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

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441–450 of 565 posts

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

#441
post #258

This is great. Federally subsidized loans is directly (not solely) responsible for rapid inflation of college costs in the US. Anything to limit its use is a good thing. I’d argue that this test would be better expanded to actually having an ROI, not just do no harm, to encourage schools to not only provide value but also constrain costs (eg your school may make sense at $10k debt not $100k debt). This and/or making…

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

What data are you referencing that proves this? There is nothing inherent about degree X that makes someone less gullible. In fact, many college campuses are insulated echo chambers that do the exact opposite.

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

#442
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.

It is impossible that you paid 4% interest on (easily) dischargeable student loans. Any lender would be insane to do that with zero risk premium, and the risk would be substantial given it’s an unsecured loan. Possibly there was a clause stating something like “if you are permanently disabled and unable to work forever, you can have this loan discharged.” That’s not what I would consider dischargeable, it’s just the lender acknowledging they can’t squeeze blood from a stone and writing of the debt lets them recover a portion of the money they lent via writing of off.

You are simply misremembering. If it’s true, scan and upload the loan agreement. I just don’t believe it based on how lenders operate.

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

#443
post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you see no value in young energetic people being educated while their brains are still maximally plastic, and society get maximal value out of the education? Eh, I’ve often thought that going to college would’ve been much better after a few years of building software in the workforce. I didn’t understand the “why” of going into a lot of the subjects I studied, they didn’t have much real experience to attach to i…

> I think Waterloo’s mix of school and working is a pretty solid way to tackle this. We dont disagree at all here. I attended a university that did project based learning, where each semester was organized around a single semester long group project. That worked wonderfully well for me, and I enjoyed the more freeform learning environment immensly. Those connections you describe is exactly what I could feel forming a…

Ah yeah, another good method. We had some project-based labs, and those were definitely some of the most impactful classes for me. But those still tended to be somewhat "synthetic" projects, and we'd never really used even basic professional tools like SQL. I definitely would've had more motivation to spend more time learning about databases, for example, query planner, how to build, etc.

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

#444
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds great, if you don’t mind sharing, what school was it? We have a couple of young kids that that seems like maybe a good fit for.

It was a school in rural Mississippi which was next to an Air Force Base and filled primarily w/ children of base personnel --- apparently it was changed away from that shortly after my father retired, I had thought because of legal challenges, but that was from the uncertain organic memory of 10 year old me of half a century ago.

Dang, ah well. Thanks for answering, anyway.

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

#445
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I want a philosophy degree then it's my God-given right to pay $240,000 plus interest for it. Maybe it shouldn't be subsidized, though.

Is this like, a real sum of money americans pay for a degree? Overhead must be mind-boggiling if like just two students are needed to pay educator's salary for the period.

In my rural located college it was 9k per year for undergrad tuition if you lived in-state, add 5k or more if you aren't from the state, but you also needed food and a place to live and books and computer. I would expect atleast 12k per year for a decent college if you don't do anything but eat ramen. Maybe take 1-2k off for a community college, tuition makes it look like a bigger savings but there are a lot of extras you lose by not going to a campus university.

Of course you might need others things too like a car if you aren't on a larger more urban (and thus more expensive) campus. But that obviously varies.

The "good" univeristy in my state would be more like 20k for tuition in-state and like 35k for out of staters.

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

#446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one thinks doing simple derivatives is a chore, I'd suggest a career other than engineering. I've known many engineers who practiced math avoidance. None of them were worth much as engineers. I know a recruiter who would ask engineering candidates what is 20% of 20,000, without using a calculator or phoning a friend. He was surprised at how many could not, and it was an easy way to filter out the no hires.

> I've known many engineers who practiced math avoidance. None of them were worth much as engineers. I have an engineering degree and did "real" engineering (electronics/semiconductors) before switching to SW. Almost all my engineering courses required calculus knowledge. None of my real engineering jobs benefited from it. And I say that as someone who tried to find any and every excuse to use calculus at work. I lov…

P.S. Have fun guessing if your hydraulic feedback flight control system can go unstable and tear itself apart. Or if the spinning differential gearbox will disintegrate if it hits the stops. Or if the gear profile is minimum weight for the loads.

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

#447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 refusi…

In all the cases you mentioned, the banks have risk. Normal lending falls into normal economic rules. We've (effectively) removed the risk for banks with education loan. Wanting "all their money" is a translation of "accept no risk." The risk is required for economic rules to apply.

Why should banks not accept risk at all? Why was 7 years protection not effective? I have seen no evidence that the previous protections banks had were insufficient.

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

#448
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, says you? We live in a society and to some extent we decide what that means. I believe many countries outside the US have heavily subsidised loans or cost deferment mechanisms, or just outright government funding for school. Certainly in Australia you essentially don't have to pay back your HECS debt if you don't end up with a salary of sufficient magnitude, and then the rate at which you pay it back is scale…

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Places like Australia, Canada and UK and many others use higher international student fees to subsidize local students. In terms of % international students to total, Australia is among the highest at 31.6%, Canada at 21.2% and US at 5.3%. So many of these countries are solving their funding problem on the back of international students.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-students-from-ab...

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

#449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, I have takrn a class like that. Was a political science class. Extreme hard right (chinese dissident, hard anti-left). I wrote the requisite papers. All of them were F, with no commentary. I brought this to the department chair, and the grades changed to b's and a-'s. He was absolutely grading on political position for the paper, and not a proper discussion of content per the rubric. And, aside from going t…

I don't understand how this happened. Surely you picked up enough of the lecturer's views during the lectures and you knew what you had to say to get a good grade. So why didn't you do it? The way I see it, the humanities classes are there to make sure you learn the non-technical aspects of life well enough to be a functioning member of the adult world. To succeed in life, one of the things you need to be able to do…

What you're saying is I should be happy to oblige corruption and sycophancy. Like hell, quite frankly.

This guy was teaching his own pet unsubstantiated 'theories' as a political science class. Anybody who argued or otherwise didn't agree with his garbage was flunked out, or attempted to be flunked.

People like that in areas of power, should hr held to a high standard, or fired from those roles. Same goes for hard-left AND hard-right propaganda. In my case, he was reviewed, and later dismissed. I'm sure I had a hand in his firing.

He was doing a great injustice to political science proper, and to all of his students. By definition, we didn't learn political science.

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

#450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that was an actual problem wouldn't people be doing it without the college already? When I was in my early 20s I got non-stop credit offers and I could have easily pulled out tens of thousands in crappy debt.

Ok. And the interest on unsecured debts like credit cards are like 25%. Sounds like the risk is properly priced in. What's your point?

Why does the interest matter much if you are going to declare bankruptcy anyways?
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