Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

[TwiceHorn 31,240]

10 minutes ago, Hank Scorpio said:

It's almost like you were wrong, didn't read the article, and then doubled down. 

Tuition is rising/has risen.  I don't dispute that.  Nor do I dispute that states have cut funding and that's a bad idea.  Yet enrollment is steady or growing and institutions continue to spend rather than cut.

The cost of a resource rises, you expect diminished utilization.  But it doesn't happen.

That, friendo, is a credit bubble.  Which was my only point.

Edited January 23, 2019 by TwiceHorn

[TwiceHorn 31,240]

26 minutes ago, alincoln said:

GCSE/A levels are racist

I suppose.  Same way SAT is racist, but actually less so because as far as I can tell A-levels are essays/knowlege based, rather than relying on the more culturally biased testing modes of the SAT/ACT.

Because education is intertwined with culture, I'm not sure how bothersome it is that an entrance test is culturally biased.

Edited January 23, 2019 by TwiceHorn

[Guest Lobo]

Does anyone remember the SNL weekend update bit, I think it was Austin's own A. Whitney Brown, who was talking about the cultural bias of standardized tests?  And he was reading sample questions and one of them ended with a multiple choice about what to do if you have a yacht party in the late afternoon but have to get to a fine arts gala right after and can't run home to change.  And it was something to the effect of, "A: Apologize to the Host/Captain for wearing a dinner jacket before 5:00p outdoors., B: Wear appropriate maritime semi-formal and explain at the gala that you had to command the Bow as someone fell ill from out-of-season oysters..."  Anyway, it was funny.  

[TwiceHorn 31,240]

1 hour ago, Dahobbs said:

My preferred choice is an expansion of education scholarships/grants focused on merit/ability while retaining the ability of anyone else to apply for and pay for college on their own. 

Yeah I guess this is where it shakes out.  Defining that merit/ability will be mas dificil, though.  People seem really uneasy with the merit-based thing.  Hell, even I am.

Also, it seems like, at least as currently conceived, scholarships and grants are underutilized, particularly by those most needy/deserving.

[Brisketexan 104,537]

Just now, TwiceHorn said:

Yeah I guess this is where it shakes out.  Defining that merit/ability will be mas dificil, though.  People seem really uneasy with the merit-based thing.  Hell, even I am.

Also, it seems like, at least as currently conceived, scholarships and grants are underutilized, particularly by those most needy/deserving.

There's no reason not to have a tiered system that does take into account merit and similar factors.  Not everyone gets to go to UT (shit, that's the way it is now).  So, go to SFA, UTRGV, UT Dallas, Texas State, OR any number of local community colleges (at least for your first 2 years).  The point is not the quality of the education, it's the financial barriers.

Joe working class with straight As should be able to go to UT or someplace similar without going up to his eyeballs in debt.  Joe working class with middling grades should be able to go to SFA, also without going into debt up to his eyeballs.  That's the issue.  And it can be solved.

[TwiceHorn 31,240]

3 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

There's no reason not to have a tiered system that does take into account merit and similar factors.  Not everyone gets to go to UT (shit, that's the way it is now).  So, go to SFA, UTRGV, UT Dallas, Texas State, OR any number of local community colleges (at least for your first 2 years).  The point is not the quality of the education, it's the financial barriers.

Joe working class with straight As should be able to go to UT or someplace similar without going up to his eyeballs in debt.  Joe working class with middling grades should be able to go to SFA, also without going into debt up to his eyeballs.  That's the issue.  And it can be solved.

Speaking of which, what's going on with Briskette?  Have you updated that thread recently?  I could do with something kind of uplifting like that.

[ChiTownDoc 21,097]

6 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

There's no reason not to have a tiered system that does take into account merit and similar factors.  Not everyone gets to go to UT (shit, that's the way it is now).  So, go to SFA, UTRGV, UT Dallas, Texas State, OR any number of local community colleges (at least for your first 2 years).  The point is not the quality of the education, it's the financial barriers.

Joe working class with straight As should be able to go to UT or someplace similar without going up to his eyeballs in debt.  Joe working class with middling grades should be able to go to SFA, also without going into debt up to his eyeballs.  That's the issue.  And it can be solved.

Common sense solutions.  What a concept!  

Makes too much sense for anyone in govt to get behind...

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4,968]

Tuition isn't the only problem with college costs these days. More and more schools are replacing spartan dorms with fancy apartment style housing that costs much more. Universities are building luxury Rec centers with every kind of workout machine imaginable, lazy rivers, and climbing walls. All in an effort to lure more students and increase enrollment. To top it off, they many schools require students to live on campus until they have at least 60 hours, which requires them to have a meal plan with a minimum of 14 meals a week for crappy cafeteria food that costs more than eating out. All of those increase costs. None of them are related to tuition increases, but all of them are related to the amounts of student loans used to pay for them.

[TwiceHorn 31,240]

3 minutes ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

Tuition isn't the only problem with college costs these days. More and more schools are replacing spartan dorms with fancy apartment style housing that costs much more. Universities are building luxury Rec centers with every kind of workout machine imaginable, lazy rivers, and climbing walls. All in an effort to lure more students and increase enrollment. To top it off, they many schools require students to live on campus until they have at least 60 hours, which requires them to have a meal plan with a minimum of 14 meals a week for crappy cafeteria food that costs more than eating out. All of those increase costs. None of them are related to tuition increases, but all of them are related to the amounts of student loans used to pay for them.

To the point of the people giving me shit, the 538 article makes that case that tuition increases dollar for dollar tend to match state support cuts.

But, to our point, you might expect cuts in state support to result in reduced hiring, staff/salary cuts, and construction freezes/deterioration of facilities.  But that hasn't happened.  Similarly, with the tuition increases, one might expect enrollment to decline (and that might be a good thing, overall, if enrollment declined in "suboptimal" majors at suboptimal schools).  But that hasn't happened, either (although it may be starting a bit as people actually do a cost/benefit analysis of aimless education).

[TwiceHorn 31,240]

The other problem that seems pretty real is that when first-time/generation college students are admitted to rigorous programs, they lack the background/resources (parents and peers) to succeed in those programs.  So it's not just an issue of admissions and funding, these folks need some additional help not to just drop/fail out of the program.  In many cases the resources apparently already exist at the school, so it isn't a matter of further expenditure (necessarily), it's a matter of access/exposure.  Those resources, like a lot of scholarships and grants, are underutilized by the very people they are intended to help.

 

Like healthcare, there's a bit of inelasticity of demand, which is fueled in part by ez credick.

Edited January 23, 2019 by TwiceHorn

[Brisketexan 104,537]

43 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Like healthcare, there's a bit of inelasticity of demand, which is fueled in part by ez credick.

So, you're saying the problem is easy credit ripoffs, when really, we just need good times?

 

 

Oh, and Briskette remains undecided -- waiting on one more university to answer (still probably a few weeks away), and then decision time.  Odds are good it will be out of the US, though.

 

[TwiceHorn 31,240]

12 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

So, you're saying the problem is easy credit ripoffs, when really, we just need good times?

 

 

Oh, and Briskette remains undecided -- waiting on one more university to answer (still probably a few weeks away), and then decision time.  Odds are good it will be out of the US, though.

 

Good times indeed!  Well cool, keep us posted.  McGill and Edinburgh still leading the pack?

[Brisketexan 104,537]

3 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Good times indeed!  Well cool, keep us posted.  McGill and Edinburgh still leading the pack?

Yep....for now.....

[Patrick Bateman 3,903]

She's holding out on her anti-ICE position.

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,356]

 

[Anastasis 23,390]

4 minutes ago, Patrick Bateman said:

She's holding out on her anti-ICE position.

 

Good for her. 

[Asithappens 974]

8 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

 

Did AOC say take guns first, Due Process second?

Fuck you, NRA, and all who support the NRA.

[bad_teammate 13,132]

15 minutes ago, Patrick Bateman said:

She's holding out on her anti-ICE position.

Love it

[bad_teammate 13,132]

lol this is hilarious

[Js1 85,085]

 

[Bash Riprock 1,695]

so i guess its all over in 2031.

[Cajun 11,675]

1 hour ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

 

Nothing like wingnuts on one side to get wingnuts on the other side to show their hind quarters.

[PenelopeWitherspoon 19,092]

4 hours ago, Dahobbs said:

Isn't that what I said? 

Yup.

[Beau Vine 53,978]

5 hours ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

6 hours ago, wildcat09 said:

Ah, good, another clearly uninformed poster we can all ignore. I love it when they give themselves away so obviously.

And this is the reason I usually avoid this cesspool. Mine are all under 3%. Money was cheap for a long time. It is definitely part of the problem.

Mine were 0% in grad school, but that was 30 years ago, so it's pretty irrelevant.  I have a daughter in college and the financial aid packages I was looking at had loans with rates of at least 7%.

 

[TwiceHorn 31,240]

5 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

Mine were 0% in grad school, but that was 30 years ago, so it's pretty irrelevant.  I have a daughter in college and the financial aid packages I was looking at had loans with rates of at least 7%.

 

I suppose some of that has to be driven by large known default risk that wasn't present/known back in our day?  Student loan default wasn't talked about much until the late 90s early oughts.

[wildcat09 29,213]

2 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

I suppose some of that has to be driven by large known default risk that wasn't present/known back in our day?  Student loan default wasn't talked about much until the late 90s early oughts.

Student loans are nondischargeable so there isn't really any significant risk. 

[Beau Vine 53,978]

4 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

I suppose some of that has to be driven by large known default risk that wasn't present/known back in our day?  Student loan default wasn't talked about much until the late 90s early oughts.

That 7% was a stated rate by the lender for all loans.  So it's 7% if you're a MechE major at Mines, and it's 7% if you're a Women's Studies major at TAMU-Corpus.  

[Dahobbs 17,420]

4 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Student loans are nondischargeable so there isn't really any significant risk. 

In fact, the complained of credit expansion can at least be partly, if not entirely, attributed to this change in 1970s. 

[Fozzz 152]

3 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

To the point of the people giving me shit, the 538 article makes that case that tuition increases dollar for dollar tend to match state support cuts.

But, to our point, you might expect cuts in state support to result in reduced hiring, staff/salary cuts, and construction freezes/deterioration of facilities.  But that hasn't happened.  Similarly, with the tuition increases, one might expect enrollment to decline (and that might be a good thing, overall, if enrollment declined in "suboptimal" majors at suboptimal schools).  But that hasn't happened, either (although it may be starting a bit as people actually do a cost/benefit analysis of aimless education).

Where are you seeing an increase in enrollment?  I'm sure there are some states that have seen recent population booms where enrollment has increased, but overall the trend is decreasing enrollment.

Quote

The result is that the number of students in colleges and universities has now dropped for five straight years, according to the National Student Clearinghouse, which tracks this — and this year is the worst so far, with 81,000 fewer high school graduates nationwide heading to places like Ohio Wesleyan, whose entering freshman class is down 9 percent from last year.

How dramatic is the falloff? There were just over 18 million students enrolled in higher education nationally in the semester just ended — 2.4 million fewer than there were in the fall of 2011, the most recent peak, the National Student Clearinghouse reports.

“That’s unprecedented in the history of as long as data has been kept on higher education,” said Kevin Crockett, senior executive at the enrollment-management consulting firm Ruffalo Noel Levitz.

The rising cost of tuition also seems to be taking a toll; 68 percent of chief business officers of colleges and universities said in the NACUBO survey that price sensitivity was eating away at enrollment, and 57 percent blamed competition from the likes of software coding boot camps.

https://hechingerreport.org/universities-colleges-struggle-stem-big-drops-enrollment/

 

 

[Fozzz 152]

lol why even have a democratic government?  These guys obviously know better than the masses of dumpster lice (as Johnny Sack likes to call them).

 

 

[wildcat09 29,213]

One of these assholes has some money secretly invested in a techbro guillotine startup and is trying to make them fashionable again.

[Footballpants 121]

51 minutes ago, Fozzz said:

lol why even have a democratic government?  These guys obviously know better than the masses of dumpster lice (as Johnny Sack likes to call them).

Michael Dell, though imperfect, has improved the lives of literally millions of people through his business endeavors and foundation. You might want to focus your disdain elsewhere, because he is undeserving... 

[TwiceHorn 31,240]

2 hours ago, wildcat09 said:

Student loans are nondischargeable so there isn't really any significant risk. 

You know the difference between obtaining a judgment and actually getting paid, right?

Non-performing loans don't become performing just because you get a judgment.

Edited January 23, 2019 by TwiceHorn

[Incredulity 11,541]

2 hours ago, Dahobbs said:

In fact, the complained of credit expansion can at least be partly, if not entirely, attributed to this change in 1970s. 

Unintended consequences 101.

 

[bad_teammate 13,132]

1 hour ago, Footballpants said:

Michael Dell, though imperfect, has improved the lives of literally millions of people through his business endeavors and foundation. You might want to focus your disdain elsewhere, because he is undeserving... 

Is it "disdain" to say that democratic governance is superior to living at the whim of the elites?

[GSU&UT 1,798]

8 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

Is it "disdain" to say that democratic governance is superior to living at the whim of the elites?

No BT, we should kiss the feet of our country's plutocrats so that hopefully we'll be lucky enough to receive the scraps they give us through their foundations.

@wildcat09 is right though, the first thing I thought of was "these guys are begging us to have our own French Revolution."

[TwiceHorn 31,240]

1 hour ago, Incredulity said:

Unintended consequences 101.

 

Actually, I think making student loans more freely available was an oft-cited justification for  non-dischargeability.  Bad policy 101.

[TwiceHorn 31,240]

3 hours ago, Fozzz said:

Where are you seeing an increase in enrollment?  I'm sure there are some states that have seen recent population booms where enrollment has increased, but overall the trend is decreasing enrollment.

https://hechingerreport.org/universities-colleges-struggle-stem-big-drops-enrollment/

 

 

Texas, and, as I recall, many other states deregulated tuition to compensate for drastic cuts in state support around 2000.  Texas' tuition began to increase dramatically (about tripling) from 2000-2010, but has been steady since.

I acknowledge that enrollments have dropped more recently, but it didn't correspond with the increases in tuition.

I'm not sure Texas is the best example with the PUF as a backstop, but decreasing state support and increasing tuition has been going on quite a bit longer than a decline in enrollment.

Also this Texas-specific tidbit:

Quote

One thing is clear: since deregulation, every Texan attending college in-state has seen their tuition bill increase. Between 2003 and 2017, the statewide average total academic charges increased 138 percent. At the same time, state investment in higher education declined by six percent when adjusted for inflation. Since 1984, the state general revenue that UT Austin receives has declined by 35 percent, as of 2017.

https://alcalde.texasexes.org/2019/01/looking-at-higher-education-funding-in-texas-and-how-we-got-here/

So, our beloved alma mater, while still a relative bargain, has been kind of gouging on the tuition a bit relative to state support.

Oh and answering your question, these stats.  https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enrollment-and-projections-in-public-and-private-institutions/

 

Edited January 24, 2019 by TwiceHorn

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13,545]

Shut the fuck up, Swam.

[Cajun 11,675]

Swam moved to Scotland.

Goes by Swum now.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13,545]

That's actually pretty funny. 

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13,545]

...bit still. Shut the fuck up. 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,356]

 

[Cajun 11,675]

Man, Hannity's really retaining a lot of water these days.

[mdmost 42,827]

He's trying to emulate his idol. 

[Tom 2,959]

On 1/22/2019 at 10:07 AM, pepper brooks said:

it's quite frightening that anyone with her ideology receives anything other than absolute admonishment and scorn.  It all sounds good.  It is always a spectacular failure.  

Always a spectacular failure?  L. O. Fucking. L.

Her economic policies are a hell of a lot closer to the "Leave it to Beaver/Make America Great Again" era than that which current conservatives pine for with everything post 1980.  

Maybe you just think this country is too stupid to figure out things like healthcare for everyone and affordable education.  Things that most westernized nations figured out long ago that America lags behind in because half of this country is fucking stupid and thinks "Government doesn't work.  Defund everything!"  

Congrats on 40 years of supply-side economics of killing the middle class for greed.  This is probably the part where you yell "What about Venezuela!?" and I roll my eyes.

[F250 28,674]

27 minutes ago, Cajun said:

Man, Hannity's really retaining a lot of water these days.

He looks like a pressed ham with eyeballs.

[F250 28,674]

I knew Michael Dell before he was a plutocrat.

[Cajun 11,675]

30 minutes ago, mdmost said:

He's trying to emulate his idol. 

Would you say he's Rushing to get there?

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,356]

This is kind of incredible