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The Lasting Consequences of Student Debt

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Re: The Lasting Consequences of Student Debt

#81

Post by austenallred »

lr4444lr wrote: post #75
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…

Beautifully said. As a follow-up question to your last sentence, do you have any thoughts on collateralization? Not so easy when the asset grown to pay back the debt is social/intellectual capital, but I think we could come up with creative solutions for certain degrees and borrower profiles.

I think it makes a lot of sense to have a simple model that predicts ability to repay and to not give out loans to people who won't be able to pay them back. But that would have to happen at a federal level, and imagine being the politician who pushes that through. Until that happens the universities won't care, so it would have to be a societal shift.

Re: The Lasting Consequences of Student Debt

#82

Post by tostitos1979 »

agalarza wrote: post #11
kudokatz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the same boat ... except I ended up buying to insulate myself from a ridiculous housing market since there are lots of jobs within a 30min trip of my place. The glorification of home ownership really baffles me, although I still ended up purchasing after careful consideration of things like: http://jlcollinsnh.com/2013/05/29/why-your-house-is-a-terrib...

This is the situation my wife and I are looking at as well. We don't have kids yet, we want to put down roots and barring another housing market collapse, the area we currently live in is getting expensive.

We paid off huge student loans first, instead of getting into housing. Housing doubled. We're priced out of our local city.

Also .. I highly suggest that if you want to buy a place, do it before the baby arrives. After the baby, you are so fully absorbed in adjusting to your new life, that taking time out to go house hunting is a herculean task. Every house we bid and lost after the baby represented a much higher cost and led us to bid more than we thought the house were (to the tune of 50K in my opinion - we still lost the bloody bidding wars).

Re: The Lasting Consequences of Student Debt

#83

Post by lr4444lr »

snarf21 wrote: post #59
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 wer…

And as a corollary, the humanities that escape the downsizing can purge themselves of the downward drag of people who aren't cut out for college work, and raise their standards again.

Re: The Lasting Consequences of Student Debt

#84

Post by branchless »

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…

Even if you understand that the system is broken you still have to play along. Suppose you are a regular student who wants a regular job in an office doing marketing or whatever. A huge % of candidates have degrees. So employees start demanding a degree. If your cv has no degree it goes in the bin.

So you pay the piper. The supply of gov credit sets the price of courses. Hand over your labour.

Re: The Lasting Consequences of Student Debt

#85

Post by wu-ikkyu »

jMyles wrote: post #14
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'm part of that generation and made that mistake for sure. > 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 takeaway here is, in part: don't do something just because you're told to. If our generation stops doing what we're told (which seems to be the case), then this will be a small price.

>The takeaway here is, in part: don't do something just because you're told to.

Perhaps children shouldn't go to school at all then, seeing as how the mantra of the classroom is sit down, shut up, and do what you're told or else you are likely to be labeled with a mental disorder and drugged with amphetamines.

Re: The Lasting Consequences of Student Debt

#86

Post by antisthenes »

austenallred wrote: post #72
ryandrake wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I graduated high school in 2008 and dropped out of college a few years later. I can honestly say not one person (other than my parents) ever recommended considering cost until after my Freshman year of college. The message that was pounded in again and again and again was "The best college at all costs." I'm pretty sure that's no longer the case - at least I hope so.

The classic case of "You can totally substitute being part of the capitalist class with education signaling!"

Turns out you can not, at least not in America.

Re: The Lasting Consequences of Student Debt

#88

Post by winstonewert »

austenallred wrote: post #66
crusso wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

In my ideal world (I'm trying to start a company that will eventually do this, but hard for obvious reasons) college would be a place where you "just show up," you learn what you need to, then you pay back the school with a percentage of income. The percentage piece aligns incentives, because the school is now invested in you earning the highest income, and it's now in part the school's responsibility to make sure it…

I like the idea in general, but a few issues seem problematic to me.

The school would seem to have a strong incentive to only accept applicants who they are pretty sure will make a lot of money. The incentive isn't to teach anyone who shows up.

The school would also seem to have a strong incentive to control the life decisions of students after they leave. i.e. they won't want to let students switch careers after they discover they weren't cut out to be whatever they trained for.

Collecting a percentage of income seems like it might be difficult to enforce. People are eventually going to decide they've paid the school enough and want to stop paying. Is the school going to constantly face legal costs trying to recapture it?

Furthermore, legally, can you sign a contract that permanantly grants a percentage of your income? I'm wondering if that would be declared invalid by the courts.

Re: The Lasting Consequences of Student Debt

#89

Post by bobbington »

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 agree 100%. You succeed in life because of who you are, not because of what college makes you. College is a business and that's why there is so much advertising for it.

Re: The Lasting Consequences of Student Debt

#90

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

adrianN wrote: post #71
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a society, it seems beneficial to spread the wealth out a bit so there's development throughout the country. IMO, our government should be focusing on improving society instead of corporations.

Why is that beneficial for the society? I don't think that's as clear cut as you make it to be. Cities are pretty efficient things.

Wealth concentration to cities has lots of drawbacks. Housing can get incredibly expensive, mental illness rates go up, local government reflects the people less because of the larger population, and people feel like they need to upend their entire family just to live a quality life. There are tons of places in SF, NYC and others where there are 6 men in a 2 bedroom apartment. All that just so that corporations can reap the benefits of a higher worker density. That's no way to structure a society.
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