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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

#221

Post by kevinventullo »

zanny wrote: post #124
wtvanhest wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we are being honest, sports and minor non-instructional costs are minor vs the cost of small classrooms and professors. We need to vastly cut costs and sports and non-instructional costs wont move the needle.

The fact that many universities have tenured masters of their domain still having to, even with as many grad students as can fill a lecture hall, oversee 100 level courses that would fit in better at middle school than university is ridiculous. Good professors are an extremely expensive thing to have, and students of merit deserve time with such masters that maximizes knowledge transfer. That almost always means not…

> Good professors are an extremely expensive thing to have

Are they? I left academia partially because compensation was so much better in industry. I remember doing the calculation that a tenured professor's salary was covered by 3-5 undergrads' tuition. At public universities, these salaries are public.

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

#222

Post by AngryData »

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!

There are a few trade jobs that are good money, but I find this idea that trade jobs overall are some overlooked gem completely preposterous. I work in the trades and while some jobs are decent, most trade jobs are still shit and pay shit for what you are doing. Especially when you factor in the high rates of injury and death, and the life long physical ailments that many of these jobs cause. Yeah you will make decent money laying brick, but what kind of physical shape are most 60 year old brick layers in? How much pain do they suffer and how much does that effect their total life span? You might look at a heavy equipment mechanic and think "Wow, they make a decent bit more than just a normal mechanic! What a good deal!" and not think about what kind of condition your hands are in after 40 years of wrenching on huge shit, a lot of the older mechanics have to get their wives to open jars because their hands are basically shot and can only hold a few clawed wrenching positions.

Now there are some real sweet positions and trade jobs out there, don't get me wrong, but there are a whole lot more shit positions beneath that and a whole lot of other factors other than just the hourly pay.

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

#224

Post by YaxelPerez »

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…

A little hyperinflation would go a long way.

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

#225

Post by troutwine »

rosterface wrote: post #188
troutwine wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Actually, I don't have a degree. That's sort of my point. Apologies, you didn't state that and I assumed. > It's very possible to just enter the labor market and make money if you work hard and smart. I'm a developer but I know plenty of people I grew up with who went on to be: military people, plumbers, cops... Then again, it's also not. Some fields absolutely require credentials and long-term education and we, as…

I actually agree with you. We need to rethink how education works and is funded. I also think education is valuable and needed in lots of fields. I just don't think we should excuse people's existing debt. We should look to fix things in the future. Some of that is the realization that there's value to be created outside of credentialed fields. Some of that is also probably the removal of credentials as a requirement…

> I actually agree with you. We need to rethink how education works and is funded. I also think education is valuable and needed in lots of fields. > > I just don't think we should excuse people's existing debt. We should look to fix things in the future.

Ah, okay, there's the difference. I tend to think that solutions to issues that don't address defects in the present moment are partial at best. Maybe, also, I don't imagine that most people with student debt were profligate, and, even of those that were, I don't think they ought to be held to account in perpetuity for that, especially if we end up settling on the notion that the root cause was a failure to properly value education as a society.

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

#226

Post by nswx »

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.…

Not generally. The reason the middle class pay higher taxes in Europe is mostly because of contributions to public welfare systems. Society level concerns are usually still to a large degree paid for by taxes on high incomes and businesses.

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

#227

Post by pyrophane »

booleandilemma wrote: post #218
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.

When companies can't pay back a loan they declare bankruptcy without a second thought and face little societal judgment for doing so, but when individuals do the same thing is labeled not just as a financial shortcoming but as a moral weakness as well. I think that attitude causes a lot of harm. People subject themselves to a great deal of suffering to avoid having to say "I can't pay this back," when sometimes that is exactly what they should do.

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

#228

Post by Gpetrium »

iguy wrote: post #129
zanny wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

> STEM career and simply shadowed professionals for 4-8 years and learned through first hand experience I believe that's called a PhD :) But I totally agree that much of the system we've invented is a mistake, basically from having the causality backwards. People who went to university did well, made more than those who worked in factories. So we decided that (after closing the factories) we should send the entire po…

I think basic educational theory would conclude that College/University should be an opportunity for people to 'learn how to learn', network, enjoy life while young, among other things. Whether everyone that goes to university actually does that is up to the individual.

Society/government can only do so much to push people towards success. I agree that a lot of people go to college without being prepared or able and that adds to the cost. It is the cost of failure that society has accepted up until today, we will see if it changes.

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

#229

Post by AngryData »

rosterface wrote: post #151
troutwine wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a member of the first group and I disagree with the conclusion. I'd be very happy to see all current student debt forgiven and subsidies to university programs improved. Good on you, though, for getting through an education without debt. That's a real accomplishment. There are for sure a good number of people who get an education for a viable career and wind up with loans that spiral out of control, especially i…

Actually, I don't have a degree. That's sort of my point. It's very possible to just enter the labor market and make money if you work hard and smart. I'm a developer but I know plenty of people I grew up with who went on to be: military people, plumbers, cops... > there's a good number of folks with student loan debt they can't easily manage who made all the right decisions but got a bad break somewhere. I don't thi…

I think we should also consider the pressures and advertising from all sides that pushed many kids into taking loans of quantities they didn't truly comprehend with potential consequences that weren't all that well explained to them. We know advertising works great on young people and when someone comes and tells them "Come here, you will make $120K a year out of college, you are the perfect candidate! You can pay off your loans in 2-3 years if you want and still have tons of money!" And then everyone around them jumps on board "OMG thats so great! Of course you need to jump on that now!", but then in reality it is a completely unprepared student with no idea what they are getting into, middling grades at best, signing their name over on documents that can barely decipher, to get a degree in either something incredibly hard or incredibly useless.

We know advertising works well and makes people do and buy shit they don't need or want, and in this case it was primarily targeted at kids during and immediately after highschool who are especially vulnerable.

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

#230

Post by AngryData »

briandear wrote: post #37

This will be highly unpopular but it seems to me like a solution is to start doing some amount of payroll withholding for those with student loan debt similar to the way social security/Medicare is handled. It doesn’t have to be a huge amount, but enough to ensure repayment. Government forces us to “save for retirement” via social security, yet being debt-free is a far greater advantage in retirement than the retirem…

We already have something like that, when you don't pay on your loans they garnish your wages. They aren't not trying to collect this money, the problem is many people don't have the money to pay it off. Creditors will call you literally every single day if you owe money on student loans and aren't paying on them.
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