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How America's universities became debt factories

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Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#361

Post by ClumsyPilot »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #216
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…

> not single class on how to manage a bank account, or even the most basic education about investments or actual wealth building. Not everything can be, or is supposed to be, taught by schools. Your parents should've taught you those things, and if they didn't do that they failed you.

> Not everything can be, or is supposed to be, taught by schools. Your parents should've taught you those things

Who is the genius that decided that you need a school and government neurotics to teach a kid to play basketball, but post gold-standard factional reserve banking is best taught by parents?

And who taught your parents, and their parents before? Do we go all the way back to cavemen for investment wisdom? You’ve got a bootstrap paradox.

Also in 1970’s we dropped the gold standard and the whole game has changed, did someone issue free adult education to being all the parents at the time up to speed?

The system is complete nonsense, you’ve got to be on copium.m to defend it.

If we taught money properly maybe voters would not elect fools and frauds to run things

Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#362

Post by slaw3 »

jancsika wrote: post #196
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.

> The people agreeing to these debts, by definition, do not have an education in complex debt instruments that cannot be discharged. I guarantee you that law/med school students have an education in "complex debt instruments that cannot be discharged." Because before the current law was passed, they were the ones abusing the old "complex debt instruments" to discharge debt they knew they'd be able to pay back once th…

What was the law that was passed? and what was the "old" method for discharging debt? Asking as someone interested in discharging some debt

Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#363

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Amezarak wrote: post #287
TeaBrain wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of parents do not know how to manage their finances any more than any other things that they do not know, which a school is supposed to be responsible for teaching. Financial literacy is one of the most important things that a person can learn. Society would surely benefit if classes were taught on the subject in high school.

Financial literacy for the average person consists of two things: do not buy things you don't really need / don't spend more than you have, and compound interest. I can't speak for anyone else but I did learn what compounding interest was in school. I can't imagine a whole class being dedicated to these topics, but then people who only need to fill out a 1040 also complain they "weren't taught how to do taxes"; i.e.,…

> Financial literacy for the average person consists of two things: do not buy things you don't really need / don't spend more than you have

Great, now take out a mortgage at a good time, predict interest rate and house prices manage your savings and plan your retirement, be self-employed for a year and correctly identify what is tax deductible and what isn’t, recognise when you are being sold a bad financial product.

There are all things a middle class person needs to deal with.

Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#364

Post by rr808 »

baby_souffle wrote: post #334
rr808 wrote: post #331

I'm not convinced American universities are unusually expensive. Its an costly business. Does anyone have good figures for what the cost/student is globally? I can see: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp... looks like the US is 20-30% more expensive than other developed countries but that isn't a huge difference.

A quarter isn’t a huge difference? When I think not huge, I think low single digits. Not “most of the way to a third”

I think most of the discourse is about fees students pay, so $$$ for US vs free for Europe. When you see $38k for US vs $32k for UK then its a different problem.

Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#365

Post by jcranmer »

inglor_cz wrote: post #347
BurningFrog wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately, we don't have the social skills to make that happen.

Also, the vast majority of software bugs are annoying at worst, with no death potential. Powers that be would react a lot more aggressively if stack overflows routinely led to bodies on the pavement.

Considering the number of ransomware attacks and other viruses that infect hospitals, it wouldn't surprise me if stack overflows had quite a large body count.

Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#366

Post by ClumsyPilot »

jancsika wrote: post #196
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.

> The people agreeing to these debts, by definition, do not have an education in complex debt instruments that cannot be discharged. I guarantee you that law/med school students have an education in "complex debt instruments that cannot be discharged." Because before the current law was passed, they were the ones abusing the old "complex debt instruments" to discharge debt they knew they'd be able to pay back once th…

“ guarantee you that law/med school students have an education in "complex debt instruments that cannot be discharged."”

All the people here claiming they know a good degree from a bad one as if they have divine providence of what will happen in 5 years

And I gave them a $100,000 and ask them you to buy and hold a single non-FAANG or meme stock for the duration of their degree you would probably loose money. Or to predict if you should hold shares vs bonds for 5 years, without adjusting their position, like you do with a degree.

You could start a degree as a VFC artist and in 5 years your job might disappear with AI.

Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#367

Post by kiba »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #357
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.

> 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…

I am disinclined to agree with you. Homecoming, football, having fun in sports, are exactly what kids should be focused on. They should be enjoying life, not hunched over materials studying late into the night.

Of course, focus on footballs, elaborate dance, and other sports can be excessive. I merely object to the excessive focus on academics, the rat race, and pressure cooker environment to get education at top ranked colleges.

On the contrary education should be meeting the needs of the 21st century, teaching skills to create functioning adults that can navigate life's challenge, such as avoiding scammers, how to judge quality information, how to diagnose and solve emotional challenges. There will still be classes taught on academics such as learning to read, simple arithmetic.

Only when they're adults that their focus will entirely be on academics. Academics are easy if you're well adjusted and know how to learn.

Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#368

Post by seanmcdirmid »

lapcat wrote: post #296
zamfi wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the OP did say “the bulk of” — some people, like you, are surely carrying debt for non-lucrative degrees. But the pipeline of lawyers, doctors, MBAs, etc. is quite a bit larger than self-pay philosophy PhDs, and a large fraction of those professional degrees are full-freight, $70k/year (plus living expenses!) of pure debt.

Not all lawyers and doctors are the same. Consider public defenders. And physician compensation can vary dramatically depending on whether they're a general practitioner or specialist, rural or urban, etc. Ironically, the ones we need the most are paid the least. Of course, that's assuming students finish their degrees and get jobs. Plenty of people drop out of school, and they don't get refunds! Law students fail to…

> Ironically, the ones we need the most are paid the least.

That isn’t ironic at all. If they were paid more, we wouldn’t have a shortage.

Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#369

Post by seanmcdirmid »

TeaBrain wrote: post #246
zozbot234 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bulk of education debt in the U.S. is not about undergrad degrees in English literature or the like. By and large, it gets incurred either for lucrative postgrad degrees (MBA, law, medical etc.) or for earning degrees at "non-traditional" for-profit colleges.

Almost 60% of U.S. undergraduate students take out either federal or private loans and there are 5x as many undergraduate students as graduate students in the U.S. For those downvoting: 54% of US graduate students take out student loans, while around 55% of US undergraduate students take out loans. The average undergraduate student loan debt is around $29000, while the average debt for graduate school borrowers is $7…

> while the average debt for graduate school borrowers is $71000.

That figure would be heavily skewed by medical school students.

Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#370

Post by GreenWatermelon »

luckylion wrote: post #311
magnoliakobus wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most people would agree with me in saying the European model sounds pretty swell compared to forcing people into declaring bankruptcy because of economic/personal factors potentially out of their control, while also inserting an incredible amount of volatility into the entire university system that would make long term institutional planning much less possible.

Many will agree, but that's part of the reason why the US has a 50% higher GDP with 30% lower population. Focusing on well-beeing, fun and experience comes at a price.

GDP that's concentrated in the top few % of the population.

The fact that despite 50% higher GPD and 30% less population there's still rampant homelessness is damning enough.

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