Moreover, public universities are much more expensive compared with when I was young because state governments have dramatically pulled back in their financial support of universities, colleges and tech schools, leaving young people not old enough to purchase alcohol to incur debt they have no meaningful experience with which to understand the implications.
It’s simply wrong from a moral standpoint and wrong frim an economic stand point.
Perhaps you Yanks should restrict uni entry to those who are old enough to buy grog?
If your claim that young people are incurring a debt they have no meaningful experience with which to understand the implications is indeed true then that is a sad indictment on your education system. Perhaps spend a little time teaching children about loans, debt, its implications etc.? I sure that are many items in your education system that could be removed or lessened to make free such time.
I think that no matter how much information and knowledge an 18 year old is able to comprehend, real life consequences and bast sums of money are still kind of like fairy takes. 18 year olds who have, at most, managed to help buy a very dilapidated very used car, don’t truly understand how much it costs to pay rent in a very modest apartment, buy groceries, put gas in the car and pay car insurance and repairs when they come up compared with how much they are likely to be able to earn when they get their first ‘real’ grown up job. It’s too far out of the experience of almost any 18 year old. I gave the example up thread of one of my kids who was furious that I refused to agree to them attending a college that would require a student debt load of at least $100K. ( they did go to that uni—because we negotiated the price down and the assistance up do that it was on par with a state school). The thing is, that kid was always very good with their spending money, worked part time as soon as we’d agree to it and banked almost all of their earnings. And STILL can pinch a penny harder than anyone I know, aside from their sibling and my parents grew up during the Grest Depression! They are extremely intelligent, and deeply practical. But at that age, completely lacked any real context for vast sums of money.
Frankly my kids were really lucky because we believed it was our job as parents to pay for university, we set a realistic budget that we could afford and made it clear that if they wanted to attend private schools, that meant student loans and still we insisted that the loans be very small. A lot of kids, especially those who are the first in their families to attend university, do not have families with enough financial literacy to provide good advice or enough discretionary income to be of substantial financial help. Those are the kids who were really preyed upon by some lenders.
And—there are the parents ( I know some) who actively encourage their kids to take out loans for as much as they can, instead of cautioning them to live very frugally, study hard, spend as little as possible. And some who think that it really is t harder due their kids than it was for their parents. In terms of money: it’s much, much, much harder today —and for the past 25-30 years! compared with how it was for me. I had a couple of scholarships that payed almost everything. The rest I paid for with summer jobs. That’s not possible today. I only got the larger scholarship because my father’s employer offered them to high achieving students.
The real need is to increase state support for public universities to the same degree as they supported public universities in the early 70’s or better, when one could reasonably afford university if one saved money from summer jobs and perhaps parents kicked in a modest amount. I also think that universities need to focus their budgets on academics and much less on on athletics.
on Twitter: "@TomCottonAR By that measure, Tom, George W. Bush needs to explain why he took a fair and functional student loan system, Sallie Mae and PRIVATIZED it so interest rates went from 1 or 2% up to credit card rates. Brought to you by the party that also started Taxing Social Security payments!" / Twitter
