UT System Tackles Issue of Growing Student Debt
On the agenda for Thursday morning's meeting of the University of Texas System Board of Regents is a discussion on a topic near and dear to the pocketbooks of many students and their parents: student loan debt.
With student loan debt now surpassing national credit card debt, part of UT System Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa's framework for advancing excellence, which was approved in 2011, called for the formation of a task force to study the issue. The task force's report, which includes recommendations on how the system can help ease the burden on students, will be presented at ...
Comments (13)
Lee B. Weaver via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Make college free and REALLY hard. (rather than easy and REALLY expensive)
Faith Ntx via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Lower their cost!! Its ridiculous! Heres an article from 2010! Unions is another problem!! http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2010/05/why_faculty_unions_could_destr.html
Renee E. Babcock via Texas Tribune on Facebook
This is the wrong question to ask, at least as regards public universities. There's very little public universities can do to ease the student loan burden, or to lower costs to students, because the costs are high. When you look at costs at private institutions, which are not publicly subsidized, you get an idea of what the true cost is per student. With public institutions, what's been happening in the last several budget cycles is their subsidies have been substantially reduced. Just because the state cuts their subsidies by millions of dollars doesn't mean the costs go down.
Payroll is usually the largest part of a university's budget, and the staff and faculty who work at universities deserve to be paid for what they do. When public subsidies go down, the cost has to be passed on to the student.
At the same time, on a federal level, grants (this is true also for state grants) and work study opportunities have also been slashed, meaning for most students the only real financial aid they can get.
Why aren't we asking the pertinent question: why is there so little value in higher education at the state levels? Where there is value, there is funding.
Devin Giddens via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Stop loaning money to kids for liberal arts degrees that have no value. Or make it free and really hard.
Jemila Lea via Texas Tribune on Facebook
They can persuade the legislature to go back to regulating tuition if they really care about student debt. Since Texas deregulated in 2003 the average academic charges for a student taking 15 hours has increased by 72 percent. For some institutions, like UT System, it has increased as much as 119%. http://www.thecb.state.tx.us/reports/PDF/1527.PDF
Renee E. Babcock via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Jemila, regulating tuition was horrible. The legislature kept tuition artificially low for years so they could tell their constituents that they were keeping tuition affordable. Only students needed and demanded services which weren't paid for out of tuition, so fees had to be raised. It was quite common for a student to have a tuition bill of only about $300 and over $2000-3000 in fees. One of the biggest problems has been defunding of higher education at the state level, and defunding of non-loan forms of financial aid.
Lisa Ahrlett via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Don't push a college degree so hard. There is nothing wrong with trade school and blue collar jobs. Not everybody needs a degree to succeed in life.
Jim Moriarty
If they had any integrity, they would support changing the bankruptcy code so student debt is treated like any other debt other than taxes and child support, and could be discharged in bankruptcy. Our young people get out of collage owing tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt that they will wear around their necks like a choke chain for decades. Think indentured servants. When our kids figure out how we have screwed them on taxes, social security and on student debt, the streets of Austin will be like the streets in Greece. Of course this would mean that the collages could not continue to ever increase collage costs so this leadership will not come from them.
Susan Syler via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Get the Leg to begin funding them again.
Jason Laviolette via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Create a statewide apprenticeship program in high demand trades; secondary education is still a product that consumers decide to use. Demand drives prices, perhaps everyone does not need college. It's not popular. Going to college to become educated is one thing, going to college to get a job is not the same. The Educated Class does overlap with the Working Class.
Lori Trammell via Texas Tribune on Facebook
stop lending for degrees with little or low job prospects. let the private sector or the universities fund the "designer majors" that offer little chance of employement. It just doesent make sense to put the taxpayer on the hook for a student loan that will never be able to be repaid by the student.
Alana Carpenter via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Not everyone 'needs' a degree, but even manufacturers cannot fill positions now because workers don't have the education to work in new technologies. It's becoming a national issue, and we are bringing educated folks in from other countries because we don't have educated people here- education should be affordable for those who are willing to work for a degree
Jeff Scroggin via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Getting a college degree, or better yet, a graduate degree is most peoples best bet for increasing their income in life. There is absolutely nothing wrong with not getting a degree, or learning a trade, but we need to encourage those who want to pursue a higher education to do so.
Like it or not, we are competing on a world stage now. We're importing high skilled workers because we don't have enough of our own. Saying "you don't need a degree" is certainly true, but it's also short sited and sets our country up for failure in the new reality we're living in.
I applaud the work of the Regents on the very real problem of student debt. I hope they can implement these ideas, see student success increase, and decrease defaults on student debt.
I never would have gone to college without school loans. I'm thankful they're also all paid off now.