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False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

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Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#151

Post by mkirklions »

douglaswlance wrote: post #142
mkirklions wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I think) I'm a fan of getting rid of subsidized loans for education. It has only made the cost of education go up rather than make college affordable. But on the flip side, what can be expected from people with no ability to afford college at the new price? Ive been told over and over that my personal situation working full time on the midnight shift and going to college is 'unrealistic' for everyone to do. So whats…

The solution is to stop orienting our society around institutional learning. We have a global information network. We need to orient society around individual learning, not academia. Kids living at home and taking (mostly) pre-programmed online courses should be the norm. It is vastly cheaper, and can deliver more consistently better results.

I like this mentality, but there needs to be education around fact finding and logic. (Formerly the scientific method, but I think that got hijacked with PhD politics)

Me and my brother are building a dishwasher but he seems to jump into solutions rather than determining the necessary inputs and equations to prove them outputs will meet our design specifications.

And my brother is an engineer.

In a few weeks/months I feel like I can learn any subject with enough googling and hard work. However, without this ultra critical mindset, I can imagine a child would get lost among too much information.

Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#152

Post by aerotwelve »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #139
jwally wrote: post #92

The U.S. would do itself a huge favour by allowing student debt to be bankruptable. College prices can rise infinitely because there is an unlimited supply of AAA+ debt to feed it. Drop that rating to reality and investors don't buy the debt, loans don't get originated, demand for college at $250k dries up.

Likewise healthcare. The fact that insurance companies exist who will pay for a $250000 procedure guarantees that those prices continue. If the customers of healthcare (patients) were the payers, those ridiculous prices would vanish.

It's almost like our health system consists of a small collection of companies playing fast and loose with each other's money, trying to extract as much from each other as possible, and the output of all of this graft (not including co-pay and deductible) is average healthcare at sky-high prices.

Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#153

Post by glenneroo »

arcbyte wrote: post #124
kryogen1c wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Used to be. Doctors and lawyers would go through a decade of school on loan and then discharge it all and start a lucrative practice. That's part of how we got here.

The doctors in my family all graduated from med school with less than 20k total student loan debt. School was much cheaper 30 years ago

Adjusted for inflation: $20,000 in 1988 → $42,601.69 in 2018

Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#154

Post by austenallred »

bradleyjg wrote: post #149
jwally wrote: post #92

The U.S. would do itself a huge favour by allowing student debt to be bankruptable. College prices can rise infinitely because there is an unlimited supply of AAA+ debt to feed it. Drop that rating to reality and investors don't buy the debt, loans don't get originated, demand for college at $250k dries up.

It wouldn’t make much of a difference because the vast majority of student loans are issued by the federal government and not underwritten. This seems to come up fairly often. I don’t think many people are aware of the enormous size of the state banking sector in the US between educational loans and continued dominance of the residential mortgage market.

This is true. About fifty percent of federal financial assets are student loans (which terrifies me).

However on the margin it would make a huge difference. The most expensive programs require a mix of federal loans and federally subsidized loans. There are a few changes the federal government could make to not back loans data clearly show are going to be bad, and if those loans aren’t federally subsized they’re not happening. Or, perhaps, worst case scenario the interest rate becomes extreme.

There are a lot of moving pieces.

Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#155

Post by jpambrun »

bedhead wrote: post #125
jwally wrote: post #92

The U.S. would do itself a huge favour by allowing student debt to be bankruptable. College prices can rise infinitely because there is an unlimited supply of AAA+ debt to feed it. Drop that rating to reality and investors don't buy the debt, loans don't get originated, demand for college at $250k dries up.

Who is going to lend tens of thousands of dollars to an 18 year old with no income, no assets, and no credit?

This the the parent comment argument. No unlimited credit, no unbounded high prices.

Alternatively cap un-bankruptable dept to a reasonable amount, say 15k/yr or something. It's pretty much how it works here in Quebec Canada and very few students end up with more than 40k CAN in un-bankruptable dept.

Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#156

Post by ble »

bedhead wrote: post #125
jwally wrote: post #92

The U.S. would do itself a huge favour by allowing student debt to be bankruptable. College prices can rise infinitely because there is an unlimited supply of AAA+ debt to feed it. Drop that rating to reality and investors don't buy the debt, loans don't get originated, demand for college at $250k dries up.

Who is going to lend tens of thousands of dollars to an 18 year old with no income, no assets, and no credit?

The federal government of the United States of America.

I feel like your question is supposed to be making a rhetorical point but it has an extremely literal answer as of a few years ago.

Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#157

Post by zip1234 »

CPLX wrote: post #41
topkai22 wrote: post #36

The real problem with higher education is really how we finance it. Give the lenders the ability to discriminate based on major and borrowers the ability to default easier and all of a sudden you’ve got some banks seriously motivated to ensure students get economic return on their investments. Besides, it just shouldn’t take a decade or more for someone to discharge a bad debt. Student debt seems uniquely oppressive…

Or instead, like most other advanced societies, we could stop trying to quantify higher education in purely personal economic return on investment grounds and consider an educated populace a public good.

Already done. Education is considered a public good. That is why K-12 education is paid for in the US. As far as a higher degree, the landscapers working across the street probably would not benefit from getting a degree and I do not see how the public would benefit from paying for a degree for those guys either. There are a significant number of jobs out there that would not benefit from people getting a degree. There are perhaps classes that might help in regards to those jobs but a degree is not something that would help. Also, the classes that would help are generally provided exceptionally reasonably priced at community colleges.

Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#158

Post by cptskippy »

pmiller2 wrote: post #69
cptskippy wrote: post #65

It's odd that no one has addressed the issues of the rising cost of higher education. Once upon a time you could work a full-time job during the summer and part-time during the school year to pay for your education and graduate debt free. This wasn't that long ago either, I paid for my college education in the late 90s in cash I earned.

If you paid for school yourself with money earned through employment in the late 90s, my guess is you either majored in STEM, had a lot of AP or other credits going in, or did your first 2 years at a community college (or, possibly more than one of these). I’d also wager you went to an in-state public school. Am I right? If so, that probably makes you the exception rather than the rule.

I attended an in-state public university and paid the full in-state tuition from 1998-2001. I worked a retail position at an office supply store for 2 years before taking a help desk position at a small company. With both jobs I worked part-time during fall and spring semesters and full-time during the summer to pay for tuition.

> If so, that probably makes you the exception rather than the rule.

So you're saying the majority of people seeking higher education are going out of state or to private schools?

Enrollment in public/state colleges and universities outpaces private schools three to one.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enroll... https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cha.asp

Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#159

Post by ble »

kryogen1c wrote: post #104
jwally wrote: post #92

The U.S. would do itself a huge favour by allowing student debt to be bankruptable. College prices can rise infinitely because there is an unlimited supply of AAA+ debt to feed it. Drop that rating to reality and investors don't buy the debt, loans don't get originated, demand for college at $250k dries up.

Used to be. Doctors and lawyers would go through a decade of school on loan and then discharge it all and start a lucrative practice. That's part of how we got here.

Can you substantiate this claim? "Doctors and lawyers who strategically go bankrupt to avoid paying student debt" sound like made up boogeymen... boogeymen who perfectly justify parts of the US' 2005 bankruptcy reform.

Re: False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm

#160

Post by aerotwelve »

mkirklions wrote: post #118
jwally wrote: post #92

The U.S. would do itself a huge favour by allowing student debt to be bankruptable. College prices can rise infinitely because there is an unlimited supply of AAA+ debt to feed it. Drop that rating to reality and investors don't buy the debt, loans don't get originated, demand for college at $250k dries up.

(I think) I'm a fan of getting rid of subsidized loans for education. It has only made the cost of education go up rather than make college affordable. But on the flip side, what can be expected from people with no ability to afford college at the new price? Ive been told over and over that my personal situation working full time on the midnight shift and going to college is 'unrealistic' for everyone to do. So whats…

At state schools, the sharp increase in tuition costs over the last decade have had just as much to do (if not more) with a corresponding decrease in state funding. State legislatures all over this country -- starting with the 2008 recession but never quite stopping -- have cut support to these institutions. Often schools raise tuition in response, because many of them have mandates to serve X number of in-state students or have Y programs or perform research at threshold Z.

(The best part is when the politicians who voted for the cut in funding turn around a year later and say why are you raising tuition?!)

This is a vicious cycle, and it only serves one class of people: students who are born into well-off families who can afford tuition at these rates out of pocket. Those who aren't have to take out larger and larger loans just to attempt to complete a degree. It's really sad, because it doesn't need to be this way.

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