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@DBlaze
Sarcasm is beyond your ken.
What should we do about student loans?
Posts
Total:
65
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@disgusted
it started during the Great Depression. Not everyone went to school or even tried to before it. Once the economy fell, the only people getting jobs were people with degrees
If you reach puberty do you think your opinions might change?
This is not an opinion. This is called critical thinking... you think the Great Depression had no influence on people's decision to attend college/ higher education? Puberty has nothing to do with this, but actual wisdom does. I guarantee I went through puberty before you were even close to a thought in your parents head of becoming a fetus, baby, human, or whatever your preferred name is.
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@DBlaze
Wanna bet baby?
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@disgusted
Sure. Do you want to go off high school graduation year? College Graduation year? 15 or 20 year anniversary date at work after graduating College? Or would you like to just keep it simple and say your age first?
I don't lie, and I will admit it if you are older than me.
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@Greyparrot
Are you saying that my example was a myth? It's not listed in the link you provided?
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@DBlaze
Wow did you go to college, in America, did you learn how to add up.
Without using google tell me what event happened in 1953 that was worldwide news, or were you not alive then. No GOOGLE, you claim to be honest.
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@disgusted
Fair enough... what happened in 1953 that has to do with the Great Depression?
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@disgusted
And you are right, I was not alive then. So, if you were alive then, Kudo's to you, you are older than me. Like I said, I don't lie.
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@DBlaze
You're not old enough and you are trying desperately to change the subject. So you were born post 1953, or are you just an ignorant yank?
Posted before your post 39 so my apologies.
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@disgusted
WTF are you talking about? I just told you I was not alive then, (I was speaking about 1953), which means I would be post 1953.... You were implying that you were alive then, so that would make you older than me. Am I missing something? Maybe you are too old and have become senile.
How was I trying to change the subject?
What are you getting at?
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@disgusted
Oh... OK. sorry, I posted before I saw yours. I think we are back on track now.
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@DBlaze
Queen Elisabeth II was crowned the queen of England and her domains.Fuckin' big deal I know. It's actually the year of my hatching, that's right I'm a fuckin' dinosaur.
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@DBlaze
So how old are you. I've given you more information than I've ever given anyone on the internet.
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@disgusted
40 years old.
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@disgusted
Now you know more than I do. Exact age.
I won't ask you yours because I respect my elders.
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@DBlaze
Hope you get many more.
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@DBlaze
I told you my hatching date just subtract that from 2019.
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@disgusted
Oh, I thought there was actually world wide news the year you were talking about. I didn't look it up, and I was still waiting on the answer. I probably would have been doing some serious web searching later on if you didn't clear that up for me.
I hope I have many more as well. I will treat you with more respect from now on. You do have more time in this world, more experience? questionable, but I will give the benefit of the doubt. .....In the USA? Probably doesn't matter too much, but there is some variance there.
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@Levi
In the US, you can already get a good college degree for a very reasonable amount of money. You get massive debt by wasting $120,000 on a BA or $70,000 on a master's program when there's great ones for much less.I'd stop lending money for these schools. I wouldn't end student loans entirely.Will ending student loans lower costs? I'm skeptical. Is there data supporting that? I know lots of universities waste money on expensive useless shit but why would that change just because you get rid of loans? We already have plenty of affordable colleges that can barely stay open at their current level of funding, and ending loans won't impact their tuition at all. The goal should be to encourage students to weigh costs in their decisions, not to eliminate expensive options altogether.
Well if there wasn’t a nearly infinite line of credit, very few 18 year olds could afford $50k tuition, so the market for incredibly expensive schools would dry up. But it’s kind of a moot point because I think you’ve hinted at a better solution. Maybe don’t cut off certain schools entirely, but cap federal student loans to around the level of the median nationwide tuition. If schools want to charge more than that, they’ll have to rely on normal loans that financial institutions will be reluctant to give because they might eat a loss if the student discharges it in bankruptcy. Normal lending standards would have to be applied.
I can see problems with that as well though. I’m not sure what the perfect solution would be, but all of these things seem better than the status quo. I think there has to be some way to address the fact that college is basically a racket. For the most part these are supposedly non profits. It does not take $50,000 a year to give someone an undergraduate education. Full stop. That is a completely insane amount of money and there are good schools that do it for a fifth of the cost. This is something the government should be involved in. Open a federal investigation to determine what exactly made tuition explode around the 1990s and how to stop it.
As for already-existing debt, I understand paying more taxes to help the disadvantaged. But paying more taxes to forgive the debt of entitled irresponsible folks? I don't think that's right. Let's say we forgive their debt, what's the likelihood these people won't rack up the same debt within a couple years? And why should responsible non-entitled students have to pay for the luxuries of the irresponsible?Yes, it sucks that a bunch of students were misled. But there's also a lot of students who were able to make responsible decisions & they shouldn't be punished. And going forward the priority needs to be changing the culture -- getting kids to weigh costs instead of blindly chasing prestige -- and forgiving loans seems like something that would solidify the current culture instead of promoting change.
ehhhhhh
I get this perspective. I really do. In fact this is the answer I would’ve given a year or so ago. But I think the situation is just a little bit different:
1) The primary culprit who misled those students is the government itself. There is absolutely zero guidance provided for those students about what some reasonable goals and expectations from college are, other than constant propaganda about how terrible of a decision it is not to go to college. The government also completely distorted lending standards to allow this problem to occur. I think it bears a lot of responsibility here.
2) Many people made mistakes (something teenagers are known to do.) and I’m not saying we should simply pay off all student debt. They made irresponsible choices and they should pay for them. But how much? Should their lives be ruined? Because in many of the horror stories, that is exactly what will happen. We give people who rack up massive credit card debt the ability to start from nothing again. Why should students not be given this same opportunity? As irresponsible as their choices, influenced by a lifetime of propaganda, were, they weren’t any more irresponsible than racking up credit card debt online shopping. I think that if a student demonstrates a serious effort to pay off their loan (10% of your income for 10 years is not insignificant) they should at least be given the opportunity, ten years after college, to declare bankruptcy.
By the way, this is FourTrouble from DDO. I just joined the site to see what's going on, and looked for a familiar person to respond to. How are things going around here? Seems fairly dead.
I’m not really sure actually, I don’t check it that much. There are a lot more people from DDO here but many of them changed their names
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@thett3
I mostly agree with you on this. The government needs to get involved in protecting students from predatory lending, and I like the idea of an investigation into rising tuition costs. My biggest concern is that I don't feel comfortable punishing the students who made good decisions, as well as people who didn't even attend college. And by the way, I'm saying this as someone who made bad decisions. I'm still paying off student debt and have a lot of regrets about my choices re: college.
2) Many people made mistakes (something teenagers are known to do.) and I’m not saying we should simply pay off all student debt. They made irresponsible choices and they should pay for them. But how much? Should their lives be ruined? Because in many of the horror stories, that is exactly what will happen. We give people who rack up massive credit card debt the ability to start from nothing again. Why should students not be given this same opportunity? As irresponsible as their choices, influenced by a lifetime of propaganda, were, they weren’t any more irresponsible than racking up credit card debt online shopping. I think that if a student demonstrates a serious effort to pay off their loan (10% of your income for 10 years is not insignificant) they should at least be given the opportunity, ten years after college, to declare bankruptcy.
I don't understand how student debt "ruins" lives. As things stand, you can already discharge student loans in bankruptcy if you prove that they cause an "undue hardship." So if it's actually ruining your life, there are remedies available. We could look into relaxing the "undue hardship" standard to make it a bit easier, but I'm skeptical of the "horror stories." Maybe I'm giving the bankruptcy courts too much credit in distinguishing "entitlement" from legitimate claims of "undue hardship," I dunno.
It's a tricky issue, for sure. As you know, I tend to agree with Democrats a lot more but this is one of those issues where I think they're just wrong in their thinking.
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@Levi
What about the enormous amount of donations that the schools receive? I think we are overlooking and underestimating that amount of money. Maybe that should be regulated more. I'm sure there is something someone can do about that. A percentage of the donations go to more students that are seeking loans to get in? I understand there are scholarships, but the whole reason they give these scholarships is because they are hoping to get paid later on in return when the person becomes someone.
I wonder where tuition actually goes and where those donations go. I have not researched it, but I know most buildings at universities get named after big donors. My grandfather was a huge donor to Penn State, ironically, he was touring the campus after they honored him at a dinner. As they were escorting him out (he was 94), he fell down the stairs at Penn State and died in the hospital not too long after that.
I've always wondered how much he actually contributed to them, especially after the issues the had a few years ago.
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@thett3
The Democratic candidates are tripping over each other trying to outbid the others, offering policies that range from perfectly reasonable (Yang’s. policy that if you devote 10% of your income to the debt for 10 years the remainder is forgiven) to the truly insane (Bernie “let’s destroy the stock market” Sanders.)As someone who has never had any student loan debt I can talk about this objectively. The lack of sympathy from conservatives on this issue really disgusts me. Not only were many students totally misled their entire lives about college, but this is a textbook example of the government messing everything up. No one would ever lend a jobless 18 year old fifty grand if student loans weren’t a special class of debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. The totally unlimited supply of credit available to jobless and broke 18 year olds for education is the true reason that tuition has skyrocketed to the extent it has. The real solution to student loan debt is politically toxic: end student loans entirely. Colleges would be forced to lower their prices to the point that the average person can afford to pay for college with cash or by working their way through school.What do you guys think?
- I think first there should be a systemic separation of undergraduate higher education & postgraduate higher education, such as that exists between high school & college. The American system of higher education & its function is quite different from almost all other countries, its flexible boundaries allows it to be such a competitive & highly performant sector, especially at the high end of the spectrum. If you tamper with it, it may quickly hinder its achievements. These require being in a constant race for the best equipment, the best minds, the best professors, the best facilities... & that is tremendously costly. Undergraduate studies, however, -much like high school- can safely do without such race. Undergraduate collages should just be made free or very low cost, just as is the case in Europe. There is a combination of ways to achieve this, by capping student loans & more government funding & regulations for the faculty body & school facilities requirements. As for postgraduate studies, time will take care of that. China's higher education institutions are quickly catching up to the US. 2018 was the first year after almost a century that a country puts out more scientific publications that the US -China. In 5 years, China would've probably completely overtaken the US in academic terms. By then, US institutions would learn to slash their extravagant tuition fees to more reasonable levels, lest they lose their student base for Chinese institutions. In a couple decades, all this wouldn't matter anyways, as US institutions would decidedly lag far behind Chinese & Indian institutions.
The problem is that the government tried to streamline this, like "You go to college equals you get good job afterwards and we don't concern ourselves with how exactly this happens". So college loans get handed out like candy to people who really have no real plan. If I didn't get a full ride scholarship I would be so screwed right now because I'm one of those no-plan people.
The lenders should be more cautious, and them agreeing to accept a loan application should be predicated upon the student having a clear plan for post-college, which he or she would consciously work towards during those 2-4-8 long years. Maybe that means there's a little bit more of a gap between finishing high school and starting college. But in the long term it'd pay off.
The key here is profitability. For a company to loan $50,000 to someone who'll end up working in a Starbucks is insanity, because the end result will be default. A governmental agency or federally subsidized company will naturally be a lot less conscious about this. But if a company has its own @ss on the line in the event that large numbers of customers will never be able to pay back their full loans, it'd very much so he in their best interests to take steps beforehand to ensure that this doesn't happen. Success of the college graduate in the adult job market must be tied intimately to the continued existence of the creditor entity.
Towards this end:
1. Pass a measure that will affect all persons taking out student loans after a certain date
2. Per this bill, if a person enters into such a compact with a respective lending institution in which a comprehensive plan of action is not hammered out beforehand, the student will, after a certain number of years passes from the conclusion of their higher education, have the option of appealing to a special court to receive an order rendering the remainder of their debt non-legally enforceable. This Court will accept or deny claims based on the realized investment-to-return ratio, evidence that the person has made sufficient effort to find satisfactory employment, etc. Every county/parish/borough will have such a court in place.
3. Per this bill, discretion will rest with lending institutions to decide whether or not to accept a loan application. However, they shall not be allowed to refuse on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious or political affiliation, or national origin.
4. Increase in transparency over projected costs of debt repayment over the long-term to the prospective student beforehand. The person about to take out a loan will be required to attend a meeting where said cost is clearly laid out.
5. Price caps for textbooks and related materials.
6. The government will either withdraw from or significantly reduce its participation in the student loans industry. Existing subsidies will be either phased out or scaled back.
(I'm not really an expert in this area, just spitting stuff suggestions there. Even if the government paid off all student debt tomorrow, if the structural causes of this crisis are not addressed then it'll just happen again.)
39 days later
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@triangle.128k
@Outplayz
@Greyparrot
@thett3
@Levi
People like Bernie Sanders believe that making college free for everyone would be the answer. The reality is that it would actually make college more expensive for the wealthier people.
Let's say that a college currently costs 3 dollars to attend and I have 21 dollars, so I pay my 3 dollars to attend that college and keep the other 18 dollars for myself, but my other 9 friends can't attend that college because they each only have 1 dollar.
If you make college free for all students in this scenario, then all 10 of us could attend the college.
However, the college still needs funds to fully function (30 dollars to be exact, since 10 times 3 equals 30), so where would it get it's 30 dollars from? Taxes, obviously. So where would it get the tax money from? Us citizens, obviously, and since I'm the one among my friends with the most money, that means I would be paying the most tax money. My 9 friends would each pay 1 dollar in taxes, making a total of 9 dollars, and then I would be forced to pay the remaining 21 dollars in taxes to make that 30 dollars that the college needs.
See? You've just made "free" college more expensive for me - 7 times more expensive, to be exact!
Bernie Sanders also suggested cancelling "All $1.6 Trillion Of Your Student Loan Debt". https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2019/06/24/student-loans-bernie-sanders/
This too is flawed, and here's why.
Let's go back to my previous example with my 9 metaphorical "friends" who each had 1 dollar. They decide to each borrow 2 dollars so that they can each combine it with their current money in order to meet the 3-dollar cost for college (2+1=3). Meanwhile, I'm stuck paying the full 3 dollars for college out of my own pocket.
Now, when you "cancel" all student loan debt, that basically means that my friends got to pay much less for college while I had to pay 3 dollars. That wouldn't be fair to me at all, nor would it be fair to all the hundreds of other people who had to pay large sums of money out of their own pocket for college. My friends legally stole a combined total of 18 dollars, and do not have to worry about being penalized for it, or having to pay it back.
Not only that, but, what would eventually happen is that NOBODY would be willing to lend money to students for college, because, why would you lend thousands of dollars worth of money to thousands/millions of people, each, when you know that you aren't going to get paid back at all? You're basically being legally robbed. When I lend money to people, I want to lend it, KNOWING that I most likely will be paid back.
So now you will end up with people who can't afford to pay for the 3-dollar college since they only have 1 dollar, AND can't get any loans to be able to pay for it either, since nobody wants to get robbed of millions of dollars.
So, yeah, by cancelling all debt, you've actually made the problem worse.
To fix the whole "student loan" crisis, we need to first fix a couple of other things.
First of all, the job market is WAY TOO competitive. When you have hundreds of people all competing for the exact same entry-level job, and only 1 person gets picked for that job, that's a problem, especially when hundreds of job applications don't even get looked at, since employers usually use ridiculous algorithms to "filter" out most applications, that would otherwise be great to at least look at.
One way to solve the issue of the competitive job market would be to have more low-skilled/entry-level jobs available to begin with, so that more people can get employed and potentially pay off their debts much faster. This can be achieved by LOWERING the minimum wage as opposed to raising it. Having a lower minimum wage means that more people can get employed since employers, especially ones who can barely afford to pay their current workers under high-minimum-wage laws, will be able to hire more workers under lower minimum wages. This makes it so that people don't have to compete as much just to get a basic job to gain valuable work experience. Here are 2 great youtube video by Prager University explaining this in more detail. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j01L69eXdI
The job market is so competitive that most applications, even for jobs that don't require a 4-year-or-higher degree, won't even get looked at unless the applicant has at least that type of degree. Making the job market less competitive makes it so that not as many people have to have a 4-year-or-higher college degree just to remain competitive in the job market, and this would result in less people having to apply for such high student loans, that they can barely pay off, to begin with.
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@Swagnarok
@Yassine
@DBlaze
@Mopac
@disgusted
Once you solve the problem with the job market being over-competitive, there can be more available jobs overall, which would result in less stiff competition, which would result in less people needing to have 4-year-or-higher degrees just to get an entry-level job, which would result in those people having more time to develop real valuable skills since they don't have to spend so much time in college, which would result in less college-degree-inflation, which would result in less student loan debt and a reduced student loan crisis, overall.
The second issue is tests. Throughout all of middle school, high school, and college, a lot of what you do involves memorizing/test-taking. This is due to George Bush's No Child Left Behind Act policy, as well as Barack Obama's Every Student Succeeds Act policy, both of which force learning institutions to focus more and more on teaching to the test. For many classes, tests count for like 40 to 70 percent of your grade, and we do tend to forget most of what we memorized after the test is over. In other words, a lot of time is wasted in both school and college - time that could be used to teach students valuable things that they aren't simply going to forget within a few weeks. So, yeah, those two are also partially to blame for this crisis that we have.
The third and final issue is that people often graduate even though they haven't fully learned the material. In college, I have/had classmates who could barely write a decent 2-paragraph essay, even though they should have learned to that, back in like 6 or 7th grade. So many people have to take "remedial classes" in college (which end up costing them more and more money, thus adding more to the already-existing crisis) because they haven't fully grasped what was taught in high school, and a youtuber named Raging Golden Eagle made a video explaining this in further detail. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZOQmWVuI14
Fixing these issues would fix the student loan crisis.
Competition is extremely important to an advanced economy.
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@Christen
Illegal immigration is causing this issue as well. If US citizens could be paid a living wage to do what politicians call "low level skilled jobs", which is incorrect because everything requires some degree of expertise and skill, I call them trades. (and if you have ever hired an illegal immigrant to do an interior or exterior job at your house, most of the time the work is mediocre at best, which proves that all jobs require skill and patience), then we would have more jobs for US citizens that also contribute to taxes, who did not require college degree.
For instance, I have made a lot of money off of sprinkler heads in ceilings that have been painted over (I sell and replace them). If you are an expert in the field of painting, then any person should know that you cannot paint over sprinkler heads, and each time it is has been an illegal immigrant hired for a cheap wage (picked up at 7-11 or Home Depot) to paint all day long, if it were someone with a real business, the customer would tell them to come back, or make them pay for the replacement, but that is impossible because the owner tried to save money, and these are not do it yourself type people. There are specific ways to paint a house so it looks good and even, so that job, just like any other job requires some expertise. The thing is, they are taking jobs of someone who could really use it, but because illegals are willing to take less pay under the table, a real citizen can't afford to take that job, and real companies are having a hard time staying in business because they cannot compete.
Having jobs available like that for people that have no intention of going to college and wasting 4 years of time that could be used to start their career, or want to start young, learn the business and someday become the boss is what will bring the cost down for school, because there will be less demand. Right now the demand for college is just too high, and you really don't have to have it because it really doesn't teach much of anything that you retain either.... There shouldn't be so many requirements for jobs and having a degree either, everyone pretty much starts from scratch at almost every job.
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@Greyparrot
@DBlaze
Competition is extremely important to an advanced economy.
Sure, competition can be a good thing, but, like with all good things, too much of that good thing is usually a bad thing. Remember that. Obviously having competition can motivate people to work harder and boost the economy, but, because we have so much of it, it's starting to get way out of control, backfire on us, and do more harm than good.
Illegal immigration is causing this issue as well.
Wouldn't having E-Verify fix the whole problem with immigrants stealing jobs? After all, it would allow employers to ensure that those who work are working legally. It seems to be a much easier alternative to having to search the entire country for 2000+ immigrants and deport each and every one of them, one by one. Perhaps that would reduce the incentive to come here illegally in the first place.
real companies are having a hard time staying in business because they cannot compete.
Like Greyparrot said, having business compete is perfectly normal and is a good thing, but, like I SAID, the competition is growing at too high of a rate and is getting out of control and doing more harm than good because of these companies going out of business, result in less jobs overall.