Speaker 1: You know, if you look at any industry, any product,
Speaker 1: any service out there in the marketplace, there aren't that
Speaker 1: many that have changed as little in a generation as
Speaker 1: residential undergraduate education. I would like to believe that all
Speaker 1: of your listeners, they can be system beaters and they
Speaker 1: can be system burners. It is possible to have both
Speaker 1: goals in mind, existing and not clashing by the way
Speaker 1: in your head simultaneously. Right now, many students are stuck.
Speaker 1: If they go to their dream college, they could be
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of dollars in debts. They don't know
Speaker 1: if come fall their classes are going to be online
Speaker 1: or in person. And for those already in school, they
Speaker 1: don't know if there's a job waiting for them when
Speaker 1: they graduate during one of the worst financial crisis is
Speaker 1: our country has ever seen. Then there are other kids
Speaker 1: who don't really have any idea what they want to do,
Speaker 1: don't especially want to go to college, but end up
Speaker 1: there because there's not really other options in the United
Speaker 1: States of America, and the only thing they end up
Speaker 1: with is a lot of debt and less direction than ever.
Speaker 1: This pandemic has put a spotlight on a lot of
Speaker 1: problems in our education system. And our workforce, and one
Speaker 1: of them is higher education. How do we pay for it?
Speaker 1: What's the value of it? I'm Stephanie Rule, MSNBC Anchor,
Speaker 1: NBC News Senior correspondent, And this is Modern Rules, a
Speaker 1: podcast from NBC Think and I Heart Radio. We've got
Speaker 1: a moment. We're in crisis. Can we do better? Ron
Speaker 1: Lieber is asking that very question in his new book,
Speaker 1: The Price You Pay for College is the author of
Speaker 1: the New York Times personal finance column Your Money. Ron.
Speaker 1: For years and years and years, we weren't thinking about
Speaker 1: the price of college, the value of college? Is it
Speaker 1: worth it? Well? I think you have to start by
Speaker 1: asking yourself what college is? All right? What is called for?
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure what the answer to that question was,
Speaker 1: and so I asked, you know, scores of families and
Speaker 1: I heard the same three things over and over again.
Speaker 1: College is for getting an education, for having your mind grown,
Speaker 1: in your mind blown. It is for kinship. It is
Speaker 1: for finding the people who will carry you through life.
Speaker 1: It is for getting a credential, whether it's the gold
Speaker 1: plated one that will open doors or just the degree
Speaker 1: that will allow you to grasp hold of the middle class.
Speaker 1: And hopefully stay there. And so in order to answer
Speaker 1: the question of whether college is worth it, you need
Speaker 1: to define it for your individual family. It's not something
Speaker 1: that we as a nation can dictate for any given individual.
Speaker 1: But then, how did we get to this place? Right?
Speaker 1: My dad worked in the summer and put himself through
Speaker 1: school and had a tiny bit of debt after How
Speaker 1: did college get this expensive? There are so many more
Speaker 1: things pulling on our household incomes than there used to be.
Speaker 1: We are entirely responsible in most instances for our own retirement.
Speaker 1: We are paying more and more out of our own
Speaker 1: pockets for healthcare. Many people are paying off their own
Speaker 1: student loaned well into their forties or fifties. Right, so
Speaker 1: people don't have the same kind of disposable income as
Speaker 1: they might have earlier. States have reduced their subsidies towards
Speaker 1: higher education, which means the price of those state schools
Speaker 1: has gone up, and then the private institutions they've gotten
Speaker 1: more and more expensive. So the middle class there is
Speaker 1: being squeezed. This whole idea of I want to go
Speaker 1: to a liberal arts college and better myself, and then
Speaker 1: the world is will be my oyster. It's kind of
Speaker 1: an antiquated thought. Sure, I'd like to enrich myself, but
Speaker 1: not if it's going to put me in hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars worth of debt. I remember when I
Speaker 1: was a senior in college. I went to Lehigh and Lee,
Speaker 1: I could absolutely help you on the career services front
Speaker 1: if you wanted to go work in an accounting firm
Speaker 1: or be an engineer. I wanted to work in investment banking.
Speaker 1: So I drove to New York City with my mother
Speaker 1: and I snuck into the career services office at Columbia
Speaker 1: University and I borrowed these giant binders that had every
Speaker 1: piece of information that you needed for every bank, every
Speaker 1: financial institution, so you could apply for the summer internships.
Speaker 1: And I went to the photo copy machine to start,
Speaker 1: and you needed to have a school. I d to
Speaker 1: use the photo copier. I got caught and I got
Speaker 1: kicked out. The reason I bring this up we send
Speaker 1: these kids to college, but the best jobs are directly
Speaker 1: linked to only a few schools. So do we need
Speaker 1: to start looking at here's a college, What is the
Speaker 1: job my child is going to get on the other side,
Speaker 1: because otherwise they will be sitting here in hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars with a deck Yes to all of that.
Speaker 1: First of all, that is the most badass career services
Speaker 1: story that I have ever heard. Your description of this
Speaker 1: as quote unquote best jobs, right, I mean, it is
Speaker 1: true that the best jobs in investment banking very narrow field,
Speaker 1: only higher from uh certain institutions, right unless you beat
Speaker 1: down the door. But are those the best jobs in America?
Speaker 1: Are they the best jobs for anyone? Goldman Saxes is
Speaker 1: hiring all these people in Salt Lake City now who
Speaker 1: do not come from Columbia and Harvard and Stanford and
Speaker 1: m I T. So then we have to ask ourselves, well,
Speaker 1: these are iconic jobs in in certain social classes, but
Speaker 1: are they really the best jobs out there for any
Speaker 1: given twenty two year old. I don't think so. Before
Speaker 1: the pandemic, we knew there was a skills gap in
Speaker 1: the United States. We were at full employment, yet we
Speaker 1: had millions of Americans who are not making enough money
Speaker 1: to support themselves. We had people who had jobs, but
Speaker 1: not good enough jobs. But you hear people making that
Speaker 1: argument saying you cannot afford to support yourself and your
Speaker 1: family working in a fast food restaurant but that job
Speaker 1: was never intended for someone who has a family to support.
Speaker 1: Is there an opportunity to actually create a real jobs program,
Speaker 1: a skills retraining program. So it's not just about raising
Speaker 1: minimum wage, it's about retraining people to qualify themselves for better,
Speaker 1: higher paying jobs. Yes, and that infrastructure already exists. We
Speaker 1: can use the community college infrastructure to provide that skills training.
Speaker 1: But we also have, you know, a shortage of qualified
Speaker 1: instructors to teach some of these skills. Why because the
Speaker 1: skills are so in demand that the people who would
Speaker 1: be doing the instructing are making five times as much
Speaker 1: money being actual practitioners. If you're a master plumber, you're
Speaker 1: not going to spend twenty hours a week teaching at
Speaker 1: a community college, even though it be a service to
Speaker 1: the community. If you are, you know, a welder with
Speaker 1: twenty five years of experience, right, same thing is true.
Speaker 1: So how are we going to create the budget that
Speaker 1: allows for more people to be pushed through rigorous training programs?
Speaker 1: And so we need to do more um I think
Speaker 1: from a state perspective and from a federal perspective, not
Speaker 1: just to provide the money, but also to ensure equity
Speaker 1: and access to these programs. Now that kids are home
Speaker 1: and you're Duke, m I T or Lafayette college experience
Speaker 1: is no different from the University of Phoenix. Could this
Speaker 1: actually press pause for a revisit on the price of college. Well,
Speaker 1: look at it this way, right, everybody gets sent home
Speaker 1: the second week in March, and by the fourth week
Speaker 1: in March and the second week in April, there's a
Speaker 1: clamor for refunds, and then by the first week in
Speaker 1: May there's a couple of dozen lawsuits right where people
Speaker 1: are freaking out and demanding their tuition back to But
Speaker 1: then something really weird happened over the summer. All of
Speaker 1: these colleges were fundamentally dishonest about why they were reopening
Speaker 1: in September. They were arguing it could be done safely,
Speaker 1: But what they really should have said is, look, we
Speaker 1: need the revenue. If we don't get the revenue, we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to cut this place to ribbons, and then
Speaker 1: it won't be the place that you'd want to come
Speaker 1: back to um eighteen months from now. So we gotta
Speaker 1: make a go of us here and when we want
Speaker 1: you all in. But strange families and the students were
Speaker 1: all in any way right because they had lost so
Speaker 1: much in the spring. They all wanted to come back
Speaker 1: and pay full price for what was clearly going to
Speaker 1: be a compromised experience socially and academically. And then a
Speaker 1: bunch of them got sick to right, and yet they
Speaker 1: still came. Why did they still come? Because the residential
Speaker 1: undergraduate experience in the United States of America has become
Speaker 1: a rite of passage for the middle class and above.
Speaker 1: So it's not clear to me how we dismantle that
Speaker 1: when so many people were desperate to come back and
Speaker 1: pay for a compromised experience, which I don't think they
Speaker 1: should have done, by the way. Yes, but in generations prior,
Speaker 1: more and more members of the middle class could go
Speaker 1: away to college, and that college experience in a different
Speaker 1: state with different people was what led you on a
Speaker 1: path to pursue the American dream. And today those same
Speaker 1: students are either not getting into those colleges, or they're
Speaker 1: getting into them and are saddled with so much debt
Speaker 1: they never get to pursue it. Given the cost of college,
Speaker 1: are there enough jobs that pay enough money to justify
Speaker 1: the price of college. Families that get into trouble. The
Speaker 1: families that express regret are the ones where the students
Speaker 1: max out their federal student loans. So let's call that
Speaker 1: thirts of federal debt. The parents co sign for private
Speaker 1: loans with the undergraduate. Call that another twenty grand, and
Speaker 1: then maybe the parents borrow tens of thousands of dollars
Speaker 1: more just to make it all work because the child
Speaker 1: just desperately wants to go to LEI, right, and they're
Speaker 1: not getting much merit aid, and they're not getting much
Speaker 1: of a discount based on their financial need. At that point,
Speaker 1: you know, you are dealing with the after effect of
Speaker 1: that decision financially for a minimum of ten years as
Speaker 1: um as a young adult, and perhaps longer as a parent,
Speaker 1: right if you need to work longer in order to
Speaker 1: keep making those loan payments. The way that it's changing,
Speaker 1: I think for that kind of family is that they
Speaker 1: are looking at the kinds of schools that they might
Speaker 1: not have looked at a generation ago. So you know,
Speaker 1: there's a family in my book where both parents went
Speaker 1: to Princeton and one of their kids went to one
Speaker 1: small college in the Midwest that offered an enormous discount
Speaker 1: on the basis of merit, and then the other one
Speaker 1: went to the College of Worcester, another school that generally discounts,
Speaker 1: even for affluent families, to a price just you know,
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars more than what it would cost to
Speaker 1: go to Ohio State. And so, you know, families are
Speaker 1: making different choices generationally and are happy about it. Both
Speaker 1: these Princeton graduates are professors, and they were thrilled with
Speaker 1: the quality of what's on offer at a slightly less
Speaker 1: selective institutions that are are fifty thousand dollars per per
Speaker 1: years than what they might have spent to send them
Speaker 1: to Princeton. And I'm trying to normalize that type of
Speaker 1: decision making because it leads to less debt and potentially
Speaker 1: more happiness. Because the fact of the matter is is
Speaker 1: that back in the old days, right if your parents
Speaker 1: went to Princeton, you got to go to Princeton too,
Speaker 1: and it was practically a birthright or an entitlement. And
Speaker 1: that's not the way that it works anymore. You know,
Speaker 1: Alumni legacy status does confer advantage, but these places are
Speaker 1: just really difficult to get into, and so I'm trying
Speaker 1: to model a form of decision making that cares less
Speaker 1: about the Instagram sweatshirt reveal and more about value and
Speaker 1: trying to define what college is supposed to be, not
Speaker 1: just for your family, but for your individual child. We'll
Speaker 1: be back after the break. So where do we go
Speaker 1: from here in terms of education? There's this idea, let's
Speaker 1: make college free. Does that take away the motivation to
Speaker 1: go and respect college? Right? When you get it for free,
Speaker 1: you don't treat it as well? So what would suggest
Speaker 1: to us that some disruptive force is about to come
Speaker 1: and make it go away? If the coronavirus just caused
Speaker 1: people to crave it more, right, and not to demand change,
Speaker 1: then what would really blow it up? This becomes a
Speaker 1: political conversation. Because we want money to be less of
Speaker 1: a factor in all of this, then we need to
Speaker 1: become more like Scandinavia and a lot of the European
Speaker 1: countries where this is subsidized, right, And that is going
Speaker 1: to mean not just a little more taxes, but you know,
Speaker 1: a fair bit more taxes. It is the case that
Speaker 1: in most countries where college is free or close to it,
Speaker 1: um access is much more limited then access is to
Speaker 1: higher education here in the United States, Right, There are
Speaker 1: all sorts of open enrollment schools in the US, not
Speaker 1: just community colleges before your schools, dozens and dozens and
Speaker 1: dozens and dozens of them. And the point at which
Speaker 1: we make something free, you know, will people flock to it?
Speaker 1: Will it cost more than than we think it will?
Speaker 1: And what will our reaction be to that going forward?
Speaker 1: And will we end up in a in a situation
Speaker 1: where in fact, not everybody will be able to access it?
Speaker 1: And then we'll just be stratifying ourselves further. So I worry.
Speaker 1: I worry a little bit about that, this idea that
Speaker 1: we should cancel student debt? What about all the people
Speaker 1: who are able to pay it? I see this through
Speaker 1: the lens of politics more than policy. The thing that
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that Biden administration is worried about is,
Speaker 1: you know, we've got a fifty fifty Senate and we've
Speaker 1: got a House of Representatives that you know is close
Speaker 1: to fifty. There is absolutely no consistency to this whatsoever.
Speaker 1: And you are right. What seems to matter most too
Speaker 1: careful policy folks in any given administration is how do
Speaker 1: you keep your political advantage right? And if people with
Speaker 1: college degrees are being bailed out. And what about the
Speaker 1: little guy who's the plumber and the electrician and never
Speaker 1: got to go to college. Will that swing um ten
Speaker 1: purple districts? If that movement gets going, it's just might.
Speaker 1: When you think about how the FED comes in and
Speaker 1: rescues the market, stabilizes the markets, helps giant corporations were
Speaker 1: down with that. But you can't simply help the little
Speaker 1: guy because that little guy is just a lazy loser.
Speaker 1: Do we need to change the way we think and
Speaker 1: not think in a way of the guy who didn't
Speaker 1: get a chance to go to college and became a
Speaker 1: plumber and redefine this person chooses to go to college
Speaker 1: because that works for them, and this person chooses to
Speaker 1: be a plumber because it works for them. But you're
Speaker 1: not a plumber by default because you weren't good enough
Speaker 1: for college. We're all facing a isis right now because
Speaker 1: of the pandemic. Could we use that to drum up
Speaker 1: the will to revisit higher education. I consider it my
Speaker 1: role in the world to be first and foremost relentlessly practical.
Speaker 1: Right I'm trying to help people win and succeed in
Speaker 1: the world as it exists. And I've got a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of colleagues on the op ed page who are
Speaker 1: working on the whole world as it should be a
Speaker 1: thing for the seventy eight percent of you know, any
Speaker 1: given listeners spare time where they're trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how two navigate the world as it exists. I am
Speaker 1: here for them, But for now, we're in the middle
Speaker 1: of a pandemic and you can't get your parents a vaccine.
Speaker 1: Your credit score got all screwed up because they didn't
Speaker 1: figure out how to put your student loan pause on correctly.
Speaker 1: And that's what I am here for for that, in particular,
Speaker 1: the system burners, you know, I'm happy to talk to
Speaker 1: them all day long, but we also have to navigate
Speaker 1: the world as it exists. Then, I guess my only
Speaker 1: hope is people can try to stay true to themselves
Speaker 1: and their priorities and their kids and don't let the
Speaker 1: fear of missing out or brands or society influence you,
Speaker 1: because they're not going to pay your tuition and they're
Speaker 1: not going to help your kids pursue what they actually
Speaker 1: want to do with their lives. I think that's right.
Speaker 1: And you know, one interesting question that fell out of
Speaker 1: my research is how do you be a principled shopper
Speaker 1: for residential undergraduate higher education? Right, there are plenty of
Speaker 1: larger universities that employ a large number of adjunct teachers,
Speaker 1: and many of those instructors are living at kind of
Speaker 1: near poverty level in terms of the wages they're making,
Speaker 1: or they have miserable lives. Right. Then there are a
Speaker 1: whole host of supposedly really good schools that you have
Speaker 1: heard of, many of which are well endowed, where the
Speaker 1: percentage of undergraduates who receive pell grants, which is a
Speaker 1: proxy for being lower income, is abysmally low. Right, so
Speaker 1: there is no commitment to equity at these places. We
Speaker 1: can ask better questions as part of this process that
Speaker 1: will put these schools on notice, um that these are
Speaker 1: things that we care about, and I endorse that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, these really well endowed schools are very very
Speaker 1: proud to take students from some of the most vulnerable
Speaker 1: communities and potentially give them sizeable scholarship money. But then
Speaker 1: when they get there and maybe room and board is
Speaker 1: covered along with tuition, what about everything else? Financial insecurity
Speaker 1: and food insecurity is a huge issue that's actually sending
Speaker 1: a lot of kids home from school. Yes, um, these
Speaker 1: are not rhetorical questions, and there are definitely practitioners that
Speaker 1: are well aware of it. Right at the more elite institutions,
Speaker 1: there is at many of them a level of granularity
Speaker 1: to the understanding of the issues that you call out
Speaker 1: what is supposed to happen to And for the students
Speaker 1: from California or Texas who come up to the Northeast
Speaker 1: on a full ride but they don't have snow boots,
Speaker 1: and then you know, a tier or two down in
Speaker 1: terms of levels of selectivity. You have people like Professor
Speaker 1: Sarah Goldrick Grab at Temple University, who has done a
Speaker 1: ton of work on food insecurity, and in the most
Speaker 1: recent relief pill of the past, some of her research
Speaker 1: was brought to bear on the question of under what
Speaker 1: circumstances can undergraduates qualify for food stamps, And through the
Speaker 1: work of her and people like her, some of those
Speaker 1: rules have changed to allow undergraduates a bit more generosity
Speaker 1: and flexibility. So this is happening around the margins. But
Speaker 1: we're not asking enough of those questions, and we're not
Speaker 1: asking them loudly enough. Do you believe the American dream
Speaker 1: is still alive, and it's higher education the best vehicle
Speaker 1: to use to pursue it. I don't want to define
Speaker 1: the American dream for anybody, but the way that I
Speaker 1: have seen it define most often is am I going
Speaker 1: to do better than my parents did? Which then leads
Speaker 1: to a natural question define better? Right? Is it income?
Speaker 1: Is it inflation adjusted income? Is it relative prosperity? In
Speaker 1: other words, how am I doing compared to the people
Speaker 1: around me? Is it a world that is cleaner or
Speaker 1: dirtier in terms of the air? Right? I mean, there
Speaker 1: are lots of different ways to define that, but if
Speaker 1: you believe in the simplest definition, which is just income,
Speaker 1: um uh. You know, the rash Chetti group at Harvard
Speaker 1: has the best, has the best data on this, and
Speaker 1: they think that it's a fifty fifty coin flip, And
Speaker 1: that to me is depressing a right. America used to
Speaker 1: be better than that, and I think it can be
Speaker 1: better uh in the future. And I will say what
Speaker 1: depresses me most? I think for so many of us,
Speaker 1: my number one goal is to try to deliver a
Speaker 1: world to my kids that's better than the one I got.
Speaker 1: I think that's sort of the unspoken contract we all
Speaker 1: think we're entering into and I can say right now,
Speaker 1: I'm not so sure about that. However, every day we
Speaker 1: can work on changing that. It's true, and in twelve
Speaker 1: months we'll all have shots in our arms and hopefully
Speaker 1: it'll feel differently. I sure hope so, Ron, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for joining me today. Congratulations on the book.
Speaker 1: I hope everyone reads it gives it to a friend.
Speaker 1: This is really complicated stuff, and I so appreciate all
Speaker 1: of your work. Thank you so much for having me. H.
Speaker 1: So much of what we do is shaped by what
Speaker 1: we think we're supposed to do with our lives, by
Speaker 1: what our parents are, teachers are friends. It's like society
Speaker 1: has deemed this is the right path and this is
Speaker 1: the wrong path. Is that actually serving us? When it
Speaker 1: comes to higher education, which takes an enormous amount of money,
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of time, it might not put us
Speaker 1: or our kids on the path to success on modern rules.
Speaker 1: You know, we like to get straight to the point,
Speaker 1: and Ron certainly left me with a lot to think
Speaker 1: about what is success? If we took the norm or
Speaker 1: the standard away, could we actually create an education system
Speaker 1: that works better for more people, that could give more
Speaker 1: young people a chance to succeed at things they love.
Speaker 1: Maybe redefine how we characterize success, because I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: success and happiness are closely aligned, but I know an
Speaker 1: awful lot of people on paper would be considered successful
Speaker 1: and they're quite the opposite of happiness. I'm Stephanie Rule,
Speaker 1: and you're listening to Modern Rules, a podcast from NBC Think,
Speaker 1: MSNBC and I Heart Radio. This podcast is hosted by Me,
Speaker 1: Stephanie Rule, Mike beet In, Katrina Norvell, our executive producers.
Speaker 1: Meredith Bennett Smith is Senior editor for NBC Think and
Speaker 1: our editorial lead. The podcast is engineered and edited by
Speaker 1: Josh Fisher. Additional production support provided by Charles Herman, Rachel Rosenbaum,
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