I’ve always considered the college business model a scam. Why do young people have to take 25 to 28 totally frivolous courses in order to get a semi-valuable credential (i.e., the vaunted bachelor’s degree)? Why can’t they just take the 12 to 15 courses that pertain to their respective majors and then get on with their lives?
And the truly sad part is that it wouldn’t require much to upend the current scam. All Congress need do is pass the following one paragraph law:
Any college or university that wants its students to have access to Pell Grants and federal student loans must provide a discipline-only degree option for every bachelor’s degree it offers. A discipline-only degree shall consist of no more than 15 essential, field-specific courses. A standard degree shall consist of 12 to 15 essential, field-specific courses plus whatever number of courses the college or university deems necessary. No college or university may financially punish a student for choosing the discipline-only degree option. Field-specific courses must cost the same per credit as non-field-specific courses.
There you go. With one simple paragraph, Congress could reduce the cost of a bachelor’s degree by 60 percent overnight for any student who just wants some worthwhile knowledge and doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the “the college experience.”
But don’t get your hopes up. The wretched Republicans and slimy Democrats are too busy right now with their redistricting war to worry about the affordability crisis in higher education.
And the Government should also definitely not be in the business of student loans.
Amen.
College got much more expensive when the govt. got more and more involved in it.
I went to a state school where credit hours were about $18/hour. I worked part-time and graduated debt free with money in the bank.
Get D.C. out of financing education.
Agreed. Federal student loans are nothing but a license for the college-industrial complex to take advantage of students, parents, and taxpayers.
My chemical engineering BS only required 4 hours of humanities. Everything else was math, science and engineering. Which is maybe why my degree earned me millions.
Excellent point, Steve. Engineering is a separate beast. A discipline-only engineering degree limited to only 12 to 15 courses would leave the degree holder severely unprepared for an engineering career. Engineering would thus need a special carve out.
Excellent idea.
The cost maths is what sells this for me. A standard degree is roughly 40 courses; cut that to 15 field-specific ones and at the same per-credit price you have wiped out about 60% of the tuition before you even talk about three fewer years of rent and fees. No wonder colleges resist it — the frivolous courses are the profit centre.
One side effect worth naming: with only 12 to 15 courses, every single grade carries far more weight. In a 40-course degree one bad semester barely dents the average; in a 15-course degree a single C drags roughly 1/15 of the whole record instead of 1/40. My grandson is in his second year and we run his numbers after every term with a grade calculator I use to track what each course does to his GPA — under a slimmed-down degree that kind of tracking stops being optional, because there are no spare electives left to average out a mistake.
That said, I would sign up for the trade tomorrow. A cheaper credential plus a bit more care over each grade beats four padded years and a mountain of debt.