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Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal

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Re: Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal

#161

Post by ruswick »

JonFish85 wrote: post #126

Whatever happened to personal responsibility? You're 18, you can smoke, drive, join the army and take out gigantic loans you can't repay. It's a fine line between making it easy for everyone to go to college and making it easy for a mathematically disinclined person to take out a huge loan for a dumb reason. It would be great for everyone to have the chance to go to some college. For some reason, people seem to immed…

Unlike the things you listed above, college isn't perceived as a choice. It's perceived as an obligation. Because of this, a myopia has set in among most students: "I need to go to the best possible college or kill myself trying." The decision is no longer theirs, it is the product of tremendous stigmatization, social pressure, and the nonstop inundation of students essentially from birth with platitudes about the necessity not just of education, but of the prestige that comes with an expensive education. The notion of college as a commodity product that needs to be evaluated based on value is foreign to people. As a student currently in the process of applying to schools who tends to associate with academically hyper-qualified students, I can tell you that most of them are taken aback if not totally incredulous when I say that going to my state flagship would be ideal.

Society has not equipped people to evaluate colleges rationally. I don't think it necessarily the fault of the students.

Re: Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal

#162

Post by JonFish85 »

14113 wrote: post #142
JonFish85 wrote: post #126

Whatever happened to personal responsibility? You're 18, you can smoke, drive, join the army and take out gigantic loans you can't repay. It's a fine line between making it easy for everyone to go to college and making it easy for a mathematically disinclined person to take out a huge loan for a dumb reason. It would be great for everyone to have the chance to go to some college. For some reason, people seem to immed…

Why should the government decide what school is right for you? On the flip side, perhaps the government should refuse to provide loans for programmes without accreditation from a professional organisation?

I absolutely don't think the government should decide that. I'd almost say though that the government should only provide loan assistance to state schools (not really willing to stand by that just yet, but it's worth a thought or two). But I'm just sort of questioning that if we're going to say that people aren't to be trusted on their own, that's usually when the government has to step in to set the rules.

Re: Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal

#163

Post by fu9ar »

JonFish85 wrote: post #126

Whatever happened to personal responsibility? You're 18, you can smoke, drive, join the army and take out gigantic loans you can't repay. It's a fine line between making it easy for everyone to go to college and making it easy for a mathematically disinclined person to take out a huge loan for a dumb reason. It would be great for everyone to have the chance to go to some college. For some reason, people seem to immed…

As a note, it was cheaper for me to leave Texas and move across the country to Oregon and pay non-resident tuition than it was to stay in Texas and pay resident tuition. Not every state has the same opportunities.

I'm not bemoaning my loans by any means. I consider them to be our generation's Indentured servitude contracts. I'm planning on paying them through the Income Contingent plan and working for a gov't or non-profit.

Re: Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal

#164

Post by sp332 »

wmf wrote: post #123
sp332 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fixing the lending problem might influence the overspending, but fixing the overspending would solve the problem much more directly.

You're basically saying let's ask people not to accept free money that's being thrown at them. That's not impossible, but I think restricting bad loans is more compatible with human nature.

How are you going to restrict bad loans without asking people (the government) not to accept free money? It's the same problem.

Re: Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal

#165

Post by heed »

JonFish85 wrote: post #126

Whatever happened to personal responsibility? You're 18, you can smoke, drive, join the army and take out gigantic loans you can't repay. It's a fine line between making it easy for everyone to go to college and making it easy for a mathematically disinclined person to take out a huge loan for a dumb reason. It would be great for everyone to have the chance to go to some college. For some reason, people seem to immed…

I winced at this quote in the article:

"Nobody sits down and explains to you what it all mean."

That kind of attitude is a problem, and instead of focusing on fixing the system, which I'm not denying is unfair and flawed, we could be focusing on changing this kind of attitude; that you're absolved of responsibility because of ignorance. Teaching kids how to think critically about their future, and that they have control over their own lives is invaluable.

Re: Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal

#166

Post by gtani »

JonFish85 wrote: post #126

Whatever happened to personal responsibility? You're 18, you can smoke, drive, join the army and take out gigantic loans you can't repay. It's a fine line between making it easy for everyone to go to college and making it easy for a mathematically disinclined person to take out a huge loan for a dumb reason. It would be great for everyone to have the chance to go to some college. For some reason, people seem to immed…

Here's some data, the report on defaults referenced here:

http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/07/08/student-loan-defa...

The institutions with the highest rates of default are for-profit colleges, about which nobody has nice things to say, and community colleges which most people will defend as a gateway to higher ed for those who had to work to support others or got lousy high school grades or whatever reason.

So... it's complicated.

Re: Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal

#167

Post by tzs »

The really interesting question, which for some reason almost no one asks, is why are college costs so low?

Most good schools, both private and public, have more qualified applicants than they have space for. Normally, when demand exceeds supply, we expect prices to go up to the point that demand falls to match supply. Yet college stays well below that point.

Re: Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal

#168

Post by avenger123 »

7Figures2Commas wrote: post #127
newbie12 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Student loans are unsecured, so if they could be discharged, the market rate would be akin to a credit card with a huge balance-- 15% to 20% a year in the current interest rate environment. Plus if they could be discharged, such action would become commonplace, a rite of passage at graduation.

Exactly. It amazes me how many people seem to believe that the solution to the student loan debt problem is to allow for discharge in bankruptcy. Not only will this necessarily force lenders to increase the cost of these loans to borrowers, a lot of folks apparently don't understand that the biggest lender in this market is the federal government. Of the more than $1 trillion in student loans outstanding, about 85% h…

Why would this be a bad thing?

if loans are able to be discharged the federal government wouldn't be handing them out like free candy to anyone that wants it.

It's exactly that there is no downside for the government that the situation is the way it is.

Re: Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal

#169

Post by narrator »

roc wrote: post #156
JonFish85 wrote: post #126

Whatever happened to personal responsibility? You're 18, you can smoke, drive, join the army and take out gigantic loans you can't repay. It's a fine line between making it easy for everyone to go to college and making it easy for a mathematically disinclined person to take out a huge loan for a dumb reason. It would be great for everyone to have the chance to go to some college. For some reason, people seem to immed…

> "Whatever happened to personal responsibility?" Nothing. But we've long since drawn a line between reasonable expectations of responsibility and being the victim of fraud, deception, etc. One can certainly argue that college loans haven't crossed that line. But society as a whole has rather moved past arguing whether or not the line ought to exist and whether or not we're all better off for having drawn it.

In America we believe that if we spend twice as much on health care it will be twice as good, same goes for education. The reality is is that the quality stays the same and the price doubles.

Re: Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal

#170

Post by [deleted] »

gxs wrote: post #7

Amazing, perspective is everything. I don't deny that college kids are being taken advantage of. Graduating from a small liberal arts college in South Dakota that no one's ever heard of with a degree is Culture Studies and 80k in debt really is a rip off. The flipside of this coin however is someone like me. My parents are immigrants and I was the first to go to school. To my parents, the fact that someone would be e…

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