Author’s Note: I’ve re-posted this article for your reading pleasure as I am on vacation.
Duke University grad student Ken Ilgunas wrote a sublime piece in Salon.com about his own grand social experiment: He currently (until someone busts him after reading his article) lives in his van in a campus parking lot. Ilgunas went the standard student-loan route for his undergrad degree and hated the resulting loss of freedom he dealt with while working to pay it all off. For grad school at Duke, he’s decided to borrow nothing and graduate owing no one.
In order to pull that off at Duke, home of the $37,000/year tuition special, it becomes necessary to live a severely frugal existence. Seriously: he’s got a van, a few items of clothing, a single-burner camp stove, a sleeping bag, car insurance, and a lot of powdered milk, oatmeal, spaghetti and peanut butter.
From the article:
The more money I had borrowed, I came to realize, the more freedom I had surrendered. Yet, I still considered my education — as costly as it was — to be priceless. So now, motivated to go back to school yet determined not to go back into debt, I had to think outside the box. Or, as Henry David Thoreau might suggest, inside one.
…And so: I decided to buy a van. Though I had never lived in one, I knew I had the personality for it. I had a penchant for rugged living, a sixth sense for cheapness, and an unequaled tolerance for squalor. More…
Have you ever walked around Duke? I lived in Durham for a short while, and spent some non-academic time wandering the campus. Everyone looks very well taken care of. Stanford kids look good, too, but Duke’s population brings it to a shinier level. Which is to say I doubt Mr. Ilgunas blends.
It would be considered a noble and an excellent statement to live in a van while attending Evergreen. You would be applauded and everyone would bring you food and other special perks. (Except for me; I would bring you bleach and wet wipes.) But van living at Duke University may not go over too well.
Regardless of the outcome, I’m rooting for him. I’m hoping he pulls off graduate school minus the staggering debt, and I hope his article makes the rounds and wakes the powers that be the hell up as to the vile and nonsensical pile of money a human seeking higher education must fork over so as to get through the ivory gates.
For the ever-tense prospective college students (and their whacked-out parents), Lynn O’Shaughnessy wrote an informative piece about the UC system and seven facts future applicants may be interested to know.
Take special note of Fact #2 of you’re a California native. And maybe don’t bother applying to the coveted UC schools. Out-of-state students pay more tuition, so they’ll have a better shot at getting in. Which is inconsistent with the black-and-white rules of fair play. Somewhere, someone was just added to my s**t list.
Watching this helps one to gain some perspective. And by perspective I mean finally understanding just how much money this country requires to survive, and how little Obama has actually removed. Obama’s killing himself and pissing everyone off in order to save the most pathetic sliver of money. And the fallout from the various federal programs losing their funding is fully, mind-blowingly noticeable. If there’s not a huge line at the border crossing today, I could be in Canada in less than three hours.
Please refrain from acting on the overwhelming urge you’ll have to stick a fork into your forehead after watching that. My father’s advice would be: It is what it is. And my advice is this: We’re all in the same boat so suck it up, sweetcheeks.
Not being a gambling girl by nature, I’m nonetheless fascinated by Alec Torelli’s post about ditching college to play poker. As a career. Never in a thousand years could I leave school for the gambling life. First of all, I dislike the odds. Secondly, I know way too much math to ever see gambling as anything more than a little bit of skill laced through a huge pile of less-than guaranteed luck.
I’ve gambled twice in my entire life: I bought one $2 lottery ticket and won $20, and I played my pre-decided limit of $20 in a slot machine in Vegas and won $60. Done. Never have to gamble again. Do you know what the odds are of playing twice and winning twice? Total crap. The probability of my being that far ahead again is insanely low, so there is absolutely no reason for me to hand over one cent more.
I clearly have a bad attitude about gambling and the mathematically challenged chuckleheads who continually shove their money down the toilet. That being said, I’m still somewhat impressed by Mr. Torelli’s post. He’s not an idiot, and despite myself I enjoyed reading his argument (see below).
While everyone wrote [college] off as a mandatory rite of passage that follows high school, I had my doubts. I did what I knew best and ran the numbers. I began by breaking down the cost of a standard degree at a supposedly lucrative university.
University of Southern California annual fees
Tuition: $ 40,384
Insurance: 1,040
Fees: 614
Books: 1,500
Room/Board: 11,458
Personal / Misc: 1200
Transportation: 828
Season Football Tickets: 145
Total Cost: 57,169
Estimated Hours or Opportunity Cost (including studying): 50/ week x 40 weeks = 2,000 hours
Note: For relevance, these numbers were updated for the 2009/2010 school year, copied verbatim from the USC website.
Multiply this figure by a minimum of 4 years and you get a stunning $228,676 and 8,000 hours of time. Does this sound absurd to anyone besides me? I couldn’t help but think to myself, “do you know what I could do with these resources? Shit give me the money and I won’t go to school.” More…
Who knows what his future will be like, but at this point he’s doing well and makes a decent argument for his current path in life. His numbers work out as long as he’s staying ahead, but, you know, what are the odds his luck won’t run out?
Brown University undergrads using their powers for good: using the pay-it-forward concept to assist college students with higher education fundage while decreasing (and hopefully obsolete-ing) the need for banks and their Machiavellian student loan schemes.
It’s an amazing idea whose time has come. I’m incredibly impressed with Mr. Simmons and his team for building this project, thereby making a good solution possible for college students who could use some help funding their higher education.
Cody Simmons, Founder, CEO and President of CO-Fund, is crazy busy officially launching Co-Fund.org today, but here’s the press release he smartly sent out:
CO-FUND’S OFFICIAL LAUNCH
Co-Fund, America’s College Opportunity Fund, now publicly accepting donations
PROVIDENCE, RI (May 17th, 2010) – CO-Fund has just publicly launched its website today and is now accepting donations for its students at www.co-fund.org. CO-Fund is a nonprofit organization that enables individuals to sponsor a student’s college education through direct, person-to-person donations.
CO-Fund empowers students to garner support from their community in an easily-accessible and credible fashion while also connecting them with supporting individuals nationwide. Through CO-Fund’s online platform, donors can sponsor a student with as little as $1, with 100% of the donations made to students going toward “closing the gap” of the selected students’ college tuition costs.
Founded by a group of talented and entrepreneurial undergraduates at Brown University, CO- Fund was developed for students, by students. CO-Fund is a unique hybrid: a non-profit mission, scalable and cost effective technology, and the organization and energy of an Internet start-up. CO-Fund succeeds not by making money but by funding and empowering students to succeed.
Akin to micro-giving sites like Kiva and DonorsChoose, CO-Fund connects donors directly to recipients, lowering cumbersome barriers for donors and fostering a rapport between donors and recipients. Instead of offering students zero-percent loans that students pay back, CO-Fund Fellows instead “pay it forward” by supporting other students and communities like their own. As examples, students can pay it forward by working for a CO-Fund partner organization for at least one year after graduation or by completing a community service requirement.
CO-Fund is fiscally sponsored by Rhode Islanders Sponsoring Education (RISE) and its pilot launch includes students and partner organizations (Brown University’s College Advising Corps and College Visions) from Rhode Island, as they seek to validate the effectiveness of their model with a small group of students before scaling to work nationwide. CO-Fund is legally sponsored by Partridge, Snow & Hahn in addition to several corporate sponsors; it has also received recognition and funding in several business plan and social enterprise competitions.
This is how the donating works:
Donating
Individuals submit donations via PayPal through our website, and these donations are then tracked by PayPal and internally through our platform. Micro-donations made directly to students are “temporarily restricted funds,” meaning they are only used for that given individual recipient. Once a Fellow enrolls in college, CO-Fund works directly with his or her college’s Bursar office to cover part of their tuition bill using the money raised.
And here’s the bit I like the most:
“Pay-it-forward” pledge
Students sign a pledge to CO-Fund and their donors to complete one of three “pay-it-forward” options. First, students can work for CO-Fund or a partner organization for at least one year after graduating. Second, students can donate one-fifth of the amount received back to other CO-Fund students within five years after graduating. Third, students can complete at least 100 hours of community service while in college. CO-Fund and its partners then work with the students to make sure they carry on CO-Fund’s social mission and confirm their completion of a pay-it- forward option.
Prior to reading the article below, I had my own theory as to why it takes more than four years for students to earn a bachelor’s degree. It all comes down to money. I included a few more factors in my theory, but I was mostly right in line with the study. Basically, higher tuition, decreased school budgets, a depressed economy, an increased population of young adults hell bent on pursuing a college education (because they’ve been told since birth that only educated humans will ever make enough money) mean more time spent earning a degree.
I was scared like a little girl to look up tuition rates for 1972 and present day, so I don’t have that information for you. My cojones are a force to be reckoned with, but I do have my limits. Eviscerating tuition hikes are one of them. But I think it’s common knowledge that tuition rates have increased since 1972, the economy is less than healthy, more kids head for college these days, and school budgets have been cut many, many times.
The crappier the economy is, the more the school budgets are cut, which leads to increased tuition and fewer faculty and staff. Higher tuition means more working for students and a decreased course load, leading to a longer stay in college. Less budget money means fewer instructors, fewer courses offered, and a more difficult time for the students to get into the classes they need in order to graduate, leading again to more time spent earning that bachelor’s degree.
According to the study, the fact that bachelor’s degree acquisition takes longer than four years is due to the type of institution a student attends; higher tier state schools and private schools vs. community colleges and lower tier state schools. Institution type and how a given school is affected by, and subsequently deals with, decreased funding is what it all comes down to.
Top-level schools with better faculty-to-student ratios offer an improved learning experience for the students. This gets them in and out in a more four-year manner. Public schools, like community colleges and state schools, cram a few more kids into every classroom, which decreases the learning experience and mucks up the four-year works. Hence, four years to complete an undergraduate degree at a top-tier school and closer to six years at a lower-tier school.
Interesting. And I don’t totally buy it. I mean, I understand what the study is saying and how a decrease in funding can affect the learning experience. But I think there are more factors involved. A students-per-faculty ratio of 25.5 to 1 vs. 29.8 to 1 is enough to cause the learning experience to suffer so much that two more years are tacked onto the end of the original four-year bachelor’s degree plan? Really? Or, you know, maybe, the less-than top tier schools are more selective when choosing faculty, staff, and students, and have a lot more private financial backing than do the community colleges and state schools. Less crowding, supah-focused students, publish-or-perish faculty, and enough cash to be able to keep both the crowding and the lay-offs down to a minimum.
Any institution relying on public funding has historically been screwed when the economy hits the crapper. And may I remind everyone that in 1972, the helicopter parent insanity hadn’t quite begun. Although parents were starting to push the importance of a college education, it was nowhere near the life-or-death situation that it is today: College or sweatshop-work, kiddo. You pick!
These days, there are more college students in the system and no one has money to pay for all that education, not the parents, not the kids, and certainly not the schools. Loans and financial aid are harder to nail down as well. I really don’t think it has only to do with a few more students per classroom and whether or not a student hits the higher education jackpot and manages to attend a top-tier school.
Time to completion of the baccalaureate degree has increased markedly in the United States over the last three decades, even as the wage premium for college graduates has continued to rise. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of the High School Class of 1972 and the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988, we show that the increase in time to degree is localized among those who begin their postsecondary education at public colleges outside the most selective universities. In addition, we find evidence that the increases in time to degree were more marked amongst low income students. We consider several potential explanations for these trends. First, we find no evidence that changes in the college preparedness or the demographic composition of degree recipients can account for the observed increases. Instead, our results suggest that declines in collegiate resources in the less-selective public sector increased time to degree. Furthermore, we present evidence of increased hours of employment among students, which is consistent with students working more to meet rising college costs and likely increases time to degree by crowding out time spent on academic pursuits.
Ten more days until taxes are due for the 2009 tax year. And by “due” I mean that they must be postmarked by April 15th, 2010 or you’re in trouble with the IRS.
If you’re doing your own taxes, it’ll be fairly simple. College tuition, scholarships, and college tax credit rules make it slightly more paperwork-y. If your parents are footing your higher education bill, then it’s their taxes that will be wrapped 80 billion times over with red tape. Fun!
Below please find several resources for pertinent tax-time information for college students and their parental units.
While we’re on the topic of student loans and the lifetime of debt college grads will face, here are some informative articles and resources to peruse (find a paper bag and try to remember to breathe slowly and evenly).
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan explains why direct student loans are better for everyone but the banks, and why the banks are pissed about losing all those government subsidies. I’m siding with college students and direct loans, and will be far*ing in the general direction of the banks and their elderberry-scented mothers.
Under current law, taxpayers provide as much as $9 billion each year to subsidize guaranteed student loans issued by banks. The banks earn profits on the interest; if students default, taxpayers take the loss, not the banks. In other words, working Americans pay while bankers get rich.
Meanwhile, educators, engineers and computer scientists — the backbone of the new economy — face crushing debt from six-figure college tuitions. A study of national postsecondary student aid found that in 2008, two-thirds of college seniors graduated with debt averaging more than $23,000. That number will rise as public and private college tuition costs escalate.
…The Education Department has issued more than $187 billion in student loans since the Direct Loan Program was created in 1993. The number of universities participating in the program has more than doubled, to 2,300, in just the past three years. There is no justification to continue wasteful subsidies to banks. It is time to complete the shift to direct lending.
The president’s proposal, which has passed the House and awaits Senate consideration, represents the ideal hybrid of public investment and market-based management. Through direct lending, we get a bigger bang for taxpayer bucks while using competition and private-sector expertise to improve customer service.
