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Higher education has two main problems. One, it’s too expensive, and, two, it wastes too much of a student’s time. Here’s how I would fix both of those problems.
Making Higher Education Less Costly
Do college amenities really need to include a climbing wall and a lazy river? Do colleges really need to run de facto minor leagues for the NBA and NFL? Do colleges really need to have three times more administrators than professors?
A good chunk of the cost of college has nothing to do with education. Less than 40 percent of the typical college budget is earmarked for the classroom. College today is more about providing students with sophisticated debauchery and midwit adults with cushy jobs than it is about providing students with economically valuable knowledge.
And the only way to get rid of this frivolity and exploitation is to put those responsible for it at risk financially. And this can be accomplished with two simple tweaks to the law.
- Make college debt dischargeable in bankruptcy.
- Mandate that every student loan going forward, whether public or private, must have a cosigner, and that cosigner can only be the college providing the education.
As soon as the above tweaks became the law of the land, no college in its right mind would continue to embrace the current higher-ed business model. Any college that continued to charge the intellectually pedestrian a hundred thousand dollars for a pedestrian degree would quickly be out of business.
Making Higher Education More Considerate of a Student’s Time
I looked up the degree requirements of a computer science degree at UNC Chapel Hill, the flagship school in the North Carolina system. Only 17 of the 40 courses required for a bachelor’s degree pertained to computers.
Why is UNC making its computer majors take 40 courses when they only need 17 courses to ready themselves for an entry-level programmer’s job?
Colleges only make students take twice as many courses as necessary because college has devolved into a giant freaking scam. College today is infinitely more about massaging the egos and feathering the bank accounts of presidents, deans, provosts, coaches, and professors than it is about readying students for the “challenges of today.” And the only way to end this giant freaking scam is to turn off the federal spigot.
- No college awarding an associate’s degree shall be eligible for student loans or federal aid and grants if its associate’s degree requires more than 10 courses.
- No college awarding a bachelor’s degree shall be eligible for student loans or federal aid and grants if its bachelor’s degree requires more than 20 courses.
- No college awarding a master’s degree shall be eligible for student loans or federal aid and grants if its master’s degree requires more than 10 courses.
- For the purposes of the above eligibility requirements, a college course, at all levels, shall consist of three to five hours of instruction per week, and shall run for 15 to 20 weeks.
Okay, groovy freedomist, that’s all I got. Let me know what you think when you get a chance. Peace.
“The Trump administration is reportedly warning colleges and universities that they could lose access to federal student loan funding if they don’t take action to improve repayment rates among former students”
POTUS must be reading your blog.
Some good thoughts and opinions for change. I think that both education and healthcare are ripe targets for overhauls.
Thanks Groovy. Keep up the good platform.
I agree with eliminating the requirements not directly related to a degree. In theory, a new 20 course bachelor’s degree should cost half of a 40 course program and so half the student loan burden. I’d also like to see a mandatory work/study internship semester arranged by the school so graduates have some real life experience in their fields. Preferably this would be early in their studies so there’s time to change majors if the student realizes it’s not what they want to do after all. College should be a job training engine, not the way to expose people to things they can learn for free on the internet. As such, colleges should be held accountable for making sure their graduates get jobs in their fields and at a salary that pays for their loans.
I don’t see a need to have loans dischargeable in bankruptcy as long as we require the college to cosign and be responsible for payment.
A chemical engineering bachelors degree requires 37 courses that are math, engineering or physics oriented. And most chemical engineers agree that that’s a little less than the actual optimum to graduate as a proficient engineer. There are only a handful of non-stem courses in any engineering program, outside of computer related majors (that real engineeers don’t consider to be engineering in the first place). I agree that with a lot of majors there is a bunch of fluff stuff included, but engineering colleges have been pressured to reduce the amount of courses. When I graduated I needed 132 hours of course work. Now chemical engineers only get 125 and there is ongoing pressure to reduce that to 120 hours, which is not sufficient to cover the basics of the major. I also chair a college board of trustees and agree the funding model is totally broken. Always a good read, Mr. Groovy
“Make college debt dischargeable in bankruptcy”. Why and to what benefit? It is the best stick creditors (taxpayers) have. Free money is not free.
How about only granting taxpayer student loans to STEM degrees and any supporting general studies for any major as part of national security? Any and all other degrees/majors require a private loan.
Agreed. Let me make my intentions more clear. I don’t want to make all existing college debt dischargeable in bankruptcy. Only new college debt. And since new college debt will have colleges as the cosigners, colleges will be forced to make the banks/government whole when bankruptcies occur. Under these changes, colleges would have a strong incentive not to accept the intellectually weak, and not to burden their students with frivolous costs.