Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 441 posts

Re: More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments

#191

Post by whitegrape »

baudehlo wrote: post #174
sushid wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, what are you doing now? What did you intent to major in/did you end up majoring in?

Replying here because the above comment is too many levels deep: this shows exactly what is wrong with hiring. Especially the HR manager who is so used to getting 100 resumes and trying desperately to find a reason to throw out 80 of them. Some of the best people I ever worked with didn't have CS degrees, and it's sad that HR still works this way at so many places. (We are working to change it in our niche of Sales,…

OT/pro-tip: the trick to reply when the reply button is gone is to click the timestamp and reply on the item's page instead.

Re: More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments

#192

Post by Overtonwindow »

I wonder if there is any school that shows students how much money they are expected to earn after graduation for their selected major, compared to the amount of debt they will have. I work with several people who have large amounts of student debt, but when I ask about their studies at college, the average income for their degrees pale in comparison to any salary they might ever earn that will help them conquer that debt. I think students should be made aware of a cost benefit analysis for their chosen majors.

Re: More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments

#193

Post by jonlucc »

siegecraft wrote: post #83
igetspam wrote: post #27

My wife is one of these borrowers. She has a master's degree in teaching. It cost her over $100k to get and she can't find job that would pay her enough that she'd be required to pay anything back. I've seen her loan repayment docs and her minimum payment due is $0 every month. While I think her decision to get a masters in education was a bad one (before we were married) I laugh at an institution that would loan her…

Have you looked into the tax burden you'll face whenever the loans are completely forgiven? Just curious, it's something I was wondering about since I am in a similar position.

Most teachers should qualify for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, meaning any federal loans (not private) should be forgiven after 120 payments without incurring the tax burden. As far as I understand, the 120 payments could well be "payments" of $0 if the annual income is low and the borrower is on an income-based repayment plan.

By the way, if you file taxes separately, they typically only take the borrowers income (unless you are on the REPAYE repayment plan, instead of the IBR repayment plan).

Re: More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments

#194

Post by dv_dt »

I this comes out of the flawed meme of private enterprise efficient/gov't inefficient. Thought it's true in some areas, in the area of funding education in society, it's terrible.

The loans push money to unsophisticated buyers (kids and their parents), who use it to make a huge amorphous transaction which is only performed once in their lives and plays out over years. There's insufficient buyer information to provide price discrimination for the asset being purchased - so it's just inflating college prices.

On the other hand, if we took the same amount of money and goverments directly funded public schools - there's a lot of attention over time and many transactions that can be administered by a gov't department to provide funding discrimination and control over the quality of what is provided. (BTW this is how many low cost public schools were funded in the boomer generation... at least in California)

Edit: BTW, Does any reader here know of any interesting economic theory on how to predict if a market will act efficiently? I'm imagining there must be some way to model the structure of a given market with information, quality and quantity of transactions between nodes representing persons/companies/institutions in a market.

Re: More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments

#195

Post by HillaryBriss »

twinkletwinkle wrote: post #70
guelo wrote: post #21

There's a simple solution, the Feds should cutoff loans for schools that don't get their students jobs. The government are the only ones that are able to accurately calculate which schools are completely worthless. In fact they should take it one step further and advertise to the whole world what percentage of students get jobs in their studied field and the average starting salary. That would finally put some market…

Must the value of an education be purely the salary you can get afterwards? The true roots of liberal arts (which used to include everything from astronomy to mathematics to botany) lie in creating a well-rounded, educated, sophisticated person. We can't all study STEM, and we as a society shouldn't demand that.

This is about the dollar cost of the college and university education process.

I'm surprised there isn't more discussion here about ways to educate people cheaply and efficiently, more discussion of supply pricing.

It may be a bad deal to obtain the knowledge required for a degree in Anthropology @ $150,000, but maybe it's a great deal to obtain the knowledge required for a degree in Anthropology @ $15,000.

Re: More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments

#196

Post by Overtonwindow »

sushid wrote: post #108
pmiller2 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A big problem is that at age 17, all of the adults are saying go to college & take out these loans. Guidance councilors, teachers, parents. The most compliant high schoolers will just do what they are told without thinking about it further. > I imagine this will start changing. When I was a kid, that group of adults had the benefit of cheap degrees. Today, now that group of adults is us and we did not go to school…

Just curious, what are you doing now? What did you intent to major in/did you end up majoring in?

I have a degree in political science. Today I am the Director of Government Relations and I've been out of college for 10 years. Many of my friends from college are shocked that I am still in the career of my degree. Rather to the point, their shock that I made a career out of my degree. It's only a hypothesis, but I suspect that I was a little more desperate than some of my peers, and that allowed me to work for shit pay for many years as I clawed my way up the ladder.

Re: More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments

#198

Post by Camillo »

AJ007 wrote: post #42
sh1ps wrote: post #22

A big takeaway from this article (for me) is that people are surprised that 17 year old kids don't understand what they're doing when they take out that college loan. Shock and astonishment despite there being little to no preparation for this kind of financial understanding previously in their education. That surprise and shock shocks and surprises me. Honestly it kind of reminds me of the whole Yelp minimum wage th…

A big problem is that at age 17, all of the adults are saying go to college & take out these loans. Guidance councilors, teachers, parents. The most compliant high schoolers will just do what they are told without thinking about it further. I imagine this will start changing. When I was a kid, that group of adults had the benefit of cheap degrees. Today, now that group of adults is us and we did not go to school chea…

When everyone goes to college, the bachelor's degree becomes the new high school degree. Then you either split between "good" bachelor's and "bad" bachelor's (depending on the institution), or all the degree requirements increase one step, or a little of both.

You can't just expect to give everyone a degree and have a nation of professionals, with "someone else" (people in foreign countries, immigrants) doing the blue collar work. For two reasons: one, there just isn't enough demand for professional-level work. Two, people differ in innate ability, and education level is often more useful as a proxy for that ability than for what it concretely teaches you. Giving everyone the same degree, even if you somehow get everyone to recite the material, will not give everyone the same level of ability - it will just destroy the degree's value as a proxy.

I wouldn't blame the councilors, teachers and parents too much, though - they have to focus on the individual case. Blame the politicians and thought leaders instead, who should have been able to see the effect at the collective level. If you're advising an individual, it's fine to assume that the market environment will not be affected by their actions. If you're advising a nation, it's not!

Re: More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments

#199

Post by Overtonwindow »

josephjrobison wrote: post #182
shogun21 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw taking out student loans as just another hurdle I had I cross. Same with taking the ACT and writing admissions essays. I'm doing fine now and paying back my loans. But I wish I better understood APRs and monthly payments and what those numbers actually meant in context.

Yea Plus Loans are the worst at 8% interest a year. Do I invest in index funds that average 7-8% or pay down student loans that guarantee you're relieving 8% interest a year. It's very disheartening to see one losing $1k/mo purely to interest. But also a big motivation to just make more money yearly.

Woah what loan are you speaking of??? My federal loan was about 3% in 2005.

Re: More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments

#200

Post by roymurdock »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #192

I wonder if there is any school that shows students how much money they are expected to earn after graduation for their selected major, compared to the amount of debt they will have. I work with several people who have large amounts of student debt, but when I ask about their studies at college, the average income for their degrees pale in comparison to any salary they might ever earn that will help them conquer that…

http://www.payscale.com/college-roi
Post reply on HN