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> I'm curious why we treat student loan debt as being special. Because you can no longer declare bankruptcy to erase student debt. > If your degree of choice
by chime 10y ago
> I'm curious why we treat student loan debt as being special.
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.
- umanwizard 10y agoIt's true only the rich could send their kids to art school, but there are lots of things only the rich can do. What makes you define art school in particular as something we should pay for everyone to do, rather than a luxury? 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)
- chime 10y ago> What makes you define art school in particular as something we should pay for everyone to do, rather than a luxury? We're not outright paying for it. We're taking a risk on it. If we create a society that supports art and culture, then these degrees will result in good paying careers. If we create a society where 9/10 art students end up as baristas, then we're losing a slice of humanity in addition to the unpayable student debt. We can get into a debate of whether one needs art school to have a career in art but that's not the point I was trying to make. If a university teaches 100 subjects, do we want to be a society that says only kids whose parents make over $250k can afford to be in these 10 specific majors?
- TallGuyShort 10y agoIf 9 of the 10 art students end up as baristas, it might be because we're not creating a society that supports art and culture. But it might also be because colleges are accepting people who weren't paying attention to exponential functions in math class and can't make basic decisions like the true cost of a loan vs. risk, and then obviously struggle to thrive financially enough to pay it off. We're all worried about the art students, ignoring the fact that they clearly didn't take advantage of lower levels of education that were completely free.
- ant6n 10y agoIt's better for society if the few university spots in art school are allocated based on aptitude rather than wealth of one's parent.
- vacri 10y agoAnglo societies value art much more than they're willing to fork over cash for. Remove all art and tools, and life would be bleak (no movies, no music, etc), but we're sort of blind to that fact.
- saint_fiasco 10y agoThen demand for art would increase and art would be profitable again! Seriously, you guys make way too much art right now. Supply is much greater then demand.
- Qwertious 10y agoWe want to subsidize poor people for art because often the best artists are poor. Hell, it's literally a cliche.
- saint_fiasco 10y agoBut the reason poor people make great art is that they are not part of the elitist orthodoxy. If they go to an expensive art school they would lose that advantage.
- ryuker16 10y agothe elite buy art so art caters to the orthodoxy
- saint_fiasco 10y agoPoor artists with no debt can choose to be starving artists if they want, but poor artists who go to college must sell to the elites because they have college debt to pay.
- AlgorithmicTime 10y ago>Now only the rich can send their kids to art school. I'm not sure that's a bad thing?
- ryuker16 10y agoprices would lower so it's not only the the rich. Right now it benefits the rich a great deal since they can afford unpaid internships or low paying entry jobs