2020 Democratic Candidates Tracker

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acbytesla said:
Don't issue loans. Pay for the education outright. Find out how to improve the results and do that.
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Your second and third sentences have no relationship to each other.

Your solution is screw itl. We don't need an educated workforce. Let them work at McDonald's.
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No, it's not my solution. Recognizing that college isn't suitable for everyone is a far cry from saying it's not suitable for anyone. And I'm all for vocational schools. I'm also for making degrees cheaper for those who can benefit from them.

But how the hell many interpretive dance theory graduates do we need? How many feminist lit theory Ph.D.'s does it take to stay competitive with China? You can pretend that this is just about an educated workforce, but it really isn't.
 
I think we'd have fewer useless degrees if the usual practice wasn't to go straight from high school to college. Finish high school at 18, spend three or four years working the sort of stupid jobs that count as "the real world", then go to college and pick a major. But right now that's not the normal practice because education is treated as a rite of passage by the student, as a product to be consumed by the public, and as a moneymaking business by the schools. We need a complete cultural shift in how education is regarded before meaningful change can be made.

Reminds me of people who talk of healthcare reform but the only change they consider is who signs the check. More fundamental problems are not seen, much less addressed.
 
Ziggurat said:
You say that as if the two policy choices being considered map directly onto these two different outcomes. There is no reason to believe that.

And if you think non-STEM fields will let you exclude them from any massive pork giveaway, well, it would be fun to watch the fallout from trying.
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You pretend that the only education that is worthwhile is science and engineering. This is like the morons that think cutting art and music in elementary and high schools is a good thing.

I always find that amusing as most of the rich kids avoided the hard science classes like the plague. But just so we don't misunderstand each other, I prioritize STEM over other choices.

But if you think all other types of education is worthless, please tell employers to devalue the importance of a degree. I can tell you for a fact that simply having my degree in Political Science as opposed to before I got the degree made a huge difference in my employability and income.
 
Ziggurat said:
Our higher education institutions are churning out lower and lower quality graduates at higher and higher expense. Pouring money on the problem isn't going to fix that.
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No one has suggested that the student loan problem is the only problem in higher education. Warren specifically has several other policy preferences to address other problems in higher education, off the top of my head one specifically was to enact (and re-enact) some consumer protection rules that stop bad for-profit schools with poorly valued degrees from deceiving potential students. Stopping them from lying about their programs and results, and from preying on military veterans. Consumer protection, loan issue, and 'lower quality students' addressed at once, but as you seem to need this explicitly stated, not addressed completely and perfectly.

As a side note, these 'poorer quality students' produced from these bad-faith for-profit schools that have a hard time finding meaningful employment tend to be in fields like programing, nursing, engineering, and welding. Those fields that the people writing right-wing talking points like to pretend are insulated from quality issues, low job-demand, 'non-valid market valued by nature like English, History, Political Science, Art'.

Or it could simply make everything worse. And odds are, that's exactly what it would do.
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Odds are not as you say, as observation does not bear out your prediction.
 
theprestige said:
The idea is, you loan people money because you're confident they'll pay it back.

Turns out, a lot of people aren't paying it back.

Sane solution: Stop loaning the money.

Warren solution: Give the money away for free.

If it's not profitable, why pay for it at all?
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That's not the only narrative here. Some of the so-called universities (like Trump's for example) promised these kids jobs and used dishonest numbers to convince them. Then they charged higher tuition than normal instate college tuition. They were in bed with the lenders getting the students to take out big loans.
 
Ziggurat said:
Government funding of student loans is a major factor in inflating those costs in the first place. An abrupt halt would be disruptive, but a drawdown over time would likely drive cost reduction as well.
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Yeah, that's what the right wingers claim. The fact don't bear it out.
 
Craig4 said:
It would be nice to hear a candidate start talking about things that don't cost the public money and reduce costs. Why does it take four years for an undergraduate degree when in all of Europe it takes three? Does everyone need all the core classes and required electives. Does everyone who goes to college need the same qualification? In the UK there are a variety of qualifications like the university diploma of higher education, foundation degrees and honors or without honors degrees. There are also graduate diplomas in some disciplines that aren't a full masters. Instead of throwing money at the problem, it would be nice to hear from candidates who are willing to look at how we educate people and does what we're doing make sense?
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I do believe kids in the EU get to college with an actual knowledge base. In the US some of them don't believe in science, others were passed year after year despite lacking basic skills. They learned Betsy Ross sewed the flag rather than actual history, and so on.

You want to shorten college, improve high schools and get the religious promoters out of public schools altogether.

Otherwise I agree with you in principle.
 
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TragicMonkey said:
I think we'd have fewer useless degrees if the usual practice wasn't to go straight from high school to college. Finish high school at 18, spend three or four years working the sort of stupid jobs that count as "the real world", then go to college and pick a major. But right now that's not the normal practice because education is treated as a rite of passage by the student, as a product to be consumed by the public, and as a moneymaking business by the schools. We need a complete cultural shift in how education is regarded before meaningful change can be made.

Reminds me of people who talk of healthcare reform but the only change they consider is who signs the check. More fundamental problems are not seen, much less addressed.
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Who are you and what have you done with TragicMonkey? No vampires in tutus? No Dame Judy? No seventeenth century Hapsburg princess? No tortoises on fire?

Don't do this to us. We have a right to certain expectations, you know!
 
Delphic Oracle said:
Speaking of higher education in the context of the campaign...

Samantha Frenkel-Poppel (VP of the Harvard Undergraduate Centrist Society) had this whopper of a question so loaded it was bursting at the seams:

https://twitter.com/jules_su/status/1120514801405448193?s=19

A freeze frame of Bernie taking the question in:

https://twitter.com/JAG_Q/status/1120515506002386945?s=19

I think this is a face I make at work a lot.
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What are we supposed to glean from this exchange? The Bern Bros are tooting the horn like it's some kind of sterling moment? The #neverBerners make it out to be a great gotcha moment.

It's a nothing berder. The look on Bernie's face is the exact same look of others who've spotted a question coming from miles away. It's not like the guy can't read and hasn't heard the same **** a thousand times! Any of us tinkering around the edges of socialism and communism has come across the same gotcha a thousand times.
 
Foolmewunz said:
What are we supposed to glean from this exchange? The Bern Bros are tooting the horn like it's some kind of sterling moment? The #neverBerners make it out to be a great gotcha moment.



It's a nothing berder. The look on Bernie's face is the exact same look of others who've spotted a question coming from miles away. It's not like the guy can't read and hasn't heard the same **** a thousand times! Any of us tinkering around the edges of socialism and communism has come across the same gotcha a thousand times.
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Do you find it credible that a Harvard student is this ignorant of the differences between Democratic Socialism and communist Russia?

What, then is the purpose of the question?

I have placed no bets on any horses as of yet, so what I see is the broader narrative of yet more hostility towards progressives from within the party that keeps telling us to all play nice.
 
Delphic Oracle said:
Do you find it credible that a Harvard student is this ignorant of the differences between Democratic Socialism and communist Russia?

What, then is the purpose of the question?

I have placed no bets on any horses as of yet, so what I see is the broader narrative of yet more hostility towards progressives from within the party that keeps telling us to all play nice.
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That's a bit of a stretch. Why do you assume someone who identifies themselves as a centrist is a stalking horse for the DNC? She appears to be a moderate Republican, to me.

Her interviews for the school paper include Centrist Republicans Chris Christie and current Barr supplicant Jennings.

Seeing as to how there's no evidence that the "hostility" is from within the party, I'll take your observations as being incorrect.

My observation is based on years of experience. Bernie wasn't set-back by the question but mildly amused. He heard it at every whistle stop for the entire campaign season and probably every presser he's ever given. His reaction is likely "not this tired old **** again!"
 
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