Cancel student loan debt?

[theprestige]

It's very strange that you, me, and JoeMorgue have had such similar lives, considering whenever there's a two-sided argument here each of us is on a different side.

Haha it is kind of strange, isn't it?

I explain it as being a notable trait of IT professionals that we can start a holy war about anything. Windows or Mac? Linux! vi or emacs? Eclipse! Perl or Ruby? Python!

 

[JoeMorgue]

It's rather concerning. Who is going to fix the machines of automation and general living?

That's the (one of many) inherent problem with the "We'll just fund the base needs of the society with taxes on the luxuries" idea, among others. It, by definition, is going to require a... middle of the road subclass who job it is to get their faces rubbed in the excess of others.

If we're looking for importance beyond "someone's going to pay me for this" I think a piece is missing in the above rundown.

//respectful snip for space//

Sure, some people can educate themselves and work to support themselves at the same time--and anyone that accomplishes that is someone I admire greatly. But HAVING to do so is a limiter on how many can.

A limiter to be sure but a necessary once.

I think people are misrepresentating (through my own fault, not theirs, I should have been more clear on the language) what I mean when I say "marketable." It's not just a case of direct 1:1 employment.

No we don't as a country just hire generic "smart people" for the sole purpose of being smart, but we as a society fund all manners of research and think tanks and institutes and organizations. True these are not straight "I give you money, you give me a product or service" jobs, but they are still society expecting some kind of return on their investment.

No we don't, and never should, have anything even approaching some sort of classical philosopher class, where we just let a bunch of rich old farts walk around "being smarter than us" to end and for no purpose, but that's not to say we as a society don't just... reward intelligence.

 

[gnome]

I think I see what you're getting at, but to some extent you seem to be conflating knowledge and intelligence, which really are different things.

 

[ahhell]

Hiring can become more picky because of increasing supply of an educated work force.

The labor market is a market. More and more people entering college doesn't mean there will be an increase in jobs for college educated people, so standards tighten. No matter how you try to moralize the failure, only so many people are going to get these jobs that pay well, and everyone else is shunted off with high debt for having the nerve to even try.

An excellent example of this is lawyers. A once profitable, though challenging, career path has become overrun with new law school graduates and the job prospects have tanked.

These people studying for the bar didn't major in renaissance fife music or gender studies, they made decisions based on slightly outdated information. They got bad advice, invested a ton of money in specialized education, and got left holding an empty bag.

Of course, Law school is almost the only example of that and even so, its been pretty well understood for at least a decade that outside of about a dozen schools, law degrees are pretty poor investment.

For at least 40 years its been pretty clear which sorts of degrees and in somecase exactly which degree programs have the best and worst ROI's A graduated highschool in 91, it was known then that STEM was for folks that wanted to make a living and BAs for folks that wanted to get a Masters or Doctorate. And depending on the Doctorate, end up working as a cashier or security guard.

And Joe Morgue is absolutely right, universities don't have a monopoly on education anymore. Universities have only three functions now which is to provide a certification that you can pull yourself together just enough for four years to show that you can actually finish something, provide the basic level of knowledge to enter certain professions, provide the upper 35% of the population a network. A network heavily sorted by class mind you. The network you get from Yale might actually be worth the price, the network you get from some somewhat well regarded public school is probably also worth the price.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I think I see what you're getting at, but to some extent you seem to be conflating knowledge and intelligence, which really are different things.

I'm making a distinction between something that has a return on investment and something that doesn't, regardless of what you call it.

Yes just a general "smarter" populace would be better, that's almost a truism. But that should be universal (or as near enough as practical) so that's what we have universal schooling for.

Basically once it becomes an education that everyone by definition isn't getting, the people getting it need to give something back.

 

[ahhell]

I got into IT because a friend of mine pointed out there was a huge demand for network admins, and that one could make upwards of $40/hour with a manufacturer certification. My unskilled, 90s-era clerical temp ass making close to minimum wage thought that was a huge improvement. So I paid for the overpriced trade school, got the training, got the cert... and discovered that the big bucks didn't start until I'd gotten some work experience.

But I was already more employable, and at better wages even just starting out, than I had been as a receptionist or phone operator. And soon enough, I was making that huge hourly wage.

Nowadays, I kinda wish I'd gone into HVAC instead. Still might.

Funny, that's basically why we have SS, to pay old farts to get out the work force. Bored old farts cause a lot less trouble than bored young farts and they die sooner if their bored too! Win win

 

[gnome]

I'm making a distinction between something that has a return on investment and something that doesn't, regardless of what you call it.

Yes just a general "smarter" populace would be better, that's almost a truism. But that should be universal (or as near enough as practical) so that's what we have universal schooling for.

Basically once it becomes an education that everyone by definition isn't getting, the people getting it need to give something back.

You don't think there might be some value in educating people to their potential, rather than a relatively low bar like high school? I'm floating the idea here that it be universal to people that can achieve mastery over the material.

 

[xjx388]

But what's the... point? It seems all that does is delay adulthood and entering the job force for another 2-6 years. We seem to have accomplished little beyond creating a generation for whom their adult lives are starting in their mid-20s and starting under a mountain of debt. Even if the debt was much more modest (to counter the "ballooning cost" thing which really isn't the topic) I still fail to see the point. And that 2-6 year chunk of time right at the core part of your young adult life is a sunk cost we can't subsidize away.

What's our overall goal here? What societal problem are we trying to fix? These are not unreasonable questions to ask.

Why does everyone need to go to college? That's a base question. If it's knowledge, see my previous breakdown, that's like purposely inefficient to the point of insanity. If it's the job market it's counter-productive.

There are a few professions where a college degree is necessary because of State licensing requirements. Those have to change before we realize your (and mine really) dream of a post-"higher education" world. The way I see it, if I can pass all the tests required to, say, become a doctor; then I've demonstrated that I have the skills and knowledge to get the license. It shouldn't matter if I came by that knowldge through independent study or through Medical School.

But it won't happen anytime soon because the current system benefits those licensed professions.

 

[Dr. Keith]

There are a few professions where a college degree is necessary because of State licensing requirements. Those have to change before we realize your (and mine really) dream of a post-"higher education" world. The way I see it, if I can pass all the tests required to, say, become a doctor; then I've demonstrated that I have the skills and knowledge to get the license. It shouldn't matter if I came by that knowldge through independent study or through Medical School.

But it won't happen anytime soon because the current system benefits those licensed professions.

I think there are states where you can still become a lawyer without going to law school. California is one of them, IIRC. Tough to get a job, though.

You can't become a medical doctor, even if you do all the work and pass all the tests, unless you get a residency. But that's a different conversation.

 

[Emily's Cat]

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.

I get what you're saying, but I think you're oversimplifying it. There are a lot of things that can't really be learned just by reading. There's a practical aspect to it that isn't as easily available as you suggest.

Take chemistry for example. Sure, you can read learn all sorts of chemistry theory on line. But the lab-work itself is incredibly valuable. Accessing the appropriate safe venues for applied chemistry, let alone the equipment and ingredients, can get very expensive and be very limiting.

Similarly, there are many fields where the actual hand-on element, the application of theory under supervised conditions, isn't really something that can be done without.

 

[Emily's Cat]

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.

Holy cow, credential inflation, yes that's a problem.

Anecdote: I had an employee a few years back who had started out as an admin assistant, taught herself how to do all kinds of surprisingly awesome things with MS Access, and started studying Visual Basic and SQL on her own. I hired her into a position on my analytical team, leveraging her ability to design incredibly user-friendly, small scale database systems to support a handful of areas of the company that just weren't big enough to make it onto IT's backlog. I spent two years arguing with HR to try to get her reclassed as an entry level programmer (since that was a huge amount of what she was actually doing in terms of work). But they wouldn't budge because she didn't have a college degree. It was incredibly frustrating.

There was no justifiable reason why a degree would be needed for that job. All of the listed job skills and requirements were things that were easily able to be self-taught, or acquired through certifications. It was simply an idiotic requirement.

 

[Emily's Cat]

The modernizing economy probably does require a greater degree of skilled labor than what universal K-12 can provide, but that's not all that is happening here.

I would really love to see more financial assistance and focus on skilled trades. We still need plumbers and electricians and nurses and welders. Those needs aren't really going away any time soon. And they also don't require a 4-year university degree. Many of them pay quite well, and are in fairly high demand.

I'd love to see a shift to more apprentice/journeyman/master approaches to on the job training. I think there are a lot of fields that would benefit more form that approach than from university degrees. Of course, I'm a bit biased on that front. My own field essentially relies on OTJ approaches, and exams are expected to occur in conjunction with full-time real-world work.

 

[Emily's Cat]

If I just had a do-over button.
Anecdote: Had some remodeling done at the house and the plumber, cabinet guy and HV/AC guy were lamenting about the difficulty in finding a trainee, apprentice or associate. All 3 had way more work than they could schedule, but no pool of interested talent. Most of their kids were not interested in the 'old man's job or wanted to take over a very lucrative business in construction or infrastructure service.

It's rather concerning. Who is going to fix the machines of automation and general living?
When the air conditioner breaks in August my quality of life is seriously impacted. The AC repair technician can pretty much name his price.

Yep.

 

[theprestige]

Funny, that's basically why we have SS, to pay old farts to get out the work force. Bored old farts cause a lot less trouble than bored young farts and they die sooner if their bored too! Win win

What *really* sucks about this is that we're relying on the productivity of young farts to fund the SS benefits of the old farts. Taking more of the old farts' money to pay the young farts to not be productive is, like, anti-sustainable.

 

[ahhell]

There are a few professions where a college degree is necessary because of State licensing requirements. Those have to change before we realize your (and mine really) dream of a post-"higher education" world. The way I see it, if I can pass all the tests required to, say, become a doctor; then I've demonstrated that I have the skills and knowledge to get the license. It shouldn't matter if I came by that knowldge through independent study or through Medical School.

But it won't happen anytime soon because the current system benefits those licensed professions.

Until fairly recently it was just doctors. Most of the professions that require a degree really just made the degree a short cut. That was true of architects, engineers, and lawyers in most states until the 21st century and is still true in some states for some of those profession.

You could probably be an engineer with out all the general ed stuff but you'd still pretty much need the STEM courses. Even then, I'd hate to be in a room full of engineers that hadn't been forced to take a few English, history, and art classes. They talk about nothing but sports, video games, or sci fi. And probably wouldn't have cracked a book between them.

 

[Emily's Cat]

That's the (one of many) inherent problem with the "We'll just fund the base needs of the society with taxes on the luxuries" idea, among others. It, by definition, is going to require a... middle of the road subclass who job it is to get their faces rubbed in the excess of others.

Morlocks & Eloi, here we come!


Side note.... I'm a bit perturbed by how many of the novels I read as a kid, which I thought were clearly cautionary tales, seem to have been read by others as instruction manuals

 

[Emily's Cat]

You don't think there might be some value in educating people to their potential, rather than a relatively low bar like high school? I'm floating the idea here that it be universal to people that can achieve mastery over the material.

In what sense are you using the term "value" here? I'm sure there's personal fulfillment value for a lot of people being educated to their potential. I'm not sure there's societal value in it if that education doesn't actually benefit society. And in a whole lot of cases, there's no economic benefit either to the individual or to society as a whole.

 

[Emily's Cat]

What *really* sucks about this is that we're relying on the productivity of young farts to fund the SS benefits of the old farts. Taking more of the old farts' money to pay the young farts to not be productive is, like, anti-sustainable.

Don't get me started on SS. No company in the country is allowed to run an unfunded pension system and get away with it. No company is allowed to fund their pension through intergeneration subsidization. The US government is notorious for making rules that they exempt themselves from.

 

[rockinkt]

You don't think there might be some value in educating people to their potential, rather than a relatively low bar like high school? I'm floating the idea here that it be universal to people that can achieve mastery over the material.

Society would be far better off if we could teach students how to think critically by the age of 14.
To do that though would require a huge revamp of the education system starting with far, far, far, far, far (get the drift?) higher qualifications and standards for elementary and high school teachers along with higher demands being placed on students before allowing advancement.
Putting the money there would be exponentially better than continuing the game of fulfilling laughably easy standards based on regurgitating the accepted group think that make up the bulk of basic college/university BAs.

 

[gnome]

Society would be far better off if we could teach students how to think critically by the age of 14.
To do that though would require a huge revamp of the education system starting with far, far, far, far, far (get the drift?) higher qualifications and standards for elementary and high school teachers along with higher demands being placed on students before allowing advancement.
Putting the money there would be exponentially better than continuing the game of fulfilling laughably easy standards based on regurgitating the accepted group think that make up the bulk of basic college/university BAs.

We might disagree what counts as the chaff there, but I would happily revamp in favor of more critical thinking.