New Federal Rule: Colleges Must Prove Graduates Earn More or Lose Aid

> But this new test, known as "do no harm," raises some thorny questions about the purpose of college. Like: Is it just about making more money?

If this is a fair question to ask students, then it is a fair question to ask the schools as well. They are the ones charging enormous amounts of money to students for this.

This doesn’t prevent people from learning to paint or play the clarinet. It prevents students from taking out enormous loans for it.

I feel like I have not really heard a compelling reason why student debt should not be dischargeable thru bankruptcy like (afaik) all other forms of debt. I am curious what the ramifications would be if higher education institutions had to (in some form) co-sign the debt being issued.

I do get that not all education should be purely for economic reasons, but as an autodidact I feel that "learning for the sake of learning" does not need to come with the prices that people are paying for degrees.

The calculation is interesting:

(For bachelors degrees):

Each year, they will calculate the median earnings 4 years after graduation of graduates of every (Institution, CIP code) tuple. (CIP Code: 6 digit code that identifies a "program"; there are ~2,000).

Then they calculate the median earnings of high school grads in that Institution's state across all jobs.

If the high school grads earn more than the bachelors degree grads for 2 out of the past 3 years, the Feds won't offer student loans for that (Institution, CIP code) tuple.

Incidentally, the IRS already supplies this data in aggregated form to the US Dept. of Ed.

Check it out here: https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/

Here is MIT: https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?166683-Massachusetts...

This is great. Federally subsidized loans is directly (not solely) responsible for rapid inflation of college costs in the US. Anything to limit its use is a good thing. I’d argue that this test would be better expanded to actually having an ROI, not just do no harm, to encourage schools to not only provide value but also constrain costs (eg your school may make sense at $10k debt not $100k debt).

This and/or making loans dischargeable in bankruptcy.

Gut feeling here is that this is going to result in significantly lower higher ed enrollment, and therefore a less educated populace.

Less federal aid means fewer students can afford our insanely expensive educational system. This will pull up the ladder on the younger generations.

We do not teach history or ethics, or much in general to our pipeline welders, but they make bank for their hard labor. Meanwhile our well educated school teachers are paid nearly nothing. Both are needed (although I would argue teachers more so). This is not fundamentally an issue of failing educational institutions (although they may well be lacking), but an issue of societal incentives. The welder is paid by the oil corporation; the teacher by a dwindling percentage of your tax dollars.

We are living in the information age yet we have a crisis of education. We desperately a solution that increases both educational access and quality for everyone regardless of their career path. We need more, better, cheaper education. We need more incentives for an educated populace. This does not achieve that: in fact it aggravates the issue.

imo this is pants on head backwards. The whole problem with the current university system is that it has become exclusively a credentialing system that everyone uses to justify higher salaries. We’ve completely left the education part of it by the wayside…except for the liberal arts majors who are actually there just to learn! This rule is just encoding the existing tulip mania into federal law directly, by making it clear that the ONLY reason one goes to school is for future $$$

Call me a skeptic (which I probably am), but the bar seems incredibly low. I am glad they are finally doing something about worthless college degrees financed by the taxpayers; but this feels like too little.

The colleges don't have to prove the degree is worth the price paid for it, only that it is better than nothing. If you go to some Ivy League school and rack up $100K debt, you don't have to show that you will earn enough to pay that back; only show that you make more than if you never went to college.

We should normalize taking gap years and doing public service before undergrad. If a kids uncertain about their future, should we push them into school at 18, or push them into national parks maintenance, inner city volunteering, or any other public duty? The latter doesn’t make as much money for the banks and colleges, but may do more good. Plus the kids will have experience and wisdom and see the world before taking a mortgage out on their brain.

The problem is... that won't help. Academia simply has gotten completely perverted from its original purpose: advancing science and training the next generation of scientists.

Companies, by requiring college degrees even for the most mundane tasks, simply turned academia into multiple things at once: it saved them money for training their staff (as the majority of "industry standard" knowledge gets taught there), it offloaded the cost to the prospective employees (remember when we were taught "if you are supposed to pay for your job you're getting scammed"?), and most importantly it offloaded all of the risk too. Got ADHD? Any other mental or physical health issue? You likely won't even pass college. Everyone who passed through college already passed the "filter gates" employers want - can cope with stress, likely has some sort of support network if they can't on their own, and doesn't carry baggage that reduces their ability to work compared with their peers.

Oh, and a nice side thing for companies, requiring college degrees saves them from ADA and other anti-discrimination regulation violations. It's well-known that being Black (or otherwise in a minority) results in markedly lower chances of finishing with a degree, having children results in lower chances, living in poverty results in lower chances, the list goes on and on. Requiring a college degree is a very easy proxy to say "I want a workplace that's as male, white and rich-frat-boy-ish as possible".