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

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

#211

Post by viraptor »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #177
rubyn00bie wrote: post #138

Let it burn down. No one should pay back their student loan debt. Seriously, just stop. This is a scheme in which they've fucked over a large portion of the population with the skyrocketing prices of education. Further, this education is the regularly accepted means of increasing your production. Society says you have to do this, and then continuously increases the price, without reason. The gist of this is; some shi…

That would be the end of poor people going to college in this country, at least under the current legislative regime. The only reason anyone loans money to poor people to go to college right now is because they know the recipients can't get out from under the loans. A no-collateral loan to someone with few assets or prospects just wouldn't happen if that provision in the law didn't exist. Or the interest rate would b…

> That would be the end of poor people going to college in this country, at least under the current legislative regime.

Or alternatively, end of the current university system. One thing that always confused me when looking at US and UK unis (both had prices rise a lot) and my home uni is how much extra stuff is added. I went there for technical education, and that's pretty much all my first University provided, and it was really cheap. It didn't have sports teams/events, on-campus clubs/entertainment, student union bars, fancy areas. It used soviet-era-style big slab buildings, and provided reasonable education. Yes, going to a UK uni was nicer. It also cost me ~200x more, to support all the extra things.

People who just want the degree should be able to get just that without the lifelong debt.

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

#212

Post by smallgovt »

cortesoft wrote: post #205
smallgovt wrote: post #201

As someone who graduated from a top tier school, I'm constantly befuddled by society's expectation/belief that college degrees are useful. I learned absolutely nothing during my 4 years of undergrad that is practically useful to my current vocation, and I can say the same is true for 90% of my peers. For some areas of study, college IS worth the cost. For example, hard sciences. But, for the vast majority, it's not (…

I think the disconnect is that a university degree is NOT vocational training, and it never has been. What happened is that for a long time, only a certain class of people got to go to a university, and that class of people were the same ones that got the best jobs. In fact, many companies used a university degree as a filtering mechanism to select that class of person. Other classes saw this, and assumed that if the…

I totally agree that college is a useful path to building critical thinking skills and becoming a well-rounded individual, but I don't think that's why most people enroll.

Instead, I think if you surveyed people, the most prevalent reason for enrolling in college is the belief that it's a wise investment in their financial future. My belief is that this is just not true for 90% of potential graduates. And, wasting 4 years and $300K is a huge mistake when taken in the context of this college debt crisis.

I don't know what the short-term solution is, but I think the long-term solution is for companies to stop requiring college degrees and move towards evaluating the skills that actually correlate with job output. As a business owner, I've certainly done this, and I hope we can move in this direction quickly as a society.

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

#213

Post by mbroncano »

rayiner wrote: post #206
RGamma wrote: post #127

From a European perspective I can only shake my head at this. It doesn't seem like a good idea at all to indebt a significant part of the young population (which I presume creates a lot of avoidable stress) while the rich gain in wealth and power year after year. But I guess longer-term thinking has been thrown overboard in economic decision/policy making anyway, because that would make the numbers not grow fast enou…

The education bubble has nothing to do with the rich. It’s entirely a middle class phenomenon—a wealth transfer from young middle class people to older middle class people (professors and administrators). To the extent that state colleges aren’t more heavily tax subsidized, again its primarily the fault of the older middle class. (The biggest difference between US and European tax rates is for the vast middle class.…

> Middle class Germans pay twice as much or more

Citation needed. My personal experience paying taxes in both EU/NL and US/TX is that I pay slightly more in the US, in pretty much the same situation (family of four, two incomes)

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

#214

Post by bootlooped »

smallgovt wrote: post #201

As someone who graduated from a top tier school, I'm constantly befuddled by society's expectation/belief that college degrees are useful. I learned absolutely nothing during my 4 years of undergrad that is practically useful to my current vocation, and I can say the same is true for 90% of my peers. For some areas of study, college IS worth the cost. For example, hard sciences. But, for the vast majority, it's not (…

From my CS Bachelor's degree I think 15% or less of classes made me a better programmer, 15% or less made me a more well rounded individual, and the remainder were a total waste of time. I did it because I felt like I had to play the game to succeed in the way I wanted to, and I think playing along makes me a small part of the problem.

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

#215

Post by iguy »

TrinaryWorksToo wrote: post #199
iguy wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem IMHO is that the "discomfort of declaring bankruptcy" is hard to predict. Right now it caries some social stigma I believe, but that could change. I don't think that's a great mechanism for deciding who pays back the loan and who doesn't... and my suggestion in all such threads is that this should be tied to future income, which the lender will then become very interested in predicting.

Does declaring bankruptcy increase interest rates for the debtor? That could be enough incentive for it to be discomfortable

That's a point. I bet it does right now.

But if it became commonly done after graduating, then I imagine it would not predict much about whether you will pay the mortgage on your house (which is anyway secured by the house) and so lenders would soon not care.

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

#216

Post by Kephael »

tfolbrecht wrote: post #109
temp1928384 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe Lambda School is effective, though something about being alone at home in front of my computer for 12-15 hours/day for 6 months straight, even with remote office hours and chatting with other students, makes me think I'd feel extremely lonely.

It's an 8 hour day with a lunch break. 11am-8pm ET, If you want people, you can always go to the local coffeeshop, library etc. I agree colleges killer feature for a young person is networking, friendship, and dating. You just have to find alternative places to get it.

Many people attend commuter schools where you don't necessarily get the networking, friendship, and dating benefits. I think in Europe many students live at home which is part of the reason why educational costs are generally lower there.

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

#217

Post by viraptor »

rubyn00bie wrote: post #138

Let it burn down. No one should pay back their student loan debt. Seriously, just stop. This is a scheme in which they've fucked over a large portion of the population with the skyrocketing prices of education. Further, this education is the regularly accepted means of increasing your production. Society says you have to do this, and then continuously increases the price, without reason. The gist of this is; some shi…

This may happen automatically with another recession or X market collapse... But it's not like the borrowers will be completely unaffected in that case.

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

#218

Post by booleandilemma »

rubyn00bie wrote: post #138

Let it burn down. No one should pay back their student loan debt. Seriously, just stop. This is a scheme in which they've fucked over a large portion of the population with the skyrocketing prices of education. Further, this education is the regularly accepted means of increasing your production. Society says you have to do this, and then continuously increases the price, without reason. The gist of this is; some shi…

Or, you know, you could just pay your debt, like any self-respecting person would.

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

#219

Post by stenl »

mbroncano wrote: post #213
rayiner wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The education bubble has nothing to do with the rich. It’s entirely a middle class phenomenon—a wealth transfer from young middle class people to older middle class people (professors and administrators). To the extent that state colleges aren’t more heavily tax subsidized, again its primarily the fault of the older middle class. (The biggest difference between US and European tax rates is for the vast middle class.…

> Middle class Germans pay twice as much or more Citation needed. My personal experience paying taxes in both EU/NL and US/TX is that I pay slightly more in the US, in pretty much the same situation (family of four, two incomes)

US taxes on average-ish incomes are definitely among the lowest in the OECD (as expected): http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/10/24/among-develo...

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

#220

Post by skookumchuck »

Shivetya wrote: post #17
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…

People have been fine with Medicade/Medicare spelling out costs for services and such they should be willing to accept the same in higher education to obtain a Federally backed loan. Schools will trip over themselves to offer degree programs to meet Federal Assistance requirements. Each degree, each course credit leading to that degree, should all be subject to review on a periodic basis to insure that the needs of t…

> Schools will trip over themselves to offer degree programs to meet Federal Assistance requirements. Each degree, each course credit leading to that degree, should all be subject to review on a periodic basis to insure that the needs of the country as a whole are being supported.

Central planning of education? Do you really want such control ceded to a handful of unelected bureaucrats?

The Medicare/Medicaid system's costs have risen by leaps and bounds every year since their inception. That is not a model one would want to emulate for lowering education costs.

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