Governor Cuomo Is Responsible For Higher College Costs At SUNY

Man, sometimes even the NY Post gets stuff right.

Take this editorial on college loans and the Cuomo proposal to have NY State pick up some of the loan for a couple of years for college graduates who remain in NY State but are make less than $50K a year:

On one thing President Obama and Gov. Cuomo are agreed: The answer to high tuition and crushing student debt is more money from the government.

Problem is, it’s precisely government dollars that are driving up the price of college tuition at a rate far faster than general inflation.

Right now, colleges have no skin in the loan game: If a kid drops out before earning his degree, or if she earns a degree that is worthless and so can’t get a job that pays enough to let her pay off her loans, that’s terrible for her.

But the school has already been paid.

The solution the Posties propose?

If you want to lower college costs, don’t just throw more money at the schools. Ensure the universities have some skin in the game — e.g., by forcing them to pick up part of the loans for a kid who fails out.

And make ’em work for their customers by demonstrating why their degrees are worth what they’re charging for them.

I don't know exactly how you do that second thing, since so many of the second and third tier private schools charge a LOT of money for a degree of dubious value that could be gotten from a state school for much less.

But I do know that making the schools pick up some of the loan costs of students who drop out might make these schools think twice about a) tuition costs and b) loading students up with loans.

But the best way to hold down college costs and give students a quality education is for NY State to provide MORE state aid to SUNY.

Under Governor Cuomo, the percentage of SUNY costs covered by state aid has dropped and the percentage of SUNY costs covered by tuition has increased.

Cuomo has instituted five years of tuition increases that will result in students paying more than 25% higher tuition and fee costs from before he became governor.

I posted this when Cuomo first released his loan debt relief plan and I want to post it again:

Governor Cuomo is the reason why SUNY costs are so high in NY State for college students.

I think the Post is right that colleges ought to have some skin in the game when it comes to student loans.

But I also think Governor Cuomo and the state Legislature ought to be providing more state aid to SUNY in order to provide opportunities for an affordable, quality education to all.

College For All Once Again Exposed As Myth

The NY Times shows what's happened to the "American Dream" since 1989 - even for the college-educated:

YOUNG families are better educated than ever before, but they are earning lower real incomes.

The Federal Reserve Board’s newly released 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances indicates that the median family headed by someone under 35 years of age earned $35,509 in 2013 dollars. Adjusted for inflation, that is 6 percent less than similar families reported in the first such survey, in 1989.

Since 1989, the Fed has conducted extensive interviews of consumers every three years. Respondents are asked about their family’s income in the previous year, as well as about wealth, debt, education and attitudes toward financial issues. The results are released by family, not by individual, so the median family income may include the income of both spouses. Single-person households are included in the family calculations.

As can be seen in the charts, younger families have fallen further and further behind older families as time has passed. Nearly a quarter-century after the first survey was taken, families headed by people over 55 generally have higher incomes, after adjusting for inflation, than their predecessors did. But those in groups under 55 generally earn less than their predecessors.

In the first survey, the younger group included families headed by people born after 1954, and so was dominated by baby boomers. The latest group includes families headed by people born after 1984, and they seem not to have done nearly as well early in their careers. The earlier group came of age in a stronger economy and its members were generally not burdened by education loans as many of the latter group are.

The largest declines have come since the 2007 survey — the last one in which participants discussed their income in a year before the Great Recession began. The following survey covered income earned during the recession, and it was not easy to know how much of the falloff was a cyclical phenomenon that would disappear when the economy recovered.

But the newest survey covered income in 2012, three years after the recession ended, and shows that most of the lost ground has not been recovered. In fact, the real median income for all of the age groups except those in the 35-to-44 group declined from 2010 to 2013.

And you know that jive about how education is the issue, that those with higher educational attainment do better than those with lower?

It's jive:

Among families of all ages, those with more education tend to earn more than those with less. But that differential appears to be shrinking. at least for younger families. In 1989, the median income of families headed by young college graduates was twice that of similar families headed by high school graduates who never attended college. Now, the difference is only 52 percent. There are more college graduates in the group, but those graduates have a lower real median income than their predecessors.

They're still pushing college for everyone in schools, selling kids on the myth that people who go to college make more money than those who don't.

It's of course much more complicated than that, as can be seen by the diminishing gap between those with college degrees and those without in the recent surveys.

I know that the NYCDOE is pushing so-called "college readiness" as one of the school metrics for whether a schools is "good" or not.

That means there is pressure on administrations to push as many students into college DIRECTLY after graduation as they can.

Here's a lesson you won't hear much in schools these days, but one that needs to be given:

If students are not careful, going to college can harm them irrevocably for life.

Taking on tens of thousands of dollars in debt at the start of their adult lives for a piece of paper that doesn't do much for them is irrevocable harm, whether the NYSED, the NYCDOE or the USDOE want to use that piece of paper as an emblem for college readiness or not.

Yesterday, Fred Klonsky linked to a Huffington Post piece about senior citizens swamped with student debt who are having their Social Security checks garnished:

The Education Department is demanding so much money from seniors with defaulted student loans that it's forcing tens of thousands of them into poverty, according to a government audit.

At least 22,000 Americans aged 65 and older had a part of their Social Security benefits garnished last year to the point that their monthly benefits were below federal poverty thresholds, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Education Department-initiated collections on defaulted federal student loans left at least another 83,000 Americans aged 64 and younger with poverty-level Social Security payments, GAO data show. Federal auditors cautioned that the number of Americans forced to accept poverty-level benefits because of past defaults on federal student loans are surely higher.

More than half, or 54 percent, of federal student loans held by borrowers at least 75 years old are in default, according to the federal watchdog. About 27 percent of loans held by borrowers aged 65 to 74 are in default. Among borrowers aged 50 to 64, 19 percent of their loans are in default. The Education Department generally defines a default as being at least 360 days past due.

As unpaid student debt approaches $1.3 trillion, the federal watchdog's findings underscore the consequences of increased student debt burdens and the risk they'll wreak havoc on households in the coming years if U.S. workers continue to see little increase in their paychecks, the economy barely grows, and the Education Department's contractors keep borrowers in the dark on repayment options.

22,000 senior citizens having their Social Security benefits garnished now.

Just wait and see what those numbers look like when the younger generations surveyed by the Federal Reserve start getting older and are still swamped by student debt.

This is where we're at these days - the American Dream, circa 2014.

As Carlin said, it's called the "American Dream" because you have to be asleep to believe it.

What Good Is "College And Career Ready" When There Are No Jobs For College Graduates?

I'm so sick of hearing Common Core proponents issue the boilerplate jive about how the CCSS are helping to make students college and career ready to compete in a global 21st century economy.

The truth is, there are few jobs out there for college graduates and the prospects aren't getting better:

While members of the class of 2014 have some cause to celebrate, they also know they are a few short months away from starting to pay down their share of the $1 trillion-plus student-loan debt.

The most shocking number of all is that only 17 percent of these soon-to-be grads have a job lined up, according to AfterCollege Inc., which crunches these numbers and also tries to help match employers with recent graduates.

Despite our being a year further along on the road to economic recovery, this year’s 17 percent is actually down from the class of 2013’s 20 percent who had a job lined up before graduating.

Most kids who go to college do so to get skills for work after graduation. It’s never going to be 100 percent or even 90 percent of graduates who have job offers waiting, but it shouldn’t be that 83 percent of seniors have nothing lined up, either — especially when 73 percent say they were actively looking for work.

Oddly, even 82 percent of supposedly more “marketable” majors (engineering, technology, math) were still empty-handed.

Some think the job situation will get better for college graduates as the economy gradually improves, but we're already five years post-recession and the economy still hasn't improved for many in the job market.

The reality is, the economy has changed such that fewer jobs for college graduates exist and that number is dwindling every year and greatly diminishing the value of a college degree:

Large numbers of college graduates can only find employment in jobs paying the minimum wage. Currently, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, 260,000 people with college or even professional degrees are so employed. Moreover, the percentage of college graduates who work in jobs that don’t require any advanced academic preparation (the “mal-employed”) has been rising for years, and now stands at 36 percent. If college degrees are becoming more valuable, why are so many graduates either unemployed or employed at low-paying jobs?

What jobs are being created these days?

The kind that don't - or shouldn't - require college degrees:

The BLS has a handy chart of the fastest-growing jobs in America (h/t Erica Grieder), and the vast majority are not the “knowledge economy” jobs we usually think of. In fact, this chart seems to prove things that we already know: the rising importance of the healthcare sector to the economy (especially with an aging population) and the transition of the economy to services, where “services” is not a euphemism for “computers” but, like, actual services.

So the list has your odd “Biomedical Engineers” (fancy!) and, at the bottom, your “Medical Scientists, Except Epidemiologists” (sorry epidemiologists!), but the vast majority of jobs are jobs like “Home Health Aides” and “Reinforcing Iron and Rebar Workers.”

A key point here: The jobs of the future are only “low skilled” if you define “low skilled” as not requiring college. Being a good carpenter (56% growth, Jesus is still with us) or, for that matter, a good medical secretary (41% growth), takes smarts (actual smarts, not just book smarts), hard work, and dedication.

Relatedly, the jobs of the future will be high-paying. It’s simply not true that all high-paying jobs require a college degree. It’s very very possible to make a very good living as a tradesman, because good tradesmen are–and always will be, unlike Fortran programmers and data entry clerks–in high demand.

“Helpers–Brickmasons, Blockmasons, Stonemasons, and Tile and Marble Setters” sounds like bottom-of-the-barrel work, but follow someone like Samuel-James Wilson, an award-winning bricklayer, on Twitter, or visit Guédelon Castle where contemporary tradesmen are building a 13th century castle with 13th century tools, to see that being a good bricklayer is as hard as being a good lawyer. Obviously I’ve been influenced by Shop Class as Soulcraft, which should be required reading for any discussion of the future of work and education.

And finally–and this is perhaps the most important thing–some jobs of the future only “require” college because we’re very dumb. Very few of those occupations require college in the sense that 90+% of people who pursue that occupation will benefit from having learned about it in college. But my guess would be that more than a few of these occupations “require” college in the sense that employers expect that applicants will have a BA. And this is our problem.  A “Diagnostic Medical Sonographer” is a highly-skilled job that doesn’t require college training in the sense that you can learn everything you need to do the job in a manner of months. But many colleges offer programs to help you become a Diagnostic Medical Sonographer. And when you compare unemployment rates for college graduates and non-college graduates, you see why someone might want to go to college to become a Diagnostic Medical Sonographer even if it means taking on huge, unnecessary debt. And once there are enough college graduates who can become Diagnostic Medical Sonographers, you can see why employers would rationally toss out of the pile any resumes that don’t have a college degree on them.

This is something that we urgently need to fix, because we’re wasting ginormous amounts of money, time, and resources. The first step is to recognize what the actual jobs of the future are.

One problem is, college is a huge money-making industry - for the college themselves, of course, but also for the ancillary industries like the testing companies, the test prep companies, the banks (via the loans) and even the government (which also makes money from student loans.)

These entities all help to push college for all because they make a ton of money off of it.

Second problem is, we live in a culture that denigrates occupations that require people to work with their hands (farming, construction, etc.) and denigrates service occupations that are necessary to make things work right (medical secretaries, doormen, etc.)

What I think we are going to need to do in this so-called 21st Century global economy is re-order how we think about work, stop privileging finance and tech over everything else, start to re-think how we handle compensation for all jobs (both the overpaid ones, like finance and tech, as well as the underpaid ones, like service jobs) and re-do how we handle training so that apprenticeships and on-the-job training replace some of the so-called college programs out there.

Oh, and there are way too many colleges - especially these expensive second and third tier private schools that load students up with debt for diplomas that are barely worth the paper they're printed on  (I'm looking at you, College of New Rochelle!)

Time to see these things go out of business and stop saddling students every year with debt.

I'm under no illusion that this will happen easily, without a fight or even, in the end, happen at all.

There's too much money to be made selling the "college dream" to as many as are willing to buy it.

But as more and more graduates find themselves slinging coffee at Starbuck's or working retail, there might be a natural movement away from reflexively saying every kid must go to college or else.

Let's hope.

Making SUNY And CUNY Tuition Free

From State of Politics:

Assemblyman James Skoufis is sponsoring legislation to give students free tuition to SUNY and CUNY schools if they agree to certain requirements. Participants would have to do 250 hours of community service each year, and then after graduation they’d need to stay in the state for at least five years. The goal is to help make college more affordable and assist non-profits around the state.

Pell grants and TAP do not come close to covering tuition, room and board at SUNY anymore.

Pell Grants and TAP still do cover CUNY costs if a student is eligible for them.

Still, I have seen way too many students have to take out $5000+ a year in loans lately to go to a SUNY school.

It would be great if there was some kind of program that gave students the opportunity to attend a SUNY school without having to go $20,000+ into debt to do it.

I have my doubts that Sheriff Andy Como would want this to happen - he likes to pass on the costs of tax cuts for rich people to working class and middle class college kids and their families.

But good to see this legislation introduced.