
jellicle
>if demand increases but producers don't need to hire people to produce more,
employment does not increase.

If fishes rode bicycles... but they don't.

Productivity growth doesn't change that much year over year:

<http://www.bls.gov/lpc/prodybar.htm>

And recessions are generally times of low change, since it doesn't make sense
to invest in labor-saving technology when labor is cheap.

> production need not be correlated with employment.

In a speculative robot-filled future, that could be true. On Earth in 2012, if
you want something done, you hire a human to do it.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_If fishes rode bicycles... but they don't._

Nonsense. Should I post the graphs again? The graphs clearly demonstrate
increased production without a corresponding increase in employment. This is
the "jobless recovery" that many columnists lament. Some graphs again:

<http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/PAYEMS>

<http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/INDPRO>

<http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/GDPC1>

<http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MANEMP>

<http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/IPMAN>

 _And recessions are generally times of low change, since it doesn't make
sense to invest in labor-saving technology when labor is cheap._

Labor is more expensive than ever before. Another graph for you to ignore:

<http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/ECIWAG>

According to Keynesians (e.g. Krugman), recessions are caused by labor not
becoming cheap in response to exogenous shocks (due to sticky nominal wages).
Do you disagree with this theory?

------
armored_mammal
I agree education (and even more particularly, the method and quality of
teaching) is a problem, but it's not the same problem as student debt.

As far as I can tell, much of the (debt) problem is caused by bad decision
making by clueless parents and teenagers who think they need to send their kid
to an Ivy League or think that their child somehow needs to spend 40k a year
to go to an in-state school.

Let's be honest. The cost of education is going up, yes. But getting into debt
is also bad and a poor choice. Yet nobody is responsible enough to consider it
when making college choices, just to whine about it after the fact.

Students do not need to own a television or get cable or even have a video
game console. Students probably don't even need a car, definitely don't need
smartphones, and at least where I went to school, could probably do just fine
without owning a computer, too. Likewise, instead of getting into debt they
could go to cheaper community colleges or a whole slew of things.

Instead many college students, regardless of economic background, seem to have
smartphones, Macs, and 42" TVs.

When I see someone complaining about college debt, I see somebody who went to
an overly expensive school, without a plan, and did whatever they felt like
without ever stopping to consider first if they could make a living when they
were done. I see a child.

As someone who looked at the big picture when making college decisions and now
has no college debt two years out of school, I have no sympathy.

I turned down the University of Chicago (among others) so that I wouldn't be
in debt and to hear all the whining about it from entitled feeling kids who
didn't make smart decisions makes me angry.

Now I'll agree that you may need to take on some debt to complete college. But
if you're taking on more than the cost of a new car, you're doing it wrong.

Don't get me wrong, either. I concur that colleges waste lots of money.

~~~
jfarmer
I attended the University of Chicago, paid for it myself, and took on 100% of
the debt.

I'm still paying it off, but it was worth it! My life is without question 100x
better for it.

Your point is fair, though: with few exceptions student's expectations of how
transformative their college education to be absolutely eclipses the reality.

~~~
lrs
I think the OP's characterization of the decisionmaking process that leads to
crippling educational debt is somewhat unfair. It's definitely driven by the
parents and children who he condemns as "clueless." But I think it's important
to consider that many of these "clueless" have been told their entire lives
that "education is a great investment" and "graduates of prestigious
universities all become successful and rich," and have never really been
confronted with any reason to question these pronouncements, which have
appeared consistent with their own observations and experiences. Colleges and
universities don't hesitate to trot out these tropes in their recruitment
literature, though I suppose it's a mark of the "clueless" that they hold
educational institutions to a different standard of credibility than used car
salesmen or carnival barkers.

I see a parallel to the recent mortgage crisis. Sure, fundamentally, the
crisis was just huge numbers of people defaulting en-masse on their mortgages.
They all made "clueless" decisions by taking on more mortgage debt than they
could handle. Maybe they deserve what they get, and maybe the appropriate
response is to be angry at these entitled whiners who made worse decisions
than the OP. But these decisions were facilitated by lenders and securities
brokers who were acting in less than good faith.

I'm inclined to view both the homeowners in the mortgage crisis and the
students and families struggling with education debt right now more as victims
of poor information availability and outmoded decision heuristics that fell
behind the times, and less as entitled whiners.

I guess I should note that I also went to the University of Chicago (hi Jesse)
and it's fairly clear by now that it was a terrible choice for me. So maybe
I'm just grasping for rationalizations while desperately fleeing from the
crushing psychological weight of the responsibility for that choice and the
long and uninterrupted sequence of related bad choices that have more or less
ruined my life.

~~~
armored_mammal
Can't really tell if the last line is sarcasm for sure (I think it is?).

I can't stand when people are taught to listen instead of think, and that
predilection of mine is why I can't see the sub-prime mortgage crisis as being
at all similar to college debt.

Someone who is going to college is supposed to be bright, intelligent, and
motivated. A budding critical thinker who can deal with new and complex ideas.
Hence I don't think someone who makes decisions based on what they're told is
a good candidate for college. Likewise I don't think someone who is focused on
the past success of others is exactly an ideal college candidate, either. Both
of these things are ostensibly why there are large essay sections as part of
the college application process.

In any case, I think it's kind of disingenuous and silly to have the same
expectations of someone without a high school degree and three kids working 60
hours a week getting pitched on a bad loan and a top end of the spectrum
student getting pitched on colleges. You can't have the same expectations.

That said, I think you hit the nail on the head when comparing modern college
recruitment practices to used car salesmen. In fact, visiting MIT (academic
activity related) remains one of the most disillusioning experiences of my
life. Sure, science goes on there, but I felt like I was inside of an
infomercial.

If anything perhaps both are a sign that K-12 needs to have more coverage of
financial- and media- literacy.

But I guess I've regarded the success of graduates of Ivy Leagues and other
prestigious schools as having more to do with being part of the good old boys
club and networking with the wealthy than actually having anything to do with
having good teachers.

~~~
lrs
No sarcasm; just a lot of regret and self-loathing.

It seems like the root of our disagreement is our differeing expectations for
the cognitive and decisionmaking abilities of teenagers. As other posters have
mentioned, there are lots of social factors at play in the college decision,
and I think those factors can be far more powerful than what's necessary to
lead a straight-A high school student astray.

If we pared away all of the people who were susceptible to making bad
decisions based on what they're told or who are focused on the past successes
of others, only the tiniest sliver of the population would remain as viable
candidates for college. Maybe this is the point you're making - maybe you
think we should shut down almost every university and tell everyone outside
the enlightened sliver to go figure out something else to do. (Might actually
not be that bad of an idea.) Or maybe you have a different view of people's
cognitive abilities at age 17.

The approach that you personally took toward your college decision is, I
think, pretty exceptional, and puts you toward the top of the top 1% of
rational 17-year-old decisionmakers. I hesitate to condemn people as clueless
and undeserving of our sympathy because they fall short of that lofty
standard.

~~~
armored_mammal
I'm not really sure what point I'm making.

I agree there are large structural flaws with college (well, pretty much the
whole educational system). Good teachers and good researchers aren't the same
thing for sure. Likewise, many amenities at college today are not really
necessary, but also likely don't have a anywhere near an order of magnitude
impact on costs. At some schools healthy food is often replaced by junk food
provided through restaurant contractors, which is not so great, but maybe is a
little cheaper. I agree that something needs to change with how college works,
and that the costs are getting a bit silly when they're almost at the point
that you could get together with a class of friends and hire expert personal
tutors instead.

Likewise, I definitely think that many people who feel they need to go to
college are people who shouldn't go to college, or who at least aren't ready
for it. Witness the huge numbers of remedial courses at many public
institutions, as well as decreasing standards in many courses. I sometimes
take classes at the local community college for fun and I'll have classmates
who can barely read and write using student loans to fail their courses. Sadly
enough, I've seen some of the same at 4 year schools. It's just depressing and
I often wonder how they even got through High School. (And I'm not talking
about non-English speakers or anything, either. Upper or upper-middle class
Caucasians who have maybe 5th or 6th grade level language skills.)

Of course some people just eat McDonald's and play WoW instead of going to
class while living off loans. I had a room mate one year in the dorms who did
that.

I'm sure you're right that social pressure is a lot of it. Dad goes to
college, assumes the kids will too, then doesn't much pay attention while they
do rather mediocre in school, aren't ready for college, but absolutely feel
like they've got to. So on and so forth.

I can't accept the notion that social pressure is really a valid excuse,
though, even if it's behind the reality for some of the problems.

But I'm the kind of cruel bastard who hates it when people worry about what
everyone else thinks and who if ever has kids will move several times on
purpose and keep them from watching TV and hopefully raise them so that they
can trust themselves instead of their peers with lots of comments like 'well,
if Freddy jumped off a cliff would you?.'

I've also got to think another part of it is the notion that the credential is
meaningful, but doesn't represent any skill or knowledge. So many people these
days think of the paper first, the socialization second, and learning third.

I'm sure there's something, too, with the excessive helicopter parenting
keeping even smart 17/18-year-olds from really thinking for themselves.

I guess I'm just not super sympathetic about things that irritate me, and my
experiences have rarely exposed me to the sympathetic side.

One thing I just thought about is ROTC. Better than debt, I guess? The people
I knew in it were definitely on the straight and narrow and all set to finish
with decent grades and no debt.

------
zanny
I just graduated with my CS degree this May, and I only took on a total of 20k
debt and lived on campus, and that 20k was just the stafford loans that 3 of
my scholarships mandated I take in order to qualify. Note, now that I
graduated, I already paid off over half that on just reserve funds from summer
jobs that I have had dating back to High School.

While I was there, only about 1 in 5 students actually had a full financial
aid package. _Most_ of them didn't fill out FAFSAs, or didn't even use
subsidized stafford loans - they had direct bank loans from their parents for
upwards of $60k a year.

In my opinion, the people of the 22ed century will look back and think we were
hilariously dumb. We have instantanous communication of ideas and knowledge
via the internet, and our internet speeds are only getting better. If you want
to _learn_ something, it is easier than ever to find a community of fellow
learners for a subject, find tons of free learning materials on that subject,
and buckle down without the financial obligations and classroom environment
(which doesn't work for everyone, and you inherently have less engagement
there because one teacher can not effectively engage with even just 10 people
all the time).

Like the article said, the degree is the problem. But I don't think thats the
_real_ problem - moreso the problem than that is the inability for
_individuals_ to have ideas and persue them in business ventures, because
upstart small business will demand much less degree knowledge from employees
(even if they are very skilled) since they draw from a local pool.

You get the degree because you will be applying to massive companies with huge
HR that don't want to try to interpret you as a _person_ but want to get a
quick diagnostic of if you are capable or not from a one word answer to a 3
word question: Got a degree? If hiring was more based on individual
accomplishment and demonstratable knowledge rather than paper, we would all be
better off for it by getting off the degree treadmill.

~~~
dpeck
As others have said before, education is incredibly cheap now, but credentials
are becoming more and more expensive.

------
marknutter
I think the biggest problem with higher education today is the fact that
colleges aren't the one issuing the student loans. If a student enters the
workforce and can't find a job to pay back their loan, the colleges aren't the
ones on the hook; the students are, and eventually, the taxpayers. I
understand that government-backed loans are a way to try to make higher
education available to more people but all this easy money has resulted in a
huge cash grab by for profit institutions who frankly could care less whether
or not their graduates actually pay the loans back. Couple that with the
almost religious belief that a college education is the only way to achieve
the American dream and you have a recipe for the exact disaster we're flying
head first into today.

~~~
jpdoctor
The traditional name for this: The agency problem.
[http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/agencyproblem.asp#axzz23...](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/agencyproblem.asp#axzz23B7SZN50)

------
Crake
I don't think there's a private solution to this problem. If we look to
functional educational systems (example: germany), we see that other countries
are often much better at matching people up with careers that match their
talents (or lack thereof). Instead, we have colleges that will take whoever
can pay over whoever might be the brightest academically. The people who can
pay aren't necessarily the sharpest crayon in the box, and the people who
can't might be the next cure for [insert x here].

State universities at the very least should be tuition free so as to not
completely fuck over students from dysfunctional families who won't
help/families that can't afford it. Of course, it would also be wiser to raise
entrance standards and somehow figure out how to stop the ridiculous GPA
inflation that goes on in the liberal arts fields. STEM still pays relatively
well, but that's because our standards haven't dropped; unfortunately, many
requirements for maintaining a scholarship fail to take choice of major into
account when setting a minimum GPA.

Anyone can get a liberal arts degree if they have enough (or can borrow
enough) money, which is why it means shit nowadays as a measure of IQ.

~~~
HarryHirsch
I _am_ at a state university, and there's a couple of issues that people here
aren't really aware of.

University funding comes from three sources: tuition, state funds and research
grants (federal or industrial). The last two have been steadily declining, so
that leaves tuition as an ever more important source of funds. The university
is building new dormitories to get new paying bodies. It doesn't matter just
how damn incapable the students are, what counts is that they pay. You can't
encourage anyone to drop their chosen degree, if you do you might have to
apologize to the chair and the parents.

Again, funds are scarce, and the administration tries to hive off teaching of
introductory courses to adjuncts. It takes anyone a year or two to learn the
ropes, then people leave because working conditions here are poor, the classes
are too large and the workload too heavy. No one is concerned about the
revolving door for introductory courses. Besides, you have to have an
excellent command of the subject matter to be able to teach a beginners'
class, you just cannot put a bottom-of-the-barrel type in front of an
introductory course and expect the students to do well.

Again, it's the undergraduates that pay, and they money goes primarily into
teaching facilities. Meanwhile the research space is neglected. There is no
money to replace the fifty year old rotting tiles in my office, everything
goes to provide a nice environment to the dear undergrad kids.

Someone might notice that mathematics and computing are peculiar in that there
is not much capital equipment or education needed to be productive. One can be
a decent programmer with a bachelor's degree and grow into software
engineering. But consider the physical sciences, biology, chemistry physics.
To produce any results one needs capital equipment and a PhD. No one goes
anywhere far in biology even with a Masters.

Startup mania. I'd love to join a startup in my field. Try that with a sick
wife. Can't afford it.

------
cantankerous
I feel like this is just swapping degrees for certifications. In this case the
certification is just saying you completed training with so and so (so and so
being bloc.io). Either way, everybody's just chasing paper and maybe learning
something in the process.

EDIT: What I meant by certification was more abstract. On a resume, saying you
completed tutelage with an individual or a group (and have achievements to go
along with them) is pretty similar to completing certification that implies
knowledge attained prior to completing the certification...the disfunctional
nature of certifications, degrees, and mentor-based systems notwithstanding.
People market themselves with this stuff, no matter what precisely it is, or
where they got it from.

~~~
choxi
we don't offer certification, we believe in the "your work is your resume"
philosophy.

~~~
cantankerous
I like that policy! I'm just curious how it ultimately boils down to a
difference in the mindset of people looking to market themselves with skills.
I personally find this model to be really cool and wish you all the best in
expanding into your other areas of teaching!

------
DevMonkey
Here are a couple of random thoughts:

Maybe we need to start outsourcing our education to China and India. We can
send our kids to India for their undergraduate degrees and then they can come
back here to get their post-graduate degrees.

Move towards knowledge certification instead of a degree that states you
completed your degree. Bar Exam, MCSE, Board Certifications, etc. If you have
the drive and capacity to learn without attending college then you should be
rewarded only having to take a certification exam.

Once enough schools go belly up people can just start listing those
institutions on their resumes. Since the school is close there won't be an
easy way to verify. (Just kidding of course)

------
revscat
The adverse effects of a warming atmosphere is a more existential problem, and
I would argue that it is for this reason that it is a more fundamental one.
Education is irreelevant if food supplies are increasingly scarce.

~~~
rimantas
I would argue, that educations and science are the most likely sources of the
solution to food problem.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug>

------
blackhole
While I strongly support educational reform, I should point out that it is not
just higher education, it's also high school, middle school, elementary
school, kindergarten, and daycare. Every single aspect of the entire
educational system down to the time spent on kids when they're too young to
speak properly is broken. Consequently, fixing this is not as simple as having
an online university, but I agree that the solution is very likely to be some
sort of private, for-profit company, simply because that's the only feasible
catalyst.

------
waiwai933
I'm somewhat curious to know how big of a problem (and what forms it takes)
this is around the world—if people could share what this looks like from where
they are, I'd be tremendously interested.

------
grecy
> Once you default on a student loan, you'll be hounded for life: student loan
> debt is the absolute worst kind of debt you can have, _as it is not
> absolvable by bankruptcy_.

I've always wondered two things about this.

1\. How is that even legal? I thought the whole point of bankruptcy was to
raise a big flag that says "I can no longer pay my debts", and they go away.
Why is student loan debt different?

2\. Why do American students tolerate it? Look what happened in Quebec when
they tried to raise tuition even a little.

~~~
GFKjunior
1) Congress passed a law after a lot of lobbying. The reasoning was that when
a student graduates they have substantial debt and no assets, so every student
would just declare bankruptcy the day after graduating and wouldn't have to
pay back the providers.

~~~
grecy
So the lenders wanted protection.

They are now 100% guaranteed to make money by lending it to uninformed
children.

Crazy.

------
pnathan
Yes, education is our generation's (18-30) problem.

Schools are lousy and degrade basic skills, as well as degrading deep cultural
literacy and history. Idiots are held as heros. College costs are skyrocketing
and dysfunctional buildings are being built by the colleges. The list of
problems could go on... reams of paper have been spent documenting them.

Yes, there's a problem. I argue the essence of the problem is the deification
of money.

------
twoodfin
There's another fix: Hire these graduates into the public sector or a random
non-profit, let them make income-based payments, and then forgive their loans
after 10 years, regardless of how much they've paid back. The taxpayers pick
up the rest.

Thanks, Congress!

[http://studentaid.ed.gov/repay-loans/forgiveness-
cancellatio...](http://studentaid.ed.gov/repay-loans/forgiveness-
cancellation/charts/public-service)

~~~
natrius
I think encouraging people to make better education investments is a better
idea than making other people pay for their poor choices.

~~~
twoodfin
I agree. To a first order approximation, "Thanks, Congress!" always has an
implied sarcasm tag.

------
stretchwithme
As with most things government is involved with, the education industry has
evolved for the care and feeding of the providers and not the consumers.

In a normal market, the customers have the power. In a market where the
consumers don't really pay or think they don't, they have no leverage.

And students are just passing through, are quite busy, so they aren't exactly
lobbying Congress. But rest assured everyone else involved is.

------
ap22213
Maybe the problem is that there's less and less need for most types of
workers.

We have a global population steadily lurching toward 8 billion. And, the
richest of us seem to need less and less. And, that's coupled with
aggressively commoditized global services industry that is providing more and
more value for less and less cost.

Seems like major equilibrium shift waiting to happen.

------
scoofy
Obviously, matters relating to shortfalls in our education system are
important, but the real problem is campaign finance. With election candidates
raising the vast majority of their funds from special interests, there is
little incentive to fix problems that are profitable for said special
interests.

------
roguecoder
Re-introduce cheap, accessible, well-funded public universities that people
can study out, without subsidizing for-profit or even private universities.
Public options allow the market to work while overcoming the underprovided
nature of education.

------
mw63214
Agile Education. Is that a thing? If not, why? If yes, how?

Edit: serious question.

------
spitx
The approaches to education in the past five decades or so have produced
mediocre results in producing a more civic individual. I wonder if the
fundamentals of logic are imparted in any elementary school curriculum.

Our electorate is already pitifully informed. However what's really woeful is
that a large portion of the vote bank cannot dissect a simple election
campaign claim or promise.

