Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How America's universities became debt factories

anandsanwal.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 564 posts

Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#351

Post by ClumsyPilot »

scoofy wrote: post #110
lenerdenator wrote: post #89

1) Move most good careers that do not require a college degree out of the country for the benefit of shareholders 2) Tell everyone born between 1980 and 1995 that they'll be unable to compete in the global marketplace if they don't get at least some post-high school education, and imply that the mere presence of a degree will help instead of having a specific type of degree 3) Have next-to-zero standards for public f…

You forgot the most important part. The people agreeing to these debts, by definition , do not have an education in complex debt instruments that cannot be discharged. Taking our a vast loan to study English literature might seem unwise, but it’s something I could definitely see a starry eyed 17 year old deciding to do.

> debt instruments that cannot be discharged

Your regular reminder that debt bondage is a form of slavery, and is illegal in most countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_bondage

There are only two options with debt: bad debt are written off, lender takes a hit and the lender must be careful who they lend money to.

Or bad debt lingers forever and accrues lucrative interest, in which case giving out bad debt is the whole point for the lender’s operation. The only risk is that the debtor might die. If the debt also passes to the next of kin, you have full-on, real slavery.

Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#352

Post by dukeyukey »

sofixa wrote: post #320
dukeyukey wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually less than half for the EU as a whole - https://erudera.com/news/statistics-show-41-of-eu-youngsters...

The absurdly low numbers for Romania and Hungary make me think that people leaving to study abroad fall through the cracks in these stats.

If those students/graduates move to other European countries (which they mostly do), they'll be counted in their destination country, evening things out.

Where did you get the idea most Europeans get a degree?

Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#353

Post by inglor_cz »

pc86 wrote: post #255
elashri wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I lost my parents before they got the chance to teach me that? What if I was raised in a foster care and I never knew who my parents were? And what if my parents don't know these things themselves? There are many ways that this logic goes wrong. The school should teach that because it is very important lesson to engage in a society and be a good citizen. Edit: Sorry I meant people raised in orphanages not fos…

This kind of argument might hold water if there were an epidemic of 12 year olds aimlessly drifting across the countryside with no adults taking care of them. But there's not, and you're not really making any point. If you are assuming a guardianship role over a child, however temporary, you have a responsibility to teach them things, full stop. I've known several foster parents over my life who would be outraged at…

And yet kids from foster families tend to have massively worse outcomes than others.

The US is obsessed with racial inequality, but from your life's perspective, it is better being black than being a foster kid, and no one bats an eye on the latter. Harvard won't certainly introduce any pseudoquotas on foster kids anytime soon.

Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#354

Post by ghaff »

adityamwagh wrote: post #326
saagarjha wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are the exact antithesis of what an English degree teaches you: how to communicate effectively and with context, and to understand nuance in what other people say. LLMs make things that sound good but have no real depth to them.

You might understand this but I would like to believe and employer won't. Anyways, my main point is universities should focus more on tangible skills - accounting, engineering etc and should not have random useless degrees of little value. Maybe English major is still valuable, but I personally don't see the tangible value in it - other than being an English teacher.

There are many many universities and colleges and students/parents can make decisions about the curricula they choose, Which will in turn, over time, lead those schools to focus on what the market wants. Obviously you disagree about those choices but there you go.

Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#355

Post by adharmad »

cheese_van wrote: post #327
labcomputer wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s only because doctors collude to limit the number of available residency places. I programmers were smart, they would: 1. Lobby the government to prohibit anyone from practicing programming without a license. 2. Limit the number of licenses granted each year

Available residency slots are dictated by the funding made available through the Medicare program and ultimately Congress.

Out of curiosity, why cannot hospitals fund residency slots on their own with some riders (the resident should work in the same hospital for x years)? It seems odd that the medical profession is not willing to invest in the training of the next generation of professionals without government help.

Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#356

Post by ClumsyPilot »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #343
NemoNobody wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly - 12 years of education to get children ready to be citizens and not single class on how to manage a bank account, or even the most basic education about investments or actual wealth building. Instead, all I was told was to go to college. So... the people that made me woefully sheep like and "financially innocent" then sent me to the wolves because they believed in me. Seriously, they made huge changes to the…

> Exactly - 12 years of education to get children ready to be citizens and not single class on how to manage a bank account, or even the most basic education about investments or actual wealth building. I kind of disagree with this. At least in my high school this was definitely taught, but at the time we were all dumb 14-17 year olds who didn’t care about any of that stuff we just wanted to know what is needed to ge…

> at the time we were all dumb 14-17 year olds who didn’t care

This is not teaching, it’s a fabrication

Can you teach swimming to a guy who has never left Sahara desert and has never seen water?

Can you teach teaching driving to a guy who’s never touched a car?

Then how do we teach finance/banking to a kid who has never earned a salary, paid bills, and probably never even held more than $100 at all?

Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#357

Post by maerF0x0 »

scoofy wrote: post #110
lenerdenator wrote: post #89

1) Move most good careers that do not require a college degree out of the country for the benefit of shareholders 2) Tell everyone born between 1980 and 1995 that they'll be unable to compete in the global marketplace if they don't get at least some post-high school education, and imply that the mere presence of a degree will help instead of having a specific type of degree 3) Have next-to-zero standards for public f…

You forgot the most important part. The people agreeing to these debts, by definition , do not have an education in complex debt instruments that cannot be discharged. Taking our a vast loan to study English literature might seem unwise, but it’s something I could definitely see a starry eyed 17 year old deciding to do.

> The people agreeing to these debts, by definition, do not have an education in complex debt instruments that cannot be discharged.

I mean it's a pretty simple concept that you borrow money and you must pay it back.

However we agree that the failure is that we do not educate them enough already in the first 12 years we force upon them. For that I blame a lack of options, government "standards" which become ceilings instead of floors, and the unions that protect bad teachers, also I'll note as a foreigner in the US. The US Schools i've seen (and i'm extrapolating here to most public schools) are ran like social clubs and have far too much time devoted to bs that does not help the kids. I'm talking about extracurriculars that impede with a quality education. Football is not a subject we should be prioritizing as a nation... Formals, homecoming, spirit days etc are such a distraction from what highschool kids should be focused on -- Growing up and making a viable future for themselves.

People note that Highschool rankings in Canada are excellent, well guess what? None of that happens in Canadian highschools (that I'm aware of), there might be a school dance or two, and "Prom" is very low key, relatively. High school football is small time...

Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#358

Post by bumby »

ghaff wrote: post #203
scoofy wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot the most important part. The people agreeing to these debts, by definition , do not have an education in complex debt instruments that cannot be discharged. Taking our a vast loan to study English literature might seem unwise, but it’s something I could definitely see a starry eyed 17 year old deciding to do.

Plenty of smart people who get liberal arts degrees from top schools do just fine. I know plenty of them even though I have engineering degrees myself. They may not get FAANG salaries in general--unless they end up in management--but plenty of people I know are just fine.

>Plenty of smart people who get liberal arts degrees from top schools do just fine.

There's research that also shows smart people who get degrees from "non" top schools do just fine as well. They studies those who got accepted to top schools but went to "lesser" ones. Implying top schools select people who will be successful regardless, rather than helping make people successful. It's important to not confuse the causal relationship.

* It's also worth noting the authors of those studies found a caveat with people on the lowest ends of the socioeconomic strata getting more benefit from the top schools.

Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#359

Post by mlsu »

pc86 wrote: post #261
paulcole wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

State school was hella cheap (it was back when Florida’s lotto money mostly went to scholarships for in-state students). I think full sticker price would’ve been around $2500/year for tuition+fees at the time? I also started with enough credits to be nearly to (the equivalent of being in) junior year and took the bare minimum credits to keep the scholarship.

I'm sorry the match doesn't even remotely work. $20k in loans over 4 years, when full sticker price was about $10k for the same 4 years and you had a 75% scholarship, and started as a junior? That plus it somehow taking you 20 years to pay $20k in loans makes this smell pretty fishy. The real question is why make something like this up?

At 1.5%, you should strive to make the absolute minimum payment on your loan. That is pretty much free money.

Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#360

Post by slaw3 »

DiscourseFan wrote: post #350
adityamwagh wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might understand this but I would like to believe and employer won't. Anyways, my main point is universities should focus more on tangible skills - accounting, engineering etc and should not have random useless degrees of little value. Maybe English major is still valuable, but I personally don't see the tangible value in it - other than being an English teacher.

You don't think about things from the perspective of someone who actually owns or starts a business, you think about things as someone who is an employee and wants to promote skills that help others get employed: accountant, engineer. Something great about engineers and accountants is that they don't ask too many questions, because many have bad social skills: many of them would never, on their own, be able to run a…

English major eh?
Post reply on HN