Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by theahura » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 3:30 PM UTC

anon291 wrote: post #42

theahura wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whats the goal of government education subsidies a more educated populace is a public and civic good on its own terms. Public funding for education is maybe partially for economic returns, but is mostly because education is a necessary part of a functioning democracy and a necessary part of living a good fulfilling life

Shifting the goalposts. For most of american history a high school education was considered sufficient to be part of a functioning democracy. If a music education (or whatever) is required to be part of democracy, then everyone should have it.

Education isn't a binary, so I'm not sure why we should arbitrarily draw the line at highschool as we become richer as a nation

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

#372

Post by whateverboat » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 3:30 PM UTC

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…

> You have the right to a degree in XYZ... you should NOT have the right to a taxpayer backed grant/aid/loan/whatever to gain said degree unless you're on a reasonable path to become a tax payer yourself as soon as you are done with the degree.

you said a lot of things with a lot of assumptions in that sentence

> You have the right to a degree in XYZ... you should NOT have the right to a taxpayer backed grant/aid/loan/whatever to gain said degree

If it becomes unreasonable/unfeasible to have a degree without a taxpayer backed grant/aid/loan, then right to a degree implies right to that aid.

> unless you're on a reasonable path to become a tax payer yourself as soon as you are done with the degree.

You are assuming that the only way a person pays back that money is by tax payer account. They could also be paying back that money by being a nurse improving people's healthy making population more productive.

At the end of the day, you are looking at this all wrong by being very ideological about it. You need to look at it from what's best for the country in long term.

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

#373

Post by exoverito » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 3:32 PM UTC

mistercheph wrote: post #131

janalsncm wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The purpose of higher education is not to get you a job. This is the line universities give, knowing full well that the only reason students pay exorbitant tuitions is because bachelor’s degrees are necessary for most salaried jobs in the US. Schools want to have their cake and eat it too. If education isn’t about the money they should have no problem charging lower tuition rather than paying their presidents milli…

Those students should be separated from the students that want to learn, I know who I want to hire, or be sitting next to on the line and so does everyone else with a pulse: it's the person that is thrilled to learn how to take the derivative of a polynomial. Not the loser sitting in a class they hate, living out their big plan to set their life on fire doing a job that makes them sad because they love money.

I enjoyed most of my math classes like multivariate calculus and differential equations, though I pursued my BS and MS degrees in CS later in life, and was already independently wealthy so didn't need to take out student loans. I also took many of the core STEM courses first at a California community college, which were honestly quite rigorous, and not obviously lower quality education than what I got at UCSD. The idea that students must go into vast debt attending an expensive 4 year university is dubious.

It's also easy to condescend and indict the students who may not necessarily love every single class they're forced to take. They're also not going to be using most of the concepts they're required to learn. In my personal career I've worked in software engineering, computational biology, machine learning, and quantitative finance, yet I don't think I've ever had to explicitly use Stokes' theorem or Cauchy-Euler equations. There are various tools I've used which I'm sure relied on these mathematics, yet it's really only at the frontier of advanced research that people will be using anything more complex than algebra.

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

#374

Post by theahura » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 3:34 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #106

theahura wrote: post #34

imo this is pants on head backwards. The whole problem with the current university system is that it has become exclusively a credentialing system that everyone uses to justify higher salaries. We’ve completely left the education part of it by the wayside…except for the liberal arts majors who are actually there just to learn! This rule is just encoding the existing tulip mania into federal law directly, by making it…

This isn't banning such programs. The question is why the federal government needs to support them. If you want to set up a teaching program to learn something arcane, by all means go for it and charge a fair/reasonable/whatever amount. Just because you're teaching it doesn't mean the Federal government should give you money. Let those who can afford it pay for it. If not many can, you need to make an argument why yo…

> Do you really want to make the case that the Federal government should fund these?

No, but I don't think means testing is a better alternative. You and I both know that this is a wedge to punish perceived political enemies, as much as you know that the total number of people who graduate with a degree in "somatic body work" is such a small fraction of people as to be negligible

> Nationally, about 10,600 to 10,700 students graduate annually with a degree or certificate in the broader category of Somatic Bodywork & Therapeutic Services. The vast majority (over 10,500) specialize in Massage Therapy, while purely focused Somatic Bodywork programs see much smaller cohorts, averaging roughly 40 to 50 graduates per year across all US institutions. (From Gemini)

This is kinda like saying we should get rid of encryption because a few people may use it for bad things, or that we should require identification before anyone can get on the Internet because some people may be hurt by it

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

#375

Post by theahura » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 3:38 PM UTC

Let's spend $100 billion + on Iran, but also cancel student funding because don't you know the budget is too high?

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

#376

Post by DonsDiscountGas » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 3:38 PM UTC

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.

Also if they do subsidize it it should be in the form of public goods (libraries, publicly available research). There's some overlap there with loans to individuals but it's weak.

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

#377

Post by rainsford » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 3:39 PM UTC

djoldman wrote: post #288

The calculation is interesting: (For bachelors degrees): Each year, they will calculate the median earnings 4 years after graduation of graduates of every (Institution, CIP code) tuple. (CIP Code: 6 digit code that identifies a "program"; there are ~2,000). Then they calculate the median earnings of high school grads in that Institution's state across all jobs . If the high school grads earn more than the bachelors d…

Unless I'm misunderstanding, that calculation sounds fundamentally wrong if it's comparing median college graduate earnings after 4 years against high school graduate earnings in general.

After 4 years the median college graduate is still early in their career and likely hasn't hit their maximum income potential, but they're being compared against high school graduates at every stage of their careers, including those who have maxed out their potential income in whatever field they're working in. Or is the high school comparison similarly limited to early career?

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

#378

Post by m3047 » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 3:47 PM UTC

lesuorac wrote: post #259

janalsncm wrote: post #41

> But this new test, known as "do no harm," raises some thorny questions about the purpose of college. Like: Is it just about making more money? If this is a fair question to ask students, then it is a fair question to ask the schools as well. They are the ones charging enormous amounts of money to students for this. This doesn’t prevent people from learning to paint or play the clarinet. It prevents students from ta…

> This doesn’t prevent people from learning to paint or play the clarinet. It prevents students from taking out enormous loans for it. The problem is going to that there's going to be a large shock to the system. As pointed out in the article, a lot of teachers make $55k. So basically no education degree should be awarded because the average worker is better than a teacher. Eventually the supply of teachers will dry…

Schools can develop training and scholarship programs. Maybe we'll find out a degree in Egyptology isn't necessary to teach basic reading and writing? Although walking like an Egyptian sure is fun. /s

Many educators are unionized. These days (it comes and goes, I wish it had been waxing when I was that age) the electricians' and HVAC techs' unions offer apprenticeships to pretty much all comers, not just the niece or nephew of a member.

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

#379

Post by dqv » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 3:52 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #330

Arubis wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want my taxes to go towards a more educated populace, full stop.

Then they don't need to tax you and you can just give the money to educational institutions. The argument for taxes is either "I don't think it is fair for me to pay for this alone since others are benefiting" or "this absolutely positively must be a group effort" (eg, the military). "I want my taxes to..." is a generally a bad start, because the point of taxes is it doesn't matter what an individual taxpayers wants…

> "this absolutely positively must be a group effort" (eg, the military).

Which, by extension, means education absolutely positively must be a group effort, even if taxpayers can't understand the n-order effects of severing tax money from education. If society needs the military, then it definitely wants soldiers who understand figurative language so that those soldiers don't shoot themselves in the foot. Being able to communicate well, critically think, understand history - these all come from the humanities (although the learner must go beyond the entry level courses to benefit).

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

#380

Post by ryzvonusef » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 3:55 PM UTC

Arubis wrote: post #317

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 want my taxes to go towards a more educated populace, full stop.

I do too, but you need buy-in from your fellow tax-payers/voters if they are willing to fund it also.

I live in a 3rd world country, and due to the limitation of our weak taxpayer base, we can afford to fund only limited number of seats, which are won by certain competitive exams, and anything beyond that is considered 'self-finance' (i.e. figure it out on your own). Your country will have to decide its own limits.