Live data from Hacker News

Some U.S. Colleges Cut Tuition

bloomberg.com

111–120 of 160 posts

Re: Some U.S. Colleges Cut Tuition

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make student loans no longer exempt from bankruptcy. The rationale for making student loans persist through bankruptcy is that students could just declare bankruptcy after graduation, since they probably have no assets. Maybe make the exemption only last 10-15 years. The permanence of student loans means lenders have no qualms against writing loans for people who will likely not be able to pay them off for decades, o…

>The permanence of student loans means lenders have no qualms against writing loans for people who will likely not be able to pay them off for decades, or ever. Worse, lenders write, and universities accept applications for people they know statistically 99.999% they will not get past the first year.

>And universities accept applications for people they know statistically 99.999% they will not get past the first year.

Universities do this on purpose because between 500 student lectures and on-campus housing requirements undergrad freshmen and sophomores have a massive profit margin per body whereas juniors and seniors are in classes that have much more resources spent per student and often don't live on campus.

Re: Some U.S. Colleges Cut Tuition

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Federally subsidized student loans need to GO AWAY. The language I'm about to use pains me, but this is an extremely privileged take, or at least naive take, on what these loans do. Removing them will hurt about about a generation of students from the very low to the upper middle class set until the academic employment market adjusts. What do I mean? A simple, pragmatic fact is degree from a name-school, vs. a no-n…

Do you think that granting mortgages to NINJAs (no income, jobs or assets) had any affect on the sharp rise in housing costs leading up to the ‘08 bubble?

> Do you think that granting mortgages to NINJAs (no income, jobs or assets) had any affect on the sharp rise in housing costs leading up to the ‘08 bubble?

While NINJAs certainly didn't help with the situation leading up to the GFC in 2008. Let's make one thing abundantly clear. Subprime mortgages did not cause the crash. They were just the tipping of a series of shitty monetary policies. The majority of mortgage defaults came from investors and the upper middle class [0][1]. People with really good jobs, lots of credit, and every resource to walk away from a sinking ship.

The bubble was caused by lawyers, doctors, Wall Street, and people just like you or I. The ones who could talk their way into taking out $200k-1mm loans from a bank based on having good enough credit.

[0] https://www.tuck.dartmouth.edu/news/articles/the-role-of-the... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/09/business/economy/09rich.h...

Re: Some U.S. Colleges Cut Tuition

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is wishful thinking. There is no collateral for a school loan. Banks have to make up for that risk somewhere. Students will have nothing to lose by staging bankruptcy, and banks will stop giving out loans.

> There is no collateral for a school loan. There is no collateral for credit card loans either. > Banks have to make up for that risk somewhere. Private student loans have pretty much shriveled to a drop in the ocean of higher-ed financing since they were excluded from the federally-subsidized loan programs (for quite a long time the only “federally-subsidized” loans are direct federal loans), so banks don’t need to…

Not true, I went to a top accredited school and had to take out private loans (at 9.5%) when I exhausted their aid and federal resources and my parents were tapped out

Re: Some U.S. Colleges Cut Tuition

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is wishful thinking. There is no collateral for a school loan. Banks have to make up for that risk somewhere. Students will have nothing to lose by staging bankruptcy, and banks will stop giving out loans.

Bankruptcy tanks your credit rating for years. Most of a decade, ~7 years IIRC. If student loans could only be cancelled via bankruptcy after 10-15 years, that would mean students trying to cancel their loans through bankruptcy would be doing it in their early to mid 30s assuming they graduated at 21 years of age. Their credit scores would be ruined until their 40s at least. Few people would pursue this route just to…

"Few people would pursue this route just to save some money on education."

You seem confident saying this, but countless youths have accumulated hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt they won't pay off until their mid 40s at no-name liberal arts schools and degree mills

Re: Some U.S. Colleges Cut Tuition

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make student loans no longer exempt from bankruptcy. The rationale for making student loans persist through bankruptcy is that students could just declare bankruptcy after graduation, since they probably have no assets. Maybe make the exemption only last 10-15 years. The permanence of student loans means lenders have no qualms against writing loans for people who will likely not be able to pay them off for decades, o…

This is wishful thinking. There is no collateral for a school loan. Banks have to make up for that risk somewhere. Students will have nothing to lose by staging bankruptcy, and banks will stop giving out loans.

I think banks stopping giving out these loans would be a benefit - it would have a crushing effect on tuition and move the conversation to cost containment and educating the most cost effective way possible.

Re: Some U.S. Colleges Cut Tuition

#116

As a parent, I'm not-so-secretly hoping we will see some correction. Especially with the proliferation of online options. If I sent my kid to Oregon State to get an online CS degree, they'd pay the same tuition as if they were on-campus. If they went to somewhere like ASU for the online CS masters, it is similarly overpriced. Meanwhile, I'm just about to finish my Georgia Tech masters in CS for under 10K for the enti…

And Tech's program is awesome. ;)

Re: Some U.S. Colleges Cut Tuition

#117
post #25
post #4

> cut its tuition by $10,000 for all new students I find it insane tuition is that high. I finished grad school before 2010, and at least with the smaller state schools I went to, total cost of tuition and books was in the $3k~$5k range. Boutique schools like Vanderbilt were like $25k+ (per semester). I had a friend who got a free ride there for graduate school, and he said it wasn't really that different than our st…

>Federally subsidized student loans need to GO AWAY. They've allowed students to enter into debt, the only long term contracts kids under 18 can legally sign, for something they can never declare bankruptcy on. I think that's something that many people would agree with, but how do we go forward with making that happen?

Here's one idea: Cap the amount that all student loans can collect at something like 15% of taxable income, for max 20 years after signing. After that they are written off. But let the lenders see everything -- school, major, test scores.

This ensures loans can never become a crushing burden. But more importantly, it incentivises the banks to provide very useful information to the potential students. Unlike colleges who, since they get paid up front, are strongly incentivised to let marginal students study expensive things.

Re: Some U.S. Colleges Cut Tuition

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is wishful thinking. There is no collateral for a school loan. Banks have to make up for that risk somewhere. Students will have nothing to lose by staging bankruptcy, and banks will stop giving out loans.

> There is no collateral for a school loan. There is no collateral for credit card loans either. > Banks have to make up for that risk somewhere. Private student loans have pretty much shriveled to a drop in the ocean of higher-ed financing since they were excluded from the federally-subsidized loan programs (for quite a long time the only “federally-subsidized” loans are direct federal loans), so banks don’t need to…

>There is no collateral for credit card loans either.

Which is why credit card companies don't give you 100K in credit cards, but you can get that in student loans. Heck, they generally won't give you more than a few K in credit cards until you've demonstrated some credit trustworthiness.

Re: Some U.S. Colleges Cut Tuition

#119
post #117
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Federally subsidized student loans need to GO AWAY. They've allowed students to enter into debt, the only long term contracts kids under 18 can legally sign, for something they can never declare bankruptcy on. I think that's something that many people would agree with, but how do we go forward with making that happen?

Here's one idea: Cap the amount that all student loans can collect at something like 15% of taxable income, for max 20 years after signing. After that they are written off. But let the lenders see everything -- school, major, test scores. This ensures loans can never become a crushing burden. But more importantly, it incentivises the banks to provide very useful information to the potential students. Unlike colleges…

> Here's one idea: Cap the amount that all student loans can collect at something like 15% of taxable income, for max 20 years after signing. After that they are written off.

Make it the 10% of discretionary (not gross), and up the limit to 25 years of any of the loans covered graduate or professional study, and you'd have an existing option for current federal student loans.

Make this the only option for federal loans, remove private loans from the protection against bankruptcy discharge, and you the job is done.

> But let the lenders see everything -- school, major, test scores.

Private lenders can, AFAIK, already put terms like this in contracts if they want.

Re: Some U.S. Colleges Cut Tuition

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Top tier colleges (and even state colleges) teach a lot more than what is inside of a book. They teach interpersonal skills, social skills, work ethic, self care, professional networking, etc. I think it is misconception that these schools are respected because they teach the subject matter better, or that they provide no value outside of the lecture hall. If anything, >50% of the value is outside of the lecture hall…

> They teach interpersonal skills, social skills, work ethic, self care, professional networking, etc. Judging by the amount of screaming children we've seen exit these institutions, they're either not teaching those things, or are doing an extremely poor job at it. The coddling companies have to do for new grads entering the workforce is a testament to the lack of interpersonal skills, social skills, work ethic, sel…

Regardless of your personal opinion on recent grads, an accurate measurement of success can only be made with the control group. There is definitely no shortage of bad employees in the non-college employment track... and oftentimes the behavior can far surpass a "screaming children" characterization.
Post reply on HN