Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education • Hacker News Board

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#411

Post by btilly » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 7:31 PM UTC

gwd wrote: post #349

jedberg wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, I don't think college should be paid for with loans. I agree with you that we shouldn't be enslaving people. But I also don't think allowing these loans to be discharged in bankruptcy will solve anything (and will arguably make things worse) without systemic changes in the way college is paid for.

It will force "the system" to come up with some other way to pay for tuition. What do you think about Income Share Agreements? https://www.thesimpledollar.com/loans/student/income-share-a...

I think that they help universities raise tuition as long as the projected lifetime income increase from going to college exceeds the cost of tuition. Which will just allow our unsustainable "tuition rises faster than inflation" trend to last a few more years before it falls apart.

Note that "projected lifetime income increase" is generally overestimated. What we do is compare average income of a college graduate with a high school graduate and attribute the difference to college. However people who could get through college likely would have made more than people who couldn't, even if they hadn't gone to college!

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#412

Post by iguy » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 7:31 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #352

iguy wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly both would happen, right? Harvard doesn't set their prices based on loans, they wouldn't care. Some mid-rank colleges would disappear, and some would adapt to serve the new market.

> Harvard doesn't set their prices based on loans, They most definitely do: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2006/10/25/tuition-increa...

Well perhaps I should have said, they don't have to. Right now they need not bother to charge at all. And how they set the sticker price is only a small part of the picture anyway, since they gather near-perfect information about your parents ability to pay (or to donate!) before anything gets agreed.

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#413

Post by mercer » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 7:33 PM UTC

gwd wrote: post #113

nimbius wrote: post #64

Disclosure: 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…

While I think things could be a lot better, I like how college loans work over here in The Netherlands.

Regardless of whether they're a 'golden ticket' or not (times are changing?), the student loan is something one doesn't have to worry about too much. Not only is/was a big part of it considered a 'gift' (up to half when I was studying, depending on my parents' income), but the entirety of the loan left over is low-interest and has no real demands.

Basically, you're asked to pay off x amount per month based on the total loan, but if x amount exceeds 10% percent of your income, you can ask to pay (potentially much) less. If you don't make any money, you pay off nothing.

My income is rather irregular, but for close to a decade I've been paying off the amount suggested. It's partly laziness, and partly a desire to be a good citizen that makes me not bother to ask to pay less based on my income. Anecdotally I know many people like myself who basically pay more back than they strictly have to.

All in all I suspect the system not only works well, but ultimately is a net benefit to the entire country. A well-educated individual over here makes 10x times that of a low-wage workers, and the taxes are significantly higher too. While it could take 20+ years to pay off the student debt, much of it is probably paid off in increased taxes in the interim.

Also I imagine the student debt not being a sword of damocles has a not insignificant effect on our general state of wellbeing and a reduced number of heart attacks, burnouts, and the like.

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#414

Post by IG_Semmelweiss » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 7:33 PM UTC

gwd wrote: post #318

jedberg wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of us should be regularly lobbying our lawmakers to make student loans dischargeable by bankruptcy, just like any other loan. The reason they aren't dischargeable is because what bank in their right mind would give a loan to an 18 year old with no collateral? They only guarantee they get that it will be paid back is the fact that it can't be discharged. Student loans would dry up overnight if they could be disc…

> The reason they aren't dischargeable is because what bank in their right mind would give a loan to an 18 year old with no collateral? If it's a bad bet for the bank , it must be far worse of a bet for young adults. That's the point -- right now we're essentially suckering millions of naive young adults into a life of wage slavery by giving them a "bet" which they are completely unequipped to evaluate; and many of t…

Bingo.

Be careful, this is very dangerous informstion

And it gets worse

You forgot that these loans are subsidized, so when they Go sour (and they will) its the taxpayer holding the bag, not the banks

In other words, its 2008 all over

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#415

Post by jedberg » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 7:33 PM UTC

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #383

jedberg wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of us should be regularly lobbying our lawmakers to make student loans dischargeable by bankruptcy, just like any other loan. The reason they aren't dischargeable is because what bank in their right mind would give a loan to an 18 year old with no collateral? They only guarantee they get that it will be paid back is the fact that it can't be discharged. Student loans would dry up overnight if they could be disc…

No other country works this way, yet they have college. So this argument doesn’t pass the smell test.

The US dug themselves into a hole in the 70s when they disallowed bankruptcies on school loans.

That opened up a flood of money to 18 year olds going to college, which in turn led to the colleges massively expanding their offerings.

Colleges in the US don't just educate. They are also the minor league sports programs for most sports in the US, and they provide luxury benefits like gyms and movie theaters and so on.

They can't go back now. They can't just stop doing all the sports with all the fancy equipment they bought, they can't just get rid of all the luxury housing and movie theaters and so on.

So yes, the US is pretty unique in this respect.

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#416

Post by slg » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 7:34 PM UTC

gwd wrote: post #113

nimbius wrote: post #64

Disclosure: 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…

>All of us should be regularly lobbying our lawmakers to make student loans dischargeable by bankruptcy, just like any other loan.

Why would anyone lend money to someone with zero credit history, zero income, zero collateral, zero prospects of repaying the loan for at least 4+ years, and has the ability to immediately declare bankruptcy as soon as it comes time to start paying you back? What would the free market interest rate be on that type of loan?

Allowing loans to discharged is nothing but a band-aid on a broken system. We need to work to make college cheaper. Building the entire system around loans is the problem, not one specific feature of those loans.

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#417

Post by knzhou » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 7:34 PM UTC

wutbrodo wrote: post #187

nimbius wrote: post #64

Disclosure: 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…

I work in AV development, and the number of refugees from the hard sciences is astonishing. I guess I don't blame them, but it's weird to have a physics PhD report to you and be able to use only a fraction of the skills she spent a decade and hundreds of thousands of dollars gaining. This isn't quite a complaint: adopting math and physics PhDs (first as a mentor and now as a TLM) that are seemingly unproductive has b…

Physics PhD student here. Yeah, we're all playing the lottery for the dream of a life studying the universe.

It's the exact analogue of how serious student athletes throw away their whole undergrad education for a shot at a pro career, usually to end up injured and useless a couple years later.

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#418

Post by waynecochran » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 7:34 PM UTC

tasty_freeze wrote: post #387

There are too many short-sighted idiots who don't realize that having your neighbors child is the 2nd most important thing to having your own child educated. "But I didn't have childen! Why should I pay taxes for schools?" is not uncommon. The answer, of course, is that we all benefit from their education, and so it isn't unreasonable for tax money to be spent to help heavily subsidize education. I'm lucky; I went to…

I was also lucky. Undergrad funded by my parents. Grad school funded by assistantships with most tuition waved. I got a PhD with zero debt.

My father could pay for college himself back in the 50's and 60's a summer job and with a part time job during the year. His parents were poor and uneducated, yet He got a PhD with no debt.

Now my kids are facing college. The landscape has changed and it is not good. I am very well paid but I make too much money for financial help, but not really enough to pay for 4 years of college for all my kids. I have saved money and have paid off my house, but I don't have another $600K set aside for college. I don't want them getting out of school with debt, so I will make sure they don't do anything stupid with large student loans. But I imagine they will all have to take on some debt.

The sad thing, college is not better (actually worse in the liberal arts -- that is a different discussion) and the inflated costs are insane. The money is not going towards better professors -- I was a professor for 18 years and I didn't see a proportional growth in teaching and research. Almost all of the extra money went into the bureaucracy.

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#419

Post by Diederich » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 7:36 PM UTC

nimbius wrote: post #64

Disclosure: 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…

The other replies are interesting and insightful, so I wanted to add a little anecdata here.

> some massive college bills

In the late 1980s I started a Computer Science program at Cal Poly Pomona https://www.cpp.edu/ If memory serves, my tuition for a quarterly full load was less than $300. That's not per credit, that was for as many classes as I wanted. Books added up to a bit less.

Working at Jack in the Box and later McDonalds, I was making minimum wage which was I believe $4.25/hour. Assuming I kept 70% of that after taxes it took me about 185 hours to pay my combined tuition and books, which comes out to about 19 hours a week over the 10 week quarter.

And I did, in fact, work about 20 hours a week.

This doesn't include housing, but it was also fairly affordable. I believe another 10 hours a week could have covered some basic shared rent. I had a place to live for free, fortunately.

EDIT: I haven't done any math for how this would look today, but I'm pretty sure it's not quite so friendly.

Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

#420

Post by mlthoughts2018 » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 7:37 PM UTC

gwd wrote: post #318

jedberg wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of us should be regularly lobbying our lawmakers to make student loans dischargeable by bankruptcy, just like any other loan. The reason they aren't dischargeable is because what bank in their right mind would give a loan to an 18 year old with no collateral? They only guarantee they get that it will be paid back is the fact that it can't be discharged. Student loans would dry up overnight if they could be disc…

> The reason they aren't dischargeable is because what bank in their right mind would give a loan to an 18 year old with no collateral? If it's a bad bet for the bank , it must be far worse of a bet for young adults. That's the point -- right now we're essentially suckering millions of naive young adults into a life of wage slavery by giving them a "bet" which they are completely unequipped to evaluate; and many of t…

> “ If it's a bad bet for the bank, it must be far worse of a bet for young adults.“

That’s not a valid implication at all. 18 year olds change their mind all the time, base decisions on impulsive reasons, etc., that comes with immaturity, lack of experience and indecision.

The loan being a bad risk for the bank is a function of youthful impulsiveness and a person without the means to pay it back yet.

It’s not risky to the bank because college itself is risky or fails to deliver wage opportunities. Not saying college cost-benefit is always favorable, just that your implication is wrong.