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The Student Debt Problem Is Worse Than We Imagined

nytimes.com

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Re: The Student Debt Problem Is Worse Than We Imagined

#231

Post by akvadrako »

jldugger wrote: post #171
imtringued wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's basic economics of lending. If X% of people default then you have to increase interest rates to cover the people that default. The increased interest rate will dissuade students from taking on degrees with lesser economic prospects. It's like adding back pressure or load shedding to a distributed system. It is better to drop or delay requests than let the entire system collapse under it's own weight.

> If X% of people default then you have to increase interest rates to cover the people that default. Your borrowers can always default, even without bankruptcy protections. It's a good policy, I assume, but I'm not sure it's strictly speaking, part of the free market dogma.

They can't default because of government interference. I don't think anyone was talking about protections.

Re: The Student Debt Problem Is Worse Than We Imagined

#232

Post by Someone »

bogomipz wrote: post #84
acjohnson55 wrote: post #18

It's a damn shame we've let this crisis reach this scale. Along with healthcare, climate change, the debt, our inauguration, and so on, we've been essentially frozen for most of my life as politicians concern themselves more so with existential power struggle. The right wants to bring us back to the gilded age, the left makes headlines but is barely relevant, and the center is trying to squeeze bandaid solutions whil…

>"Along with healthcare, climate change, the debt," There's an interesting parallel with the cost of healthcare. Increases in costs for both seem to outstrip inflation year over year. And there's lots of of people making lots of money in both sectors. And yet nobody in either sector seems to be able to say exactly why the costs are increasing at the untenable rates they are. The only thing Washington ever seems to do…

There’s a lot wrong with pricing of healthcare versus its costs, but that spending on it increases faster than inflation isn’t abnormal.

If you ask people what’s most important for them, health ranks very high, often is #1. So, once you’re rich enough to pay for food, clothing, and living, almost all extra money should go to health, rather than, say, dining at three star restaurants, wearing tailor-made clothing, or four day working weeks.

Also, automation makes things that can be automated cheaper, and, hence, things that can’t (or aren’t yet) relatively more expensive. Education, day care centers and healthcare fall in the latter category.

Re: The Student Debt Problem Is Worse Than We Imagined

#233

Post by lotsofpulp »

dstaley wrote: post #228
goolulusaurs wrote: post #225

It is obvious the college education system is flawed just from it's incentive structure. Colleges don't get paid based on the amount that you learn, they get paid based on the amount of your time they take up. Up to a point they even have a disincentive to aid learning, since they make more money when their students have to repeat classes. Each additional semester gives the colleges many more opportunities to get mon…

> Maybe a way to do this would be to separate teaching from testing. Have testing be established by some external body, and make it so both the university and the student receive a payout when the student succeeds on the test. This is basically what standardized testing is all about, and it's a significant contributor to the inadequacy of education in the United States. We haven't figured out a scalable way to measur…

How does standardized testing contribute to the inadequacy of education? If anything, it shows which students need help, as opposed to grade inflation and throwing out A grades to everyone that hands in a homework assignment on time.

Local parents can influence grades, but they can’t get past standardized testing (which is why colleges use SAT/ACT/AP grades to filter rather than GPA).

Perhaps funding as a result of standardized testing is a problem and distracts from teaching. But the actual problem is children who grow up in unsupportive environments with lack of parental guidance. That socioeconomic class divide exposed by standardized testing isn’t going to be fixed by getting rid of standardized testing.

Re: The Student Debt Problem Is Worse Than We Imagined

#234

Post by BdHQvGKCQF »

rossjudson wrote: post #112
Kephael wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very difficult to start your career at leading companies such as Google, Facebook, etc without going to a reputable school.

Nope. Get in the pipeline at Google and ace your interviews. There's no checkbox in our hiring process labelled "went to a famous school so I'm impressed and we should hire".

On the other hand, I interviewed at Google some years ago and during my conversation with an HR rep, my very first meeting in the day-long interview process, she noted my lack of CS degree and said point blank: “You know we place a lot of importance on degrees here, right?”

(And this was for an ops position, not development)

Re: The Student Debt Problem Is Worse Than We Imagined

#235

Post by scottlocklin »

hellogoodbyeeee wrote: post #158
batteryhorse wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't express how wrong this response is. Term limits are necessary, there should be no such thing as a "career politician". A politician should be required to have actual skills, and not just a nice smile. Experience with politics is meaningless, there should be NO establishment. It is always the new guy who reveals the truth to the people, which is a good thing. Experience only results in being able to lie to the…

This is such a strange sentiment to me. You would never hire an amateur Carpenter to work on your house. You would never hire an amateur DBA to build your company's key data architecture. But you want the people who run the country to be amateurs?

Yes.

Athens picked their Senators by lot, and we probably should consider it.

Re: The Student Debt Problem Is Worse Than We Imagined

#236

Post by Viker »

hellogoodbyeeee wrote: post #158
batteryhorse wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't express how wrong this response is. Term limits are necessary, there should be no such thing as a "career politician". A politician should be required to have actual skills, and not just a nice smile. Experience with politics is meaningless, there should be NO establishment. It is always the new guy who reveals the truth to the people, which is a good thing. Experience only results in being able to lie to the…

This is such a strange sentiment to me. You would never hire an amateur Carpenter to work on your house. You would never hire an amateur DBA to build your company's key data architecture. But you want the people who run the country to be amateurs?

But a political is supposed to be a "representative" of the people. Not some kind of professional wordsmith...

Re: The Student Debt Problem Is Worse Than We Imagined

#237

Post by chadcmulligan »

I'm not in the US, but whatever happened to student activism, protests and so on? There's no way they're going to rollover and say sure, don't worry about it, same with health care, working conditions and everything else that seems to be on here regularly.

You guys invented the protest movement, seems like some marches on DC would get these things fixed, complaining on Internet forums doesn't really make a difference.

Re: The Student Debt Problem Is Worse Than We Imagined

#238

Post by dillondoyle »

batteryhorse wrote: post #95
Delmania wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None; absolutely none. Term limits are a terrible idea because to gain experience with politics and credibility within the establishment requires years. Institute term limits lobbyists gain all the power as they are the only ones who have the clout to get legislation passed. You'd need to institute campaign finance reform and ban lobbyists before you could start terms limits. But these are just both band aids on Amer…

I can't express how wrong this response is. Term limits are necessary, there should be no such thing as a "career politician". A politician should be required to have actual skills, and not just a nice smile. Experience with politics is meaningless, there should be NO establishment. It is always the new guy who reveals the truth to the people, which is a good thing. Experience only results in being able to lie to the…

Being a good politician I think has two meanings which kind of drives this divide in opinion: 1) being good at getting elected 2) being good at getting things done

It really does take experience, connections, networks, and skill to accomplish things in legislatures. Same with getting elected.

The problem is in order to become #2, you have to become #1.

Unless we as voters become far more informed and drastically change the way we evaluate candidates I don't think we'll get #2 skillsets from politicians who also don't have the qualities many term limit advocates despise.

Re: The Student Debt Problem Is Worse Than We Imagined

#239

Post by syshum »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #18

It's a damn shame we've let this crisis reach this scale. Along with healthcare, climate change, the debt, our inauguration, and so on, we've been essentially frozen for most of my life as politicians concern themselves more so with existential power struggle. The right wants to bring us back to the gilded age, the left makes headlines but is barely relevant, and the center is trying to squeeze bandaid solutions whil…

>>>It shouldn't be controversial that we need an educated population

Its not, what should be controversial is the manner in which we are educating children. University based schooling is not the only way to obtain education, nor IMO is it is the best

Personal we should be bringing back more vocational studies, more apprenticeships, and utilizing the ever increasing technology with things likes MOOC to bring the costs of education way down.

I also not believe it should take 16+ years of a persons life to educate them.

There are massive amounts of waste, inefficiencies, tradition in education that need to be eliminated.

All of these are made worse not better by the modern belief that every single student should get a degree, and that is the right of every student to have someone else pay for that degree.

We need to fix the fundamental issues in education first, most people however just want to throw more tax payer money at the problem and hope that by making the people in the work force poorer everything will get better.

Re: The Student Debt Problem Is Worse Than We Imagined

#240

Post by paulmd »

brink wrote: post #9

The article says the average is $22k, but Forbes says the average for 2016 students is $37k. https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2018/06/13/student...

Forbes doesn't say that (as noted by the popup, opinions of contributors are their own), someone who blogs for Forbes says that. Forbes is just Medium with a financial slant, these days, there are no qualifications required to be a contributor and there is no editorial oversight.
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