Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid • Hacker News Board

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

#391

Post by nradov » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 4:13 PM UTC

LPisGood wrote: post #275

arenaninja wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not gather up with other like-minded individuals and fund scholarships and grants if you feel strongly about this? I disagree that taxing the rich is our way out of this. There's a reason the starving artist is a cultural trope. Not only that but the higher ed industry has abused the hell out of this program. I'm close to people who were studying degrees they will never come close to paying and now they're $100k+…

The reality is the degree should have been entirely funded by the government’s coffers. Funding arts and humanities education is so cheap and provides so much relative societal benefit that it’s a no brainer.

OK but how many? There has to be some upper limit. It's hardly fair to ask citizens who went to work or joined the military out of high school to pay taxes to fund free education for an unlimited number of liberal arts scholars.

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

#392

Post by ozim » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 4:20 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #368

ozim wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really not fun part is that loads of office jobs can be done with high school education level where companies require a degree. I guess it is because there are not enough office jobs and not enough masters/bachelors level jobs so we are all at rat race.

Right, economists describe this as a signaling mechanism. Most regular office jobs don't require skills beyond the high school level. But a college degree signals to employers that the candidate has some discipline and ability to complete tasks. That allows employers to cut down the candidate pool to a manageable size and somewhat reduce the risk of a bad hire. When labor demand is high, employers are quick to elimin…

Big corporations or decent companies are not quick to drop requirements.

Sweatshops or „Joe Shmuck” companies that will make you swipe floors after you finish filling in TPS reports are quick to drop requirements.

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

#393

Post by ThrowawayR2 » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 4:23 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #336

class3shock wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The purpose of a college degree is NOT a job" Check the marketing literature for any college and you will find that is not true. The only people doing degrees for knowledge and prestige are the filthy rich and while they may make up a significant percentage of students at the top 5 schools, they make up a tiny percentage of all college students. The last point is where I end up aswell though and I think no matter ho…

> Check the marketing literature for any college and you will find that is not true. I actually had the opposite takeaway. The last university literature booklets I saw were all about the experience, the facilities, the sports, the events, and the fun. I don’t even remember if they included content about getting a job at the end.

That seems to depend on the category of the institution? The websites of two R1 universities for CS I skimmed don't mention jobs but websites for two local community colleges mention career and earnings benefits front and center.

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

#394

Post by Aurornis » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 4:23 PM UTC

sethammons wrote: post #384

kentm wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're still getting your facts wrong.

Loans are still dischargeable under certain conditions.

You claimed that "a quarter century ago" student loans could be discharged in bankruptcy, but that's not really true either. The restrictions started in 1978 with waiting periods and those waiting periods were eliminated in 1998 for government loans and shortly after that for private loans.

The period in which you got this 4% loan was within the period where bankruptcy protections were in place, not before it.

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

#395

Post by rightbyte » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 4:24 PM UTC

tyleo wrote: post #291

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…

> Money is just a social construct I'm not sure what you're trying to say but it hardly matters if "X is social construct" if having it is the difference between struggling and not. TBH this is the exact thing that frustrates people who get screwed by the system, "Silly peasants! Don't they know that money is just a social construct!"

I am trying to say that the game is rigged and the profitability of different university studies is a very bad indicator of anything.

I don't know what to say to those "screwed by The Man" to make them feel better.

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

#396

Post by ndriscoll » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 4:25 PM UTC

WillAdams wrote: post #362

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?

Those texts were a standard part of grade school social studies when I was young, and my children read all in the course of a typical public education long before graduating.

They might be part of the curriculum, but apparently ~half the country doesn't know what we just celebrated[0], so I somehow doubt they actually did their reading. It's pretty easy to pass or even do well in classes without really engaging with the material at all, even at the university level. Like I got an A in a philosophy course by just reading the professor's notes on exam morning and spitting them back out on an essay. I've still never gone back and actually read Grotius.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2026/07/03/nx-s1-5881451/cato-institute-...

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

#397

Post by parineum » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 4:25 PM UTC

blfr wrote: post #305

bitmasher9 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would argue that a child has a right to a certain number of years of education. I would also argue society is better if its people are more educated.

Is it? We have piled on tons of new years of education, are we that much better off as a society, more cultured than, say, the French in the 50s when most people had like 8 classes under their belt?

> are we that much better off as a society ... than ... the French in the 50s

Everyone in the western world is, including the French.

> are we ... more cultured than, say, the French in the 50s

That's a pretty meaningless question to me.

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

#398

Post by Aurornis » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 4:25 PM UTC

sethammons wrote: post #388

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Which is it? Greed by banks. They were functionally fine up through the late nineties.

Except the regulations for student loan discharge started with government loans, not private loans.

Congress restricted discharge of government loans first, because they were trying to protect the continued existence of the program and the low interest rates.

You've had incorrect facts all throughout this thread and you're refusing to acknowledge all of the people trying to bring real facts into the discussion.

> The rules changed because banks wanted all their money instead of nearly all their money.

You're not understanding how interest rates work.

Banks aren't charities. They don't give people money and hope that it gets paid back. They set the interest rate in accordance with the risk.

There are two ways this can work:

1. The debts are easy to discharge in bankruptcy. Banks do their analyses, estimate how many will be lost ot bankruptcy, and increase interest rates until the net result makes lending justifiable.

2. The debts are hard to discharge. The analysis shows a higher recovery rate. They can lower interest rates because the risk of default is down.

There is not a 3rd scenario where banks keep interest rates low and eat the losses from bankruptcy.

If you think that a business wanting "all of their money" is greed then you don't understand how business works. If loans became a money-losing proposition, they just wouldn't loan the money! Though honestly there are some good arguments that we shouldn't be lending money to people who might not pay it back, but there are a lot of people who dislike this idea that we should only give loans to people pursuing careers that pay well.

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

#399

Post by toast0 » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 4:25 PM UTC

nekusar wrote: post #267

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The collateral is effectively a claim on the person's future earnings Back in the Russian empire a person could buy themselves out of serfdom if they could come up with the money… which was difficult for obvious reasons. And this feels like a modern reincarnation of the system. It’s categorised as ‘ Unfree Labour’

Its the same too with renouncing citizenship. If you have federal student loans, you are trapped as being a US serf. And with usurious interest rates, you will never be able to buy your freedom.

Are federal student loans at usurious interest rates?

From what I could find [1], the caps look fairly reasonable. The unaffordability seems to come from the financed amount.

[1] https://mohela.studentaid.gov/DL/resourceCenter/DLInterestRa...

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

#400

Post by treis » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 4:26 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #361

ryzvonusef wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I should have written it a bit more clearer, but in my mind I was comparing degrees with certifications. I feel studies/degrees that have an associated certification (possibly legally mandated) linked to it should have a different loan profile as compared to open-ended degrees. Whether you are going to Trade school to become a Plumber, or Med school to become a Doctor; in both cases there is the study part (t…

I think you might be a little confused about how the practice of medicine works. State medical boards license physicians. Earning a license usually requires an MD/DO degree, passing the USMLE exam, and completing some amount of post-graduate training (residency). Once you're licensed you can legally perform pretty much any medical procedure regardless of whether it's in your specialty or not. There may be separate co…

They didn't say license. They said certification which is issued by the relevant board. While theoretically a medical license gives you the right to perform heart surgery without the relevant certification no hospital will let you, no insurance company will cover you, and your license will be immediately revoked.