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

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

#691

Post by skewart »

bradlys wrote: post #346
maps wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But barring shifting to a European model of college funding, I don't see the US allowing dischargeable loans, nor do I think they should, because the reality of it is that colleges won't reduce their rates nor increase their scholarships, they would just be completely out of reach of poor and middle class students. The reality is that the they should be out of reach to poor or middle class students TODAY. They are…

> The reality is that the they should be out of reach to poor or middle class students TODAY. That varies so much by student and to bar a whole class of people out of these things is not going to improve their outcomes. While some students are not served with better employment opportunities by going to college and earning a degree - there are many others who are. Outlawing things to a group of people isn't going to s…

> Outlawing things to a group of people isn't going to serve them better. It will mean that the entire middle class will be unable to educate into jobs. Educating them about the effort college requires to be successful once you leave would be better.

Making it harder to get a student loan is hardly "outlawing" anyone from going to college. Schools would still give scholarships. Plus, tuition would almost certainly go down. Right now they can charge as much as they want because banks are will to lend whatever colleges charge. If all of a sudden people stopped buying their product when they raised the price too high then tuition would come back down to what it was only a few decades ago.

Even if fewer people ended up going to college it wouldn't limit opportunity. If anything it would likely make it easier to get ahead. Fewer jobs would require a college degree - there wouldn't be enough applicants who have one - and we'd likely see alternatives to college become more popular and widely respected, which would give high school grads more options for how to get started with a career.

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

#692

Post by steve_adams_86 »

darkerside wrote: post #458
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 guess Javon never learned about second order effects in college. > the work he would get would pay about as well as a fry cook anyway You start in the same situation, but with the room for advancement in a skilled field, you have the opportunity to either pursue growth in your role, or leverage those skills into a related but more lucrative career. Avoiding dead ends is much more important than your velocity, assum…

I used to tell my friend this and she was positive she'd never earn more than $50K CAD/year, and always said I was overpaid as a developer making ~$70K/year at the time. These days she has advanced far more than I have, and she'll continue to. Even as a developer with no education or particularly special skills, your ceiling in Canada isn't all that high. I'm the epitome of a 1xer though, so I can't speak for everyone. I can earn around $90k, but she's earning $120k now – that only took about 7 years for a 240% increase. Having an education can be a huge asset to your career, and she couldn't have her career without hers.

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

#693

Post by SuoDuanDao »

BobbyJo wrote: post #655
gwd wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, that just means it is a bad bet on average and right now . The thing is, a student can know a lot more about themselves than the bank can. A student can make a bet with an extremely high expected return, that the bank would be unable to appropriately risk-price. The problem with the current system, is we don't force the students to understand the price of the risk. The problem with mak…

I once read a setting resource for an RPG system set in a multidimensional university which cut out the middleman and offered its own student loans. Predatory as Illuminati University was, it seems like a better system than what we have now.

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

#694

Post by asdfadsfgfdda »

vkou wrote: post #317
xmprt wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debt is good. It's what enables people who don't have the money up front to start businesses or buy houses. It becomes bad when people are relying on it to finance small purchases or when loans have predatory terms (like credit card payments, payday loans, etc.)

> Debt is good. It's what enables people who don't have the money up front to start businesses or buy houses. The reason people go into debt to buy houses is because everyone is using debt to buy houses, thus driving the prices up. If mortgages were capped at 5-year terms, the price of houses would be a lot lower, which would be great for society - for the same reason that having cheaper electricity is great for soci…

Prices wouldn't significantly change. You still have people/pension funds/governments with lots of money to invest (the people who currently buy mortgage debt). How would you prohibit this money from just buying houses and renting them out?

And even if you could lower prices, how would you compensate the current homeowners for destroying the value of their largest asset?

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

#695

Post by bradlys »

skewart wrote: post #691
bradlys wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reality is that the they should be out of reach to poor or middle class students TODAY. That varies so much by student and to bar a whole class of people out of these things is not going to improve their outcomes. While some students are not served with better employment opportunities by going to college and earning a degree - there are many others who are. Outlawing things to a group of people isn't going to s…

> Outlawing things to a group of people isn't going to serve them better. It will mean that the entire middle class will be unable to educate into jobs. Educating them about the effort college requires to be successful once you leave would be better. Making it harder to get a student loan is hardly "outlawing" anyone from going to college. Schools would still give scholarships. Plus, tuition would almost certainly go…

If you're saying that someone who is below a certain income cannot get a loan - how are they going to go to college? Pull-up them bootstraps and find some more money under the couch cushions? You do know that scholarships are not like a dime-a-dozen, right? It's not like every university waives tuition at middle class incomes.

If you want to limit the cost of college then doing it by putting caps on how much a university can charge could be a more straight forward option than hoping costs come down by limiting loans to those who can't afford the cash option. (e.g. If a university wants state funding then they need to cap their student costs) Even then - loans would still need to happen for people who can't afford much more than their basic housing expenses (if even that - think about kids who get kicked out at 18).

You're speaking in a lot of "if market forces behave the way we all think they should thanks to basic econ like supply and demand" but that's not how things always work in the real world.

Considering ~50% families don't have any retirement savings and don't have an emergency fund, do you really their kids are gonna be able to afford all the expense things associated with college? (Remember - these people just got out of high school! They have likely never had a job and have no money at all)

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

#696

Post by JamesBarney »

slg wrote: post #668
JamesBarney wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Reducing the supply for colleges isn't going to make overall college education cheaper while maintaining the same quality of education. There is certainly some waste in college budgets, but it will mostly force colleges to cut the least profitable programs. Education is a social good. We should invest in it like we do with other public services. It shouldn't need to be profited minded. We subsidize the shit out of e…

A person's ability to pay off a loan is not the true value of the investment. There are positive externalities to getting an education that boost society as a whole. Real wage stagnation, rising income inequality, and compound interest on loans would all serve to make this investment less rewarding for individuals while not decreasing the overall societal value of education.

There definitely are positive externalities to education. But I doubt they are even within an order of magnitude of the benefits of training and signalling which accrue to the individual.

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

#697

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #530
nostrademons wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a generation of potential parents who won't be having kids because they can't afford to, largely because of student loan and housing costs. That's already hitting - the incoming class of 2023 (matriculating 2019) is the first cohort born since 9/11, and is tiny. A number of colleges are facing bankruptcy because there just aren't enough students to go around. And it'll only get worse. Birth rates were depressed…

Colleges were counting on foreign students to fill the gap. Now with massive unemployment, immigration may slow to a trickle for a while, and with it the allure of American colleges for students elsewhere.

At full tuition, one foreign student could bring as much revenue as 3 or more domestic students. There's a much larger population of students outside the U.S. than in it, too.

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

#698

Post by krastanov »

Barrin92 wrote: post #468
bachmeier wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the average college graduate, college is still a pretty good investment. I could write lots of comments about people without a college degree that live crappy lives and have trouble finding good paying jobs, and people with college degrees that live well and make a lot of money. My prediction is that we'll see changes in the US system. The problem you're pointing out is the risk. Universities are the ones that IM…

>For the average college graduate, college is still a pretty good investment Evidence doesn't seem to bear this out. " The college income premium—the extra income earned by a family headed by a college graduate over an otherwise similar family without a bachelor’s degree—remains positive but has declined for recent graduates. The college wealth premium (extra wealth) has declined more noticeably among all cohorts bor…

I skimmed the paper. Figures 3, 4, 5, and 6 from the paper you linked seem to show that higher degrees correlate with higher net worth. Could you elaborate on what I am missing?

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

#699

Post by ngold »

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…

This is a 15 year experiment signed by gw jr. and cheerleaded by biden. It is debt slavery to turn college kids into conservatives. On the other eND of the spectrum was no child left behind to makes kids dumber and conservative. Trump is a direct result.

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

#700

Post by _v7gu »

WalterBright wrote: post #648
iateanapple wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For a just-graduated person with minimal assets it's not that bad It is in fact bad. You can’t just declare bankruptcy and get a high paying job a year later and have no student debt.... When I looked into personal bankruptcy I was told by my lawyer that it would only make financial sense if there was no way I could pay back the amount owed in the next 7-10 years.

Having a bankruptcy on your record may make it difficult to get that high-paying job, as employers may not look favorably upon it.

Do Americans really check prospective employees' credit scores? Wow.
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