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

The Lasting Consequences of Student Debt

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 209 posts

Re: The Lasting Consequences of Student Debt

#51

Post by revelation »

austenallred wrote: post #12

The thing that irks me about this the most is how it's the people who were doing exactly what they were told that got hurt the most. The good kids who went to the best school they could get in to, studied whatever they were interested in, and if that thing happened to be literature or women's studies or a wide number of other things you might just spend the next 20 years figuring out how to live with debt you can't p…

I fully agree, but this didn't just happen. Cost of college didn't simply explode. There were people on the other side that steered things such that costs would explode, loans would be readily available, people would land in debt they can never escape.

Re: The Lasting Consequences of Student Debt

#52

Post by ge96 »

I was an idiot, like "Hell yeah give me this money." Only later realizing how long it would take me to pay. Luckily for me what I owe is a mere pittance compared to someone like a doctor. But I also make 1/3rd of a pitance per year... haha I like that word pittance. Tribute to that Futurama episode, "Honking"

Anyway yeap... sucks thankfully I have a somewhat functioning brain, despite the loans, not getting a useful degree/potentially wasting three years of money/life, I have an opportunity to dig myself out. It's my own fault by the way I had a great opportunity and I pissed it away because I was a jackass. But yeah, it's easy to accept this money and not realize the interest like a couple of my loans are 6.8% APR and paying the interest down alone holy crap.

Re: The Lasting Consequences of Student Debt

#53

Post by crusso »

ep103 wrote: post #37
r_smart wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps one of the silver linings of growing up poor was that I, and my friends, were conscious of money, or its lack. I wanted to pursue a writing degree and knew I shouldn't spend a ton of money on it, so I stayed local and worked to mostly pay my way through my first degree. My friends went to fancier schools, but did it in pursuit of business degrees, looking to get a good return on their education. The point bei…

You make a good point. Yet the entire time I'm reading it, the main thought going through my mind, is people shouldn't have to make choices like this about education. And definitely not in a democracy.

People shouldn't have to make choices to get educations that will provide marketable value?

What should drive such an important choice? Pleasure? Fashion? Government quotas?

Re: The Lasting Consequences of Student Debt

#54

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #48
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason people don't want to move there is because that's not where the money is, which makes sense. But when everyone thinks like that, it causes most of the wealth to concentrate to a handful of areas across the nation while the rest suffers from lack of development. It's not even. There used to be a lot of legislation that prevented that and led to development across the nation, but most of that legislation was…

I'm honestly curious -- could you elaborate and perhaps cite some examples of such legislation?

Sorry, I should have added it to my post. I edited in the site that I got my info from.

Re: The Lasting Consequences of Student Debt

#55

Post by pitt1980 »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #18
davidf18 wrote: post #13

A problem is that many of the higher paying jobs are in cities such as NYC, SF, LA, Boston, DC, (also London, ...) and the housing is expensive in these cities because of "rent-seeking" -- a market failure or market inefficiency caused by an politically induced scarcity of housing through zoning density restrictions. This harms renters and those starting out in life while benefiting wealthy landlords such as Presiden…

> a market failure or market inefficiency caused by an politically induced scarcity of housing through zoning density restrictions. This is true, but it's also a failure of policies that have led to the majority of job growth being in the biggest cities in the country. If we could spread things out a bit and keep smaller cities a viable place to create jobs, the bigger cities wouldn't be impacted nearly as hard.

" it's also a failure of policies that have led to the majority of job growth being in the biggest cities in the country"

do you have ideas as to policies that would spread growth around the county?

I heard the idea of decentralizing government bureaucracies out of DC, and around the country, do you have other ideas?

Re: The Lasting Consequences of Student Debt

#56

Post by crusso »

austenallred wrote: post #40
ep103 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make a good point. Yet the entire time I'm reading it, the main thought going through my mind, is people shouldn't have to make choices like this about education. And definitely not in a democracy.

100%. It's a broken system with misaligned incentives. The college doesn't have to care if you get a job, the loans are backed by the federal government so there's no risk there, and 100% of the risk is placed on the shoulders of the student. Even if we didn't have government sponsored education straight up, if any of the money involved were dependent upon a student's career success I believe we'd see a very differen…

Are you saying to get rid of the federal government backing of the loan? Let the banks making the loans sink or swim based upon the success of the students and their ability to pay it back?

Re: The Lasting Consequences of Student Debt

#57

Post by DamnYuppie »

reader5000 wrote: post #46
treehau5 wrote: post #45

Did any of these kids (and I am one of them, graduated in 2013) stop and think that paying 50-70k a year after room and board to attend a university was insane? I had the option to go to a nice university, and maybe my horizons would have been expanded, maybe they wouldn't, but at the end of the day I am happy where I ended up and I went to community college for 2 years, and the public state university, for the remai…

I agree, the taxpayers were pretty stupid for taking on the risk that kids wont be able to pay on their student loans. Too bad for the taxpayer!

The government is collecting quite a bit of interest on over $1.4 trillion dollars in student loans.

I was also under the impression that for the vast majority, outside of a few programs, can't get rid of the debt, even with bankruptcy. So overall the money is being made.

Re: The Lasting Consequences of Student Debt

#58

Post by randomdata »

ep103 wrote: post #37
r_smart wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps one of the silver linings of growing up poor was that I, and my friends, were conscious of money, or its lack. I wanted to pursue a writing degree and knew I shouldn't spend a ton of money on it, so I stayed local and worked to mostly pay my way through my first degree. My friends went to fancier schools, but did it in pursuit of business degrees, looking to get a good return on their education. The point bei…

You make a good point. Yet the entire time I'm reading it, the main thought going through my mind, is people shouldn't have to make choices like this about education. And definitely not in a democracy.

For better or worse, here in North America the government does mandate and provide, with little choice, the education it deems necessary for its young citizens to become functioning members of society.

If someone chooses to pursue a hobby beyond that, which is what the parent seems to be referring to, why shouldn't they have full choice of what they want to study and how they want to study it? Especially in a capitalistic democracy.

Re: The Lasting Consequences of Student Debt

#59

Post by snarf21 »

austenallred wrote: post #12

The thing that irks me about this the most is how it's the people who were doing exactly what they were told that got hurt the most. The good kids who went to the best school they could get in to, studied whatever they were interested in, and if that thing happened to be literature or women's studies or a wide number of other things you might just spend the next 20 years figuring out how to live with debt you can't p…

It is very unfortunate that this happened and was a perfect storm. Money for college loans became too easy and too lucrative and made the supply of college educated workers too large for the demand. This also happened at the same time that good paying non-college jobs started to decline, mostly to automation and partly to globalization. Then students said, "Well, I'll invest more and get a Masters" and then there were too many of them, plus all the extra debt. In a lot of verticals, the same has happened with the PhD.

Software really is eating the world and we need to find a solution or it will eventually lead to revolt as people will have no other option. If someone isn't going to college for something medical or STEM, they shouldn't bother. Go learn a trade or start a small sole proprietor business while you live at home.

Re: The Lasting Consequences of Student Debt

#60

Post by refurb »

austenallred wrote: post #12

The thing that irks me about this the most is how it's the people who were doing exactly what they were told that got hurt the most. The good kids who went to the best school they could get in to, studied whatever they were interested in, and if that thing happened to be literature or women's studies or a wide number of other things you might just spend the next 20 years figuring out how to live with debt you can't p…

The good kids who went to the best school they could get in to, studied whatever they were interested in

Huh, I went to college 10+ years ago and it was clear to me then that certain degrees meant a good paying job and some were dead ends.

That's a shame if some students were led to believe something else.

Post reply on HN