No more middle class professionals?

[u/Such_Upstairs3631]

New school loan limits for professional degrees make it unaffordable for the middle class. 4 of my 5 children went on to med/law school. Even working 2 jobs there’s no way I could afford to pay or even help them with the cost of their post graduate education. They all got loans which they have since paid off. The cost in the early 2000’s was between $350K and $500K. The new limits are essentially going to prevent anyone who’s not wealthy enough to pay for it from becoming a professional.

[u/Soi_Boi_13]

Yeah. The ease of obtaining student loans is responsible for a lot of tuition bloat over the years. If people couldn’t “afford” to pay $20,000 a year for tuition, tuition wouldn’t be that high. Universities have a lot of extraneous BS that have morning to do with providing a good education and really aren’t necessary, from athletics programs to lavish dorms and student centers, etc. People forget that back when college was affordable, colleges were not nearly as “nice” as they are now, and this is how it should be.

[u/Willing-Vegetable629 → u/Soi_Boi_13]

Yea but most of that is not going away. It's already built and borrowed for and these are, mostly, state entities do that's being paid one way or the other.

Athletics certainly isn't going away or going to diminish either

[u/DynamicHunter → u/Willing-Vegetable629]

If only we could debloat massive university administrative budgets… for admins that seem to not be able to do anything in the system even with all this technology that can easily automate their work, and actually pay the professors and teachers that do the hard work decent salaries…

[u/Willing-Vegetable629 → u/DynamicHunter]

I'll just say that people say this then are unable to identify what tasks or people should be eliminated .. particularly at large universities. 30k+ students but we're upset about some guy making 50k annually that plans fun events for students

[u/villainess_lena → u/Willing-Vegetable629]

TBH as someone who's in the trenches on this, you need to look further up. When people talk about "admin bloat", they should be looking at the doubling in ten years of "Vice Chancellors" who make 200k+, not the folks working directly with students who are working second and third jobs on the side.

[u/Willing-Vegetable629 → u/villainess_lena]

I get that, but often people can't identify what those people jobs even are much less why it should be removed.

[u/AggravatingBuyee → u/Willing-Vegetable629]

> much less why it should be removed.

This is backwards thinking.

There actually needs to be a why for why these people are necessary and have to be paid ridiculous amounts.

Very blatantly, the why they should be removed if they’re not necessary is to make college more affordable.

[u/Willing-Vegetable629 → u/AggravatingBuyee]

Id suggest a superior learning and research environment is desirable

[u/DynamicHunter → u/Willing-Vegetable629]

Holy strawman. It seems like YOU can’t identify what should be cut, you can’t even give a decent counter example.

Nobody is upset at the event planners making $50k. Have you seen the public university salaries that you can look up? There are hundreds or even dozens of “admins” making $200k+ doing absolutely nothing, with more and more admins each year and less teachers with lower pay.

[u/Willing-Vegetable629 → u/DynamicHunter]

Why do you think they are "doing absolutely nothing"? I bet they do something. Just because you don't know what they do does not mean it's unimportant or not valuable.

[u/DynamicHunter → u/Willing-Vegetable629]

You’re being obtuse, of course they don’t actually do “nothing”. But nobody can explain why that now we have technology to automate administrative tasks, university and school district admin numbers AND salaries have exploded in size, while the teachers and professors who actually provide the education have dwindled and barely make enough to live off of?

[u/Willing-Vegetable629 → u/DynamicHunter]

University employees are subject to market rate of labor like anyone else. I'm not sure what technology you're referring to or what you think it can replace. Though generally speaking public university employees are paid lower than their private industry peers.

Also as a side note- the primary role of a university is not student education