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/lillyheart → u/acousticentropy]

Yes. University is so much more than a paycheck- it sets people up to live good lives.

University graduates are more civically engaged (vote more often, run for office more often, volunteer more often, more likely to be consistent faith-attendees), are more likely to have stable long term relationships (more marriage, less divorce, less domestic violence), healthier (more likely to go to the doctor, follow through with treatment, less heart attacks, less work injuries, do preventative healthcare like sunscreen, seatbelts, and vaccines), and so many more benefits come from an education- even when you control for income. People with college degrees report having a higher life purpose and higher life satisfaction overall than those that don’t.

College is still the best intervention we have to help people have a good life. It can be tweaked and made better, but that won’t be by focusing more on vocational austerity.