U.S. Student Debt in ‘Serious Delinquency’ Tops $166B • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. Student Debt in ‘Serious Delinquency’ Tops $166B

#111

Post by Casseres » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 7:02 PM UTC

ourmandave wrote: post #32

This is why keep pushing my daughter towards a trade school. (Once you become immune to eye-rolling life gets easier.) There's a lot of companies with unfilled skilled blue collar jobs. And despite self-driving trucks, semi drivers can make some serious money. And HVAC projected job growth is 14% over the next 10 years. Thank you Global Warming!

I highly recommend Marine Engineering at a maritime academy if mechanically or mathematically -inclined. You get a four-year engineering degree and a license from the US Coast Guard as an Engineering Officer.

You can easily pay off your student loans very quickly, you get to see the world, and if you do it right, you have little to no expenses while you're sailing and can bank that money for when you quit.

For most people though, I don't recommend making it a long-term career though. It can be dangerous, and I always felt like my life was on pause while many of my friends were getting married, having kids, etc. (And I worked with a lot of older men who did not have good family/wife situations.)

One can certainly get a desk job with a Marine Engineering degree, but one leaves so much on the table if they do.

Re: U.S. Student Debt in ‘Serious Delinquency’ Tops $166B

#112

Post by johnchristopher » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 7:04 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #3

alkibiades wrote: post #2

i predict we’re going to have to bail these people out. once a critical mass of americans do something idiotic, it becomes politically expedient to bail them out and blame the companies for greed. this is a direct response of the government providing unlimited loans to anyone

We will bail them out when enough voters vote for candidates who support zeroing out this debt, and write it off as a policy mistake. We’ve wasted trillions on unproductive military initiatives in the Middle East, this would be relatively minor in comparison. The economic productivity realized by these debtors able to be full economic participants instead of having student loan drag for a lifetime outweighs the moral…

Won't it backfire in some way ? Banks and house sellers rising their prices because these debt free people now can get better credit ?

Re: U.S. Student Debt in ‘Serious Delinquency’ Tops $166B

#113

Post by openloop » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 7:04 PM UTC

This is fine.

Re: U.S. Student Debt in ‘Serious Delinquency’ Tops $166B

#114

Post by dorchadas » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 7:06 PM UTC

briandear wrote: post #48

toomuchtodo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I would agree with this, along with government providing for free community college as well as subsidizing trade schools. Fresh slate and we start over as a country on the right foot for education delivery.

I am a fiscal conservative, but I absolutely can get behind the free community college idea. It would be a net gain for the economy in my opinion as we could significantly reduce student loans to strictly means-tested criteria.

There's also a lot of jobs that don't really need degrees, either. One of the main ones I'm thinking of is teachers. Anyone can learn to teach, and an apprenticeship program might be better at actually getting good teachers (plus, it would let them see a few years in the classroom, meaning that they can decide if it's for them early on, and then leave before they start, hopefully decreasing teacher turnover rate). Then you could add specialization at all levels for subject area, and so they do their apprenticeship in the area they want to teach. Oh, and stop elementary school teachers from being generalists while we're at it; that's where a lot of the problem with basic math ability lies, from my experience as a high school math teacher. These teachers honestly have to take the state-mandated tests multiple times because of basic high school level math, yet we expect them to teach kids well...

Re: U.S. Student Debt in ‘Serious Delinquency’ Tops $166B

#115

Post by zanny » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 7:07 PM UTC

systematical wrote: post #38

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #6

Education is important. Access to education is important. But our current system of giving out student loans with no regard to if the student will ever have a realistic ability to repay borders on predatory. If we can't do anything to solve that portion of the problem, we should at least restrict the mandatory fees that are tacked on for non instructional purposes. No student should have to pay for decades to prop up…

Education is important, but I sometimes wonder if there is a whole lot of correlation does not equal causation going on here. What I mean is, statistics say those with a four year or higher degree earn more than those without. A correlation. But you might say that those who are predisposed with the aptitude for higher earning power are more likely to pursue a higher degree in the first place. It's this thought, that…

I feel like so many of the incentives in modern society are rigged to approach the "problem" of what to do with your people from the wrong end.

You put them through public school to... train them to work in factories. Because that is the original and persistent intent of what a high school education leaves you capable of.

You then siphon them into university then because... they need the means to live, and the only way to get it is with specialized skills.

Like with many things the original functions of what these programs were meant to achieve (creating a capable working class for regimented jobs of the era) have been totally lent to obsolescence but the systems remain as if nothing changed.

Not even STEM justifies the cost of university. We could be collectively saving absurd amounts of time and money if 14 year olds were electing to pursue a STEM career and simply shadowed professionals for 4-8 years and learned through first hand experience while reading books and doing online regimented lecture learning about the subjects on their own or in collaborative groups of their peers. You wouldn't need extravagant institutions costing absurd amounts of upkeep to maintain just to fail to produce capable scientists and mathematicians because they graduate with often only a rote understanding of ten+ year outdated domain knowledge and no experience practically applying any of it.

Re: U.S. Student Debt in ‘Serious Delinquency’ Tops $166B

#116

Post by strainer » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 7:07 PM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #52

spinach wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet, at the same time, they also provide all those jobs. Is bloating and inefficiency all that bad if it provides good jobs and the jobs have a good work/life balance?

This is exactly the question that the parable of the broken window answers. http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html

I wouldn't say exactly because over-staffing does not entail destruction like window smashing does. Overstaffing entails significant training and break time while on duty. Time to train, break and help other departments is considered a premium quality of creative working environments. Factory style production environments that are goal focused are a special case of keeping workers running, best when its to finish early.

Re: U.S. Student Debt in ‘Serious Delinquency’ Tops $166B

#117

Post by hobo_mark » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 7:08 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #90

TrinaryWorksToo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't people then plan to go bankrupt? Although perhaps that will allow a better equilibrium.

No, being bankrupt is definitely not an enjoyable state to be in, even is your debts are discharged, though. What is does mean, however, is that no sane entity will then continue giving out loans for someone to go $75k in debt to go to cooking school.

You mean culinary science !

Re: U.S. Student Debt in ‘Serious Delinquency’ Tops $166B

#118

Post by lukeschlather » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 7:08 PM UTC

The graph of percentage of people in serious delinquency over the past 20 years doesn't seem to support the doom and gloom throughout the article. In fact it looks like there might even be a bit of a percentage-wise decline, even though the absolute total is increasing linearly.

Re: U.S. Student Debt in ‘Serious Delinquency’ Tops $166B

#119

Post by Casseres » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 7:08 PM UTC

goodells wrote: post #59

anilshanbhag wrote: post #10

There is so much waste in universities: bloated admin/it staff , libraries filled with journals/magazines that no one reads, tenure system that doesn't allow you to downsize departments that have no students. Tuition can be reduced, however there is no incentive to do it since students can easily get loans.

This is spot on. An anecdote from my undergrad studies and living in Madison, WI: the UW has a division of housing, which provides (shoddy) canvas carts to the students to use for moving in/out of the dorms. My student organization happened to "acquire" some of these carts, and when using one I was confronted by none other than the director of housing, who promptly called the police on me. In the end I was happy to r…

> there's a complicated bidding process to even attempt to sell them to the school!

Did he mean complicated process for the school to buy them, or was he making them and selling them to the school himself?

Re: U.S. Student Debt in ‘Serious Delinquency’ Tops $166B

#120

Post by alexnewman » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 7:10 PM UTC

Only things in our economy with no skin in the game get more expensive

medical and student loans cannot be bankrupted houses are mostly gov't supported and when they crash the gov't bails them out.

If you don't want high prices, tell the gov't to stop inflating the prices.