Cancel student loan debt?

[JoeMorgue]

College also is biased toward low tech fields that never change.

You can't go to college for 2-6 years in the IT or Medical fields and be set for the next 40 years of your working life.

I'm dropping a few hundred to a couple of thousand bucks a year, and will be for the rest of my working life, to get new certs, upgrade old certs, etc.

I have a basic Computer Science degree but I'll admit its functionally useless at this point. I got in the Windows 3.11 / Dos 6.22 days.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

No. Not being paid enough is not the same as being unproductive.

Everyone knows that workers are paid a fixed, fair percentage of their productivity and that the capital class would never try to challenge that.

Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of labor history in the modern world knows that wages and productivity are not one in the same.

 

[TragicMonkey]

What I really want to put a halt to is the for profit scams schools.

Agreed, those are a menace. But let's define those: where does the difference lie between a night school in an office park that lets you pay them exorbitant amounts of money for a degree in "crime scene science" versus an ivy-bedecked centuries-old university that lets you pay them exorbitant amounts of money for a degree in literature? They're both making bank on you pursuing something that's most likely going to be an expensive waste of your time. Why is the latter not a scam?

I submit that they're both scams, and the only reason the latter isn't seen as one is because middle class values interpret it as legitimate. Just as in prior ages people believed tithing to churches wasn't a scam-- they simply choose to believe they're getting something out of it, despite the facts.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Again I know this is a certain someone's default answer to everything, but we can at least address the Student Loan Crisis without jumping right to "Burn Capitalism to the ground, begin the Socialist uprising."

Especially since without Capitalism... what are you even going to college for? It's 2020. If it's just about knowing stuff go on the internet. "Knowledge" is post-scarcity along with pictures of boobies and funny cat pictures. Hell major colleges on the level of MIT and Cambridge put almost all of their actual study material online for free.

People go to college to get jobs, not to get smarter. Pull the icky, sticky core evil of "Capitalism" and college as a post-information age concept collapses in on itself.

 

[crescent]

It is not as if making college free would make it easy.

Some majors are just inherently hard. Some degree programs are just inherently competitive to get into. Going to college still takes time, time spent not having much of a job, or essentially working two jobs (college + job) which is, you know, hard - and again none of the current discussion involves covering living expenses. For a great many lines of work, a degree in the right major with decent grades really is a good indicator of a prospective candidates potential value.

Plus we're having this conversation about college being useless or becoming just like high school, when to me at least the real issue is the ever-rising cost making it less available than ever. Free? I would happily settle, enthusiastically settle for inflation adjusted costs equal to what they were 25 years ago when my middle class parents were able to pay for about 90% of my college education without going into debt themselves.

 

[TragicMonkey]

College also is biased toward low tech fields that never change.

You can't go to college for 2-6 years in the IT or Medical fields and be set for the next 40 years of your working life.

I'm dropping a few hundred to a couple of thousand bucks a year, and will be for the rest of my working life, to get new certs, upgrade old certs, etc.

I have a basic Computer Science degree but I'll admit its functionally useless at this point. I got in the Windows 3.11 / Dos 6.22 days.

Yeah, but would you want to go back and actually have to use the programming languages you first learned? I started with C, I don't think I could even do a hello world in that now. Thankfully nobody's going to ask me to!

I do miss ASP, though, that was so cool! for about ten minutes, a couple of decades ago.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Agreed, those are a menace. But let's define those: where does the difference lie between a night school in an office park that lets you pay them exorbitant amounts of money for a degree in "crime scene science" versus an ivy-bedecked centuries-old university that lets you pay them exorbitant amounts of money for a degree in literature? They're both making bank on you pursuing something that's most likely going to be an expensive waste of your time. Why is the latter not a scam?

I submit that they're both scams, and the only reason the latter isn't seen as one is because middle class values interpret it as legitimate. Just as in prior ages people believed tithing to churches wasn't a scam-- they simply choose to believe they're getting something out of it, despite the facts.

Are the people going to Harvard for degrees in Medieval French poetry spending the rest of their lives in poverty unable to pay their loans?

I doubt it. These ivy league institutions provide more than education, they provide connections to the wealthy, elite circles that hold much of the public and private power in this country. The prospects of someone leaving Harvard with any degree is not comparable to someone getting fleeced at a strip mall degree mill.

People going to Harvard are getting something valuable for their money, even if it's not the education.

 

[mumblethrax]

Seems fairly regressive to me. My recollection is that Elizabeth Warren's plan (which was means-tested) disproportionately benefited the top two quintiles of earners (because that's where the student loan debt is). Someone scraping by in the "inner city" or living in some ******** midwestern town whose chief export is jobs likely didn't go to college in the first place.

I have difficulty believing that people drowning in student loan debt are significantly worse off than people trapped in poverty. $50,000 goes a lot further to those at the bottom--I mean, that's like 10,000 scratchers. But I guess you can't reward people for terrible life choices, like being born to people without retirement accounts.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Another common complaint is that free or even affordable college would reduce the incentive for desperate people to join the military.

How are you going to convince people to get blown up in Afghanistan for a war nobody even cares about anymore if you can't dangle the GI bill?

 

[acbytesla]

I humbly suggest that the Devos family's fleet of yachts is not an efficient use of the nation's wealth, even factoring in the boat mechanics and barnacle scrapers that manage to pull a wage from their existence.

This!

The study of economics is the study of resource management. Prestige is blatantly ignoring opportunity costs and how quickly money turns in differnt hands. Paul Allen Microsoft co-founder purchased multiple homes that mostly sat unoccupied, an island, more than a billion dollars in yachts/boats, another billion in planes, a professional football team and basketball team. None of these purchases are productive for the economy. Not exactly capital goods.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Again I know this is a certain someone's default answer to everything, but we can at least address the Student Loan Crisis without jumping right to "Burn Capitalism to the ground, begin the Socialist uprising."

Especially since without Capitalism... what are you even going to college for? It's 2020. If it's just about knowing stuff go on the internet. "Knowledge" is post-scarcity along with pictures of boobies and funny cat pictures. Hell major colleges on the level of MIT and Cambridge put almost all of their actual study material online for free.

People go to college to get jobs, not to get smarter. Pull the icky, sticky core evil of "Capitalism" and college as a post-information age concept collapses in on itself.

The problem is that there are both capitalistic and noncapitalistic functions of education, and neither function thrives when the two are muddled together. I think we ought to be realists about it and have a two-pronged education system: one that you put money into, get useful skills out of, and can make a good living by. Everybody profits on that branch. The second branch can be the knowledge-for-it's-own sake, and those who can afford it and want to spend the money can pay for the pleasure of learning interesting but not terribly useful knowledge that they probably can't use to support themselves with, careerwise. This path is for pleasure and should neither be subsidized by government or paid with on borrowed money, because it's not likely to pay out afterwards. And having a degree from this path shouldn't be a requirement (or even a plus) for a job that isn't in that particular field. Practical and impractical can live in harmony as long as we treat the practical as practical and the impractical as a lovely extra for those who can indulge in it, not for those who can't and/or shouldn't.

We do the same in medicine between surgeries that are necessary and surgeries that are cosmetic. There's a reason regular health insurance doesn't pay for cosmetic procedures: one doesn't need a boob job or a tummy tuck, the way one needs a colonoscopy or a heart valve replacement. I suggest that our society needs education of the practical type, but the impractical type is an optional extra.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Are the people going to Harvard for degrees in Medieval French poetry spending the rest of their lives in poverty unable to pay their loans?

I doubt it. These ivy league institutions provide more than education, they provide connections to the wealthy, elite circles that hold much of the public and private power in this country. The prospects of someone leaving Harvard with any degree is not comparable to someone getting fleeced at a strip mall degree mill.

People going to Harvard are getting something valuable for their money, even if it's not the education.

The "old boy network" is a separate evil from education. If it didn't occur in those select few universities they'd just move it to the country clubs. I don't think solving the conspiracy of the elite is a prerequisite to attempting education reform.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Another common complaint is that free or even affordable college would reduce the incentive for desperate people to join the military.

How are you going to convince people to get blown up in Afghanistan for a war nobody even cares about anymore if you can't dangle the GI bill?

18 year old cannon fodder wouldn't see this, but the middle-aged would: a pension and healthcare are ultimately worth more than a college degree.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Basically we need to redefine higher education.

Definition 1: Simple education. More knowledge about a wider range of topics. Which is generally meant as a "Classic" or "Liberal" education. Yes more of this gives us a more educated society, which as I've said is basically good by definition. But again the traditional college system is the absolutely most over-complicated, least efficient, most time consuming, most pointless sunk-cost way of achieving this. This should be free (or have minimal cost) but in the sense that it just shouldn't cost that much to get it, not in the sense that it we keep it super-expensive but subsidize it.

Definition 2. Skills that the society needs to operate. Jobs (even if they aren't strictly for profit "I give you X amount of money and you do Y amount of work" style) that a society needs more skilled people to do. Traditionally what we think of as "Trade Schools." With these, regardless of looking at it within a capitalist mindset or not, society has the right, arguably the duty, to not waste resources training people in skills it doesn't need.

A skill that nobody needs you to do isn't a skill, it's a hobby. And you can pay for those yourself.

 

[acbytesla]

Another common complaint is that free or even affordable college would reduce the incentive for desperate people to join the military.

How are you going to convince people to get blown up in Afghanistan for a war nobody even cares about anymore if you can't dangle the GI bill?

Well there is that.

 

[Meadmaker]

That's part of it certainly - a big part. But there is also much less tax-supported subsidy.

College is more expensive than it's ever been, and the 5 reasons why suggest it's only going to get worse


State Higher Education Funding Cuts Have Pushed Costs to Students, Worsened Inequality


Notice that, like many things in our society, our willingness to support government subsidy is inversely related to the use of that subsidy by minorities.

Goodness - that's a good in depth article on the subject. Don't read what I'm writing - just read this article:

State Higher Education Funding Cuts Have Pushed Costs to Students, Worsened Inequality

Interesting. I knew that was a factor, but what you wrote suggests it is a bigger factor than I thought. It's possible that has changed over time, and gotten worse recently.


I can't help but notice that all of your quotes dealt with per student funding. None of them said anything about absolute funding. I haven't looked it up, but that suggests to me that absolute funding is probably more, which would mean there are more students. It plays into the narrative that perhaps more people are going to college than really ought to be going to college.

I was shocked when I discussed college and college spending with my (at the time) high school senior son. He said that high school kids view the whole college thing as a gigantic rip-off. They are forced to go into massive debt or accept second class citizenship. It was quite a frightening view of the world. My kid tended toward cynicism, but the fact that they were even saying it was kind of scary.

The fact that it was mostly true was even scarier.

 

[crescent]

Seems fairly regressive to me. My recollection is that Elizabeth Warren's plan (which was means-tested) disproportionately benefited the top two quintiles of earners (because that's where the student loan debt is). Someone scraping by in the "inner city" or living in some ******** midwestern town whose chief export is jobs likely didn't go to college in the first place.

I have difficulty believing that people drowning in student loan debt are significantly worse off than people trapped in poverty. $50,000 goes a lot further to those at the bottom--I mean, that's like 10,000 scratchers. But I guess you can't reward people for terrible life choices, like being born to people without retirement accounts.

Some of those people trapped in poverty are there because they're drowning in student loans, which they took out in hopes of getting out of poverty.

College is a means to get out of poverty. I disagree with those in this thread who propose that college is just a thing for the middle and upper classes, with the idea that efforts to make college more affordable only benefit middle to upper classes. With the correct structure, college loan reform can have great value in poverty alleviation.

 

[JoeMorgue]

18 year old cannon fodder wouldn't see this, but the middle-aged would: a pension and healthcare are ultimately worth more than a college degree.

They've gotten rid of the pension. I was once of the last ones to get it. The US Military has shifted to a more mainstream 401k style retirement plan. There might be a few oldtimers still grandfathered into the old pension system, but not many and they won't last much longer. For at least 10 years now all new recruits have been put into the new system.

And yes I wouldn't trade my pension for all the degrees in the world.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

The "old boy network" is a separate evil from education. If it didn't occur in those select few universities they'd just move it to the country clubs. I don't think solving the conspiracy of the elite is a prerequisite to attempting education reform.

Sure, but I'm just saying that entry into these kinds of social circles probably explains why so many people are desperate to get into such schools, even if education into a profitable field is not on offer.

Harvard doesn't teach 101 calculus any better than any run of the mill state school. It's about access. Access to the most prestigious faculty, the most well funded projects, the peers that will one day be power brokers.

Rich people don't pull strings to get their dim witted children into the Ivy League because they think that the education is better. After a certain point, it's about prestige and access to the prestigious.

There's a big difference between people trying to get into Harvard for dubious liberal arts degrees and those getting sold a false bill of goods through some fly-by-night technical school that promises them they can become a forensic investigator in 6 months.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Sure, but I'm just saying that entry into these kinds of social circles probably explains why so many people are desperate to get into such schools, even if education into a profitable field is not on offer.

That's why the stories of people cheating to get their kids into prestigious colleges that keep popping up confound me.

If you're bribing Harvard to get Junior into it, Junior ain't never going to need the money. If it's just about getting him into the Good Ole' Boy network you could get him a seat on some made up "Advisory Board" or a consulting "job" for pennies on the dollar and achieve the same thing.