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White House rolls back protections for people in default on student loans

washingtonpost.com

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Re: White House rolls back protections for people in default on student loans

#51

Post by dkrich »

brianwawok wrote: post #35
brogrammer2 wrote: post #26

Sometimes I do wonder why American Universities charge exorbitant tuition fee? Education being the bedrock of an advanced society, isn't but natural the developed economies like US should be able to subsidize education to such an extant that youth of country don't have to worry about paying their tuition fee and focus more on learning and innovation that will take everyone forward. It is but a reflection on the sad s…

> Sometimes I do wonder why American Universities charge exorbitant tuition fee? Students demand a lot. Good profs. Dorms with AC. Sports teams. Medical care. All that cost a lot. States and federal gov't pays less each year. The difference has to come from somewhere? In any case, its not perfect but I will take US colleges 100x over Japanese Colleges or Chinese Colleges or Mexican Colleges or 98% of the colleges in…

This seems to be based on some misinformation. Tuition only covers a small portion of a university's costs. The rest is made up by endowments, grants, donations, and other sources.

People have been going to college in this country for a long time and only relatively recently has the outstanding amount of loans and those in delinquency have shot up. I have a hard time believing the reason is having good professors and air conditioning.

Re: White House rolls back protections for people in default on student loans

#52

Post by gregw134 »

brogrammer2 wrote: post #26

Sometimes I do wonder why American Universities charge exorbitant tuition fee? Education being the bedrock of an advanced society, isn't but natural the developed economies like US should be able to subsidize education to such an extant that youth of country don't have to worry about paying their tuition fee and focus more on learning and innovation that will take everyone forward. It is but a reflection on the sad s…

There are three gigantic sources of waste in the US: healthcare, military spending and education. All of them are 1) run by large organizations with growing bureaucracies, 2) considered so important that any expense is justified, 3) heavily subsidized or financed with loans or insurance, so growing costs are always met 4) in a position where the bureaucracy decides how much should be spent, not the end consumer. In other words, the school decides its students need $300 text books, or to raise rates $1k to fund new buildings and programs. Same with hospitals: the last hospital I was at had a grand piano and robots roaming the hallway. Politicians don't want to be seen cutting defense spending, so the military bureaucracy decides how much to spend, and when there's money left at the end of the year they always find a way to spend it. I'm not sure how we should fix it, but I'd imagine we either have to increase pressure on these institutions to save money by drying up their endless source of revenue, or take the purchasing decisions out of their hands and back into the hands of consumers.

Re: White House rolls back protections for people in default on student loans

#54

Post by ginko »

brianwawok wrote: post #35
brogrammer2 wrote: post #26

Sometimes I do wonder why American Universities charge exorbitant tuition fee? Education being the bedrock of an advanced society, isn't but natural the developed economies like US should be able to subsidize education to such an extant that youth of country don't have to worry about paying their tuition fee and focus more on learning and innovation that will take everyone forward. It is but a reflection on the sad s…

> Sometimes I do wonder why American Universities charge exorbitant tuition fee? Students demand a lot. Good profs. Dorms with AC. Sports teams. Medical care. All that cost a lot. States and federal gov't pays less each year. The difference has to come from somewhere? In any case, its not perfect but I will take US colleges 100x over Japanese Colleges or Chinese Colleges or Mexican Colleges or 98% of the colleges in…

>Students demand a lot. Good profs. Dorms with AC. Sports teams. Medical care.

Why would you expect your university to provide dorms for you? This whole living on campus thing on Anglo universities was always weird to me. You'd only expect perks like that if you pay thousands of dollars a semester. Also Re:"Medical care": That's what universal health care is for.

Re: White House rolls back protections for people in default on student loans

#55

Post by loeg »

brianwawok wrote: post #35
brogrammer2 wrote: post #26

Sometimes I do wonder why American Universities charge exorbitant tuition fee? Education being the bedrock of an advanced society, isn't but natural the developed economies like US should be able to subsidize education to such an extant that youth of country don't have to worry about paying their tuition fee and focus more on learning and innovation that will take everyone forward. It is but a reflection on the sad s…

> Sometimes I do wonder why American Universities charge exorbitant tuition fee? Students demand a lot. Good profs. Dorms with AC. Sports teams. Medical care. All that cost a lot. States and federal gov't pays less each year. The difference has to come from somewhere? In any case, its not perfect but I will take US colleges 100x over Japanese Colleges or Chinese Colleges or Mexican Colleges or 98% of the colleges in…

I went to university in 2008. We did not have dorms with AC. The dorm I lived in was built in the 40s or 50s. Tuition (no relation to dorm costs) was still rising rapidly. Now my alma mater has new dorms with AC, but they cost far more than the older dorms (which are still available). Tuition has continued to rise since then, albeit more gradually.

My university did not provide free medical care. Professor quality has not quantifiably improved over that time.

Have sports team costs increased so rapidly in the last 10-15 years?

Re: White House rolls back protections for people in default on student loans

#56

Post by madenine »

artursapek wrote: post #19

I keep seeing people say that the student loan crisis will be the next "bubble pop". It seems like colleges and lenders both got greedy and created a mass of debt to them that will never be paid off. That, and I imagine the current generation will send their own kids to college at a much lower rate than their parents did. The "college bubble" is going to pop.

Its going to be a really rough bubble. There's no one source to point the finger at, but we've got ourselves in a spiral where:

-More people are going to school

-University costs have skyrocketed (mostly due to expanded administration services), which has increased the need for students to secure loans

-Wage growth has been low/flat for a long time

-A college degree has replaced a high school diploma/GED as a minimum requirement for most middle class jobs

-New grads are coming out of school to lower paying jobs relative to the cost of their education than ever before, driving defaults.

-As college matriculation becomes more and more necessary, even great high schools pivot towards a goal of getting students into college, instead of providing them great educations which have a secondary effect of getting them into college. Further decreasing the value of high school as someone's highest degree of education.

The last one is very worrisome for me, and something I hear a lot about. I have family and friends who are college professors - even those at ivy league universities are saying their students are just as smart as before, but on average now they're not as generally educated and way less prepared for serious academic work. They can't handle the same work loads, don't write or research as well, require more oversight/direction - things like that.

How do you fix that without blowing everything up and probably destroying the lives for a huge group of people who's only crime was being born in a certain set of years? Not to mention the economic implications of an entire generation going into middle age already carrying massive debt - how are they going to generate asset wealth?

Re: White House rolls back protections for people in default on student loans

#57

Post by Kluny »

UpDownLeftRight wrote: post #39
BucketSort wrote: post #5

After a few years of unemployment and being treated for bipolar depression my loans were in default. Due to the grace of the system at the time, I was able to bring my loans out of default and I now pay them like everyone else. This type of thing punishes the downtrodden even more. There must be a set of checks and balances that at least attempts to differentiate between deadbeats and broke people that don't need a h…

I don't pay student loans. Do you know why? I don't have them. I went to an inexpensive local school, worked while going to school, and took the public bus to and from it. (I was fortunate enough to be able to live with my parents.) While I don't know your situation, it's hard for me to feel sorry for someone who went to an expensive private school, lived on campus in a "country club" atmosphere, and then expects the…

I think it's more that students are allowed to take loans that they can't possibly service. Since you can't get out of loans via bankruptcy and the loans are backed by the federal government, loan agencies have no reason to make sure borrowers are qualified. When they issue big loans to women's studies and philosophy majors, they don't assume any of the risk that's rightfully theirs. That's where the abuse happens. Students, in their ignorance, take on more than their fair share of risk.

Re: White House rolls back protections for people in default on student loans

#58

Post by someguydave »

andr wrote: post #13
yummyfajitas wrote: post #3

This is probably a good idea. It's ridiculous that we coddle people who wastefully took out loans with the goal of improving human capital, and then failed to take advantage of them. Previously student loans were a socialized losses, privatized gains situation. This gives borrowers some skin in the game and will hopefully give them more reason to carefully evaluate whether college is really a good idea for them.

A professional VC will be wrong about some 80% of the startups they fund. Yet you want to punish a teenager for not correctly evaluating the chances of receiving a well-paying job 4+ years into the future?

The VC is "punished" by his own (and his investor's) voluntary investment losses. Who covers the teenager's losses?

Re: White House rolls back protections for people in default on student loans

#59

Post by razorunreal »

brianwawok wrote: post #35
brogrammer2 wrote: post #26

Sometimes I do wonder why American Universities charge exorbitant tuition fee? Education being the bedrock of an advanced society, isn't but natural the developed economies like US should be able to subsidize education to such an extant that youth of country don't have to worry about paying their tuition fee and focus more on learning and innovation that will take everyone forward. It is but a reflection on the sad s…

> Sometimes I do wonder why American Universities charge exorbitant tuition fee? Students demand a lot. Good profs. Dorms with AC. Sports teams. Medical care. All that cost a lot. States and federal gov't pays less each year. The difference has to come from somewhere? In any case, its not perfect but I will take US colleges 100x over Japanese Colleges or Chinese Colleges or Mexican Colleges or 98% of the colleges in…

Even if US colleges are better than 98% of the world (which I doubt, it seems like you conveniently forgot Canada, Europe, Australia, etc.) employers are mostly using that degree as a box tick. Convincing students they need the exhorbitantly priced best when they really don't still seems predatory to me.

Personally I paid the equivalent of 16kUSD for a 4 year software degree in New Zealand, and my fortune 500 employer seems fine with it. A foreigner would have to pay double, but that's still far from US prices.

Re: White House rolls back protections for people in default on student loans

#60

Post by HarryHirsch »

artursapek wrote: post #41
nhangen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have two teenagers and a 7 year old. The oldest is 15 and doesn't even think about college. I don't nudge him either way, but find it interesting he has not even considered it. My daughter is 13 and wants to go to college, but only because TV says that's where you go to meet boys and get married.

Hah. I have a 3 year old and am very curious what the "college scene" will look like in 15 years.

A lot less than Sweetbriar and much more like Virginia Commonwealth University. Stanford and MIT will be fine, the University of California won't be.

Sweetbriar: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/23/fashion/the-independent-w...

The very top will survive the cuts in federal funding, but research at lower tiers won't survive. The larger sectarian colleges will survive, the smaller ones will die. Notre Dame will remain, Seton Hall and the Franciscan University of Steubenville will go away, that's a good thing.

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