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More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

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Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#261

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

saint_fiasco wrote: post #136
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We just spent $80bil on the military. Free college is estimated at $65-75bil, so we just take that money, and move it over here and blammo. Free public university for everyone. (:

With that amount of money, can't you just end poverty directly? Why do so many people treat college like a terminal, intrinsic good?

>With that amount of money, can't you just end poverty directly?

Actually I don't know. If it is then that's certainly a good use of it and I agree that college is not an intrinsic good but ending poverty is. I suppose it's really a two-pronged problem. (1) We want to raise everybody up out of poverty. (2) We want people to be economically mobile, aka even in the case of UBI no-one wants to be a serf on the CEO's plot.

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#262

Post by calvinbhai »

Fomite wrote: post #186
Kadin wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The schools would undoubtedly respond that in doing so, they would necessarily have to stop educating people from anything less than the most privileged (and thus low-risk) backgrounds. You'd need to cook up some sort of risk-pooling scheme if you wanted schools to extend that credit to anyone coming from a background that made payment statistically less-likely. And once you started doing that you'd have to be carefu…

Indeed. The university where I'm currently faculty views it's mandate as making college more accessible to the state's population and supporting first generation college students. If they're going to be left holding the bag for that, they're going to stop. And to address the poster who thinks we can blind universities to a potential student's financial background...we have a very good statistics and computer science…

not sure where I mentioned it should be tied to the "student's financial background". In fact it can be irrelavant. By the time student graduates, parents can say 'you are on your own', and the debt is still dangling.

The only deciding factor needs to be the outcome which is the employability or ability to make money to repay debts.

If the Outcome Rating for a program at a university is high, it means lower risk, and the university is responsible only for, say 10% of unpaid debt.

If the Outcome Rating for a program at a university is low, it means higher risk, and the university takes a much higher responsibility for ~ 50% of unpaid debt.

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#263

Post by CaptSpify »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #234
CaptSpify wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sorry if this is a bit ranty: We should be able to freely sharing digital media as virtual-goods are immediate to duplicate. Instead we've created artificial barriers (drm, paywalls, streaming services, etc). The only reason these barriers are allowed, is a dying industry is trying to stay relevant. The economic impact of the media industry loss would be great, and the media industry does still have a place in our sy…

The value in the music industry has never been in the duplication (or do you really think CDs cost $20 to make while AOL was simultaneously giving them away??). The value is, and always has been, in the talent of the people making the music. DRM is that industry trying to ensure that people who create amazing content are still interested in doing so. You are essentially arguing that we should let everyone steal since…

Not at all. I'm arguing that paying artist per album is a stupid model that doesn't reflect reality. The only reason we pay per album is that it made sense when distribution was hard. Now that distribution is a solved problem, we need to adjust our economic model to match.

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#264

Post by saint_fiasco »

freeflight wrote: post #159
saint_fiasco wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With that amount of money, can't you just end poverty directly? Why do so many people treat college like a terminal, intrinsic good?

How would you propose to "end poverty"? Paying all the debt of the poor? But that wouldn't solve the actual problem, only a symptom. Some view better education as a potential solution because poverty is often directly correlated with the level of education.

Poverty is correlated with education because education is expensive. If the causation doesn't go in the direction you expect, solving poverty with free college might be like solving poverty with free yachts and free diamonds.

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#265

Post by CaptSpify »

brokencode wrote: post #236
CaptSpify wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sorry if this is a bit ranty: We should be able to freely sharing digital media as virtual-goods are immediate to duplicate. Instead we've created artificial barriers (drm, paywalls, streaming services, etc). The only reason these barriers are allowed, is a dying industry is trying to stay relevant. The economic impact of the media industry loss would be great, and the media industry does still have a place in our sy…

How do you envision media companies making money if people don't have to pay for their product once it's produced? It's not like most people are going to pay Disney ahead of time for the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie, even though a lot of people will (inexplicably) pay to see it in theaters.

I'm not sure how, but I'm very sure that our current model makes no sense. The cost of producing media is all up-front now. It used to be that it cost a lot up front, and a lot to distribute. We would charge people on the distribution side, because that was easier. Now that there is no need for a distribution system, we need to find better funding systems for those companies, rather than relying on the physical media mindset.

People are still paying a lot of money right now to fund media even though they can get it for free. It's not that people won't or don't want to pay, it's that we're paying on the wrong side of an outdated economic model.

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#266

Post by saint_fiasco »

wfo wrote: post #243
saint_fiasco wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your very expensive proposal doesn't end up in someone generating additional wealth that can be taxed or donated or given in loans and so on, how are you going to fund your utopia?

It is not very expensive. It is not a utopia, it is a tiny but meaningful increase in quality of life for the vast majority of citizens and society as a whole. And your question is fundamentally ideologically flawed: were you concern trolling about how we were going to fund the bombs we dropped on weddings last year? How did we fund the Saudi Arabian genocide in Yemen? What taxes did we raise to give them this money?…

Of course I was concerned about how to fund the wedding bombs. The fact that government is spending money on something stupid is no reason to be less concerned and skeptical about new expensive government initiatives.

Nobody is going to say "sure the deficit is increasing even more, but at least the spending is consistently wasteful instead of only wasteful towards rich people".

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#267

Post by rtkwe »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #241
fhood wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they though? Do public universities really have competition? Maryland has College Park and not much else. All the other public schools are much much smaller, and generally lower quality.

This isn't the 1850s, UMD essentially competes with at least the other east coast public schools. So you have Penn State and UVA, as well as UD, Va Tech, GA Tech, UNC, etc. Add to that the negligible degree to which attending "the best school" effects your outcomes (spoiler: virtually not at all. Being in the top 25% at your school far outweighs how good your school is) and you'll realize that they compete heavily. T…

Except not really because the cost for going to an out of state public school is much larger for a student so any given school has a large leg up on cost in competing for students in their state.

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#268

Post by alistairSH »

brewdad wrote: post #87
alistairSH wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

think long and hard before choosing to go to a 4 year college A college degree is still worth a considerable bump in lifetime earnings.[1] Perhaps you should revise your advice to "think long and hard before choosing to go to an expensive 4 year college" or "consider spending the first two years of college at a local community college." 1 - https://trends.collegeboard.org/education-pays/figures-table...

One question I have regarding spending the first 2 years in a CC is how does this impact your ability to get admitted to a 4-year school later on, particularly a top-tier (say top 50) university? Are these schools less likely to admit students who will only spend a couple of years there vs students entering straight out of high school, all other things being equal? I don't know the answer, but given my son is on a tr…

tssva is correct, most states have matriculation agreements between the CC system and state college system. So, at worst, you finish your degree at your home states flagship state university (obviously, those vary, but generally, each state has at least one well respected institution). If you're in VA, you "hit the jackpot" and have many choices (UVA, W&M, VT, plus a half-dozen other solid choices).

Locally (VA), students are guaranteed admission to the state university system if they meet a published GPA threshold. That threshold varies by school. The one big caveat - students are not guaranteed placement within specific programs. So, at GMU, an overall GPA of 2.85 is required to transfer, however that is might not be high enough to guarantee placement in their Computer Science program (which is highly competitive and close to fully enrolled).

I don't know how this applies to transferring to an Ivy (or other top-tier private). For the Ivies, I assume the caliber of student who can gain admission is going to figure out the finances (for better or worse). I also assume (big assumption here) that even a "useless" liberal arts degree from Harvard makes one employable at a reasonable salary (vs the same degree from a 2-tier school).

Edit - one "local" private school (Shepherd U, WV) also has a guaranteed transfer program from the local (Northern VA) CC system. They offer a tuition discount to those transfers. http://www.shepherd.edu/nova-transfer-admissions/

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#269

Post by Runtime_ »

AutomationTool wrote: post #56

This one is easy. People are buying things that they can't afford. Throwing it into a loan and then partying their way through school. Since that worked out so well, then they do that with their car, house, furniture, cell phones, and car rims. You aren't entitled to 100,000 dollar education. You aren't entitled to go down to Mexico every spring break. you aren't entitled to eat pizza and hit the bar every weekend. Y…

"These people it's no mystery where they come from. You sharpen the human appetite to the point where it can split atoms with its desire.

You build egos the size of cathedrals.

Fiber-optically connect the world to every eager impulse.

Grease even the dullest dreams with these dollar-green gold-plated fantasies until every human becomes an aspiring emperor becomes his own god.

Where can you go from there?

As we're scrambling from one deal to the next who's got his eye on the planet? As the air thickens, the water sours, even bees' honey takes on the metallic taste of radioactivity and it just keeps coming, faster and faster. There's no chance to think, to prepare. It's buy futures, sell futures when there is no future. We got a runaway train, boy." 'The Devils Advocate'

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#270

Post by astura »

quuquuquu wrote: post #2

>unemployment is low Yes, but many people have been designsted as "having stopped looking for work", which means the statistic doesn't count them. Additionally, those who are employed perhaps are underemployed, working as an Uber driver or bartender or chipotle or etc. >the economy has improved For the top 6% of Americans that are millionaires, it absolutely has improved. Most of their income is from capital gains, d…

TFA mentions that underemployed people can get income based payments matched to their earnings.
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