Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education
151–160 of 848 posts
Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education
#152Disclosure: i never went to college, I went to a trade school. Colleges really only started scaring the heck out of me when I started enjoying my career. After spending a day wrenching in a garage, we'd hit miller time and head down to the Soapbox Bar and Grill. Over the span of a month or two ordering buckets and shooting pool I learned our bartender Javon had a masters in biology and his fiancee Cortisha who bussed…
> He had some massive college bills too and i didnt understand how those worked, but you cant get rid of them like you can a car loan. This is the thing that is really the most shameful and outrageous thing about the US system. Our entire K-12 educational system and our culture is set up to paint a college degree as a ticket to "the good life". Then an 18-year-old, potentially with parents who aren't great at math bu…
>This is the thing that is really the most shameful and outrageous thing about the US system. Our entire K-12 educational system and our culture is set up to paint a college degree as a ticket to "the good life". Then an 18-year-old, potentially with parents who aren't great at math but have great aspirations for their child, is sat down and asked to sign a load of papers, not realizing that this will lock them into decades of unforgiveable debt and wage slavery.
It's because one generation ago, college was a great way to access a pretty good life for most people, and was affordable on an average person's income.
Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education
#153Disclosure: i never went to college, I went to a trade school. Colleges really only started scaring the heck out of me when I started enjoying my career. After spending a day wrenching in a garage, we'd hit miller time and head down to the Soapbox Bar and Grill. Over the span of a month or two ordering buckets and shooting pool I learned our bartender Javon had a masters in biology and his fiancee Cortisha who bussed…
> He had some massive college bills too and i didnt understand how those worked, but you cant get rid of them like you can a car loan. This is the thing that is really the most shameful and outrageous thing about the US system. Our entire K-12 educational system and our culture is set up to paint a college degree as a ticket to "the good life". Then an 18-year-old, potentially with parents who aren't great at math bu…
> There's a reason many ancient religions forbid loaning money at interest entirely;
It's sad that most cultures understood the danger and fragility that debt brings, and yet we've all somehow how forgotten it. We even have terms like "good debt".
Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
> He had some massive college bills too and i didnt understand how those worked, but you cant get rid of them like you can a car loan. This is the thing that is really the most shameful and outrageous thing about the US system. Our entire K-12 educational system and our culture is set up to paint a college degree as a ticket to "the good life". Then an 18-year-old, potentially with parents who aren't great at math bu…
>This is the thing that is really the most shameful and outrageous thing about the US system. Our entire K-12 educational system and our culture is set up to paint a college degree as a ticket to "the good life". Then an 18-year-old, potentially with parents who aren't great at math but have great aspirations for their child, is sat down and asked to sign a load of papers, not realizing that this will lock them into…
> access a pretty good life for most people
Depends on the degree, school, and student. Still true for STEM and medicine.
Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education
#155Disclosure: i never went to college, I went to a trade school. Colleges really only started scaring the heck out of me when I started enjoying my career. After spending a day wrenching in a garage, we'd hit miller time and head down to the Soapbox Bar and Grill. Over the span of a month or two ordering buckets and shooting pool I learned our bartender Javon had a masters in biology and his fiancee Cortisha who bussed…
> He had some massive college bills too and i didnt understand how those worked, but you cant get rid of them like you can a car loan. This is the thing that is really the most shameful and outrageous thing about the US system. Our entire K-12 educational system and our culture is set up to paint a college degree as a ticket to "the good life". Then an 18-year-old, potentially with parents who aren't great at math bu…
> Then an 18-year-old, potentially with parents who aren't great at math but have great aspirations for their child, is sat down and asked to sign a load of papers, not realizing that this will lock them into decades of unforgiveable debt and wage slavery.
Well yeah, because us "adults" don't wanna pay the state and local taxes necessary to keep public universities affordable.
Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't have to create and improve in a world you have little to no competition with high barrier to entry established. You can keep repackaging the same things without risk and work on perceptive value of people. Why innovate and create when I can live like a king just playing our economic, governmental, and social systems like a fiddle? We're not quite that bad yet but we're already headed down the path in that d…
I know you aren't promoting it, but to answer your question: > Why innovate and create when I can live like a king just playing our economic, governmental, and social systems like a fiddle? Because the entire country is going to implode. 2008: financial crisis 2016: political crisis
2008: financial crisis
2016: political crisis
2020: deadly pandemic, inducing a financial crisis, while also collapsing the real economy, on top of four years of political crisis
Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education
#157This situation is exposing colleges as the scam that they are. Families are getting indebted up to their eyeballs, thinking are paying for education. In reality the education can be had for free. What they are really paying for is a sorting function, something that could also be had for free with national exams.
Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
> He had some massive college bills too and i didnt understand how those worked, but you cant get rid of them like you can a car loan. This is the thing that is really the most shameful and outrageous thing about the US system. Our entire K-12 educational system and our culture is set up to paint a college degree as a ticket to "the good life". Then an 18-year-old, potentially with parents who aren't great at math bu…
> All of us should be regularly lobbying our lawmakers to make student loans dischargeable by bankruptcy, I thought so too. This always made me so angry. Last time I posted a rant about that here someone urged me to read the REPAYE Act, and it completely changed my mind. Under REPAYE, students get income based repayment, even down to $0 payments if you're anywhere near poverty level. After a certain number of years o…
This program only applies to federal student loans. Anyone with private student loans (before ~2010 IIRC) is SOL.
Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education
#159Any time you make money easily available for a certain good, whether through debt or direct subsidy, the cost of that good is going to increase proportional to the amount of money made available. This is what happened in the housing market and with college tuition.
I'd be willing to bet that if you outlawed student loans (assuming that was possible), you'd see colleges finding all sorts of ways to cut costs without negatively impacting the students.
Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because many (most?) states have been cutting state funding for public universities for years, IIRC. (See, for example, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/most-americans-dont-r... ). It wouldn't have been sensible to impose price caps while cutting funding at the same time.
If I’m a Republican legislator and I’m seeing my kids enroll at a state college where gender and queer studies classes are a requirement to get a computer science degree, I’m going to want to defund too. I remember my Republican high school peers arguing with our liberal debate coach, and he’d just laugh and say “wait until you go to college, then you’ll get it”. Sure enough, she went to Harvard Law and became a Demo…
"Crippling the young with lifelong debt to win the campus culture-wars and own the libs."