Friday, July 05, 2013

For the Patron Saint's Name of Frick

So it isn't "free" tuition when you essentially are having your wages garnished, is it?

It's more like "indentured servitude" or "slavery" or "the state parasiting off of you and adding another 3% income tax."

Honest to god, at any time you dumb, young kids can starve the beast by not attending and getting votech degrees.

Somebody buy the entire state of Oregon copies of Worthless.

By the way, what is 3% on a barrista's part time annual income?

10 comments:

Blinding Buddha said...

3% percent of a Barrista's check is 3% of nothing. :)

Positive Thinker said...

Hey Cappy,
I'm from Australia and I can assure you we don't consider our education free. We even have people getting worthless degrees wanting it to be free, even though if they never earn enough to pay it back, they won't.
Our repayment system works on how much you earn, so a person who owes $50k in university debt doesn't pay one cent until they earn more than, say $45k a year, then they start paying 4% of their salary.
The more you earn, the more you pay back, with the repayments going as high as 8% of your salary.
The good part is that the debt is indexed annually at the rate of inflation, so you're not on the hook for an ever increasing debt, but you are if you're not paying it back at all.

Carl said...

Just a way to transfer whatever profits may be realized from the banks to the universities. In the end neither gives a crap about the graduates employment prospects.

Andrew S. said...

Average cost of one year's undergraduate study at the Oregon State University: $23,658. (source: http://oregonstate.edu/financialaid/cost-attendance)

Multiply by four years to get a total cost of a bachelor's degree: $94,632.

Divide this sum by the wage garnishment period (24 years) to get the money garnished per year to attain complete (non interest paying) repayment of the cost of the degree: $3,943.

Divide this by 0.03 to get the salary that would pay $3,943 per year at 3%: $131,433.

Unless the average graduate of the University of Oregon hits the marketplace with a salary of $131,500, this plan will not pay for itself and require further subsidizing (beyond what amounts to essentially an interest-free loan to college kids).

"According to the NACE survey, the average starting salary for college graduates stands at $44,928, up from the 2012 average salary of $42,666." (Source: http://around.uoregon.edu/story/career-center/good-news-grads-average-starting-salaries-grads-bachelor%E2%80%99s-degrees-rise-53-perce).

Something tells me this plan isn't going to work out very well. But what do I know (besides 5th grade math)?

Anonymous said...

Can Oregon garnish the wages of somebody who moves out of state?

Anonymous said...

Captain, you're generally solid but you're definitely letting your crusade against the universities get in the way of supporting a real chance at fighting back against the tuition monster:

Let's take the number OSU estimates for total resident undergrad cost of attendance for a year: $23,658. You don't pay all four years at once, so we discount it, let's say at 5%. Assuming four years, annual payments at the start of each year, single compounding because I'm lazy, that's about $88,000 in value, whether you student Queer Native American Studies or Engineering. You don't start paying for four years, so discount that another four years to $72,467. Set that as PV for the next part, set FV to 0, N to 24, and keep the 5% annual rate. The payment that makes it all balance out is $5,252 a year, which is 3% of an annual salary of over $175,000. That income would put you in the 98th percentile among single filers. Let's be frank, the VAST majority of people who get in on this program are getting a freaking steal. As somebody who advocates milking the cow or joining the military to young people, you should be all over this.

Eric S. Mueller said...

Makes me wonder if it's the voters or the politicians who are stupid here. Or both?

I wonder if most of these people just can't understand the meaning of words. Just like "free healthcare". No, somebody has to pay for it. Anything that costs money to produce or provide has to be paid for somehow. Why is that so hard for people to understand? But I guess if they think a President is magical and can create jobs just by saying so like some kind of god, then maybe they don't understand cost either.

PUMPsix said...

What a load of rubbish. The STEM students will be holding the system up for the rest. 3% of a barista is nothing, but 3% of an engineering salary works out to be more than the cost of college.

tucuma kid said...

I remember a Czech girl years ago who was mailing off a money order to pay for her education, even though she had left the country and didn't intend to go back. "So why keep paying?" was my question. "Because they have people watching." she said.
But of course that wouldn't happen in the US, would it?

Robert said...

Why should someone who never got a job his college education qualified him for pay anything for a useless degree? Isn't there some kind of warranty here for a product intended for a particular use?

Oh, I know why. Because SWAT teams.