521–530 of 563 posts
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More likely, the basket weaving program would entirely go away. Wealthy parents generally aren't idiots and don't encourage their children to waste away in pointless degrees. Well, the ultra-wealthy might not care, but there aren't too many of those. In any event, congrats, you just made a whole set of degrees inaccessible to anyone except the wealthy. The progressives are really going to love you for that.
It's wise to view a degree of such cost which is unlikely to re-pay itself as a luxury good. We call most other quarter-million dollar products that have little investment potential, such as yachts, luxuries. The whole point of free college is to give everyone a shot at the middle class. Personally I think we'll just get degree inflation; college has been used as a distinguishing factor because there are a limited nu…
So if they give someone $250k for a basketweaving degree, they are unlikely to ever see that money fully repaid.
No one serious thinks private universities that cost $60k+ a year should be free btw.
Also most STEM degrees are about as economically viable as liberal arts degrees if you don't go to grad school. Computer Science and any degree that can get you into CS are outliers.
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I'm a graduate of Uchicago (from shortly after you), and to offer a different perspective, I'm still paying off my loans (and will be for another 6 years), but I'm incredibly glad I went. I thought the undergraduate experience was perfect, and about half of my friends from around the world are people I met while I was there. I did get much worse marks that I had ever gotten before, but the University being very diffi…
So how does having more realistic grades (i.e. not everyone gets B or above) feel when it comes to graduate admissions? I went to the university with the hardest admissions score for EE, some of the brightest people I've met, graded on a curve, and yet for graduate admissions I'm competing with people who took much easier classes and ALL have much better marks. The GPA system is just insane really.
How to fix student loans... The .gov backs student loans. And, they are non-dischargeable. So, it is zero risk for the lender to give loan to the 2.7 GPA moron getting a worthless basket weaving degree from the local private lib arts school for $100k. So, they give as many loans as possible, since they can't lose (taxpayer on the hook). Colleges are incentivized to drive up costs of tuition b/c tons of free money. It…
Good luck with that. You just made college out of reach for everyone that isn't already wealthy, exacerbating inequality and further entrenching class boundaries. To be clear, I agree with you, rip out the loan guarantees and let the private market deal. But progressives would never allow this.
People have a different emotional response to predatory lending like payday loans, but not those same practices in student loans.
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Do you believe the same thing about medical debt? Why or why not?
Yes, and no Yes, because I dont want to live in a world or a country where someone can go bankrupt and/or end up in poverty because of medical problem - this is still possible in the US unfortunately (though I suspect vastly over stated), Regardless, I would never support forgiving of debts for elected/vanity surgeries. No because I would not want to just forgive all medical debt without fixing the system, which curr…
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I mean, imagine telling that to people living in poor countries. Please travel or read about the world to get some perspective. Seriously, if you were born in a country like the U.S. in modern times, you won the birth lottery.
Nah. Winning the lottery is being born in a country with free health care and education. Being born in the US is OK at best.
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It is incredible to me how straightforward and undoubtedly true the point you are making is, yet I've had 0% success in bringing it up in conversation without immediately being called all sorts of names or accused of hating poor people.
> It is incredible to me how straightforward and undoubtedly true the point you are making is Even the part when it relies on private lending behavior being driven by security provided to lenders by federal loan guarantees that haven't been available to private lenders since July 1, 2010?
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Dude it is a satirical term to symbolize low value programs. It isn’t supposed to be taken literally.
Teachers generate less value (see:income, GDP) than engineers. We should abolish teaching degrees and just teach software engineering at college.
If you're asserting that teachers are as valuable as software engineers to society, then the question becomes: why doesn't society compensate them accordingly?
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Americais and always has been fantastic place if you're part of the upper 20% and dog shit for everyone else. We just have great propaganda.
The Thirteen Colonies were the richest group of states under the British and as the US grew it continued to be land rich and labour poor. Americans were noticeably taller than Europeans until week after WWII. The rest of the world has caught up some but the US is without a doubt in the top ten by GDP per capita though competing with city states and what would be individual states there. Measured by average individual…
Arguably, not even the bottom 50%. Even a minor medical issue can tank middle-class families.
OTOH, you're in the top 30% of the bell curve there is nowhere else better than the US.
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> very few employers will pay for you to train/gain experience Yes and no. Most HVAC shops will pay for technician's training. Most dev shops pay for technical conferences. Most managers have access to management seminars and training. Expecting an employers to pay tens of thousands of dollars seems weird, but many employers do pay on a smaller scale for skills training. > degrees are used as proxies instead Though c…
The degree you get certainly matters for graduate admissions though. For example, at both MacGill and U of Montreal they don't take any account of industry experience when you are applying for grad school. And they assume grade inflation, so unless you scored A average you can give up.
I've also noticed that Canada and Australia place far more emphasis on formal credentials than US colleges. US Uni's will take you if you can demonstrate competency and can pay; Uni Melbourne won't talk to you unless you have the exact, specific kind of degree. Ditto for UBC, U Sydney, etc.