DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Education

It insures you take on a huge amount of dept which makes it much harder and take much longer for young people to be able to afford buying a house and starting a family. In the long haul if you choose the right career path it will certainly pay off. But it's a heavy burden to take on at the beginning of your adult life.

College has constantly grown in cost, because the government is willing to finance almost anyone. I went to YSU back in 2004 and 2005. Annual tuition was somewhere around $6000, and has almost doubled since. Just crazy.

I'd rather take on an apprenticeship and learn a trade.

Unless you are getting a very in demand degree, college is a poor, and costly, choice for many.

Agreed. College/University is not in the education business. They are in the business of education. There's a difference.

Some jobs you NEED that degree, some, you don't.

2 examples: RN degree from a state college. Right around $100,000 (depends on where you go. You can also get a 2 year RN degree at a community college for much less, I know, but that degree, while good, is not as good as the 4 year.)

In year 2, you're making $70-80 thousand.

Second example: Go to a career center your last 2 years of high school. Nephew - grew up working on engines, etc. Can fix anything. Graduated (instructor even said "I just let him do his thing. He needs no instruction.")

Got a job for a large road construction company. Mechanic. Last year? $110,000.00. Yes, he works a lot of overtime - but he's young, single, and wants to. Great retirement after 35 years or so, IF he wants.

It is going to take primary schools getting their act together. I have been a big proponent for Voc Tech programs which have been decimated over the last 25 years. By the time a student is in the 8th grade you have a good idea if the person is a serious student or not. Kids are going to go from have 1.8-2.8 GPA's and all of a sudden start getting 3.7 GPAs? They are already behind. Get the actual students in to the college prep courses and the others in Voc-Tech. Every person in high school needs to come out with the skills to get an actual college degree or have the skills to be productive in the workforce.

As has been stated, a degree is valuable if it is the right degree. The problem is colleges offer meaningless degrees and admit nearly anybody, knowing they are just going to pass them through with a basket weaving degree or end up flunking them out after 2 years, with no meaningful skill and a mountain of debt.

j/c

I find it odd and somewhat humorous how posters who themselves went to college and got their degree at a they didn't have to take on a huge amount of debt to get a degree now seem to suggest that people of this generation somehow shouldn't have that same opportunity to get a degree.

Rather than address the high cost of a college degree they advocate this generation should settle for trade school instead.

My point is more about the first part of your post. There's no excuse a college degree should put you in debt for 100k or more. While I certainly agree that in some cases people could make better choices in what fields they choose to major in I don't see how that really changes the high cost of higher education. I also can't understand how former generations in a lot of cases think they deserved a much more affordable education while the current generation should have to settle for less.

Nobody in our generation or even the generation after us could have ever imagined graduating college 100k or more in debt as we were starting our adult life. Could you even imagine the financial hole that would put you in in your early 20's?

And an important part in all of this is how it impacts the economy overall. These young people have so much debt when they come out of college they can't afford to buy a home and start a family. This is a situation that never existed before. But it seems for some they believe the solution is "Just learn a trade".

I'm certainly not against the idea of learning a trade. We certainly need people to continue entering the trades. But it's something you really have to like doing or it would be a miserable life. Just as everyone isn't cut out to go to college so it's true for being in the trades.

And that in no way addresses the ridiculous cost of higher education.

Our nation's higher education is an example of the problems out government causes at every level.

There is a system.

The government decides to "help" by pouring tons of money into it.

More people get the money. More people apply to college because they can now afford it with the government's held.

Aid money pours in, and costs go up accordingly.

More government money in causes higher prices. It is a never ending cycle ,,,, at least until we finally have no more money, and have no one to borrow from.

And here I thought a larger volume in customers was supposed to bring prices down and not cause them to go up.

I think the bigger issue as that universities have turned their campuses into resorts and the cost is passed on to the students. In many cases to students who will never use most of those amenities.

As far as student loans from the government is concerned, without those student loans the vast majority of college students would never be able to afford college at all. I don't think providing them with an opportunity to attend college should be targeted as the problem.

There are kids being admitted to college who really don't have adequate high school educations. (at least when I went) Kids are in classes they cannot successfully complete. This what I saw, and it was back in 2004-2006, or so.

There are many kids in college who cannot write a paper, cannot defend a position, and who struggle with rather introductory math and science. This was my experience way back when I went.

Obviously there are excellent students as well, but many, and I dare say a majority, have little to no chance of getting, or putting to use, a college degree. Student loans sell college, and many don't care if it really gives the student a chance to succeed, or not. Get 'em in, collect the money, and when they drop out in 2 or 3 years, so what?

Do you not think this has been going on for decades? You yourself just admitted it has been going on for 20 plus years. Do you honestly believe it wasn't going on before that? I saw people getting high school diplomas who could barely write their names. I would just like for you to tell me a time when you think colleges weren't doing everything possible to fill every seat and dorm room they had available?

The first form of student loans began in 1958. Direct college loans from the government began in 1994.

In 1994, the average annual cost for one year at a public four-year college was about $2,681 for in-state tuition and fees, or roughly $6,670 including room and board, making a four-year public degree roughly $10,700 to $26,700 total.

The average annual cost for a four-year college in 2025 ranged from roughly $11,610 to $43,350 per year for tuition alone, or $29,910 to $62,990 per year including room, board, and living expenses.

Once again, can you name at which point in time colleges weren't trying to fill every seat and fill every dorm room?

I don't suggest that at all. What I am saying is people who don't have the aptitude for a meaningful degree shouldn't be pushed down the college path by parents, school counselors and everyone else. Colleges shouldn't accept those who don't qualify using real qualifiers.

The fact that the cost of college has spiked is all the more reason for my comments.

So now you want to address the high cost of education. Cutting the numbers of colleges would be a good step. The number has increased tremendously since the late 60's. The same with totally worthless degrees.

Back then you could buy a new car for $4,000, so indeed, the value of our money has dropped.

When my wife and i visiting colleges with our 3 kids from 2004-2009 every college we visited (mostly MAC schools) were building or had just built a huge PAC with dozens of pieces of exercise equipment like treadmills, stair masters etc. Huge pools and a "water park" with big slides like you would find.

The dorms were so much nicer than those "closets " my wife stayed in at her private catholic university she stayed at in the early 80s.


Back then she did not have available food courts, just a dorm cafeteria on campus, and local pizza, sub and fast food close to campus.

Those facilities cost a lot of money. Someone has to pay for it.

Iij regards to ai, I am using chatgp and claude as much as I can think of to make me more valuable to my clients. I read an article about ai. It said it is not about what you know, it's about what you want to learn. To me it is about analytical thinking to figure out what you need to learn to acomplish your goals..

I learned to administer a dealership network entirely on my own.

We had a kid from one of our sister dealerships who wemt to Kent State, and who got a degree along with MS Certifications. Kid didn't know squat. He came over to install antivirus on all of the systems. some stupid program the Parts manager installed wouldn't let it install. He came up and told me what happened and I asked him if he stopped the program. He looked at me like I had 3 heads. Walked him down, hit Ctrl-Alt-Del, found the program and atopped it, and installed the program. He was wide eyed shocked, and said he never learned that. Kid had a degree and certifications, and had no idea what he was doing. H

He left about 6 months after I did, and got a 6 figure job in IT. I never did hear how long that lasted.

The last time the average price of a car was 4k was in the early 1970's. By 1976 that price went up to over 5400. Surely you're not trying to make excuses why college kids upon graduating college should be 100k or 200k in debt are you?

Higher education is a value and and asset to our entire nation. Science and innovation helps make us world leaders. We'll never be able to compete on the world stage with a dumber, less educated society.

Look at China. They're certainly not closing the gap or now leading us in many categories by saying, "I think we should be educating less people."

If you feel parents shouldn't be pushing their children towards a higher education that's your prerogative. As for myself I will leave those decisions between parents and their children to make. But let's face it Peen, this "high standard" you think colleges should demand in order to allow students to attend goes against every business model there is. College isn't as much about the advancement of education as it is a big business now. They have seats and classrooms to fill. They have dorms to fill. And fill them they will.

Yet you still felt the need to go to college later in life. I guess the story we decide to tell, tells the story we want others to hear. I wonder how many college graduates you worked with that did know what they were doing?