It’s interesting that the real perpetrators don’t get much of Taibbi’s scorn. The loan industry are just opportunists, and for the most part students loans have been taken over by the government anyway.
The real criminals here are teachers, parents, and employers, who have created a culture where people are compelled to get completely unnecessary higher education. Here, you need a college degree to be an administrative assistant in an office. In Germany, in contrast, young people can get many white collar jobs after age 16, plus three years of apprenticeships during which they get paid.
I mean, the loan industry still does deserve scorn when they make loans that hurt society rather than help. They should at least strive to focus their efforts on deals where everybody wins, especially when the taxpayer is the one who foots the bill when they lose.
I do agree that our education system is the most at fault, though I would make administrators as criminals before teachers. Administrators are the ones who continually spend their schools' funds on pretty buildings, sports teams, and raising their own salaries. That money could be used to develop better educational methodologies, raise teacher salaries (in the case of K-12 where viable STEM professionals would be taking a giant pay cut compared to industry), and improve the quality/quantity of resources that students really need to succeed (not a new football stadium).
Parents and employers are typically reacting to this environment, not generating it. Employers require more education due to the failures of K-12 and some universities. Parents try to recognize what their kids will need to get a fulfilling career (we hope), though they may lack the understanding to do so effectively.
> the loan industry still does deserve scorn when they make loans that hurt society rather than help. They should at least strive to focus their efforts on deals where everybody wins, especially when the taxpayer is the one who foots the bill when they lose.
Lenders don’t have a choice. Student loans are originated without regard to ability to repay. Indeed, today, lenders are just responsible for servicing and refinancing—the federal government handles all loan origination.
It’s the quintessentially American way of solving problems in the most expensive way possible. Instead of actually addressing social and racial injustices. we tell disadvantaged people to go to college and then make it illegal to deny them outrageous student loans on the basis of their financial ability to repay. The primary beneficiaries are, of course, the petit bourgeoisie—school professors, administrators, etc.
You're right about the gratuitous overbuilding, administrative bloat and salaries, but at most schools athletics is a self-funding enterprise, via ticket sales, advertising and sponsorships, merchandise, and donations.
Quoting the article: "Going to college doesn't guarantee a good job, far from it, but the data show that not going dooms most young people to an increasingly shallow pool of the very crappiest, lowest-paying jobs. There's a lot of stick, but not much carrot, in the education game. [...] the squeeze on the un-degreed grows tighter, increasing further that original negative incentive: Don't go to college, and you'll be standing on soup lines by age 25. "
The article itself explains why teachers and parents and students themselves still seek degree - because alternative is nothing good either.
It is competitions and if you dont compete, you loose for sure.
It's still possible to make a good living in a skilled trade. Welder, electrician, pipe fitter, etc. Especially if you're entrepreneurial and can start your own business after getting some experience. It requires education and hard work but not college.
Their point is that you don't need to go to college to be a software developer, and if you're trying to say that you need to be Bill Gates-level lucky to get away with that, that's a really dubious argument.
The problem will he solved once there are no more young people. We already have less then two children per couple on average, so it is getting there.
Then again, if your logic makes you claim that majority of population is wrong for having children (including lower middle class and employed honest workers) then maybe the problem is elsewhere.
Agree. If an economy is structured where the population can't even sustain itself, that's a sign of a huge systemic problem. People sure like to parrot that though.
Well between birth and college life might happen that reduces income - consider injury, illness, or death.
Personally, I don't think parents should pay for higher education. I wouldn't have taken mine seriously if I weren't paying for it myself. It gave me a healthy dose of the value of money.
The employers are free to require whatever they'd like for a job. But the teachers and parents are often uneducated on the topic themselves and parrot the prevailing wisdom that a college degree is essential.
Neither of my parents have a college degree, but they were insistent that their children got one - any one. It's the prevailing blue collar logic and it's hard to shake it when you're surrounded by it.
Interestingly, Germany had a push over the last thirty years or so towards requiring higher education for jobs that have historically never needed that.
As an example, a large chunk of my classmates did not study after the Abitur (which is the qualification for university studies and can be received with about 18 from the Gymnasium – our highest secondary school). Many went to local banks and became bank tellers and back office workers.
Bank tellers used to have "Mittlere Reife", which you get at the Realschule (in the middle of secondary schools) with about 16. There are still bank tellers with Mittlere Reife, but since the banks can choose to get young people with Abitur, they do so.
Becoming a baker or a joiner used to be the domain of young people who graduated from the Hauptschule – the lowest of the secondary schools. Today, many are from the Realschule.
Still, the apprenticeship system works, even if the standards have been raised.
Even more interesting to young people who think about going to college (because that's the audience we're talking about here) is the "dual system", where they study half of the time, but with lower academic expectations (less theorizing, more practical learning), and spend the other half in a company where they can immediately put their new knowledge to practice. They are paid by the company (enough to move out from home) and are obligated to work at that company after graduation for a few years. It is quite a bit like apprenticeship, but for white-collar jobs.
It is less prestigious than studying at a university, but companies love those students, because they are well-integrated into the company from the beginning, and some of those students do have rather fast careers afterwards.
> Still, the apprenticeship system works, even if the standards have been raised.
The standards for these jobs surely have raised a litle - but mostly the standards of Hauptschulabschluss and Realschulabschluss (I don't know how to translate these words into English) have declined. Things that every graduate of a Hauptschule, say, 40-50 years ago, had to know, say, in writing German text or numeracy, can not be assumed anymore. So the problem in my opinion mostly lies in the decline of standards in schools instead of new, harder requirements to become an apprentice.
And another way of looking at things is this problem would not exist if the government did not pass special rules that affect student loans, and only student loans.
I think there are lots of sources of failure that lead up to the problem, but the vast majority are of good intentions. It's not hard to see why the government decided to create special rules. It enabled lenders to all but completely ensure profit on loans meaning that anybody would have access to university, regardless of financial background. And that's a good thing.
Parents and teachers are also acting with good intentions. I would fully recommend college to anybody. I would certainly recommend move to Europe for it now a days, but the value of an education is immense. Access to the resources (physical, personnel, and intangible) of a campus is something that can open up vast new possibilities for an individual. And being around a more competitive group of individuals than you'd experience in high school can help ensure people stand a better chance of reaching their full potential.
And then there are employers. Today in the US it's somewhat paradoxical that we have a genuinely low unemployment rate yet also most decent job offers get more resumes than employers can handle. All other things being equal, a person with a college background is going to be more desirable than somebody without one. So why not require it and cut those CVs down to a more manageable size?
Perhaps the only people acting in bad faith are lenders. But like you mentioned they're just opportunists. And cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug. They're not exploiting anybody. They're providing equal access to education for everybody in mutually beneficial agreements. At least that's what they'll convince themselves of.
What I'm getting at here is that trying to point fingers at one person or another isn't really productive. Who cares who's fault it is? There's a problem that needs fixing is all that matters.
> Who cares who's fault it is? There's a problem that needs fixing is all that matters.
I care. We can't properly address the problem or learn from our mistakes if we don't know the cause.
We had colleges before federal student loan subsidies. Our parents went to school and paid for tuition with part time jobs. Then we had them, and decades later, the chickens have come home to roost. This is not rocket science--it's Economics 101.
We are letting bad ideas off the hook by not focusing on what the problem is, and as long as we let people pass blame, we can expect to continue seeing it again and again.
Determining a cause and attributing responsibility are not the same. One can argue that just about everybody is responsible:
- Government giving special laws that are able to be abused.
- Lenders utilizing said laws to maximize their personal benefit
- Universities raising costs far outside of any notion of need
- Students taking out loans they can't repay
- Parents/schools encouraging students to go to college, even for low value degrees
- Employers requiring degrees for jobs that don't really require them.
And while each of these can be attacked, they can be just as easily defended. When you try to attribute blame, it's going to end up being horribly subjective and more like to turn into a witch hunt than anything else. And it's also going to be incredibly partisan. For instance people who chose to not attend university would completely understandably prefer to blame students. Students who went to university would probably prefer to blame universities or lenders. Who's right? There's no objective answer.
What is clear is the cause of the problem -- students are taking out loans that will not be able to be reasonably paid back. And so too are there plenty of solutions. Blame plays no part other than to divide people.
Sure--I read the parent comment. I have no doubt there will always be someone else people blame when liberal policies fail, but lenders, universities, students, parents, and employers acting rationally in their own self-interest is not some strange unforeseeable possibility.
We have to be able to acknowledge when bad ideas don't work well. This is one of those times.
Ah okay! I must have misunderstood you. The implication (to me) of seeking to attribute blame was the typical game of trying to pick the most apparently malevolent actor, not actually thinking about why we failed to foresee quite foreseeable consequences in the past. I'd completely agree that trying to figure out why we didn't foresee this (to help us prevent making such mistakes in the future) would be very helpful.
The real criminals here are teachers, parents, and employers, who have created a culture where people are compelled to get completely unnecessary higher education. Here, you need a college degree to be an administrative assistant in an office. In Germany, in contrast, young people can get many white collar jobs after age 16, plus three years of apprenticeships during which they get paid.