Earlier quoted context omitted.
even graduating with no debt and a good job, I doubt most people are looking to buy a house within seven years anyway.
In the sciences out of SF and NYC? It’s very easy.
*In the computer sciences
Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education
701–710 of 848 posts
Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education
#702Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because college was infinitely more affordable.
The argument is that you are reversing the cause and effect.
Loans are unable to get discharged -> banks give more loans -> schools ramp up prices -> loans are now even harder to discharge
It's a positive feedback loop
Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education
#703Earlier 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, 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…
I've always thought it would make sense to have all the involved parties take a hit if a student loan can't be repaid.
For example, the loan could be split four ways. To qualify for discharging the remaining balance in bankruptcy, we could require that you've already paid at least 25%, the bank can eat 25%, the university can eat 25%, and Uncle Sam can cover the rest.
If we don't force all the parties to share some of the consequences, we're basically pushing universities to charge as much as possible, banks to lend as much as possible, and 18 year old kids to enter into lifetime contracts of potentially crippling debt.
Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education
#704I always found the US model of colleges so outlandishly short-sighted. Problems of non-bankruptcy and wage slavery are just the very apparent outcomes that you would have a system like this. "Free" education is the only thing that separates us from a dystopian society of social immobility. And hence people in US defend it. I came from poor background and the fact that Uni education is free allowed me to, first of all…
I don't think anyone has to take a 100k loan to pay for college in the US. There are many many many colleges that are cheaper than that and there's a HUGE variety in financial aid that can make college free.
Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education
#705Disclosure: 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…
In addition to just frightening people away from attending college, we could do some real things to make the skilled trades attractive to more people:
1. Real workplace safety laws with real enforcement
2. Better health care
3. Better safety net, including retirement
4. Stronger unions
5. Free continuous retraining
From time to time, I hire tradespeople to work around my house -- roofing, tree service, installing a sliding door, new Internet service, a new furnace, etc. One thing I've noticed is that the guys who are my age -- mid 50's -- are hobbling and broken. Many of them work for smaller businesses, as independent contractors, or in situations where they are conveniently "exempt" from things like health care, unemployment, etc.
At the smaller businesses where they work, regulatory enforcement is probably minimal to nonexistent. I would guess that abuse of wage and overtime laws is probably rampant.
Much of the work is seasonal.
Much of it is at the mercy of the construction cycle.
Many of the trades are in businesses that are largely family owned, which puts non family members at a severe disadvantage at finding jobs and advancing beyond the entry level.
So, don't just cite some anecdotes, or throw starting wages around, but take a deep look into what the working class deals with in the US, and start making changes.
Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education
#706Not all colleges are the same. For example, at the UW-Madison, over half the students leave with do debt at all. There is a Bucky tuition promise so that any low-income person will have college paid for in entirety. All of the negative comments on here treat "college" as if it is one unified thing, when in fact the experiences across institutions (both educationally, as well as financially) are quite different. All o…
> try telling that to a person in the middle of the state, who has never been to Madison, has never had a kid go to Madison, and who has to pay their tax dollars to support the University. It is a hard sell. Everyone wins some and loses some with government spending. But overall as a collective group, the idea is that the group is better off (e.g. a more educated population produces greater amounts of valuable work w…
Rural regions get their fair share of wins.
E.g., the massive amount of money that is redirected from productive cities into relatively unproductive rural counties, many of which subsist on jobs that would not exist without superfluous military bases, over-incarceration, massive farm subsidies, or, yes, branch campuses of state university systems. This happens at the state level too. Many of our state’s rural school districts are almost entirely funded by redistributed taxes. Because their local populations won’t even pass no-tax-increase no-debt-load-increase bond issues to fix roofs.
Hopefully work from home will take off and rural communities/states will find a way to become more productive.
Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education
#707Disclosure: 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…
In addition to just frightening people away from attending college, we could do some real things to make the skilled trades attractive to more people: 1. Real workplace safety laws with real enforcement 2. Better health care 3. Better safety net, including retirement 4. Stronger unions 5. Free continuous retraining From time to time, I hire tradespeople to work around my house -- roofing, tree service, installing a s…
I think this idea that white collar jobs require college is generally wrong.
The core of the issue is that colleges produce degrees instead of people capable of doing specific jobs. If you want education for education's sake this is fine and great. But most of us don't have the money for that and need college to give us the specific skills needed for an in demand job. That's what needs to change, colleges need to prepare people for real jobs. Or be replaced by trade schools for white collar jobs or apprenticeships.
The main problem with apprenticeships is that you have to pay them and they don't produce enough work for their cost in most industries.
Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education
#708Disclosure: 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 felt pretty much the same, during my last post-doc. I had a friend who rebuilt power plant equipment. He got to work on very cool stuff, and he made very good money.
I did a straight chemistry BS and basically a biochemistry PhD, so I remain largely ignorant of the humanities. But I did learn to write clearly (if not artfully) and I learned very well how to learn. In my experience, that's what's most important. Facts get dated quickly, and now they're findable online. But how to learn, that's essential.
But then, this was some decades ago. My BS cost about $20K, and the PhD was "free". Indeed, "worked" as a research assistant during grad school. The salary was very low (albeit tax-free) but it was enough for rent and food.
Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education
#709Disclosure: 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; and it's the same reason we have bankruptcy laws.
I don't think the case has been made for this, unless the reason is "things started that way and developed from there", with "that way" and "there" referring to two different things in the two different examples.
Brotherhood of Kings has an interesting discussion of an ancient Mesopotamian moneylender, whose documents are preserved today. He became very rich by making loans without charging interest.
It worked because if you defaulted on a loan, the moneylender took title to everything you owned. This could be worth more than the value of the loan. (Indeed, for moneylending to be profitable on these terms, you must be able to recover more than the value of the loan.)
So the system at the time didn't charge interest, but it would have completely fallen apart if it had also allowed for bankruptcy.
Re: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education
#710One of the things I was curious about was how many people are in school now compared to the 60s and 70s. I had trouble finding a graph or statistics on how many people are in school but https://www.statista.com/statistics/184272/educational-attai... shows that 14.6% of men and 10.1% of women in 1971 had completed 4 years of college.
For 2019, that was 35.4% of women and about 34% of men.
So there are 3 times as many women and 2 times as many men as there were 50 years ago.
And that's for students who have completed 4 years. I would be surprised if the number of students who started and didn't make it to 4 years wasn't also 2-3 times higher than it was back then.