The unofficial online home for fans of the University of Cincinnati Bearcats. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

(10-12-2023 12:06 PM)Helicopter Wrote:  Who gives a f*** what kids "want"? If you went and got a worthless degree (except for the 12 CEOs! LOL) I don't want to hear about "wants". You know what I don't want to go to my job everyday but I sure as hell do.

Also when I got my engineering degree from UC I hated most of my classes, and hated studying all night while soft science and arts smoked weed and played video games. But I sure appreciated the zero debt and full time job when I graduated.

Probably the kids and their parents, who are forking over hundreds of thousands of dollars for a "useless degree", and don't really see "go back in time 4 years and get this specific STEM degree that I got" as a solution.

Also, if you think Engineering students aren't smoking grass and playing video games, I'm a little curious as to what Engineering progran you were enrolled in.

(10-12-2023 12:15 PM)Helicopter Wrote:  

(10-11-2023 03:11 PM)BearcatMan Wrote:  

(10-11-2023 02:28 PM)namrag Wrote:  I think a lot of the critiquing of liberal arts degrees is a result of the push for taxpayers to pay for student loans of students who most likely piled up student loan debt in degrees that don’t have the income outlook of STEM degrees.
If someone wants to pursue a liberal arts degree because of “quality of life” and “money isnt everything”, then fine.
But don’t then cry and demand that someone else pay off YOUR debts.

I've long argued that there is a very simple answer to the student debt crisis...remove interest from the equation. Interest charges tend to be the thing that people are frustrated with, and the whole idea behind the Federal Government essentially using 18 year olds as a profit center is icky as all hell.

I would do 4 things:

1. All federally backed student loans must have demonstrated ROI from the fields they supplement and are porportional to that ROI. Engineering/STEM would be fully funded. Sorry, no more tax payer funds for soft science BS. One poster here suggested Liberal Arts was such a high ROI -- this evaluation would prove it.
2. All current federally backed student loans would have all historical interest completely stripped and the University endowments would be direcly taxed to make up the shortfall.
3. All federally backed student loans can be payed with pre-tax income. All payments made this way drive the payer's AGI down similar to any other pre-tax deduction. No limit.
4. All borrowers who live at or below the poverty level for a 5 year period have their entire loan forgiven. Income recieved above 200% of the poverty level over the next 10 years is garnished at 25% in addition to taxes/FICA until the original principle is exhausted or 10 years elapse.

A sensible solution...so it'll never happen lol.

I especially like your second clause, more specifically, I would re-write it to be the following:

All interest paid on previous Federal Student Loans should be applied to remaining principal on any existing or remaining Federal Loans for the payees. All interest paid on student loans that have already been paid in full should be applied as a Federal Tax deduction to those individuals applied over a maximum of 5 years of earned income.

This does two things...makes the individuals who paid back their loans whole while also "forgiving" paid interest on Federal Loans for those who have remaining principal.

(10-12-2023 12:06 PM)Helicopter Wrote:  

(10-11-2023 07:37 AM)OKIcat Wrote:  

(10-10-2023 10:32 PM)Bruce Monnin Wrote:  Liberal Arts colleges are the worst. Some guys I was playing poker with tonight was worried about paying for his kid's college. I told him have the kids go into a good paying field (like engineering) and go to a good college with a co-op program. My kids made like #25 per hour and had no college debt when they graduated from UC.

Bolded, true and our daughter did the same--UC engineering, co-op, and abundant opportunities. But not everyone wants to be an engineer or work in that profession or other STEM related jobs.

Statistically, more than one third of Fortune 500 CEO's have liberal arts degrees (Inc. Magazine). I worked for one of those CEO's years ago--a brilliant guy whose undergraduate degree was in Anthropology. Here's a great (short) piece from Inc. Magazine on the value of liberal arts education.

https://www.inc.com/tim-askew/why-libera...ccess.html

I think we do agree though, that going to a small, private liberal arts college that isn't Ivy League or elite and still charges exorbitant tuition probably won't yield a strong ROI for many graduates starting their careers.

Who gives a f*** what kids "want"? If you went and got a worthless degree (except for the 12 CEOs! LOL) I don't want to hear about "wants". You know what I don't want to go to my job everyday but I sure as hell do.

Also when I got my engineering degree from UC I hated most of my classes, and hated studying all night while soft science and arts smoked weed and played video games. But I sure appreciated the zero debt and full time job when I graduated.

And yet Chicago doesn't have an engineering college. Princeton has no business school whatsoever, and the schools with the most elite mba programs (Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, MIT, Dartmouth etc) have no undergraduate business majors.

Yet if most people were to place a lifetime earnings bet on a Chicago philosophy major or a UC engineering major, they'd pick the former. What you're advocating is really allowing only the elite private universities and LAC's and maybe 20 or so AAU public flagships to offer a real education. Everyone else--including UC--gets trade school.

(10-12-2023 03:34 PM)Bearcat 1985 Wrote:  And yet Chicago doesn't have an engineering college. Princeton has no business school whatsoever, and the schools with the most elite mba programs (Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, MIT, Dartmouth etc) have no undergraduate business majors.

Interesting that you say that - my daughter (and my bank account reflects it) has an MBA from Wharton at Penn, as well as a BA from Penn and a BS from Wharton. So there is at least one reasonably good MBA program that does have an undergraduate program.

I’m not sure majoring in a subject you have no interest in is a good roadmap to success. I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

(10-12-2023 04:15 PM)beethovan Wrote:  

(10-12-2023 03:34 PM)Bearcat 1985 Wrote:  And yet Chicago doesn't have an engineering college. Princeton has no business school whatsoever, and the schools with the most elite mba programs (Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, MIT, Dartmouth etc) have no undergraduate business majors.

Interesting that you say that - my daughter (and my bank account reflects it) has an MBA from Wharton at Penn, as well as a BA from Penn and a BS from Wharton. So there is at least one reasonably good MBA program that does have an undergraduate program.

You're right. My mistake. Still, Penn is the anomaly among those elite private mba programs.

In the end, my contention holds. UC can either be a great university offering a comprehensive classical education with a large and thriving Arts & Sciences College or it can be a trade school where everyone majors in STEM, bidness and nursing.

(10-12-2023 05:33 PM)Bearcat 1985 Wrote:  

(10-12-2023 04:15 PM)beethovan Wrote:  

(10-12-2023 03:34 PM)Bearcat 1985 Wrote:  And yet Chicago doesn't have an engineering college. Princeton has no business school whatsoever, and the schools with the most elite mba programs (Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, MIT, Dartmouth etc) have no undergraduate business majors.

Interesting that you say that - my daughter (and my bank account reflects it) has an MBA from Wharton at Penn, as well as a BA from Penn and a BS from Wharton. So there is at least one reasonably good MBA program that does have an undergraduate program.

You're right. My mistake. Still, Penn is the anomaly among those elite private mba programs.

In the end, my contention holds. UC can either be a great university offering a comprehensive classical education with a large and thriving Arts & Sciences College or it can be a trade school where everyone majors in STEM, bidness and nursing.

Bolded, well said.

And I believe that's the strategic direction of UC under current leadership. Academic "quality" as reflected in national rankings often connotes the strength of core curriculum offered through arts and sciences programs. UC has a handful of truly elite programs, though most are small enrollment. To raise the university's overall academic stature requires excellence to be more broad based. By advocating (and investing) for excellence I'm not suggesting our students today aren't getting a great education--in many cases they are.

Rankings are often more about prestige than quality. And we all care about those rankings to some degree or we wouldn't have this thread.

UC now to offer in-state tuition to all of Indiana and KY(previously just the surrounding counties).

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/n...ce=twitter

(10-12-2023 10:37 AM)OKIcat Wrote:  

(10-11-2023 04:25 PM)the_dude Wrote:  

(10-11-2023 07:37 AM)OKIcat Wrote:  

(10-10-2023 10:32 PM)Bruce Monnin Wrote:  Liberal Arts colleges are the worst. Some guys I was playing poker with tonight was worried about paying for his kid's college. I told him have the kids go into a good paying field (like engineering) and go to a good college with a co-op program. My kids made like #25 per hour and had no college debt when they graduated from UC.

Bolded, true and our daughter did the same--UC engineering, co-op, and abundant opportunities. But not everyone wants to be an engineer or work in that profession or other STEM related jobs.

Statistically, more than one third of Fortune 500 CEO's have liberal arts degrees (Inc. Magazine). I worked for one of those CEO's years ago--a brilliant guy whose undergraduate degree was in Anthropology. Here's a great (short) piece from Inc. Magazine on the value of liberal arts education.

https://www.inc.com/tim-askew/why-libera...ccess.html

I think we do agree though, that going to a small, private liberal arts college that isn't Ivy League or elite and still charges exorbitant tuition probably won't yield a strong ROI for many graduates starting their careers.

Your comment is valid but mostly useless. You could conversely say: 100% of Microsoft/apple/Facebook founders were college dropouts, so being a college dropout would be even better.

The reality is there's only 500 Fortune 500 CEO positions total and even if a third of them are liberal arts degrees (which also means that 2/3 are not), there are only a handful of those positions available versus the millions of people that get these degrees and most of them are not going to become CEOs or anything close.

Long story short, these ultra high priced liberal arts colleges are usually not worth the money unless they are the most selective / highest rated and carry the name recognition as well as the good education.

And for those of you who say it's not about the money you get from your degree, that's fine too. Not everyone is a doctor/lawyer, but you don't need to spend $250,000 to get an English degree. That's a degree you could have gotten from a state school for a quarter of the price and had the same profession.

Steve Jobs background remains an anomaly. Bolded, a sample size of three is rather small compared with 165 liberal arts degree holders who are CEO's among the largest, most respected companies populating the Fortune 500. Further, many more liberal arts graduates are employed downstream in those organizations' succession plans, rising through various leadership roles as directors or managers.

In the aggregate, college graduates will still make more money over a career than high school graduates, according to Forbes. Certainly there is often wide variance by academic majors. But the fact that so many in Fortune 500 "C" suites hold liberal arts degrees suggests there are skills and competencies outside STEM education that produce strong leadership for a wide variety of organizations.

On this we do agree: paying a premium for a liberal arts degree from a private college with little to no national reputation will likely not provide a good ROI, especially when compared with either elite privates or academically sound public universities.

Well we agree on one thing, but here is the kicker for your first point...

The supermajority of f500 ceo's do NOT have a liberal arts degree.

And I guarantee if you interviewed a bunch of newly graduated liberal arts majors and asked them what their ultimate goal is.... CEO is probably not high on their list, especially now given that most millennials (and younger) despise ceo's.

Fyi, one of my children is a liberal arts major at an ultra expensive school (on scholarship) but is realistic on their earnings potential in their given field. They are fine with a small house or apartment and don't care about fancy clothes, jewelry, cars, or vacations. I'm perfectly happy with that for them.