The military has a recruiting problem. They also offer free college tuition. That's how I earned my degree. Both parties should be advocating for able bodies to sign up instead of tossing out money. It's not just war either. I responded to many natural disasters when I served. They could join the Guard, Coast Guard and learn some real skills along with helping their community in a crisis but no. Can't do that.
There are around 18 million college students and 2 million members of the armed forces. Your proposed solution can’t possibly work due to this discrepancy. It is good though that you agree there is a problem and it needs a solution. One proposal is to shrink the military budget. Spending on national defense is more than double the money spent on public schools in higher education.
It can, because 60% of students are women and very few of those are needed in the armed forces, so half are out. Plus service is normally 3 years while uni lasts 5. So around 5M men can be enlisted. And everyone sees the writing on the wall that university education has overshoot it's facility: the marginal student today certainly net loses in life as a result of education, not wins. It needs to shrink. Armed forces on the other hand, will def. need to grow given the insane shit that's going on. 4M enlisted resulting in 6.5M male students and 12M students overall looks about right.
The military is indeed a great choice for many people: there non-combat roles like medical and IT, and besides college tuition it also guarantees stability, housing, and income.
But it can’t be the only opportunity for young people:
- People with certain disabilities are disqualified, they don’t even have the choice. Not fair to them
- Some people want careers which you don’t get in the military, including “useful” careers like science. Not fair to them, and they probably wouldn’t be good soldiers or Coast Guards anyways
- Some people don’t want to join for ethical or ideological reasons, when you join you technically lose some of your Constitutional rights. This is 100% valid and they shouldn’t be pressured to join; and we probably don’t want non-committed people in the military anyways
- The military has its flaws. There’s a lot of beurocracy and inefficiency, and some
people don’t like the culture. A big contributor to the recruiting problem are the horror stories (albeit maybe rare) you’ll see in forums. Many people say that joining the military was the best choice of their lives, but many people deeply regret it.
I don’t mind advocating for the military, but some people are better off going directly to college. And some of those people need scholarships, and college tuition is still unreasonably expensive.
> The military is indeed a great choice for many people: there non-combat roles like medical and IT
Do you even get to select what role you want to get into?
My (conscript) experience is that everyone first goes through Basic Military Training, then you get assigned somewhere randomly and that's basically it. You never get a choice. If you're lucky, you get assigned to an interesting unit, then you enlist and are set for the next 10 years.
edit:
The way the conscript system in Singapore works is
1. if you're 'highly' educated (highschool diploma equiv), you get a chance at becoming an officer. If you enlist, you get put on a career track (ie. set for life).
2. if you're 'technically' educated (tech/vocational diplma), you get a chance to be a technician or unit leader. You automatically become a sergeant after 1.5 years. If you enlist, you get to become a slightly higher ranked sergeant and eventually on course to become an NCO.
3. you're not educated so you're disposable cannon fodder (infantry). You're rejected for enlistment.
Yes. In the US you choose your military occupational specialty(MOS) before enlisting and that is where you will be assigned after you complete your training. Your eligibility for a given MOS is a function of how well you do on the entrance exam.
A college degree is a requirement for becoming an officer.
I responded to natural disaster as well, which is what I had in mind when I signed up. But I was also sent to war. Everybody should be mindful of this potential outcome before they swear the oath.
You can sign up for the Guard and absolutely get sent to an active warzone as that happened to my brother. And they will not advertise that fact a whole lot.
I wish the USA would just come out with a barebones upper education option based on the German model. Yes, no sports club or fancy dorms, or even fancy campuses, no sections or TAs to grade/correct homework, your grade depends 100% on your final. But the end result is that if you have the discipline for it, nothing should stop you from earning a degree.
The biggest problem for any attempt at education reform in the USA is that education is organized at the state level. It is practically impossible to get all interested parties to cooperate nationwide.
The other major problem is that the public university system has developed a huge overcapacity. They operate now as businesses whose main goal is to keep themselves employed. You see the effects in the softening of academic standards and continual pursuit of more foreign students.
WGU is a good program for the fields that it covers, but it is based on competency to pass an exam and not so much on rigor of knowing the material in and out.
It's much better suited for people with field experience who need the nice sheet of paper to move up in their field than it is for fresh HS graduates making their way in the world.
With that being said, if you know college is for you but you are concerned about the money as a fresh high school graduate, consider getting your AAS at your local community college and then getting your BS or MS from WGU (if it teaches what you want to learn).
You'll save tens of thousands early on in your career and be able to work for the 2 years between your AAS and your BS, getting experience and certifications in the process.
It won't be as fun as going to a party college but if you have a goal in mind it might be a viable path.
Our local community colleges are rebranding as colleges so they can jack up tuition. It might have been an option in the past, it might still be an option in a few places, but they are increasingly becoming as bloated as the universities they were meant to be economy versions of.
> better suited for people with field experience who need the nice sheet of paper to move up in their field
That seems to be the case for online education in general.
> consider...community college and then...WGU
I agree. I've worried over what to say to kids facing the terribly high cost of university education these days. If you can find a good program at a community college (quality varies), I think this route would be no worse educationally than what you get at most traditional universities in the USA now.
Why don't we change the debt to income shares? Make enough of x money pay a percent every month. Seems like it would be at least be more fair for those that don't make enough to pay their bills easily. It's debt without the interest and stress. Honestly though with private loans and complicated debts I'm sure that would be complicated to pull off completely.
Like all attempts before it, this will accomplish little. The cost of higher education has increased bc the government has implicitly funded it via massive credit backstops across the student loan complex. This has artificially reduced the cost of capital resulting in much higher borrowing limits.
Students are able to borrow more, so schools increase tuition and see no appreciable drop in demand. Rinse and repeat.
Not a fucking one of which do anything substantial or impact anything even resembling a root cause.
Putting another couple pieces of paper in front of highschoolers detailing the total financial cost - while literally everyone in their lives encourages them to pursue college as the next step in their lives - and even mentioning that plan in the same breath as 'tackle student loan debt' is assinine.
Hell, even if you were going to try and fix the problem with a fucking disclosure, you'd do it by presenting and making a case for attractive alternative options.
Because realistically loads of people go to college after highschool because it has been the expectation of everyone they have known their entire lives AND symbolizes their opportunity to escape whatever the local body breaking labor is.
But if you wanted to convince me that you were serious then you'd go after the money. Probably lots of great ways to stop treating 18 year olds like great long term debt instruments but I think treating student loans as a normal form of debt that is dischargeable by bankruptcy would be a fine place to start.
Beyond the obvious effects of supporting effectively arbitrary price increases for that market - I don't think its possible to construct a sound moral argument that excuses removing a crucial safety valve on a debt that is also very large and targeted towards people that have only recently stopped being children.
Yep. This is all passing the buck to the people (you made a bad decision, you have to suffer forever now) rather than taking accountability to fix the system from the top down.
Even the part about degrees that don't meet income level averages not being eligible for funding sounds good on paper but then you're essentially once again putting the onus on the arts to sacrifice for the other fields rather than fixing the system that has enabled this intersection of education and capitalistic piracy come to be in the first place.
32 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 85.5 ms ] threadYou know that women are people too, right? It's not acceptable to solve a problem by simply ignoring the problem for half your population.
This is a great strategy and leaves us more money to spend on giant tax cuts for billionaires.
No society can survive with that design pattern (encouraging people to take from society, not encouraging people to sacrifice for society).
But it can’t be the only opportunity for young people:
- People with certain disabilities are disqualified, they don’t even have the choice. Not fair to them
- Some people want careers which you don’t get in the military, including “useful” careers like science. Not fair to them, and they probably wouldn’t be good soldiers or Coast Guards anyways
- Some people don’t want to join for ethical or ideological reasons, when you join you technically lose some of your Constitutional rights. This is 100% valid and they shouldn’t be pressured to join; and we probably don’t want non-committed people in the military anyways
- The military has its flaws. There’s a lot of beurocracy and inefficiency, and some people don’t like the culture. A big contributor to the recruiting problem are the horror stories (albeit maybe rare) you’ll see in forums. Many people say that joining the military was the best choice of their lives, but many people deeply regret it.
I don’t mind advocating for the military, but some people are better off going directly to college. And some of those people need scholarships, and college tuition is still unreasonably expensive.
Do you even get to select what role you want to get into?
My (conscript) experience is that everyone first goes through Basic Military Training, then you get assigned somewhere randomly and that's basically it. You never get a choice. If you're lucky, you get assigned to an interesting unit, then you enlist and are set for the next 10 years.
edit:
The way the conscript system in Singapore works is
1. if you're 'highly' educated (highschool diploma equiv), you get a chance at becoming an officer. If you enlist, you get put on a career track (ie. set for life).
2. if you're 'technically' educated (tech/vocational diplma), you get a chance to be a technician or unit leader. You automatically become a sergeant after 1.5 years. If you enlist, you get to become a slightly higher ranked sergeant and eventually on course to become an NCO.
3. you're not educated so you're disposable cannon fodder (infantry). You're rejected for enlistment.
A college degree is a requirement for becoming an officer.
https://www.nationalguard.com/tools/student-loan-repayment-p...
The biggest problem for any attempt at education reform in the USA is that education is organized at the state level. It is practically impossible to get all interested parties to cooperate nationwide.
The other major problem is that the public university system has developed a huge overcapacity. They operate now as businesses whose main goal is to keep themselves employed. You see the effects in the softening of academic standards and continual pursuit of more foreign students.
It's much better suited for people with field experience who need the nice sheet of paper to move up in their field than it is for fresh HS graduates making their way in the world.
With that being said, if you know college is for you but you are concerned about the money as a fresh high school graduate, consider getting your AAS at your local community college and then getting your BS or MS from WGU (if it teaches what you want to learn).
You'll save tens of thousands early on in your career and be able to work for the 2 years between your AAS and your BS, getting experience and certifications in the process.
It won't be as fun as going to a party college but if you have a goal in mind it might be a viable path.
That seems to be the case for online education in general.
> consider...community college and then...WGU
I agree. I've worried over what to say to kids facing the terribly high cost of university education these days. If you can find a good program at a community college (quality varies), I think this route would be no worse educationally than what you get at most traditional universities in the USA now.
Students are able to borrow more, so schools increase tuition and see no appreciable drop in demand. Rinse and repeat.
Stop meddling in free markets.
Putting another couple pieces of paper in front of highschoolers detailing the total financial cost - while literally everyone in their lives encourages them to pursue college as the next step in their lives - and even mentioning that plan in the same breath as 'tackle student loan debt' is assinine.
Hell, even if you were going to try and fix the problem with a fucking disclosure, you'd do it by presenting and making a case for attractive alternative options.
Because realistically loads of people go to college after highschool because it has been the expectation of everyone they have known their entire lives AND symbolizes their opportunity to escape whatever the local body breaking labor is.
But if you wanted to convince me that you were serious then you'd go after the money. Probably lots of great ways to stop treating 18 year olds like great long term debt instruments but I think treating student loans as a normal form of debt that is dischargeable by bankruptcy would be a fine place to start.
Beyond the obvious effects of supporting effectively arbitrary price increases for that market - I don't think its possible to construct a sound moral argument that excuses removing a crucial safety valve on a debt that is also very large and targeted towards people that have only recently stopped being children.
Even the part about degrees that don't meet income level averages not being eligible for funding sounds good on paper but then you're essentially once again putting the onus on the arts to sacrifice for the other fields rather than fixing the system that has enabled this intersection of education and capitalistic piracy come to be in the first place.