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How America's universities became debt factories

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Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#151

Post by brigadier132 »

lenerdenator wrote: post #89

1) Move most good careers that do not require a college degree out of the country for the benefit of shareholders 2) Tell everyone born between 1980 and 1995 that they'll be unable to compete in the global marketplace if they don't get at least some post-high school education, and imply that the mere presence of a degree will help instead of having a specific type of degree 3) Have next-to-zero standards for public f…

In your 4 step process where do you blame the not for profit schools for raising tuition by completely absurd and unsustainable amounts?

If we are going to forgive student loans, tax payers should not be on the hook. The loan originators and most importantly the schools should pay since they are both the primary beneficiaries of this disastrous policy.

Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#152

Post by imtringued »

tway_GdBRwW wrote: post #58
andreyk wrote: post #13

Seems like a good overview, but I do find this bit unclear: "But why don’t market forces correct these issues? The answer lies in the unique shield that non-dischargeable student loans provide to educational institutions and lenders. In a normal market, if a product consistently fails to deliver value, consumers stop buying it. Producers either improve or go out of business. But in the world of higher education, this…

> But why don’t market forces correct these issues? Another theory: The value creation is not linked to the value capture. So market forces make a bad feedback loop. Look, I'm totally pro business, but business is only "good" at allocating capital when value capture and creation are linked. Education isn't like that. The closest we have are the bootcamp schools, where they take a cut out of your first 2 year's salary…

The fundamental problem in job education is that it needs to be linked to the needs of future employers, but those employers do not have an incentive to hire workers and train them, thereby aligning the education program with the needs of the employers. Employers do not want to pay for training, because employees can leave at any point, so they decided to let employees go to university and pay for their own education. This then leads to a misalignment between what people elect to receive an education in and what employers want, because people aren't mind readers and know exactly what will make their boss five years into the future happy. So what happens instead is that higher education becomes purely about standardising worker skills, so that each worker is a replaceable cog according to their degree. This means you can just hire X amount of Y degree holders instead of caring about their individual skills.

Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#153

Post by AnimalMuppet »

lordnacho wrote: post #47

I don't know if this is some kind of heresy, but here we go. I don't think universities provide much value at all to the common student who is not going to be a PhD. I went to a very well-known institution known for putting the students in a room with the professors, maybe two or three students, to one professor. My economics professor taught me one on one. I still think, in the end, the work is mostly done alone, in…

> Make an examination authority. "Here is the national linear algebra test. Anyone who wants to try it, sign up, and come to this hall on this date." Everyone who passes, whether they studied at home or went to fancy U, gets a paper that says they passed it. Do it as a 12 year old prodigy or a 75 year old grandma, you get a diploma.

> Now, maybe there is already an authority that does this, I don't know. But it isn't very well known or authoritative.

Western Governors University operates this way. You can get a full, recognized degree that way (in a limited set of topics).

Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#154

Post by sofixa »

vondur wrote: post #124
tway_GdBRwW wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Universities will have to start focusing on ROI. In Europe, they have a simpler system. Education is paid for from taxes. If a student does well, they pay for it via taxes. If they don't, then they aren't crippled by debt. The problem with the ROI approach is it still places too much burden on the student, and, well, life happens. Say you major in comp sci (or some other high-paying field) but shortly after graduat…

I would imagine in Europe they select more carefully the students whom will go to College. Here in the US we've told students that everyone must go to College. We now have too many people in College and many of them aren't going to be successful once they are in. It's not sustainable. In many of our public universities, the graduation rate is well below 50%

> I would imagine in Europe they select more carefully the students whom will go to College. Here in the US we've told students that everyone must go to College

You imagine wrong. Pretty much everyone goes to university in most and European countries. Even in wildly tourist dependent places, a degree in tourism is a normal thing for a young person to pursue before going to work at hotels/restaurants.

Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#155

Post by d0mine »

AndyKelley wrote: post #97
advael wrote: post #6

We should be way more willing to straight up kill multi-billion dollar industries. Without that willingness, most modern problems are impossible for governments to solve, and such industries and even their potential competitors are incentivised mostly to exacerbate the problem. I love a good market as much as anyone but there really are problems markets will never solve

You seem to imply that a general willingness is what would allow this to happen when the article spells it out pretty clearly: it's powerful organizations clinging to power. Your sentiment amounts to nothing more than wishful thinking. It's tempting to just agree with your sentiment, but I think that day dreaming about an unrealistic solution sucks energy away from more effective actions. The main challenge of solvin…

A viral meme/tiktok/xkcd/etc could educate many 18 years old on how bad the deal is.

Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#157

Post by huuhee3 »

anovikov wrote: post #64
ben_w wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we overdo on it, we get socialism. And we know how it always ends. First, no, we have some high-visibility examples of dictators claiming to be socialists , several of whom had purges of other internal opponents who said socialism was a different thing to what they were doing. We don't point to the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea"* or "The Democratic Republic of Congo" then say of Democracy (or of republi…

No, i mean EU socialist countries. To the tune of Sweden, Netherlands, etc. That are little but sleepy retirement community with no ways to make money. Why would anyone with any ambition want to live there? So they don't. They go to America in spite of all it's horrors and sins. Live there once they made they money? Also no, because taxes, they go to the likes of Cyprus or Malta, or since recently, Spain [1]. These c…

European social democracies may not be the best if you want to get rich, but for average Joe they offer superior quality of life compared to the US. IMO too much capitalism and socialism both suck, and certain EU countries have the best balance between them.

Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#158

Post by rufus_foreman »

idunnoman1222 wrote: post #27

All other unsecured debt disappears after what seven years but this university debt is somehow guaranteed?? That’s why this happened.

Absent a government guarantee, what lender is going to lend to people with no job, assets, or income?

Students' parents would need to co-sign, and if the parents were poor, the student would be out of luck.

Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#159

Post by sofixa »

oldprogrammer2 wrote: post #119
crazygringo wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's all well and good for the student, but what about for taxpayers/governments who's funding that education? We can say the same thing about K-12 education -- it's just something we choose to fund collectively, because that's the kind of society we want to be. But also, progressive taxation means that the rich fund it more than the poor. So the general idea is that if law school and medical school are expensive…

But it’s not the same as K-12. I can’t send my kids to an expensive private boarding school and expect taxes to pay for it.

And absolutely the same logic can and should apply for universities - there can be private exclusive institutions, but the majority should be affordable and mostly paid for by taxes.

Re: How America's universities became debt factories

#160

Post by [deleted] »

sofixa wrote: post #154
vondur wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would imagine in Europe they select more carefully the students whom will go to College. Here in the US we've told students that everyone must go to College. We now have too many people in College and many of them aren't going to be successful once they are in. It's not sustainable. In many of our public universities, the graduation rate is well below 50%

> I would imagine in Europe they select more carefully the students whom will go to College. Here in the US we've told students that everyone must go to College You imagine wrong. Pretty much everyone goes to university in most and European countries. Even in wildly tourist dependent places, a degree in tourism is a normal thing for a young person to pursue before going to work at hotels/restaurants.

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