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The Great College Loan Swindle

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Re: The Great College Loan Swindle

#111

Post by fulafel »

rayiner wrote: post #92
Maarten88 wrote: post #58

I am always amazed at the level of acceptance for these types of injustice there is in the US. Even here, most discussion is about the economics of college degrees, and how to deal with it on an individual level. While the problem, it seems to me, is entirely one of political choice and justice, and the current situation seems very unfair. Young people from poorer backgrounds seem to be destined for slavery for a lar…

> I am always amazed at the level of acceptance for these types of injustice there is in the US. Even here, most discussion is about the economics of college degrees, and how to deal with it on an individual level. You gotta give Americans a bit more credit than that. American attitudes are cultivated in a very different context. Yes, in a place like Germany, the government mostly pays for your school. The flip side…

You can go to at any age, or start by attending in night courses in open university, in most EU countries. There exist also private schools where you pay for full tuition.

Re: The Great College Loan Swindle

#112

Post by moduspol »

indubitable wrote: post #109
moduspol wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who cares who's fault it is? There's a problem that needs fixing is all that matters. I care. We can't properly address the problem or learn from our mistakes if we don't know the cause. We had colleges before federal student loan subsidies. Our parents went to school and paid for tuition with part time jobs. Then we had them, and decades later, the chickens have come home to roost. This is not rocket science--it's…

Determining a cause and attributing responsibility are not the same. One can argue that just about everybody is responsible: - Government giving special laws that are able to be abused. - Lenders utilizing said laws to maximize their personal benefit - Universities raising costs far outside of any notion of need - Students taking out loans they can't repay - Parents/schools encouraging students to go to college, even…

Sure--I read the parent comment. I have no doubt there will always be someone else people blame when liberal policies fail, but lenders, universities, students, parents, and employers acting rationally in their own self-interest is not some strange unforeseeable possibility.

We have to be able to acknowledge when bad ideas don't work well. This is one of those times.

Re: The Great College Loan Swindle

#113

Post by leetcrew »

ejnulls wrote: post #91
leetcrew wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if students could declare bankruptcy there would probably be no student loans. there are already very few private loans available to students without substantial credit history or a cosigner. how could the numbers possibly work out? to graduate in four years from a state university (paying in-state tuition) costs about $44k. a typical college freshman has close to zero assets and no credit. if they have any income, i…

You used to be able to discharge student loans through bankruptcy and guess what?? The sky didn't fall down. However, that was also when a year of college could be paid for by a minimum-wage summer job. Now it's egregiously expensive AND they've got you by the balls.

the last time you could discharge student loans in bankruptcy without satisfying special conditions was 1976 in the US. but that was a time where an undergrad degree was relatively cheap, and not many people took out loans in the first place.

I don't disagree that something is seriously messed up in this country's higher education system, but the discharge exemption for student loans is probably one of the few things that keeps the system even slightly economic. like I said above, you cannot just lend huge chunks of money to kids without making any risk assessment and also allow them to default whenever. at least, you can't do this unless your intention is to lose money.

if I had to have a guess, I would say that the main contributor to our outrageous education costs is the government making all these uneconomic loans in the first place.

Re: The Great College Loan Swindle

#114

Post by indubitable »

moduspol wrote: post #112
indubitable wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Determining a cause and attributing responsibility are not the same. One can argue that just about everybody is responsible: - Government giving special laws that are able to be abused. - Lenders utilizing said laws to maximize their personal benefit - Universities raising costs far outside of any notion of need - Students taking out loans they can't repay - Parents/schools encouraging students to go to college, even…

Sure--I read the parent comment. I have no doubt there will always be someone else people blame when liberal policies fail, but lenders, universities, students, parents, and employers acting rationally in their own self-interest is not some strange unforeseeable possibility. We have to be able to acknowledge when bad ideas don't work well. This is one of those times.

Ah okay! I must have misunderstood you. The implication (to me) of seeking to attribute blame was the typical game of trying to pick the most apparently malevolent actor, not actually thinking about why we failed to foresee quite foreseeable consequences in the past. I'd completely agree that trying to figure out why we didn't foresee this (to help us prevent making such mistakes in the future) would be very helpful.

Re: The Great College Loan Swindle

#115

Post by Antimachides »

RhysU wrote: post #96
Antimachides wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree students shouldn't be taking on the loans they do for worthless degrees but I'd like to add that 17/18 years old is just not old enough to (1) decide what you want to do for the rest of your life and (2) begin taking dozens of thousands of $ in bankruptcy-immune loans to pay for it. There's also the issue of the cost of college being an artificial grossly expensive racket. If the opportunity for moneyed inter…

American society indeed says 18-year-old adults can legally do these things. Are you advocating for 21 being again the age of formal adulthood?

I'm just making an observation, not a prescription.

Re: The Great College Loan Swindle

#117

Post by tptacek »

Clubber wrote: post #35
empath75 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t go to college and I’m making 6 figures as a software developer. I’d say half the people I work with never went to college either.

What is your point here? Bill Gates was a college drop out and he's wealthy, but so are some lottery winners.

Their point is that you don't need to go to college to be a software developer, and if you're trying to say that you need to be Bill Gates-level lucky to get away with that, that's a really dubious argument.

Re: The Great College Loan Swindle

#118

Post by sanderjd »

bunderbunder wrote: post #104
sanderjd wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed 100%. I think the focus on delineating useful vs. useless degrees in this thread represents exactly the wrong approach to solving this problem.

On the one hand, I agree completely. On the other hand, I don't think you can ignore the financials. It's not about "useful vs useless." All courses of study are useful. People are getting saddled with piles of debt that they can't manage, though, and US law doesn't allow you to declare bankruptcy from your student loans, so people can potentially end up screwed for life. Against that kind of a backdrop, to blithely…

I keep wanting to reply to your comment because it's a good one that seems like it deserves more than just an upvote. But I also don't want to take the time to write the kind of response you deserve. So I'm leaving this meta comment just to let you know you weren't shouting at the wind and to thank you for your thoughts, which I found very interesting.
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