The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe • Hacker News Board

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#311

Post by LoSboccacc » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 6:08 AM UTC

FussyZeus wrote: post #278

icelancer wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This simply isn't true. Schools offer crazy financial aid and there are junior colleges / state universities that offer 100% of aid to impoverished individuals. The people taking malinvestment (student loans for unproductive means / negative ROI) are firmly in the middle class bracket, both lower/upper sides of it.

And who decides what constitutes malinvestment? I'm guessing there will be plenty of funds made available for tech work, what with Twitter, Ubereats and Facebook being so critical. How about the arts? How about history and culture, you know the stuff that makes living worthwhile beyond your usefulness to line the pockets of capitalists? Or how about we just confront the problem dead on, remove the money and profit as…

> who decides what constitutes malinvestment?

the unemployment rate by major, assuming it wasn't already a bad investment due of the student lacking the skill or willingness to finish the studies.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#312

Post by nercht12 » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 6:18 AM UTC

If companies didn't require "higher education" degrees for entry, then schools would be forced to start appealing more to the masses. In an information age such as we live in, we can access virtually all the info we could get from universities for a mere fraction of the cost (just the books + supplemental material if we need it).

There's no need for government subsidized education or broadening the job market. There's need of ditching bureaucrats and "Because we've-always-done-it-this-way" morons. Reward people for studying on their own, building their own businesses, networking, etc. rather than following the stupid system just to get two letters next to their name.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#313

Post by wutbrodo » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 6:31 AM UTC

cf141q5325 wrote: post #41

AmericanChopper wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article doesn’t make any case for the economy struggling. ‘Struggling’ in this context would mean that there’s less skilled employment opportunities available than there used to be. The article doesn’t put forward any argument to say that’s the case. With increasing enrolments, the economy could be doing great and still produce underemployment. The question is why are people completing unmarketable (or not suffic…

>The question is why are people completing unmarketable (or not sufficiently marketable) degrees? For the pursuit of knowledge. Universities are not job training. You getting a good job with your degree is a bonus not the intend outcome for a university.

Man, this canard gets really tiring. Don't get me wrong: I was crazy about university as a place of learning and added a "useless" major & minor from a career perspective to take advantage of the opportunity to learn

But 1) this doesn't reflect the priorities of the vast majority of people, 2) this wasn't to the exclusion of paying attention to what's marketable (ie my other major), and 3) it beggars belief to claim that any significant number of people are intentionally taking on high debt loads in order to play-pretend being an unemployable philosopher-aristocrat.

Leaving aside whether society _should_ be providing the no-strings-attached opportunity for a broad-based education[1] as disconnected from economic productivity, it's beyond laughable to claim that students are actually making this choice en masse in the knowledge that their education is unmarketable.

A misguided and anachronistic belief in the marketability of arbitrary degrees is a far more plausible explanation.

[1] I certainly think it would be nice in the abstract, pending feasibility obviously

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#314

Post by carboy » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 7:09 AM UTC

I’m still trying to figure out why every major costs the same. Most non-STEM majors are using the same methods, and devices that were used 50, a hundred years ago.

$50K per year for an English degree vs $50k per year for a Mechanical Engineering degree, the English majors are getting jobbed. Think about all the majors that don’t require the underpinnings of constant technology upgrades, or need the latest and greatest technology.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#315

Post by ddalex » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 8:44 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #237

fiftyfifty wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We just need to reduce or eliminate government backed student loans and the problem will take care of itself. This "crisis" is almost a replay of the housing crisis we just had, government backed loans encourage lenders to lend out money to people who are not qualified for the loan. It doesn't make sense to keep loaning out tens of thousands of dollars to 18 year old kids that have no income [yet] and no real plan to…

But without the student loans, the under privileged will not be able to afford said education - I don't want to see a society where only those who can afford it go to university.

That's what free/cheap university in Europe managed to achieve.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#316

Post by dagw » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 8:49 AM UTC

ddalex wrote: post #315

chii wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But without the student loans, the under privileged will not be able to afford said education - I don't want to see a society where only those who can afford it go to university.

That's what free/cheap university in Europe managed to achieve.

Don't most countries in Europe offer student loans? If not to the same degree as the US. Even if tuition is free, rent and food isn't.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#317

Post by matt-attack » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 9:16 AM UTC

Re the escalating price of universities, why do we treat the issue like it’s totally a mystery? Aren’t the budgets and costs of large public universities (E.g. the UC system here in CA) public? Weren't these choices based on specific choices by specific individuals who are public employees? Can’t we pinpoint precisely who raised prices and why? What should cost substantially more today than 25 years ago (after inflation)? And why don’t we just demand that a system like UC just go back to the precise budgets of, say, 1995 (again inflation adjusted)? It seemed to be working ok then.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#318

Post by tomp » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 10:18 AM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #11

robohoe wrote: post #2

One thing that I noticed in this article and charts was the unprecedented growth of auto loans. They too have skyrocketed. That seems like another "bubble" waiting to happen.

With GPS/always on mobile data connections, the lender has a much easier time reclaiming the collateral and recouping their losses by selling or leasing it again.

Surely not easier than locating, reclaiming and resealling a house... yet we had a housing-bubble-inducde crisis 10 years ago!

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#319

Post by chii » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 10:24 AM UTC

icelancer wrote: post #254

chii wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But without the student loans, the under privileged will not be able to afford said education - I don't want to see a society where only those who can afford it go to university.

This simply isn't true. Schools offer crazy financial aid and there are junior colleges / state universities that offer 100% of aid to impoverished individuals. The people taking malinvestment (student loans for unproductive means / negative ROI) are firmly in the middle class bracket, both lower/upper sides of it.

financial aid is such a tiny portion that it effectively doesn't exist for the vast majority of university goers.

People taking on too much loans for higher education is a multi-pronged problem. Loans have a place, and if people choose to mis-use a loan to study an "unproductive" subject, i expect that the fault lies with them.

however, when the loans to study law/medicine is in the 200k range, i find it hard to believe that the fault isn't with the university and vested interests in making money with the loans.

Re: The student loan crisis is really an underemployment catastrophe

#320

Post by acollins1331 » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 10:31 AM UTC

Schools charging the same amount to each student is an issue. Why should someone getting taught in an expensive engineering program pay the same as a British lit kid?

People want to do away with all the "useless" majors, which seems like a mistake to me. Colleges weren't about finding jobs until recently when companies decided to outsource training workers to these places. For our entire history colleges were places where people can learn about the world and different things. Suddenly shaming them for teaching literature when they have been doing it for hundreds of years is dumb. The answer is to just charge tuition relative to the cost of the particular education.