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Pritzker spitballs some higher ed ideas

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Illinois

* More from Tom Kacich on JB Pritzker’s Champaign-Urbana visit…

“Tuition has gone way up in this state,” he said. “It’s become harder and harder for middle class families to put their kids through school. College is not affordable in this state when you don’t have (Monetary Award Program grants for low-income students) — and we don’t fund MAP grants.

“So we’ve got to step back up to the plate here, and we’ve got to make sure that people who are seeking to get a degree in higher education have the ability to get it.” […]

Asked if he favors an expansion of MAP or something like the limited free college program proposed by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Pritzker replied, “As long as every kid who wants to go to college and can’t afford it has the ability to, I think that answers the question.”

He said that if every young person had the opportunity to go to a public university or obtain vocational training at a community college, “I think we’re going to have a much better and more economically productive state.”

* More from WILL…

Pritzker fielded a question about burdensome student loan debt, and replied with a suggestion that young people launching their own businesses should be given more time to pay back their loans.

“The idea that if you’ll go be part of a startup enterprise, or start up your own enterprise, that we ought to give you a grace period from having to pay your student debt,” said Pritzker. “Because it strikes me that we want to create jobs in this state. Startups and small businesses are the ones that are creating most of the jobs.”

Pritzker’s own company, Pritzker Group Private Capitol, invests in fast-growing technology companies. And he led a group that founded Chicago’s non-profit digital startup incubator, “1871”.

Before his meeting with the Illini Democrats, Pritzker toured the University of Illinois’ Research Park, which he compared to his own activities as a venture capitalist.

Thoughts?

posted by Rich Miller
Tuesday, Apr 18, 17 @ 11:47 am

Comments

We are turning out young adults with large (essentially mandatory) student loan debt. A bachelor’s degree is almost a prerequisite to get in the workforce these days. That affects our ability in three areas, each of which we generally value in America: 1) home buying, 2) saving for retirement and 3) starting a new business. We’re a generation or two away from having a whole set of elderly people unable to work any longer, with little to no retirement savings and no real estate assets to liquidate. The current situation is not a good recipe.

I’d like to see a federal program where the feds made a student loan payment on the borrower’s behalf for every dollar put into a retirement savings plan. I think this idea makes a positive impact in two public policy areas and has the added benefit of long term compound interest earned for these young people.

Comment by The Captain Tuesday, Apr 18, 17 @ 11:59 am
our higher education is vital to our states future. Despite what Trump and Rauner try to peddle on you, no amount of anti-union/roll back of regulations is going to bring manufacturing jobs back. We need to prepare our workforce for the 21st, not the 20th century.

Comment by Rogue Roni Tuesday, Apr 18, 17 @ 12:14 pm
To the question…

This all sounds good, but fundamentally the problem is that the cost of higher education, be it born by students with loans, parents or government is going up significantly faster than the rate of inflation or general income growth.

(expressed here by the college board in 2016 dollars)

https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/tuition-and-fees-and-room-and-board-over-time-1976-77_2016-17-selected-years

This is fundamentally unsustainable, any discussion of how we pay for higher education has to include a discussion of how we manage the cost of higher education. That could come in a variety of ways, from 2+2 programs becoming more socially acceptable,wider acceptance of alternative credits to less spending on the bells and whistles of education. It could be program consolidation with the state university system.

In general there doesn’t seem to be incentive to controlling the costs of higher education.

Comment by Oneman Tuesday, Apr 18, 17 @ 12:24 pm
It’s hard to be against that NY program, but there are a few caveats. Tuition is not the only college cost, there are also food and shelter and books and materials costs and not all kids can stay in the family home. Sure, they can try to find work to support the latter costs, but that can cut significantly into learning time. And students facing prohibitive non-tuition costs might be more likely to drop out if there is no cost to that decision.Dropping out is still a big problem in the US.

Not that I have an answer to all this. Just saying.

Comment by Cassandra Tuesday, Apr 18, 17 @ 1:18 pm
==young people launching their own businesses should be given more time to pay back their loans.==

Well, that only leaves 99% of the graduates to worry about.

Comment by City Zen Tuesday, Apr 18, 17 @ 1:18 pm
Oneman I agree with you, I also wouldn’t mind seeing a bachelor’s degree reduced from 4 years to 3 by eliminating a bunch of unnecessary classes. For example I had to take geology and astronomy to get a business degree, that’s all well and good but hard to justify from a student loan debt point of view.

Comment by The Captain Tuesday, Apr 18, 17 @ 1:21 pm
The more students, the easier it is to budget and plan for reduced tuition rates. When students decide to go elsewhere, that imposes further burdens on the universities.

Comment by freas Tuesday, Apr 18, 17 @ 1:33 pm
He didn’t really answer the question but then he has been doing that a lot lately. Oneman at 12:24 pm has it right. The costs are going up faster than inflation and that is where the solution needs to be applied.

Comment by Maximus Tuesday, Apr 18, 17 @ 1:41 pm
Yesterday we had a discussion on outmigration of college students. This graft from the IBHE sums it up nicely:
http://www.ibhe.state.il.us/DataPoints/OutmigrationContext.pdf

Comment by G'Kar Tuesday, Apr 18, 17 @ 1:52 pm
testing

Comment by Blue Bayou Tuesday, Apr 18, 17 @ 1:58 pm
No, costs in higher ed are not just going up. It’s more complicated than that.

When states began cutting appropriations to state universities, tuition went up to make up the gap. That’s the largest driver of tuition increases.

No doubt some universities have made investments (some wise and some silly) that have made tuition go up, but they have also done so due to changing demand, to recruit students, to modernize, etc.

The bottom line is that because states have been spending less, individual students spend more. We are privatizing the costs.

Comment by Blue Bayou Tuesday, Apr 18, 17 @ 1:59 pm
Tuition goes up because state funding goes down.
Check out http://www.ctbaonline.org/reports/illinois’-significant-disinvestment-higher-education

Comment by Thomas Griffin Tuesday, Apr 18, 17 @ 2:05 pm
So our budgets are billions out of whack and he wants to give away college educations for free. Who says being a billionaire means having a business sense.

Comment by Downstate Illinois Tuesday, Apr 18, 17 @ 2:07 pm
On the cost side, the facilities arms race is a problem. Some of it is just failure to invest in infrastructure- everything goes obsolete, even dorms and classrooms- but when facilities get built they seem to get built for now with little regard for 15 years later when trends and technology have moved preferences.

Some student services costs are very valuable (advisement, career services, mental health, academic services that bolster retention, etc). Other things are more fluff (paying popular performers).

Degrees could stand some streamlining. Beef up work/internship credit. Rather than taking out your gen-ed type stuff, narrow the options on those courses so people like me can’t soft-pedal math and science anymore. Subjects like stats, psychology and some interdisciplinary sociology/econ/poli sci type course would serve basically everyone well.

Comment by In 630 Tuesday, Apr 18, 17 @ 2:24 pm
Oneman and everyone else out there:

Costs are not going up (At least not at near the rates you mistakenly conclude here.) Tuition is going up. Those are two different numbers! The main driver of tuition increases has been the withdrawal of both the federal and state governments from funding of higher education. Public sector contributions have gone down!!

These contributions were once both direct and indirect. So decreases in Pell grants or in NSA funding, for instance, indirectly forced tuition increases. Then there is the decrease in direct state appropriations, which have fallen off a cliff.

Notice to all babyboomers: you went to college on the public dole! In 1959, 99% of ISU’s operating budget came from the state! Boom. Tuition was a fee, not a bill for service. My parents worked in the summer to pay both tuition and room & board.

Educators have taken steady pay cuts since the 1980’s. The main driver of tuition increases has been the destruction of the New/Fair Deal that Reagan inaugurated.

And don’t start in with me about “administrative costs.” Yes top administrators are overpaid, but this is largely due to the contemporary “business minded” tendency to worship the CEO. In fact the drivers of increased “administrative” costs have to do with things like health care as well as the desperate need to attract every tuition dollar available. (Once again, the result of “business-mindedness.) Students want nice work-out facilities and being tuition dependent, we can’t say ‘no.’

Comment by HistProf Tuesday, Apr 18, 17 @ 2:28 pm
“- Downstate Illinois - Tuesday, Apr 18, 17 @ 2:07 pm:

So our budgets are billions out of whack and he wants to give away college educations for free. Who says being a billionaire means having a business sense.”

Where exactly did he say that?

Comment by Anonymous Tuesday, Apr 18, 17 @ 2:48 pm
Dear “the Captain,”

Since I know about as much about medicine as someone else might know about higher ed, how about I rifle through their pill boxes and throw out the pills I don’t think are “necessary.”

You might be surprised about just what ends up to have been “necessary.” 73% or so of students do not end up working in a field related to their college major. Generally, it is critical reading, writing, and foreign language that not only make for a well-educated human being and a well-informed citizen, but end up getting people promoted in whatever field they end up in. (If you think a student with foundational skills in Mandarin along with enough civilizational skills to thrive in China will be unemployed for long, Think again.) Meanwhile, my IT-trained brother has just about aged out of the workforce; no longer relevant.

Comment by HistProf Tuesday, Apr 18, 17 @ 2:53 pm
@ HistProf

That should have read: Dear “The Captain,”

Comment by The Captain Tuesday, Apr 18, 17 @ 3:02 pm
Are there others out there who find this neo-liberal worship of business perhaps just a bit overdone.

How about tuition forgiveness for servicemen and women, or for teachers? Naw, wouldn’t want to encourage service when we could further subsidize the Ayn Rand wannabees out there!

Any funding scheme will be an expression of our values. Pritzker just expressed his values. If you want more start-ups, you might consider socializing medicine. Most guys I know who started businesses did it on their wives healthcare.

I’m looking for another Democratic candidate.

Comment by HistProf Tuesday, Apr 18, 17 @ 3:07 pm
HistProf, point well made, but aspiring military officers have a viable tuition-free option called ROTC.

My Navy LT Super Hornet pilot son would take strong offense to any suggestion that he didn’t earn that tuition, particularly as he prepares to deploy for summer in Iraq/Syria.

Comment by Arthur Andersen Tuesday, Apr 18, 17 @ 4:54 pm
==Downstate Illinois==

prikzer has no sense, he inheirted his billions from his more industrious father. If elected, he will be little more than a madigan yes man.

Comment by Atsuishin Tuesday, Apr 18, 17 @ 5:05 pm