Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 565 posts

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#381

Post by ndriscoll »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #364
ndriscoll wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To that point, how many university educated American adults have actually read, say, Locke? It's been freely and easily accessible for decades, e.g.: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7370 How many university (liberal arts even) educated Americans have read the Federalist Papers? The Declaration of Independence? The Constitution?

> How many university (liberal arts even) educated Americans have read the Federalist Papers? The Declaration of Independence? The Constitution? To give a counterpoint: C. P. Snow. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures (overview) > https://web.archive.org/web/20170508085255/https://www.rbkc....

I don't think that's really a counterpoint. My point was that I get the impression that even those in the humanities seem to be losing familiarity with liberal ideas. So it's even worse now (or we've just lied to ourselves as we pretend to expand access to higher education).

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#382

Post by Aurornis »

chneu wrote: post #358
Aurornis wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It simply isn't true. I got my student loans a quarter century ago. Back then the loans were dischargeable and low. The Bankruptcy Reform Act which introduced restrictions on discharging student loans was introduced in 1978, a full quarter century before your experience. Loan dischargeability was further restricted in subsequent years. If you got your loans a quarter century ago, you were deep into the time when it…

Two centuries?

Good catch, sorry. Was trying to put it in terms of the parent comment's "quarter century ago" claim. They didn't realize that the student loan protections had gone in a full quarter century prior to their experience, which contributed to their 4% rate.

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#384

Post by sethammons »

kentm wrote: post #180
sethammons wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The full reason is that preventing bankruptcy is the only way to keep interest rates low and make the loans widely available "They are eating the dogs and cats." It simply isn't true. I got my student loans a quarter century ago. Back then the loans were dischargeable and low. My loans came in at like 4% interest at the time. It is propaganda that it was a widespread problem and the "solution" was to legally protec…

In 1978 loans were made non dischargeable for the first 5 years and extended to 7 years in 1990. In 1998 the waiting period was eliminated making them non dischargeable in perpetuity. Private loans were made non dischargeable in 2005. So while student loans were technically dischargeable approx 28 years ago there were some big caveats.

Technically true is the best kind of true.

Fact: they were dischargeable. Fact: there was no crisis else rates would have already factored in. Else the argument is they were losing money overall. They wouldn't do that for literal decades. Fact: after the loans were no longer dischargeable, banks were guaranteed their rates and stopped being competitive with them and rates increased.

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#385

Post by grayhatter »

ryzvonusef wrote: post #140

The purpose of a college degree is NOT a job... but the purpose of a college LOAN is 100% a job, and it's very important to differentiate between the two. The whole point of the loan is to buy time; you don't want to wait for when you have savings to purchase the degree, you want to do it now . If you are not doing it for the job, then why the loan, what's the rush? If knowledge and prestige is all that matters, then…

> If knowledge and prestige is all that matters, then don't take the loan, take the scenic route, get your degree slowly as and when you have the time and money, and one day you will have something to look back at.

This is a nice idea, are you younger, or older? I find younger people say you have all the time in the world, where older people more often advocate for not wasting time, and to do it now. I know neither are arguments from your comment, but the context around the difference you see is interesting.

Other than compounding interest, why? Shouldn't everyone do what they find fulfilling as early as possible? Wouldn't acquiring knowledge earlier be as good as acquiring money earlier?

> You have the right to a degree in XYZ... you should NOT have the right to a taxpayer backed grant/aid/loan/whatever to gain said degree unless you're on a reasonable path to become a tax payer yourself as soon as you are done with the degree.

I find arguments like this incredibly stupid and shallow. The whole point of a society is to improve reality. The ability to do things together that you can't do alone. No one is owed a society, but we're all forced to live within one with dubious consent, (excluding people who've opted out completely from society). Just by the expectation that you'll obey the social contract, you're are owed the benefits of said society.

I *HATE* dealing with stupid people. I'm fine with my tax dollars being used to provide free education, at every level. To quote Stewart:

> How about this, you reimburse me for the [pointless war for oil] and [college education] is on me!

I've gladly payed taxes; and I'll eagerly assert that everyone does have the right to taxpayer funded education. It's what I want my money to go towards.

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#386

Post by croes »

kingstnap wrote: post #345
croes wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know why many companies prefer employees without a degree? Easier to exploit and manipulate. This step makes it even easier for them

Yes as we all know Employers are just bursting at the seems to hire people without a post secondary degree. Even more so if they don't even have a highschool degree. Just cant get enough of them lol.

No degree, doesn’t mean no skills.

Or how do you explain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiel_Fellowship

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#387

Post by dragonwriter »

ryzvonusef wrote: post #140

The purpose of a college degree is NOT a job... but the purpose of a college LOAN is 100% a job, and it's very important to differentiate between the two. The whole point of the loan is to buy time; you don't want to wait for when you have savings to purchase the degree, you want to do it now . If you are not doing it for the job, then why the loan, what's the rush? If knowledge and prestige is all that matters, then…

> The purpose of a college degree is NOT a job... but the purpose of a college LOAN is 100% a job, and it's very important to differentiate between the two.

No, the purpose of a college loan is to enable a student to pay for college with future earnings. It can be perfectly rational even if the loan/degree doesn't improve job prospects (and even more especially so if it doesn’t “improve” them in a purely financial sense that ignores the borrower’s actual utility function.)

The purpose of this test (like the special accounting rules imposed on the postal service) is not to better fulfill the purpose of a college degree or the purpose of a college loan. The purpose of the test is to increase the administrative compliance cost of participating in the college loan program as a means of stifling the program. Like the special accounting rules imposed on the Postal Service, its how you use the political power you have to chip away at a public program that you feel is too popular to abolish directly.

> You have the right to a degree in XYZ... you should NOT have the right to a taxpayer backed grant/aid/loan/whatever to gain said degree unless you're on a reasonable path to become a tax payer yourself as soon as you are done with the degree.

You have an inherent right to neither, but while any public policy must observe rights, it need not be limited to them.

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#388

Post by sethammons »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #184
sethammons wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The full reason is that preventing bankruptcy is the only way to keep interest rates low and make the loans widely available "They are eating the dogs and cats." It simply isn't true. I got my student loans a quarter century ago. Back then the loans were dischargeable and low. My loans came in at like 4% interest at the time. It is propaganda that it was a widespread problem and the "solution" was to legally protec…

If a non-negligible proportion of people would discharge their student loans in bankruptcy then the rates would have to increase by a non-negligible amount to make up for it. If a negligible proportion of people would discharge the loans as you suggest then the need to do it is the "eating the dogs and cats" in this case, since it doesn't matter a whole lot if nobody can do something nobody would have done anyway. So…

Which is it? Greed by banks. They were functionally fine up through the late nineties. The rules changed because banks wanted all their money instead of nearly all their money.

This is not market economics. This is regulatory capture. Market economics suggests they were more market based when there was risks to banks. The risks are removed and they can print out debt.

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#389

Post by picofarad »

rainsford wrote: post #377
djoldman wrote: post #288

The calculation is interesting: (For bachelors degrees): Each year, they will calculate the median earnings 4 years after graduation of graduates of every (Institution, CIP code) tuple. (CIP Code: 6 digit code that identifies a "program"; there are ~2,000). Then they calculate the median earnings of high school grads in that Institution's state across all jobs . If the high school grads earn more than the bachelors d…

Unless I'm misunderstanding, that calculation sounds fundamentally wrong if it's comparing median college graduate earnings after 4 years against high school graduate earnings in general. After 4 years the median college graduate is still early in their career and likely hasn't hit their maximum income potential, but they're being compared against high school graduates at every stage of their careers, including those…

A bachelors degree should be a large jump in earnings. I think in the 90s it was stated that high school diploma was lifetime ~$600,000, bachelors was $1,200,000,and so on up to PhD at $6,000,000 lifetime median earnings.

So a bachelors degree should get something like 25-50% more money after graduatation than the median high school graduate.

Re: Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

#390

Post by nradov »

beej71 wrote: post #289
rightbyte wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> do it on someone else’s dime. Money is just a social construct and the amount of tax dollars spent on classes in progressive tea pot clay handcraft is minuscule. Non-tech academics were more or lessed forced into getting degrees by the job market. There were no choice involved on part on the victims of a systematic issue, which is, gatekeeping access to middleclass jobs by the parents' bank account size with usury…

> amount of tax dollars spent on classes in progressive tea pot clay handcraft is minuscule. Seriously. Our debt goes up by $1T every 7 months, but I'm sure dropping even all student loans from all education won't stop it. I guess I get way more value from having artists in society than most people do. I get a lot of value out of city parks and libraries, too, both perpetual money-losers.

And yet many of our greatest artists never attended college at all.
Post reply on HN