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Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

statecraft.beehiiv.com

491–500 of 771 posts

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#491
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No its not Literally says "Subsidized and Unsubsidized Aggregate Loan Limit $31,000-No more than $23,000 of this amount may be in subsidized loan" Just confirms most people have no clue how small the limits actually are.

Those don't include private loans which can be co-signed by parents if needed, nor do they include PLUS loans where parents also take out loans. Colleges are also quite helpful in what you need to do to be declared independent for financial aide purposes, which almost doubles that limit. Graduate students are where it gets wild though.

Private loans aren’t backed by the government though.

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I read that Wall Street is creating CDO's based on these loans, like they (continue to) do on mortgages. Some people die "early" without paying back these loans, and sometimes, they will owe more than they took out. Given the mounting problems with the numbers here, it seems a whole generation of people in the middle of this bubble are going to go to the grave while still owing on these loans. What happens to the…

One of the core elements of the 2008 meltdown was when someone abandoned a house, all the other houses in the neighborhood would see a substantial drop in their value. This made it more likely that other people would go underwater on their mortgage and also walk away. Education doesn’t have this kind of contagion. If you stop paying your student loans it has very little impact on the value on my education.

If you can't pay your loan back because of poor education quality, then your fellow students will have the exact same problem.

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#493
post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you are right basically -- with the caveat that "business has shown the ability to be responsible with money" while individuals fail at this for a large variety of reasons. However, in many societies past and elsewhere, not every single individual adult has to manage money like a business. Zoom out a bit and you might imagine that government now treats corporations as a person, and persons like they have to behave li…

In what world have businesses shown the ability to be responsible with money?

I did put is quotes !! .. meaning that it is something that has been said, not something that is true in itself.

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems wrong to influence your son's decision based on your financial situation rather than his desires/passions. Of course if he's naturally interested in the trades then sure.

Passion doesn't pay the bills. It's good to be passionate about something, but many passions are not marketable. Many have drowned in student debt following their passions, but this wouldn't be so in many countries that have university education fully covered or significantly subsidized by taxes.

If passion doesn't pay the bills, it certainly can't pay taxes. Why should engineers and plumbers and garbagemen pay taxes to send someone to art school for years?

Once something is paid for with tax money, then the people paying the taxes want a say in how it's spent -- which is not just reasonable, it's a requirement of a liberal democracy.

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#495
We are seeing the perverse incentives of subsidized and free education. There are few barriers to increasing the cost of something if neither the consumer or supplier have sensitivity to cost at the time the purchase is made. And loans defer the pain for students in a way that makes them basically insensitive to the eventual cost of their education.

People react to incentives. Systems react to incentives. America has been ignoring this for 50 years.

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#496
post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work for a public organization or certain non-profits while making 10 years of regularly scheduled payments and you may be qualified for student loan forgiveness. Lots of physicians I know took advantage of this since most of their training is at public academic institutions, and I believe many teachers do as well.

Do you have data on how many take advantage of it? My anecdotes are that everyone who tries this gets trapped in some bureaucratic hell hole that tends to prevent it from actually being used.

NPR did some reporting on this a couple years ago: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/11/739860400/broken-promises-tea...

"By the department's last count, only 1% of the people who think they've made their 10 years of payments and apply for loan forgiveness are getting approved.

If you took all the people getting rejected and got them together in one place, Peterson says, you'd have "football stadiums full of nurses, firefighters, teachers, law enforcement officers that are seeking to have their debts forgiven.""

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do though. I was a Pell Grant recipient. All I did was fill out the FAFSA and the grant was automatically applied. That got me through community college debt free. When I transferred to a 4-year, I once again filled out the FAFSA and was eligible for an interest-free loan which covered the difference between tuition and my Pell Grant.

Pell grants are tiny though. Really, the current grant system doesn't work. We should tell the universities they must provide needs-based grants on their own and prohibit using ability to pay during admissions - or they don't receive federal grants. This way they aren't incentivized to continue to bloat costs (as happens now), since now the school is responsible for the costs.

> Pell grants are tiny though.

No, tuition rates at some schools are absurd. Max Pell Grant is enough to cover tuition at the three universities closest to me.

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems good in theory but hard in reality. The modern economy is built on debt being used for new investments. The problem is high interest rates, not interest rates in general.

Debt is being used for new investment? That can’t be right - it’s gotta be some form of credit, right? Maybe I’m mistaken.

Of course, it’s credit. The word “new” is redundant.

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have we learned...nothing?

We learned that people like to gamble and that it’s easy to push things forwards. Also, better jump on the loan band wagon, or you’ll be left out. Anyone without a mortgage + houw which appreciated has basically been robbed by people who do

This is why I’m 100% sure we’re headed towards another real estate meltdown sooner or later. Real estate prices and rates have skyrocketed. The number of people who could afford 500k mortgages at 3% is much higher than people who can afford 750k mortgages at 7%.

But lenders aren’t going to suddenly go from approving 100 loans a month to just 10 a month. The incentive structures are designed to weasel and lie to pump out flattering bottomlines every quarter.

You can trot out the statistics but you can’t change human behavior without changing the incentives.

Re: Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

#500
post #39
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse than just "backed by the federal government," the loans are basically protected by the government. Being one of the small list of things you can't bankrupt out of, the risk in giving out the loans has been fully pulled from the lenders. It is frustrating to hear the discourse over the inappropriate students that are taking on too much debt, all the while ignoring the lenders that are taking on too much risk. At…

What "lenders," and what "market" are you talking about? 92% of all student debt was issued by the federal government. As a matter of social policy, the government does not meaningfully consider credit risk when issuing student loans.

The government taking credit risk into account would have such regressive results it would be hilarious. The cost of college would dramatically plunge for kids from rich families taking CS and finance classes and skyrocket for everyone else
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