Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Student Loan Bubble is Starting To Burst

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 289 posts

Re: The Student Loan Bubble is Starting To Burst

#111

Post by [deleted] »

MattGrommes wrote: post #45
everettForth wrote: post #17

No, it's not. Not even close, and this is really terrible reporting. It's unfortunate that so many young people are carrying large amounts of student loan debt, but there is no sign of a "bubble" bursting any time soon. I don't even understand how the notion of a "student loan bubble" makes sense, since people don't "speculate" on college like they speculate on real estate. There are so many things wrong with the ide…

I'm not arguing since you know way more about this than I do but I'm curious: I've thought of a lot of the problem with the college loan situation as exactly "speculation" since people are gambling that the job they get on the other side is going to let them pay off the giant loans easily. No, people don't buy and sell degrees but isn't there a lot of speculation type behavior going on?

[deleted]

Re: The Student Loan Bubble is Starting To Burst

#112

Post by comicjk »

msandford wrote: post #74
slg wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playing devil's advocate, isn't it fair to remove the ability to discharge student loan debt and in term the default risk due to the fact that there is no collateral? Unlike a car loan or a mortgage, a bank can't repossess your education.

Yeah that's a really good point. I'm not sure it really matters, though. The law allowed you to shed college loan debt through bankruptcy up until 1976/1978 and people went to college for at least 100 years prior to that law. Furthermore a cheap college degree might be so inexpensive that the hit to your credit isn't worth the expense dodged. Banks can loan on cars worth as little as $5k even though their cost to rep…

> people went to college for at least 100 years prior to that law.

This is the fallacy of comparing the upper classes of one period with the masses of another. A far smaller fraction of people went to college in the century before 1976, and those who did go from lower-class origins often did so through direct scholarships like the GI bill. The college loan market was not very viable at this time. None other than Milton Friedman discusses the problem in his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom. Actually, he proposes some form of legally undischargeable debt as a solution.

Re: The Student Loan Bubble is Starting To Burst

#113

Post by prostoalex »

unono wrote: post #57

Perfect opportunity for hackers. Employers pay big money to find employees. Students pay big money to get educated to get a job. Hackers roll in with apps that allow students to do courses for free on the smartphone/tablet, sell the info of the students to employers, who then hire the students. Everyone wins. Hackers are proclaimed heros.

Great, who wants to be the first patient to undergo a surgery by a doctor with a diploma from an app?

Re: The Student Loan Bubble is Starting To Burst

#114

Post by jlgreco »

ShabbyDoo wrote: post #82
dnautics wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>[1] Half of all defaults are from these kind of schools. That means half of all defaults are from the "other" kind of school. And the loans from the "other" kind of school are much, much more than 10k +, and many of those students are "never landing any kind of job", too. Sounds like a LARGER part of the problem is "conventional" higher education.

What percentage of the issued student loans were taken out by those attending for-profit institutions?

"Despite dismal outcomes and high defaults, for-profit colleges enroll between 10 and 13 percent of students but receive 25 percent of all federal financial aid dollars. In 2009-10, this amounted to 25 percent of the total Department of Education student aid program funds."

http://www.harkin.senate.gov/help/forprofitcolleges.cfm

Re: The Student Loan Bubble is Starting To Burst

#115

Post by aianus »

rprospero wrote: post #35
abdophoto wrote: post #10

Every kid I come across that plans to go to college I tell them to find the cheapest route possible. Start at either a good community college or go to a public in-state school. You can still go to a good college for a reasonable price, but it seems more and more that kids are taking the more expensive route (dorms, out-of-state, etc).

The best college advice I ever received was from my middle school history teacher: Go to the cheapest college you can. Harvard doesn't have a secret extra organ to teach you about. Just about everything in undergraduate education is well established enough that you'll learn the same material anywhere. You'll find variation in the material covered (e.g. Catullus versus Ovid), but it's mostly window dressing on the sam…

Going to Harvard is less about learning things and more about meeting people. It's a lot easier to start a startup or join a big firm when your roommate's (girlfriend's, teammate's, etc.) daddy is a VC or a Partner.

Re: The Student Loan Bubble is Starting To Burst

#116

Post by unono »

jlgreco wrote: post #110
unono wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing a really good app that is both enjoyable for students and a rigorous test of ability that employers are looking for is not chump work. If you can show employers that your app truly tests useful abilities they would be lining up. The current education system fails at producing workers with the right skills and employers are always complaining abou this.

What you are looking for is Khan Academy. Khan Academy with enough content, with sufficiently rigorous content, with sufficiently rigorous evaluation , to become accredited so that employers will value their assessment of a students worth. Actually, they would need to be better than merely being accredited, since employers sure aren't bending over backwards to pay accredited universities serious cash for access to th…

No, this ain't non-profit, it's big profit stuff.

Khan academy is definitely not it. They teach traditional curriculum which is isn't useful to business.

The app is definitely isn't the easy part - it is basically the whole part. The current education system is a failure for 2 reasons

- unanalyzed teaching

- unmotivated students

Apps solve both problems, every user interaction recorded and analyzed, gamification.

You can turn it around even and starting hiring those students yourself and create your own megacorp with the best employees and make megabucks.

Re: The Student Loan Bubble is Starting To Burst

#117

Post by dnautics »

jlgreco wrote: post #81
dnautics wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>[1] Half of all defaults are from these kind of schools. That means half of all defaults are from the "other" kind of school. And the loans from the "other" kind of school are much, much more than 10k +, and many of those students are "never landing any kind of job", too. Sounds like a LARGER part of the problem is "conventional" higher education.

How many people go to real schools, and how many go to fake 'for profit' schools? And isn't the median student debt something like 25k? Not really "much much more" in my book. Anyone with a real degree should be able to handle that sort of debt. What we should be doing is allowing lenders to discriminate by major and school. Good school with a good degree? Lend. Good school with a shitty degree? Lend with extreme cau…

> What we should be doing is allowing lenders to discriminate by major and school. Good school with a good degree? Lend. Good school with a shitty degree? Lend with extreme caution caution. Fake school with any sort of degree? Tell them to kindly fuck off.

No disagreement here.

I don't want to give the perception that I think "for-profit" higher education is problem-free. I do think they have severe problems, but putting a disproportionate amount of attention on them is distracting to the problem that the "non-profits" are - which has a bigger societal impact, since they are serving more people. "For-profits" are just an easy target because of the broad social perception that profits breed evil, where many of those evildoings are just as bad in the "non-profit" higher educational sector.

Re: The Student Loan Bubble is Starting To Burst

#118

Post by jlgreco »

unono wrote: post #116
jlgreco wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are looking for is Khan Academy. Khan Academy with enough content, with sufficiently rigorous content, with sufficiently rigorous evaluation , to become accredited so that employers will value their assessment of a students worth. Actually, they would need to be better than merely being accredited, since employers sure aren't bending over backwards to pay accredited universities serious cash for access to th…

No, this ain't non-profit, it's big profit stuff. Khan academy is definitely not it. They teach traditional curriculum which is isn't useful to business. The app is definitely isn't the easy part - it is basically the whole part. The current education system is a failure for 2 reasons - unanalyzed teaching - unmotivated students Apps solve both problems, every user interaction recorded and analyzed, gamification. You…

1) The absolute last thing this world needs is more for-profit education, particularly for-profit education that has somebody else foot the bill. Do yourself a favor and try to sell this idea as non-profit; I was giving you the benefit of the doubt by assuming it was.

2) An app that teaches people things but doesn't have anything to teach them is worthless. Of course the software is the easy part...

If you really think a for-profit Khan Academy that teaches... nontraditional... curriculum, but doesn't actually have any content since you seem to be completely ignoring that problem... is what the world really needs, then pitch it to YC as a for-profit startup. I ain't stopping you...

Re: The Student Loan Bubble is Starting To Burst

#119

Post by lmartel »

sliverstorm wrote: post #103
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is pretty impossible and probably unreasonable to expect your average college freshmen to have a good credit rating.

No one expects them to. The point is the credit card company accepts the risk of default on no-collateral loans in part because they have confidence (credit report) in the chances of being paid back, while a student typically has no such supporting evidence to back their case.

I'm a college student. I have two credit cards with credit limits of $500 and $1700. My tuition (with room and board) is $58,000 per year. That's the difference.

Re: The Student Loan Bubble is Starting To Burst

#120

Post by unono »

prostoalex wrote: post #113
unono wrote: post #57

Perfect opportunity for hackers. Employers pay big money to find employees. Students pay big money to get educated to get a job. Hackers roll in with apps that allow students to do courses for free on the smartphone/tablet, sell the info of the students to employers, who then hire the students. Everyone wins. Hackers are proclaimed heros.

Great, who wants to be the first patient to undergo a surgery by a doctor with a diploma from an app?

Gamers are better at (virtual) surgery than MDs

http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2012-11/teenage-gamers...

Post reply on HN