US student loans grotesquely high

[Loren Pechtel]

Well, I think the easiest way to make school a lot cheaper, especially higher education, is to make education more accessible. Because unless I am missing something, more educated people mean more teachers, and more people producing better educational materials for lower cost.

A more educated population makes it easier and cheaper to educate.

We certainly can do this without universities exploiting students' use of crippling loans. If you cut half the university administration and other bureaucrats there's no reason higher education can't be affordable. Yet, demanding universities be more efficient and focus on education seems a conversation no one wants to have.

Got some budget numbers on how much for admin and how much for teachers/facilities?

Let's look at the cost of teachers. A quick Google shows the midrange locally for a university professor is $120k/yr. Also, a typical professor teaches 4 classes. Let's call that 40 students/class (some will be larger, some smaller--but the large ones generally have teaching assistants.) That's 320 students/year. Right there that's $375/student/class. A quick look through the school budget says half of everything they spend is on "Instruction". It's poorly organized for looking things up, the cost of the facilities they teach in isn't apparent.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Unlike Loren, I don’t believe that educational effort is best focused in creating ‘educational materials.’ Indeed, educational ‘materials’ whatever they may be, tend to be more specialized as one acquires a deeper level of knowledge and skill. Teaching a basic high school biology or chemistry class requires much less expensive materials and equipment ( and text books) and much less qualifications—and different qualifications compared with teaching, say, an undergraduate course in biochemistry which requires far less expense in terms of qualifications of instructors and materials in graduate and post graduate studies and research. Indeed, research often involves developing new instruments and technology which is expensive compared with most general lab equipment.

I'm not saying "focused on". I'm saying to make available to everyone at no cost those things that can be learned from a computer. That will narrow the gap between rich and poor and make things more efficient overall--you can have the best teachers preparing the online material because it only needs to be done once. (Although I would favor doing it a few times--don't offer just one class, offer a few different approaches to the same class.)

I think it is also a mistake to keep learning isolated to specialties. Every discipline benefits from some connection and some sharing with other related abs even disparate disciplines.

The isolation is because of the cost in time and money of education.

But stepping back from this: how many people here have spent the last year or two relegated to online meetings or teaching or learning: How’s that going for you? Because what I’m hearing from people I know in real life is that basically, it sucks. It’s not as effective and it’s much harder for instructors to see whether the class is following or confused or bored or????

Unfortunately, an awful lot of teachers don't watch that even in the classroom. In large classes it's not even an option.

As for how I've fared--I've been remote since 1989, only being on-site when something couldn't be done remotely. No problem.

Like it or not, we’re corporeal human beings abs we rely very heavily on non-verbal communication.

Non-verbal stuff helps, but not having a commute also helps.

Remote would have saved me from the bullies in grade school.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Loren - "There's no way to make school cheap, but people can learn as much as they can before they start paying those costs."

Of course, people have the ability to learn before they incur explicit expenses. But for some reason, most don't.

True--but most of what you can learn for free isn't complete enough to take the place of an actual classroom. I'm saying to make stuff that is complete enough--that's going to require a substantial budget and organization, not what people can get from monetizing classes on You-Tube.

Using your reasoning, mandatory K-12 education is unnecessary - children can learn without taxpayers footing the bill. We can just put all of it online and leave it up to the children and their guardians.

No. First, it's impossible before kids learn to read. Second, in the earlier grades it's going to need to be guided.

However, I would like to see past the point of learning to read that the teacher's time be used helping students, lectures should come from stored media. Using a human in place of a DVD player is a horrible waste.

There's also the issue that K-12 education serves the secondary aspect of being childcare and supervision trying to keep them actually learning.

But we know there is a very good chance that won't work well in most cases. Why/ Because we know that most people either don't have the discipline or motivation to learn on their own.

That I disagree with. People don't learn on their own without there being some appreciable incentive to doing so. The classroom doesn't really provide that incentive, though--I've seen too many students goofing off at the university.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I've taught in a mix of mediums, both before and after the pandemic. There are as you might imagine pros and cons to every teaching modality. The current situation is a disaster, partly because enrollment has tanked - all else aside, only a small subset of the student body is comfortable in an online-heavy environment. Most of them don't have PCs in their home, and while a majority do have access to the internet through their phones, try writing an essay on a phone sometime! Or even attending a ZOOM lecture. I've upped the font size on all my powerpoints but still- a phone screen is not the equivalent of a whiteboard or mounted display.

Yeah, Zoom on a phone is not conductive to learning much. Can you at least go full screen with your powerpoints? I would not recommend online learning without a desktop with a good size monitor!

And some topics adjust better than others. As an anthropologist, the thought of graduating students with "degrees" in anthropology without having ever picked up a human bone, without ever having done a chemical test on an artifact, without ever having conducted any field research at all in the form of an excavation or ethnography, is ridiculous. Almost offensive. If we keep sending the professional job market new hires with "college degrees" but no practical experience in field science, those degrees are swiftly going to become about as valuable as a high school diploma. No one wants to pay more money to hire someone they're going to have to redo all the training of anyway. If the jobs aren't 100% digital, instruction shouldn't be either. But, we cannot choose our times.

Yeah, online can never replace things which must be hands-on. I'm saying to use online in place of things that don't need to be hands-on. Also, I'm not picturing Zoom, I'm picturing course materials designed from the ground up for an online (or local storage--the same stuff could bring an awful lot of education to the third world) format.

Look at Duolingo. Engineered from the ground up as online learning, the material is chopped up into a bunch of little lessons organized so you can't do a lesson without it's prerequisites. Making common errors very well might pop up an extra bit to the lesson specifically explaining that error. It's not professionally done but it's a lot closer to what I'm picturing than a Zoom of a teacher in the classroom. (And it has a feature I like--it is impossible to complete a lesson without giving the correct answer to every question on it. Miss one and it goes on the end of the lesson and gets asked again.)

(On the other hand, you're assuming physical anthropology. My father did cultural anthropology--I doubt he was ever on a dig or even knew much about how to do one.)

 

[Toni]

Unlike Loren, I don’t believe that educational effort is best focused in creating ‘educational materials.’ Indeed, educational ‘materials’ whatever they may be, tend to be more specialized as one acquires a deeper level of knowledge and skill. Teaching a basic high school biology or chemistry class requires much less expensive materials and equipment ( and text books) and much less qualifications—and different qualifications compared with teaching, say, an undergraduate course in biochemistry which requires far less expense in terms of qualifications of instructors and materials in graduate and post graduate studies and research. Indeed, research often involves developing new instruments and technology which is expensive compared with most general lab equipment.

I'm not saying "focused on". I'm saying to make available to everyone at no cost those things that can be learned from a computer. That will narrow the gap between rich and poor and make things more efficient overall--you can have the best teachers preparing the online material because it only needs to be done once. (Although I would favor doing it a few times--don't offer just one class, offer a few different approaches to the same class.)

I think it is also a mistake to keep learning isolated to specialties. Every discipline benefits from some connection and some sharing with other related abs even disparate disciplines.

The isolation is because of the cost in time and money of education.

But stepping back from this: how many people here have spent the last year or two relegated to online meetings or teaching or learning: How’s that going for you? Because what I’m hearing from people I know in real life is that basically, it sucks. It’s not as effective and it’s much harder for instructors to see whether the class is following or confused or bored or????

Unfortunately, an awful lot of teachers don't watch that even in the classroom. In large classes it's not even an option.

As for how I've fared--I've been remote since 1989, only being on-site when something couldn't be done remotely. No problem.

Like it or not, we’re corporeal human beings abs we rely very heavily on non-verbal communication.

Non-verbal stuff helps, but not having a commute also helps.

Remote would have saved me from the bullies in grade school.

Actually that's not why there is so much isolation. The current generation of students is smaller than the generation that you and I (I'm guessing we're about the same generation) belonged to. Departments want to bolster their enrollment and to protect their department members or at least the number of positions allotted to their department, so they require more and more 'core' courses within whatever major you're talking about, and therefore, leaving the student less and less opportunity to explore other disciplines or just enjoy a little serendipity.

It's cool that you can teach your stuff remotely and that the type of students you teach can learn well remotely but that's certainly not the case with all subjects or all students. As I've said, almost universally, students and profs HATE having been forced to do so much remotely.

As for commutes: Tell me about it. I almost always had long commutes, whether going to school or working and in my line, remote was not possible.

Yep. I know about bullies in person school settings. Happens on line as well, as I'm sure you've noticed as a mod. Other things that help with bullies: adults being engaged (and not as bullies themselves) and also learning people skills. Which, like it or not, we all need. My observation is that usually, the kids who face the most tormentors have the worst social skills (or darker skin or different clothes or accent or religion). We need to learn to be more tolerant of one another and that doesn't happen hiding behind screens but only through face to face, and sometimes with a lot of adult intervention.

Personally, I fear for society if people continue to avoid dealing with ...other people.

 

[Politesse]

Yeah, Zoom on a phone is not conductive to learning much. Can you at least go full screen with your powerpoints? I would not recommend online learning without a desktop with a good size monitor!

Yes, and I do. I also make the slides themselves available for download. Still though, especially for certain kinds of work there are few true substitutes for a whiteboard. And I really miss my interactive maps.

Yeah, online can never replace things which must be hands-on. I'm saying to use online in place of things that don't need to be hands-on. Also, I'm not picturing Zoom, I'm picturing course materials designed from the ground up for an online (or local storage--the same stuff could bring an awful lot of education to the third world) format.

(On the other hand, you're assuming physical anthropology. My father did cultural anthropology--I doubt he was ever on a dig.)

I'm a cultural anthropologist by specialty, actually. A professional anthropologist should have at least some experience in all of the four subfields though, at least that has been a major objective of our department and a principle I agree with. Certainly, close to my own subdiscipline, were I working for a consulting firm, advocacy group, etc, I might be willing to overlook say a lack of archaeological field experience, but I would not be willing to hire a cultural anthropologist with no experience conducting ethnographic research. We have to try and anticipate all of our student's needs if we can, regardless of their future concentrations. I teach at a two year college, so the students often haven't picked a concentration yet anyway, or do so toward the end of their time with us.

 

[laughing dog]

Loren - "There's no way to make school cheap, but people can learn as much as they can before they start paying those costs."

Of course, people have the ability to learn before they incur explicit expenses. But for some reason, most don't.

True--but most of what you can learn for free isn't complete enough to take the place of an actual classroom. I'm saying to make stuff that is complete enough--that's going to require a substantial budget and organization, not what people can get from monetizing classes on You-Tube.

What one can learn for free and what one will learn for free are two different things.

Using your reasoning, mandatory K-12 education is unnecessary - children can learn without taxpayers footing the bill. We can just put all of it online and leave it up to the children and their guardians.

No. First, it's impossible before kids learn to read. Second, in the earlier grades it's going to need to be guided.

No, it is not impossible before kids learn to read. And they could be guided by their guardians. If you don't thing it will work for children, why would you think it would work for teenagers or young adults?

But we know there is a very good chance that won't work well in most cases. Why/ Because we know that most people either don't have the discipline or motivation to learn on their own.

That I disagree with. People don't learn on their own without there being some appreciable incentive to doing so. The classroom doesn't really provide that incentive, though--I've seen too many students goofing off at the university.

Then why would you think they would not goof off online?

 

[Politesse]

Good lord, do they ever. I doubt more than half of the people attending my Zoom lectures are actually present. And for the fully online, asynchronous course students I have actual quantitative data. Less than a third log in to the class for more than three hours in a normal week later in the term. We call those classes "self-guided", but it's a pretty optimistic claim.

 

[Jarhyn]

Loren - "There's no way to make school cheap, but people can learn as much as they can before they start paying those costs."

Of course, people have the ability to learn before they incur explicit expenses. But for some reason, most don't.

True--but most of what you can learn for free isn't complete enough to take the place of an actual classroom. I'm saying to make stuff that is complete enough--that's going to require a substantial budget and organization, not what people can get from monetizing classes on You-Tube.

What one can learn for free and what one will learn for free are two different things.

Using your reasoning, mandatory K-12 education is unnecessary - children can learn without taxpayers footing the bill. We can just put all of it online and leave it up to the children and their guardians.

No. First, it's impossible before kids learn to read. Second, in the earlier grades it's going to need to be guided.

No, it is not impossible before kids learn to read. And they could be guided by their guardians. If you don't thing it will work for children, why would you think it would work for teenagers or young adults?

But we know there is a very good chance that won't work well in most cases. Why/ Because we know that most people either don't have the discipline or motivation to learn on their own.

That I disagree with. People don't learn on their own without there being some appreciable incentive to doing so. The classroom doesn't really provide that incentive, though--I've seen too many students goofing off at the university.

Then why would you think they would not goof off online?

As if seeing students goofing off means they aren't learning?

I literally slept through the majority of lectures through university.

Sometimes people don't learn from having one person say the same thing five times five ways while 25-29 of 30 people ask questions as if they didn't hear the instructor say the same thing five times five ways while 1-5 of the students desperately wish they could ask and actually get answers about some interesting thing or point that the instructor started out by just glossing over.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I'm a cultural anthropologist by specialty, actually. A professional anthropologist should have at least some experience in all of the four subfields though, at least that has been a major objective of our department and a principle I agree with. Certainly, close to my own subdiscipline, were I working for a consulting firm, advocacy group, etc, I might be willing to overlook say a lack of archaeological field experience, but I would not be willing to hire a cultural anthropologist with no experience conducting ethnographic research. We have to try and anticipate all of our student's needs if we can, regardless of their future concentrations. I teach at a two year college, so the students often haven't picked a concentration yet anyway, or do so toward the end of their time with us.

His primary field was psychology, but he had enough cultural anthropology to teach it. How much more knowledge he had I do not know.

 

[SimpleDon]

Strange how the Republicans count the cost of Democrat tax cuts but not Republican tax cuts. Your moron was behind a far bigger tax cut.

1. I am not a Republican.
2. Trump is not "my" moron.

I do not agree with all the provisions of the 2017 tax cuts of course, but it was not all bad. The big difference, of course, is that Republicans are not running on "tax the rich" message. Democrats are - which makes these tax cuts for the rich they like quite hypocritical.

Republicans sold the 2017 legislation as tax cuts while raising income taxes on people paying higher property and state income taxes. I am sure that you missed this example of hypocrisy which mitigates the calls of hypocrisy in the SALT provisions of BBB.

The truth is that any tax increases have to target the rich because we have the money. It's the role of the government to determine the distribution of income in the economy. This is why the rich people were laser-focused on corrupting the soft bribery of campaign contributions, academic economics research & teaching, and establishing a coalition of racists, gun nuts, religious extremists, fascists, etc., in short, the worst of the far-right extremists.

 

[SimpleDon]

How about just removing the No Bankruptcy clause? That way those that need assistance can get it without the huge expense of a blanket forgiveness program.

Why do you think that the Federal government forgiving the loans would be a huge expense?

Like all loans that banks make the money that is loaned out was money that the Federal Reserve Bank creates for the exact purpose of loaning out. All the Federal government has to do is to relieve the banks of their obligation to pursue the borrowers' when they don't pay the loans back when the government says that they don't have to pay back the loans. It is pretty much up to the President, he holds all of the needed authority necessary to forgive the loans.

 

[Harry Bosch]

How about just removing the No Bankruptcy clause? That way those that need assistance can get it without the huge expense of a blanket forgiveness program.

Why do you think that the Federal government forgiving the loans would be a huge expense?

Like all loans that banks make the money that is loaned out was money that the Federal Reserve Bank creates for the exact purpose of loaning out. All the Federal government has to do is to relieve the banks of their obligation to pursue the borrowers' when they don't pay the loans back when the government says that they don't have to pay back the loans. It is pretty much up to the President, he holds all of the needed authority necessary to forgive the loans.

For every dollar that a student loan is forgiven, the federal deficit goes up a $1. Student loans are paid back to the government. The government assumes (with a small estimated loss estimate) that these loans will be paid back each year with P&I. If this goes down, the government income goes down.

 

[ZiprHead]

How about just removing the No Bankruptcy clause? That way those that need assistance can get it without the huge expense of a blanket forgiveness program.

Why do you think that the Federal government forgiving the loans would be a huge expense?

Like all loans that banks make the money that is loaned out was money that the Federal Reserve Bank creates for the exact purpose of loaning out. All the Federal government has to do is to relieve the banks of their obligation to pursue the borrowers' when they don't pay the loans back when the government says that they don't have to pay back the loans. It is pretty much up to the President, he holds all of the needed authority necessary to forgive the loans.

For every dollar that a student loan is forgiven, the federal deficit goes up a $1. Student loans are paid back to the government. The government assumes (with a small estimated loss estimate) that these loans will be paid back each year with P&I. If this goes down, the government income goes down.

That would be $1.6 trillion at the moment.

 

[Toni]

How about just removing the No Bankruptcy clause? That way those that need assistance can get it without the huge expense of a blanket forgiveness program.

Why do you think that the Federal government forgiving the loans would be a huge expense?

Like all loans that banks make the money that is loaned out was money that the Federal Reserve Bank creates for the exact purpose of loaning out. All the Federal government has to do is to relieve the banks of their obligation to pursue the borrowers' when they don't pay the loans back when the government says that they don't have to pay back the loans. It is pretty much up to the President, he holds all of the needed authority necessary to forgive the loans.

For every dollar that a student loan is forgiven, the federal deficit goes up a $1. Student loans are paid back to the government. The government assumes (with a small estimated loss estimate) that these loans will be paid back each year with P&I. If this goes down, the government income goes down.

I don’t think that’s true. For every dollar of student loan forgiven, that’s another dollar that is used to make purchases, investments that benefit the economy —and taxed.

The plain truth is that most of these debts were incurred by adolescents who are not old enough to purchase alcohol! But somehow we feel that they must be responsible for decisions they had zero context for actually understanding.

This debt prevents new graduates from doing things that further stimulate the economy, such as purchasing homes and starting families—for decades.

In the end you have more educated people less likely to raise families. And you have perpetually young people from families who did not go to college entering higher Ed without much potential economic support from their families and therefore more dependent on student loans—an endless cycle.

It is far better to forgive loans now and tax higher earners at a higher rate. After all, people who go to colllege to become teachers also incur student debt and are not ever going to be high earners if they teach.

States need to start contributing to higher ed at rates that they did in the 70’s so that education is more affordable for everyone.

 

[Harry Bosch]

How about just removing the No Bankruptcy clause? That way those that need assistance can get it without the huge expense of a blanket forgiveness program.

Why do you think that the Federal government forgiving the loans would be a huge expense?

Like all loans that banks make the money that is loaned out was money that the Federal Reserve Bank creates for the exact purpose of loaning out. All the Federal government has to do is to relieve the banks of their obligation to pursue the borrowers' when they don't pay the loans back when the government says that they don't have to pay back the loans. It is pretty much up to the President, he holds all of the needed authority necessary to forgive the loans.

For every dollar that a student loan is forgiven, the federal deficit goes up a $1. Student loans are paid back to the government. The government assumes (with a small estimated loss estimate) that these loans will be paid back each year with P&I. If this goes down, the government income goes down.

I don’t think that’s true. For every dollar of student loan forgiven, that’s another dollar that is used to make purchases, investments that benefit the economy —and taxed.

The plain truth is that most of these debts were incurred by adolescents who are not old enough to purchase alcohol! But somehow we feel that they must be responsible for decisions they had zero context for actually understanding.

This debt prevents new graduates from doing things that further stimulate the economy, such as purchasing homes and starting families—for decades.

In the end you have more educated people less likely to raise families. And you have perpetually young people from families who did not go to college entering higher Ed without much potential economic support from their families and therefore more dependent on student loans—an endless cycle.

It is far better to forgive loans now and tax higher earners at a higher rate. After all, people who go to colllege to become teachers also incur student debt and are not ever going to be high earners if they teach.

States need to start contributing to higher ed at rates that they did in the 70’s so that education is more affordable for everyone.

Toni: I'm not disagreeing with everything that you are saying. However, what I'm saying is correct. When the federal budget is calculated, all estimated forms of revenue are tallied (taxes, fees, principal and interest paid by students, and etc). A reduction in revenue will increase the federal deficit (republicans also have great problems understanding this). For example, the PPP program was really a grant program (with only a small percentage turning into loans). Thus PPP, is not included as revenue in the federal budget.

Student loans dollars are not bank money. They are federal dollars. So, a dollar in student loans forgiven, increases the federal deficit by a $1.

 

[Toni]

How about just removing the No Bankruptcy clause? That way those that need assistance can get it without the huge expense of a blanket forgiveness program.

Why do you think that the Federal government forgiving the loans would be a huge expense?

Like all loans that banks make the money that is loaned out was money that the Federal Reserve Bank creates for the exact purpose of loaning out. All the Federal government has to do is to relieve the banks of their obligation to pursue the borrowers' when they don't pay the loans back when the government says that they don't have to pay back the loans. It is pretty much up to the President, he holds all of the needed authority necessary to forgive the loans.

For every dollar that a student loan is forgiven, the federal deficit goes up a $1. Student loans are paid back to the government. The government assumes (with a small estimated loss estimate) that these loans will be paid back each year with P&I. If this goes down, the government income goes down.

I don’t think that’s true. For every dollar of student loan forgiven, that’s another dollar that is used to make purchases, investments that benefit the economy —and taxed.

The plain truth is that most of these debts were incurred by adolescents who are not old enough to purchase alcohol! But somehow we feel that they must be responsible for decisions they had zero context for actually understanding.

This debt prevents new graduates from doing things that further stimulate the economy, such as purchasing homes and starting families—for decades.

In the end you have more educated people less likely to raise families. And you have perpetually young people from families who did not go to college entering higher Ed without much potential economic support from their families and therefore more dependent on student loans—an endless cycle.

It is far better to forgive loans now and tax higher earners at a higher rate. After all, people who go to colllege to become teachers also incur student debt and are not ever going to be high earners if they teach.

States need to start contributing to higher ed at rates that they did in the 70’s so that education is more affordable for everyone.

Toni: I'm not disagreeing with everything that you are saying. However, what I'm saying is correct. When the federal budget is calculated, all estimated forms of revenue are tallied (taxes, fees, principal and interest paid by students, and etc). A reduction in revenue will increase the federal deficit (republicans also have great problems understanding this). For example, the PPP program was really a grant program (with only a small percentage turning into loans). Thus PPP, is not included as revenue in the federal budget.

Student loans dollars are not bank money. They are federal dollars. So, a dollar in student loans forgiven, increases the federal deficit by a $1.

I'm not an accountant, an economist or a public policy person so maybe I'm missing something. But won't student loans not repaid is money go into other forms of government revenue?: increased taxes on higher earners (including students who didn't pay back those loans) plus revenue from taxes on increased earnings by everyone that the students paid for goods and/or services with those dollars that didn't go straight to the government coffers but instead were multiplied throughout the economy. In effect, wouldn't loan forgiveness be a big stimulus to the government--fed and state, assuming states have any income taxes. It's an accounting shift.

It seems as though that's the big argument that Republicans make about low taxes: it allows businesses to use money to hire, etc. and otherwise stimulate the economy.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

States need to start contributing to higher ed at rates that they did in the 70’s so that education is more affordable for everyone.

Note that the net economic effect of loans + loan forgiveness is the same as if the state had provided extra funding in the first place.

 

[Toni]

States need to start contributing to higher ed at rates that they did in the 70’s so that education is more affordable for everyone.

Note that the net economic effect of loans + loan forgiveness is the same as if the state had provided extra funding in the first place.

Yes, I see loan forgiveness as a short term measure but states really do need to step up their funding of public post secondary education to the same proportion of funding as they did in (whatever the peak was? The 70's??)--and maintain it so. Many/most public universities cannot set their own tuitions without state approval anyway. At least in some states which have university staff unions (professors, administrative, etc) must get state approval of any labor contracts already. Since the state has maintained that much control over university finances, they really need to actually fund them as well.

 

[Toni]

I don’t know how much online learning of new material—not the typical professional CEs many professions require. Some people can learn some material that way but it’s not at all the same as learning from someone who deeply knows and understands the material. Of course that’s without considering that many fields of study require laboratory work—equipment and materials and space that is expensive to provide. And in person instruction that is vital, not only for learning but to ensure safety.

Yeah, labs still have to be in person with actual teachers.

The point is to minimize the cost, there's no way to eliminate it.

You may or may not know much about the learning that took place—and did not take place last year and sometimes this year during the pandemic. Almost universally, students and teachers at all levels have disliked the zoom classes and the online ‘learning’ because it’s just not nearly as effective.

Because the teacher can't stop students from goofing off.

Yes, it is possible to learn from solo study/books/online. I did a lot of solo reading all of my life. I picked up a lot of information and discovered areas of further interest, meriting further inquiry. I’m sure it’s the same with you and most of the people reading this.

It’s not the same as systemic guided learning under expert guidance. It’s not the same as having someone there who can read the audience and tell if students understand or are hopelessly lost or have further questions.

I may be completely wrong but I get the feeling that you’ve never taught before.

Of course it's not, although if you use textbooks you have a pretty good guide of what to learn. There's no way to make school cheap, but people can learn as much as they can before they start paying those costs.

In larger (or even not large) lecture sections, professors cannot prevent students from goofing off in class unless it is disruptive to other students. This has been an issue in some schools with so many university students bringing laptops to class--and sometimes watching porn on their laptop during lecture. All sorts of issues as one person's taste in porn might be highly objectionable to another person for all sorts of reasons.

Universities don't typically force students to attend class but some professors make attendance mandatory or at least count towards a significant portion of the final grade. No one has been able to force students to study or learn, that I am aware of. Loss of place in school, or funding or place on a team, etc. can be a natural consequence. A lot of students go to university who are not prepared--sometimes academically and sometimes, not in terms of emotional maturity, and sometimes--not infrequently, actually--students are dealing with varying degrees of mental illness, from depression to more acute illness and either because of recent onset or simply by virtue of being an adolescent and being on their own for the first time in a brand new environment without any of the usual supports in place, students can really flounder quickly.