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

Student Debt Lawsuits Are a Lucrative Business

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 120 posts

Re: Student Debt Lawsuits Are a Lucrative Business

#61

Post by logfromblammo »

Verdex_3 wrote: post #56
alexanderstears wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there isn't enough skin in the game. Judges don't get punished for bad decisions and Transworld was allowed to mislead the courts for too long.

I don't think judges should necessarily be punished for bad decisions. The judiciary is a mechanism for allowing society to get along peacefully with one another (ie you can take your grievance to a judge instead of to the mob). I don't really want judges having to worry about punishment when doing their job. On the other hand. Incompetent and corrupt judges have no place in the judiciary because it's basically an at…

You forgot lazy. What do you do with the judges that simply can't be arsed to read the filings or briefs, and arbitrarily rule against those that seem to be making the most work for them? They want a light calendar, so they can spend more time doing literally anything else. So what do you do with those who will only do their job half-assed?

Re: Student Debt Lawsuits Are a Lucrative Business

#62

Post by eli_gottlieb »

ChrisBland wrote: post #5
arcanus wrote: post #3

It is remarkable that you cannot declare bankruptcy from student debt. We have essentially decoupled the price of college from the expected return.

If we didn't prevent it, then you'd be stupid to not go to college take out $120k in loans and then declare bankruptcy at 22 prior to taking a job (you'd have no income and no assets). You'd be 29 by the time the bankruptcy fell off your credit report, meaning credit might be tight in those years to buy a car or house, but you'd be debt free - something many people in their 20s and 30s would gladly do if they were gi…

>If we didn't prevent it, then you'd be stupid to not go to college take out $120k in loans and then declare bankruptcy at 22 prior to taking a job (you'd have no income and no assets).

If you'd be stupid not to do it, how many people have actually done it? If it was actually done at a certain rate, why wasn't that rate priced in?

>IMO the only way to solve it is to put the school on the hook for part of the $$ if the default rate exceeds X%.

This is a pretty good proposal.

Re: Student Debt Lawsuits Are a Lucrative Business

#63

Post by thebradbain »

iterati wrote: post #55
exabrial wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree (except maybe on music theory, bit more technical of a degree that most people realize)

Doesn't matter how technical it is, it's still pretty worthless.

I'm a CS Major, but saying a degree is "worthless" is pretty narrow-minded, no? I'd argue (at least anecdotally) that most people getting into these "worthless" degrees know they won't make a ton of money - but for them, money isn't something they particularly care about.

There's more ways to define success than in terms of money.

Re: Student Debt Lawsuits Are a Lucrative Business

#64

Post by lgleason »

ChrisBland wrote: post #5
arcanus wrote: post #3

It is remarkable that you cannot declare bankruptcy from student debt. We have essentially decoupled the price of college from the expected return.

If we didn't prevent it, then you'd be stupid to not go to college take out $120k in loans and then declare bankruptcy at 22 prior to taking a job (you'd have no income and no assets). You'd be 29 by the time the bankruptcy fell off your credit report, meaning credit might be tight in those years to buy a car or house, but you'd be debt free - something many people in their 20s and 30s would gladly do if they were gi…

I agree with this. As part of the underwriting for the loan the school has to have skin in the game and is responsible for at least some of the default and no extra recourse to go after the debtor beyond what the original lender already did. It would definitely change the admissions criteria for the better and also incentivize institutions to to spend more wisely.

Re: Student Debt Lawsuits Are a Lucrative Business

#65

Post by godelski »

xeromal wrote: post #43
Posibyte wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bank should be entirely at fault here. If they looked at a student's request for a loan that said I'm taking a basket-weaving class at Cornell and I need $120k to attend then it's the bank's prerogative to look into the student's past performance, the rate of return for basket weavers, and the bias to which Cornell would prompt higher or lower returns in this area. Just like any area of lending, it's on the bank…

I agree that our student loans are junk and need a revamp, but if banks only loaned for the rate of return of a job, we'd have engineers and no one else. There is something to said for having artists and philosophers are "useless" as their degrees are perceived to be.

The idea here is that there is a feedback system causing the price of tuition to go up. Banks can lend at little risk and schools can charge a lot because students can get loans.

The hypothesis is that if students can't get the loans then the schools can't charge as much and have to become leaner. Combine this with a social change in perception of "you need to go to college to be successful" and I think the idea has merits. Simplified and not the full answer, but it definitely has merits.

Re: Student Debt Lawsuits Are a Lucrative Business

#66

Post by GauntletWizard »

thebradbain wrote: post #63
iterati wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't matter how technical it is, it's still pretty worthless.

I'm a CS Major, but saying a degree is "worthless" is pretty narrow-minded, no? I'd argue (at least anecdotally) that most people getting into these "worthless" degrees know they won't make a ton of money - but for them, money isn't something they particularly care about. There's more ways to define success than in terms of money.

Several of the best mathematicians I've met had degrees in music theory; there's a surprising practicality to it in modern CS as the concepts translate well to machine learning.

Re: Student Debt Lawsuits Are a Lucrative Business

#67

Post by hibikir »

exabrial wrote: post #44

Good Lord. There are two issues with college tuition: The first problem is people are not shopping around for a college education. There are thousands of incredible colleges around the USA that will give you the same or better education as a pricey school on the coasts. I did my easiest credits at Bulter County Community, then Wichita State University, before finishing up at Kansas State University. I only took on ab…

Shopping around for college education only makes sense if your career path doesn't take the name of the institution into account. Careers are so path dependent that landing in a worse first job can make a huge difference in lifetime earnings.

See, a good engineer I know, who studied in University of Missouri Rolla. Their CS degree is not all that different from a big name, as far as curriculum is concerned, but many HR departments won't recognize the place, especially if it's a company from the coasts. If you don't find a way to break through that social class, the best you can hope for is a Midwest Enterprise company, which will not pay as well, and will not teach as well. Then your resume will be thrown away at many hip companies, because working at such companies is seen as a negative, not as a positive: To climb out of a good education with a bad name to a place that pays top dollar can be a huge struggle. If instead you go to the Right University, you can then move on to the Right Company, and you can keep working at said places, or get venture capital to start your own thing, because you were already in the inside track. That's what you are paying for at the coastal university, not a dramatically superior education.

You are right though, in that there are many degrees that are terrible investments in all but the topmost universities. You'd be surprised by the kind of companies that will interview you anyway if you have an irrelevant degree from Harvard.

Re: Student Debt Lawsuits Are a Lucrative Business

#68

Post by trowawee »

turc1656 wrote: post #58
ChrisBland wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education costs have risen faster than health care costs, you have to try to find some way to contain it or every generation becomes more indebted. As long as the feds are going to throw free money at this, we need to find some way of controlling costs. IMO asking the university staff to tighten their belts and be fiscally prudent is going to get you about as far as trying to build 1000 new mid rise apt buildings in…

I agree that universities are not going to tighten the purse strings unless they have no choice. The cause, as you mention, is the feds throwing money at the education system. Therefore, the only logical solution is to remove that. You say you don't want to limit access to education, but the world isn't perfect. If you want everyone to have access (meaning having access to funding via loans) then you must accept the…

> The education system used to work fairly well in this country several decades ago.

That is...a pretty remarkable claim. I think there are a fair number of people - lots of women, lots of people who grew up smart and poor, lots of non-white folks - who would contest that pretty stridently.

Re: Student Debt Lawsuits Are a Lucrative Business

#69

Post by logfromblammo »

ChrisBland wrote: post #38
turc1656 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If we didn't prevent it, then you'd be stupid to not go to college take out $120k in loans and then declare bankruptcy at 22 prior to taking a job" Yeah, but that's exactly why no one would ever lend that amount in the first place. That, I believe, was the OP's point. College should not cost what it does. And part of that reason is federal guarantees upon the debt. So colleges can raise the price and since the debt…

Education costs have risen faster than health care costs, you have to try to find some way to contain it or every generation becomes more indebted. As long as the feds are going to throw free money at this, we need to find some way of controlling costs. IMO asking the university staff to tighten their belts and be fiscally prudent is going to get you about as far as trying to build 1000 new mid rise apt buildings in…

The answer is to build other accredited institutions that compete on costs. They can poach all those adjuncts from the established universities by offering them tenure-track positions, build no-frills dormitories, skip the fancy landscaping and neo-classical architecture, forego any formally sanctioned athletic programs, rely on the bare minimum of administrators, and focus on undergraduate instruction.

And that could be a decent second life for abandoned retail shopping malls, too.

It might also be nice for such an institution to adopt a libre-license or gratis-license policy for all course materials, such that textbooks and lecture notes are essentially sold for the printing and distribution costs, and electronic versions downloadable at no additional charge.

And since some of those new colleges will fail, establish a succession plan to begin with, so that the student records can be easily maintained and transferred.

Even if you cut established university costs to the bone, you still eventually run up against the problem that there isn't enough undergraduate instruction capacity in them to serve the growing demand for bachelor's degrees. You're going to need to build out anyway, and private universities aren't necessarily going to do enough of that if it drops the market price for tuition.

Re: Student Debt Lawsuits Are a Lucrative Business

#70

Post by godelski »

aplummer wrote: post #33

I think this is another situation where you can look at the models in the UK, Europe, other similar countries to find solutions. If I grew up in the US and could have managed it, you can study in Germany as a foreigner for free. Other countries like Aus have a system where your loan is interest free and indexed with inflation, and you start paying it off after you make about $35k per year as a percent of income.

Here in America we gain interest while we are in school and have to start paying it off 6mo after we graduate. For context, that is the average time it takes a student to get a job (right when they are also paying moving costs and such). Payment used to initiate after 9mo after graduation.
Post reply on HN