Solution: go to college in Scandinavia, where they will pay for your schooling and even your rent!
Stanley Choad
· 11 months ago
Get that fucking Top Posts widget the hell off my screen.
joe
· 11 months ago
i can't read the article with that top posts thing. it's covering it up. why is there no freaking close button on it?
Marcelo
· 11 months ago
Same here on Safari, freaking "top posts" thing moving around and keeping in the WORST place possible, just in the middle of the text! No top posts widget under firefox, though.
Put please, PLEASE, get it off!
alandipert
· 11 months ago
safari users paste this into your address bar to kill that thing:
Your "top posts" widget makes the page completely unusable in Safari. You might want to look into fixing that.
jd
· 11 months ago
Sorry for commenting out of context - get rid of that top posts script. annoying. no close button.
Steve
· 11 months ago
Get that HORRIBLE widget off the site please! It's useless and it's totally obscuring the view!
buglewood
· 11 months ago
jamtoday
· 11 months ago
Hey guys - I'm sorry about the Safari problem. I'm almost always using FF3, so I didn't get that bug.
There should be no sidebar at all, for any browsers.
Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Adam
· 11 months ago
Interesting post....how long before people start skipping college to go to 'OpenSource-U' online?
Jorge monasterio
· 11 months ago
Or kids will go abroad for an education. Americans are already "medial tourists", "retirement tourists", and just plain bad tourists. What's a few more education tourists?
PerfectZero
· 11 months ago
Interesting perspective, but wouldn't education prices have to be significantly higher than, not approaching, their intrinsic value to be "at variance?" Since the present value of a college education has been higher than the cost (historically, and probably still currently), you could consider higher education itself as a form of arbitrage. It makes sense then that the cost would eventually increase to equal to the present value, but I'm not sure they're high enough yet to label it a bubble.
AJ
· 11 months ago
Since the price of attending college is going up, won't more people go to colleges to take just the classes they find interesting or useful or pertinent to their lives? Why go to school to take underwater basket-weaving when all I really want to know about is metal-smithing? Perhaps, colleges will offer a degree program but there will be more ala carte students.
Ethan
· 11 months ago
That isn't arbitrage. Also the appearance of arbitrage opportunity is in no way a sign of a bubble.
slag
· 11 months ago
I don't think this is quite right. To my understanding, the reason that tuition costs are rising is that states are already cutting funding for higher ed (and have been for a long time), thereby passing more cost onto the student. The real cost of education isn't exploding--just the cost to the student. Consequently, the first point--if I understand it correctly--doesn't really wash.
jamtoday
· 11 months ago
There's a lot of reasons why the costs of education is rising (and it's rising at private schools as well, so its really not just about public funding) but the fact is that the rise of OERs of various kinds means that college is starting to see some serious competition.
And once it becomes increasingly acceptable to not attend college, that may lead to a snowball effect. After all, many people now go to college just because they're scared to proudly claim to have not earned a college degree.
slag
· 11 months ago
Maybe. But I'm not quite ready to buy into an "education bubble" scenario just yet. The last study I read indicated that real cost per student is actually decreasing while tuition rates are increasing (institutions directing more money to research instead of teaching as a result of decreased public funding). And as for private schools, their tuition rates rely so strongly on perceived value that I'm not at all surprised to see their tuition rates raise with public school rates. Real costs vs. tuition rates is the sticking point for me. That said, anything is possible.
John Robb
· 11 months ago
For example, over a nine year period Purdue's contribution from the state increased 25% (ahead of inflation). During the same period, student costs increase three fold (300%). The student population went up only slightly (low single digits).
Did the state gut their funding? No. Did the quality of the education go up 3 fold? No.
Bubble.
Ann
· 11 months ago
Perhaps we will see more freedom of movement in US students. Right now, there are still a lot of students who come to the US to study. Perhaps US students will start looking abroad? I pay significantly less for my education in Europe than I would in the US, and I find the quality better as well (I've tried both). Of course as an EU citizen I pay less than an American student would (around 1000 euros a year for grad school), but the foreign students still get a much cheaper deal than they would in the US (I believe it's around 10x what I pay).
san1t1
· 11 months ago
As an employer I am generally more impressed with the 21 year old who has been working for 3 years, got some real world experience,and on the job vocational learning under his belt, than I am with the guy who went and pissed away the college fund his parents saved for years, barely scraped through university, only to walk out of it with massive debt and a 2:2 in some wishy washy liberal arts degree. Higer academic education should be reserved for academics - ie <%5 population. Everyone else. Get vocational training on the job and start on that career ladder early. A government policy like that in the UK where 50% of kids are supposed to get a degree is just daft.
Oh, unless the idea is really just that you want to be trapped in the debt cycle as early as possible. In which case, go study! Worry later!
steveellwood
· 11 months ago
... pretty much the advice I gave my children. Unless you know *why* you want to go to college - and for what - work, enjoy debt-free life and study at night school/day release.
san1t1
· 11 months ago
course, all that said, as a recruiter (rather than an employer) with '000s of CVs to go through, I still use the college/degree/rank as my first pass sift. Especially when the CEO of the company I'm recruiting for says "I only want folk who went to the same uni as me and my friends)
steveellwood
· 11 months ago
"Especially when the CEO of the company I'm recruiting for says "I only want folk who went to the same uni as me and my friends" " Why, does he think he's not going to make any friends...
If the alleged CEO said that, they'd deserve shooting.
ryan
· 11 months ago
absolutely agree. when i chose where to go to college, i chose a place based upon value not prestige because i have seen this coming for a while. i actually got paid (net income) close to $7k/yr to go to an obscure, small public university here in south carolina, got an internship with a huge software company and after graduation got a great job with another fortune 100 company. the education system is a total waste -- i can't believe people actually accumulate hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to go to school. were i a potential employer, in my eyes this would deem them unfit to make sound decisions.
Jan
· 11 months ago
The drive in increased college fees is partly due to the expectation that the funds expended will be returned in increased earnings. You rightly point out that this isn't always happening. The problem is that perception is lagging reality.
In my office we often help clients rethink the college issue. Most have NO IDEA how long that student loan is going to follow them. Most have only a vague notion of what their proposed educational path is going to pay them when they are finished. Most have spent more time filling in their info at FAFSA than have looked at applying for scholarships. Some have never considered the option of doing college without debt. The credit crunch is helping us communicate the necessity for making a deliberate financial choice rather than an emotional one.
Whether the cost of education is really increasing or whether it is a perceived increase due to drops in state and federal funding doesn't matter to the consumer. If gas goes up to $4 per gallon you make different choices about driving regardless of whether the increase is due to a real increase in the cost of gas or an increase in the taxes on that gas. There has to be a real financial reward for choosing to sacrifice 4-5 years of income and work experience. If colleges charge so much for the education that the net result means zero benefit over a lifetime, then fewer people will choose college.
Glen Moriarty
· 11 months ago
The financial crisis, as well as the teacher shortage in urban and rural areas, will also amplify the move to online education. Disrupting Class my Christenen and Horn provides a plethora of data to really back this up.
We've been working on a startup to address these issues for the last several months. For more info, check out our blog and sign up for our beta!
"The government is forced, over the objections of established institutions, to confer credentials to graduates that pass standardized tests (in fact, comparisons quickly show that these graduates are the equal and/or better than traditionally educated competitors). The business world embraces them."
Those employees would likely have a more entrepreneurial and thrift (cost saving) mind set as well, having a lower intrinsic expectation of the cost of things that a traditional graduate would have .
sjburnt
· 11 months ago
medicine and law? I can't speak for medicine, but lawyers are a dime a dozen. I have worked contract projects where they paid more for paralegals than attorneys. over 100 grand in law school loans - just law school, not undergrad - are hard to pay when your yearly Gross income is less than fifty grand.
if they allowed bankruptcy for law school loans the line would be huge.
Dan
· 11 months ago
It is NOT an education bubble that is about ready to implode, rather it is a historically unprecedented debt bubble that is just beginning to implode. It is no coincidence that a plot of the Dow over the same period (1980-2007) looks very similar to the plot of college tuition costs, rising from around Dow 1000 in 1982 to Dow 14,000 in 2007. A plot of real estate prices looks similar. All were fueled by an incredibly unprecedented expansion of personal, corporate, state, and national debt. And that debt expansion mostly took place over the last three decades, from the day that Ronald Reagan took office. As history shows, every major depression has been immediately preceded by a rapid expansion of credit and debt, and the one we are headed into is no different, except in size. Deflationary depressions are necessary events that occur about once every century for the purpose of liquidating a sufficient amount of debt so that society can become productive again. Depressions redistribute wealth and assets, from the inefficient in society to the efficient in society. Debt destroys the productivity of individuals, corporations, and nations. Deflation is the pruning needed to restore productivity. The national debt now stands at around $52 trillion and the Fed's recent attempts to reignite inflation by trading their T-notes, bonds, and bills for $2 trillion of inflated debt "assets" of failing banks will do nothing but help guarantee that the depression is deeper and longer, as that huge mountain of debt implodes. The winners in all this will be those few individuals and institutions (including educational) that stayed debt-free and are then able to pick up the assets of bankrupt individuals, corporations, and governments for pennies on the dollar at the bottom of the deflationary cycle. It is NOT a given that a student must go into debt to get a college degree today. All three of my children graduated from a reputable state college, not only 100% debt-free, but having saved up several thousand dollars in the process, and that with little to no financial help from my wife and I. They graduated with honors, with degrees in physics, nursing, and aerospace engineering. Yes, they worked their rear-ends off, maintaining good grades and working part time jobs to pay for tuition. But they are debt free and productive. My oldest just finished up his PhD and socked a few more thousand in the bank during the process. If you came out of college with loads of tuition debt you should be ashamed of yourself! Nor is it a given that one must go into debt to buy a house. I just finished building a house 100% debt-free while working another job. I agree with the writer that traditional educational institutions are about to be significantly hurt, but that is because both they and their staff are in debt up to their eyeballs. But there are a few debt-free educational institutions that are about to win big-time when these troubled institutions go bankrupt. If you're a lawyer, bankruptcy law should be good business the next several years. But while you're practicing, live on beans and rice and pay off those college debts. We're about to see a massive redistribution of wealth, from the inefficient to the efficient!
AB
· 10 months ago
I work with University of the People, which aims to provide a long term solution for this very situation. Visit the website www.UoPeople.org for more information.
All Comments
No top posts widget under firefox, though.
Put please, PLEASE, get it off!
javascript:document.getElementById("sideposts").style.setProperty("display", "none");
There should be no sidebar at all, for any browsers.
Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
And once it becomes increasingly acceptable to not attend college, that may lead to a snowball effect. After all, many people now go to college just because they're scared to proudly claim to have not earned a college degree.
Did the state gut their funding? No.
Did the quality of the education go up 3 fold? No.
Bubble.
Oh, unless the idea is really just that you want to be trapped in the debt cycle as early as possible. In which case, go study! Worry later!
Why, does he think he's not going to make any friends...
If the alleged CEO said that, they'd deserve shooting.
In my office we often help clients rethink the college issue. Most have NO IDEA how long that student loan is going to follow them. Most have only a vague notion of what their proposed educational path is going to pay them when they are finished. Most have spent more time filling in their info at FAFSA than have looked at applying for scholarships. Some have never considered the option of doing college without debt. The credit crunch is helping us communicate the necessity for making a deliberate financial choice rather than an emotional one.
Whether the cost of education is really increasing or whether it is a perceived increase due to drops in state and federal funding doesn't matter to the consumer. If gas goes up to $4 per gallon you make different choices about driving regardless of whether the increase is due to a real increase in the cost of gas or an increase in the taxes on that gas. There has to be a real financial reward for choosing to sacrifice 4-5 years of income and work experience. If colleges charge so much for the education that the net result means zero benefit over a lifetime, then fewer people will choose college.
We've been working on a startup to address these issues for the last several months. For more info, check out our blog and sign up for our beta!
www.nixty.com
Those employees would likely have a more entrepreneurial and thrift (cost saving) mind set as well, having a lower intrinsic expectation of the cost of things that a traditional graduate would have .
if they allowed bankruptcy for law school loans the line would be huge.