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Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

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Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#151

Post by burnt-resistor »

stcg wrote: post #104

Yet another case of mistaking price for value. When evaluating whether public money is well spent on education it must be more important how valuable it is to the public , not what the price for the work is to the individuals. I like the "what if these workers stopped today" test: Pick a profession. For example pick from 'trader', 'dentist', 'cleaner', 'sales person' or 'nurse'. Then imagine that all people in that p…

Fascists and neoliberals don't understand or appreciate academic curiosity, art, history, philosophy, or electives because they value quick income maximization through modern undergraduate degree mills (most consumer-first universities these days) to the exclusion of all else.

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#152

Post by Coffeewine »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #130
IsTom wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this like, a real sum of money americans pay for a degree? Overhead must be mind-boggiling if like just two students are needed to pay educator's salary for the period.

That is very much a real sum of money people pay. The UC system is (I believe) 30k per year tuition if you’re in state. Add rent and you’re probably looking at 45k per year. Out of state is higher. And many systems are more expensive as well

45k/year is excellent! If you believe business insider, U of Chicago’ll run you 100k / year. https://www.businessinsider.com/most-expensive-colleges-tuit...

Traditionally the story was that almost no one paid the sticker price, but still that’s an eye watering sum even discounted.

I’m sure in the next few years we’ll have stories of people 500k in debt or more for their schooling.

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#153

Post by linkregister »

chacha102 wrote: post #10
hankbond wrote: post #7

I feel like I have not really heard a compelling reason why student debt should not be dischargeable thru bankruptcy like (afaik) all other forms of debt. I am curious what the ramifications would be if higher education institutions had to (in some form) co-sign the debt being issued. I do get that not all education should be purely for economic reasons, but as an autodidact I feel that "learning for the sake of lear…

I'm all for "learning for the sake of learning", but the federal government doesn't need to subsidize it. Losing federal aid is not the same as not permitting colleges to run the programs at all. Supply/demand is still alive and well.

You could say the same about all government programs, including pensions and defense. Yet somehow popularly-elected governments keep finding themselves maximizing public utility. A curious property indeed.

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#154

Post by dmurray »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #55
jjav wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If bankrupcy is allowed some reasonable number of years later (not sure if that is 7 or 10, but some reasonable time) then if your education worked out and you're in a good career path and maybe close to buying a home, etc, declaring bankrupcy would probably hurt more than help. OTOH if you're still poor after those years and don't care about consequences of bankrupcy then maybe that's fair enough to wipe out the deb…

> declaring bankrupcy would probably hurt more than help. It wouldn't help at all as you are typically forfeiting all but essential assets by declaring it. The only people who benefit are those with nothing to their name except perhaps the home they live in and the car they drive to work everyday.

A house and a car are an enormous amount of assets for someone 7 years out of college. Leaving bankrupts with "only" enough assets to be in the top few percent of their peers is hardly a hardship.

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#155

Post by fzeroracer »

It's really quite sad to see people think this is a 'great' idea in a world where the US literacy rates are falling rapidly and people graduate out of highschool barely able to function. Slashing both the bottom and top end of education aid isn't going to suddenly make things financially viable or improve education; it's just going to further narrow education and turn college into Highschool 2 which it slowly is already becoming.

If you wanted to tackle the problems of education you'd start by improving our failing highschools and then ensuring higher education is free and easily accessible so that the earnings gulf isn't as wide.

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#156

Post by strken »

red_admiral wrote: post #124
strken wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the argument was that they do contribute to a functioning democracy, as opposed to investment in training nurses and carpenters, who are being trained for economic reasons. The argument was that the two goals are so different that they should be funded differently.

In what way do nurses and carpenters not contribute to a functioning democracy?

Their direct work output contributes to a functioning democracy, but does so indirectly by providing material goods and services, which I refer to by the shorthand "economic reasons". We don't train nurses and carpenters because their training directly supports democracy; we train them because we want to live inside and be cared for when needed, and these things are incidentally good for any society, democratic or otherwise.

They may of course contribute as individuals, too, but their training is not required for them to do so.

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#157

Post by euroderf »

dataflow wrote: post #11
hankbond wrote: post #7

I feel like I have not really heard a compelling reason why student debt should not be dischargeable thru bankruptcy like (afaik) all other forms of debt. I am curious what the ramifications would be if higher education institutions had to (in some form) co-sign the debt being issued. I do get that not all education should be purely for economic reasons, but as an autodidact I feel that "learning for the sake of lear…

> I feel like I have not really heard a compelling reason why student debt should not be dischargeable thru bankruptcy like (afaik) all other forms of debt. According to Reddit [1] it was to discourage students from immediately declaring bankruptcy upon graduation. I don't see why they couldn't have put a time limit on it though, if that was the reason. Say you can't declare bankruptcy for 7 years after you leave sch…

> it was to discourage students from immediately declaring bankruptcy upon graduation.

Yes, this was a thing in (IIRC) the late 70s / early 80s, and the fed crackdown on the non-dischargeability of school loans in bankruptcy was enacted very quickly in response.

I myself got my bachelors in '79 and read about this idea and did not try it cos it was so incredibly unethical (and it sounded risky). In the words of the infamous Vince Lombardi, "Nice guys finish last."

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#158

Post by zo1 »

CamouflagedKiwi wrote: post #81
dataflow wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel like I have not really heard a compelling reason why student debt should not be dischargeable thru bankruptcy like (afaik) all other forms of debt. According to Reddit [1] it was to discourage students from immediately declaring bankruptcy upon graduation. I don't see why they couldn't have put a time limit on it though, if that was the reason. Say you can't declare bankruptcy for 7 years after you leave sch…

You can't really tell people that they just can't be bankrupt though. What are they supposed to do if they have debts they can't pay but they're not allowed to declare bankruptcy because they pinky swore they wouldn't do it seven years ago?

Bankruptcy is such an alien concept. Adults took out consensual loans from another adult and now they get to just say oops "take backsies"?

It's one thing if you're in a crazy desperate situation and someone takes advantage of you, I could get that. But if you're not desperate and you took money from someone else and can't pay it back? Theft.

The rest is just how we manage to keep that low on an aggregate level in our society that takes care of our own - which we want to do.

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#159

Post by reactordev »

jclulow wrote: post #144
ryzvonusef wrote: post #140

The purpose of a college degree is NOT a job... but the purpose of a college LOAN is 100% a job, and it's very important to differentiate between the two. The whole point of the loan is to buy time; you don't want to wait for when you have savings to purchase the degree, you want to do it now . If you are not doing it for the job, then why the loan, what's the rush? If knowledge and prestige is all that matters, then…

I mean, says you? We live in a society and to some extent we decide what that means. I believe many countries outside the US have heavily subsidised loans or cost deferment mechanisms, or just outright government funding for school. Certainly in Australia you essentially don't have to pay back your HECS debt if you don't end up with a salary of sufficient magnitude, and then the rate at which you pay it back is scale…

In the US, college is considered a privilege for those who can afford it or are poor enough to be granted it from poorly designed taxpayer funds. Then we set the bar for hiring to requiring a degree making it so that if you want anything above minimum wage, you’re going to have to get a degree. This is how the predatory lending prior to 2008 started with student loan debt. Glad to see that 20 years hasn’t taught us anything.

Other countries where University and Education are rights or are provided via better taxpayer systems don’t understand the pure chaos the US system is.

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#160

Post by BoingBoomTschak »

collinmcnulty wrote: post #116
frognumber wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the corollary is about taxpayer accountability. It's easy to make the argument: "If we invest $1M in education, we will have $10M in additional future economic output, $4M in future taxes, and $20M less in law enforcement / criminal prosecution / jail fees. It improves global competitiveness." That's a no-brainer. Education is a very high ROI investment for a country. Like infrastructure spending or industria…

You don’t think investing in arts, humanities, and music contributes to a functioning democracy?

Not at all, most of these are obviously "symptoms" of a well functioning society (not just democracy), not its cause.
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