NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students • Hacker News Board

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#301

Post by markmichalski » Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 9:50 PM UTC

Included in the list of perhaps not totally intended consequences: I think this may allow some MD students to think twice about practicing and take less traditional (potentially less secure) career routes. I may be biased, having effectively not practiced for a couple years now myself, but I think this could be a good thing to an extent.

I work with 3-4 MDs that chose not to practice who are now working on defining software/ML product feature requirements; their MD experience makes them solid product specialists for clinical solutions that hopefully will help a lot of people...not having to stare down the barrel on loan payments may help people make these kind of career moves that may ultimately progress the system.

All that being said, we (obviously) need good docs at the bedside.

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#302

Post by rubicon33 » Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 9:51 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #296

How? Medical is one of the most expensive courses to provide. I mean I love this, but who is footing the bills on this & are we sure they won't taint the results with ulterior motives...

Seriously. I don't understand how this is possible. Nothing in life is free... Someone, or something, is footing this bill - no?

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#303

Post by lovich » Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 9:52 PM UTC

mcny wrote: post #274

nostromo wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be a pattern in America. People call for X to be more affordable > government subsidizes X > X absorbs all subsidies and becomes even more expensive > people call for X to be socialized. Maybe instead we should start to unwind student financing. For example: let students discharge student loans via bankruptcy. That would give financiers pause and would put an upper bound on what many universities could…

> For example: let students discharge student loans via bankruptcy. Ataturk's reply to this is dead below but I must agree with the (spirit of the) comment. While I support letting students discharge loans via bankruptcy, I VEHEMENTLY oppose making this applicable to loans already signed. This is absolutely ridiculous and anyone who supports this kind of position should be barred from public office on grounds of insa…

I'd say that a politician who stares at a problem head on and refuses to deal with it, because we didn't deal with it in the past, is the insane one.

Student loans have become incredibly predatory and the banks were the ones who had the information to realise these were bad loans, but they lobbied the government to make it so they had to do no due diligence. Now they've fucked up and unless something is done about the loans they are all going to start defaulting anyway.

The default rate is already growing[1]. Based on the number of people I know who are making minimum payments and waiting 20 years for the loans to be forgiven based on income levels, I expect a large portion of expected revenue on these loans is going to evaporate starting after 2028 when everyone who got bad terms and a shit job after the great recession start to become eligible.

It's already a house of cards and we should just deal with it instead of tying large portions of the population to these bad deals

[1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2017/10/06/student...

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#304

Post by pitaj » Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 9:53 PM UTC

justonepost wrote: post #236

pitaj wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College is expensive because so much money is available in the forms of subsidies and loans. If the federal government stopped guaranteeing loans, and cut back on other subsidies, the cost of college would be much much lower.

No, College is expensive because it's horribly inefficient. Professors are paid terribly.

Inefficiency is only enabled by the pure quantity of money flowing into the system.

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#305

Post by kurtisc » Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 9:54 PM UTC

pitaj wrote: post #208

monocasa wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDK. The same thought process led me to not being able to complete college due to financial reasons. Despite being emancipated, FAFSA still considers you a dependent until you're 24. I was told that only with documentation of leaving an abusive household would a dependency exception grant be applied. So according to FAFSA I was supposed to use all this money that I didn't have to pay for college. By 24 I had dropped…

College is expensive because so much money is available in the forms of subsidies and loans. If the federal government stopped guaranteeing loans, and cut back on other subsidies, the cost of college would be much much lower.

There shouldn't be a debate on why higher education is expensive, it was answered in a 1973 paper that won a 2001 Nobel prize:

https://msu.edu/~conlinmi/teaching/EC860/signallingscreening...

tl;dr: In markets where the cost of education is less than the increase in wages, the real cost of education isn't the fee, it's the relative effort of passing it.

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#306

Post by 326543 » Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 9:56 PM UTC

pwdisswordfish2 wrote: post #181

agitator wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Yes, it will cost a lot and yes we need to find a way to fund it, but giving all communities fair access to education is in everyone's best interest. Increasing the base level of education makes everyone a more intelligent, informed citizen and voter, and will have a positive impact on the progression of our country. I think it's a bad idea to be penny pinching in this regard. I also think everyone being edu…

Free but not compulsory, right? You don't need higher education for a lot of jobs and many people do not wish to attend college. I also think it's wrong to imply that people who haven't attended higher education can't "think for themselves". My 2 cents.

The problem I have with free college is that college, while expensive now, is already nearly compulsory for a lot of jobs that don't require it. A degree in any irrelevant thing is used as an arbitrary deciding factor. Free college will make for compulsory college as everyone will need a degree to have a chance. Then we actually lose value from the opportunity cost of people not working.

Disclaimers: obviously, yes, I think education is great in general. And I actually don't mind social education. I just think it's easier to get this wrong than right.

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#307

Post by chimeracoder » Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 9:58 PM UTC

AngryData wrote: post #279

monocasa wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDK. The same thought process led me to not being able to complete college due to financial reasons. Despite being emancipated, FAFSA still considers you a dependent until you're 24. I was told that only with documentation of leaving an abusive household would a dependency exception grant be applied. So according to FAFSA I was supposed to use all this money that I didn't have to pay for college. By 24 I had dropped…

I think not being able to default on your student loans is the main factor in rising costs. There is no reason not to give out a student loan of any amount if it is guaranteed money. And there are many people who struggled to graduate highschool, or people who have no idea what they want to do in life in any way, that are getting crazy large loans to go to very expensive and demanding schools and and are very likely…

> I think not being able to default on your student loans is the main factor in rising costs. There is no reason not to give out a student loan of any amount if it is guaranteed money.

Just because the loans can't be discharged during bankruptcy proceedings doesn't mean the lender gets their money back. Default rates are high (and rising). The lender may get some money, but that doesn't mean they get their principal back, let alone a sufficient interest to justify giving out the loan in the first place.

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#308

Post by ceejayoz » Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 9:59 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #264

hellllllllooo wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Those invisible fighter jets that don't work were a great investment. https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a21957/wtf-35/ The US military is a publicly funded socialist entity. Interesting how that's ok for war but not for education.

By that definition, isn't every military a socialist entity?

That's the point, isn't it?

The US right holds the contradictory opinions that socialized government can't accomplish anything effective, and that the US military (which is fundamentally a socialized entity) is amazing and awesome and supremely capable.

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#309

Post by nicoburns » Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 9:59 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #220

pitaj wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College is expensive because so much money is available in the forms of subsidies and loans. If the federal government stopped guaranteeing loans, and cut back on other subsidies, the cost of college would be much much lower.

This seems to be a pattern in America. People call for X to be more affordable > government subsidizes X > X absorbs all subsidies and becomes even more expensive > people call for X to be socialized. Maybe instead we should start to unwind student financing. For example: let students discharge student loans via bankruptcy. That would give financiers pause and would put an upper bound on what many universities could…

In Europe when the government subsidies things, they usually also put a cap on what the organisation is allowed to charge. See for example universities and trains in the UK.

> people call for X to be socialized

Alas it never gets to the final step: X is socialized.

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#310

Post by mbrumlow » Thu, Aug 16, 2018, 10:01 PM UTC

FeteCommuniste wrote: post #269

mbrumlow wrote: post #129

I feel like all the collage should be free people are not thinking far enough ahead to what that actually means. 1) A free collage will end up being more like extended high school. 2) At some point new institutes of for pay higher education will pop up. They just won't be called colleges. People who can afford them will clearly have a advantage and top companies will start to seek out people who attended these organi…

If financial risk really encouraged effort and perseverance, we would expect university dropout rates in countries like France or Germany to be far higher than in the US or UK. Is that actually the case?

France Germany both have something like a 50% drop out rate, much like the US according to my recent searches. The UK has ~7% but has been rising over the past 3 years.

As far as I can tell you still pay in the UK but tuition is fully covered in both Germany and France, expect France has already started the thing I said they would with a second more elite school. And you better bet a grad from a free university vs the elite university competing for the same job the guy who paid is going to probably win more often than not.

For what it's worth free and or guaranteed loan is the same, and I would expect the same outcomes in the long run. At least with the loan part we might wise up and stop demanding every kid goes and gets a higher education.

Note, I am not coming from somebody who was able to pay, or took loans out to go to school. I did the math, and I simply could not afford to go to any university, not even the cheap ones that were local. I tried, and saw the deb increasing while working for $8 a hr.

What did I do? I quit, and focused on my job, and spent every free second learning a skill that I could make money with. That just so happens to be computers/programming/and data centers. For a while there my friends and peers that went to school looked like they were going to pass me up, but by the the time they got out of school loaded with deb I had already double the income they would be able to start out with. Today I know very few people who went to school who make more than me, and those that do still have massive amounts of debt. Now I maybe lucky, but I know to many people like me, and meet to many people who have taken the same path as I did to put it all on the notion that I was just lucky.