QuickWire: U. of Central Florida Student Arrested in FBI Raid on Hackers

This jerk needs another good 10+ year assignment- trying to hack his way out of federal prison.

Which is why these types of hacks have two sides. Yes, they are illegal. However, these illegal activities are, well, we HOPE will in turn result in better security. Some good can come from this “bad”.

rescomp, I’m not condoning his action, but what makes you think this government organization is hiring. Do you think it likely they would accept an invitation from some random college student who wants to test their system for vulnerabilities? Or are they more likely just to tell him to scram?

“uber”
FWIW, the word is “ueber” if you do not have an umlaut.

1. “low interest rates … are set by the political process, not market forces”
-More significantly, the political process sets a) the low Pell grant funding we have today, and b) the lack of funding for our educational systems, spurred by c) regressive taxation.
“Loose Federal Reserve monetary policy along with irresponsible lending”
-I’m glad you see the need for oversight of our banking system.
“federal student loans today are having a smaller but still sizable detrimental effect in higher education”
-No, not in higher education, but again in housing – graduates with high debt burdens put off things like buying houses.

2. Wealthy ≠ bright ≠ Cal Tech engineer (just look at George W. Bush).
However, you are correct in correlating wealthy students with high-paying jobs, because their families/fraternities/communities have connections to these positions, no matter what the educational attainment of the student.
You also point out the need to improve our support, schools, and opportunities for low-income students, and eliminate their debt burdens.

3. “the student-loan explosion has contributed to the tuition explosion”
OK, Vedder, we’ve been through this before:
-Lower government support means higher tuition at the state colleges most students count on.
-High loan availability prompts *for-profit* “schools”, not public colleges, to increase prices, in order to maximize profits.

4. “the net effect of student loans is to increase enrollments”
-No: the prospect of graduating saddled with debt turns away many thoughtful blue-collar students.
“the quality of the incremental students on average is probably lower …”
-You never would have used the word ‘probably’ if you had even anecdotal evidence of this, much less hard evidence.
“… than those who would have attended in the absence of loans”
-i.e. wealthy students from top suburban high schools.
“more mediocre students,”
-Today’s students are much more dedicated than, say, the ‘Animal House’ generation (your generation, Vedder?), and the libraries much more full than even when I was a student.
“a dumbing down of material,”
-Are the latest editions of books that have been around forever dumbed down?
“an easing of student expectations”
-Requirements are the same as ever, and some fields, like biochem and the life sciences, have become much tougher.
-But let me remind you that *for-profit* ‘schools’ are very dumbed-down and eased, compared to state colleges.
“the number of graduates now far exceeds the number of traditional college-graduate entry level jobs.”
-’It’s the economy, stupid.’
“we are now in the era where well over 100,000 janitors have college degrees”
-Don’t need high school to be a janitor, either, so let’s dispense with high school, shall we? However, I think you pulled that number out of a hat, or somewhere else.

5. “U.S. government has become essentially a monopoly provider of student loans, robbing students of the variation in options and competition between private providers”
-’Variation in options’ is definitely out there – but students use the government ‘option’ first, because, as you’re complaining, this ‘variation’ burdens them with somewhat less debt than the other ‘options’.
“U.S. Postal Service and the Bureau of Motor Vehicles will never win awards for customer satisfaction”
-Wha..?? Next-day postal service right to your front door. And how many times in our lives do we, heaven forbid, actually get in a line at the DMV? have they ever messed anything up? or are you just complaining about the fees set by your congress? Next time you see one of our government workers doing their job so well day after day that you take it for granted, say “thank you”!

6. “the infamous Fafasa form”
-This must be after my time, because I don’t recall my financial aid paperwork being hugely troublesome – I didn’t realize it’s become ‘infamous’ since then. But I do know the word is “FAFSA”.
“low-income persons not used to completing long government bureaucratic documents”
-But I’ll bet they can spell FAFSA correctly! So where does that leave Vedder, who can’t even manage that, and possibly knows not whereof he speaks?
“allows the colleges to engage in price discrimination of its customers”
-Now THIS is a very serious problem in our state schools – favoring students from which they can extract a higher tuition, over the students they are supposed to be serving. Perhaps Vedder should address this problem in his next essay.

7.”smaller percentage of low-income recent college graduates today than was true in, say, 1970, before loan programs were as large as now”
-Yeah, back when better-funded schools charged lower tuition, and Pell grants actually obviated the need to take on debt burdens.

“start from scratch with a newer, more innovative, approach”
-Yeah, you know that 1970 approach clearly worked better than what we have today.

I was disappointed that none of the sins addressed the flawed methodology of federal financial aid. As just one example, why do two families with the same income qualify for the same aid, even if one owns a million-dollar home outright and has significant retirement savings while the other can only afford a 2-bedroom apartment and has no retirement savings? Or even worse — the second family qualifies for LESS aid because they put savings into a college fund for their child rather than a retirement fund for themselves?

I’m not sure you’ve read those yourself, or else you’re deliberately making a facile argument.

The first two articles are focused on high-tuition/high-discount strategies and don’t say much about federal aid at all.  While they do explain some of the increase in sticker price, they don’t make the case you claim that I can tell.

The Gillen article is quite good (and worth the long read), but also doesn’t make the case you claim – if I recall, he deliberately notes that there is no evidence for loans increasing the cost of tuition, though he does cite the Pell research. 

The Stone & Singell article notes that, at selective private schools, Pell is used as an offset for institutional grant funding – which, while a debatable practice, is hardly secret.   Plus the authors note that the impact of Pell on schools other than selective privates appears muted at best.  The Turner article appears to replicate the Stone & Singell work. But again, unless I’m missing something, I don’t see that it has anything to tell us about loans impacting cost.

Using the Long article as “proof” of your point is humorous, since that article specifically notes:

“Of the many studies that have tried to identify whether colleges react to federal financial aid, most find little to no response. While several studies do find a college price response, their overall results are mixed and often contradictory. In summary, none of the numerous studies on the subject have found a “smoking gun” in terms of college pricing behavior.”

The Long article goes on to say that the research is complicated and conflicting in many ways, even once you concede that most research fails to distinguish between ‘causation’ and ‘correlation’.  And again, the few cases where a tie is suggested between aid and cost relate to grant programs (HOPE, Pell). http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED501555.pdf

So yes, “weak evidence” is putting it mildly when it comes to research establishing a link between loans and college cost.

Ahem … not racist or sexist.  Doesn’t mention either.  However, you, apparently are both racist & sexist, assuming that women & people of color are ‘risky,’ ‘marginal,’ ‘dropouts.’

a mixture of true stuff and nonsense here, driven by the fact that the author doesn’t seem to know whether he wants to ration higher ed or open it up. (1) is a nonissue – no one goes to college because the huge loan they take out has 4% instead of 6.5% interest for a while. (3) is most true for the for-profit diploma mills, whose crap product wouldn’t exist without the federally-guaranteed loan pipeline.  (5) is false- there’s a huge private loan industry and securitization structure that shadows the government.  (The crack about the post office assumes everyone like private service better than gov, but in fact lots of people would give higher customer service marks to the PO than to their health insurance company).  (6) and (7) are true and important, but contrary to the author’s apparent belief, they result from 30 years of privatization of functions like paying for college rather than from too much direct government (no loan forms when you don’t need loans because you aren’t being charged more than nearly everyone can pay).  The author’s apparent solution–getting government out of student loans?– would mean “market” rates of more than 3-4%, more debt, more non-starting or more discontinuation of degree programs, and a less educationed society.  This piece is too jumbled to be of any help