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

bloomberg.com

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

#281

Post by alistairSH »

astura wrote: post #271
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...

I would be very, very careful making the conclusion college degree leads to lifetime earnings, it's possible that a third (or forth, or fifth, ...) factor that makes people more likely to earn a college degree is what leads to the bump in lifetime earnings. It is also completely useless to lump together all college degrees from all schools.

Sure, it's a massive generalization. But, no more so than "college is an over-priced waste of time," which is a claim I see repeated on HN and other tech-centric forums.

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

#282

Post by olalonde »

intended wrote: post #251
olalonde wrote: post #218

I firmly believe that university is way, way overpriced in a world of free, high quality MOOCs. It just makes zero economic sense and I believe the market will correct this sooner or later. Think about how utterly inefficient it all is: you have hundreds of professors around the world, each mechanically teaching the same subject semester after semester to new students (I know, they do a bit more than that). Some will…

Quite the opposite! > According to a visualization of MOOC completion rates assembled by Katy Jordan (2013), the 50 investigated MOOCs have generated 50.000 enrollments on average, with the typical completion rate hovering below 10%. Put it somewhere around 7.5%, or 3.700 completions per 50.000 enrollments. Meyer (2012) reported that the dropout rates of MOOCs offered by Stanford, MIT and UC Berkley were 80-95%. For…

I don't know, a similar argument could have been made about Amazon not overtaking retail in 1999. I'm not saying the MOOCs market we have today is mature enough to fully replace university but I'm convinced technology will eventually reduce costs massively.

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

#283

Post by BatFastard »

1_2__4 wrote: post #108

I hate sounding both old and weird but I cannot shake the feeling that much of the claims of economic health and growth in the US is... if not fake (I’m not totally nuts) but not accurate. My most charitable interpretation if I’m right is that we’re using the wrong metrics (possibly intentionally) that give a distorted view of the economy. But I keep hearing employment is great, productivity is great, stock market is…

Lets just say the rich are doing well.

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

#284

Post by BatFastard »

Erik816 wrote: post #204
kiliantics wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you get a 9-5 job that pays $25/hr without going to college? I know adjunct professors that get paid less than that.

Adjunct professors make less money than just about anyone, college educated or not. Many skilled trades can easily make $25/hour. The median wage for an electrian, for example, is $25/hour based on a quick search. That will depend on location and experience, but college is not the only way to get a decent paying job.

Sure, but how many people are trained in skilled trades?

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

#285

Post by PhasmaFelis »

thephyber wrote: post #237
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Official US government "unemployment" rates only include people who are "jobless, looking for a job, and available for work". This means that the graduate who can't find work, gives up, and goes back to his parents' basement is not unemployed. The guy who can't work anymore due to injury or chronic illness, barely surviving on disability, is not unemployed. The man begging for change outside the subway, who doesn't l…

The old U3 vs. U6 argument gets tired quickly. It's not a conspiracy that the government still relies heavily on U3 -- it's just more useful for what the government does and it's more accurate than U6 measurements. U3 is the official measurement because it has a long history and it's useful for simplifying policy decisions. It's also fairly accurate because it's largely based on unemployment insurance claims forms, w…

I'm sure it has its uses, but when the news publishes an unemployment percentage that does not actually describe the percentage of people who are unemployed, that's deceptive and dishonest. I dunno if it's down to malice or just bureaucratic incompetence, but it's false either way.

> It's also fairly accurate because it's largely based on unemployment insurance claims forms, which have to be re-filled every 1-2 weeks.

That's even worse. You can only claim unemployment insurance for a few months after losing your job. Claiming that's more accurate because it's easier to measure is like the joke about the guy who lost his keys in the bushes, but is looking for them under the streetlamp because it's easier to see.

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

#286

Post by thadk »

jxramos wrote: post #140
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But I keep hearing employment is great, productivity is great, stock market is great The question you have to ask is, who are you hearing this from? The answer is: people with a vested interest in making you believe the economy is doing great, or people fooled into believing this by those with a vested interest. I suggest you closely examine the metrics used by those who claim the "economy is great". First these met…

I dream about the day when the CBO and the Fed lay out all their calculations in a Jupyter Notebook and some means of accessing the raw data used. I can smell the transparency there.

I haven't looked into this carefully but I believe the UK does this already in R: https://twitter.com/Rbloggers/status/846887304379744259

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

#287

Post by chiefalchemist »

taw55 wrote: post #254
chiefalchemist wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me add this to your theory (which btw I agree with). Fracking! It was allowed to hockey stick - despite the ecological damage - because without historically low fuel prices the US economy would be into the weeds. Ultra-cheap fuels is a (temporary?) fix to hide plenty of ills. Keep in mind, much of the hockey stick'ing happened under Obama, who was and still is perceived to be a green prez. Yet no one has really s…

This is my current hypothesis. Been too lazy to look at the figures though.

I've definitely read things on how much fracting has increased, especially in the last 5 to 10 years. We talked a good green game but it was the economy that won out.

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

#288

Post by Fomite »

calvinbhai wrote: post #262
Fomite wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Because the "Outcome Rating" of a program is not independent of financial status.

For example, the use of Classics as a major for many people who go into banking as essentially a status signifier. That only applies to some classics majors.

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

#289

Post by ToxicCorgi »

intended wrote: post #250
ToxicCorgi wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what's happened and what will happen - setting goalposts and then moving them. In Europe, specifically Germany and France, it's common for people to go for a Bachelor's and Master's back-to-back since there aren't any student loans to worry about. While the lack of student debt from studying so much sounds all nice, the reality is you get a bunch of 26-28 year olds graduating with Master's degrees and…

Your view, accurately portrays the deeply problematic issue that is inherently intertwined with education - namely real life. Human beings are not studying machines. Fail a course, and the response is not "re-booting, preparing trial N+1", the response is usually discouragement. With free courses, good material, always on, and self selected motivated students - MOOCs were supposed to change the way we studied. They h…

That is absolutely correct. If we were to drill deeper down, the purpose of 'education' and the certificates it brings for most jobs is extremely questionable. I'm an advocate for education for highly skilled jobs where lives are at stake, such as doctors and civil engineers.

But it's hard to see and justify the same need for typical white collar jobs where college is mostly a repetition of high school and employers train you/indoctrinate you with their koolaid anyway once you're done showing them you have a Bachelor's/Master's.

The same applies for comp sci/developers where a lot of the talented ones tend to enjoy writing code or playing around with tools like web APIs or their Android SDK way before they went to college anyway. It seems a lot of people who weren't passionate in the tech field before, but majored in the T part of STEM in college basically forced themselves into it for the money. They end up graduating with the same certificates anyway, but the forced-non-passionate ones use the cert only for getting their foot in the door while still lacking critical thinking and have little interest in improving/enhancing their skill set (See: majority of developers from India).

And don't even get me started on lower-tier majors like communications, history/librarian, arts, basic design, etc where little more than basic hands-on training would be adequate to get people on their feet to do their jobs, versus spending a ton of time and money on 4 to 8 years of 'higher education'

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

#290

Post by rconti »

linkregister wrote: post #170
rconti wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, I meant in absolute dollar terms (which is why I put 'suffered' in quotes for the rich). That's not meant to minimize the fact that the poorest had the most actual suffering. (and, likely, on average, the greatest % decrease in earned income due to unemployment).

I was speaking in terms of percentages. In absolute terms, it's almost a meaningless comparison because the highest quintile will almost always experience a larger dollar fluctuation.

The problem is the article terms the rich as getting "85% of the gains" which, while a percentage figure, is not a percentage of their wealth -- it's percent of actual dollar figures. So if we're trying to decide whether or not they disproportionately profited from the rebound, we'd have to figure out how it compared to their losses.
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