This is true. An easy way to solve the student debt "crisis"

@QuixoticSoul Boomers were smart enough not to cater to outrageous tuition.

@Budwick They never needed to.

@QuixoticSoul 👍️ People don't understand how things have changed. It used to be that college graduates were a much smaller percentage of the population. You could get a well-paying job and be set for life with just a high school diploma. College was ideally supposed to lead to better jobs and higher salaries, but it was not for everyone or even most people. Now the situation is that college is the bare minimum requirement for almost any job thought of as "decent", including ones that really have nothing to do what a higher education provides, and the cost of that higher education has skyrocketed.

@SW-User And on top of that college was outrageously cheap. It used to be somewhat practical to work your way through college, and people frequently did it, while now it's basically impossible.

@QuixoticSoul But people keep paying the freight!

Ya know, you're all about boycotting Chik Fil-A etc
Why not boycott Universities?

@Budwick I don’t boycott anything, those chicken sandwiches are supposed to be pretty great - I’m keen to try.

And because not everyone wants to be a plumber. Like it or not, college degrees are basically mandatory for any kind of white collar work. That hasn’t changed, even if costs skyrocketed the last few years. There isn’t a single person in my building that doesn’t have at least a BA. You can’t even be a schoolteacher without one.

Besides, that’s where all the hot girls are.

@QuixoticSoul Hot girls aside for the moment,...
There's a lot of kids in college that should have been plumbers.
I understand the importance of a degree.
I DON'T understand the tendency to run to government to fix everything.
If you can't afford college - don't go!
If you go - pay for it.
If you don't like the tuition - do something about it.

@Budwick Yes, how silly to expect the government to fix the situation with government-run public universities that exist for the sake of the public and our economy 🙄

Aren’t you a conservative? Here is a situation that worked perfectly fine your entire life, and got broken in the wake of the Great Recession. Well, conserve the fucker.

@QuixoticSoul So, they're free now? Don't think so Sparky.

You are wandering off course again Chaos.

@Budwick They were never free, but the point of public funding is to keep them an affordable alternative to private institutions. Because having an educated workforce is of critical importance in the modern world - something conservatives used to understand.

Stop being the most stupid useless form of progressive - a fucking libertarian. Preserve what has worked for so many years, and worked well.

@QuixoticSoul We still do understand.
You've drifted away from student debt though.
You've ignored the skyrocketing tuition's.
It always comes back to government freebies with you.

@Budwick Apparently you don’t understand, because we’re here having this conversation.

The skyrocketing tuition is the result of decades worth of funding neglect, followed by drastic funding cuts in the wake of the Great Recession. Like it or not, to bring down the tuition at government-funded universities, the government is going to have to fund them again.

Get tuition back under control, and the student loan situation will become more or less reasonable again, like it has basically the entire time you’ve been alive.

@QuixoticSoul Nothing to do with overpaid professors and retirement plans?

@Budwick Nope.

@QuixoticSoul Of course not.
They're democrats!

@Budwick 🙄

Professors are generally rather underpaid, and the faculty is squeezed harder than ever, with universities seeing more and more transient lecturers, and less full-time professors of note. As percentage of the overall budget, faculty salaries have been shrinking for decades.

Yes, government employees often still have retirement plans. And until the states cut funding to higher education, that wasn't an issue.

@QuixoticSoul
The average salary for a Professor is $67,084 per year in the United States.

That's the AVERAGE!


No, it's long been an issue.

@Budwick Yes, exactly. That is pitifully low for field-leading doctorate-holders. I made more money right out of college. And considered myself underpaid.

@QuixoticSoul Well then,
Maybe universities with skyrocketing tuition's should make the case front and center so we can all feel sorry for the poor profs.

@QuixoticSoul Nobody holds a gun up to a professor is head An Command them to work . That is such a tired old argument the teachers and professors are underpaid. They are paid very well for the time that they are actually teaching and for the months that they actually work...

@MarmeeMarch Professors aren’t high school teachers, they work the year round - teaching classes is only part of that gig, and often a small one. Research and publications generally take up most of their time, and drive career advancement in that job.

Lower faculty salaries just means the private industry and foreign universities poach more top names. Universities operate in a market - like you said, nobody forces professors to work.

@QuixoticSoul Thanks for making this clear. My dad is a university professor and there's a lot people don't understand about the job. Professors aren't glorified high school teachers.

@SW-User For that matter high school teachers are also underpaid, and that’s even related to the topic. There is a great example of where we have a critically important society-defining job that requires a college degree - but doesn’t pay well enough to easily repay the sort of loans we are seeing kids leave undergrad with.