U.S. Citizens Now Hold About $1.3 Trillion in Student Loan Debt • Hacker News Board

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

#381

Post by cmdrfred » Mon, Nov 21, 2016, 6:18 PM UTC

orly_bookz wrote: post #379

cmdrfred wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you tell me how much you have donated to "the arts" before you demand that everyone else does so. For context, I give 8% of my humble income to charities that feed the hungry and care for the sick. Is my dollar better spent funding a play that few will ever wish to see?

What? I'm not forcing anyone to do so nor even asking them to. As far as I'm aware, none of us are allowed to pick and choose what our taxes go to or else I probably would give more to the arts than, say, the military.

This discussion has been on the public funding of college education.

So, the crux of your argument is: because money is squandered in one area its fine to do so in another?

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

#382

Post by test6554 » Mon, Nov 21, 2016, 6:21 PM UTC

digler999 wrote: post #319

jimmywanger wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it need not: all that great education requires are wise, passionate teachers and a bit of infrastructure: a whiteboard, a few books, and a laptop computer (with a couple of outliers). It's funny that a lot of the outliers are the degrees that can actually help you with financial stability later. Universities love humanity courses, exactly for the reasons you point out. It's easy to shoehorn a couple more underg…

> For a computer science lab, you need some heavy iron if you're going to be doing heavy algorithms Not for 200 undergrads learning how to bubblesort. For that you need a lab with 50-100 PC's. For grad courses in parallel comp. or AI, you might need a semi-expensive cluster to play around with, but if you want something that just works you could just buy cluster time on AWS, which I'm sure they'd give a discounted ac…

Can you imagine a raspberry pi for every student where you just buy a new microSD card for each class and all notes/assignments are stored in the cloud or a gitlab type site for higher-education? That way it's a snap to set up with the exact development environment you need and if you mess something up badly, the T.A. could re-image your sd card and you just grab your assignments from your git.

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

#383

Post by orly_bookz » Mon, Nov 21, 2016, 6:23 PM UTC

cmdrfred wrote: post #381

orly_bookz wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? I'm not forcing anyone to do so nor even asking them to. As far as I'm aware, none of us are allowed to pick and choose what our taxes go to or else I probably would give more to the arts than, say, the military.

This discussion has been on the public funding of college education. So, the crux of your argument is: because money is squandered in one area its fine to do so in another?

No. It's not. I'm not trying to be rude here but I don't know why you keep making arguments for me. I never said that nor the last thing you think I was saying.

All I said was "hey maybe you're right there isn't a tangible value in terms of money in and money out but perhaps there are other, more-difficult-to-track reasons why the arts are important."

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

#384

Post by charlieflowers » Mon, Nov 21, 2016, 6:29 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #85

charlieflowers wrote: post #65

This is so obviously a scam that I don't see how it can hold up. Tuition has gone to sky high levels, and who is getting that money? Not the professors, let's get real. They have probably gotten sweet raises, but nowhere near the growth rate of tuition. The armies of "administrators" are getting huge salaries, but the main point of the whole bubble is that it is a great way to proactively enslave a whole new generati…

At this point it is still "worth it" though. Might be in huge debt but you can get a job that you can afford that debt though. Now I personally don't think this is a good environment for a healthy economy, but for many it is still "worth it". It'll crash when it isn't, and I think we're getting close to that.

The problem is it is artificial. It has been manipulated.

It produces an army of people who have to work every day of their lives, which produces tax revenue and a big, growing economy.

Going to college might be a better choice for an individual than not going to college, but the system has been intentionally set up this way to turn the masses into indentured servants. (Originally, it might have been unexpected that student loans would create this bubble ... but now, it's not a surprise, it's a valuable exploitation mechanism).

It's not the optimal approach for our society ... it only serves to help the Haves gain more control over the Have-nots.

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

#385

Post by Godel_unicode » Mon, Nov 21, 2016, 6:32 PM UTC

roel_v wrote: post #175

Godel_unicode wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Banks give home/auto/business loans based on value of the home and ability to pay. Why not have similar metrics for education?

Because there is no collateral for education.

I'm not suggesting collateralized student loans, I agree that's difficult without a durable good. I'm suggesting a similar risk-based approach for determining the size of the loan. This would cut down on the number of people who have $200k in student loans and a MFA which generates no income.

The difficulty of getting loans for degrees which are less likely to be able to generate significant income might even lead to lower tuition at non-STEM schools (hey, a guy can dream)

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

#386

Post by charlieflowers » Mon, Nov 21, 2016, 6:34 PM UTC

conanbatt wrote: post #217

Speaking from a purely market-driven position, the Student Loan Debt market has one issue that prevents colleges from not raising tuition prices: its the incapacity to default on loans. Its obvious a huge part of the loans are used for careers that will never make its money back, and the loans only collateral are the person itself(not his parents assets). So if someone had an arts degree that cost him 150k, and never…

I think you're right. The most effective single intervention would be to make them defaultable.

The transition would be ugly, because student loans would dry up like a pat of butter on a skillet. It would take a year or more for college tuitions to adjust, for all those administrators to be laid off, for all those leisure centers to be scrapped for firewood, etc.

But then we'd be back to market driven, affordable college tuition with a solid ROI.

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

#387

Post by koolba » Mon, Nov 21, 2016, 6:49 PM UTC

awinder wrote: post #309

koolba wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then what we're saying is 80K represents 50% of the educational costs we're all comfortable with sinking into base education. You're making assumptions that we're all comfortable with paying for 12 years of education. I think the majority of that is a waste of time (and by extension money). > Most people want to go to college to get skills to then contribute something to society, whether or not today's economy spec…

Sorry to lump you in, caveat that statement in whatever way makes you feel comfortable. Hopefully we can agree that at least as far as level of discussion goes, much more is made of college costs than of childhood education costs. I found to be a little absurd given the financial numbers involved (every kid goes through primary education, even if college is free it'll never rise to the level of every kid utilizing it…

> Sorry to lump you in, caveat that statement in whatever way makes you feel comfortable. Hopefully we can agree that at least as far as level of discussion goes, much more is made of college costs than of childhood education costs. I found to be a little absurd given the financial numbers involved (every kid goes through primary education, even if college is free it'll never rise to the level of every kid utilizing it, etc.)

The big difference is that childhood education costs are primarily borne locally. Most, if not all, comes from local real estate taxes. If I pay those taxes I can reap the results (via my children attended a school I pay fore) ir I can vote with my wallet and live somewhere else that has lower taxes (and by extension lower quality education). Either way it's up to me.

> I left a comment in another thread, but the amount of shit that is in the budget leaves every American with a feeling of "I don't want to pay for that". The DoD budget alone clocks in at over 8x the projected cost of free college education, very few people talk with vitriol about the hand-outs we're creating for the myriad of people that make up that apparatus.

Saying, "He gets his daisy cutter so I want my free college!" is a fools argument. Just because there's other crap in the budget doesn't mean we should increase it further with more crap. It's just a different pile.

> I'm not as well read here as I'd like to be, but I have a hard time understanding how this is going to be such a magic fix. Professors aren't going to be too keen to take a pay cut here, and state universities aren't exactly making out like gangbusters right now.

I'm sure you'll find plenty of professors willing to teach for less. I don't even think they're a significant part of most budgets anyway but I doubt it'd be a problem.

> Is the idea that we'd have less students and less professors?

No the idea is to remove the artificial upward pressure on prices by having people pay for the education they want to receive.

> What's the economic impact of seeing those jobs, and the dependent jobs in school communities, eliminated?

They're being artificially inflated and maintaining a college loan bubble to keep them employed is asinine. Nobody has a right to a government subsidized job.

Plus it'd be better than the economic impact of trillions of dollars of student loan guarantees or the weight of those loans on our youth. College graduates with $160-200K of debt are common nowadays, even for in-state schools. That's a mortgage payment and they don't even have a roof over their heads to show for it!

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

#388

Post by charlieflowers » Mon, Nov 21, 2016, 6:51 PM UTC

treebeard901 wrote: post #322

jazzyk wrote: post #301

This is another example of the law of unintended consequences. While the idea of helping people become more educated is obviously beneficial to both individuals and the society as a whole, government loans - which are supposed to "help" - are a huge factor fueling ever-raising costs. The loans, in effect, subsidize the higher-education complex, rather than students. Many of us have been brainwashed to think that high…

> the law of unintended consequences A cynical person might say it is an intended consequence. Higher prices raise the barrier to entry for lower classes.

I believe it started as an unintended consequence, but now it is intentional -- the surprise is long past.

When you have wealth, you want to get maximum benefit out of that wealth. Since wealth is a relative concept, the only way to do so is to widen the gap between those who have wealth and those who don't. You're making your dollars go farther.

If you can drive the cost of college (or anything else) to exorbitant heights, people will be forced to come to you for loans. Then, you own many years of their future.

College is one of the most sinister purchases to do this to, because it is the very mechanism by which someone could possibly break free of being a Havenot.

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

#389

Post by nerfhammer » Mon, Nov 21, 2016, 6:52 PM UTC

CaptSpify wrote: post #336

vkou wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, in order to finance the construction of fancy student dorms, many universities require unmarried undergraduates to live in a dorm. Speaking as a commuter in my student years, this boggles my mind. Of course, any concerns about cost are dismissed by the big handwave of 'well, financial aid is available...'

Captive markets are the best markets! I had similar requirements for school. Meals ended up costing me ~$10 per. I could get much cheaper food on my own, but that wasn't going to make the university any money.

Where I went to school the student meal plan you were required to buy costed something like $14 per meal, while they provided the same food at the university hospital for something like $4 per meal.

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

#390

Post by skwosh » Mon, Nov 21, 2016, 6:59 PM UTC

jimmywanger wrote: post #304

skwosh wrote: post #117

There seems to be a strong sentiment in this thread that the only value provided by education is the contribution to career (e.g. that loans should only be provided for financially viable courses, that studying arts is as useful to one's career as studying finger painting, etc). This just seems so wrong. Optimising for vocational training means you're effectively tuning out the abstract arts and sciences and... oh, t…

> This just seems so wrong. Why? Out of all the things to think are wrong, inability to pick a useless major based on financial status is wrong? As opposed to pollution in East Asia, conflict minerals in our supply chain, or slavery in shrimp fisheries in Thailand? > These fields don't usually/directly translate into a financial success, but they broaden our perspective and deepen our experience. Yes. Those are luxur…

Yes, those things are also wrong. As are decreasing socioeconomic mobility, racially & religiously motivated violence, lack of code hygiene and unit testing, etc...

If you read my and other responses in this thread, the arts/humanities are far from useless (they just have a less direct economic effect).

Historically important art/music has often been ignored, ridiculed, censored, etc. To suggest that it only has social/cultural value if it appeals to a popular/paying audience is overly simplistic.

I'm not saying there's no overlap between capitalism and art in general, but if they're perfectly aligned then we miss the challenging, obscure, alternative, upsetting, disruptive, etc.