This just seems so wrong.
Optimising for vocational training means you're effectively tuning out the abstract arts and sciences and... oh, the humanities. These fields don't usually/directly translate into a financial success, but they broaden our perspective and deepen our experience. And in doing so provide the tools and language to more effectively analyse and engage with human culture.
And to a certain extent, "true" art is antithetical to capitalism, in a similar way that "true" journalism is antithetical to surveillance (honesty/transparency vs main-stream popularity), and I'd argue equally as important. For that reason these fields absolutely should be subsidised, otherwise art becomes about marketing, journalism becomes about propaganda, and science becomes about start-ups...
Fact 1: Education in the US is very expensive, in large part because the ready availability of loans removes most downwards pressure on prices.
Fact 2: If you are loaned money to obtain a degree which is not economically valued then you will not be able to pay it back.
Fact 3: If you loan people money without expecting people to pay it back, then it's not a loan, it's a grant.
Fact 4: If you offer grants to high school graduates to take non-economically values classes, a lot of them will do so. This pushes up the cost of the education, and pushes down the wages graduates will make, excerbating the problem.
> For that reason these fields absolutely should be subsidised
Perhaps. But in which case by how much, by whom, and in what fashion? Because offhand offering free arts degrees sounds like one of the worst possible ways you could subsidise art as a field, and one of the best ways you can cause a lot of harm to young people while enriching the existing education institutions and not really advancing art at all.
Mind you...
> otherwise art becomes about marketing, journalism becomes about propaganda, and science becomes about start-ups...
Artists, journalists, and scientists have always had to earn a living. To the best of my knowledge, there was no "golden age". We've never subsidized artists (or scientists, or journalists) in the way you say we should; the future you're afraid of "becoming" is our present and past.
It is as likely that tying a university degree as the minimum pre-requisite for a decently paying career is driving the price upwards. Increased competition for desirable placements is the classic limited supply high demand scenario.
The problem isn't the availability of loans which are just a side effect but the focus of education as a gate to future success.
BTW from ancient times up until the last couple of centuries, patronage was often the primary income source for artists and scientists, the rich and powerful would subsidize them, offer sinecures to allow them to create, and the patron would get to show how wealthy and sophisticated they were.
Really all I'm talking about is not defunding/sidelining Arts etc "because it's not financially viable".
The idea is really to provide a well rounded education, (giving students a broader perspective on the world, a stronger vocabulary for expressing ideas, etc), as opposed to a purely career focused one. I think it would be detrimental to culture and society in general if everyone was groomed from high-school to only ever consider the safe, paved, career footpath.
This may take the form of allowing for more electives in vocational courses, encouragement to take double degrees, or eliminating barriers for later study (letting people change their minds, or even just reskilling when the robots take over).
What I was meant by "subsidisation" is just the "somewhat" free education that exists in some places today, but has been more prevalent/widespread in the past. And while prioritising vocational degrees is fine to some extent, crippling participation in the Arts by making those qualifications prohibitively expensive (by not providing loans) is a bad idea imo.
But for the vast majority of jobs people don't care what degree you have! In technology yes you often want someone with a particular degree. But if you're hiring a civil servant, a advertising executive, a business consultant, or any one of hundreds of other jobs, you can have any degree you like.
I have friends with theology degrees who work in business and earn more than I do in technology with my CS PhD. The companies that hire them value having people with a very wide range of academic backgrounds.
I'd even go so far as to say the majority of college grads learned almost nothing during college, and the few who did would, after a few years of maturity, pick up a book of their own free will and enrich themselves.
I think the costs of university (huge amounts of debt and enormous human and physical resources put into holding lectures in giant buildings that need to be maintained and heated, the social divide created between those who got to hang out among the privileged for 4 years and those who couldn't) generally outweighs the hypothetical benefits you mention that some people might gain during college. Except perhaps for a few fields (like medicine, or dramatical arts, or music) where you can't just pick up a textbook and learn it all.
The value added by quality in-person tuition shouldn't be underrated though, not to mention access to equipment, studios, and like minds...
Working and communicating in person is a hugely effective catalyst for productivity, creative evolution, etc. Artistic and scientific development is often accelerated by human interaction, which is why art movements and scientific advancements tend to cluster around communities (vs individuals).
Now I'll certainly agree that the cost of a University education in the US is much too high, and there are probably more efficient ways to get the same educational benefits, but to say that you can replace Universities with books is simply disingenuous.
Go pick up a graduate mathematics textbook (or even an undergraduate one, I'll be generous) of your choice and try to learn from it without help from an instructor. I'll wait. Best case scenario, you will believe you understand it until you come into contact with someone who actually does and be horribly embarrassed. Or perhaps so self-satisfied with your ability to surpass everyone in the universe at understanding mathematics quickly and without help or discussion that you won't be able to even grasp the fact that you don't understand it. I've seen both first hand.
English and Philosophy (especially Philosophy) are exactly the same. You cannot learn philosophy from only reading textbooks. It's where you start, not where you finish. It's the bare minimum. It's what you should have done before you even show up to the class, at which point you begin learning nearly everything there is to learn about the subject.
Almost everyone learns a GREAT deal in college. Some people do learn so little they aren't even capable of understanding what it is they were /supposed/ to learn, and post on tech message boards about how college is a waste of time.
True.
And, if you live in the US, patronize one of our great public libraries. If you're in New York or Boston, just walk in. If you're elsewhere you can borrow via interlibrary loan.
I'm not against Arts or offering scholarships/grants for them. What I'm against is allowing a person to take out $160,000 of debt at 6% interest for an education that will land them a job as an administrative assistant. They will most likely carry that debt for the majority of their adult life.
It's bad for society to allow 18 year old kids that have a poor grasp of long term consequences to shackle themselves with such a financial burden. None have had long term full time jobs to appreciate how difficult it will be to pay back that much money.
Further, I think having the availability/flexibility of studying multiple degrees can be immensely useful/rewarding. Particularly as industries get more advanced/sophisticated (and others get automated/downscaled), I wouldn't be surprised if there's a cultural shift towards continuous reeducation (at least, as much is financially practical/possible).
Why? Out of all the things to think are wrong, inability to pick a useless major based on financial status is wrong? As opposed to pollution in East Asia, conflict minerals in our supply chain, or slavery in shrimp fisheries in Thailand?
> These fields don't usually/directly translate into a financial success, but they broaden our perspective and deepen our experience.
Yes. Those are luxuries. For most of history, middle class people couldn't afford to study those fields. Colleges used to have much smaller enrollments. They'd either by A&M schools, used to help train up mechanics and farmers or engineering schools where you need to learn the math to become an engineer. Only a few prestigious ones (Yale, Harvard, etc etc) offered humanities majors, for landed gentry. The kind of people who didn't really have to work for a living.
> And to a certain extent, "true" art is antithetical to capitalism
That is ridiculous. "True" art has to appeal to an audience, and if it appeals, it will sell. You can't just put our art and say "hey, it's true, support me". That's a dangerously naive view of the world.
If you read my and other responses in this thread, the arts/humanities are far from useless (they just have a less direct economic effect).
Historically important art/music has often been ignored, ridiculed, censored, etc. To suggest that it only has social/cultural value if it appeals to a popular/paying audience is overly simplistic.
I'm not saying there's no overlap between capitalism and art in general, but if they're perfectly aligned then we miss the challenging, obscure, alternative, upsetting, disruptive, etc.
I don't believe that's the sentiment at all. Few on here will argue against the value of a well-rounded liberal arts education. However, the sentiment is that if an education requires borrowing piles of money, it should lead to employment which can realistically service the loan.
As far as I'm concerned, it's a question of priorities. Sure, I love the humanities, but the government only has so many tax dollars, and studying Shakespeare in university is not a priority.
Some times a struggle is not a bad thing. Not to the point where one should be homeless or starving of course, but having everything handed to you (even if you have worked hard in the past) doesn't always result in the best of outcomes.
Earning a high level of income in general already signifies that a person is contributing to society in a meaningful way. Their income is reflective of the service provided to others.
All corporations exist to better the lives of people. Their purpose is to earn profit for shareholders (ultimately, people), but how do they accomplish that? Mostly, by making useful goods or selling useful services. A consumer will then buy one of these goods or services because that consumer has decided the value of the good/service to them is greater than the value of the dollars they'd need to pay for it. E.g., If you have decided to buy a car for $10k cash, then you have decided that having the car now is more valuable to you than having $10K USD now. The fact that the car exists and is available for sale has thus enriched your life, by giving you the option to buy it. The car's makers are providing a service to others.
As a result of each purchase, both sides ends up with greater total value than they had before. When people trade, both are better off.
A tremendous income generally comes from delivering tremendous value in the world to others. There are many layers of indirection involved, so it's difficult to see for one's self how one's job (like an office job or financial job) improves the lives of others in the general case, but through trickle-down effects it always does if you follow cause and effect through enough steps.
Or for a clear and notable example, consider the game of Minecraft. It was largely developed by a single individual, Markus Persson aka Notch. He sat down and used his game development skills to produce something marvelous. Many people came along and each decided to pay Markus $X for his game Minecraft, and since over 100 million copies have been sold, Markus became a billionaire. Many people found great enjoyment in the game, and Markus gained a great number of dollars.
In general, tremendous income results from delivering tremendous value. Our society is working correctly and incentivizing the right things if this is the result of ethical business dealing. Sometimes people get rich through scams, fraud, theft, and other shady dealings, but in a society with law and order, this is the exception rather than the rule.
Because, unless you're rich or get a very good scholarship, I guess that going to that kind of college makes sense only if you plan to pursue a high-paying career.
On the other hand this benefits them as an institution since they can soak those legacy students for every hundred-thousand that daddy is worth and let them coast through on the reputation of those high-flyers.
What concrete evidence leads you to think this is true?
As far as evidence goes, more experiential - I've studied visual and sonic arts at a few different universities/colleges (in Australia). Generally, not many found financial success in their chosen field.
The underlying theory of subsidizing tuition is that a college degree increases lifetime earnings, which increases GDP and the tax base, ultimately paying for itself. Generally speaking, investments which do not pay for themselves are considered bad ones.
Taxpayers don't want to make bad investments in subsidizing college education. Clearly this is happening at a massive scale, but I think liberal arts degrees are just the scapegoat. The reality is that $1.3 trillion in mostly unpayable and undischargable debt is a problem much bigger than earning the wrong degree.
With the housing bubble and subsequent crash [1], the truth is that not everyone should have a mortgage, and pushing the homeownership rate above 64% was not sustainable. But college degree rates are on a much longer term and steady rise, and there's not clearly a bubble [2] but maybe I'm looking at the wrong data.
If $1.3 trillion in student debt didn't actually result in significantly more people getting degrees than otherwise would have, then we are talking about a completely failed policy which is merely padding school endowments. Literally nothing to do with choice of degree.
Imagine an alternative policy; making a $1.3 trillion investment in building and endowing 5,000 public universities. Significantly increase the supply of college education to drive down the cost. Would that have worked better?
[1] - http://cdn.tradingeconomics.com/embed/?s=unitedstahomownrat&... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...
Smart investing is the same whether the returns are financial or something else (citizenship, etc.): Someone needs to make good decisions about which investments are good and which aren't. If I believed your romantic notion of the humanities reflected reality in the classroom, that would be a great investment. But I don't believe that's true for many students.
I agree that many students probably gain nothing at all from studying arts, but many do, and become better people, professionals, politicians, etc.
Studying these fields (or communicating with people who have (even watching documentaries)) helps to understand and contextualise the world, and to articulate those (often complex and abstract) ideas.
Of course, many people come away with nothing, and many with only the most superficial understanding, but an educational climate with less participation in the arts, humanities, theoretical sciences, etc would suffer a net reduction in cultural capital, political discourse, etc.
[*] IMO.
Kind of ironic you say that, since the humanities programs themselves "tune out" all recognition to Eastern/South American/African art and humanities. I took 3 required "western traditions" classes, and except for a brief study of sumerian/egyptian cultures, the vast majority centered around dead white men.
I'd go so far as to suggest that learning the tools and language to construct a building, treat cancer, or program a computer all may offer significantly upside for human culture and civilization. This is in potential constract when items in that list are neglected in favor of Roman poetry, post-modern art, or dissecting the rhyming schemes of long-dead authors.
The humanities have their place, but the list of things that broaden our perspectives and deepen our experiences is literally the list of all subjects that can be studied. The humanities have no monopoly on perspective, experience, or reasoning.
Absolutely not, especially now when the mechanisms of compensation have been democratized so well. Beyond that, Andy Warhol (et al) would be amused to learn that real art and capitalism were conceptual enemies. NB: I'm assuming you're using "antithetical" to mean that their successes are inversely proportional.
Plus I'm not sure that the "mechanisms of compensation have been democratized so well", as you claim. (Which is to say it's all still largely driven by major label interests [1] [2].)
[1] http://pitchfork.com/features/article/8993-the-cloud/ [2] http://www.newyorker.com/culture/sasha-frere-jones/if-you-ca...
While the idea of helping people become more educated is obviously beneficial to both individuals and the society as a whole, government loans - which are supposed to "help" - are a huge factor fueling ever-raising costs. The loans, in effect, subsidize the higher-education complex, rather than students.
Many of us have been brainwashed to think that higher education has to cost a lot of money. But it need not: all that great education requires are wise, passionate teachers and a bit of infrastructure: a whiteboard, a few books, and a laptop computer (with a couple of outliers).
We don't need football/hockey teams with coaches paid $3-4M/year. We don't need armies of "Deans of Diversity & Inclusion" (and other phony administrative positions), who make $400K/year, we don't need manicured lawns and Olympics-quality sports facilities (these salaries are from the Univ of California - a state school!)
If a good private university cost < $20K/year and a state university < $10K, we would not have endless discussions wrt who should pay, who should study what, etc.
It's funny that a lot of the outliers are the degrees that can actually help you with financial stability later. Universities love humanity courses, exactly for the reasons you point out. It's easy to shoehorn a couple more undergrads into a literature or philosophy class, all you need to do is buy a few more chairs, and the books sort of buy themselves, and you're paying the TAs starvation wages anyways, what's a few more students between friends.
Whereas in a material science lab, you need a rockwell brinell hardness tester. For a computer science lab, you need some heavy iron if you're going to be doing heavy algorithms (might have changed lately, it's been going on 20 years for me). For electrical engineering, you need the CAD workstations with licenses for VHDL programs and the hardware to reprogram FPGAs.
So that's kind of interesting
Not for 200 undergrads learning how to bubblesort. For that you need a lab with 50-100 PC's. For grad courses in parallel comp. or AI, you might need a semi-expensive cluster to play around with, but if you want something that just works you could just buy cluster time on AWS, which I'm sure they'd give a discounted academic rate. I'd expect the most expensive thing in a CS lab to be the electricity to power the computers.
No one put in sane cost controls. No one told the universities that federal money wouldn't just increase to their whims. No one told students what its really like in real life to payback a 50k or 100k or even 150+k loan for a 4 year degree. What that means as an opportunity cost compared to cheaper schooling. My relatively modest loan is like making car payments on a decent car everything month... for 20 years. So 4 lower-end Lexus's if you consider interest. Or less to put in retirement.
I have no idea how people with large loans get by. I imagine the recent Obama rules regarding loan repayment as percentage of salary helps with an 20 year payment forgiveness plan. Not sure if the new business friendly administration is going to keep that in place.
The "phony administrative positions", lawns, and student facilties you dismiss as pork are the school's way of competing for the piles of grant money replacement known as undergrads.
Then further more, prices are already in the ball park of your supposed ideal. An instate student can go to a school like Georgia Tech (ranked 5 or so in engineering nationally depending on the year) for 12k before scholarships, essentially free if they don't piss away their grades. Private top tier schools cost more, but tend to offer more scholarships and grants so that's harder to compare between institutions. It's not that schools are expensive, it's that students are choosing to not go to the inexpensive schools, usually to get out of their state, or to be in an institution that specializes in their major, or go someplace with better student institutions.
US research is what makes our schools the top in the world, and the actual education gained from an undergrad degree isn't the drive for most people. It's the networking, the exposure, and the certification, none of which can be duplicated in a dinky classroom with a whiteboard and an underpaid teacher. Just look at American High Schools if you want to see how that turns out.
Do you have evidence for this?
I have never been privy to the financials of a university, college, or even department where tuition money subsidizes research staff, including professors.
> The "phony administrative positions", lawns, and student facilties you dismiss as pork are the school's way of competing for the piles of grant money replacement known as undergrads.
Believe me, we'd see this dynamic regardless of whether your hypothesis re: research funding were true. For evidence, look toward small liberal arts colleges. Most have never received anything more than token amounts of federal grant money, and yet their tuition increases match those of research universities.
>...Georgia Tech...
is an extreme outlier in terms of quality for cost.
Also, that $12k is only tuition. The actual cost, assuming you can't find free room/board in Atlanta, is 2x before interest on inevitable loans.
I say it's a consequence of their windfall profits from 3-5% yearly tuition increases. Most institutions have "use-it-or-lose-it" budgets. Their accountants can only be so clever in finding ways to spend it, lest it pile up and get released on a state budget report. Then everyone would scream "Why does UXY have a $50mil surplus when they just increased tuition!".
If they wanted to actually compete, they would lower prices. Thats what attracts buyers.
What is actually happening is that in many cases "researchers" chase fame and money, not academic excellence. They have no time to teach "idiot undergrads", as you nicely put it, because they are busy running their consultancies on the side. [I am in Boston, I see a lot of this first-hand, in "elite" schools in particular]
[0] http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbelzer/2016/02/24/the-unive...
UoA made significantly more money than any other college team (some of which lose money). So using them as an example of why college sports is a net gain rather than a net loss is extremely (and purposely) misleading.
Plus even UoA spent $47 million on arena expansion in 2006 and then $65.6 million on further arena expansion in 2010. So it isn't like the football program doesn't have debt it has to repay the school (and incidentally many arenas are never funded from the programs that they house).
A cynical person might say it is an intended consequence. Higher prices raise the barrier to entry for lower classes.
When you have wealth, you want to get maximum benefit out of that wealth. Since wealth is a relative concept, the only way to do so is to widen the gap between those who have wealth and those who don't. You're making your dollars go farther.
If you can drive the cost of college (or anything else) to exorbitant heights, people will be forced to come to you for loans. Then, you own many years of their future.
College is one of the most sinister purchases to do this to, because it is the very mechanism by which someone could possibly break free of being a Havenot.
Speaking as a commuter in my student years, this boggles my mind.
Of course, any concerns about cost are dismissed by the big handwave of 'well, financial aid is available...'
Why are interest free student loans never floated as an option? Here in New Zealand, our student loans are provided by the government and are interest free as long as we reside in New Zealand.
It means that people who don't do tertiary education, or who do a trade, don't subsidise those who go to university. It also means that there's a disincentive to go to university if you don't need to, which I think is a good thing, however everyone is able to go to university if they want to/need to, without worrying about how it's being paid for.
Our student loans are also paid off proportional to our income, I think at a rate of around 8% (and no repayments required if you earn less than $19k per year). This means that you only pay what you can, it's essentially another tax, rather than in the USA where you get people struggling to make payments on their student loan.
Obviously, we also have the advantage of cheaper tuition, although it is rising. It costs around NZ$7,000 (~US$5,000) per year to go to university, it's not cheap, but it's not cripplingly expensive.
Imagine what would happen if the US government made student loans interest free. Who would gain, and who would lose?
(1) Students could afford to take out larger loans (as the repayments would be more affordable with 0% interest vs. 4.66% interest)
(2) As a result of (1) colleges could charge higher tuition fees, without reducing the number of students would could afford to pay
(3) The government would pay interest to the banks (interest that's paid by students under the current system).
Based on what we've seen in the past, increasing access to credit for students mostly benefits colleges. Students end up paying the same monthly payments. Just like how lower interest rates make house prices go up.
This is indeed a sad situation. I'm generally in favour of free-market solutions, but most 18-year-olds don't have sufficient information or ability to act as a rational market participant. So the situation in the UK, where undergraduate education is mostly funded by the government, and prices are centrally capped, seems much better for students.
Basically, I've come to the conclusion that college is not for all. We would be wise to get behind technical schools, and community colleges, and save the university for those pursuing subjects like medicine, science, math, law, etc. At a minimum we should change the paradigm of college--from being an "experience" (parties, socializing, sports), to academics. Getting rid of school sponsored sports would vastly change the perception of college. Plus, we should make it harder to graduate. Require a 3.0, and have controls in place to ensure grades don't inflate to enable everyone to achieve the new minimum. Basically, college should be 100% for learning. Sure, you'll still have friends, go to the occasional party, but on the whole you're only there to learn and do things you couldn't learn or do elsewhere. Right now it's almost day care for 20-somethings. This would also necessitate dropping easy programs and majors. Not that there isn't a place for the arts, but is a four year degree in English or Art History really a good idea?
But yeah, I've noticed the same thing: the more we incentivize people to go to college by way of grants and loans, the more expensive it gets. When was college cheapest? When there was virtually no aid/loans available to anyone, and a much smaller percentage of people went to college.
Firstly, all loans are provided by the government and they do charge interest. With the current system (for loans since 2012), the interest rate is based on how much you earn - it varies from 1.6% to 4.6%.
The amount you repay is based on how much you earn. If you earn under £21k you don't pay anything. Above that you pay 9% of your income (pre-tax) - if you are an employee it's taken directly from your salary.
Although it's a loan, it isn't typically classed as debt the same as a credit card or mortgage. If you want a mortgage to buy a house, the bank will want to know how much you pay each month, but they won't factor in how much you have left to pay, on the decision to give you a mortgage.
The amount a high education institute can charge is capped at £9,000/year, however a lot of universities charge less, and if you are from a poor background you can usually get a good amount of funding from the government.
After 30 years if you haven't repayed everything, the rest of the loan will be written off.
[0] Scotland is different in that they have no fees for Scottish and EU students, where as students from the rest of the UK have to pay the usual fees.
Increased subsidizing of college education will only make the overall costs (whether to students or to the government) rise unless additional controls to reduce tuition are in place.
(Yes, the exceptions immediately leap to your mind, I'm sure. But I went to University too, and I remember that I just described an awful lot of courses, even as I too remember the exceptions.)
Universities are valuable, yes, but they acquired that reputation in a time where we weren't shoving everyone through them. It is completely unclear to me that 19th century attitudes about the values of Universities are appropriate to our 21st century reality. If you take a hard-headed business-type look at a university and look at the product it is producing vs. the overhead it requires to produce that cost, not to mention the opportunity cost being foisted off on the students, it's not hard to think that we could pare this down a bit for the vast bulk of students, with the result that they still get the vast majority of benefits and either not having any debt, or having an order of magnitude less of it. Leave those who still need the full experience to it, don't make everyone pay for it.
Please note: I said "college" not education. I believe education will always be vital, no matter what. A piece of paper "proving" it may not be.
Well, an interest-free loan is certainly a significant subsidy, as is the direct government support of NZ universities. But I agree this is less subsidy than some European countries where higher education is essentially given away for free.
I don't expect (or want, actually) for my education to be free. I knew I was racking up debt and knew it would have to be paid. Being able to refinance, though, was a huge help.
I mean I paid for all my living and education expenses with loans too but I'm not sure I would if it would take 20+ years to pay off
imagine that - graduating and having 0 debt, and not ruining parents in the same time. it's called freedom. but if you feel that you don't want this kind of freedom and perform better under long term pressure, then enjoy your current state.
The idea of linking repayment to income is called an "income-contingent loan". It's a great idea for University tuition, because it reduces the loan to a system for reclaiming a proportion of the private benefits that accrue to the student from the additional education. This removes some of the risk faced by the student that they might put a lot of resources into education but then fail to realise the expected benefits (eg. through serious illness, a broader economic collapse etc).
It seems like American students are willing to pay higher and higher tuitions. This is the root of the problem.
If we had 0% interest loans, we might have students paying even more for college than now.
Why can't these kids just think about the debt they're getting into?
Some other people in this thread have mentioned that it's because parents have beaten into kids heads how important college is. That may be in part true, but I think a bigger truth is that people are simply bad with money. College is not the only debt many people have. Look at things like credit card debt[1], and car loans. The populace as a whole makes poor financial decisions every single day, so why would college be any different? At least college can be looked at as a type of investment, unlike that new car or PS4.
When you're 17/18, it's really hard to grasp how hard it will be to pay off the loans. Especially when society tells you that you will be a loser if you don't go. This comes directly from teachers, which have been an authority figure in the child's life up to that point.
[1] https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay-loans/understand/plans [2] https://studentloans.gov/myDirectLoan/mobile/repayment/repay...
That's because the US is characterized by a Republican party with wholly obstructionist goals which make the worst possible consessions for those who do wish for an effective social safety net to be in place, effectively being able to say "I told you so" when the watered-down systems inevitably fail.
In countries where those systems are not points of contention they end up working quite well. See the German education system, NHS, and a long list of other programs around the world.
- The government stops guaranteeing student debt to banks
- Students are allowed to declare bankruptcy and discharge their debt after N number of years, if they can prove that they're financially unable to pay & the market will not bear a salary high enough to service their debt for someone with their degree
- (optionally) The government stops subsidizing student loan interest
Why?
- If banks are liable to lose the capital in the loan, they will have incentive to make sure that the money is being spent wisely. This does mean that they'll no longer give out $100k for a hypothetical finger painting degree.
- It's a societal norm that debt can be discharged in bankruptcy if a person has no assets and no income, and student loans shouldn't be straight-up exception. We have to tighten this up a little bit to make sure people don't go to college, default, and then reap all the benefits ... but disallowing bankruptcy entirely seems extreme. Optionally, we could also consider revoking their degree if they default (rough equivalent of repossession of a physical good).
- College is extremely expensive right now because a flood of guaranteed, subsidize money has created fairly inelastic demand -- many students have little price sensitivity. This drives prices up. If loans are harder to get, smaller, and not subsidized, college prices come down.
The big problem with the American system right now is that we've written the educational institutions a blank check. If suddenly we put even a little economic pressure on the system, costs will come down.
Many of these changes couldn't be made retroactive -- loans were given out under a set of conditions agreed upon by all parties, and these determined the amount of the loans, so they shouldn't be changed. These changes could, however, improve things for future generations.
One last note -- as someone who spent 5 years paying off $100k in student loans, and who now makes enough money that I'd be excluded from the 'free' (AKA 'paid by everyone else') tuition plans for my own kids, I do admit that I'm not real excited about that idea. I would be pretty ticked off if I had to pay for my own tuition, my children's tuition, and also everyone else's kids tuition.
I suspect because then no one could make money. In the current system, they certainly make money. In a "free tuition" state, they'd still make money; it'd just come direct from the government rather than being filtered through the population and economy first.
If you give interest free loans there is a strong incentive from the universities to increase their fees. How do you fix that issue?
The general attitude in the US is more like "Everything is a choice" rather than "The Government should do things that are broadly good for everyone". So anything that gives relief to students as whole will be deeply unpopular, but universities charging exorbitant rates and employers using college degrees as a filter for jobs that don't need them are okay, because it's your choice to get into student debt for a degree, or because it's your choice as an employer to use whatever filter you want.
This attitude is really hard to change because practically anyone in the US who is admired or famous is so because of their wealth. All the parents think that their kid is going to be good enough to go to Harvard and become a millionaire. And that is why they pony up the ridiculous fees that keep their child in facilities that are ridiculously good for some petulant 18-year olds.
Just like anywhere in the world, there's a wide spectrum of hopes and wishes and dreams here and an equally wide spectrum of how to achieve them.
You are painting the US as a drone-like nonsensical mono-culture. This is very, very far from reality.
Not the professors, let's get real. They have probably gotten sweet raises, but nowhere near the growth rate of tuition.
The armies of "administrators" are getting huge salaries, but the main point of the whole bubble is that it is a great way to proactively enslave a whole new generation before they even have a chance.
It's so obviously a "sold my soul to the company store" situation that I can't believe everyone doesn't see through it right away.
Until employers start scrutinizing education in terms other than "No degree? No thanks.", then we will continue to have this problem, in my opinion.
To add to this, administrators know if they don't hire extensively they are likely to be replaced by someone who will. There is no control mechanism. Giving students a small periodic vote in respect of their top administration would go a long way towards ameliorating such corruption.
The "Dictator's Handbook" covers such topics https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Po...
There are better options than a lot of people have taken. To me the solution has to involve better financial and career counseling for high school graduates.
Requiring a degree is fine. Just waive state university tuition. In Germany education is free, for example.
Actually, at most institutions, professors' raises barely match the rate of inflation, and the majority of teaching has been moved onto adjunct faculty who have no job security.
so, do the taxpayers see the money as reduced sales and property tax?
No, that isn't the real killer. That's the educrat line you've been trained to regurgitate. The truth is that higher-ed is getting about the same percent GDP it's been getting since the 70's [1]. The "real killer" is the annual 3.5% above inflation tuition increases [2] that are inflicted to fund an ever growing amount of staff and their gold plated benefits.
>> do the taxpayers see the money as reduced sales and property tax?
Are you kidding? Where is the place where taxpayers are liv'n la Vida Loca in their property tax free la-la land? We're paying out the ass. Some RINO manages to cut a half a percent or maybe just not increase taxes as fast and they shout it from the roof tops; HUGE TAX CUT. OMGWTFBBQ I SAVED YOU 1.003% VOTE FOR MEEE!
Please kid; stop drinking the educrat kool-aid. The only redeeming feature of this crazy ass education bubble is that it isn't growing as fast as the crazy ass health care bubble.
[1] http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/education_spending [2] https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tabl...
In the UK the professors are lucky to have a permanent contract, nevermind sweet raises!!
It produces an army of people who have to work every day of their lives, which produces tax revenue and a big, growing economy.
Going to college might be a better choice for an individual than not going to college, but the system has been intentionally set up this way to turn the masses into indentured servants. (Originally, it might have been unexpected that student loans would create this bubble ... but now, it's not a surprise, it's a valuable exploitation mechanism).
It's not the optimal approach for our society ... it only serves to help the Haves gain more control over the Have-nots.
Plus every time the department of education gives out more money, colleges raise prices.
Imagine how much a television would cost if the government said everyone must have a television. They're older people who tell me back in their day they could work at a restaurant and pay for college debt free. Get the government out of the student loan business and let the free market decide.
If no money is being printed for students to go to colleges, fewer people will go to college and therefore the schools will be forced to compete for student's business. Therefore college will be much more affordable for the people who wish to go.
I totally agree with our President-Elect about getting rid of the DoE, along with Common core. Let things be up to the states.
Apparently back in the old days you could work a part time job, and pay for college at night debt free. If the gov keeps handing out loans, then what incentive do schools have to keep their prices low and compete with each other?
Oh and then the presidents of some colleges are paid more than the president of the United States. I guess appointing 4,000 people, managing the military, a bunch of departments across the country, etc is easier than managing a bunch of kids by their logic. Oh and don't forget we gotta build a nice stadium so I can put my name on it too!
Okay, I'll bite. What? As is, with the DoE and Common Core, we struggle to get the poorer states to educate its students adequately compared to the wealthier states. Take a look at any metric you want about education in New Mexico, Louisiana, West Virginia and compare it to Massachusetts, New Jersey, or Virginia.
One of the things that makes the federal government so valuable is its ability to provide as even footing as possible for citizens of all states. Gutting the federal ability for that is going to ensure that those state which already struggle will struggle more and is going to lead to a larger set of divides within our country.
Its obvious a huge part of the loans are used for careers that will never make its money back, and the loans only collateral are the person itself(not his parents assets). So if someone had an arts degree that cost him 150k, and never made that money, he should be able to default on that loan. As he does that, colleges have a strong incentive to keep tuition matched with the income produced by that degree.
My understanding is that college loans have a special protection by the government that makes them undefaultable. Dont subsidy college loans! Dont take more money from all(including under represented poor people) to put it in the pockets of colleges. Just make the loans defaultable, and you will see such a massive movement of defaults that colleges will never put unpayable debt ever again.
I would guess somewhere around 1 in 1000; not widespread, but every institution will have a few.
The transition would be ugly, because student loans would dry up like a pat of butter on a skillet. It would take a year or more for college tuitions to adjust, for all those administrators to be laid off, for all those leisure centers to be scrapped for firewood, etc.
But then we'd be back to market driven, affordable college tuition with a solid ROI.
TL;DR - When handing out student loans, we should consider aptitude (how likely is the person to graduate) & the career potential of the degree as qualifiers.
Because you can no longer declare bankruptcy to erase student debt.
> If your degree of choice is unlikely to yield the kind of return that will pay for it, then you should be required to save up for it, rather than getting a loan, just like there are qualifications for other loans, like auto or mortgages which look at both the value of the asset vs its sale price, and your ability to pay.
Now only the rich can send their kids to art school.
> TL;DR - When handing out student loans, we should consider aptitude (how likely is the person to graduate) & the career potential of the degree as qualifiers.
So people like my wife who didn't do that great in high school because of poor family environment would never be able to prove their true abilities in college. She was the valedictorian of her masters program. Without student loans, she'd be making 1/5th of her salary but you couldn't tell that a decade ago.
Keep in mind that resources are limited -- for a given level of taxation, everything the State spends money on means either cutting something else or increasing the debt (thereby making debt service less likely to be sustainable long-term)
Right now it benefits the rich a great deal since they can afford unpaid internships or low paying entry jobs
Because it is. If student loan debt was treated exactly the same way as every other form of debt, 95% of rational students would declare bankruptcy as soon as they graduated, since their financial wealth at that point would be negative and their intangible wealth -- primarily the education they've received -- can't be repossessed and sold off. Obviously no lender would want to issue loans under such conditions; so treating student loan debt the same way as other debt would simply result in student loans not existing.
But as a society we're better off if students can borrow money to get training which significantly increases their future earnings[1], so the government steps in with regulations to prevent strategic defaults on student loans. Unfortunately, it's very hard to distinguish between strategic and non-strategic defaults... and so we get the current situation, where some people have large amounts of "zombie" student loan debt.
Ultimately what is needed is a system which doesn't allow for strategic defaults but simultaneously avoids having punitive repayments; many countries around the world are moving to income-based repayments for this reason -- that is, you can't get rid of your student debt by declaring bankruptcy, but your minimum payments won't exceed a formula based on your income (e.g., $5 out of every $100 you earn past $15k/year).
[1] Not all degrees do increase students' future earnings, but academic institutions are very good at misleading students about this. We need stronger regulations here, and not just for the benefit of students taking loans; I think the best approach would be to add questions to the Census about the specific academic qualifications individuals have and then report -- and require institutions to republish -- the average incomes of graduates of particular programs. This would not be perfect, since students entering higher education are biased towards higher incomes whether they get that higher education or not; but it would be better than the present complete lack of information.
Where is the collateral? You buy a house, don't pay... you lose the house.
You buy an education, don't pay... you... lose the education?
No bank is going to give money for degrees without a realistic change of getting paid back. They have no fear of getting paid back because you CANT remove the debt via bankruptcy.
I think there needs to be a different approach because it IS different... but the "you can never remove this debt" is too much.
My personal opinion:
Give some sort of limit - 10/20/30 years? - and some sort of max% of income - 10%?. If the loan isn't paid off by the end of the limit at a max % of income, then the loan can then be discharged by bankruptcy.
That would remove loans for "crap" courses (finger painting) except for those that pay for it out of pocket. Banks would still give loans for courses that lead to real jobs. Kids could still take shit degrees if they can pay for them (although, those would dry up).
Then they shouldn't. A big part of the problem is that the negative externalities of loans are all but eliminated from the issuer and completely placed on the borrower, only that these borrowers almost always unaware or don't fully appreciate the risk. If we allowed student loans to be shed through bankruptcy then companies would stop giving out $100k loans for art degrees and history degrees. This is the sort of risk/reward calculation that most incoming students aren't equipped to make, but actuaries are great at. Why don't we let them?
This already exists in the USA. It's called Income Based Repayment and the outstanding balance of loans and interest is forgiven after 30 years of making payments capped to a certain percentage of income. There is a tax penalty that may or may not still exist in 30 years.
And what happens when the bubble bursts and the house is now worth 200k less than what it was originally purchased for? The bank writes it off.
So I propose we give everyone a paperclip with their degree and then if they file for bankruptcy they can give the paperclip, which depreciated 50-100k, back to the bank. It works for boomers so I think it'll work for millennials.
...I'm only half kidding with this comment.
This is how it's more or less handled in Canada. You're able to discharge your student loans through bankruptcy 7 years after you graduated. It prevents abuse, while offering some respite to those who fall into deep financial problems. Seems fair to me.
No risk to lenders.
If you run into extreme hardship, I can't repossess and sell your 4 years of education/partying for a market rate of its value.
I think the problem is eqch individual is pushed to go to college to find a good job which raises demand of college, which raises price. But those good jobs are barely out there for the graduates. And the college institutions didnt guide people down paths of success, instead gave enough freedom to find their own path to failure.
Now, you have a lot of intelligent hardworking (college is not easy) people who are in debt with a very abysmal perspective on their future. Their debt makes them worse off than working poor because any low income job would simply put them in the black. And the gov has their habds tied because america is a great believer in the free market yet a huge group of hardworking young people are effectively worthless and the coming generations are likely to fall in the same trap.
Further: if college is a necessity for a good job, and that's why students are going to college, and they're leaving college with a mountain of debt and no means to pay it off, then college is not achieving the promise of securing better jobs, and the answer isn't to plow even more money into the system but instead to stop sending kids to expensive colleges that have no positive impact on their financial futures.
It would be nice if college in the US was free. If one could wave a magic wand and reach that outcome, one certainly would.
But since we don't have magic wands, we have to prioritize, and we're generally not keen to prioritize the financial well-being of the wealthy before that of the less well-off. In matters other than finance, sure, we don't discriminate that way; we don't, for instance, send the rich off to wars first (we do rather the opposite).
I would like to note that while 2/3 of millennials don't have a bachelor's degree, 2/3 of millennials did go to college. The argument, then, that the median person would not benefit, then, is not substantiated given that some college does still afford some cost. I do wonder why 19% of millennials did not complete college to any degree and if less debt would have aided them.
I would like to question a central premise of your comment, which appears to indicate that regressive benefits are less useful than progressive benefits (Please, correct my assertion if you think otherwise, I'm referring to the sentiment of your last two sentences). Given that measures such as these, which would likely allow more students to graduate (I assume a subset of the people who did not finish were for financial reasons) and to better focus on their studies (Working one to two jobs during the school year, like I did, can definitely be a distraction). The investment may be worthwhile in the long run, given that education is linked with earnings (And, by the transitive property, taxes paid). Additionally, it may make careers that are more focused on a "collective good", such as social work and teaching, more tractable (Even though debt forgiveness plans do exist in some situations in these fields).
[1] http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publication...
But of course, that statistic conceals a much bigger gap:
* It measures only those who complete high school. In most of the US, the completion rate for low-income students is between 65% and 80%. In nine states it's below 65%.
* It captures vocational and community colleges which cost as little as $1000 a year alongside Bowdoin, which costs $50,000 a year. Obviously, it's the low-income students going to community college.
* It measures only enrollment rate and not completion rate, where there is another giant structural gap (for instance: high-income students can afford to take more than 4 years to see a degree to completion).
Student debt financing assistance is a benefit that accrues mostly to the higher end of the income spectrum.
Why work so hard when your discretionary income is barely higher than those on welfare?
We need a great deal more genuinely affordable housing in this country. That would be an excellent start.
You comment basically boils down to "not too many people even go to college, let's not do anything to improve that".
What a shame, you really don't want to improve anything.
There was an interesting episode on Planet Money why college textbooks cost a ton but not high or middle school.
My institution has the added administerial tax of those offices inhabiting all the nicest buildings on the quad. Really drives home the totem pole of who's most important on campus.
[1] https://studentloanhero.com/student-loan-debt-statistics/ [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRSFRMACBS
University degrees aren't like that. Someone holding a degree doesn't suffer additionally when people stop realising that this type of degree isn't worth the sticker price. He's not selling his degree to new students. Whatever his experience is in the job market is not affected by the price new students pay for their degrees.
Sure there is, the loans themselves.
Right now a bunch of lenders have $1.3T worth of loans. If those loans don't get paid off, they are $1.3T poorer.
The gov sponsors universities almost to 100%. The means going to university is almost free for me as a student - about $2500 per year. I can acquire a law degree and become a lawyer for less than $8000. The government is involved in the way the public universities are run so as to keep the subsidies manageable. Total government funding for university education in Israel is about $1.5B [1]. Since universities have high admission standards, many colleges have sprouted to service those who can't or don't want to go to one of the public universities. However, since university prices are so low, even private colleges are forced to operate with tuition fees of roughly $5000 per year, which means they are also very manageable for students. Even so, the quality of education in Israel is amongst of the highest in the world, especially when considering its tiny population. Hebrew University, Israel's best institution, has been ranked 26th in the world [2].
This system has attracted a lot of snark here in Israel, but from what I gather it's actually pretty effective. Israel is the 2nd most educated country in the world, with 46% of its population possessing a university degree [3]. :-)
Sorry for the Hebrew sources!
[1] Hebrew: https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/אוניברסיטאות_בישראל#.D7.9E.D7....
[2] Hebrew: http://www.calcalist.co.il/world/articles/0,7340,L-3693018,0...
[3] Hebrew: http://mako.co.il/special-mako-news/Article-6489f432bb2f9310...
US culture, as a whole, does not value education for its own sake. We value education only as a business. And much of that business is to suck money from the pockets of those who do value education as intrinsically beneficial, and blow it along to those who provide the illusion of education at the lowest operating cost. If a greater proportion of the population valued real learning, the focus would be on making high school graduates more relevant and useful in the modern workforce, rather than using bachelor's degrees as an arbitrary qualification for jobs that clearly do not require them.
If >25% of kids think they need to go to university to get a "good" job--or even to just not be considered a low-status, ignorant loser--it is not the university system that has failed, but the 12-13 years of public education that usually precedes it.
The largest negative effect of all this debt will be the drag it puts on consumption. Young people are already delaying major purchases like cars and houses due to all their student debt.
Keep in mind major purchases such as cars and houses support the local economy and taxes. Student loan repayment doesn't. Once a large enough percentage of consumers are deferring those purchases that it starts to be felt locally, it becomes a lot more palatable to remove that safety net on student loans. Especially since the federal govt holds most of those loans, so fewer lobbyist dollars at work to protect it. And representatives will pretty consistently choose to screw over the federal budget before they'll take a hit locally. Especially as more and more representatives become personally affected by the issue and sympathetic to it.
Edit: P.S. this is just my guess and any data on this would be interesting.
Unless people start to die before paying off their loans.
(Hard to find a solid number, seems to be around $40,000 for new grads. This is a lot of money, but those grads are typically going to earn quite a lot over their career)
The generation or two who paid off their student loans instead of making a down-payment on a house will be screwed.
If we bailed out real estate speculators, I wouldn't be surprised if something happened with college grads.
Unfortunately. I hate assuming responsibly for monetary decisions other than mine, but judging the trend, that's where we're headed.
Here's a Mother Jones article that takes this position:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/12/behind-real-size...
Can someone with more knowledge break down whether or not this is accurate?
Imagine you buy a house for $500,000, the value goes down to $150,000. The government, instead of paying $155,000 pays you $450,000. That sounds like an "open market transaction" but it is a gift, a bailout just by another name. Unfortunately they didn't do that with homes, they did it with mortgage bonds and CDOs, which meant that most of the gifts went to a small sector of society in lower Manhattan and around Greenwich Connecticut.
So it's technically right, in a sense (or it was when it was written last decade), but it isn't trying to answer the question you're asking, it's horribly outdated, and it's larded with weasel words.
"[T]hese guarantees could have potentially cost the federal government more than $3 trillion..." but actually didn't. "[T]he government's potential exposure from the PPIF is between $500 million and $1 trillion..." but they ended up turning a profit on it. "As of December 21, 2009, $117.5 billion of that has been repaid..." and subsequently the rest of it was too. "The Treasury has bought $200 million in preferred stock from Fannie Mae" and then ended up quasi-nationalizing it and has since been making a hefty profit on it.
And so on, and so forth. What the report shows is that the financial crisis had enormous potential price tags attached to it, but the bills never ended up coming due. Whether that was luck or skill remains to be shown. :)
> the real cost of the bailout was much, much higher
No. You can argue about the true underlying risks, and the proper risk adjusted interest rate to nominally charge when lending government funds to a quasi-government entity with an effective government guarantee, and the option value of the bailout, and you can argue that it, on balance, cost a few billion, or quite a few billion, or maybe even turned a profit. I think the CBO scored it at $60 billion a while back; I'd lean towards the "cost a couple hundred billion" answer, but it's ultimately too complicated a question to ever really have an answer. Especially if you try and estimate the cost compared to some other policy. :)
If I loan you $1000 today and you pay me back $1001 tomorrow, my cost is not $1000. A whole lot of those programs look like that, short term loans or purchases of actual assets or whatnot.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Progra...
We could get rid of it, but we'd have to fix high schools first. This would likely require admitting that a focus on academic subjects isn't appropriate for everyone. In many European countries, a majority of students go to trade-oriented secondary schools and the minority that goes to academic schools leading to university have to study quite rigorous material in secondary school. That's why their university programs can focus specifically on individual specialties.
For example, the French academic high school diploma (called Baccalauréat Général) is normally considered equivalent to at least a year in a US university.
It had a disastrous unintended consequence, by completely shifting the risk of an uncollectable loan away from the lender and onto the borrower. How so?
When a lender carries risk, they underwrite those loans. That means they study them before making them. They pay attention to all kinds of things, including the borrower's ability to pay and the value of the thing being bought with the borrowed money. Underwriters are (usually) knowledgeable about the field they work in. They understand the value of both vocational and liberal education. Some of them even understand the value of giving under-served people a chance.
So, when a school gets calls from underwriters saying "we're having a hard time justifying loans of US$100K to your students taking bachelor's degrees" the school takes notice. They restrain growth in tuition and fees. Maybe they even offer discounts, also known as "scholarships." Those calls, coming from skilled underwriters, are far more effective than student demonstrations against tuition increases.
The 2005 reform made it possible for the lenders to be much lazier. Their underwriting is much more sloppy. The reform freed up a lot of tuition money that the educational institutions were happy to soak up. And their students are stuck with the bill for a lifetime.
I'm aware of the libertarian view which emphasizes individual responsibility, and I have a lot of sympathy for it. I have a young friend who looked at the cost of her first-choice college (Syracuse, it was) a few years back, and wrote them a letter saying "sorry, you're too expensive. I regret that I must decline your offer of admission." That too puts downward pressure on educational costs. But she's rare: she has great presence of mind and forward-thinking parents. Plus, she listened to me. -:)
Most high-school seniors get caught up in the mostly fake competitive admissions system. They aren't in a position to behave like hard-nosed underwriters.
So, let's put some of the loan risk back on the lenders, and bring back the underwriters.
This situation is analogous to the mortgage crisis, which shifted the risk of bad loans away from the mortgage originators. In that case the risk got shifted onto anonymous buyers of securitized mortgages, and onto AIG. In the case of educational loans the risk gets shifted onto the poor schlemiel who wants to be a schoolteacher.
That one of the richest countries in the world should shy away from this responsibility is a bit galling, more so because it seems to be purely so that bankers can make some money.
You can't have a country purely of corporations and workers and the US has been moving in this dubious and dystopic direction for decades now. You need to build a society or everyone loses, eventually.
The nation doesn't owe anything, I would rather said past students who still have loans owe this money.
We have basic tuition in Uruguay, and, while people don't leave university with crippling debt, we still have the problem of people spending 4 or 5 years of their lives and leaving with a worthless degree (as in, they cannot get a job in what they studied). And they do end up in debt because they have to pay for food and housing while they study.
I feel very sad whenever I see a working class family breaking their backs to send their child to become an architect or a psychologist, because I know they won't be able to get a decent job (there's one architect per 400 citizens, and one in twelve in the workforce is a psychologist, they usually end up earning less than a store clerk if they don't set up a succesful practice).
Another problem is the strain on infrastructure, in the Engineering faculty they only have capacity to train about 300 to 400 students but over 2000 enter each year. The solution is to have extremely hard and cruel first year courses so at least half drop out in the first year and another half in the second year (I dropped out in second year and enrolled in a private university).
Another country with free university is Venezuela, and a problem I've noticed is that the quality of education is very uneven, there are graduates with titles that aren't worth the paper they're printed on. This doesn't happen in Uruguay that much because they force them to drop out (not a great solution either).
(1) here in Uruguay it's not entirely free, it's deferred - graduates from the public university have to pay about half a normal salary each year from 5 years after they graduate until they retire, so it often ends up more expensive than a private university.
He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.
He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.”
— American trial lawyer, Louis Nizer [1]
[1] https://lawlessstruggle.wordpress.com/2014/11/13/a-laborer-a...
I can think of a lot of problems and reasons why this won't work...which makes it interesting :) Apart from "won't work for not highly competitive degrees" and "figuring out who to sponsor is as hard or harder than just hiring" and "how do you grantee the people actually stay with the company and are motivated" there's probably a lot more. I think the principle of reciprocality can make it work in principle though.
ROTC does this for the military.
>Google sponsor some CS students and they sign a 4 year deal with them in return (somewhat similar to sports?
They would probably try to get fired so they can get hired elsewhere for more money leaving Google holding the bag or be lazy as fucks. Non compete agreements are difficult to enforce....you cant create a wage slave and expect it to be enforced by the courts.
I'm new on this site, but I assume that most people on this site are computer programmers or are tech savvy enough to get a job that pays a decent wage.
I'm Canadian, but you should also look at the bright side Of US education. There is no Canadian Caltech. If you step out and start a business in America, it is Considered entrepreneurial and a good thing.
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/081216...
Factoring is selling client debt at a discount for instant cash. The financial institutions that buy the debt are usually responsible for collecting unless they decide to pass it around again.
So in a sense, universities are sort covered against losses from that kind of debt, not students.
I cant believe do much is being lended to college students.
In the past 12 years, we have added a trillion dollars to
that amount and gained about 4% in the overall college
graduation rate.
We need to revamp the system so universities can't charge us these ridiculous rates.
Female in lower income bracket - I believe this. I think this is a rather heartbreaking reality so I am a ok not going into this. What I do know is that Ive met a few peoples whos moms work 16 hour days as much as possible.
- chronically ill - the college educated are competing with the chronically ill for jobs
- mentally ill - the college educated are competing with the mentally ill for jobs.
- unable to afford - so they are working but cannot find housing. I believe it.
I dont think 'bail out' is the solution. Its 'salvage and prevention'. Ensuring that future generations dont fall into the trap and if they do it is an educated risk. And salvaging multiple generations lives who were chasing after the american dream.
Im all for helping those that cant help themselves. But Im also interested in getting those 60% there to 100%. If the "prividged" are having are hard time post graduation. The under privlidged have it even worse. We are talking about the future of basically educated children not just "foolish rich kids"
Perhaps your intent was sincere, but the effect you had on the thread is indistinguishable from trolling. Please don't do this on HN.
Yeah, no. This is incredibly insulting.
I am not incapable of helping myself. I am working damn hard every single day to resolve my problems in the face of a hugely uphill battle that is compounded by sexism, housing designed solely for the rich and a whole bunch of other entrenched barriers to ordinary people making their lives work.
You may be able to pretend that the homeless (and other poor people) are a bunch of utter and complete losers who can't help themselves, but your reply means you either didn't really listen or didn't really understand.
As these problems deepen, larger numbers of people are being pushed out into the streets. Perhaps if homelessness hits 50%, the world will stop talking like it is merely a bunch of fringe losers who need our compassion and charity and realize that, no, actually, the system is deeply broken and actively screwing over a very high percentage of people and chewing them up and spitting them out.
Or perhaps all the rich assholes will continue to be all LA LA LA NOT LISTENING, you must just be defective as it cannot possibly be the shitty company/policies I created that is somehow at fault.