Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Paying For College?

To paraphrase the dad of one of the YYM's classmates, Jessica.

"It's a debt trap, it's a suicide rap, we've got to stay debt-free until tomorrow, 'cause baby we're too young to borrow!"

A solution?

A statement of the problem.  I'm not sure that "college is expensive, so I was forced to film porn" is a tight argument, but the article is quite persuasive.

On the other hand, as Peter Lange has pointed out, tuition does not really cover all the "costs," either.

9 comments:

Peter M said...

"Faced with either a degree from a less prestigious school or decades of crushing debt, a few hours of work on a porn set revealed itself to be the best way to avoid getting screwed."

I hope the pun was intended.

Justin said...

Do you agree that Duke is shafting its students by charging such high prices? And if not, why? If yes then is it not mildly embarrassing to be working for such an organization?

Angry Alex said...

The real travesty is that "Belle" is pursuing a degree in "women's" studies. That like paying 50K a year to study creation science

Larry said...

Belle's article was good. Too bad she's waisting that massive tuition money studying women's studies. I don't suppose she plans to use her degree to support herself. She might live off her savings from porn (I hope she puts a lot away for a rainy day). Of if that fails she can always marry Charlie Sheen.

J Scheppers said...

To answer Larry's question applying it to me instead of MM, paying full fare to go to Duke would not be valuable to me, but I do admit that it is the market list price that about half the students pay.

Provost Lange counting student aid as contribution seems a little disingenuous. It seems more accurate to say the students pay on average 38K per year and the university pays 68K to provide services, because $22K is the average student aid.

The $350 million in charitable contributions Duke received last year equals about $24K per current student and you can bet Duke has part of their administrative budget dedicated to calling up Alumni, sending letters and catering fund raisers to collect payments from those grateful scholarship recipients.

Some of the donations are just advertising and the purchasers are likely getting what they paid for.

Duke is acting like an aggressive market actor and getting paid the market price given the rules and constraints.

J Scheppers said...

My apologies to Larry my comments were intended to address Justin's question.

Simon Spero said...

How much Financial Aid is actual expenditure, as opposed to forgone revenue?

University costs could be slashed by over 60% with no effect on the research or academic mission. A report on the precise details is being prepared by a sub-committee of the the administrative oversight cost amelioration task-force preparation working group, which will be meeting weekly as soon as all scheduling conflicts have been resolved, and the appropriate resources identified.

Anonymous said...

Alex and Larry, as I understand it, the young lady is wants to be a women's rights attorney, which tends to make an undergrad degree in women's studies look like a reasonable choice.

Anonymous said...

"I cannot tell you how difficult it is to hear my wealthy friends talk about all of the exciting summer plans in Greece or London they have, while I know I’m going to be working"