Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Blog 10
The debate i have identified is between the people who are attending college and paying for them in loans and putting themselves in debt. The other side is the people who decide to forgo college and work straight out of high school avioding debt. Everyone has heard of the "million dollar payoff" claiming that on average most college graduates make over a span of a lifetime one million dollars more than the high school grad. Kathy Kristof talks about how those numbers are not necassarliy true when you take into acount the amount of money that college costs about 47,000 for a four year public university for tuition room and board books and food. Kim Clark talks also about how the amount financial aid might decrease over the next couple years, but on the contrary i recieved an email today about how Obama is trying to give more finicial aid to try and lower the amount of private loans being taken out, but a women named Sallie Mae opposes the aact, the emial reading "take a swing at Sallie Mae". I have yet to research who Sallie Mae is but these are the reasons students are choosing to forgo college because of the state of the economy and the costst. Research done by Micheal Lillis showed that the cost of college and how much finiancial aid a student will receive is the biggest reason for choosing a college. Researchers such as Burdman write about how college is still worth the price. Even with the economy in the state that it is college is still producing ready students for work.
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You should definitely find out who Sallie Mae is -- and, while you are at it, you might also learn about her friend Freddy Mac. These are two government-chartered organizations, backed by the government and designed to make sure that more people have access to private loans for education or home ownership. Some question whether or not the government should be in the business of encouraging people with low incomes trying to buy a home, and the recent housing debacle may have been created by Freddy and his friends encouraging poor folks to get into the housing market. Though I have not heard similar criticism aimed at low-interest college loans, I'd be curious if some argue that Sallie Mae helps marginal students not likely to succeed at school get into debt -- or if increasing Pell grants and other "free money" alternatives might actually feed the anti-intellectual student culture we talked about early in this course.
ReplyDeleteI talked about some of the issues you raise in my blog posting on Obama's Higher Education Plan, which I drew your attention to last class.
An interesting article for you might be "Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?" published in The Chronicle of Higher Ed and given wide play in blogs and magazines. I would be curious if any academic sources take on the questions raised by the authors or address this article directly -- it was published nearly a year ago, and the bubble seems to be growing rather than bursting at the moment. Maybe college graduates from 2008 onward are going to feel the same way as people who bought a house right before the housing market tumbled.... A disturbing thought, though, fortunately, housing and education are not so parallel to each other as all that....
ReplyDeleteAlso see my latest post on the New Jobless Economy.
ReplyDeleteOh -- and one more thing. I just picked up on this trend in the way students are addressing the question and thought this might help you. You write: "The debate I have identified is between the [students] who are attending college and paying for [it] in loans and putting themselves in debt. The other side is the [students] who decide to forgo college and work straight out of high school avoiding debt." You make it sound like the people debating are students going to college and those choosing to work. I don't think that way of framing the problem is going to be so productive.
ReplyDeleteWhen I say I want you to "enter a debate," I mean a scholarly debate among academics / scholars who theorize about these choices. It is not a debate between young people making different choices -- especially since those different groups of young people hardly speak to each other, let alone debate those choices. Basically, you are too stuck in the "student perspective." Step back from the issue. Look at it from above. Examine it as an outsider -- as an academic. Who is making the better choice on purely rational economic grounds? Only an academic (or someone adopting an academic perspective) can decide that question.
Academics are debating this or developing research you can use to debate both sides. That is the debate: an academic debate over which choice is better, going to college or going to work right away out of high school? Think of it that way and you will have more success.