8 ms·

America’s Student Debt Machine

64 points by patagonia 8y ago

chiefalchemist 8y ago
> "According to a 2012 study, 65 percent of newly hired nonprofit workers had student debt, and 30 percent owed more than $50,000. In order to keep people working as public defenders, or rural doctors or human rights activists, something had to be done. PSLF was an attempt at a fix." So the root problem was jobs that didn't pay well, but the solution was student debt forgiveness? That is, find a problem, solve a symptom, the problem remains, and the symptom becomes a bigger and more expensive problem. But the politicians got more votes, and the taxpayers stuck with the bill. This article should have focused on this. This is the lesson that voters are unwilling / unable to learn. and perhaps ppl taking on more de
cascom 8y ago
shocker - government program is poorly administered and a private contractor is poorly supervised.
- skh 8y ago
  The thing that shocks me is how Americans casually accept that government will pooprly run some programs. It’s almost expected that this be the case. Indeed, one of the two major parties sometimes actively seeks to prove incompetence.
  - sjg007 8y ago
    It is worse than that, the republicans seek to actively destroy programs that help people out. There is no reason we need private loan servicers for example.
    - merpnderp 8y ago
      And your opinion is exactly why nothing ever gets reformed. Republicans almost never want to "destroy" programs, they want to make them more efficient. My state spends $1k more per capita on public services than Texas, but no one would ever claim we get $1k more per capita in public services. We do have many more per capita administrators for our departments. But anyone who wants to solve this probably of deep institutional inefficiency is accused of "destroying programs".
      - bobmarley1 8y ago
        See Betsy Devos and Mick Mulvaney. They are literally gutting their respective Departments for the direct benefit of private corporations. You can tell yourself that they are just trimming fat all you want but please explain how removing protections for student loan borrowers or dismantling consumer financial protections helps anyone but corporate bigwigs?
      - oldsklgdfth 8y ago
        I completely agree with your point. However, I don't think the purpose of institutions is to be more efficient, but it is to grow and further entrench themselves. It's the error of the Democrat voter in believing that more complexity will help and the error of the Republican voter that efficiency can be achieved. Not really what the answer is other than having an informed populace, but this is hard to do with the poor education we have.
      - skh 8y ago
        Republicans have actively sought to undermine Obamacare even though it is mostly a Republican plan from the 1990s. They actively seek to undermine Social Security and Medicare. From my perspective they do not seek to genuinely improve on programs in terms of helping more people or making the standard of care better.
      - mywittyname 8y ago
        They claim to be for efficiency, but their ideas around how to be more efficient are funnel money into private corporations (owned by their donors) for no apparent reason. This is why we have private prisons, student loan servicers, and a the owner of a student loan debt collection agency overseeing student loan reforms. Not to say Democrats don't do the same shit, but there's an undeniable difference between Trump appointments and Obama appointments. Trump had no problem putting into power Scott Pruitt, Rex Tillerson, Ajit Pai, and Betsy fucking DeVos -- all of whom are absolutely corrupt business leaders whose entire purpose in government life is to shovel as much money as possible from tax payers into their own pockets. Those people weren't personally picked by Trump, they were recommended by high-ranking Republicans.
  - merpnderp 8y ago
    Wanting to reform government institutions is seen as anti-government or anti-public service by a majority of people. My state spends $1k/per capita more on public services than a much more successful and well off neighboring state with much better services, but politicians who want to reform our public services to be just as efficient are seen as nutjobs.
    - skh 8y ago
      My experience is often times the high per capita costs result from deliberate inefficiencies to benefit some industry. I’m all for making things more efficient but usually that just means, to certain politicians, making it private and thus worse in the long run. It depends on the details. I’m leary when a elimating I efficiencies is touted but no details given. It’s just then an empty slogan.
- evanagon 8y ago
  It's not just that. The system has ballooned on top of itself: the arms race that is higher education is in no small part a result of government issued loans that seem great at the time but turn out to be a nightmare in practice. Students get caught up in the hype of needing to be a part of the arms race (go to a "good" school) and borrow exorbitantly from their future without understanding what they're actually getting into. Then many companies that pay the best only recruit at the "best" schools, which fortifies the entire system and leaves many students from lower tier programs with a degree, a mountain of debt, and no job.
alienreborn 8y ago
Best thing I've ever done as far as college is concerned is 1. Saved up money by working before going to Masters. 2. Lived with 3 others in a two bedroom to save money. 3. Chosen less prestigious institution in a smaller town which is significantly cheaper than one of the bigger schools to which I got admit to. Graduated with no debt.
- whorleater 8y ago
  Best thing I've ever done as far as college is concerned is 1. Did well in high school to qualify for merit scholarships 2. Chose a top 10 college for my field 3. Get a job starting at >100k per year Graduated with debt paid off in less than a year (this is comment is intentionally snarky to point out that "I did X and this is how I avoided loans" stories are usually unique to a person and circumstance, and ignores the very real problem that student loans are opaque, confusing, and intentionally manipulative for young borrowers, which was the point of this article.)
  - alienreborn 8y ago
    It wasn't meant to snarky. I would've been under debt too if I wasn't educated about this by my family/friends etc.
    - intended 8y ago
      Non American here. I’ve known about what works in the American education system since the 1990s and before. When I was in my early teens. Meaning that if you were one of the people in the know, you knew the path that made you the most money. Strangely, This is a privilege, one not enjoyed by most Americans.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - sjg007 8y ago
    I find it immensely difficult to get back on a standard repayment plan after being on the extended repayment plan.. They (Navient) don't want you to switch to a cheaper plan...
dimillian 8y ago
In France, I did apprenticeship (3 days works, 2 days school) as Software developer, meaning that I did not payed for school, I was actually payed to go to school. And it was full salary, I did that for 3 years. Got my bachelor, quite a lot of money and 3 years of experience. So I "began" my life with money, experience and diploma. It was not prestigious school, nor prestigious diploma, I could have continued for a master, but IMO, I value experience far more than diploma, and where I worked/work also. So my question is Americans? What's the deal. Same for France too, I guess our profession as developers allow that, I can understand that for some other fields you need prestigious schools and requirements to get hired for a good salary.
- xeromal 8y ago
  Not really related to education, but software eng. salaries around the world are far less than what American's make. Not sure if there is any correlation though.
- donmatito 8y ago
  I think you did good but employability is crazy good in computer science. Not sure how much is applicable in other fields. Apprenticeship can work in other engineering fields (at least it does in Germany, for cultural reasons), perhaps a few other fields like sales... but you cannot extrapolate for all educational tracks Same with other path to software engineers like self-taught or bootcamps. Very good but almost impossible to replicate in other fields with less desperate demand
- nfRfqX5n 8y ago
  higher education just costs much more here in the US
- stevenwoo 8y ago
  It's been a slow gradual boil since about the 1970's when college prices started increasing out of proportion to the cost of everything else, and no one stepped in to reform things since it mostly worked for the universities that could charge more and more, and make more and more money, except as the article notes - to make it possible for students to get more loans. Combine this with healthcare costs in America rising faster than college and stagnating wages for the average American over the same period of time and the added debt of college crushes a lot of people as the individual examples in the article note. Companies have not very often sponsored college students in America, except for some profession like rural doctors where it's local government choosing to help pay for an exceptional debt load for an unpopular lifestyle choice (being primary care physician for a large geographical area). The other option off the top of my head for Americans is to join one of the military services to fund education. How did you find the apprenticeship and how did you decide to choose that route? Not sure of much like that in America except some of the construction trades like electricians/plumbers.
hb3b 8y ago
I am really sorry for anyone who has piles of student loan debt. But with that said, there is no reason in my mind for someone to not consider state schools. State University of New York (of which I'm a graduate) estimates the yearly expense of a commuter student to be $17,320 @ a 4-year school, less if you live at home, buy used books, take the bus, or go to a community college. It's really affordable! And there are so many opportunities for part time work on college campuses. Everything from grunt work to being a TA to being compensated for working for a department. Hell, I worked in the nursing department as a comp sci student sorting files and research articles for professors. Along with this, programs like CLEP and DSST exams that let you test out of gen-ed coursework for $180 a pop. The savings can be in the thousands! So for those students who aren't going to an IVY on a full or partial ride, or those going to med school, I say do some research before committing to a private school. There is absolutely no reason in my mind why somebody ought to take on such massive debt and I am totally against the idea of our government being in the student loan business.
- wilsonnb3 8y ago
  I disagree that ~$70,000 for a four year degree should be considered affordable, even if private universities cost many times that. I do agree that public schools are generally a better financial option, as are community colleges.
  - dgzl 8y ago
    I believe the parent is considering that price to include housing and other necessities as well. I really think you'll have a tough time finding a decent University that would cost less than that for a year's worth of use.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - greedo 8y ago
      No, that's for a commuter student. Room and board would add much more to the debt total.
skh 8y ago
I teach at a community college. Increasingly we are becoming a business and we now actively recruit people who realistically can’t get a college degree. Due to lower per student funding by the government we rely on tuition and need to market and recruit. We have become like a smarmy for profit. It’s a bad trend for society. This semester before classes started we had seminars on helping students dealing with food insecurity and housing security. The whole time I’m wondering why are we asking students who are hungry or homeless to take on unforgivable debt to pay for tuition. The system is rotten. The standards have eroded. Increasingly I see barely literate people being passed through the system. I pass people who don’t deserve to pass because I’m hounded by administration on the importance of having a high passing rate. I need a job so....
- merpnderp 8y ago
  This is happening across all college school systems across all states. Kids are graduating who are functionally illiterate, or just quitting, and being burdened with massive student loan debt that mostly pays for school administrative costs and not professor salaries.
- purplezooey 8y ago
  Come to California. Good CC system. We don't tolerate that nonsense.
  - skh 8y ago
    My response is a quote from this article [1]. Although community colleges can decide on their own how to address hunger, California’s community college system offers on-campus training for faculty and staff so they can help students qualify for food stamps, according to Colleen Ganley, who works in the California Community College Chancellor’s Office. [1] https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/health-and-medicine/article165366787.html https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/health-and-medicine/articl...
    - djajshgsjja 8y ago
      The tuition is free though.
40acres 8y ago
I was talking to my girlfriend the other day about this trying to wrap my head around what this will mean for the economy 20-30 years from now. We don't have student debt so we're in advantageous position. I keep wondering, what will happen to the housing market once the boomers die and their estates (and homes) are put on the market -- do prices drop because so many people have debt and can't buy homes? Do they rise because the gap is filled by foreign investors and those who don't have debt and/or have the wealth to scoop these homes up? I haven't been able to find any literature w.r.t to the long term impact of the student debt crisis.
- woolvalley 8y ago
  A pessimistic guess: REITs and hedge funds flush with boomer retirement cash buy them and more people rent because they can't afford it.
  - jseliger 8y ago
    Buying property is not an intrinsic good, and renting is not intrinsically bad: https://affordanything.com/is-renting-better-than-buying-should-i-rent-or-buy https://affordanything.com/is-renting-better-than-buying-sho....
- Applejinx 8y ago
  The latter is a horrifying thought (though 'occupy houses' seems like a very obvious counter-mechanism). Hedge funds and investors go and buy all the houses, because they need to park money somewhere and no Americans can buy houses. That's pretty much hilariously apocalyptic. More police, to defend (execution-style) the empty houses owned by literally piles of abstract capital!
- xemdetia 8y ago
  It feels like we have already started to hit that outcome in a sense in the people who took out loans as the cost of education skyrocketed without seeming bound in the 90's. In my naive opinion it feels like the entire economy already shifted that way once we pushed further and further into service economy. There are so few things that feel like the are traditional goods- you buy a thing to do a thing and then you're done, instead of paying persistently for the same thing you had before. The whole construct has seemed to deviate into the fact that even mid to high earners have no ability to actually buy the thing at the price it is worth. I first felt like that once cellphones became mandatory around the time of the original iPhone and everything was roped into weird payment agreements instead of buy phone, and pay for service. You end up with people putting aside so much income to pay for even modest sized debts, and then you have them looking for cheap things to save money not because of frugality but because you still need these essentials like pants, shirts, and so on. Then since you are buying cheap you are in the same poverty mindset where you end up spending more than you should because the necessity of now exceeds the necessity of later. So property prices go up from general want of property values to go up (feels not correlated), people 'moving to where the money is', and the lack of the people that should be starting out in life not being able to build/otherwise afford secure housing. Many of the stories I hear are people being effectively acting like squatters where they feel like they are going to have to move at a moment's notice. There is less people moving into an apartment/townhouse with the intent to live there for a 5 years, and this is not including people moving to chase opportunity it's people just trying to persist in the same environment. These are also people that are making 75-150k and otherwise should not be having these same kinds of difficulties but when you are slicing the pie with ~60% going to loans, and a lion's share going to rent and other ongoing necessity services like cell phone, insurance, etc. This leads to just this swath of people being risk-averse where otherwise they should be financially stable, and then the services that are generally mandatory to keep the level of income to satisfy the loans end up eating the rest of any real gains. In essence I feel like it already has taken plenty of effect now that people have most of their income already spoken for before they receive it. It's not massive credit card debt or some sort of aggressive consumerism, it's people that because of education are so over leveraged they aren't participating in the economy in the same way as someone who didn't have those hooks. Like the article dictates as well it also becomes you versus a constant changing set of loan servicers who manage to mess ordinary things up without recourse so whatever leftovers you had get eaten by penalties and could result in a cascade of penalties and costs just like how Bank of America was dinged for how they approached overdrafts (sort for biggest and fine for each one that goes over). So maybe the additional hidden cost here isn't even the loan + interest but loan + interest + unnecessary fines + legitimate fines which slurps up more of that critical income of someone first starting out. As for the question for property prices I believe the problem ends up being a leftover of the boomer era and that general sense that 'property prices should rise.' From an investment/speculation standpoint real estate is a wonderful thing because of that sentiment. But it feels in general like the majority of money in that market isn't individuals buying homes or commissioning construction of a new home for themselves because of these loans preventing them from having the raw remaining leverage to do so, they end up having to take whatever they can get from the existing market or getting pre-recession leveraging. If the short-term beneficiaries of a real estate purchase is the banks and construction/real estate speculators and not the person buying the home why wouldn't they want to maximize that at expense of everything else? I feel that's another layer to the luxury home/condo/apartment construction trajectory. Because of these other beneficiaries I can't reason why house prices would come down from just the heavy debt ridden individuals- all they have to do is get them to agree to purchase something they can't afford and draw out what blood is left in either mortgage money or rent money it's just the best slice of pie from a student loan holder after the student loans to be paid from.
Taylor_OD 8y ago
Graduating without debt has affected my outlook and early career much more than I realized it would have. I paid for school with a combination of sports and acting scholarships and some money my parents had been saving for school since I was a child. Getting out without debt allowed me to move to a city right after school with some meager savings, take a few months figuring out what I wanted to do, and take a job that paid very little upfront but had a large potential payoff. I can count on one hand the number of people I know my age without any student debt. It's insane. It's also limiting with dating. It's odd to think I may inherit (in some way shape or form) 25K-100K of student loan debt from a significant other.
debtfreer 8y ago
During the private student loan heyday circa 2000-2007, anyone with a decent bank affiliation could spin up a "private student loan" company, write up thousands of loans, and sell them off to the bigger banks and trust portfolios, with very little regard to the student's ability to repay. It was a very fly-by-night operation with sketchy advertising practices. When the credit crisis hit, these companies were one of the first to cut off the tap. And it was a literal overnight cessation of loan originations. Buried within these promissory notes were odd mechanisms for calculating variable interest, accounting fees, and cosigner releases. Despite the variable rate moving very little on a month-to-month basis, students in repayment would see 20% of their payment applied to principal one month, then 8% applied the next month. Some servicers would not apply extra payments to principal, opting to apply payments to the next month's payment (which results in maximum interest for the bank) unless the debtor followed a convoluted trail of paperwork to force the bank to apply the extra payments correctly. Co-signer releases would be advertised at "24 months of on-time payments" but by the time the debtor reached that mark, they'd receive letters informing them that the promissory note had a clause that allowed the servicer to change terms, and the co-signer release was now 36 or 48 months. Even servicers of the federal student loans would engage in sketchy practices, such as charging the debtor an fee to enter into a hardship forbearance. You can Google which servicers were fined heavily for these practices by the CFPB during the last administration.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Even servicers of the federal student loans would engage in sketchy practices, such as charging the debtor an fee to enter into a hardship forbearance. Actually, just encouraging forbearance when switching to income-based repayment was available was a legally available option was a bigger one, which the main service of federal loans (Sallie Mae—now Navient) was charged with engaging in.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
jxramos 8y ago
Guys we just need to make college free and shake down these greedy fat cats who are splurging off their huge profit margins. Right??!!!!?
madengr 8y ago
The real problem is she paid $70k for a masters degree to be frigging bureaucrat. The second is that the federal government loans money for this crap. Sheesh, I paid $0 to get a MSEE as TAs pay no tuition. Then was paid as an RA, so essentially was paid to do an MSEE. People are crazy.
chriselles 8y ago
Student debt is an issue close to my heart. I received my undergrad from a middle tier small public state university in the US. I received a very good ROI on the money spent. 25 years later(graduated 93) the out of state cost has exploded 500% Meanwhile starting salaries for Liberal Arts grads has barely moved since 1993, only circa 10% or so. “Purchasing” a salary with a degree should have a positive ROI, rather than a negative ROI. My thoughts are as follows: Universities should have the same standards as print advertisers and used car dealers. Graduation rates, starting salary rates, return on education $ invested rates should be independently audited(like readership audits for advertisers in print ad industry). And education consumers should have car industry Lemon Law like protection against universities selling indentured servitude rather than value-add education. My kids use Khan Academy, Duo Lingo, Amy.ac AI Math Tutor(disclosure, I’m on the cap table as investor), and Fender Play 5 days a week. I’m rooting for Ed tech outfits like Khan Academy, Coursera, EdX(and of course Amy.ac) as an Ed Tech sector to transform education. We are looking hard at Harvard Extension School for our children as a possible hybrid option for them. 1)School brand value 2)Online and in person learning requirements 3)educational rigor 3)Value of #1 & #2 & #3 While Harvard Extension School is traditionally for adult employed learners(and has been around for a long time as a correspondence school), I think their branded hybrid approach points to the future. All I know is that countless middle to bottom tier schools are doomed. To me, the financialisation of higher education achieves two goals: 1) Banking sector profiting from indentured servitude 2) University white collar worker bloat is akin to the “manufacturing” blue collar construction jobs that evaporated after the housing bubble of 2002-2009 Just my 0.02c
hollaur 8y ago
Is there a way to dig up the average credit score of student loan borrowers at the time they received their first loan? If the government didn't do credit checks, which I don't remember them doing on mine, then wouldn't this be the epitome of predatory lending?

64 points by patagonia 8y ago

> "According to a 2012 study, 65 percent of newly hired nonprofit workers had student debt, and 30 percent owed more than $50,000. In order to keep people working as public defenders, or rural doctors or human rights activists, something had to be done. PSLF was an attempt at a fix." So the root problem was jobs that didn't pay well, but the solution was student debt forgiveness? That is, find a problem, solve a symptom, the problem remains, and the symptom becomes a bigger and more expensive problem. But the politicians got more votes, and the taxpayers stuck with the bill. This article should have focused on this. This is the lesson that voters are unwilling / unable to learn. and perhaps ppl taking on more de

cascom 8y ago

shocker - government program is poorly administered and a private contractor is poorly supervised.

skh 8y ago
The thing that shocks me is how Americans casually accept that government will pooprly run some programs. It’s almost expected that this be the case. Indeed, one of the two major parties sometimes actively seeks to prove incompetence.
- sjg007 8y ago
  It is worse than that, the republicans seek to actively destroy programs that help people out. There is no reason we need private loan servicers for example.
  - merpnderp 8y ago
    And your opinion is exactly why nothing ever gets reformed. Republicans almost never want to "destroy" programs, they want to make them more efficient. My state spends $1k more per capita on public services than Texas, but no one would ever claim we get $1k more per capita in public services. We do have many more per capita administrators for our departments. But anyone who wants to solve this probably of deep institutional inefficiency is accused of "destroying programs".
    - bobmarley1 8y ago
      See Betsy Devos and Mick Mulvaney. They are literally gutting their respective Departments for the direct benefit of private corporations. You can tell yourself that they are just trimming fat all you want but please explain how removing protections for student loan borrowers or dismantling consumer financial protections helps anyone but corporate bigwigs?
    - oldsklgdfth 8y ago
      I completely agree with your point. However, I don't think the purpose of institutions is to be more efficient, but it is to grow and further entrench themselves. It's the error of the Democrat voter in believing that more complexity will help and the error of the Republican voter that efficiency can be achieved. Not really what the answer is other than having an informed populace, but this is hard to do with the poor education we have.
    - skh 8y ago
      Republicans have actively sought to undermine Obamacare even though it is mostly a Republican plan from the 1990s. They actively seek to undermine Social Security and Medicare. From my perspective they do not seek to genuinely improve on programs in terms of helping more people or making the standard of care better.
    - mywittyname 8y ago
      They claim to be for efficiency, but their ideas around how to be more efficient are funnel money into private corporations (owned by their donors) for no apparent reason. This is why we have private prisons, student loan servicers, and a the owner of a student loan debt collection agency overseeing student loan reforms. Not to say Democrats don't do the same shit, but there's an undeniable difference between Trump appointments and Obama appointments. Trump had no problem putting into power Scott Pruitt, Rex Tillerson, Ajit Pai, and Betsy fucking DeVos -- all of whom are absolutely corrupt business leaders whose entire purpose in government life is to shovel as much money as possible from tax payers into their own pockets. Those people weren't personally picked by Trump, they were recommended by high-ranking Republicans.
- merpnderp 8y ago
  Wanting to reform government institutions is seen as anti-government or anti-public service by a majority of people. My state spends $1k/per capita more on public services than a much more successful and well off neighboring state with much better services, but politicians who want to reform our public services to be just as efficient are seen as nutjobs.
  - skh 8y ago
    My experience is often times the high per capita costs result from deliberate inefficiencies to benefit some industry. I’m all for making things more efficient but usually that just means, to certain politicians, making it private and thus worse in the long run. It depends on the details. I’m leary when a elimating I efficiencies is touted but no details given. It’s just then an empty slogan.
evanagon 8y ago
It's not just that. The system has ballooned on top of itself: the arms race that is higher education is in no small part a result of government issued loans that seem great at the time but turn out to be a nightmare in practice. Students get caught up in the hype of needing to be a part of the arms race (go to a "good" school) and borrow exorbitantly from their future without understanding what they're actually getting into. Then many companies that pay the best only recruit at the "best" schools, which fortifies the entire system and leaves many students from lower tier programs with a degree, a mountain of debt, and no job.

alienreborn 8y ago

Best thing I've ever done as far as college is concerned is 1. Saved up money by working before going to Masters. 2. Lived with 3 others in a two bedroom to save money. 3. Chosen less prestigious institution in a smaller town which is significantly cheaper than one of the bigger schools to which I got admit to. Graduated with no debt.

whorleater 8y ago
Best thing I've ever done as far as college is concerned is 1. Did well in high school to qualify for merit scholarships 2. Chose a top 10 college for my field 3. Get a job starting at >100k per year Graduated with debt paid off in less than a year (this is comment is intentionally snarky to point out that "I did X and this is how I avoided loans" stories are usually unique to a person and circumstance, and ignores the very real problem that student loans are opaque, confusing, and intentionally manipulative for young borrowers, which was the point of this article.)
- alienreborn 8y ago
  It wasn't meant to snarky. I would've been under debt too if I wasn't educated about this by my family/friends etc.
  - intended 8y ago
    Non American here. I’ve known about what works in the American education system since the 1990s and before. When I was in my early teens. Meaning that if you were one of the people in the know, you knew the path that made you the most money. Strangely, This is a privilege, one not enjoyed by most Americans.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- sjg007 8y ago
  I find it immensely difficult to get back on a standard repayment plan after being on the extended repayment plan.. They (Navient) don't want you to switch to a cheaper plan...

dimillian 8y ago

In France, I did apprenticeship (3 days works, 2 days school) as Software developer, meaning that I did not payed for school, I was actually payed to go to school. And it was full salary, I did that for 3 years. Got my bachelor, quite a lot of money and 3 years of experience. So I "began" my life with money, experience and diploma. It was not prestigious school, nor prestigious diploma, I could have continued for a master, but IMO, I value experience far more than diploma, and where I worked/work also. So my question is Americans? What's the deal. Same for France too, I guess our profession as developers allow that, I can understand that for some other fields you need prestigious schools and requirements to get hired for a good salary.

xeromal 8y ago
Not really related to education, but software eng. salaries around the world are far less than what American's make. Not sure if there is any correlation though.
donmatito 8y ago
I think you did good but employability is crazy good in computer science. Not sure how much is applicable in other fields. Apprenticeship can work in other engineering fields (at least it does in Germany, for cultural reasons), perhaps a few other fields like sales... but you cannot extrapolate for all educational tracks Same with other path to software engineers like self-taught or bootcamps. Very good but almost impossible to replicate in other fields with less desperate demand
nfRfqX5n 8y ago
higher education just costs much more here in the US
stevenwoo 8y ago
It's been a slow gradual boil since about the 1970's when college prices started increasing out of proportion to the cost of everything else, and no one stepped in to reform things since it mostly worked for the universities that could charge more and more, and make more and more money, except as the article notes - to make it possible for students to get more loans. Combine this with healthcare costs in America rising faster than college and stagnating wages for the average American over the same period of time and the added debt of college crushes a lot of people as the individual examples in the article note. Companies have not very often sponsored college students in America, except for some profession like rural doctors where it's local government choosing to help pay for an exceptional debt load for an unpopular lifestyle choice (being primary care physician for a large geographical area). The other option off the top of my head for Americans is to join one of the military services to fund education. How did you find the apprenticeship and how did you decide to choose that route? Not sure of much like that in America except some of the construction trades like electricians/plumbers.

hb3b 8y ago

I am really sorry for anyone who has piles of student loan debt. But with that said, there is no reason in my mind for someone to not consider state schools. State University of New York (of which I'm a graduate) estimates the yearly expense of a commuter student to be $17,320 @ a 4-year school, less if you live at home, buy used books, take the bus, or go to a community college. It's really affordable! And there are so many opportunities for part time work on college campuses. Everything from grunt work to being a TA to being compensated for working for a department. Hell, I worked in the nursing department as a comp sci student sorting files and research articles for professors. Along with this, programs like CLEP and DSST exams that let you test out of gen-ed coursework for $180 a pop. The savings can be in the thousands! So for those students who aren't going to an IVY on a full or partial ride, or those going to med school, I say do some research before committing to a private school. There is absolutely no reason in my mind why somebody ought to take on such massive debt and I am totally against the idea of our government being in the student loan business.

wilsonnb3 8y ago
I disagree that ~$70,000 for a four year degree should be considered affordable, even if private universities cost many times that. I do agree that public schools are generally a better financial option, as are community colleges.
- dgzl 8y ago
  I believe the parent is considering that price to include housing and other necessities as well. I really think you'll have a tough time finding a decent University that would cost less than that for a year's worth of use.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - greedo 8y ago
    No, that's for a commuter student. Room and board would add much more to the debt total.

skh 8y ago

I teach at a community college. Increasingly we are becoming a business and we now actively recruit people who realistically can’t get a college degree. Due to lower per student funding by the government we rely on tuition and need to market and recruit. We have become like a smarmy for profit. It’s a bad trend for society. This semester before classes started we had seminars on helping students dealing with food insecurity and housing security. The whole time I’m wondering why are we asking students who are hungry or homeless to take on unforgivable debt to pay for tuition. The system is rotten. The standards have eroded. Increasingly I see barely literate people being passed through the system. I pass people who don’t deserve to pass because I’m hounded by administration on the importance of having a high passing rate. I need a job so....

merpnderp 8y ago
This is happening across all college school systems across all states. Kids are graduating who are functionally illiterate, or just quitting, and being burdened with massive student loan debt that mostly pays for school administrative costs and not professor salaries.
purplezooey 8y ago
Come to California. Good CC system. We don't tolerate that nonsense.
- skh 8y ago
  My response is a quote from this article [1]. Although community colleges can decide on their own how to address hunger, California’s community college system offers on-campus training for faculty and staff so they can help students qualify for food stamps, according to Colleen Ganley, who works in the California Community College Chancellor’s Office. [1] https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/health-and-medicine/article165366787.html https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/health-and-medicine/articl...
  - djajshgsjja 8y ago
    The tuition is free though.

40acres 8y ago

I was talking to my girlfriend the other day about this trying to wrap my head around what this will mean for the economy 20-30 years from now. We don't have student debt so we're in advantageous position. I keep wondering, what will happen to the housing market once the boomers die and their estates (and homes) are put on the market -- do prices drop because so many people have debt and can't buy homes? Do they rise because the gap is filled by foreign investors and those who don't have debt and/or have the wealth to scoop these homes up? I haven't been able to find any literature w.r.t to the long term impact of the student debt crisis.

woolvalley 8y ago
A pessimistic guess: REITs and hedge funds flush with boomer retirement cash buy them and more people rent because they can't afford it.
- jseliger 8y ago
  Buying property is not an intrinsic good, and renting is not intrinsically bad: https://affordanything.com/is-renting-better-than-buying-should-i-rent-or-buy https://affordanything.com/is-renting-better-than-buying-sho....
Applejinx 8y ago
The latter is a horrifying thought (though 'occupy houses' seems like a very obvious counter-mechanism). Hedge funds and investors go and buy all the houses, because they need to park money somewhere and no Americans can buy houses. That's pretty much hilariously apocalyptic. More police, to defend (execution-style) the empty houses owned by literally piles of abstract capital!
xemdetia 8y ago
It feels like we have already started to hit that outcome in a sense in the people who took out loans as the cost of education skyrocketed without seeming bound in the 90's. In my naive opinion it feels like the entire economy already shifted that way once we pushed further and further into service economy. There are so few things that feel like the are traditional goods- you buy a thing to do a thing and then you're done, instead of paying persistently for the same thing you had before. The whole construct has seemed to deviate into the fact that even mid to high earners have no ability to actually buy the thing at the price it is worth. I first felt like that once cellphones became mandatory around the time of the original iPhone and everything was roped into weird payment agreements instead of buy phone, and pay for service. You end up with people putting aside so much income to pay for even modest sized debts, and then you have them looking for cheap things to save money not because of frugality but because you still need these essentials like pants, shirts, and so on. Then since you are buying cheap you are in the same poverty mindset where you end up spending more than you should because the necessity of now exceeds the necessity of later. So property prices go up from general want of property values to go up (feels not correlated), people 'moving to where the money is', and the lack of the people that should be starting out in life not being able to build/otherwise afford secure housing. Many of the stories I hear are people being effectively acting like squatters where they feel like they are going to have to move at a moment's notice. There is less people moving into an apartment/townhouse with the intent to live there for a 5 years, and this is not including people moving to chase opportunity it's people just trying to persist in the same environment. These are also people that are making 75-150k and otherwise should not be having these same kinds of difficulties but when you are slicing the pie with ~60% going to loans, and a lion's share going to rent and other ongoing necessity services like cell phone, insurance, etc. This leads to just this swath of people being risk-averse where otherwise they should be financially stable, and then the services that are generally mandatory to keep the level of income to satisfy the loans end up eating the rest of any real gains. In essence I feel like it already has taken plenty of effect now that people have most of their income already spoken for before they receive it. It's not massive credit card debt or some sort of aggressive consumerism, it's people that because of education are so over leveraged they aren't participating in the economy in the same way as someone who didn't have those hooks. Like the article dictates as well it also becomes you versus a constant changing set of loan servicers who manage to mess ordinary things up without recourse so whatever leftovers you had get eaten by penalties and could result in a cascade of penalties and costs just like how Bank of America was dinged for how they approached overdrafts (sort for biggest and fine for each one that goes over). So maybe the additional hidden cost here isn't even the loan + interest but loan + interest + unnecessary fines + legitimate fines which slurps up more of that critical income of someone first starting out. As for the question for property prices I believe the problem ends up being a leftover of the boomer era and that general sense that 'property prices should rise.' From an investment/speculation standpoint real estate is a wonderful thing because of that sentiment. But it feels in general like the majority of money in that market isn't individuals buying homes or commissioning construction of a new home for themselves because of these loans preventing them from having the raw remaining leverage to do so, they end up having to take whatever they can get from the existing market or getting pre-recession leveraging. If the short-term beneficiaries of a real estate purchase is the banks and construction/real estate speculators and not the person buying the home why wouldn't they want to maximize that at expense of everything else? I feel that's another layer to the luxury home/condo/apartment construction trajectory. Because of these other beneficiaries I can't reason why house prices would come down from just the heavy debt ridden individuals- all they have to do is get them to agree to purchase something they can't afford and draw out what blood is left in either mortgage money or rent money it's just the best slice of pie from a student loan holder after the student loans to be paid from.

Taylor_OD 8y ago

Graduating without debt has affected my outlook and early career much more than I realized it would have. I paid for school with a combination of sports and acting scholarships and some money my parents had been saving for school since I was a child. Getting out without debt allowed me to move to a city right after school with some meager savings, take a few months figuring out what I wanted to do, and take a job that paid very little upfront but had a large potential payoff. I can count on one hand the number of people I know my age without any student debt. It's insane. It's also limiting with dating. It's odd to think I may inherit (in some way shape or form) 25K-100K of student loan debt from a significant other.

debtfreer 8y ago

During the private student loan heyday circa 2000-2007, anyone with a decent bank affiliation could spin up a "private student loan" company, write up thousands of loans, and sell them off to the bigger banks and trust portfolios, with very little regard to the student's ability to repay. It was a very fly-by-night operation with sketchy advertising practices. When the credit crisis hit, these companies were one of the first to cut off the tap. And it was a literal overnight cessation of loan originations. Buried within these promissory notes were odd mechanisms for calculating variable interest, accounting fees, and cosigner releases. Despite the variable rate moving very little on a month-to-month basis, students in repayment would see 20% of their payment applied to principal one month, then 8% applied the next month. Some servicers would not apply extra payments to principal, opting to apply payments to the next month's payment (which results in maximum interest for the bank) unless the debtor followed a convoluted trail of paperwork to force the bank to apply the extra payments correctly. Co-signer releases would be advertised at "24 months of on-time payments" but by the time the debtor reached that mark, they'd receive letters informing them that the promissory note had a clause that allowed the servicer to change terms, and the co-signer release was now 36 or 48 months. Even servicers of the federal student loans would engage in sketchy practices, such as charging the debtor an fee to enter into a hardship forbearance. You can Google which servicers were fined heavily for these practices by the CFPB during the last administration.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> Even servicers of the federal student loans would engage in sketchy practices, such as charging the debtor an fee to enter into a hardship forbearance. Actually, just encouraging forbearance when switching to income-based repayment was available was a legally available option was a bigger one, which the main service of federal loans (Sallie Mae—now Navient) was charged with engaging in.

deleted 8y ago

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jxramos 8y ago

Guys we just need to make college free and shake down these greedy fat cats who are splurging off their huge profit margins. Right??!!!!?

madengr 8y ago

The real problem is she paid $70k for a masters degree to be frigging bureaucrat. The second is that the federal government loans money for this crap. Sheesh, I paid $0 to get a MSEE as TAs pay no tuition. Then was paid as an RA, so essentially was paid to do an MSEE. People are crazy.

chriselles 8y ago

Student debt is an issue close to my heart. I received my undergrad from a middle tier small public state university in the US. I received a very good ROI on the money spent. 25 years later(graduated 93) the out of state cost has exploded 500% Meanwhile starting salaries for Liberal Arts grads has barely moved since 1993, only circa 10% or so. “Purchasing” a salary with a degree should have a positive ROI, rather than a negative ROI. My thoughts are as follows: Universities should have the same standards as print advertisers and used car dealers. Graduation rates, starting salary rates, return on education $ invested rates should be independently audited(like readership audits for advertisers in print ad industry). And education consumers should have car industry Lemon Law like protection against universities selling indentured servitude rather than value-add education. My kids use Khan Academy, Duo Lingo, Amy.ac AI Math Tutor(disclosure, I’m on the cap table as investor), and Fender Play 5 days a week. I’m rooting for Ed tech outfits like Khan Academy, Coursera, EdX(and of course Amy.ac) as an Ed Tech sector to transform education. We are looking hard at Harvard Extension School for our children as a possible hybrid option for them. 1)School brand value 2)Online and in person learning requirements 3)educational rigor 3)Value of #1 & #2 & #3 While Harvard Extension School is traditionally for adult employed learners(and has been around for a long time as a correspondence school), I think their branded hybrid approach points to the future. All I know is that countless middle to bottom tier schools are doomed. To me, the financialisation of higher education achieves two goals: 1) Banking sector profiting from indentured servitude 2) University white collar worker bloat is akin to the “manufacturing” blue collar construction jobs that evaporated after the housing bubble of 2002-2009 Just my 0.02c

hollaur 8y ago

Is there a way to dig up the average credit score of student loan borrowers at the time they received their first loan? If the government didn't do credit checks, which I don't remember them doing on mine, then wouldn't this be the epitome of predatory lending?