Cost of college and financial aid

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What I mean is that I don't think the university is absorbing the cost themselves when they give out scholarships. They find someone else to pay, even though (at least at my university) they have more than enough money lying around to grant scholarships to students on the university dime.

Well if one cannot afford to pay back the college loans what makes you think they can afford to do that?

Yeah, aside from morality it is rather difficult to travel too quickly when your broke, although by foot a person can walk 3 miles per hour, and if they walked about 8 hours each day they could clear 24 miles in a day, calling a season 90 days they could travel 2,160 miles in a single season. The main concerns then would be potable water, food, a safe sleeping area, and cleanliness. If those necessities are met then such travel is possible. Still is bad to avoid a debt even if the debt is absurd, although with how artificially inflated and nearly impossible to pay it would be difficult to really think badly of someone trying to escape such a game of arbitrary numbers.

It is PRECISELY that.

We saw it in the housing bubble and other similar "cheap credit" cycles.

When it is easy for someone to come up with the money to pay for something, the prices go up. The inability to pay for a good or service checks the price asked for by the seller.

If a college class cost $10,000 to take but people are lucky to have $3,000/year to spare, few would go to school. If nobody made student loans, schools would go out of business if they didn't make their service more economically viable to the marketplace.

Even if you allowed academic loans, if you would have to be like any other loan granted back in the 1950s...you had to show you had a solid ability to repay the debt or you got nothing. For decades, there was a presumption that repayment was never an issue, even in the last 10-20 years when academia and student lenders KNEW the economy and job market was going downhill fast. The change to the bankruptcy code to exempt student loans from bankruptcy discharge was done by the pressure of the student loan industry that KNEW where things were headed, and that was done over 10 years ago, but they kept telling borrowers that there would be little problem getting a good job to repay the debt they were taking on.

Eliminate the "easy" money for education and the cost will come down. Colleges would stop all the fancy frills and be basic institutions of education. Alternative and competitive means of job skill training would emerge (already seen in community colleges that can offer certificate programs for specific job skills) for those with limited means who want credentials for a job field they want to enter.

How can anyone insure they will for sure be able to pay back college loans? especially in this economy.

Exactly.

Early on, when education was less frills and much cheaper, and fewer had a degree, you could borrow for an education and be ensured that if you tried to get a decent job, you'd find one and be able to pay back those loans.

A good 20 years or so ago, that reality was vanishing, those in "the know" knew it was so, but they didn't want the up and coming generations of students to realize that.

Now it is apparent.

Education has value, but it is quantifiable, and now education is too expensive for the benefits it conveys.

Well what am I supposed to do other than college? I kind of suck at most entry level simple jobs that one can get without a college degree because of social skills I lack, slow processing and other things. So if I do end up completeing a degree I feel like that would help a lot more than just depending on hopefully finding at least a minimum wage job I can actually hold for more than a month. I guess I just feel like there has to be a way to lower college costs without putting policies in effect to prevent people in my situation from going to college.

There is: properly support the public universities that already exist, and make them more affordable and higher-quality. Then private universities will feel the pressure to stop charging such high tuition rates. In many ways, the University of California/CalState system is a good model, but they need to go farther.

I like the community college I go to, and there is an actual four year college on the campus as well...that I will be going to if I decide to pursue a full degree...provided they don't cut all the loans and grants and I don't find something else I would rather do.

I am part of the UC system. It was a very good model but the support is disappearing right before our eyes. When I started two years ago, the tuition was only about $9,000 a year. Now the tuition is almost $14,000.

These public universities, almost every one in the top 100 of the world, are now having public support for them dwindled. These schools depended on revenue from the state to support them.

The quality of our UC is going down. Esteemed and high quality professors are going elsewhere because of the cuts to their paycheck. The school, despite cut classes and professors, lets more students in. Now students are fighting for the same classes everyone requires which effects the academic integrity of the school. People cannot graduate on time due to the limited classes offered. The state and government puts more of a cost on the student by offering loans instead of financial aid.

The UC system is becoming a mess. Cal state is not much better.

I think this may be a nationwide problem. I know the public universities here in PA are going through similar troubles. Federal funding has been reduced substantially and tuition hikes are averaging about 10%/year. Grants are down too so loans are up. It's a real cause for concern.

Well, right, recent events have caused problems... but California's public universities were a beautiful model for many years. There were the Cal State schools that offered dirt cheap, easily accessible, and still reasonably good education, and for the more "elite" level the University of California offered much more prestigious programs, still relatively cheaply for in-state students. If support for those institutions was maintained and increased, rather than gutted as it has been recently, UC would still be a great beacon. They still are an excellent system, much better than what was available in my home state, but they seem to be going down. The important point is, we know that it is possible to provide an excellent public education. A commitment to delivering on that would go a long way.

I remember the old Soviet Union wanting departing emigrants to pay back the cost of their university educations, too.

Morality be damned.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Does_emigrati ... _loan_debt

AMEN!

Saw this on Professor Mead's sight about the troubling trend of students taking out loans, going deep into debt, and Universities spending more on frillies than improving eduction services.

"The War Against the Young Part II"

The rest can be read at:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/ ... g-part-ii/

I remember Candidate Obama pledging to fix the student loan mess. Not a peep from President Obama. The Student Loan Sharks are just making too much money.

If you think that it is a matter of "morality", how much "morality" do you think that the Student Loan Industry actually possesses?

All of the morality in the world, plus five bucks, will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Every millionaire in the world knows that. Donald Trump knows that. Just ask him.

Morality is for chumps like us.