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A third of college students who earn a four-year degree graduate with no debt at all. Zero. Frankly, that is extremely alarming. Only a third? It's strange how

by Kenji 10y ago

A third of college students who earn a four-year degree graduate with no debt at all. Zero. Frankly, that is extremely alarming. Only a third? It's strange how people can look at the same numbers and draw completely different conclusions. Here's my take on the issue: The government inflated prices of education not unlike banks inflated house prices. All the loaners of student loans should start making provisions now, and big ones at that. People are defaulting or taking a longer time to pay back than anticipated. At the end of the day, I anticipate nobody will act until it blows up and then the state (and thus the common people) will pay up every single dime of this debt - just another case of privatized profit and socialized losses, it becomes boring to watch this game. I suggest a radically different form of funding education. I would start a pool for every branch of education and invite private companies to fund education and institutes they need (which is already happening at some scale). Then I would have the state multiply the collected amount of money by a number, say, 2 (or whatever the public agrees to and is reasonable), and pay that on top of the collected funds, and that is how much funding this branch of education gets. Maybe there's some minimum too. And I'd make tuition fees very low but still high enough to disincentivize just fooling around - full stipends would be granted to poor people who are doing well at school and show potential.

cgearhart 10y ago
> loaners of student loans should start making provisions now But it's vastly more difficult (i.e., nearly impossible) to discharge student loan debt. Even if it takes years and years, most students will be required to pay back what they borrowed. I don't think we need to be worried about the bubble popping, but rather the secondary effects that the weight of student loans will cause. For example, companies have a natural advantage negotiating with graduates carrying debt who need a job more urgently than those who have no debt. > I suggest a radically different form of funding education. I'm slightly less radical, but along the same lines -- fund institutions, not students. Making students into consumers forces schools to compete on features & amenities (things students care about) rather than focusing on providing quality education at low cost. Public colleges don't need to be country clubs to provide an education.
- Kenji 10y ago
  Yeah, you're right. If the student was the customer, everyone would get perfect grades and uni would be an amusement park. The student should not be considered the customer. That reminds me of a first year lecture of discrete mathematics that I took. The professor is pretty renowned and does a good job, but he's also incredibly strict and demanding, especially when it comes to exercises and exams. I still know pretty much all of the stuff we learned there and it's come in handy year after year i.e. in crypto and graph theory. Anyway, we could write anonymous feedbacks for this professor and some students really hated him. He read some of them to us and they contained things like "you are an a * * * ole" etc. I understand the frustration with him, it was one of the toughest courses, and it did cause suffering, but it was also a learning experience and the students left the course with newly acquired knowledge and skills. I'm pretty sure many people who were mad with him were even more mad with themselves and likely dropped out, because among the ones who passed, only few people hated him.
frandroid 10y ago
Colleges determine the cost of education, not the government. I don't know how it works for state universities, it must be a grey area. But anyway, across North America, governments have been defunding higher education, which leads to colleges raising prices. It's totally unlike the housing bubble. What's needed is an education policy that doesn't leave the amount of students in each program entirely up to the number of students who apply for such programs, but also constricts some programs based on market demand, and provides financial incentives for students to go in programs where there is high demand in the marketplace.

by Kenji 10y ago

cgearhart 10y ago

> loaners of student loans should start making provisions now But it's vastly more difficult (i.e., nearly impossible) to discharge student loan debt. Even if it takes years and years, most students will be required to pay back what they borrowed. I don't think we need to be worried about the bubble popping, but rather the secondary effects that the weight of student loans will cause. For example, companies have a natural advantage negotiating with graduates carrying debt who need a job more urgently than those who have no debt. > I suggest a radically different form of funding education. I'm slightly less radical, but along the same lines -- fund institutions, not students. Making students into consumers forces schools to compete on features & amenities (things students care about) rather than focusing on providing quality education at low cost. Public colleges don't need to be country clubs to provide an education.

Kenji 10y ago
Yeah, you're right. If the student was the customer, everyone would get perfect grades and uni would be an amusement park. The student should not be considered the customer. That reminds me of a first year lecture of discrete mathematics that I took. The professor is pretty renowned and does a good job, but he's also incredibly strict and demanding, especially when it comes to exercises and exams. I still know pretty much all of the stuff we learned there and it's come in handy year after year i.e. in crypto and graph theory. Anyway, we could write anonymous feedbacks for this professor and some students really hated him. He read some of them to us and they contained things like "you are an a * * * ole" etc. I understand the frustration with him, it was one of the toughest courses, and it did cause suffering, but it was also a learning experience and the students left the course with newly acquired knowledge and skills. I'm pretty sure many people who were mad with him were even more mad with themselves and likely dropped out, because among the ones who passed, only few people hated him.

frandroid 10y ago

Colleges determine the cost of education, not the government. I don't know how it works for state universities, it must be a grey area. But anyway, across North America, governments have been defunding higher education, which leads to colleges raising prices. It's totally unlike the housing bubble. What's needed is an education policy that doesn't leave the amount of students in each program entirely up to the number of students who apply for such programs, but also constricts some programs based on market demand, and provides financial incentives for students to go in programs where there is high demand in the marketplace.