most of my GED,

That explains a lot...

And my dogs went to obedience school which I paid cash for. I don't have human children.

Oh, look at that, the guy who can't even make it through one online English course without bitching on the Forum is making fun of the kid who has a GED. Really classy.

How about sticking to the actual argument, which you're clearly on the right side of, if you don't get sidetracked with stupid comments.

"not to duct tape it and flip the switch. "

Somehow I doubt that was actually what you meant, but I'll let you lie like your idols in the Democratic Party.

I just meant it explained alot about his long winded diatribes. He is over compensating. As far as the course, it wasn't English, it was Management Psychology and she ended up liking my rebuttal to the "loaded question" giving me an A in the course.

I don't want my tax dollars going to pay for some liberal arts major barista's debt because (s)he got a useless degree.

@obi

If this bill is passed, why would colleges have any incentive to lower tuition and why would students have any incentive to go to colleges they can afford?

^Massive +1

"The cost of higher education is a serious problem. It is made more serious by the fact that people are idiots. Pay $60k a year for a degree that has an average starting salary of $30k and you're surprised when you're crippled by debt? Take some responsibility for your stupid mistakes and don't make me pay for it because I had the sense to go to a school my family and I could afford."

But you have to get that job somehow, abgemacht...

Suppose you're doing what I'm (unfortunately) doing, teaching for college...

Isn't it a rather conservative bit of fiscal advice that "you need to spend money to make money?" I'm NOT advocating for taking a 4-year joy ride at a party school and then being shocked that your low-paying job can't pay off the five or six-figure debt...

Bu if you're seriously pursuing a career--and let's be honest, the job market's not as open as it used to be, and not everyone's suited for every task...I was pretty decent with basic science in college, but I'm terrible with math, as people here will attest, and "Try harder" isn't always the answer...there are some people who are just not very good at math, and some who are just bad with words, and so on.

So it's not as if people can just instantly change educational tracks to suit what jobs are open or what pays the best out of college nowadays.

I don't want to be a teacher, but it was pretty much that or law school, and 1. That's even more expensive and 2. I don't have the patience to deal with the most piddling of shit with people...which I will as a teacher, but at least I can...no, well, that sucks too...um...it's less expensive...and has more Shakespeare. :p

You do what you have to do to get by, and sometimes, that means paying a lot of money for a degree that won't pay a lot to begin with...and again, that's not just fine art degrees or having a Bachelor's in Art Appreciation or whatever.

@obi

What you say would be true if it was the way the world worked, but it's not. Look up studies on ROI of colleges. Expensive schools have worse ROI than cheap schools (with a few exceptions). Their price is not economically justifiable. *YOU ARE LOSING MONEY BY GOING TO AN EXPENSIVE SCHOOL*

Become a technical writer. Starting salary is a hell of a lot more than school teacher. But you don't get your summers off. IT (and tech writers are part of IT) has one of the lowest unemployment rates. When the rest of the nation was double digits, we were 7%.

"I don't want my tax dollars going to pay for some liberal arts major barista's debt because (s)he got a useless degree."

1. I'm getting REALLY sick of the liberal arts being wholly classified as useless--there ARE useless liberal arts degrees, a lot of them, I'm just saying, I think it's unfair to pick on the entire field--but that's another story.

2. Unless you're prepared to argue that more of the students who are facing crippling student debt studied Shakespeare and Van Gogh rather than Engineering and Chemistry, that's not fair at all, ALL different kinds of college students are affected here, REGARDLESS of major (those test tubes and doctors from lands with better educational systems than our own don't pay for themselves, ya know!)

Obi would be an awful Tech Writer (sorry).

I'm prepared to defend #2. STEM degrees have significantly higher starting salaries and fast track pay raises because they are in demand. So yes, STEM degrees are a smarter ROI.

@abgemacht:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/schifrin/2014/03/27/the-50-top-roi-colleges-2014-the-grateful-grads-index/

Princeton tops the list there, along with quite a few other expensive schools...

But granting your point for the moment--what about someone like me, who goes to a state school?

If your argument is against going to an Ivy League school when you can't afford an Ivy League, then, with some reservations--I still like to think talent should win out, but then again, talent should also be able to find and win scholarships and financial aid, so those exceptions to the rule can be considered here--I agree.

But sometimes the cost of a degree and the salary you get starting out don't match, even if you're not going to a fancy university or party school...but you NEED that degree in order to get that salary, because that's the best starting salary you're likely to make.

Well, it's midnight. Time permitting, I'll get on tomorrow off and on during the day. Things haven't been as hectic lately...

Move to Seattle where minimum wage is 30k a year... Then you can flip burgers and have a possible management career without spending 100k or more.

'night y'all!

@obi

I'll return to the ROI point in a moment.

Based on what I know about you, I think you did everything right. You went to a CC and then a state school. You're in a field you like and are good at. You have plans to get a decent paying job in a field that is important. The fact that you are getting fucked by the cost is a failing of society, not you, and something needs to be done. Unfortunately, I just think this bill is going to hurt people like you in the future, not help them.

"STEM degrees have significantly higher starting salaries and fast track pay raises because they are in demand. So yes, STEM degrees are a smarter ROI."

I'm not arguing that point, I'm saying that the cost of a STEM degree is pretty expensive too, AND that STEM fields are so competitive now that you NEED to go somewhere good for future job prospects, and good, for better or for worse, correlates to name brand recognition--

If three candidates, equally qualified, apply for a STEM job, and one went to MIT, one went to UC Davis (a University of California school that's big on the sciences) and one went to a Cal State...

Who would you expect to get the job, if the only distinguishing features (their GPAs are the same, their prior jobs, everything) are those degrees?

STEM degrees make more, but they also cost more.

By contrast, a degree in the Humanities will get you less to start, but you can get a decent Humanities degree education from a Cal State (like me) and still get a decent job at a college or university somewhere.

@obi

The way that dip calculates ROI is obnoxiously inadequate. I'll find something better.

"By contrast, a degree in the Humanities will get you less to start, but you can get a decent Humanities degree education from a Cal State (like me) and still get a decent job at a college or university somewhere."

Uh, not you can't. You *just* said you need an MS to do anything. That isn't true in Engineering.

And I actually don't know what a tech writer does (unless it's the obvious and write about technology-related fields?)

I've seen jobs for that on the freelance site I get jobs from, but I really don't know a thing about technology that's pertinent or article-worthy...

The thing I've carved out the best niche writing on thus far (besides all the shit regarding testosterone pills and whatever Dr. Oz is peddling nowadays) is in real estate. I can write the same kind of website content over and over for that, I've gotten good at it, same key phrases, "cut through the red tape," "no-hassle," "we'll help you every step of the way," etc.

If I have time to study on the side, maybe I'll look into writing about that for more money or something later on for some extra cash, if I can keep pulling this off (and hey, someday I might actually be able to have firsthand experience in all the bullshit I'm talking about by actually having a place!) ;)

A tech writer writes documentation for technical fields, such as manuals, guides, instructions, etc. For instance, my girlfriend is a technical writer and she spends most of her time writing customer manuals and editing the software for grammar and consistency before it is finalized.

"Uh, not you can't. You *just* said you need an MS to do anything. That isn't true in Engineering."

But I also said you need to go to a pretty good school with a good program to get noticed in STEM (though of the four that make up that acronym, I guess Engineering might be the one least applicable to that point, given how high in demand Engineering jobs are, even compared to the others in STEM.)

I'd have to see a comparison--

State school through to a Master's in Humanities vs. University or Better to a Bachelor's.

Just going on how expensive UCs are, I'm willing to bet my education at a Cal State, even with the Master's, will be cheaper, or at least comparable.

The average starting salary for my department at the state school I went to (~20k/year) was $65k. Employment/grad school was over 90% after graduation.

obi, you're wrong on this one. Eden, 2WL, or any of the other econ majors here can back me on this.

All this bill would do is keep inflating the cost of education while punishing the rich for being rich. I mean, go ahead and tax the rich but at least do something better with it than give it to the soon-to-be-rich.

What is needed is regulation that mandates what private institutions are allowed to charge as a function of the size of their endowment. The law will have to be bulletproof so schools can't abuse the formula, but it is what's needed. That way Harvard would be forced to charge a much lower price than a school with a much smaller endowment (idk, University of Pittsburgh). It doesn't even have to be a function of the endowment, it could just be a clear upper boundary across the board. But the government needs to act. Whatever action comes will likely come from the Supreme Court, though, as the other two branches aren't doing shit about it. Kinda like how it took the court system in California to weaken the teacher's unions.

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21604201-stunning-defeat-teachers-unions-california-brown-v-board-sequel

@gold

Why should Private colleges be punished for people making poor purchasing decisions? What is wrong with just properly funding state schools?

Hm, OK, that's a fair point...a Cal State BA in English gets about 30K to start.