Cancel student loan debt?
- Thread starter rdwight
- Start date
When it comes to ‘ways you can get out from under a loan besides repayment,’ “it’s a pain in the ass and has serious consequences” is still easier than “You can’t.”
Also in many states they can take the house and still keep you on the hook for the loan.
More data:
https://www.nitrocollege.com/research/average-student-loan-debt
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2020/02/03/student-loan-debt-statistics/?sh=3bffc10e281f
What's going on in Pennsylvania?
https://studentloanhero.com/featured/majors-students-debt/
Also, Student debt in the US is 1.6 trillion dollars. Debt for car loans is 1.2 trillion. Why aren't we talking about car debt relieve? That would at least be a little less regressive.
https://www.nitrocollege.com/research/average-student-loan-debt
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2020/02/03/student-loan-debt-statistics/?sh=3bffc10e281f
What's going on in Pennsylvania?
https://studentloanhero.com/featured/majors-students-debt/
Also, Student debt in the US is 1.6 trillion dollars. Debt for car loans is 1.2 trillion. Why aren't we talking about car debt relieve? That would at least be a little less regressive.
I don't see the problem or the loophole here. Ignorance of Norwegian folklore is forestalled, burgers get flipped, books or blogs on Norwegian languages are written in the spare time the scholar has due to not having to work an additional part-time job to pay off loans.
Note that if the actual problem here is that getting a humanities PhD is manyfold more expensive than it should be (and a couple hundred thousand sounds like that to me), then any scheme for shuffling around how those exorbitant charges get paid is a worse idea than solving that actual problem. (See also: debates about health insurance in the U.S.)
That's why this thread sucks. Much more fun when the sinister motivations are based on a code buried deep within their writings. Like any moron can see I have done in my last three posts in this thread.
Emily's Cat
Rarely prone to hissy-fits
Plus, there seems to be a tendency to pretend that the many ways of managing student loan debt don't exist. It's very easy to get a forbearance, a deferment, an income-based payment plan, etc. It's not even all that hard to get portions of it completely cancelled.
None of those avenues exist for mortgages or car loans.
Emily's Cat
Rarely prone to hissy-fits
Make the schools be the lenders, and take on the risk of default for their own students...
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
The problem is if it were an acceptable risk we wouldn't need government-backed loans. Schools would be falling all over themselves to pad their endowment with the profits of lending to good risks.
There's a lot of things not to like about the current arrangement. One of them is the government using our tax dollars to finance bad risks.
There's a sort of education bond thing that exists. Basically someone pays for your education in exchange for a certain percentage of post graduation income for some combination of a limited time and limited maximum payout.
It solves some of the moral hazard issues. Want a doctorate in something with no ROI, good luck finding an investor or you find a cheap school somewhere.
It solves some of the moral hazard issues. Want a doctorate in something with no ROI, good luck finding an investor or you find a cheap school somewhere.
That's not a bad idea really. Might encourage them to better prioritize there spending too. Or at least some schools would compete on ROI instead of providing the funnest culture with the best stuff on campus.
ponderingturtle
Orthogonal Vector
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- Jul 11, 2006
- Messages
- 54,545
Exactly the poor do not deserve access to the careers afforded by an education. If they had the genes worthy of such careers they wouldn't be poor to begin with.
I don't see how that follows. The loans should be based at least partially on future potential earnings, currently they aren't. A poor person pursuing an engineering degree is a far better investment than a rich person pursuing a 17th century French Music degree.
It doesn't follow, but that doesn't change the fact that that is exactly what would happen.
In other words I doubt the "Poor people, screw them" where the ones pushing for everybody to get a student loan in the first place.
ponderingturtle
Orthogonal Vector
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But that ignores the skyrocketing cost of a college degree for one.
TragicMonkey
Poisoned Waffles
SLAVERY! INDENTURED SERVITUDE!!!!!
Not really.
The rich person getting the musical degree is likely to have the connections to get a job after they get their degree, no matter what the degree is in or how well they did. (Side note: Most lawyers have fluffy undergraduate degrees because the high GPA looks better on a law school application.) If they do not get a job they are still likely to have income from their family.
The poor person getting an engineering degree may still have trouble getting a job. If they are not great students or if they just don't interview well, for example. They also may have trouble finishing the program even if they have loans or financial assistance because of life events rich people don't have to deal with: becoming a caregiver for older relatives or needing to stay home with their own child, for example. I know a recent STEM graduate who is working the same menial job they were working before they graduated. The degree doesn't solve all issues.
Exactly. Lenders are smart in how they get the federal government to support their business interests.
The point is being missed.
I made the point earlier in the thread that this is self defeating argument. You pull the wet, sticky, icky of money out of this equation and... what are talking about?
Education? Knowledge? That has nothing to do with anything we are discussing. It's 2020. Raw information and base knowledge is as democratized as it is going to get until we all start jacking into the Matrix and downloading Kung-fu directly to our brains. The entire collected sum of human knowledge is available at your fingertips for the cost of a 200 Chromebook and a 50 dollar a month ISP. Knowledge is post-scarcity. Taking 2-6 years out of your life and going into massive amounts of debt right at the moment you are entering adulthood for the sole reason of "getting smarter" is the dumbest thing you can do. If you're going to college on some vague idea of "I want to get smarter" then you've already failed because you're an idiot.
If you're going to college without the "idiot" modifier you're doing it for one reason. To have a piece of paper that proves you have knowledge about the thing in question. And you get this for one reason, so somebody will pay you for that knowledge.
So yes if you go X amount money into debt to get a skill and 10, 15, 20 years later are still in that debt, you by definition did something wrong because you wasted your time and resources.
That's why "Any degree that ends in 'studies'" are jokes and rightfully so. If you get a degree in "Gender Studies" and during that whole 4 year period you fail to notice that there are no "Gender Study" factories or stores with jobs waiting for you when you get out, waaaaaaaaah.
If you aren't going to college for a marketable skill then do it on your own dime because you're just picking the least efficient way and most expensive way of learning something for no reason. And "asking you to use resources you are demanding from me in an at least vaguely efficient manner" isn't the same thing as greed no matter what the Hippies say.
Go to trade school for 2 years at 1/10th the cost, learn to become an electrician or plumber or to install gutters so that can charge 40 bucks an hour, and listen to the Great Courses Audiobooks on Gender Studies on the weekends. Boom you've accomplished the same level of knowledge you claim you wanted about the topic you wanted but know about, but now you're an actual functional and productive member of society.
You thinking computer support is my personal passion? Of course it isn't. It's nobody's. But I can fix PEBKAC errors for 8 hours and then spend my personal time learning about my personal passions that I'm mature and adult enough to understand aren't the same thing as marketable skills.
I get it. We all got told "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life" but I thought we all understood that wasn't universal. I thought we all understood that at no point did the social contract include the idea that everyone was going to be able to make a living off of their passions.
If your personal passions are also marketable skills, good on you. Consider yourself lucky and blessed. But if they aren't it's not anyone else's fault or problem.
But that's not what people want is it? Let's be fair here, and here we come to probably the closest thing I will ever make to anti-intellectual statement, there's still a very strong idea that certain jobs are just too good for smart people and that's bullcrap.
It's weird how, not to play a game of gotcha, the more progressive and socialist minded arguments in this threads are the ones that depend upon the idea that you are defined by your vocation.
I made the point earlier in the thread that this is self defeating argument. You pull the wet, sticky, icky of money out of this equation and... what are talking about?
Education? Knowledge? That has nothing to do with anything we are discussing. It's 2020. Raw information and base knowledge is as democratized as it is going to get until we all start jacking into the Matrix and downloading Kung-fu directly to our brains. The entire collected sum of human knowledge is available at your fingertips for the cost of a 200 Chromebook and a 50 dollar a month ISP. Knowledge is post-scarcity. Taking 2-6 years out of your life and going into massive amounts of debt right at the moment you are entering adulthood for the sole reason of "getting smarter" is the dumbest thing you can do. If you're going to college on some vague idea of "I want to get smarter" then you've already failed because you're an idiot.
If you're going to college without the "idiot" modifier you're doing it for one reason. To have a piece of paper that proves you have knowledge about the thing in question. And you get this for one reason, so somebody will pay you for that knowledge.
So yes if you go X amount money into debt to get a skill and 10, 15, 20 years later are still in that debt, you by definition did something wrong because you wasted your time and resources.
That's why "Any degree that ends in 'studies'" are jokes and rightfully so. If you get a degree in "Gender Studies" and during that whole 4 year period you fail to notice that there are no "Gender Study" factories or stores with jobs waiting for you when you get out, waaaaaaaaah.
If you aren't going to college for a marketable skill then do it on your own dime because you're just picking the least efficient way and most expensive way of learning something for no reason. And "asking you to use resources you are demanding from me in an at least vaguely efficient manner" isn't the same thing as greed no matter what the Hippies say.
Go to trade school for 2 years at 1/10th the cost, learn to become an electrician or plumber or to install gutters so that can charge 40 bucks an hour, and listen to the Great Courses Audiobooks on Gender Studies on the weekends. Boom you've accomplished the same level of knowledge you claim you wanted about the topic you wanted but know about, but now you're an actual functional and productive member of society.
You thinking computer support is my personal passion? Of course it isn't. It's nobody's. But I can fix PEBKAC errors for 8 hours and then spend my personal time learning about my personal passions that I'm mature and adult enough to understand aren't the same thing as marketable skills.
I get it. We all got told "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life" but I thought we all understood that wasn't universal. I thought we all understood that at no point did the social contract include the idea that everyone was going to be able to make a living off of their passions.
If your personal passions are also marketable skills, good on you. Consider yourself lucky and blessed. But if they aren't it's not anyone else's fault or problem.
But that's not what people want is it? Let's be fair here, and here we come to probably the closest thing I will ever make to anti-intellectual statement, there's still a very strong idea that certain jobs are just too good for smart people and that's bullcrap.
It's weird how, not to play a game of gotcha, the more progressive and socialist minded arguments in this threads are the ones that depend upon the idea that you are defined by your vocation.
TurkeysGhost
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2018
- Messages
- 35,043
Is there any evidence that this ballooning student debt load has anything to do with increasing enrollment in frivolous degree programs or is that just an ass-pull on your part?
it may shock you, but what a "marketable skill" is can change dramatically over time, and students enrolling may think they are pursuing a good career only to discover after the fact that they made a poor choice.
Much has been written about credential inflation and the increasing requirement for ever specialized education, but sure, keep on talking about underwater basket weaving or whatever else.
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