Doesn't it come back to one basic point? The so-called "higher-education" is simply "higher-business"? I think honestly it would behoove people, and especially the young to behoove themselves to think entrepreneur rather than tradional?

We all need to understand how economics work. Even if we all have 30% higher IQ and 50% more productive, at least 20% of the population has to be poor. The reason being is a flawed capitalistic market. Since, power always needs more power, the rich won't be content to allow all of us to succeed. The powerful will always use their power to gain more power, and therefore, someone has to be in poverty. Even if we had robots to do work for us, the average poor won't be able to afford one. It seems all our economic modules can't seem to eliminate the need to dominate or use others. Therefore in the end, the capitalist will lead to the destruction of the US as the communist module led to the destruction of the USSR.

Looking at the number of millionare university presidents, it is hardly surprising that the tuition is becoming ridiculous. One of my friends graduated med school last year. The cost? 200K. Besides med, law and engineering fields of study, higher education is nothing but a joke. According to the new reccomendations of professors, it is optimal that you have a masters, a BA/BS isn't worth much anymore. What does it cost to get a BA/BS alone? 20-70K depending on the school.

What is the point of getting an education that costs more than its own value?

Better risk becoming cannon fodder in Afghanistan by joining the US Army or Marines for a few years and then become a mercenary with Xe...You can retire in a few years...

 Why not take some of the revenue generated from college sports and reduce tuition, or have universities stop purchasing real estate and sell excess real estate to reduce tuition?   

my son went to a private college 12 years ago. both he and i took out loans to pay for it. he changed his mind and never completed his degree. 12 years later we are ALMOST done paying off the loans. meanwhile he is now making great money tending bar ($300-$500 per night in tips alone),something it turns out he has a gift for. he paid a whopping couple hundred in cash for a one week bartending course.

my stepson recently graduated with a degree in poli-sci and $100,000 in debt. he has a job bagging groceries. he is 22 years old. can you imagine starting out your life with this much debt?

my daughter, who is ivy league material, has observed this and decided to pursue a 2 year agri-business degree using the 2 years of her dad's GI bill that he gave her. she will graduate with no debt and go into a industry that will never lose it's importance. she's the smart one.

What I love is the poor grammar or spelling that is in many posts on here. Here's a book to show how you can get an education without going in debt.

http://www.amazon.com/Debt-Free-Outstanding-Education-Scholarships-Mooching/dp/1591842980

I'm a university professor with 30 years experience in computer science where almost all of our graduates get a good placement right after graduation. However, I see the US over emphasizing education: we cannot afford to send 40% - 50% of our HS grads to college. Some HS grads should have enough background to earn a living at 18 years of age, AND GROW. My nephew is a millionaire with 20 months of tech school. Bill Gates is a billionaire with no college. They are driven to succeed. It is more the person than the paper: many students mistakenly think that the paper certificate is a guarantee: it is not. Persons must continue to learn and grow. Many HS grads should work for a while rather than go to college; many should start their own businesses, even if just to clean houses or plow snow. We cannot all be social workers or retail managers. Neither Europe nor Asia sends such a high percentage of HS grads to college;most of their HS grads can do good work when out of HS. The US has great opportunities for continuing ed and more HS grads should go with that track.

An education is a valuable thing to develop as a human being. School is more about selling students an intangible with very little value in the market place, and a lot about submission to someone else's needs and desires at ever-increasing prices.

Honestly, I should've stuck with trade schools rather going to a 4-year traditional college. Maybe I should start over again and go back at the age of 26 going to school in business management/IT training so I can get a job working within that field. Marketing is a creative field which isn't bad, but there aren't any available jobs anywhere! Especially in Louisiana. Already, I got to pay back Sallie Mae my loans starting in January and it's not much, but it'll hurt me in the long run because I don't have the necessary funds to pay them back. So my only option really is to find a petty job to pay back my student loans or even work while attending college (again!) My traditional college dreams are now over and I've done the community college route. Maybe I should do it again but this time, get an associate's degree or a certificate! Trade school here I come!

Somehow people keep comparing today's colleges and universities with those of the 1960's and it ain't gonna work. The whole equation has change dramatically.

Universities used to be based on three major foci: education, research, and service. Most people don't realize that about 1/3 of university PhD's worked for "soft" money --- that is, they were supported by research grants, not the university.

Now service to academia and the community have been dramatically cut back (except for football.) Research funds have virtually dried up, dropping to the lowest levels since prior to WWII. And tuition has become the major source of income for colleges and universities.

Conservatives question higher education constantly: a) is a college degree useful? b) do college-educated people form an "elite" that is taking the country to hell in the proverbial handbasket? c) why is society as a whole taxed for education when only relatively small segments of the population actually have children in school at any given level? d) are colleges and universities anti-religion? e) why is it important that the poor go to college, aren't graduates who can afford it enough? f) Aren't all universities liberal and aren't they instilling that in out kids?

This constant drumbeat of criticism has its effect in good times and hard times. Higher education has slowly been defunded since 1980 or so. K-12 has also run upon hard times with emphasis shifting from education to bureaucracy at the cost of about half of the K-12 dollar.

But academia is a hard row to hoe. It takes about 4-8 times as long to get a PhD and get to the point of independent "practice" as it takes to get an MD and 6-10 times as long as a JD. And the whole ideas of grant funding, tenure, and basic research are so poorly understood by the general public as to be dangerous to the institution itself.

I just watched as a tenured professor at a Tier 1 university turned in three students for plagiarism. But before she wrote them up, she asked a more senior professor if she should do it formally or try to handle it informally first. He had had similar problems and advised that he had tried to handle it informally and obviously failed. When she filed a notice that she would flunk the three for plagiarism (any grade other than an A or a B requires written authorization from the Dean in grad school) they "grieved" her because she discussed it with another professor without "due process." The end result was that she lost tenure and will lose her job at the end of the school year in May. The students were retroactively awarded As in her class. Long story, but it was to illustrate just how "different" a modern college education has become.

I watched a Senator from my state tell an audience of mostly rural people that when "millions of dollars" were given to professors for "research" into areas such as global warming and evolution, they they just kept the money and "went through the motions" of pretending to do research and then produced fake results that were intended to generate future grant funding. This same Senator has brought many millions into the same university system and has at least 6 buildings on campus with his name on them. He knows this is a lie, but he also knows this is what poorly educated people want to hear. (From any grant, the researchers' salaries are severely capped and the university takes a substantial percentage for "overhead.")

All of this has caused a huge dependence by universities on tuition. And increasing tuition is how they are maintaining the illusion that they are staying afloat. More and more, business models are being used by universities and education is being commoditized. Classes that used to be restricted to 20 students now have 400. A 4-year degree is now taking closer to 6 years (5.7) to complete because of manipulation of class availability. And there is constant pressure to "dumb-down" classes and admission requirements and to pass students to keep them enrolled.

And don't even get me started on football. How does a football coach earn $9 million a year in income. I watched the local football coach shut down a Tier 1 university campus for two days (along with local K-12 schools) because he wanted to do an old buddy a favor and get him some TV money by moving a game from a Saturday to a Thursday. This caused thousands of employees of the university to be faced with taking two vacation days or two days without pay. It also caused students to have to stay on campus an extra week to make up the classes without any housing. (Many plan to sleep in their cars.)

And people wonder why a college education is becoming irrelevant, far more expensive, and under constant siege by non-college-graduates and religious interests. There are few mysteries there. My state just elected a governor who contended that Pell grants and other grants-in-aid were unnecessary. His parents sold 2,000 acres of land to put him through school and he sees no reason why other parents don't just sell off some stuff in the same way.

It's bizarre and getting worse. There was a time when an American college education (and especially a PhD) was the envy of the world. But we are slipping fast into a politically correct "puppy mill" where 87% of students admit to plagiarism and 64% of students admit to texting each other exam answers during exams. A BS today is roughly equivalent of a high school diploma in 1963.

I used to live in Delaware, which has 3 counties. 70% of graduating high school students could not name and locate on a map, the three counties. I wrote a snide letter to the editor suggesting that we could improve that percentage by naming the counties Top, Middle, and Bottom. I was shocked at how many people thought it was a good idea.

One by one the candles that combined to make America a shining light to the world are being snuffed out. And probably the one that will guarantee that America's decline will continue will be the "dumbing-down" of both higher education and K-12 schools. Even if everything were fixed tomorrow, it would take 20-40 years to undo the damage that has been done to this country's educational system in the last 30 or so years.

I too took out $50,000 in student loans to get my criminal justice degree to be a "cop" as someone said.  I now work at a very progressive Dept. making $75,000 a year and have a received a tentative officer for a federal law enforcement position that will have a starting salary of $95,000.  On top of this I will only pay a fraction of my student loans back as they will be forgiven under the public service loan forgiveness program.  Considering I am putting $1500 in the bank every month after bills, food, and living expenses I would say my degree to be a "cop" was worth it lol! 

Bridget, has your husband considered serving part-time in the Army National Guard?  They need military policemen, and officers (which he could probably qualify for since he has a college degree), and they have a student loan repayment that can cover as much as $50K.  I wish only the best for you two.  Your situation sounds terribly frustrating. 

My Daughter is currently in College to become a teacher, she has one year left to get her Bachelors degree, it is what she has wanted to do her whole life and requires a college education and then raises are are based on continuing her education after getting a job. The thing I agree with most is that the problem is not what colleges are charging but rather that the problem lies in what jobs that require degrees pay. The starting salaries for teachers are deplorable! Everyone seems to have an opinion on what our children should be taught and how dedicated the teachers should be, but when you pay someone no more than close minimum wage you have to expect minimum wage employees. Pay These types of jobs what they are worth and you will see a big improvement in education as well as a reduction in defaulted student loans. Also it would be better for the economy for people to get out there and start making purchases like cars and houses but excess student loans that need paid back put delays on those. Again the problem imho is not the amount of an education but rather that with that education you get a job that barely gets you above the poverty level. I mean seriously does the manager at your local pizza place really mean more to your childs future than their elementary teacher(s)? Now want to guess who is making more money in most communities?

Loyola University Chicago = Undergraduate + Graduate School of Business. Roughly $250,000 with very little aid! RIDICULOUS!

More attention, and a more SUBSTANTIAL attention, needs to be given to the issue of student loan debt.  The superficial article here, raises statistical issue without much background. Student loan debt is as dangerous as the mortgage crisis and yet no one seems to pay much attention to it. Is it because borrowers are young and do not have a voice?

Some issues that might be examined are:

1. The fact that more women incur student loan debt as more women attain higher levels of education... but then get paid roughly 28% less than their male peers. --So the debt has even greater effect.

2. Student loans were de-regulated in the mid-90s: interest rates increased. Borrower's rights decreased. Those of us who graduated in the 90s-early 2000s pay twice as much in interest than current graduates... and did not get grandfathered in to "forgiveness" legislation passed two years ago.

3. Laws governing student loans are different than ANY OTHER financing in our country. This debt is the only debt not eliminated by bankruptcy. It also cannot be refinanced for a lower interest rate once consolidated.

4. Student loan debt easily doubles, triples, quadruples (or more!) because BOTH capitalized AND accrued interest. Again, this is different than other loans.

5. Student loan debt prohibits one from seeking advanced degrees since it is at that point unaffordable... plus the minor increase of pay with another degree is almost never offset by the amount of debt incurred.

6. One major reason people put their lives on hold (relationships, marriage, kids, owning a home) is due to the longevity of student loan debt.

7. Our new Speaker of the House, Rep. Boehner (OH), is a HUGE friend of the student loan industry.

Please start talking about this issue more!  It DOES affect MILLIONS of us in this country. Imagine what we might give back to our families, commmunities, nation, employers if only we were not slugging through a lifetime of debt.

Thanks,

A P (39 years old, still working 2-3 jobs (one "professional), single & childless, just to pay an original loan of $13,500 from 1994. I will have paid roughly $40,000 when it is paid off. I still owe $8,800. And I didn't even have a car until I was 26.)

College can be worth every dime if you follow a few simple rules:

1. Always go to community college first and get your two-year degree - then transfer to a 'real' school to get your four-year (and advanced) degree. It will save you a boatload of money, especially once you discover 2 semesters in that you s*ck at math/biology/whatever and need to rethink your career plans. Maybe you weren't put on this earth to be a surgeon. Oh well, start again..

2. You don't have to go directly to college after high school. Get a job. See how it is to work in the service/retail/minimum wage sector for a while. Pay your own rent, car payment, insurance. Are you having fun? No? Now consider what your really want to do with your life and go to college for a degree. Start back at #1 above. Even better... if you can swing it financially, volunteer. Nothing will give you better perspective on life that helping out those less fortunate than yourself. Then see #1.

3. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever attend college as an 'undecided' or 'general studies' major. If you are undecided, you aren't ready to be in college - especially a private expensive 4 year school. See #2 above. Then see #1.

4. Don't be a slacker. You are better than that. Take your collegiate career seriously and do your best. Put in the extra effort to succeed. Sure, you can party and hook up, but keep focused on why you are really there.

5. Don't take 'blowoff' classes just to fill your schedule. Sure it's tempting to fill that last 3 credits with that pass/fail art interpretation class. Don't do it. Get as much education as you can. You're paying the same price per credit hour regardless.

6. Unless you are 1000% sure you want to pursue an advanced degree (MS, PhD) and/or teach, stay away from the 'arty farty' majors and stick with the basics. No, we don't want/need a generation or corporate/legal robots graduating, but will you really use that BA in Medieval Studies with a minor in Romance Languages? (Hey, if you will use it, cool. Carry on.)

7. Respect your professors and your peers. At some point in your college career, you will need their help and you will be glad you didn't burn that bridge. Believe me.

8. Make sure to research every possible financial aid tool available: grants, scholarships and yes, loans. Do your research and make sure you know the application dates for each program (!)

I wish I would have had a list like this when I was younger. It would have saved me a fortune and more than half a decade of my life. I hope it helps someone out there.

It is too bad there isn't more attention drawn to the reason so many kids are graduating with such high debt. Like most other waning areas of our economy, college tuition is very simply being driven up because it is almost 100% subsidized by the federal government.

With the government guaranteeing loans to anyone who needs them, students are led to believe that just because they get accepted to a particular school, they have the means to attend. People don't buy anything else (with the exception of perhaps housing - where the gov't subsidized just as much) with such disregard for its price tag.

On the flip side, college boards can blindly increase tuition year over year, instead of making the hard decisions required to run any other type of business profitably. They can do this, because government guaranteed student loans are create artificial demand. Increases in college tuition will simply be me with students obtaining larger amounts of federal loans.

This cycle has perpetuated itself for several generations - Only now is there such outrage because people are realizing that there are not enough jobs to go around. Add to the mix the millions of students coming into the workforce with humanitarian and sociology degrees - What type of work were they expecting to find in the first place?

Unfortunately, rising tuition will only get worse with our inflationary economy - And the answer will simply be for politicians to promise more and more federal aid to compensate. If we thought the housing and credit crises were bad, just wait for this impending college tuition bubble to really burst.

www.throughthebrokenwindow.wordpress.com

More attention, and a more SUBSTANTIAL attention, needs to be given to the issue of student loan debt.  The superficial article here, raises statistical issue without much background. Student loan debt is as dangerous as the mortgage crisis and yet no one seems to pay much attention to it. Is it because borrowers are young and do not have a voice?

Some issues that might be examined are:

1. The fact that more women incur student loan debt as more women attain higher levels of education... but then get paid roughly 28% less than their male peers. --So the debt has even greater effect.

2. Student loans were de-regulated in the mid-90s: interest rates increased. Borrower's rights decreased. Those of us who graduated in the 90s-early 2000s pay twice as much in interest than current graduates... and did not get grandfathered in to "forgiveness" legislation passed two years ago.

3. Laws governing student loans are different than ANY OTHER financing in our country. This debt is the only debt not eliminated by bankruptcy. It also cannot be refinanced for a lower interest rate once consolidated.

4. Student loan debt easily doubles, triples, quadruples (or more!) because BOTH capitalized AND accrued interest. Again, this is different than other loans.

5. Student loan debt prohibits one from seeking advanced degrees since it is at that point unaffordable... plus the minor increase of pay with another degree is almost never offset by the amount of debt incurred.

6. One major reason people put their lives on hold (relationships, marriage, kids, owning a home) is due to the longevity of student loan debt.

7. Our new Speaker of the House, Rep. Boehner (OH), is a HUGE friend of the student loan industry.

Please start talking about this issue more!  It DOES affect MILLIONS of us in this country. Imagine what we might give back to our families, commmunities, nation, employers if only we were not slugging through a lifetime of debt.

Thanks,

A P (39 years old, still working 2-3 jobs (one "professional), single & childless, just to pay an original loan of $13,500 from 1994. I will have paid roughly $40,000 when it is paid off. I still owe $8,800. And I didn't even have a car until I was 26.)

I went to public University 25 years ago and paid $363 for a full semester plus under $200 for books per semester and lived at home. I graduated with an engineering degree. Over the past 25 years college costs have increased faster than energy and health care yet nothing is done to curb this mess. Now I face astronomical costs for my children. Our leaders have been oblivious to the middle class struggles for years. Do we need a completely bankrupt country before anything is done?

This is a far more complex situation than portrayed. There is a difference in getting training and getting an education. Colleges (real colleges) are primarily aimed at education -- which was never intended to necessarily be associated with a particular job. That's one issue. The other is the influx of all the 'colleges' (or, even worse, some call themselves 'universities') that are not providing quality education but costing the moon. Anyone wanting an education can get one. Two years at a technical college then the final twoyears can be done resonably inexpensively. It can be even more inexpensive if done over a period of time rather than the usual four years. But the key is knowing what you are getting and WHY.

I hate how we live in this country of so many opportunities yet people want to complain and make excuses. Take responsibility for the choices you make. No one is holding a gun to your head telling you that you must go to college. But college is a wonderful opportunity. If you can't make it work, don't go!

I was a first generation college graduate and racked up $28,000 in college debt when I graduated in 2005. The key to going to college is picking a degree in which will actually get you a job. If you major in German and don't plan on moving out of Arkansas, for example, then that major is more then likely going to a dead end job wise. More then likely that person will have to go back to get their Masters Degree in a completely different field that will actually get them a job.

The most frustrating thing that I found out about college is most of your classes the first two years are core classes in which you've already had previously in high school. I saw it as a waste of time and money. They are also taught by graduate students. I paid thousands of dollars and did not expect to be taught by other students. Half of those were students who could barely speak English for that matter. I wanted actual teachers for the money I was shelling out to my school.

Most of the Professors do not even want to teach which I can honestly say I witnessed first hand while being employed at the University that I attended. They only want to do research and have their graduate students teach their classes for them. It is all about politics and very few actually really do care about the students and their futures. Professors salaries are extremely high for what little teaching they actually do.

College is a gamble that is for sure. You have to take a risk and make the right decisions if you are going to shell out that kind of money. In the end, I do think that my going to college was worth the expense as I did have very good luck in the job market. It is unfortunate though that many do not have the luck that I had.

[sarcasm] Why wait until they have a mortgage to be enslaved?

80K in debt for an Engineering Degree from a private university. However i am employed and able to pay the loans. 900 bucks a month sure does hit the bottom line hard though.

Education is simply too expensive and too many individuals who shouldn't be in college are pushed into it. Not to mention spending tons of money on Arts degrees.