81–90 of 374 posts
Reminder: Your future employers care more about side projects and experience than some writing on a piece of paper. You don't need to go to college to be a kick ass programmer.
Also many other countries have much more stratified systems and degrees are mandatory
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Somebody getting a break doesn’t bring you down, it just brings them up. I’m sorry you had to pay off your loans. I’m paying about $100,000 myself. But even if I didn’t get amnesty, I’d rather not have one more graduate who, like me, has sincerely considered whether simply being dead would be easier to deal with. And there are a lot of people like that. I’d rather be in debt forever if it means that subsequent multit…
> Somebody getting a break doesn’t bring you down, it just brings them up. Well, the assumption here is that the money to "bring them up" can just be materialized out of thin air and doesn't have to be taken from other people, in turn.
Banks, on the other hand, won't be suffering if reforms are made; they will simply not be able to realize as much interest from the loans they issued.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's very difficult to start your career at leading companies such as Google, Facebook, etc without going to a reputable school.
That's why you usually do not start there. Google might require a degree, but your local hairdresser does not ask for one as long as you can create his website. Then move your way up from there. After several years recruiters will be more interested in your experience, projects and contributions than your non existing degree. EDIT: other options include working at startups/smaller companies, contributing to open sour…
It's a damn shame we've let this crisis reach this scale. Along with healthcare, climate change, the debt, our inauguration, and so on, we've been essentially frozen for most of my life as politicians concern themselves more so with existential power struggle. The right wants to bring us back to the gilded age, the left makes headlines but is barely relevant, and the center is trying to squeeze bandaid solutions whil…
There's an interesting parallel with the cost of healthcare. Increases in costs for both seem to outstrip inflation year over year. And there's lots of of people making lots of money in both sectors. And yet nobody in either sector seems to be able to say exactly why the costs are increasing at the untenable rates they are. The only thing Washington ever seems to do is kick the can down the road.
You used to be able to apprentice for just about any profession at all, often earning money while doing so. Perhaps social norms need to adjust and bring back apprenticeship. Perhaps we are on that course now having reached the tipping point of student loan debt and with the death of the 4 year degree. Education is free (MIT has free courses, and there are lots of opportunities nowadays for self-study); it's a degree…
Most young people we hire straight out of the university are at about the level of “apprentice” anyway.
The best just learn faster later on.
The university degree in E.E. is just a ticket to being apprentice somewhere.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The attitude of 'I suffered so others should have to' is really damaging. I get why that's the instinctive response, but it's also going to lead to a worse society. By all means argue for a solution that also helps people who made sacrifice in the past, but people who didn't or couldn't being left to suffer is not a solution. To be clear - I get you are not saying you don't want to solve this because of that, but unf…
> I suffered so others should have to I didn't "suffer", I just fulfilled the obligations I signed up for when I signed up to my loans.
With PAYE and IBR, it seems like one could permanently take a couple of classes, receive all of the loan money for "living expenses," and then run up an unlimited amount of student loans... and they never have to pay back more than just a percentage of your income...
And if your IBR payment isn't enough to cover the interest as it accrues, your balance at the end might be pretty big.
There was a story in the WSJ about a dentist who currently has $1MM in student loan balances and is on IBR. When the IBR period expires, he'd be likely to have a $2MM balance forgiven and consequently a $700K tax liability.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/mike-meru-has-1-million-in-stud...
It's a damn shame we've let this crisis reach this scale. Along with healthcare, climate change, the debt, our inauguration, and so on, we've been essentially frozen for most of my life as politicians concern themselves more so with existential power struggle. The right wants to bring us back to the gilded age, the left makes headlines but is barely relevant, and the center is trying to squeeze bandaid solutions whil…
I must say, as someone who made quite a few sacrifices to pay off my school debt, I'll be pretty miffed if less responsible people from my same generation get a break on their loans.
Granted, the government has tightened the rules around private student loans and encouraged students to pursue federal-only loans (which offer a ton of benefits compared to private loans), but if you look at the loan practices in 2000-2008, private lenders were effectively fly-by-night and doing everything they could (including questionable advertising) to encourage students to apply for private loans.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Somebody getting a break doesn’t bring you down, it just brings them up. I’m sorry you had to pay off your loans. I’m paying about $100,000 myself. But even if I didn’t get amnesty, I’d rather not have one more graduate who, like me, has sincerely considered whether simply being dead would be easier to deal with. And there are a lot of people like that. I’d rather be in debt forever if it means that subsequent multit…
> Somebody getting a break doesn’t bring you down, it just brings them up. Well, the assumption here is that the money to "bring them up" can just be materialized out of thin air and doesn't have to be taken from other people, in turn.
Or would you rather a non-society where everyone fends for themselves?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The attitude of 'I suffered so others should have to' is really damaging. I get why that's the instinctive response, but it's also going to lead to a worse society. By all means argue for a solution that also helps people who made sacrifice in the past, but people who didn't or couldn't being left to suffer is not a solution. To be clear - I get you are not saying you don't want to solve this because of that, but unf…
> I suffered so others should have to I didn't "suffer", I just fulfilled the obligations I signed up for when I signed up to my loans.