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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

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Student loans aren't your standard private sector loan though. They are a special legal category, which is why they can't be discharged in bankruptcy. All the usual borrowing standards don't apply either. No commercial lender would give that size of loan to an 18 year old with no collateral. The collateral is effectively a claim on the person's future earnings. What a crazy contract to have young people routinely pre…

You can discharge them through bankruptcy but it's not automatic. You have to prove repayment would cause "undue hardship". https://studentaid.gov/manage-loans/forgiveness-cancellation...

lol no. They were designed initially so that law and medical students wouldn’t be able to skip out on loans as was common early on.

There are the paths out: repayment, death and fleeing the country.

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

#272
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do not. This is nonsense.

Just checked with ai about Berkley (I like this uni from telly): EECS B.S.: You must complete six humanities/social-science courses. Two are Reading and Composition courses, and four come from approved areas such as history, philosophy, arts, international studies, or social sciences. At least two must be upper-division. https://engineering.berkeley.edu/students/undergraduate-guid... All Berkeley undergraduates must…

Vouched for this.

When I worked in IT at a second-tier university (not Ivy), I saw some of the classes that passed for humanities. And you have profs who are legit teaching cited facts, and some who teach their political persuasion as facts.

BTW, depending on the school, the hard left/hard right flips. Schools of law, economics, engineering - are usually hard right.

Now its also an experience that conservatives in classes also perceive facts as 'wokeism'. Facts aren't woke, but damn, don't try to say that to them.

And lest to say, Marx did have cogent commentaries about universities regressing to STEM, since in a capitalist economy, the 'profit' is only measurable in how much you can help a capitalist produce. But people still freak out about even teaching Marxism fairly. (Howls of woke.)

What's hilarious is that for all the yelling of 'competition is great', capitalists are incapable and unwilling to compete with socialism and communism, and will do any dirty trick to NOT teach those.

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

#273

Gut feeling here is that this is going to result in significantly lower higher ed enrollment, and therefore a less educated populace. Less federal aid means fewer students can afford our insanely expensive educational system. This will pull up the ladder on the younger generations. We do not teach history or ethics, or much in general to our pipeline welders, but they make bank for their hard labor. Meanwhile our wel…

> Less federal aid means fewer students can afford our insanely expensive educational system.

A significant reason it is insanely expensive is because we keep shoveling public money into it.

Higher ed is a cash incinerating inferno. When there is an out of control fire you must stop throwing fuel into it.

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

#274
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that were true, wouldn’t we be better served by auditing the finances of these universities and imposing caps on university profits based on operating expenses?

The problem is not that universities have high profits, but that they have high operating expenses.

Standard non-profit grift-- you can't take profits out of a non-profit directly, but you can give particularly robust salaries for yourself and your friends, use the funds to build powerful influence networks by directing projects, build prestigious glittering facilities, etc.

It's difficult to control because an outsider isn't in a position to know the best way to allocate funding. The best control is to not provide funding in absence of performance, which it sounds like this rule is all about.

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

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a shitty American take (or any of the countries that somehow decide the USA is a good model to follow), it's kind of baffling that this is a popular opinion and explains a lot of the social issues (or near lack of social system) you guys have. You know that technically, people are allowed to have fun and not strive to be a billionaire, right? Its everyones right to pick a path they want, and enjoy, and i…

Why not gather up with other like-minded individuals and fund scholarships and grants if you feel strongly about this? I disagree that taxing the rich is our way out of this. There's a reason the starving artist is a cultural trope. Not only that but the higher ed industry has abused the hell out of this program. I'm close to people who were studying degrees they will never come close to paying and now they're $100k+…

The reality is the degree should have been entirely funded by the government’s coffers. Funding arts and humanities education is so cheap and provides so much relative societal benefit that it’s a no brainer.

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

#276

I think the pure purpose of a university should be to mould students into critical thinkers and innovative mindset that would ultimately add value to the society so they can contribute back as tax payers to help the next generation. The cycle breaks if the university suddenly produces a group of people that cannot contribute in any meaningful way back. In that case it’s totally fair to ask where did we go wrong and h…

It depends on who gets to define "meaningful". There are a lot of things that I think are meaningful that you probably don't. And while many would say that STEM automatically qualifies, I don't think that really holds up to scrutiny.

I think it’s quite easy to decide. If the students at the end of the study can contribute to the society as tax payers to fund the next generation, then what they have studied is meaningful. It doesn’t have to be STEM necessarily.

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

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a shitty American take (or any of the countries that somehow decide the USA is a good model to follow), it's kind of baffling that this is a popular opinion and explains a lot of the social issues (or near lack of social system) you guys have. You know that technically, people are allowed to have fun and not strive to be a billionaire, right? Its everyones right to pick a path they want, and enjoy, and i…

You are allowed to have fun. Do what you want I don't care. I don't even know you. However if you want me the taxpayer to pay for the fun it needs to be a good investment for me. Otherwise I want to use my money to have fun myself.

Having people highly educated in the arts and humanities is a good investment, albeit not a financial one.

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

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. While this may have been true in the past, this is no longer the case, and it has not been the case for at least a decade and change now, at least in the US. If you are intelligent and self-motivated to learn in-demand skills, and you can demonstrate those skills, and…

> working fully remote for Google, also with no degree. Aquihired? My understanding, is that Google is infamous for requiring, not just degrees, but degrees at prestigious STEM colleges. Apple is known for hiring folks with patchy educational creds. They showed interest in me, a couple of times, and I’m as scruffy as you can get.

Old Apple was definitely like that, I worked with them as a customer and all of the tech people i was directly exposed to were “weirdos” (in the best expression of the word) from a background perspective, a lot of musicians by training in particular. They were all smart people passionate about their work.

My anecdotal 1/1 story re Google from a long time ago was they recruited me via a high level referral for a gig, went through an pretty strenuous (and interesting) interview process and got to the final boss for a vibe check go/no go. I was ghosted at that point. A lot of things could have killed that, but the dude name dropped his Ivy League experience no less than 5 times, so I suspected my attendance at Peasant State was a personal issue.

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

#279
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do not. This is nonsense.

Just checked with ai about Berkley (I like this uni from telly): EECS B.S.: You must complete six humanities/social-science courses. Two are Reading and Composition courses, and four come from approved areas such as history, philosophy, arts, international studies, or social sciences. At least two must be upper-division. https://engineering.berkeley.edu/students/undergraduate-guid... All Berkeley undergraduates must…

Putting a broad label of “woke garbage” on simple liberal arts requirements of taking a few classes from “history, philosophy, arts, international studies, or social sciences,” almost does not even justify a response. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you’ve never taken such a class, but I can assure that unless you live in a reality so warped by politics, that basic logic and reason is out the window, classes covering those subjects are serious, thoughtful, and rigorous at accredited US universities.

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

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just checked with ai about Berkley (I like this uni from telly): EECS B.S.: You must complete six humanities/social-science courses. Two are Reading and Composition courses, and four come from approved areas such as history, philosophy, arts, international studies, or social sciences. At least two must be upper-division. https://engineering.berkeley.edu/students/undergraduate-guid... All Berkeley undergraduates must…

Vouched for this. When I worked in IT at a second-tier university (not Ivy), I saw some of the classes that passed for humanities. And you have profs who are legit teaching cited facts, and some who teach their political persuasion as facts. BTW, depending on the school, the hard left/hard right flips. Schools of law, economics, engineering - are usually hard right. Now its also an experience that conservatives in cl…

> the hard left/hard right flips. Schools of law, economics, engineering - are usually hard right.

This is just objectively not true at all, accept in cases so specific that mentioning it as a general rule is misleading

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