Seems like this would only bar working-class and lower-class applicants with high ambitions and impeccable high school records from the ability to attend top universities. True, they could attend Honors programs from state schools instead. But it still doesn't feel right.
typically the land grant universities that are state public out perform ivy league schools in specific subject areas.
You miss the point of these ivy league schools already are taxed, Congress wants to say well why not donate to the cause...and frankly some ivy league schools do in fact do that in donations to financial grant programs for low income...
Other point is that pell grants are better spent at State Schools where students can almost get 50% or more of tuition covered by pell grants due to the Congress finally increasing the amounts due to inflation in the bill they are proposing.
I agree with mostly everything you're saying except this:
>some ivy league schools do in fact do that in donations to financial grant programs for low income
This is always after other financial aid has been applied to the student account. They're not going to be willing to pony up the missing chunk, I bet you.
Honors colleges are a massive scam. They give the student more work and far more costs for only a small fraction of the prestige associated with top universities.
They also usually prevent one from applying AP credits or IB credits to college courses, as their "honors" versions of classes are not considered equivalent to any AP class. More money for mom and dad to pay because their kid got waitlisted and later rejected from Berkeley.
>>> Why would people make an investment with insufficient ROI (Return on Investment)?
>> Insufficient information.
>> College Scorecard [1] is a database with a web interface for finding and comparing schools according to a number of objective criteria. CollegeScorecard launched in 2015. It lists "Average Annual Cost", "Graduation Rate", and "Salary After Attending" on the search results pages. When you review a detail page for an institution, there are many additional statistics; things like: "Typical Total Debt After Graduation" and "Typical Monthly Loan Payment"
Which curricular assignments have actual career ROI for cash-strapped students?
I challenge you to find an example where honors college courses are considered "equivalent" to the honors college core you're required to take.
My claim is specifically courses like AP Lit or AP Lang can't be applied for "Honors Western Civ", not that they prevent AP Physics or other stuff not in the honors college from being applied.
> Honors colleges are a massive scam. They give the student more work and far more costs for only a small fraction of the prestige associated with top universities.
My niece is actually getting paid monthly in her honors program. Everything else is also covered. This, despite being eligible for GI Bill through her dad. As for Berkeley, I didn't imagine they have an honors college. In my mind, it's most associated with state schools and I've definitely seen students go from Honors program at state school to Ivy Leagues for grad school. Perhaps some of them are a scam. Just not the ones that I've seen.
I disagree. When watching some interviews of Yale students before, there was a frequent pattern of students responding, "I'm just a legacy student." to indicate that they're from a family of graduates paying full tuition, distinct from the merited students that are on some sort of scholarships and aid.
You have to consider that, as much as we'd all love think being smart is reliably inherited, it's not reliable at all. Not saying I'm opposed to their system. So-called "legacy students" are how the school is primarily financed, allowing subsidies for merited students. Without legacy, it goes bankrupt. Without merited, the degree loses value.
I have read this article twice now and I am failing to understand what they are trying to solve with this. They want to essentially punish students who that opt to attend a wealthy university? So they are expanding pell-grants and banning students from getting federal financial aid? What is the overall purpose or problem they are trying to solve?
When of course while yes the schools ultimately get the money, it's not a direct handout/appropriation to the school it's a vessel to get the student an education
Since the schools have high demand there is another student that will replace the loan recipient so the private school will not suffer one iota.
However the poor or middle class student just had their bootstraps cut off, the same ones that they'll be told they should've pulled themselves up by in 10-20 years when it's explained to them why they are not to have help with healthcare when they get cancer and have to stop working or why the banks are getting bailed out directly but their mortgage is definitely going to be foreclosed in the next housing crisis
You're not wrong, but I'm wondering how many of those top 50 schools (by wealth) already have guaranteed scholarships/grants that are income based. Stanford, for example, guarantees free tuition (not sure if this covers room & board, or fees) for any students with household income <$250k/yr, which is a pretty darn high threshold. Princeton has been similarly generous for a long time (UVA modeled their program after Princeton's about twenty years ago), and I suspect a number of others have programs like this, too.
Then I would question what the loans are for and why anyone is getting them. If a school is offering free tuition, room, board, books, and fees at best someone needs to buy food. That said without knowing the exact coverage, and situation I don't have an opinion specifically but I would not have a problem setting a rule where loans are not issued until other forms of aid (whether it be scholarships or just free tuition) are tapped and exhausted
However, we've made these loans non-dischargeable and people are basically on the hook to repay them no matter what and if they are going to pay them back they should have pretty broad freedom to use them at the school. If these were grants that didn't get paid back, I'd be a lot more sympathetic to the "well these have to be used at a state school and that's it, sorry, no free ride into the elite class today".
But these aren't bags full of cash that are not traceable, the students are going to pay these back come hell or high water, they should be able to use them where they want (within reason--we shouldn't be issuing loans to people to go to ITT Tech)
They are required to pay for the Pell grants somehow without new revenue. It’s a house rule.
So they are taking the money from the student loan program. It’s not really going to pay for the grants because that loan money is still available just at different institutions. It’s an accounting trick.
But those institutions are an easy target. The right views them as spreading leftist ideals and the left views them as bastions of privilege.
Of course if this passes it will be middle class kids that get hurt the worst.
The problem is a massive taxpayer subsidy for wealthy institutions that don’t need it.
The important point is who is benefiting from the subsidy? Just like the Federal tax credit for EVs benefit Tesla not the consumer, so too do student load subsidies benefit the universities, not the student.
When the Fed steps in to pay a portion of a consumer’s bill, if the supplier isn’t regulated, the supplier simply increases their prices exactly in line with the subsidy.
Consumers have a price they will bear, and that price is NET of any subsidies. It doesn’t really matter who technically “receives” the subsidy, directly to the supplier or to the consumer after the fact, because the purchasing decision works out the same either way if the supplier is free to increase prices.
Is there some reason these institutions could not make direct student loans themselves to their students? That would give them some real ‘skin in the game’ ensuring a good education with good job prospects.
It would be telling if they ended up lending to students in some majors but not others.
That's just called an institutional loan. Also I don't think the top 50 wealthiest private universities need us to worry about their students' outcomes.
That might work for a few years, but if all institutions did that it would collapse the whole system. A university degree is for jobs why would you think otherwise?
Even if the loans weren't subsidized by the government, the schools wouldn't do it. It's more likely they would be financed by banks like they are with other goods.
My state school is already doing it (though it is in addition to the federal program, not in lieu of it). The loans are serviced by a company, but the actual lender is the state as far as I can tell:
> UNC Loans are based on financial need and administered by the University. If you complete a FAFSA and are found eligible, a UNC Loan may be offered as part of your overall financial aid package.
> Interest rates are fixed at 5%, and interest is deferred as long as you are enrolled at least half-time. UNC Loans are repaid to ECSI, the loan servicer.
This makes absolutely no sense from any angle. US politics is so messed up right now. The entire right is lost in a personality cult and is driven more by triggering the libs than actually effecting change for their fellow citizens or the country as a whole. And the entire left is on a rampage to make sure they alienate as many people and supporters as possible and would much rather focus on symbolic protesting on issues they have no impact over as opposed to real issues they can help. The center is sensible and fairly effective but was small to begin with and is rapidly getting squeezed from both sides.
Re: this specific issue, it’s very obvious that universal programs are always more successful. They build a strong political and support base across the spectrum of voters without creating any losers who are deliberately excluded that would be motivated to end them. Further, more often than not any sort of means discrimination costs way more than the money saved through the means discrimination. And that’s even before the hoops the means discrimination adds to the lives of the poorest to prove their eligibility.
The means discrimination should be done once on the income tax side. There’s an extremely well established process for that and will be done anyways. Setting up ad hoc processes for each program on the benefit side simply doesn’t make sense.
And yet contra all the information we have the people proposing these policies will go out of their way to make their own policies less effective and more expensive as we’re seeing with these unnecessary riders.
I blame social media algorithms for the hyper polarization insanity. They run the discourse now.
“Own the libs” and unhinged Trump cultism on one side and “virtue spiraling” and toxic negativity on the other are what maximizes engagement. If it’s negative, offensive, triggering, or insane it goes to the top of the queue because it keeps people on the site arguing and raging.
Social media is a toxic destructive industry. I call them “tobacco companies of the mind.” If Musk finally kills Twitter he will be a hero. He should buy Instagram or TikTok after that.
Virtue spiraling happens on the far left or the far right as well as within religious movements. It’s when people try to outdo each other on appearing virtuous and mobbing one another for being insufficiently so. It ends with everyone being shattered and atomized and hating each other and the movement collapsing.
The toxic negativity I see on the left is a general attitude that basically everything is evil and horrible and hopeless. Any attempt to bring up good news leads to a counter attack or minimization of it. Also tends to go with discourse where the main topic is how awful the other side is. (The right hate circle jerks like that too but the tone is more aggro and less depressive.) It’s self defeating and depression inducing and generally unpleasant.
Today’s discourse is just generally toxic and stupid everywhere and like I said I blame the algorithm. Algorithmic social media took everything bad about media driven discourse and turned it up to 11.
> “Own the libs” and unhinged Trump cultism on one side and “virtue spiraling” and toxic negativity on the other
This resonates. Despite being someone that the vast majority of US citizens would characterize as "left", I was commenting to my partner the other day that as I'm getting older I feel more and more like Archie Bunker. I live in a deep blue area and I can't help but roll my eyes at half the stuff that gets discussed. I almost always agree with their starting point and their general sentiment, but then it just goes off in a wild direction.
And then of course the other side. It's like watching Voyager hurtling itself out past the solar system. They just keep running in a wild direction. There was a time where I'd pay more attention to right wing media as I found it overall better. A couple of decades later, hoooo boy.
One person walks past you on the street and says "hi." The next person strips naked, smears themselves with peanut butter and feathers, and starts clucking like a chicken and saluting Hitler. Which one of these maximizes engagement?
Now you understand social media and all modern mainstream political discourse.
Having known quite a few regular smokers - who remained kind, capable, healthy-ish people for decades - I'd suggest something far more negative than "tobacco companies".
Who do you consider the "center", and how have they been effective?
Senators Manchin and Sinema, for example, seem to be for sale to the highest campaign contributor and have been a veto holding back many bills from passing through Congress. And Biden himself is now one of the least popular Presidents in history, so it appears that the American public doesn't consider him effective.
> “America’s reliance on student loans is imperfect, but this move would hurt students far more than the colleges they attend.”
I’m not so sure that this would hurt students more. Taking debt without income or profit to service said debt is a highly risky move and this may mitigate the number of risks taken thereafter.
That said I do understand at the surface it would appear to prevent poor kids from attending these schools.
We should probably analyze the entire cohort and make a determination if it’s a good or bad move.
Per recent episode of Bill Maher, Stanford university has over 10000 administrators. Why is higher education so expensive in the US… bloated bureaucracy and fancy buildings which would not happen if the federal government was backing student loans.
That is not unique to Stanford, and every university in the country right now takes federal money in many ways, not just student loans, so your premise does not follow at all
People have cited this figure before, but I think the “10,000 administrators” without further context is misleading. The number is 15,000 anyway if you look at Wikipedia.
The reason it’s misleading is that it’s being portrayed as though there are 10,000 diversity, equity, and inclusion support group staff or payroll checkers or some other nonsense when the fact of the matter is that these figures include staff doing things like running federal research grant projects, maintaining facilities, working at university hospitals, and numerous other activities.
If you think 10,000 is a lot, wait until you see Ohio State University’s 27,000 administrative staff.
Adjust for student body that’s what ~1.5 admin staff per Harvard student and ~2.4 per Ohio state. Both seem crazy on their own but also sensationalized. I’d love to see how this has changed over time and compare school cohorts.
That’s my point but I may not have made it well. On its own that “feels” high but a better representation would be to look over time and also try to adjust for things like services offered — eg more sports teams likely means more admin.
I'm sorry. I read that a little differently and then just reiterated the point you were trying to make.
It really would be helpful if these things were broken down and better understood amongst the general population. Costs have gone up but I'd be hesitant (which is a reversal from my previous understanding) to blame that solely on "administrators".
In interpreting the number of “administrators” at different institutions, it is useful to have an understanding of when one is classified as an administrator. At my institution, there are basically three types of non-wage (classified) positions: tenure track faculty, research faculty, and administrative faculty. Librarians are administrative faculty, as, I suspect, are football coaches.
There are, of course, administrators among the administrative faculty, but far fewer than it appears.
> It would ban students who attend Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or any of the roughly 50 other wealthy, private colleges subject to a tax on their endowment from taking out federal student loans.
> America’s reliance on student loans is imperfect, but this move would hurt students far more than the colleges they attend.
Reaction: Yeah - from the PoV of folks who've drunk too much of the "We are the uppermost crust of the New Meritocracy, born to lord over lesser humans..." Kool-Aid that many elite colleges serve up, this sounds pretty bad.
But between the staggering administrative bloat of those institutions, the sort of culture wars Bizarro-world they seem determined to keep pushing into, and other major problems - maybe it would be better if the brighter & harder-working young people were steered away from them? Back about 1900, Americans were obsessed with the high status and long history of British nobility, and quite a few of America's richest families forced their daughters to marry British nobles - with huge dowries - in crass "pay for social status" trades. A few decades later, when the decline & fall of the British noble class was d*mned obvious, that fad faded.
If all your friends aren't making "take mommy's private jet, or daddy's?" decisions as they head to Harvard, this might be a good time to look further ahead, and make a long-term better decision.
It's a combination of prestige and education quality. And the fact that they can afford to be very selective, so they can keep the prestige intact by admitting the very best for the majority of the student base.
Consider this: The best and brightest that aren't admitted to the ivy league due to financial purposes will attend some other institution. Those institutions will raise their prestige over time as the market acknowledges the education outcomes.
As long as we continue to let these ivy league institutions gate-keep society, we'll be stuck in this system. Cutting out federal tax-payer money from these wildly overpriced institutions is a good first step.
Why not? What’s the point of the state paying for higher education? I’d say encouraging social mobility and making more people into high value creators.
It's not very egalitarian to let wealthy private institutions be the gate keepers of social mobility. I don't believe we're talking about 'education' here, rather we're talking about status signaling.
I'm 100% for free higher education paid by the state. I'm 100% against the current college and school system.
China does the opposite. To get access to government jobs (which include essentially all middle management and up positions in the private sector), there's an exam, the "Gaokao" ... administered by the government.
It is absolutely infamous for the amount of fraud and corruption, as well as how far government employees will go to force their kids through the exam. In both senses - preparation, cheating, outright fraud.
> One does not sent their child to Harvard for the education. One sends their child to Harvard to build personal and business connections.
It’s not a coïncidence that the education is damn good, too. A motivated student will be proximate to great minds in a way that is demonstrably productive.
> The wealthiest schools would absolutely love this.
No, because:
(1) Their "best and brightest" branding requires at least the perception that top geniuses from families of modest means still get in.
(2) A perceived "You must be $THIS rich to enter" sign at the door - for anything, not just education - attracts a lot of negative reactions these days.
(3) They can feel a slippy slope under their feet. There's a lot of Federal money flowing into their coffers (both literally, and de facto), and no reason for Congress to stop at cutting off just their Federal student loan money.
When I was in high school, and it was time to choose colleges, I had a particular challenge. As an immigrant to the US, I had a legal immigrant status that was unconventional. Additionally, my family has come to the country just 5 years prior, and it was tough to pay for brand name cereal, let alone college tuition.
Federal financial aid, including loans, is not available to everyone. It was unclear whether my family met those criteria. Our immigrant status was rarely encountered. I was told that likely I would not be able to get any financial aid. The prospect of paying $20k-$30k per year worried my head hunched over a bowl of no-name ringo-o’s.
I chose not to apply to any top schools because of my financial situation. Without federal assistance the cost would be even higher. I felt that I needed to balance my ability to pay with all other choices that go into a life plan.
Who knows if I would have been accepted. I did not even try because I was told that federal financial aid would not be available to me.
This ended up being not true and I got federal financial aid after all. I learned this after I already sent in my applications. But not to MIT and Stanford, my dream schools.
I ended up going to RIT. It was cold and I found a new appreciation for brick architecture. My life is fine. I do occasionally think about what would have been had I heard “You have access to federal student loans” when I was choosing where to apply.
Would such a proposed bill cause more kids who are not well off to not even apply if they knew federal financial aid would not help them pay for certain schools? My situation was odd and rare, but this would place many more kids in a similar dilemma.
On the bright side, if such a law passes, less wealthy colleges will get access to more top-tier applicants, and that is what equality is all about, right?
> I had a legal immigrant status that was unconventional.
> It was unclear whether my family met those criteria.
Firstly: I’m sorry that your high school and the system seems to have failed you here. A guidance counselor office (or similar) should have been either already knowledgeable in this area or able to figure it out.
What was unconventional about your immigration status?
No reason to be sorry. Things turned out quite well. I rarely share sad stories but this one provides a perspective that may be valuable for the conversation.
Re rare immigration status: my family entered the US in 1990 as “indefinitely paroled.” A single stamp in the passport was all we had to show for it. Supposedly only a few hundred people came in similar circumstances. Eventually this status got normalized through some legislation and now I am a US citizen. I can share more in private if you are curious.
So I don’t think the system failed me. There is no way that a guidance counselor would have know this, if lawyers were perplexed. Looking at it from another perspective and a wider view, the system worked well because it gave my family a chance to emigrate to the US.
There are many ways to look at the past. Road not taken and all. It’s good to take a moment how our decisions today might play out.
Nowadays most top schools would provide a financial aid package to someone from a family in that situation ("tough to pay for brand name cereal") that requires no family contribution and probably doesn't require loans.
Stanford for example does not charge tuition if your family income is under $150k/year and family assets are typical for that income level. Under $100k/year and they don't charge for room and board.
Perhaps back then it was also the case, but I did not know it. For me getting accepted and not being able to pay was the most terrifying prospect. Knowing what I know now, I would have gone about it a different way.
Good advice for kids who don't get it from other places is wonderful.
Duke also guarantees tuition free undergrad attendance to all “lower income” attendees, where lower income is something in the ballpark of $120K family income.
It's unfair that these colleges that have legacy admissions can take any federal loans/grants at all. I think the colleges' enthusiasm for race based admissions was to ensure that social class never becomes an issue - thus protecting their true clients, the children of rich alumni.
Takeaways: This modification basically removes federal Stanford and direct plus loan eligibility for schools whose average family net worth (assets held) exceeds $500k. (This isn't just HYP/Ivy's either! Small private schools like Reed and William and Mary might pass this eligibility test, as they have very wealthy student bodies.). However, the actual impact this will have on students coming from poorer backgrounds remains to be seen, for three reasons:
1. These loans tend to not be very large. Anything helps, of course, but a $6k Stafford loan is a drop in the bucket against a $78k/year tuition.
2. These schools tend to issue grants and scholarships to students from disadvantaged backgrounds. These are better than federal loans, of course. Check out what Harvard is doing for the class of 2026: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/03/harvard-to-ex.... You pay nothing if your family makes less than $75k/year. That's pretty neat!
3. These schools are stupidly insanely selective and everyone applies to them, I.e., it's like Google's hiring problem. Students from wealthier families with always have more resources to help their kids get noticed, and students from poorer backgrounds will have to claw their way in. Same as it ever was.
Very disappointing that The Atlantic couldn't cite the source of the actual bill and the section in question.
I would expect that students most of the named schools would be more likely than average to pay back their loans. Wouldn’t the government be making money, in interest, off these students?
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 32.2 ms ] threadYou miss the point of these ivy league schools already are taxed, Congress wants to say well why not donate to the cause...and frankly some ivy league schools do in fact do that in donations to financial grant programs for low income...
Other point is that pell grants are better spent at State Schools where students can almost get 50% or more of tuition covered by pell grants due to the Congress finally increasing the amounts due to inflation in the bill they are proposing.
>some ivy league schools do in fact do that in donations to financial grant programs for low income
This is always after other financial aid has been applied to the student account. They're not going to be willing to pony up the missing chunk, I bet you.
They also usually prevent one from applying AP credits or IB credits to college courses, as their "honors" versions of classes are not considered equivalent to any AP class. More money for mom and dad to pay because their kid got waitlisted and later rejected from Berkeley.
>>> Why would people make an investment with insufficient ROI (Return on Investment)?
>> Insufficient information.
>> College Scorecard [1] is a database with a web interface for finding and comparing schools according to a number of objective criteria. CollegeScorecard launched in 2015. It lists "Average Annual Cost", "Graduation Rate", and "Salary After Attending" on the search results pages. When you review a detail page for an institution, there are many additional statistics; things like: "Typical Total Debt After Graduation" and "Typical Monthly Loan Payment"
Which curricular assignments have actual career ROI for cash-strapped students?
Maybe this was your experience, but I have not ever heard of this, so ‘usually’ may not be the correct descriptor.
My claim is specifically courses like AP Lit or AP Lang can't be applied for "Honors Western Civ", not that they prevent AP Physics or other stuff not in the honors college from being applied.
My niece is actually getting paid monthly in her honors program. Everything else is also covered. This, despite being eligible for GI Bill through her dad. As for Berkeley, I didn't imagine they have an honors college. In my mind, it's most associated with state schools and I've definitely seen students go from Honors program at state school to Ivy Leagues for grad school. Perhaps some of them are a scam. Just not the ones that I've seen.
Education received has never been different at ivy leagues.
You have to consider that, as much as we'd all love think being smart is reliably inherited, it's not reliable at all. Not saying I'm opposed to their system. So-called "legacy students" are how the school is primarily financed, allowing subsidies for merited students. Without legacy, it goes bankrupt. Without merited, the degree loses value.
Since the schools have high demand there is another student that will replace the loan recipient so the private school will not suffer one iota.
However the poor or middle class student just had their bootstraps cut off, the same ones that they'll be told they should've pulled themselves up by in 10-20 years when it's explained to them why they are not to have help with healthcare when they get cancer and have to stop working or why the banks are getting bailed out directly but their mortgage is definitely going to be foreclosed in the next housing crisis
However, we've made these loans non-dischargeable and people are basically on the hook to repay them no matter what and if they are going to pay them back they should have pretty broad freedom to use them at the school. If these were grants that didn't get paid back, I'd be a lot more sympathetic to the "well these have to be used at a state school and that's it, sorry, no free ride into the elite class today".
But these aren't bags full of cash that are not traceable, the students are going to pay these back come hell or high water, they should be able to use them where they want (within reason--we shouldn't be issuing loans to people to go to ITT Tech)
So they are taking the money from the student loan program. It’s not really going to pay for the grants because that loan money is still available just at different institutions. It’s an accounting trick.
But those institutions are an easy target. The right views them as spreading leftist ideals and the left views them as bastions of privilege.
Of course if this passes it will be middle class kids that get hurt the worst.
The important point is who is benefiting from the subsidy? Just like the Federal tax credit for EVs benefit Tesla not the consumer, so too do student load subsidies benefit the universities, not the student.
When the Fed steps in to pay a portion of a consumer’s bill, if the supplier isn’t regulated, the supplier simply increases their prices exactly in line with the subsidy.
Consumers have a price they will bear, and that price is NET of any subsidies. It doesn’t really matter who technically “receives” the subsidy, directly to the supplier or to the consumer after the fact, because the purchasing decision works out the same either way if the supplier is free to increase prices.
It would be telling if they ended up lending to students in some majors but not others.
Also, education is for education not for job prospects. The fact that you want this to be the wrong way around is a very American perspective.
A university for many careers, is a signal.
A trade school is for jobs.
Skills are different from knowledge.
Etc.
> UNC Loans are based on financial need and administered by the University. If you complete a FAFSA and are found eligible, a UNC Loan may be offered as part of your overall financial aid package.
> Interest rates are fixed at 5%, and interest is deferred as long as you are enrolled at least half-time. UNC Loans are repaid to ECSI, the loan servicer.
Re: this specific issue, it’s very obvious that universal programs are always more successful. They build a strong political and support base across the spectrum of voters without creating any losers who are deliberately excluded that would be motivated to end them. Further, more often than not any sort of means discrimination costs way more than the money saved through the means discrimination. And that’s even before the hoops the means discrimination adds to the lives of the poorest to prove their eligibility.
The means discrimination should be done once on the income tax side. There’s an extremely well established process for that and will be done anyways. Setting up ad hoc processes for each program on the benefit side simply doesn’t make sense.
And yet contra all the information we have the people proposing these policies will go out of their way to make their own policies less effective and more expensive as we’re seeing with these unnecessary riders.
They're well past granting 9000 degrees per year; I wouldn't be surprised if they hit 10000/yr within 10-15 years.
[1] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/05/harvard-award...
“Own the libs” and unhinged Trump cultism on one side and “virtue spiraling” and toxic negativity on the other are what maximizes engagement. If it’s negative, offensive, triggering, or insane it goes to the top of the queue because it keeps people on the site arguing and raging.
Social media is a toxic destructive industry. I call them “tobacco companies of the mind.” If Musk finally kills Twitter he will be a hero. He should buy Instagram or TikTok after that.
The toxic negativity I see on the left is a general attitude that basically everything is evil and horrible and hopeless. Any attempt to bring up good news leads to a counter attack or minimization of it. Also tends to go with discourse where the main topic is how awful the other side is. (The right hate circle jerks like that too but the tone is more aggro and less depressive.) It’s self defeating and depression inducing and generally unpleasant.
Today’s discourse is just generally toxic and stupid everywhere and like I said I blame the algorithm. Algorithmic social media took everything bad about media driven discourse and turned it up to 11.
This resonates. Despite being someone that the vast majority of US citizens would characterize as "left", I was commenting to my partner the other day that as I'm getting older I feel more and more like Archie Bunker. I live in a deep blue area and I can't help but roll my eyes at half the stuff that gets discussed. I almost always agree with their starting point and their general sentiment, but then it just goes off in a wild direction.
And then of course the other side. It's like watching Voyager hurtling itself out past the solar system. They just keep running in a wild direction. There was a time where I'd pay more attention to right wing media as I found it overall better. A couple of decades later, hoooo boy.
Now you understand social media and all modern mainstream political discourse.
Having known quite a few regular smokers - who remained kind, capable, healthy-ish people for decades - I'd suggest something far more negative than "tobacco companies".
"Methamphetameme gangs", maybe?
Citation needed.
Who do you consider the "center", and how have they been effective?
Senators Manchin and Sinema, for example, seem to be for sale to the highest campaign contributor and have been a veto holding back many bills from passing through Congress. And Biden himself is now one of the least popular Presidents in history, so it appears that the American public doesn't consider him effective.
I’m not so sure that this would hurt students more. Taking debt without income or profit to service said debt is a highly risky move and this may mitigate the number of risks taken thereafter.
That said I do understand at the surface it would appear to prevent poor kids from attending these schools.
We should probably analyze the entire cohort and make a determination if it’s a good or bad move.
Stanford and Harvard issuing a lot of useless basket weaving and women's studies degrees that no one can use to get a job, are they?
The reason it’s misleading is that it’s being portrayed as though there are 10,000 diversity, equity, and inclusion support group staff or payroll checkers or some other nonsense when the fact of the matter is that these figures include staff doing things like running federal research grant projects, maintaining facilities, working at university hospitals, and numerous other activities.
If you think 10,000 is a lot, wait until you see Ohio State University’s 27,000 administrative staff.
I don’t know if I’ve seen that dataset though.
It really would be helpful if these things were broken down and better understood amongst the general population. Costs have gone up but I'd be hesitant (which is a reversal from my previous understanding) to blame that solely on "administrators".
There are, of course, administrators among the administrative faculty, but far fewer than it appears.
> America’s reliance on student loans is imperfect, but this move would hurt students far more than the colleges they attend.
Reaction: Yeah - from the PoV of folks who've drunk too much of the "We are the uppermost crust of the New Meritocracy, born to lord over lesser humans..." Kool-Aid that many elite colleges serve up, this sounds pretty bad.
But between the staggering administrative bloat of those institutions, the sort of culture wars Bizarro-world they seem determined to keep pushing into, and other major problems - maybe it would be better if the brighter & harder-working young people were steered away from them? Back about 1900, Americans were obsessed with the high status and long history of British nobility, and quite a few of America's richest families forced their daughters to marry British nobles - with huge dowries - in crass "pay for social status" trades. A few decades later, when the decline & fall of the British noble class was d*mned obvious, that fad faded.
If all your friends aren't making "take mommy's private jet, or daddy's?" decisions as they head to Harvard, this might be a good time to look further ahead, and make a long-term better decision.
There’s absolutely no pressure anymore on them to accept anyone but the wealthiest candidates anymore from across the world.
Not only will they make more money the exclusivity means they will be more desirable as well.
What a backwards idea from both the right and left perspective.
In a functioning society, this would only be true if the education quality is actually superior.
As long as we continue to let these ivy league institutions gate-keep society, we'll be stuck in this system. Cutting out federal tax-payer money from these wildly overpriced institutions is a good first step.
I would tend to agree. It's usually my first response when someone says <insert community college here> isn't a good school.
I'm 100% for free higher education paid by the state. I'm 100% against the current college and school system.
It is absolutely infamous for the amount of fraud and corruption, as well as how far government employees will go to force their kids through the exam. In both senses - preparation, cheating, outright fraud.
Fraud horror stories: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-53316895
Preparation horror stories: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/magazine/inside-a-chinese...
Cheating horror stories: https://time.com/4360968/china-gaokao-examination-university...
Having 5 different options in the private sector + a fallback (the state universities) seems a very desirable outcome compared to that, I must say.
It’s not a coïncidence that the education is damn good, too. A motivated student will be proximate to great minds in a way that is demonstrably productive.
> There’s absolutely no pressure anymore on them to accept anyone but the wealthiest candidates anymore from across the world.
What a strange statement. Are they under any such pressure today? (I assume you mean exogenous pressure). They already choose the students they want.
Removing the availability of assistance will change that pool of applicants, obviously.
No, because:
(1) Their "best and brightest" branding requires at least the perception that top geniuses from families of modest means still get in.
(2) A perceived "You must be $THIS rich to enter" sign at the door - for anything, not just education - attracts a lot of negative reactions these days.
(3) They can feel a slippy slope under their feet. There's a lot of Federal money flowing into their coffers (both literally, and de facto), and no reason for Congress to stop at cutting off just their Federal student loan money.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/jwhsqhrat
When I was in high school, and it was time to choose colleges, I had a particular challenge. As an immigrant to the US, I had a legal immigrant status that was unconventional. Additionally, my family has come to the country just 5 years prior, and it was tough to pay for brand name cereal, let alone college tuition.
Federal financial aid, including loans, is not available to everyone. It was unclear whether my family met those criteria. Our immigrant status was rarely encountered. I was told that likely I would not be able to get any financial aid. The prospect of paying $20k-$30k per year worried my head hunched over a bowl of no-name ringo-o’s.
I chose not to apply to any top schools because of my financial situation. Without federal assistance the cost would be even higher. I felt that I needed to balance my ability to pay with all other choices that go into a life plan.
Who knows if I would have been accepted. I did not even try because I was told that federal financial aid would not be available to me.
This ended up being not true and I got federal financial aid after all. I learned this after I already sent in my applications. But not to MIT and Stanford, my dream schools.
I ended up going to RIT. It was cold and I found a new appreciation for brick architecture. My life is fine. I do occasionally think about what would have been had I heard “You have access to federal student loans” when I was choosing where to apply.
Would such a proposed bill cause more kids who are not well off to not even apply if they knew federal financial aid would not help them pay for certain schools? My situation was odd and rare, but this would place many more kids in a similar dilemma.
On the bright side, if such a law passes, less wealthy colleges will get access to more top-tier applicants, and that is what equality is all about, right?
> It was unclear whether my family met those criteria.
Firstly: I’m sorry that your high school and the system seems to have failed you here. A guidance counselor office (or similar) should have been either already knowledgeable in this area or able to figure it out.
What was unconventional about your immigration status?
Re rare immigration status: my family entered the US in 1990 as “indefinitely paroled.” A single stamp in the passport was all we had to show for it. Supposedly only a few hundred people came in similar circumstances. Eventually this status got normalized through some legislation and now I am a US citizen. I can share more in private if you are curious.
So I don’t think the system failed me. There is no way that a guidance counselor would have know this, if lawyers were perplexed. Looking at it from another perspective and a wider view, the system worked well because it gave my family a chance to emigrate to the US.
There are many ways to look at the past. Road not taken and all. It’s good to take a moment how our decisions today might play out.
Stanford for example does not charge tuition if your family income is under $150k/year and family assets are typical for that income level. Under $100k/year and they don't charge for room and board.
Good advice for kids who don't get it from other places is wonderful.
Duke School of Nursing (article ex) Tuition: BSN: $14,525/yr (or ABSN $25,258/yr).
Housing: $11k/yr. Fees,Food,etc: $7k/yr. I'm likely low.
sources: https://nursing.duke.edu/academic-programs/absn-accelerated-...
https://nursing.duke.edu/academic-programs/msn-master-scienc...
housing:internet said $1100/mo for student housing in Durham NC (do students rent all 12mo?), food:guess
This is to measure the issue, not advance an argument either way.
Section 7 is the amendment under discussion here.
Definition of an "applicable institution" from 26 USC § 4968(b): https://www.law.cornell.edu/definitions/uscode.php?width=840...
Takeaways: This modification basically removes federal Stanford and direct plus loan eligibility for schools whose average family net worth (assets held) exceeds $500k. (This isn't just HYP/Ivy's either! Small private schools like Reed and William and Mary might pass this eligibility test, as they have very wealthy student bodies.). However, the actual impact this will have on students coming from poorer backgrounds remains to be seen, for three reasons:
1. These loans tend to not be very large. Anything helps, of course, but a $6k Stafford loan is a drop in the bucket against a $78k/year tuition.
2. These schools tend to issue grants and scholarships to students from disadvantaged backgrounds. These are better than federal loans, of course. Check out what Harvard is doing for the class of 2026: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/03/harvard-to-ex.... You pay nothing if your family makes less than $75k/year. That's pretty neat!
3. These schools are stupidly insanely selective and everyone applies to them, I.e., it's like Google's hiring problem. Students from wealthier families with always have more resources to help their kids get noticed, and students from poorer backgrounds will have to claw their way in. Same as it ever was.
Very disappointing that The Atlantic couldn't cite the source of the actual bill and the section in question.