Oh public schools.
One of the biggest to-dos on campus is the student tuition protest.
Last year the grad students marched about student fees, and this year there is more of a general tuition protest. There are angry fliers, people pounding on drums, yelling. General pissyness.
I went to a super-pricey1 private university, so I’m unsympathetic. My theory is this:
- You’re smart. There are scholarships. Apply for them.
- The government guarantees loans to grad students, and gives free money and subsidized loans to needy undergrads. Use those resources.
- Your education should theoretically result in employment that will pay the loans. There are also loan-forgiveness programs for those that go into the public sector.
You can’t even get a public sector job with your fancy degree? Well, higher education in obscure or unprofitable fields is a luxury, not a right. If you major in something like early modern Peruvian art history (or law) you can’t demand that the state pay for it via reduced tuition.
Should have majored in nursing or I.T.
1 On a full scholarship. I passed up big, but less than full-ride scholarships at Georgetown and NYU because I knew that I needed even more aid and that I would probably go into debt for law/grad school afterward. The point here is that there are many options and no one is entitled to a certain fee or tuition level.
you’re an asshole
Stay classy.
No one in their 20s in ANY sector can get a decent job.
Haha, that’s not true. It’s harder, but possible.
I sometimes think I should have majored in nursing, people always ask me; “what are you going to do with your degree?” And I say, “I don’t know, but at least I can communicate with 2.5 billion people give or take a few hundred million bi and or trilingual speakers like myself.”
If you did something else, like law/nursing/etc. you’d be a hot commodity down south were they need more professionals with the language skills.
I know, that’s why I’m going back to school as soon as I’m done………lol
Racking it up?
Hmmm… I don’t necessarily agree with the ‘college gets you a good job so you can pay back your loans’ the system is a bit screwed as far as how much and for how long people end up paying for it… don’t forget higher education is indeed a business.
However I will indeed back you up on the rest of it. And it is quite irritating to hear people piss and moan about how they are young and broke and blah blah blah. Give me a break. By the age of 19 I had 2 SEC licenses and was working as an investment agent good money and swanky benefit package. No degree…
I think if you aren’t majoring in a field that will lead to employment then you can’t demand the government to subsidize that line of study. (And when I say ‘pay back’ this in reference to those 30-year plans the government has for loans.)
I agree with some of what you said. The government shouldn’t subsidize people who pick worthless majors. However, it also costs the university a lot less to produce an English or Sociology major than an Engineering student because the labs and extra teaching time those majors require costs universities. There should be a tiered system based on the cost of the major. As it stands, humanities and social science majors subsidize the tuition of science and engineering students.
But the science and engineering students get the government/grant money. I’m not sure they need the humanities students.
Don’t forget that we are talking about public universities that obtain their funding from tax payers. The mission of the public university system has from the beginning to provide a low cost alternative to the pricey private university. The idea is to be able to educate the public at large rather than have an elite and everyone else.
And I know too many people with good degrees (science, engineering) that are working fast food and having to defer loan payments indefinitely while racking up interest.
It’s really not so clear cut.
Oh and science/engineering do receive grants. Those grants are to fund individual researchers and their graduate students, not fund the university. The university takes a cut for the overhead of that researcher, but very little will see the general fund.
Agreed. I went to undergrad on full scholarship and majored in history because my parents weren’t paying for it. I knew that if I didn’t go to grad school I would have to be a teacher BUT I was okay with that. Even now in law school, 70% of my costs are covered by a scholarship because I want to work in the public sector or at a small, local firm.
Buhaha, smart. Tons of schools gave me full rides, but I knew I wanted to go to UMN law scholarship or not.