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More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

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Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#71

Post by KekDemaga »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #63
KekDemaga wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when public college becomes the new high school continue to add layers of education as needed.

Are you arguing against public high schools? I don't understand.

Not at all, I'm just pointing out that many jobs that only required a high school degree now require a college degree without the job fundamentally changing all that much. More people attending college would likely worsen that trend to the point where "College 2" (whatever it would be called) would then be required to stand out.

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#72

Post by cableshaft »

ep103 wrote: post #58
mtgx wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but repayment of those loans is capped as a percentage of the person's income, Depending on what you mean by this, it could be either a good idea or nothing would change. So can you clarify? If you simply mean that the students would only have to pay back a portion of the loan, but the government would still have to fund the rest to the university, then nothing would change from how things work right now. The unive…

I meant as in, student loans (whether private or public) have a maximum mandatory monthly repayment rate of, say, 10% of the individual's monthly income. So let's say I took in $1000 before taxes this month. The highest my minimum monthly payment can be on my student loans (total) is $100. That puts pressure back on the university to keep their tuition rates in line with what can actually be repaid, ie, the actual fi…

This puts zero pressure on the actual university to do anything with tuition. The universities aren't the ones loaning the money or counting on your repayments. That's handled by private or government subsidized lenders. It's not a solution at all.

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#73

Post by notfromhere »

jaclaz wrote: post #17

In a nutshell, as a generic reasoning, say that a few years ago the student loan was about US$ 100,000 and once you got the degree you had - on average - a higher pay of around US$ 10,000 per year (net). You could repay it in 10 years time while living at the same level of your non-graduated friends. Now say that the student loan averages US$ 150,000 and - still on average - the increase in annual wages is US$ 7,500…

At some point they do start garnishing your wages, so that's not a long-term strategy

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#74

Post by Chardok »

13of40 wrote: post #59
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could make public college free, just like we did with high school.

Maybe the real problem is that we've developed this caste system over the last 50 years where people who don't get college degrees are excluded from careers that can sustain a middle class lifestyle. What if free college just moves the goal post and in a couple more decades nearly everyone has a Master's degree and you need a PhD to earn a decent living? What happens if the most talented segment of our work force end…

Honestly we need to completely rid ourselves of the notion that education should be preparation for a job and instead looking at it as a betterment of society in general.

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#75

Post by rtkwe »

tyrw wrote: post #44
fhood wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of lessened "value" of degrees, University's need to be held accountable for some of the debt that they are encouraging students to take on. For example, at my public university, STEM students were charges several thousand dollars a year more than humanities students. STEM programs also did their best to discourage enrollment. Meanwhile the anthropology department is literally begging students to stay and ge…

Why should this be the case? They offer a service with hundreds of competing options (other schools), so it's hard to argue they're not offering market rate.

The market is much smaller than you think especially for public universities because of the huge difference between in and out of state student rates. That means most students can only really consider in state schools where there's at most a handful and generally they've each got a few things they're known to be 'the good one' for that subject/field.

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#76

Post by notfromhere »

tbirrell wrote: post #36

Serious question: Who loses out if all the student debt got canceled? Not the colleges, I assume, because they already got the tuition. And not the students. So would it be loan companies and the US government? Would such an action be catastrophic?

The gov't loses the repayment, since student loans are federally backed. Though the fed is double dipping on the student loans: they get interest back on the loans while also getting higher tax revenue from higher incomes.

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#77

Post by wfo »

13of40 wrote: post #59
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could make public college free, just like we did with high school.

Maybe the real problem is that we've developed this caste system over the last 50 years where people who don't get college degrees are excluded from careers that can sustain a middle class lifestyle. What if free college just moves the goal post and in a couple more decades nearly everyone has a Master's degree and you need a PhD to earn a decent living? What happens if the most talented segment of our work force end…

Well, the point of college isn't to do job training. There are trade skills for that. College exists in the exact state high school did before it was made free for everyone. It is a barrier for entry into "good" jobs and the middle-upper class. It is simultaneously a way for people to learn and become informed citizens, to get some context for the world around them and how it operates, to learn economics and philosophy and mathematics and physics and computer science if they are interested in it.

After a while we said "no, everybody should go to high school and learn civics and math even though they aren't necessary for most specific jobs". Before that, we had the poor starting manual labor or apprenticeships at 12, never learning anything beyond their specific skill, while actually becoming educated and a citizen was reserved only for the rich. We decided to make our workforce and citizenry more thoughtful and educated and improved society as a whole significantly.

It's time to do it again. Our world is much more complicated now, human knowledge has expanded vastly. College education is now the baseline for 'educated person' and that's okay. It's great, even. Thanks to free high school the poor can study math and history. If there were free college, the poor could study economics and philosophy and computer science too.

How many talented people do we lose by shunting the poor (who are, in capitalism, always the vast majority of the population) into non-education job training when they are young because they can't afford to learn about the world?

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#78

Post by tbirrell »

Rainymood wrote: post #55
tbirrell wrote: post #36

Serious question: Who loses out if all the student debt got canceled? Not the colleges, I assume, because they already got the tuition. And not the students. So would it be loan companies and the US government? Would such an action be catastrophic?

I think this is kind of a nonsensical question but please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Imagine you and I agree to a deal, both verbally and contractually (i.e. on paper). I give you 10 euros and you pay me back 11 euros in exactly 1 year. Now 6 months into the deal you suddenly ask yourself: "Well who would lose out when this debt gets cancelled?" Do you see now why I think it is a nonsensical question?

Sure, it would seem obvious that the loaner is the one to lose out. The things it, I'm not sure who all the various loaners are these days or how much the economy itself would be affected by these people suddenly not having $1.3 trillion (or whatever the figure is these days) coming to them.

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#79

Post by wfo »

KekDemaga wrote: post #71
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you arguing against public high schools? I don't understand.

Not at all, I'm just pointing out that many jobs that only required a high school degree now require a college degree without the job fundamentally changing all that much. More people attending college would likely worsen that trend to the point where "College 2" (whatever it would be called) would then be required to stand out.

And we would have educated our citizenry and let millions of people learn about the world and the expanses of human knowledge instead of just the rich for nothing, since those citizens wouldn't be able to generate extra wealth for their bosses. What a nightmare.

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#80

Post by wfo »

binarymax wrote: post #54
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could make public college free, just like we did with high school.

"Free" is covered by taxes already paid. So making university "free" would be an additional tax. But instead of the attendees paying for them directly, the pay would be spread out. Also, it would change the dynamic of which school you could attend. High School is covered based on taxes in the town paid for by property owners. Some university programs are subsidized by state taxes (like SUNY for New York) and are disc…

No, "Free" is covered by printing money which the government does all the time (where does it get money for billions of dollars in military increases? It just appears out of nowhere, handed to military contractors). Taxes are to manage the amount of US dollars in circulation and to constantly create demand for them after the services are created and money is printed.
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