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US government backed student loans were a huge mistake. We needed something like rent control enforced on public universities, for government backed loans. But

by MollyR 9y ago

US government backed student loans were a huge mistake. We needed something like rent control enforced on public universities, for government backed loans. But we didn't. So it created a situation that caused an enormous amount of millennials to be taken advantage of by universities and colleges. Those universities and colleges pumped full of government loan cash became increasingly predatory. They increased their administrative costs, they increased their tuition costs, and they lured unsuspecting teenagers into taking enormous debt for worthless degrees like gender studies over engineering. This has been a catastrophe, that will be used as a case study of unintended consequences. The extreme amount of student loans has lead to extreme unrest, unless action is taken quickly it will only get worse. We see it in the rise of the alt-left and alt-right fueled by extreme fanatics in desperate and angry situations.

mjevans 9y ago
Well, rent control isn't exactly the correct option. Econ 101: if you want the price of a 'product' to go down, increase supply. The correct thing to do is to provide more supply (full ride public institution, paid for by taxpayers at government run community colleges) and focus production on fields valued by society.
lickedydiff 9y ago
To be fair to universities, at the same time that happened, states have been decreasing funding. Also, topheavy administration is everywhere, not just education, part of the unnecessary MBA-ification of everything. And there would be no demand for loans if corporations weren't trying to offload all their employee financial responsibilities in every way possible: just as companies are reclassifying everyone as consultants and freelancers, and decreasing everything to part-time, they stopped seeing themselves as providing career training to anyone, expecting people to do that themselves at universities and through unpaid internships. So I wouldn't blame much on US backed government loans. The US government could offer free loans for people wanting to get Justin Bieber tattoos, and it would increase tattooing I'm sure, but wouldn't cause a generational economic crisis.
bluntfang 9y ago
>worthless degrees like gender studies Worthless eh? I bet if companies Uber hired some of these gender studies majors they might not have fucked up?
- MollyR 9y ago
  I can't tell if you are joking, so I'm taking it seriously. Uber's human resources and or lawyers should have caught many of its missteps. Common undergrad degrees for HR being in management, business administration, and related business degrees. Lawyers are well lawyers. Gender Studies doesn't prepare you for business as well as an actual business related degree, it prepares you for a mostly academic career which has limited spots. That being said, even STEM and business degrees are worth less and less as competition increases. You now need a degree and often years of experience for jobs. The only thing that really angers me is charging 60,000 dollars for a gender studies degree, and having a student take loans for it. 1/100 might get lucky and work at a big tech company as a tech evangelist, but it's not sustainable. We need universities to be far more accountable about what degrees actually lead to jobs.
  - adamson 9y ago
    I feel like you're missing their point. You can make the case that a gender studies degree prepares you for a mostly academic career only insofar as companies aren't creative enough to find a way to use the unique skills that someone with a gender studies degree has developed. Maybe Uber wouldn't have had the toxic culture they ended up with if they had hired conscientious people who have spent time studying things like how gender power dynamics play out in the small - and empowered them to speak - instead of relying solely on business graduates.
- pokstad 9y ago
  Go speak to a gender studies major and you'll find out.
ThrustVectoring 9y ago
College degrees are largely positional goods. A good chunk of the value of a college degree is that you get hired preferentially over an otherwise equally qualified candidate without a degree, or with a less prestigious degree. The US higher education system is an excellent example as to what happens when you subsidize positional goods. Daycare workers and firefighters are starting to be a college-degree-required position. They're not there yet, fortunately, but it's absolutely ridiculous. The solution has three parts: 1. Expand the examination system used in places like actuarial work and civil service to encompass a broader range of skills. 2. Declare a student loan debt jubilee. 3. Add a "don't ask, don't tell" policy for college degrees, or otherwise shut down the ability for college degrees to matter in resumes. Banning colleges and other organizations from confirming whether or not a student actually got a degree is a good start.
norlys 9y ago
I'm very glad I'm not a student in the USA. In Germany, almost all universities are owned by the state, which means study fees are about 700€ per year - transportation ticket already being covered. And if your parents have low income, the state will give you a grant of which you'll have to pay back only by half. I know that this might be a unpopular opinion over here, but there are a lot of fields which are important for a society while offering a relatively low income. In USA's system, these become luxury goods. Fields like Ecology, philosophy, history, education or cultural studies suffer. I find the idea "it doesn't yield a lot of money, thus it's useless" weird, but that might be a cultural difference.

by MollyR 9y ago

mjevans 9y ago

Well, rent control isn't exactly the correct option. Econ 101: if you want the price of a 'product' to go down, increase supply. The correct thing to do is to provide more supply (full ride public institution, paid for by taxpayers at government run community colleges) and focus production on fields valued by society.

lickedydiff 9y ago

To be fair to universities, at the same time that happened, states have been decreasing funding. Also, topheavy administration is everywhere, not just education, part of the unnecessary MBA-ification of everything. And there would be no demand for loans if corporations weren't trying to offload all their employee financial responsibilities in every way possible: just as companies are reclassifying everyone as consultants and freelancers, and decreasing everything to part-time, they stopped seeing themselves as providing career training to anyone, expecting people to do that themselves at universities and through unpaid internships. So I wouldn't blame much on US backed government loans. The US government could offer free loans for people wanting to get Justin Bieber tattoos, and it would increase tattooing I'm sure, but wouldn't cause a generational economic crisis.

bluntfang 9y ago

>worthless degrees like gender studies Worthless eh? I bet if companies Uber hired some of these gender studies majors they might not have fucked up?

MollyR 9y ago
I can't tell if you are joking, so I'm taking it seriously. Uber's human resources and or lawyers should have caught many of its missteps. Common undergrad degrees for HR being in management, business administration, and related business degrees. Lawyers are well lawyers. Gender Studies doesn't prepare you for business as well as an actual business related degree, it prepares you for a mostly academic career which has limited spots. That being said, even STEM and business degrees are worth less and less as competition increases. You now need a degree and often years of experience for jobs. The only thing that really angers me is charging 60,000 dollars for a gender studies degree, and having a student take loans for it. 1/100 might get lucky and work at a big tech company as a tech evangelist, but it's not sustainable. We need universities to be far more accountable about what degrees actually lead to jobs.
- adamson 9y ago
  I feel like you're missing their point. You can make the case that a gender studies degree prepares you for a mostly academic career only insofar as companies aren't creative enough to find a way to use the unique skills that someone with a gender studies degree has developed. Maybe Uber wouldn't have had the toxic culture they ended up with if they had hired conscientious people who have spent time studying things like how gender power dynamics play out in the small - and empowered them to speak - instead of relying solely on business graduates.
pokstad 9y ago
Go speak to a gender studies major and you'll find out.

ThrustVectoring 9y ago

College degrees are largely positional goods. A good chunk of the value of a college degree is that you get hired preferentially over an otherwise equally qualified candidate without a degree, or with a less prestigious degree. The US higher education system is an excellent example as to what happens when you subsidize positional goods. Daycare workers and firefighters are starting to be a college-degree-required position. They're not there yet, fortunately, but it's absolutely ridiculous. The solution has three parts: 1. Expand the examination system used in places like actuarial work and civil service to encompass a broader range of skills. 2. Declare a student loan debt jubilee. 3. Add a "don't ask, don't tell" policy for college degrees, or otherwise shut down the ability for college degrees to matter in resumes. Banning colleges and other organizations from confirming whether or not a student actually got a degree is a good start.

norlys 9y ago

I'm very glad I'm not a student in the USA. In Germany, almost all universities are owned by the state, which means study fees are about 700€ per year - transportation ticket already being covered. And if your parents have low income, the state will give you a grant of which you'll have to pay back only by half. I know that this might be a unpopular opinion over here, but there are a lot of fields which are important for a society while offering a relatively low income. In USA's system, these become luxury goods. Fields like Ecology, philosophy, history, education or cultural studies suffer. I find the idea "it doesn't yield a lot of money, thus it's useless" weird, but that might be a cultural difference.