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Can you point out a country where a private student-loan sector is working well? One thing the government does that the private sector won't is prioritise the

Can you point out a country where a private student-loan sector is working well? One thing the government does that the private sector won't is prioritise the needs of society over financial results. Say, for instance, that "teachers" and "nurses" were underperforming groups of student-loan takers. Private sector would say "OK, stricter controls on student-loans for those!" Meanwhile the government would say "OK, but we really need more teachers and nurses in society, so we'll keep giving them student loans like today." This is of course a fictional example, but you get the point.

SamReidHughes 10y ago
If we need these people in society, let their salaries increase. There is no reason to prefer debt ridden graduates paying higher interest rates at lower salaries with government soaking up the cost of defaults to the benefit of employers and their direct customers.
- st3v3r 10y ago
  Yes, because everyone has that perfect negotiating power to do so. There are no school districts that are struggling or can only afford to pay so much for teachers, and hospitals that can't afford higher salaries for nurses. The "invisible hand" is not what should be guiding society. The "invisible hand" has declared that it's more worthwhile to be a Kardashian than it is to be a teacher or nurse.
  - SamReidHughes 10y ago
    > The "invisible hand" has declared that it's more worthwhile to be a Kardashian than it is to be a teacher or nurse. What you propose is to guide society by deliberately lowering the pay of teachers and nurses even more. So are you saying that the invisible hand is right? That a Kardashian should be expensive (which reduces how many are available) and that teachers should be cheap (meaning we can afford more of them)?
    - st3v3r 10y ago
      "What you propose is to guide society by deliberately lowering the pay of teachers and nurses " No, I'm not. So your response has lost all credibility right there.
      - SamReidHughes 10y ago
        I proposed increasing their pay, or letting it increase, and you disagreed, so how are you not proposing to lower their pay? If you want more teachers, you can either increase budgets to pay them more, or you can use some artifice to increase the supply of teachers so that wages get suppressed. You implied having more teachers would be nice, with your comment about Kardashian. So your own views here are self-contradictory.
        st3v3r 10y ago
        No, you didn't. You proposed using the "invisible hand of the free market". I told you why most of us wouldn't trust that idea.
        SamReidHughes 10y ago
        The text you're quoting is nowhere in this thread... Look, teacher pay is in control of the government, not the market. And nurse pay and nursing demand has already had demonstrable impact on students' selection of what to study. (You can observe this by looking at the real world.) Is there a particular hypothesis that you're arguing against? Is it that increasing pay won't attract students to the line of study? Do you disagree with the equation (Teaching Budget) = (Teacher Pay) * (Number Of Teachers) in a material way? In fact I ... wait a second. Me: > I proposed increasing their pay, You: > No, you didn't. Me (upthread): > let their salaries increase. Well now, looks like I did. (You can observe this by looking at the real world.)
        dredmorbius 10y ago
        You two are talking past each other. The response to your "let their salaries increase" pointed out that there are districts (and counties and states) where this simply does not and can not happen given how government policies are structured. Much of that the result of quite deliberate "starve-the-beast" anti-tax policies, but also frequently a simply quite inadequate economic base. In the deep south of the US, say, the state of Mississippi, you have a de-facto segregated school system. Whites, even poor whites, attend private schools, largely religious, known as "Segregation Academies". Public schools are almost wholly the domain of blacks. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/12/in-southern-towns-segregation-academies-are-still-going-strong/266207/ http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/12/in-south... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_segregation_in_Sunflower_County,_Mississippi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_segregation_in_Sun... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segregation_academy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segregation_academy Markets don't exist independent of power constructs, a fact explicitly recognised by Adam Smith: "Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power." Much of Smith's Wealth of Nations is about those dynamics. This thread reads as if two ideological agendas are being pushed on the other, rather than some seeking of greater truth. I'm finding your line of argument the less pesuasive and less sincere.
  - tn13 10y ago
    Invisible hand is something I trust far more than anything else to guide the society. We need lot of teachers and nurses and that is possible only if they are cheap. If the teachers and nurses are expensive we will have few of them making education and healthcare more expensive. The probability that some celebrity would earn disproportionately more than a conventional career will always be 1 in a fairly free society. Even in sports like say sprinting 1 player often is far better than rest of others.
    - st3v3r 10y ago
      "Invisible hand is something I trust far more than anything else to guide the society." And I don't. The invisible hand has said that the Kardashians are more valuable than teachers. So to me, any argument that says the "invisible hand" should be used is completely invalid.
eru 10y ago
Working well can also mean that the sector doesn't exist when it shouldn't. But to give an example: lots of people in lots of countries traditionally get support from their families for education and are expected to help out their parents financially later in life. This kind of financing never even hits the markets---but on the other hand, parents are probably the people knowing their kids the best.
jimbokun 10y ago
"One thing the government does that the private sector won't is prioritise the needs of society over financial results." Getting young people into more debt does not prioritize the needs of society. If you want to prioritize the needs of society, provide young people a tuition free, or at least very low cost, education. Current system only really benefits scam operations like ITT.
- eru 10y ago
  People who can get into uni already mostly made it into middle class. If you want to subsidize anything, do early childhood care.
tn13 10y ago
India. A hell lot of Indians (29K last year) come to USA for their Masters degree. These kids borrow loans from Indian banks at 10% to 12% APR do their M.S. and then pay that loan back quickly. Even though MS is significantly less risky you need to factor in the huge gap between value of that in money in USA v/s India. Market signals works pretty strong here. Stanford can charge you whatever they want while the F1 visa factory college charge a modest 10K for a 2 year M.S.

SamReidHughes 10y ago

If we need these people in society, let their salaries increase. There is no reason to prefer debt ridden graduates paying higher interest rates at lower salaries with government soaking up the cost of defaults to the benefit of employers and their direct customers.

st3v3r 10y ago
Yes, because everyone has that perfect negotiating power to do so. There are no school districts that are struggling or can only afford to pay so much for teachers, and hospitals that can't afford higher salaries for nurses. The "invisible hand" is not what should be guiding society. The "invisible hand" has declared that it's more worthwhile to be a Kardashian than it is to be a teacher or nurse.
- SamReidHughes 10y ago
  > The "invisible hand" has declared that it's more worthwhile to be a Kardashian than it is to be a teacher or nurse. What you propose is to guide society by deliberately lowering the pay of teachers and nurses even more. So are you saying that the invisible hand is right? That a Kardashian should be expensive (which reduces how many are available) and that teachers should be cheap (meaning we can afford more of them)?
  - st3v3r 10y ago
    "What you propose is to guide society by deliberately lowering the pay of teachers and nurses " No, I'm not. So your response has lost all credibility right there.
    - SamReidHughes 10y ago
      I proposed increasing their pay, or letting it increase, and you disagreed, so how are you not proposing to lower their pay? If you want more teachers, you can either increase budgets to pay them more, or you can use some artifice to increase the supply of teachers so that wages get suppressed. You implied having more teachers would be nice, with your comment about Kardashian. So your own views here are self-contradictory.
      - st3v3r 10y ago
        No, you didn't. You proposed using the "invisible hand of the free market". I told you why most of us wouldn't trust that idea.
        SamReidHughes 10y ago
        The text you're quoting is nowhere in this thread... Look, teacher pay is in control of the government, not the market. And nurse pay and nursing demand has already had demonstrable impact on students' selection of what to study. (You can observe this by looking at the real world.) Is there a particular hypothesis that you're arguing against? Is it that increasing pay won't attract students to the line of study? Do you disagree with the equation (Teaching Budget) = (Teacher Pay) * (Number Of Teachers) in a material way? In fact I ... wait a second. Me: > I proposed increasing their pay, You: > No, you didn't. Me (upthread): > let their salaries increase. Well now, looks like I did. (You can observe this by looking at the real world.)
        dredmorbius 10y ago
        You two are talking past each other. The response to your "let their salaries increase" pointed out that there are districts (and counties and states) where this simply does not and can not happen given how government policies are structured. Much of that the result of quite deliberate "starve-the-beast" anti-tax policies, but also frequently a simply quite inadequate economic base. In the deep south of the US, say, the state of Mississippi, you have a de-facto segregated school system. Whites, even poor whites, attend private schools, largely religious, known as "Segregation Academies". Public schools are almost wholly the domain of blacks. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/12/in-southern-towns-segregation-academies-are-still-going-strong/266207/ http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/12/in-south... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_segregation_in_Sunflower_County,_Mississippi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_segregation_in_Sun... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segregation_academy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segregation_academy Markets don't exist independent of power constructs, a fact explicitly recognised by Adam Smith: "Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power." Much of Smith's Wealth of Nations is about those dynamics. This thread reads as if two ideological agendas are being pushed on the other, rather than some seeking of greater truth. I'm finding your line of argument the less pesuasive and less sincere.
- tn13 10y ago
  Invisible hand is something I trust far more than anything else to guide the society. We need lot of teachers and nurses and that is possible only if they are cheap. If the teachers and nurses are expensive we will have few of them making education and healthcare more expensive. The probability that some celebrity would earn disproportionately more than a conventional career will always be 1 in a fairly free society. Even in sports like say sprinting 1 player often is far better than rest of others.
  - st3v3r 10y ago
    "Invisible hand is something I trust far more than anything else to guide the society." And I don't. The invisible hand has said that the Kardashians are more valuable than teachers. So to me, any argument that says the "invisible hand" should be used is completely invalid.

eru 10y ago

Working well can also mean that the sector doesn't exist when it shouldn't. But to give an example: lots of people in lots of countries traditionally get support from their families for education and are expected to help out their parents financially later in life. This kind of financing never even hits the markets---but on the other hand, parents are probably the people knowing their kids the best.

jimbokun 10y ago

"One thing the government does that the private sector won't is prioritise the needs of society over financial results." Getting young people into more debt does not prioritize the needs of society. If you want to prioritize the needs of society, provide young people a tuition free, or at least very low cost, education. Current system only really benefits scam operations like ITT.

eru 10y ago
People who can get into uni already mostly made it into middle class. If you want to subsidize anything, do early childhood care.

tn13 10y ago

India. A hell lot of Indians (29K last year) come to USA for their Masters degree. These kids borrow loans from Indian banks at 10% to 12% APR do their M.S. and then pay that loan back quickly. Even though MS is significantly less risky you need to factor in the huge gap between value of that in money in USA v/s India. Market signals works pretty strong here. Stanford can charge you whatever they want while the F1 visa factory college charge a modest 10K for a 2 year M.S.