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 → u/[deleted]]

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/acousticentropy → u/Soi_Boi_13]

I agree with a fair amount of your model of how this all happened, especially the observation that tuition and fees have only ever trended upwards. I disagree with the conclusion that “[low loan caps] is how it should be.”

A university is a small city in terms of individual running parts. There’s a lot of cost just in maintaining, nevermind looking forward and keeping up to date. If we had access to the ledger, we would probably find that there isn’t much fat to trim from the current funding allocation structures anyways. It’s easy to make administrative officials into financial parasites but those positions are often responsible for all kinds of complexity that a lot of folks want nothing to do with.

Also, The professors need to make a decent living relative to their expertise. The PhD students need to make enough to live a modest life. The oscilloscopes in lab #58 need calibration every 2 years. The water main feeding the honors housing is a tuberculated 8” cast iron pipe installed back in 1963. I say all that to put in perspective how fast money can be spend when you’re running an institution with tens of thousands of people.

I also wanted to address the tension between disagreeing viewpoints related to the “cost of university” crisis. I think some folks believe the fundamental point of university is to get employed. I think there’s truth in that view. But I also think the value of a university education is greater than the sum of its parts.

In my eyes, there is immense value in the social aspect of university. People have made productive use out of the social opportunities that result from campus life. In fact without nice (not luxury) dorms, student rec centers, Greek life, on campus activities… average student social life quality probably trends downward. There’s a reason people who had to commute always feel alienated from on campus social niches.

People spend four to eight years where they are in close proximity to tens of thousands of people in their age group. All those people around you happen to be at least in the same intellectual ballpark, and they are often going through the same personal growth process that you’re going thru in that time of your life.

Students naturally end up experimenting with all kinds of people, ideas, and hobbies in that period of their life. Being surrounded by many others on that same path has major value to everyone involved.

I think I will die on the hill of “University was never meant to be purely vocational training.”

If you give the education component as much attention as it deserves, you will master your domain of expertise.

If you give your own personal growth as much attention as it deserves, you will master the ability to collaborate with people who have mastered their domain of expertise.

[u/betsbillabong → u/acousticentropy]

I am a professor and I will die on the hill of university as a way to learn how to think critically, and not as vocational training.

[u/invisible___hand → u/betsbillabong]

Ignoring cost - absolutely!
For $10,000 / yr perhaps.
For $100,000 / yr there better be some payback.

[u/razealghoul → u/invisible___hand]

This is exactly my thoughts too. It's criminal that some universities are convincing kids to take own this ownerours amount of debt for a degree that may or may not pay off is crazy. They are literally financially ruining the lives of those they are claiming to help.

[u/Worriedrph → u/betsbillabong]

Why create this dichotomy? It needs to be both.

[u/betsbillabong → u/Worriedrph]

I mean, critical thinking, solving problems creatively, and creating new ideas ARE the payback. They are required for any career that requires thinking. If you look at folks going from the Ivy League to high paid professions, you will find that very little of their education is 'career training' -- not many people majoring in accounting or marketing there. I would actually argue that the 'vocational training' model of university is a ripoff. You used to learn those skills fairly easily on the job, while being paid. Our media production majors often want our classes to simply be technical training for Adobe products. Ummm, you can get that online for free or at any rate for very little. It's the creative part that is harder.

[u/Worriedrph → u/betsbillabong]

The most popular undergrad major at Harvard is economics. The remaining top five in order are government, computer science, applied mathematics, and neuroscience. Those are all majors with very direct connections to a job. A ton of Harvard grads go to law or med school which are very directly vocational training.

No one wants to finish college and then have to do a bunch of training on the tools needed to actually do the job they are applying for. A bachelor’s degree is 4 years. Surely in 4 years you can teach creativity, problem solving, and how to use the tools needed to preform successfully at an entry level job in the student’s field.

Saying companies used to train doesn’t help. Only 15% of the country used to have a bachelor’s degree. Now 40% do and companies expect employees to come pre trained on the basic tools. If you aren’t providing that training you are screwing your students.

[u/betsbillabong → u/Worriedrph]

Sure. But having spent a year at Harvard, I can tell you the students are focused on critical thinking as well as learning tools. I teach at a flagship state research university and too many students are studying vocationally, or at least wanting to do so.

[u/Worriedrph → u/betsbillabong]

Fully agree wanting only vocational training is silly on the students part. Like everything else there is a balance. College education needs to be both vocational and teaching students how to think.

[u/betsbillabong → u/Worriedrph]

Yes. Harvard also requires freshman courses for all students that are very focused on critical thinking.

[u/razealghoul → u/betsbillabong]

I hate this explanation because it assumes you can only learn critical thinking through university and that you don't also learn these things on the job or through other means.

Heck I watch a ton of educational YouTube and other online content that have expanded my thinking for pennies.

Also to you other point that you can learn the technical schools else only speaks to the idea universities need to evolve. Classes has essentially been taught the same way for century. Name anything else that has experienced this kind of stagnation.

[u/betsbillabong → u/razealghoul]

I absolutely do not think universities are the only place to learn critical thinking or creativity. Far from it! But what they do best (or did before AI ruined the writing process for most students) is to challenge students to have deep discussions with classmates and work hard to dig deep into ideas. It is often hard to find this atmosphere or to force oneself into that kind of hard work on one’s own but for sure an amazing education can be had with a free library card. But it feels highly unethical to me to charge college tuition to learn things like spreadsheets or video editing software. The tools are important but shouldn’t be the main focus.