This is the last in a series of four stories. Read the related articles: How The College Pricing And Student Loan Systems Hurt Students, Is College Even Still Worth It? and How To Save For Your Child's College Education: 6 Common Questions
Anya Kamenetz, NPR's lead education blogger and author of DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education and The Test
How could we improve college pricing?
The federal government has begun to enforce the gainful employment rule for for-profit and career colleges. They are proposing that colleges where too many graduates can’t repay their loans should be forced out of the federal student aid program. If that kind of regulation were extended, without forcing colleges to publicize a fixed price and without removing their ability to bargain, you could still have competition based on productivity and outcomes.
How could we pay for college better?
The availability of student loans has enabled public and private colleges to shift costs onto students through tuition, and this is the primary driver of tuition increases at public universities. Students are relatively insensitive to price increases because they have the ability of financing to pay for them. Some people have proposed getting rid of student loans, but I’d like to see the restoration of bankruptcy for student loans — not only because it’s the just and right thing to do, but because if there were bankruptcy protection and loans were canceled more often, lenders would be more cautious about giving them out. The end result across the whole market would be less volume in student loans and a more moderate rise in tuition.
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What opportunities do you see up ahead?
On the private education side, they are including a ton of amenities. Unbundling different aspects of the college degree would lower the cost. For instance, College for America through Southern New Hampshire University is extremely low-cost because people enroll through their employers. It’s online and entirely self-paced, and it focuses on building a specific skill set instead of the traditional disciplines. And it’s a fully accredited program for a fraction of the cost.
There’s a ton of inefficiency that comes from people dropping out and transferring from one school to another, so smoothing the path to a degree, helping people transfer and keep their credits and even something as simple as getting students to graduate on time, could lower costs.
Anthony P. Carnevale, director of Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce
How could we improve the way people pay for college?
College is the biggest expense you’ll have aside from buying houses and having a family. If you get too much in debt, it’ll be hard to do those things. When you’re 18 years old, my bias is, you probably deserve some help with this, and your parents too. Since the government makes out the loans, they have the responsibility to make sure that people pursuing their dreams don’t end up in a nightmare. When you take out a loan, you should know what happened to graduates of that major from that college and then make your own decision. If you want to go $160,000 in debt for a psychology degree, that’s your business. But someone should tell you you’re headed for trouble.
What opportunities do you see up ahead?
Since so many more Americans want and need higher education, we’ve got to deliver it more cheaply. In every other industry, technology has been the answer. There’s a lot of potential for technology to substitute for the classroom. You could have a smaller faculty. Hybrid technology-and-professor systems would require fewer instructors. Everyone would have the choice of the 10 best lecturers and the 10 best scholars in the country (they’re not always the same people), plus teaching assistants who can work with you and lead discussion sessions.
Who will benefit from those changes?
We know online learning doesn’t work really well for the less prepared students, but it works very well for the most prepared students. But those are precisely the kids that come from families who want them to have a residential four-year education. If you have enough money to go to Harvard, you don’t want to get your degree online. So we need to find a way to use technology to teach the less advantaged kids.
Lauren Asher, President of the Institute for College Access and Success
Is the current system effective?
Is high-cost, high-aid working? It depends on for whom. It’s a common misconception that low-income students are getting their needs met through grants. When you look at who is borrowing and how much they owe, that’s not the case. What we have seen is tremendous cost-shifting. The large majority of students go to public college universities, and the share of that cost that students and families are expected to pay has risen much faster than the total cost.
How would you improve pricing?
It’s still too hard for families to tell what college will likely cost them and how much borrowing a particular school will require. For instance, colleges do not have to tell you what the full cost of attendance is when they give you your aid offer. A school may offer you a $10,000 grant but you still won’t know how much you’re going to pay. Colleges are not required to report or otherwise disclose how much debt is typical for their graduates, and they are not required to give students financial aid award letters that include the full cost of attendance. Some schools hide the bottom-line cost – how much you’ll have to pay – by leaving this full cost of attendance off, or even blurring the lines between grants and loans.
Net price calculators, which are now required of all colleges, vary tremendously. They are supposed to give you a rough sense of how much it would cost someone like you to go to that school. But they vary in the age of the data they’re using, the level of personal financial detail they use and whether they highlight the net price or the net price minus loans, which can make a college look more affordable than it is.
How could we make paying easier for students?
Private loans have far fewer consumer protections than federal loans and are not covered by any of the federal loan repayment plans that can help limit the burden of debt. In order to ensure students max out their federal loans before turning to private loans, we could mandate that before a lender can issue a private loan, it has to confirm that the student is enrolled, how much of the total cost is not covered by aid and that the school has informed the student of any untapped aid eligibility.
This is the last in a series of four stories. Read the related articles: How The College Pricing And Student Loan Systems Hurt Students, Is College Even Still Worth It? and How To Save For Your Child's College Education: 6 Common Questions
