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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

#181

Post by smutticus »

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…

Instead of arguing culpability vs gullibility, how about the government just not try and take advantage of people? How about the government actually work for people instead of trying to rip them off with terrible rates? I would like to live in an America where government actually understands the cheap long term investment that is an educated populace. And instead of offering them loans with terrible conditions offerred them loans with good conditions at good rates.

It's not about whether the students were stupid to sign onto loans with bad conditions. It's about why we don't have better loans for students and why school costs so goddamn much.

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

#182

Post by ethanbond »

danielweber wrote: post #141
ethanbond wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/the-ur... Lots of sources down at the bottom. EDIT: Also, I've yet to actually see any study that concludes direct causation between availability of loans and tuition prices. Yet somehow the burden of proof is on the naysayers?

"Government and colleges are not driving up college costs," government and colleges report. That blog post, by the way, the source of the quote that Taibbi references in TFA. It's not even an op-ed, it's a guest post written on one individual WaPo blog.

"Government and colleges are driving up college costs," random people on Internet report.

I'm aware of what it is. That's why I didn't tell you to read the blog post. I told you to go to the sources.

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

#183

Post by JonFish85 »

avenger123 wrote: post #159
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…

On one hand I agree with your sentiments but expecting an 18 year old to "take responsibility" and choose the right thing for themselves at that age is reasonable at first sight but doesn't take into account the reality of being a young adult. How many young adults have the confidence, long term thinking and proper guidance to decide that they should go to a cheaper school? At that age the percentage of people having…

18 is where we as a nation have "decided" that a person is mature enough to make these kinds of decisions (except for alcohol, thank you very much Federal Aid Highway Act). At 18 you're your own person, for better or worse. I don't think coddling people any longer makes things better--eventually you need to grow up and be your own person and be responsible for yourself. At that point your parents have fulfilled their legal responsibilities to you, and you are responsible from there forward.

There are a lot of benefits that come along with being an adult, but you can't have it both ways: the benefits of being a child and no responsibilities but the ability to make decisions for yourself.

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

#184

Post by RougeFemme »

brucehart wrote: post #14
jacquesm wrote: post #11

One big problem I have with college loans is that people that sign up for it are not adequately informed on the long term consequences of their action. Since this is a loan for education one would expect that before being allowed to sign for the loan there would be a test that you'd have to pass to be able to apply. That would get rid of a lot of people that find out the hard way that they've borrowed themselves into…

I don't know if the rules have changed since I was in college, but I actually did have to take an online test showing I understood the nature of student loans before my loans could be approved.

As of last year, that online test is still required.

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

#185

Post by scottmagdalein »

My (American) cousin has a degree in German from a fancy school. She's now 30, a Zumba instructor, and still living with roommates in an apartment to keep costs down while paying for student loans.

She loves her job, but the debt of college is a complete waste for her.

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

#186

Post by larrys »

citricsquid wrote: post #137
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…

From the first day of school children are taught two things, to obey authority and if you want to make something of yourself, go to college. A large number of people go to college because they believe that is what they have to do, they've had it drilled into their heads that if you want to be successful, you go to college. If you can go to college, whatever the cost, you go to college. No one is forced at gun point t…

"drilled into their heads "

To add to this people also will have children they can't afford. Sometimes by "accident" and sometimes planned with the same thinking that "everything will just work out".

You also hear about someone who didn't want to have the nth child but now boy are they glad they did (not factoring in the impact on the rest of the family or other kids) or taking money into the picture. Simply because the nth child is alive and you can't imagine (once they are born) that you could have considered not having them.

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

#187

Post by alipang »

theorique wrote: post #55

The major problem is that university administrations are becoming top heavy. Instead of hiring tenure-track faculty to teach real subjects like computer science or mechanical engineering (or even English lit, so as not to be prejudiced to the humanities), universities are creating $300K per year sinecure positions like "Vice-President and Associate Dean of Student Diversity". Guess who pays for this? Students and the…

Well they have to create these positions. The people who took out all that student debt in diversity studies have to pay off their loans somehow...

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

#188

Post by speeder »

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 one extremely indebted person I feel insulted by this.

Mostly, because here in Brazil at least, when you decide what college you will go, you are 17, and here you cannot drive at 17, or smoke, or join the army.

I went to the cheapest college I could find on my field, and I STILL did not had enough money to pay it, so I had to either drop out, or take loan.

Here in Brazil everyone taught us you NEED college (now that I do have a degree, that I noticed how this is utter bullshit, and I certainly won't tell that lie to my children), and my parents told me that if I refused to go to college, they would only allow me to stay at home if I got a job, any job, even a cashier job or something like that.

So, I took the loan.

Now, I DO wish I went with the cashier option. I would have more money now (despite getting 300 USD/mo in wages, that is the cashier wage here).

Even better would be if I had decided to get into construction (blue collar construction work here averages 2500 USD for entry level, while 2500 USD in programming is only for seniors and onward).

Of all people that went to high-school with me, the richest one is the only guy that went with blue collar route and not even tried college (he is a machine operator in a factory, and owns his own motorbike).

The reason why he was the only one that did that? Well, he was the only one that the parents let do that. All others (including me) got the threat of be kicked out of home if we attempted that.

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

#189

Post by 7Figures2Commas »

danielweber wrote: post #152
7Figures2Commas wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then people will stop lending students tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars... Let's make your comment a little more accurate: Then the federal government, which is responsible for ~85% of the student loan market, will have to stop lending students tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, and there will be no end to the cries that millions of young Americans are being denied a college education by well-to-do p…

Maybe for a year. After that schools will lower costs and everyone will be better off. Well, except for the school administrators and the construction people who build new stuff for them. You don't make society's huge education bills go away just because the government is paying for them.

I think you're misreading my point, as I don't disagree at all. This problem is a government-created one, and it's bound to end badly, but it's important to be clear about who is doing the lending (it's not random "people") and what the "victims" of this system will complain about next.

We're in a lose-lose situation here. If student loans are plentiful, tuition costs rise and the debt must be secured by laws preventing discharge in bankruptcy, which leads to complaints about the cost of an education and debt levels. If student loans become less plentiful, the complaints will shift to focus on lack of access to education. Even if costs decrease substantially from today's levels, there is sadly a sizable market of would-be students who simply don't have the funds to go to college. Telling them they can't go to college and major in [insert wacky subject here] is political suicide for politicians.

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

#190

Post by avenger123 »

hnal943 wrote: post #172
avenger123 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On one hand I agree with your sentiments but expecting an 18 year old to "take responsibility" and choose the right thing for themselves at that age is reasonable at first sight but doesn't take into account the reality of being a young adult. How many young adults have the confidence, long term thinking and proper guidance to decide that they should go to a cheaper school? At that age the percentage of people having…

If they can't take responsibility in this manner then they are not young adults; they are still children. Rather than infantilizing high school grads, there needs to be social pressure for them to rise to the challenge.

I agree with you. I like what Dave Ramsey is doing in this area. I just don't want to make a blanket statement that they made their choice so be it.

I would love to know how many of these students sit down with their career councilors at school. Even if they do, how many of these councilors actually give proper advice versus just saying "great idea, go to that school for your liberal arts degree, here's the student loans you need to fill out, don't worry about the $80,000 tuition, the loans will cover you."

I think that you are right that the real discussion should be how do we change the culture so that the right "social pressure" is there to allow someone to reject going overreaching with their school choice.

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