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U.S. Citizens Now Hold About $1.3 Trillion in Student Loan Debt

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Re: U.S. Citizens Now Hold About $1.3 Trillion in Student Loan Debt

#351

Post by Sgt_Apone »

wernercd wrote: post #37
krisroadruck wrote: post #13

I'm curious why we treat student loan debt as being special. We don't make a huge deal out of people taking on other debt and then being unable to pay for it. I think probably if anything, what we should have are better controls for what types of degrees you are allowed to take a loan out for. If your degree of choice is unlikely to yield the kind of return that will pay for it, then you should be required to save up…

> Why we treat student loan debt debt as being different Where is the collateral? You buy a house, don't pay... you lose the house. You buy an education, don't pay... you... lose the education? No bank is going to give money for degrees without a realistic change of getting paid back. They have no fear of getting paid back because you CANT remove the debt via bankruptcy. I think there needs to be a different approach…

>Give some sort of limit - 10/20/30 years? - and some sort of max% of income - 10%?. If the loan isn't paid off by the end of the limit at a max % of income, then the loan can then be discharged by bankruptcy.

This is how it's more or less handled in Canada. You're able to discharge your student loans through bankruptcy 7 years after you graduated. It prevents abuse, while offering some respite to those who fall into deep financial problems. Seems fair to me.

Re: U.S. Citizens Now Hold About $1.3 Trillion in Student Loan Debt

#352

Post by stale2002 »

jazzyk wrote: post #349
coredog64 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alabama pays Nick Saban almost $7M/year. At first blush that seems outrageous. Then we find out that Alabama pulls in nearly $100M/year from football [0]. While not every school is so lucky, most (if not all) that are spending 7 figures on a coach are getting that money back and then some. [0] http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbelzer/2016/02/24/the-unive...

Yes, but they are in the wrong business, then. it is a sports business - what does it have to do with academia?

What it has to do with academia is that it provides lots of funds that can be spent on teachers and classrooms.

Re: U.S. Citizens Now Hold About $1.3 Trillion in Student Loan Debt

#353

Post by cmdrfred »

JohnGB wrote: post #171

So total student loan debt is something like 10% of the cost of the Iraq / Afghanistan war. Tell me again how it's not affordable to make college free, when it's affordable to spend so much money on an unnecessary military intervention?

I wasent privileged enough to go to college. Why isn't paying off my mortgage affordable instead?

Re: U.S. Citizens Now Hold About $1.3 Trillion in Student Loan Debt

#354

Post by wang_li »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #204
Lazare wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, but how does that translate into policy? Fact 1: Education in the US is very expensive, in large part because the ready availability of loans removes most downwards pressure on prices. Fact 2: If you are loaned money to obtain a degree which is not economically valued then you will not be able to pay it back. Fact 3: If you loan people money without expecting people to pay it back, then it's not a loan, it's a…

Basic income. Free tuition. An outright grant, no repayments. Literally zero barriers except ability for anyone, for any level of academic achievement in anything. Result: a culture with a lot more understanding of the real world, and the preservation of human and humane values, rather than a laser focus on the hand-to-mouth of Jobs Right Now.

> Basic income. Free tuition. An outright grant, no repayments. Literally zero barriers except ability for anyone, for any level of academic achievement in anything. Result: a culture with a lot more understanding of the real world, and the preservation of human and humane values, rather than a laser focus on the hand-to-mouth of Jobs Right Now.

Scarcity is a thing in the real world. We are nowhere near a point where we can produce more than is necessary for everyone to have everything they want at every point in their lifetime. Assuming that's even possible as there are things that are naturally limited. I mean, under the everything is free to everyone model, how do you determine who gets to live in the house on the cliff overlooking the ocean and who gets to live inland surrounded by tract housing?

Re: U.S. Citizens Now Hold About $1.3 Trillion in Student Loan Debt

#355

Post by JonFish85 »

ap22213 wrote: post #263
Lazare wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a very nice world to live in. It also doesn't sound much like our world. It's certainly not how any country on Earth operates. One day, I hope and imagine, we will live in a post-scarcity world, and then yes, that sounds like a great plan for organizing society. > rather than a laser focus on the hand-to-mouth of Jobs Right Now. Perhaps we should wait to relax that focus once we've actually solved th…

It is extremely unlikely that a post-scarcity world will ever occur without, say, a collective global work project. There is no financial incentive for private capital to initiate it. Just like the Internet (in its current form) would have never occurred without government funding. The technology to bring about a post-scarcity world mostly exists, and we could get there very quickly (maybe 5-10 years). But, how do yo…

"But, how do you convince the upper classes (who control the capital) to support it?"

This is a red herring. It's easy to assuming that such an enormous undertaking can be solved by "tax the rich". It doesn't work that way. There isn't enough money in the top 1% of the United States to pay for such a program. Inevitably a UBI would be paid for by the middle class, the meaty part of the bell curve.

This means people who took on debt loads to become a doctor, lawyer, whatever, and have worked hard to pay it down (and probably still are paying it down). $250k/yr sounds like a lot, but when you're paying back $400k worth of loans, it's really not as exorbitant as it sounds to many people -- especially if these same people are trying to buy a house, save for their kids' college, etc.

Re: U.S. Citizens Now Hold About $1.3 Trillion in Student Loan Debt

#356

Post by orly_bookz »

cmdrfred wrote: post #345
awinder wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telling someone that their humanities education was all a hobby is a much greater insult than calling someone out, so I'll let the universe sort out who was the true meanie-head here lmao.

If humanities are so valuable, why aren't they valuable?

You're right, they're not valuable in the capitalistic sense.

They're valuable if you don't want to live in the world depicted in Brazil (1985), or Neuromancer, or pretty much any cyberpunk dystopia.

Re: U.S. Citizens Now Hold About $1.3 Trillion in Student Loan Debt

#357

Post by tsunamifury »

cmdrfred wrote: post #345
awinder wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telling someone that their humanities education was all a hobby is a much greater insult than calling someone out, so I'll let the universe sort out who was the true meanie-head here lmao.

If humanities are so valuable, why aren't they valuable?

They are valuable. Myself and most of my colleagues make 6 figure+ with arts degrees. Journalism, Visual Arts, etc. On top of that, most of them manage engineers, or lead their projects. And the engineers who work with them would never be so naive as to insult their work or their education in the way that the individuals in this thread do.

Re: U.S. Citizens Now Hold About $1.3 Trillion in Student Loan Debt

#358

Post by stale2002 »

nickik wrote: post #245
charlesdm wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that is obviously ridiculous. > I have friends with theology degrees who work in business and earn more than I do in technology with my CS PhD. The companies that hire them value having people with a very wide range of academic backgrounds. That has nothing to do with their degree and everything with their ability. They would probably still get hired without the degree. Degrees only really matter in formal subjec…

Its actually not ridiculous at all. There is a lot of study on the idea that the main value of education is not what you actually learn but much more signal that you are dedicated, motivated and have the ability to learn. There is a huge argument going on right now about how much of the value is signal vs actual knowledge you need for the job. There is a lot of evidence that suggest that signal is a huge part of the…

Well if that is the case, and the degree doesn't matter, then the government has no reason to subsidize 200k college degrees.

Just provide free community college to everyone for a 10th the price and call it a day.

Re: U.S. Citizens Now Hold About $1.3 Trillion in Student Loan Debt

#359

Post by mercsilv »

stale2002 wrote: post #352
jazzyk wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but they are in the wrong business, then. it is a sports business - what does it have to do with academia?

What it has to do with academia is that it provides lots of funds that can be spent on teachers and classrooms.

This isn't true, most football programs have single digit percentages of their revenue being redirected back to academic programs and most of that is earmarked for scholarships for ...student athletes.[1]

The idea that football programs generate substantial revenue that improves academics for the entire university is not true.

[1] http://www.ethosreview.org/intellectual-spaces/is-college-fo...

Re: U.S. Citizens Now Hold About $1.3 Trillion in Student Loan Debt

#360

Post by cmdrfred »

tsunamifury wrote: post #357
cmdrfred wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If humanities are so valuable, why aren't they valuable?

They are valuable. Myself and most of my colleagues make 6 figure+ with arts degrees. Journalism, Visual Arts, etc. On top of that, most of them manage engineers, or lead their projects. And the engineers who work with them would never be so naive as to insult their work or their education in the way that the individuals in this thread do.

Great, you won't have any issue repaying your loans then I can safely assume?

I make 40k a year due to not growing up wealthy enough to attend college, I should be subsidizing people like you?

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