Begging... Free Market Style

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We need to do away with this ridiculous notion that it's part of the American Dream to attend college. We need to change with the changing economic/jobs landscape (see Germany). Jobs are becoming highly specialized and technical. We need more technical schools and for many of these kids to attend them, instead of loading them up in debt for a 4 year education they have no business getting. You can read up on Kant and about Western Civilization on your own (and for cheaper cost of books).

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- from the comments.

-couldn't agree more.

I have no objection to the Crowd Funding stuff being out there.

If a cause is worthy, it will get donations.

If it isn't, it won't. And it will be ridiculed unmercifully.


A guy on my FB list tried to do one of these to get some extra scratch to help with school, etc.

He got heckled for various reasons, including his tendency to ignore constructive criticism of WHY his plans are bad and what he should be doing instead.

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from the comments. -couldn't agree more.

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Disagree although not whole heartedly.

Article

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As a result, the tuition pricing at America’s universities has evolved into something akin to a discount mattress retailer, though Graber’s employer, a consultancy named Noel-Levitz, has come up with a more august name for it: “financial aid leveraging.” Noel-Levitz might be the most influential force in higher education pricing that you’ve never heard of, empowering what’s become a three-stage, market-distorting game for college administrators. First, conjure as high a sticker price as possible for tuition. Second, schools plow a lot of that extra money into student amenities, including country-club perks that outwardly justify it–and help with college rankings that reward such largesse. Finally, use your financial aid pile not necessarily to help needier students but rather to offer discounts to lure richer kids who might pay the rest of that inflated tuition price in full. The average yearly cost for a four-year, private, not-for-profit college is now $41,000–compared with $33,000 a decade ago–but the average discount rate for incoming freshman is 46%.

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America’s tuition pricing mess has a start date: 1992. In July of that year the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act changed the way that the expected family contribution was calculated and made it easier for students to take out loans. Meanwhile, an antitrust suit against the Ivy League schools and MIT established that colleges could no longer collude on a family’s need, a practice these schools had been employing for decades so that top students wouldn’t have to choose between them based on money. The late Charles Vest, onetime president of MIT, which was the only college to fight the lawsuit, argued for maintaining this seemingly clubby system, presciently warning that without it in place, there would be “wheeling and dealing and bargaining student by student, and there would be a shift of funds from those who most need it to paying for kids who frankly did not need it.”

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The system is screwed. Universities have priced themselves high to make money. They are playing the game by the rules...dumb rules.