California bans ITT tech from accepting new students • Hacker News Board

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#241

Post by ensignavenger » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 3:16 PM UTC

kaitai wrote: post #232

ensignavenger wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they allow their student loans to default in such a situation instead of enrolling in an income based repayment plan? If they have 0 income, they would have a payment of 0 dollars, still get their tax refund, and have their loans forgiven after a some time on the plan.

Not all federal loans allow income-based repayment. For instance, parent PLUS loans aren't eligible, nor are other loans made to or through parents. Moreover, there are tons & tons of private loans (often with high interest rates) pushed at these places, and none of those need to offer income-based repayment.

PLUS loans are to the parents though, not the students- do they even count as "student" loans? They are more "parent" loans.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#242

Post by ensignavenger » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 3:22 PM UTC

cloakandswagger wrote: post #233

ensignavenger wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any data on how good FICO scores are at predicting default rates? In my limited experience, my own credit report is rarely accurate... and from what I understand, that is quite common. So I wonder how a score calculated on inaccurate information could possibly be a great indicator of default rates?

No data except to postulate that if FICO scores had no correlation to default rates then the entire credit industry would fail. What is inaccurate about your FICO score? Maybe it results in false negatives (meaning your score is low when it should be high), but if the opposite was true across the board (bad borrowers getting high scores) then the credit industry would collapse.

I'm not sure there is 'no correlation'. But I don't trust the credit industry to not do stupid things...

My credit report often has accounts that aren't mine listed. Balances can be wrong for months. Accounts occasionally show late payments that were on time. The dates are often wrong (sometimes by years) for items, and then little things that are used to verify my identity by many companies can be quite wrong, like past addresses.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#243

Post by n-exploit » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 3:23 PM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #18

Are there any good ITT / University of Phoenix type schools? They all seem like scams. I don't count community colleges here, I know those can be very good. My wife went to one, got great education, was able to pay it by just budgeting money every month out of her part time work. Then switched to a 4 years univeristy, transfered credits and graduated with honors after 2 more years (with minimal loans). Would it be ha…

Western Governors University is an NWCCU accredited school that has programs in healthcare, business, information technology, and teaching. They're different in some ways from ITT tech and the like in their competency-based method and business practices (~$3.5k per semester), but they generally seem to be well respected. The teaching model (or lack thereof) does lend to high dropout rates, but it can be a good model for working professionals. I have an undergraduate degree from WGU and have had (comparable to my peers) considerable career progression that I would attribute to my withdrawal from the traditional brick-and-mortar academic system. I finished my B.S. in 2 and a half years and spent the rest of my 4-year allotment in full-time corporate employment while most of my friends over a year left at their traditional school. I also graduated with less than 20k in student loans, with most of that balance coming from my stint at a brick-and-mortar.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#244

Post by brianwawok » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 3:35 PM UTC

ensignavenger wrote: post #223

brianwawok wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically illegal to use school loans for things like cars or houses.

From the way I understand it, you can use student loans for any expense related to going to school, including living expenses.

https://www.edvisors.com/ask/faq/use-stafford-for/

Highlights include

> Transportation (cost of travel to/from school, but not for purchase of a vehicle)

> Room and board costs can include one of four allowances, depending on where you live:

> On-campus in housing that is owned or operated by the college > At home with parents (only applies to students without dependents) > In housing on a military base or for which a basic housing allowance (BAH) is provided (allowance restricted to board; room is excluded because it is already paid for) > Off-campus

No "Durable" goods like houses or cars may be bought with student loan money in the US.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#245

Post by pessimizer » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 3:45 PM UTC

Blackthorn wrote: post #204

pessimizer wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm criticizing a lot of CS programs, not programmers who didn't program before college. There are plenty of good programmers who never attended college for computers at all. My own mother started programming after majoring in English in college, learning in a training program at her job in her mid-20s (because she wanted to move out of a management track.) She went on to a 40 year career, and inspired me to become a…

> but you would probably have to skip the second sentence of the first paragraph, and the first parenthetical in item 2 No, I think you're just poor at communicating. Your claim was "After the second semester, CS students divide into three groups", and then listed those three groups, zero of which involved a person who was new to programming doing well. You had every opportunity to hedge your statement, and you did n…

Because I intentionally excluded that category, under the qualification that I was talking about programs with a vertical learning curve, that also had intros to programming that didn't actually have lectures about programming. You clearly read those words, so the problem is either reading comprehension or being intentionally obtuse.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#246

Post by sbov » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 4:04 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #245

Blackthorn wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but you would probably have to skip the second sentence of the first paragraph, and the first parenthetical in item 2 No, I think you're just poor at communicating. Your claim was "After the second semester, CS students divide into three groups", and then listed those three groups, zero of which involved a person who was new to programming doing well. You had every opportunity to hedge your statement, and you did n…

Because I intentionally excluded that category, under the qualification that I was talking about programs with a vertical learning curve, that also had intros to programming that didn't actually have lectures about programming. You clearly read those words, so the problem is either reading comprehension or being intentionally obtuse.

They're called "weeder" classes, and probably every CS department has them. You take your intro classes then they dump you into algorithms.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#247

Post by headmelted » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 4:21 PM UTC

asmosoinio wrote: post #134

headmelted wrote: post #119

Reading the comments here has been really eye opening to me. I always knew that tuition was orders-of-magnitude more expensive across the Atlantic but now it's a bit clearer why. Here (Northern Ireland, but it applies to the UK as a whole), students don't start to repay their loans until their earnings are over a certain threshold, then repayments are proportional to how much they earn over that level. If their annua…

Coming from Finland where all schools are free, the tuitions sound crazy to me as well. However I don't think "good loan terms" is the cause for your low tuition prices at all. At least in other contexts, the reverse is usually true: When people have easy access to capital, prices go up. This happens for example in Finland with government rent subsidies (for people with trouble paying for a place to live in): When th…

Interesting that you make the point about rent subsidies, we have those here to (but under a different name).

It has a really strange effect though of putting a floor of £450/month on almost anywhere (even the nastiest dive you could think of), but the sweet spot seems to be the next 25% up to £600. The difference between a really nice, new house, and a really crappy apartment in a bad area is about £100/month, solely because of the bottom on rents provided by the subsidies.

I suspect it's a really nice racket for modern day slumlords to be honest.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#248

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 4:30 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #123

selectodude wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because student loans are guaranteed by the federal government. Student can default and the bank will still get their money.

> Student can default Um no. They can't. That's the problem with American student loans. It's the only contract you can enter into under 18 and you can never declare bankruptcy on them. It's the most bullshit type of loan there is. In grad school I put part of my car on Student Loans because it was 0%. My car load was 5.2%. After I graduated, my student loans shot up to 6.8%! I quickly dumped all my savings onto them…

> It's the only contract you can enter into under 18 and you can never declare bankruptcy on them.

Please stop repeating this myth. It is, in fact, possible to discharge student loans in bankruptcy. (It is particularly difficult to do so compared to other forms of debt, but there is an enormous difference between that and "you can never declare bankruptcy on them.")

See, e.g., http://www.studentloanborrowerassistance.org/bankruptcy/

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#249

Post by antisthenes » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 4:32 PM UTC

bane wrote: post #205

One of the things that's very interesting to me is how information asymmetry helps drive people to these kinds of companies. I don't know everybody's story, but when I was just out of high school, there was no chance (I believed at the time) that I'd be able to go to a traditional school. I had bad grades, my family was poor and nobody in my family had gone to university except for my father, who had quickly abandone…

Community colleges are a hidden treasure in the United States. Many of them have very good professors, are cheap and have the benefit of having transfer programs into a big name university for the last 2 years of your 4 year degree.

I'm not sure why schools like ITT or Phoenix even exist or how they attract "customers/students".

This may sound arrogant, but for me, an ITT or Phoenix degree is worth less than the piece of paper it's on. I would actually pay money to have my name never associated with them on a resume or otherwise. Buying a fake diploma in a subway might be a better investment.

Having a school like that on your resume is pretty much the best way to signal to potential employers to never hire you for the kinds of jobs that will let you move up the financial and social ladder.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#250

Post by ensignavenger » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 4:33 PM UTC

brianwawok wrote: post #244

ensignavenger wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the way I understand it, you can use student loans for any expense related to going to school, including living expenses.

https://www.edvisors.com/ask/faq/use-stafford-for/ Highlights include > Transportation (cost of travel to/from school, but not for purchase of a vehicle) > Room and board costs can include one of four allowances, depending on where you live: > On-campus in housing that is owned or operated by the college > At home with parents (only applies to students without dependents) > In housing on a military base or for which…

That is very interesting, in many years of dealing with student loans for myself and my wife, I have never heard sucha thing! For example, the Department of Education publications usually say somthing like:

"You may use the money you receive only to pay for education expenses at the school that awarded your loan. Education expenses include such school charges as tuition, room and board, fees, books, supplies, equipment, dependent child care expenses, transportation, and rental or purchase of a personal computer"

(see https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/sites/default/files/your-federa...)

It would be interesting to find an official statement on this... I couldn't find anything on the Dept. of Ed website and my search for the actual laws didn't turn up anything...