10 ms·

Many Americans Feel Cheated by Their Student Loans

65 points by rafaelc 8y ago

ProAm 8y ago
Basic decision making and investment ROI should be covered in HS, or at least by peoples parents. 50k for a 1 year degree when you are already in debt isn't insurmountable but it is significant.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > Basic decision making and investment ROI should be covered in HS The "a member of my family once said I deserved student loan debt because I chose the unrealistic field of history" comment reminds me of friends. They're smart. But they came from families that didn't teach ROI. (Their high schools didn't offer , they pursued majors that they found interesting. Nobody offer economics in a remotely-useful form, either.) Nobody told them to consider job-placement frequencies and mean exit salaries. (Let alone where to find these data.) So they didn't. It's difficult to fault them. Their adolescent brains were given insufficient information (or, in some cases wrong information) for a series of huge decisions. They are now left with the consequences of those decisions for life. The only way to fix this is to let loans be wiped out in bankruptcy (i.e. give lenders skin in the game). We probably also need to let lenders vary interest rates by institution and major. (The latter to give borrowers an early price signal around their choices.)
  - ASpring 8y ago
    I agree it is difficult to fault these students who chose majors without fully factoring in lifetime earnings and that we should allow college loans to be wiped out in bankruptcy. However, I disagree that we should let lenders vary interest rates by institution and major. Our premise was that these students didn't understand the full picture of what they were getting into. I'm not sure complicating that picture by varying interest rates is going to make the situation better overall.
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > Our premise was that these students didn't understand the full picture of what they were getting into. I'm not sure complicating that picture by varying interest rates is going to make the situation better overall. As the article illustrates, complexity isn't the core problem. College applications, student aid and education loans are already complicated. The problem is critical information is not being presented to students at the right time. One way to solve this would be mandatory disclosures when (a) schools or lenders send out any marketing materials, (b) admissions or loan applications are received, and (c) school or loan acceptance letters are sent out. (I think this should happen.) Unfortunately, simple disclosure is only a first step. Incorporating the disclosed information into pricing ensures it's received. Also, if we're going to force lenders to bear the risk of default, we should give them a way to manage it. Forcing a single market rate subsidies students pursuing uneconomic majors at the expense of those pursuing economic ones.
    - theli0nheart 8y ago
      > However, I disagree that we should let lenders vary interest rates by institution and major. Going to college is a financial investment, so I see the logic in this: just make it a flat "fee" and let the student decide what to study to make it worth it. I'm not sure what the ramifications of this might be, though. I can imagine there might be some unintended consequences.
      - Mirioron 8y ago
        The consequences are that certain easier degrees will get flooded and the degree becomes worthless "because everyone has one". Most of those people won't be able to find work in their field of expertise. College will still be useful for them, but only as a signaling mechanism. But it might even be a negative signaling mechanism, because it would show that the student didn't think through their actions.
  - smileysteve 8y ago
    I find it interesting that we so readily blame this ignorance on age. Someone turning 18... - can join the military - enter contracts - get a credit card or loan - decide not to go to college
  - iguy 8y ago
    Here's a half-way measure to give the lenders better incentives, without risking making bankruptcy on your 22nd birthday a rite of passage: Make non-dischargeable student loans only repayable at all when your taxable income is above $50k (or some number keyed to official stats), capped at 15% of income, and written off after 20 years. And let the interest rate, and amount offered, vary with major, school, SAT score, everything. This will provided a vivid picture to 17-year olds of what their choices mean. Taking a 4-year all-inclusive resort holiday should be expensive, maybe it's a nice gift to buy your kids, but nobody should stumble into it thinking they are getting job training. (But the same major at a more selective school may actually have great outcomes -- it doesn't have to be direct job training.) And this way there's no need for a committee to identify which programs do or don't fall into this category, the bankers are free to gamble as they wish.
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > capped at 15% of income I like your idea. I'd edit $50k to some fraction of the median wage (or multiple of the poverty line) and revise 15% of income to a higher fraction of after-tax income after housing, food, childcare, healthcare and other essential costs. (We already have fraction of discretionary income based repayment programs. Shouldn't be hard to borrow that definition.)
      - iguy 8y ago
        There are lots of details, but I would vote that it should be fairly simple, and connected to few facts beyond your IRS income. There should be no incentive to rent a bigger house, or move to an expensive city, beyond the usual salary/rent tradeoffs. (And no cliff-edges, so perhaps it's max 15% of the income above twice the poverty line?)
- Bucephalus355 8y ago
  This puts the burden on the individual. We’ve had 30 years of this. What is government or business going to do about it? They’ve been exempt / free from responsibility for far too long. They are as lazy as the “welfare queens” they once tailed against.
  - PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
    > They’ve been exempt / free from responsibility for far too long. I've seen arguments that the government not allowing these debts to be discharged through bankruptcy was a major cause of the problem. Do we want more market manipulation, or should we start teaching students that because the government has allowed for a trap even bankruptcy cannot escape, you need to learn how to avoid it?
- SilasX 8y ago
  For all requirements $R of everyday life: - "Schools should be required to teach $R, and not graduate a student that hasn't learned it!" - "The evil school wouldn't graduate my snowflake merely because s/he couldn't pass the standardized test for $R!"
  - harpastum 8y ago
    Are you saying that one individual might hold both of those positions? Or is your point that people disagree on what is important in school? I'm trying to understand the argument you're making here.
    - SilasX 8y ago
      I'm saying that "verifying schools are really teaching $R" requires something like a standardized test, but those are already unpopular even for things that people agree schools should be teaching. Hence there is a tension between "graduation rates" and "adding more things-schools-have-to-teach", and yes, probably a lot of people who don't see the contradiction (between hate for standardized tests and demands that schools teach $R) as clearly as I've laid it out here.
- scarface74 8y ago
  According to many on HN, your college education shouldn't be about finding a job. "It isn't vocational training". It's about expanding your mind and becoming a well rounded citizen of the world. Obviously, I don't share that belief....
  - freedomben 8y ago
    What is your opinion on the relevance of, and proper place for, trade schools?
    - scarface74 8y ago
      In a perfect society that did not over index on a college education, I would be all for it. Most of the core classes should be taught in high school anyway and shouldn't need to be retaught in college.
      - freedomben 8y ago
        Makes sense, thanks. In a few companies I was involved with early in my career, a B.S. in Xyz was required to even get an interview. Until we fix that problem (which I believe is cultural) the trade school won't be widely acceptable.
  - Mirioron 8y ago
    I think that's at least partly true, but if that's the reason you go to college for, then you should consider how much it costs you.
  - wolfgke 8y ago
    > According to many on HN, your college education shouldn't be about finding a job. "It isn't vocational training". It's about expanding your mind and becoming a well rounded citizen of the world. In Germany, the mentality is different: school is for becoming well-rounded (that is why one has to attend many obligatory subjects from different areas) and university is for specializing into some area in which you will probably work for the rest of your life.
- aqme28 8y ago
  I think there's a human-nature problem to teaching ROI like you suggest. People are always going to think that they're going to be the one to break through--to rise above the mean ROI. That's why you get so many people trying to become actors or musicians or athletes or even startup founders. The high-end returns are so distracting that people forget about the mean ROI.
  - pnw_hazor 8y ago
    That's why schools that offer financial aid are required to have financial aid advisors. Given the inherent conflict of interest schools should bear some of the risk of student debt.
cschep 8y ago
Because they are cheated by them. :)
malvosenior 8y ago
There's a lot of effort put into Jen's anecdote but not once is what degree she received even mentioned. That is suspect and dishonest reporting. As a tax payer, I do not want to subsidize people's poor educational decision making. If you get a STEM degree, you can get a job. This article describes what's long been referred to as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_basket_weaving https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_basket_weaving Look at what fields are in demand and get an appropriate degree. Someone's failure to do that should not fall on the tax payers shoulders anymore than it already does.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- landryraccoon 8y ago
  I can’t disagree more strongly with this attitude. You’re saying that children basically barely out of high school need to make decisions that are very high cost and impact the rest of their lives, then held accountable for them when they make a mistake. This is on top of the fact that in all likelihood both society and their parents and teachers pushed them hard that the only way to succeed in life is to max out on education. Blaming kids for choosing the wrong college is just a symptom of a broken system. How messed up is it that almost the very first decision a person has to make when reaching the age of majority is whether to take on tens of thousands in debt or more?
  - mattnewton 8y ago
    I agree. If student loans weren’t protected from bankruptcy, lenders would be forced to learn the market and would signal to you the unfeasiblity of these choices by setting higher interest rates on loans for different colleges/majors. I think we’ve made the measure of success just the number of college degrees because it was correlated with a middle or upper class lifestyle for so long, but failed to understand the causal relationship there fully.
    - dba7dba 8y ago
      Yet another masterpiece work by the fabulously lucrative sector called lobby industry. Lucrative both for the lobbyists themselves and the banks. Bravo.
Bucephalus355 8y ago
I have no student loans. ROTC paid for all of my college. Yet 15 minutes ago I got a call from “Robbie”, clearly a domestic call as he had 100% American accent, to talk about restructuring my federal student loans. Why is our country so incredibly deceptive and scammy? We’ll never have European-style socialism here and that’s somewhat liveable / something I’ve come to accept, but why must we be cheated at every turn and in every interaction? This is not capitalism as much as it is a predatorial monetary jungle. Reminds me of the quote: “behind every fortune, a crime”.
- hindsightbias 8y ago
  Have always wondered if PT Barnum's "There's a sucker born every minute" is a uniquely American quality or not.
- james_s_tayler 8y ago
  Part of human nature. Same is true to varyingly degrees around the world. Research on deception/cheating is pretty damning of the people in general.
wernercd 8y ago
The old wisdom that "College is Worth It, No Matter What." is no longer true (assuming it ever was). Trades, IT jobs and the inability to bankruptcy out of bad decisions... paired with colleges that are more focused on head count than quality...
- wvenable 8y ago
  The current wisdom is that "College is necessary" because even your barista has a degree. Good luck getting a good job without one.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    I imagine you're going to get a lot of "I don't have a degree but I have a great job!" responses, but that's largely because tech is a super weird industry, and not indicative of the rest of the job market.
    - wvenable 8y ago
      I believe that you can be in tech without a degree (and I know a lot of people who are) but we just posted looking for a new developer and, of course, it says "CS degree required". If you don't have a degree, you have more of an uphill battle if you go the traditional employee route and that is where most of the jobs are.
  - Mirioron 8y ago
    Some people consider college to mostly be about signaling. While it might be better for an individual to go to college, it's wasteful for society for everyone to go to college if most of them don't learn useful and beneficial skills.
  - pnw_hazor 8y ago
    Especially when the assistant manager that is hiring you has a masters in fine art.
  - wernercd 8y ago
babaganoosh89 8y ago
Why not limit federal aid and student loans to "in-demand" majors? Do we really want high school students getting >$100k debt for majors with limited market value?
- bdcravens 8y ago
  Presumably this would either eliminate certain jobs over time or limit those who go into those fields to a given financial class. Smells a little too much like central economy planning to some.
- par 8y ago
  great idea. just add some bounds checking to who can receive a loan!
- wvenable 8y ago
  There probably aren't even enough jobs in "in-demand" majors to make that worthwhile anyway (or there soon won't be). I suspect the number of college-necessary skilled jobs is going down but the number of McJobs that will require a degree merely as a filter is going up.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > Why not limit federal aid and student loans to "in-demand" majors? Consider how politicized this would become. Also consider that demand for a major is a lagging indicator.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  Are we filtering millions of people each year into a handful of majors? What happens to these industries when that many individuals enter the workforce? Do we keep cycling through the majors as demand shifts?
- est31 8y ago
  What about people who drop out of their studies for whatever reason?
- hurryskurry 8y ago
BrandonMarc 8y ago
LOL, buzzfeed.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  In case it isn't clear, Buzzfeed≠Buzzfeed News.
  - rosterface 8y ago
    This is off topic so we probably shouldn't talk about it. But I find it humorous that over the past couple of weeks people have been saying Buzzfeed != Buzzfeed News and that Buzzfeed News is actually really high quality journalism. Yet here we have an article from Buzzfeed News and it's total garbage. I see no difference in content quality from the other Buzzfeed.
gzu 8y ago
Its all just a taxpayer (and employee) subsided way to lower high skill labor costs for companies. "We need more STEM" /s. What we actually need is a long term solution to middle class destruction. Everyone/everything is sucking them dry. It’s too bad though once they’re empty the whole system is dead.
danschumann 8y ago
Make them bankruptable. Make the risk real, causing banks to only give loans if the kid is gonna pay it off fairly regularly. Fewer kids going to college will decrease demand, and cause the price to go down, as well. Tech schools have far better outcomes, and will be chosen more often.
- tomatotomato37 8y ago
  What happens when someone blames the banking system for oppressing the poor/minorities/whatever by denying them a loan and thus not providing opportunities for advancement, while leaving out the fact that they applied for a degree in 17th century Mongolian literature?
  - wolfgke 8y ago
    > What happens when someone blames the banking system for oppressing the poor/minorities/whatever by denying them a loan and thus not providing opportunities for advancement, while leaving out the fact that they applied for a degree in 17th century Mongolian literature? If someone believes that such a person will get a decent salary after graduating, they should put their money where their mouth is.
    - pnw_hazor 8y ago
      I think the schools should play this role. They are the ones with the best information.
  - danschumann 8y ago
    Would they be less oppressed than having $xx,000 in debt, which they cannot pay off, and cannot get rid of? By the way, they were admitted access to a school which was beyond their ability, and they didn't even get a degree to go with this debt. They were set up for failure in many ways. The loan assumed they'd have a job. The school assumed they needed a leg up, and would adapt to the work load. Is this oppression? Or is this death by assistance? Hansel and Gretel were fattened up before they were eaten, as well. Is this toxic assistance, where people drown in the programs meant for their benefit?
roenxi 8y ago
There are a lot of details here, but from the high level the problem is that loans that can't be discharged through bankruptcy are unfair. Some very successful people have gone bankrupt once or twice on their way. Obviously allowing student loans to be discharged through a normal bankruptcy isn't feasible, because students leave college basically bankrupt. There needs to be a sensible mechanism to default on student loans, and probably a matching hard political conversation about what education is actually worth.
- pnw_hazor 8y ago
  Put schools on the hook for a portion of the defaults.
_bxg1 8y ago
I was privileged to have parents who paid my tuition, but this phenomenon that I've watched many of my friends go through is so unjust it's giving me a headache as I type.
wickoff 8y ago
One person making unwise financial decisions is a dummy. A generation of people being systematically lured into making unwise financial decisions is a racket. How do people rationalize putting young people into debt slavery instead of having them spend their earnings in the free market, stimulating the economy?
- lbotos 8y ago
  >How do people rationalize putting young people into debt slavery instead of having them spend their earnings in the free market, stimulating the economy? Because they (the people rationalizing) didn't realize the game has changed since they left college (or their lack of access to college)
- Mirioron 8y ago
  Because they already spent it "on the free market" they just thought going to an expensive university was a good idea. The blame lies as much with all the people telling students that they must go to university as it does with the students themselves.
- porpoisely 8y ago
  The government says a 18 year old is too immature to legally purchase beer. But a $30K loan which they can't bankrupt out of, they sure are mature enough for that. It's getting teenagers to sign away a significant part of their 20s to indentured servitude.
  - Mirioron 8y ago
    That's different though. Alcohol has negative effects on development and your brain continues to develop until you're about 25. So the reason to limit alcohol isn't that they can't handle it, but rather that it's bad for them physically.
  - pnw_hazor 8y ago
    Colleges already provide an entire department or two of professionals to guide their students through the process. This is why schools should bear more of the risk. They are ones that are recommending that the kids takes the loans and help them select majors. I couldn't believe how much financial aid (all loans) I was offered for law school. (I took about 10% of what was offered.)
victoro 8y ago
It seems to me that a relatively simple to implement (I'm not going to say simple in aggregate, because the knock-on effects would be hard to predict) solution to all of this is to make student loan debt dischargeable in bankruptcy. At the very least, this would shift the burden of determining which degrees are "worth it" from high-school-aged kids and their families to large lending institutions that are much better equipped to analyze risk.
mountainofdeath 8y ago
I need to dig up the article but an article I read a few years ago confirmed what I already thought about schools in Europe. While it is true that higher education in Europe is mostly free, it's extraordinarily competitive. There are far fewer universities and the admissions standards are much higher. Students are sorted going into high school based on their ability and those that are not on the university track on placed into normal or trade high schools. I have no problem paying taxes toward humanity or other "useless" degrees if the person is truly profoundly talented. Student loans provide all of the wrong incentives.
- wickoff 8y ago
  Russia adds its own twist. Education is free, but all young men except who fail admission exams or drop out at any point in their education are conscripted into the military service. It used to be two years of service, now it's one. Russian army is not a nice place to be, to put it mildly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dedovshchina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dedovshchina
  - iguy 8y ago
    I think this was not so uncommon, although often phrased differently -- in many places conscription was obligatory, but could be deferred while in university... and after graduating you'd be useful enough not to spend 2 years digging ditches. And perhaps by the time you had a PhD would be exempt.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  I guess Europe hasn't figured out how that you can make guaranteed money off a subset of the population whose risk vs rewards centres have literally not totally developed in their brain, or it has enough ethics not to.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    I think it's more accurate to say that they are missing information, rather than being mentally underdeveloped.
mountainofdeath 8y ago
About 1/3 of the US federal government's receivables are student loans. Allowing people to default on their loans has huge downstream consequences.
Stronico 8y ago
An open question to people born after 1980 - did you hear "what will you do with that degree" early and often? The end career was an important part of the decision making process when I started college, harped on by parents, advisers, processors, etc, - but maybe things changed over time.
- freedomben 8y ago
  I never heard that from teachers, school counselors, or anybody in the educational system. In fact I heard the opposite: basically "go to college for something (anything) or you'll flip burgers for a living."
  - Stronico 8y ago
    I heard it pretty constantly, over the whole college experience actually. It just seems irresponsible not too.
  - Frondo 8y ago
    I also never heard that, not once. The entirety of the pro-education message I received all through my youth and schooling was, "get a degree, it doesn't matter what in, and you'll get a white-collar office job." That's it. My parents weren't of the socio-economic class to give me any more detailed information, either. They didn't know better, no one else said better, and I know my experience is common among my peers.
- tamalesfan 8y ago
  No. Never. Graduated high school in '88. All I heard from infancy was the 'Education!' chant. It was understood that 'Education!' was the answer and the rest would fall into place. Every degree is equally valid and damn anyone that dares claim otherwise. No thought given to the fact that a large fraction of people aren't really capable of intellectually challenging tasks and professional class behavior, and I mean from the womb. Just 'Education! Education!'
dawhizkid 8y ago
I took out some student loans for a grad degree and still have around $20k left. This was a few years ago so my fixed interest rate is 5.6%, which today is only a little higher than the rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage. I stretched out the repayment to 25 years and it's on autopay. The monthly payment is around $150/month. Also, interest is tax deductible if you make less than $85k. I barely think about this loan at all except for filing taxes. Of course everyone's situation is different, but even ~$40k in debt for one of the most forgiving loans you can take out (both in terms of the fixed rate, the amount of time you can stretch out, and the tax deductibility of the interest) is not worth the stress.
alando46 8y ago
Student loans reinforce existing socioeconomic boundaries. Effectively, if a student can't afford to pay tuition and living expenses upfront then the cost of a college education is 15-50+% more than for a student who comes from a wealthy family. How is this equal opportunity?
freeopinion 8y ago
This article frustrates me. I suppose the whole debacle of student debt frustrates me. I would fall into what the article labels a "retributive view." '“I think there’s this assumption that millennials are spoiled, naive, and entitled,” Jen said.' That's because they often are. Jen racked up $50K of students loans in one year at an Ivy League school. My daughter is finishing up her first year of grad school at a state university, debt free. She works multiple jobs while going to school. It's hard. Sometimes it's really hard. And when she's done she won't have a diploma from an Ivy League school. But she won't have any debt, either. Jen's case is intentionally special because she had a stroke in the middle of all this. So we can't criticize Jen. We have to sympathize with her. By extension, we are supposed to sympathize with everyone who has racked up student debt. The cost of a college education is crazy. I agree with that. But the onus for student debt should fall on the debtor. Just like the onus for a car loan so that somebody can drive to work. Or the onus for a mortgage, or credit card debt. You can't repossess an education. When a student defaults, that knowledge and experience can't just be transferred back to the bank. So it is fair that such loans are secured differently than debt on hard assets. If you don't currently have a cash flow that would allow you to make a $2000/month mortgage payment, don't take out that mortgage. If you don't currently have a cash flow that would allow you to make a $500/month student loan payment, don't take out that loan. If you could afford a $200 monthly payment, find a degree that fits your budget. Try a $3000/semester school instead of a $25000/semester school. Don't rack up $50K/year and then pretend that you're not entitled.
- m_ke 8y ago
  I got into an ivy league school and ended up going there because I was offered a fairly generous financial aid package. Then in my final year my grants went from covering 80% of my tuition to practically 0 because my father was working 80 hour weeks and made 5k more than the previous year. I thought I would graduate with around 20K in loans but ended up having closer to 70K because of that.
  - pnw_hazor 8y ago
    Was it worth it? You could have went to a cheaper school?
jeffdavis 8y ago
So many problems here: * Public service loan forgiveness * Inability to get out of loans through bankruptcy * "College, college, college" mantra where college is specifically defined as a big expensive place you go * Kids' first "grown up" financial decision is a big one * Majors that don't have a track record of paying off with no real counseling or information to encourage more realistic choices * Kids taking easy or "cool" majors without thinking very hard about the financial trade offs * Going back to (expensive) school as a way to hide from debt payments * Many colleges more like joining a social club than an educational institution. The first two years at university are very expensive but no better at educating than a community college. We know these are all problems, we just have no will to fix them. Politicians are looking for a political money-shuffling solution after the damage is already done, not looking for policies that will prevent the harm.
- hurryskurry 8y ago
  I actually think the problem isn't unrealistic major choices, but the fact that college shouldn't cost so much in the first place. There is really no reason college has to be as expensive as it is. It isn't like college professors pay went up as tuition did or anything, or as if students got their own microscope or something to make up for the cost. It just went to staff, and buildings.
tamalesfan 8y ago
Interesting phrase: “the retributive view” Apparently criticizing poor decision making is a bad thing and so here we're provided a convenient pejorative with which to dismiss it. Recently we've seen many notables dismiss uneducated white Trump supporters as poor decision makers; their outcomes being entirely their own fault and so we need consider their views no further. I wonder if they'll be permitted to demean such behavior as “retributive.” I don't actually wonder that. The answer is as certain as a physical law. These kids were sold a bill of goods. One might hope they've learned that good paying jobs will not magically appear simply by chanting 'Education!' We can't actually evacuate most of our industrial base to Asia and force the remaining employers into ever greater oligopolies through regulatory pressure and still have a middle class. But I think that's a false hope. Instead they'll do precisely as they've been trained and vote for the promises of the political class; the very people that taught them to mindlessly chant 'Education!' in the first place.
jonahrd 8y ago
I see a lot of HN comments on these issues treating college education as a commodity/investment, blaming students/society for making poor "choices" (I'd like to remind you of the cost and selective nature of STEM programs, not everyone is able to enroll in the highest valued degree due to circumstances beyond their control-- it's not always a choice), and using economic indicators like ROI to measure the "value" of degrees. Some commenters go so far as to even suggest letting the free market lower the price of education by restricting access to education [1] However, I'd like to propose that there's alternative value to education beyond short-term individual capital gains. First off, having a degree teaches you more than the hard skills promoted by the individual degree program, it opens up new pathways to learning that you can use to later-on learn new skills [2] This is increasingly important as the pace of technology changes, and skillsets will need to be adjusted multiple times in one lifetime. Also, the overall prosperity of the economy, as well as other indicators such as happiness, is tied to the number of college graduates in a particular society. [3] [4] To me it makes sense to invest in education as a whole, instead of targeting one specific area, or pitting individuals against each other to compete over education resources. I'm surprised by the number of well-educated people on this site who don't see the value of any degrees that aren't directly related to current economic trends, and who don't see the value of expanding access to education through society as a whole. To me, it seems like a case where having been given a certain set of privileges it's easy to dismiss other situations as being a result of poor decisions or poor societal structure. I just hope that people reading my comment will take a moment to step back and recognize that there may be much longer-term humanitarian reasons to support education as a whole, even if that means supporting degrees in 'underwater basket weaving' [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19138961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19138961 [2] https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED465040 https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED465040 [3] https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/news/Pages/Nation%27s-prosperity-relies-on-more-people-of-all-ages-going-to-university.aspx https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/news/Pages/Nation%27s-prosp... [4] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1474904118770818?journalCode=eera https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/147490411877081...
anongraddebt 8y ago
I attended an elite institution for my grad degree, but attended a state school for undergrad. My parents are also middle-class but reside in a low-income area of the country. All of this being said, I can attest (anecdotally) to the following: (1) There are low-income, middle-income, and upper-income individuals with student loan debt so large it will never be paid back. I know at least two people in each income bracket. The ones from the upper-income bracket come from families that are well-off, but not so well-off that they are willing to throw away a quarter of their life-savings to payback their child's student loan debt. (2) I know people with $200K+ in student loan debt, but who pursued degrees which have career trajectories not aligned to paying off such debt. (3) Even at elite institutions, and even within different acclaimed grad programs, the 'country club' experience of American undergrad education is creeping in. That is, even at elite grad programs, students are beginning to treat education as secondary and socializing, partying, etc. as primary. Grade inflation, among other signs of systemic institutional rot, is rampant. ---- Having graduated and joined the professional class, as well as being connected to various professional social circles spanning different industries, I can also attest (anecdotally) to witnessing only ~20% of the people I know spending the vast majority of time at their job doing work rather than playing around. To those with limited data on what actually takes place at the mid and senior levels of management in large corporations and firms, I can tell you many stories of people making ~$130-$200K/yr while spending a non-trivial amount of work time shopping on-line, scrolling social media feeds, etc. Take that FWIW.
- dba7dba 8y ago
  I personally know someone who went to a state college AND a private, expensive private law school (not top tier). All while getting loans/grants. That is 7 years of borrowing. Not graduating from a top tier program meant the lawyer job with really high enough income was out of reach. I just remember hearing that individual amassed about a quarter of a million of US $ in debt. And he will be paying about $2000 - $3000 a month to repay the debt, till he reaches 40ish, provided there is no hiccup in employment. That's enough for mortgage for a really good house in most parts of US. Was it worth it? I think not personally. Not with that kind of loan. And yes, people in mid/senior management spend non trivial time doing non-work related activities on computers behind closed doors of the private offices. I've seen it as a help desk guy.
therobot24 8y ago
there's going to be a great http://n-gate.com/ http://n-gate.com/ paragraph from this thread
hurryskurry 8y ago
I want to point out that university ought to really be about the pursuit of knowledge. It isn't, or shouldn't be about prestige or income. Many people seem to have this massive chip on their shoulder, "these fing kids just thinking they're so much smarter than me but they're just hipsters getting useless degrees." God forbid anyone should pursue knowledge for knowledge's sake. You want to work in the private sector and make a killing? Good for you here's a pat on the back. You might not realise this, because you're close minded, but fundamental research happens to pay terribly, requires long hours, is super stressful, but is good for everyone. Pharmaceuticals, for example, almost always rely on fundamental biological discoveries made by academic science. You need to sort of understand a disease a bit, before you find a drug to cure it, and guess who is figuring that stuff out? It's the grad student over there who went to lab on christmas, because that's when the mice were born. Let nerds spend 60+ hours a week in the lab or library doing what they love, and let's make sure they can eat and survive, so we can all reap the benefit. These people will literally go to work all day including weekends for fun. What motivates these people is discovery of new information, and having the respect of their peers. They aren't motivated by money, but they need enough to be mentally and physically healthy. Have the kind of rationality that sees what a terrific resource that is. You can pay them less than half of any worker in private industry and they will work twice as much. Just the sheer ignorance, hautiness, and closed mindedness of some of these comments. Chill, university isn't really supposed to be there for that annoying kid you all think of when you think of college loans. There are literally people trying to give us their lives as long as we allow them to do research. And y'all are ruining it.
vidro3 8y ago
Everyone is ignoring that 98% of students doing the Public Service Loan Forgiveness are rejected for some vague inexplicable reason. I don't think 98% of people are doing it wrong
apta 8y ago
It makes a lot of sense why what are known as the Abrahamic religions prohibit interest/usury. It's an exploitative practice that destroys societies. Of course, that's one part of the issue at hand here.

65 points by rafaelc 8y ago

Basic decision making and investment ROI should be covered in HS, or at least by peoples parents. 50k for a 1 year degree when you are already in debt isn't insurmountable but it is significant.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> Basic decision making and investment ROI should be covered in HS The "a member of my family once said I deserved student loan debt because I chose the unrealistic field of history" comment reminds me of friends. They're smart. But they came from families that didn't teach ROI. (Their high schools didn't offer , they pursued majors that they found interesting. Nobody offer economics in a remotely-useful form, either.) Nobody told them to consider job-placement frequencies and mean exit salaries. (Let alone where to find these data.) So they didn't. It's difficult to fault them. Their adolescent brains were given insufficient information (or, in some cases wrong information) for a series of huge decisions. They are now left with the consequences of those decisions for life. The only way to fix this is to let loans be wiped out in bankruptcy (i.e. give lenders skin in the game). We probably also need to let lenders vary interest rates by institution and major. (The latter to give borrowers an early price signal around their choices.)
- ASpring 8y ago
  I agree it is difficult to fault these students who chose majors without fully factoring in lifetime earnings and that we should allow college loans to be wiped out in bankruptcy. However, I disagree that we should let lenders vary interest rates by institution and major. Our premise was that these students didn't understand the full picture of what they were getting into. I'm not sure complicating that picture by varying interest rates is going to make the situation better overall.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > Our premise was that these students didn't understand the full picture of what they were getting into. I'm not sure complicating that picture by varying interest rates is going to make the situation better overall. As the article illustrates, complexity isn't the core problem. College applications, student aid and education loans are already complicated. The problem is critical information is not being presented to students at the right time. One way to solve this would be mandatory disclosures when (a) schools or lenders send out any marketing materials, (b) admissions or loan applications are received, and (c) school or loan acceptance letters are sent out. (I think this should happen.) Unfortunately, simple disclosure is only a first step. Incorporating the disclosed information into pricing ensures it's received. Also, if we're going to force lenders to bear the risk of default, we should give them a way to manage it. Forcing a single market rate subsidies students pursuing uneconomic majors at the expense of those pursuing economic ones.
  - theli0nheart 8y ago
    > However, I disagree that we should let lenders vary interest rates by institution and major. Going to college is a financial investment, so I see the logic in this: just make it a flat "fee" and let the student decide what to study to make it worth it. I'm not sure what the ramifications of this might be, though. I can imagine there might be some unintended consequences.
    - Mirioron 8y ago
      The consequences are that certain easier degrees will get flooded and the degree becomes worthless "because everyone has one". Most of those people won't be able to find work in their field of expertise. College will still be useful for them, but only as a signaling mechanism. But it might even be a negative signaling mechanism, because it would show that the student didn't think through their actions.
- smileysteve 8y ago
  I find it interesting that we so readily blame this ignorance on age. Someone turning 18... - can join the military - enter contracts - get a credit card or loan - decide not to go to college
- iguy 8y ago
  Here's a half-way measure to give the lenders better incentives, without risking making bankruptcy on your 22nd birthday a rite of passage: Make non-dischargeable student loans only repayable at all when your taxable income is above $50k (or some number keyed to official stats), capped at 15% of income, and written off after 20 years. And let the interest rate, and amount offered, vary with major, school, SAT score, everything. This will provided a vivid picture to 17-year olds of what their choices mean. Taking a 4-year all-inclusive resort holiday should be expensive, maybe it's a nice gift to buy your kids, but nobody should stumble into it thinking they are getting job training. (But the same major at a more selective school may actually have great outcomes -- it doesn't have to be direct job training.) And this way there's no need for a committee to identify which programs do or don't fall into this category, the bankers are free to gamble as they wish.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > capped at 15% of income I like your idea. I'd edit $50k to some fraction of the median wage (or multiple of the poverty line) and revise 15% of income to a higher fraction of after-tax income after housing, food, childcare, healthcare and other essential costs. (We already have fraction of discretionary income based repayment programs. Shouldn't be hard to borrow that definition.)
    - iguy 8y ago
      There are lots of details, but I would vote that it should be fairly simple, and connected to few facts beyond your IRS income. There should be no incentive to rent a bigger house, or move to an expensive city, beyond the usual salary/rent tradeoffs. (And no cliff-edges, so perhaps it's max 15% of the income above twice the poverty line?)
Bucephalus355 8y ago
This puts the burden on the individual. We’ve had 30 years of this. What is government or business going to do about it? They’ve been exempt / free from responsibility for far too long. They are as lazy as the “welfare queens” they once tailed against.
- PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
  > They’ve been exempt / free from responsibility for far too long. I've seen arguments that the government not allowing these debts to be discharged through bankruptcy was a major cause of the problem. Do we want more market manipulation, or should we start teaching students that because the government has allowed for a trap even bankruptcy cannot escape, you need to learn how to avoid it?
SilasX 8y ago
For all requirements $R of everyday life: - "Schools should be required to teach $R, and not graduate a student that hasn't learned it!" - "The evil school wouldn't graduate my snowflake merely because s/he couldn't pass the standardized test for $R!"
- harpastum 8y ago
  Are you saying that one individual might hold both of those positions? Or is your point that people disagree on what is important in school? I'm trying to understand the argument you're making here.
  - SilasX 8y ago
    I'm saying that "verifying schools are really teaching $R" requires something like a standardized test, but those are already unpopular even for things that people agree schools should be teaching. Hence there is a tension between "graduation rates" and "adding more things-schools-have-to-teach", and yes, probably a lot of people who don't see the contradiction (between hate for standardized tests and demands that schools teach $R) as clearly as I've laid it out here.
scarface74 8y ago
According to many on HN, your college education shouldn't be about finding a job. "It isn't vocational training". It's about expanding your mind and becoming a well rounded citizen of the world. Obviously, I don't share that belief....
- freedomben 8y ago
  What is your opinion on the relevance of, and proper place for, trade schools?
  - scarface74 8y ago
    In a perfect society that did not over index on a college education, I would be all for it. Most of the core classes should be taught in high school anyway and shouldn't need to be retaught in college.
    - freedomben 8y ago
      Makes sense, thanks. In a few companies I was involved with early in my career, a B.S. in Xyz was required to even get an interview. Until we fix that problem (which I believe is cultural) the trade school won't be widely acceptable.
- Mirioron 8y ago
  I think that's at least partly true, but if that's the reason you go to college for, then you should consider how much it costs you.
- wolfgke 8y ago
  > According to many on HN, your college education shouldn't be about finding a job. "It isn't vocational training". It's about expanding your mind and becoming a well rounded citizen of the world. In Germany, the mentality is different: school is for becoming well-rounded (that is why one has to attend many obligatory subjects from different areas) and university is for specializing into some area in which you will probably work for the rest of your life.
aqme28 8y ago
I think there's a human-nature problem to teaching ROI like you suggest. People are always going to think that they're going to be the one to break through--to rise above the mean ROI. That's why you get so many people trying to become actors or musicians or athletes or even startup founders. The high-end returns are so distracting that people forget about the mean ROI.
- pnw_hazor 8y ago
  That's why schools that offer financial aid are required to have financial aid advisors. Given the inherent conflict of interest schools should bear some of the risk of student debt.

cschep 8y ago

Because they are cheated by them. :)

malvosenior 8y ago

There's a lot of effort put into Jen's anecdote but not once is what degree she received even mentioned. That is suspect and dishonest reporting. As a tax payer, I do not want to subsidize people's poor educational decision making. If you get a STEM degree, you can get a job. This article describes what's long been referred to as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_basket_weaving https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_basket_weaving Look at what fields are in demand and get an appropriate degree. Someone's failure to do that should not fall on the tax payers shoulders anymore than it already does.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
landryraccoon 8y ago
I can’t disagree more strongly with this attitude. You’re saying that children basically barely out of high school need to make decisions that are very high cost and impact the rest of their lives, then held accountable for them when they make a mistake. This is on top of the fact that in all likelihood both society and their parents and teachers pushed them hard that the only way to succeed in life is to max out on education. Blaming kids for choosing the wrong college is just a symptom of a broken system. How messed up is it that almost the very first decision a person has to make when reaching the age of majority is whether to take on tens of thousands in debt or more?
- mattnewton 8y ago
  I agree. If student loans weren’t protected from bankruptcy, lenders would be forced to learn the market and would signal to you the unfeasiblity of these choices by setting higher interest rates on loans for different colleges/majors. I think we’ve made the measure of success just the number of college degrees because it was correlated with a middle or upper class lifestyle for so long, but failed to understand the causal relationship there fully.
  - dba7dba 8y ago
    Yet another masterpiece work by the fabulously lucrative sector called lobby industry. Lucrative both for the lobbyists themselves and the banks. Bravo.

Bucephalus355 8y ago

I have no student loans. ROTC paid for all of my college. Yet 15 minutes ago I got a call from “Robbie”, clearly a domestic call as he had 100% American accent, to talk about restructuring my federal student loans. Why is our country so incredibly deceptive and scammy? We’ll never have European-style socialism here and that’s somewhat liveable / something I’ve come to accept, but why must we be cheated at every turn and in every interaction? This is not capitalism as much as it is a predatorial monetary jungle. Reminds me of the quote: “behind every fortune, a crime”.

hindsightbias 8y ago
Have always wondered if PT Barnum's "There's a sucker born every minute" is a uniquely American quality or not.
james_s_tayler 8y ago
Part of human nature. Same is true to varyingly degrees around the world. Research on deception/cheating is pretty damning of the people in general.

wernercd 8y ago

The old wisdom that "College is Worth It, No Matter What." is no longer true (assuming it ever was). Trades, IT jobs and the inability to bankruptcy out of bad decisions... paired with colleges that are more focused on head count than quality...

wvenable 8y ago
The current wisdom is that "College is necessary" because even your barista has a degree. Good luck getting a good job without one.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  I imagine you're going to get a lot of "I don't have a degree but I have a great job!" responses, but that's largely because tech is a super weird industry, and not indicative of the rest of the job market.
  - wvenable 8y ago
    I believe that you can be in tech without a degree (and I know a lot of people who are) but we just posted looking for a new developer and, of course, it says "CS degree required". If you don't have a degree, you have more of an uphill battle if you go the traditional employee route and that is where most of the jobs are.
- Mirioron 8y ago
  Some people consider college to mostly be about signaling. While it might be better for an individual to go to college, it's wasteful for society for everyone to go to college if most of them don't learn useful and beneficial skills.
- pnw_hazor 8y ago
  Especially when the assistant manager that is hiring you has a masters in fine art.
- wernercd 8y ago

babaganoosh89 8y ago

Why not limit federal aid and student loans to "in-demand" majors? Do we really want high school students getting >$100k debt for majors with limited market value?

bdcravens 8y ago
Presumably this would either eliminate certain jobs over time or limit those who go into those fields to a given financial class. Smells a little too much like central economy planning to some.
par 8y ago
great idea. just add some bounds checking to who can receive a loan!
wvenable 8y ago
There probably aren't even enough jobs in "in-demand" majors to make that worthwhile anyway (or there soon won't be). I suspect the number of college-necessary skilled jobs is going down but the number of McJobs that will require a degree merely as a filter is going up.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> Why not limit federal aid and student loans to "in-demand" majors? Consider how politicized this would become. Also consider that demand for a major is a lagging indicator.
SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
Are we filtering millions of people each year into a handful of majors? What happens to these industries when that many individuals enter the workforce? Do we keep cycling through the majors as demand shifts?
est31 8y ago
What about people who drop out of their studies for whatever reason?
hurryskurry 8y ago

BrandonMarc 8y ago

LOL, buzzfeed.

saagarjha 8y ago
In case it isn't clear, Buzzfeed≠Buzzfeed News.
- rosterface 8y ago
  This is off topic so we probably shouldn't talk about it. But I find it humorous that over the past couple of weeks people have been saying Buzzfeed != Buzzfeed News and that Buzzfeed News is actually really high quality journalism. Yet here we have an article from Buzzfeed News and it's total garbage. I see no difference in content quality from the other Buzzfeed.

gzu 8y ago

Its all just a taxpayer (and employee) subsided way to lower high skill labor costs for companies. "We need more STEM" /s. What we actually need is a long term solution to middle class destruction. Everyone/everything is sucking them dry. It’s too bad though once they’re empty the whole system is dead.

danschumann 8y ago

Make them bankruptable. Make the risk real, causing banks to only give loans if the kid is gonna pay it off fairly regularly. Fewer kids going to college will decrease demand, and cause the price to go down, as well. Tech schools have far better outcomes, and will be chosen more often.

tomatotomato37 8y ago
What happens when someone blames the banking system for oppressing the poor/minorities/whatever by denying them a loan and thus not providing opportunities for advancement, while leaving out the fact that they applied for a degree in 17th century Mongolian literature?
- wolfgke 8y ago
  > What happens when someone blames the banking system for oppressing the poor/minorities/whatever by denying them a loan and thus not providing opportunities for advancement, while leaving out the fact that they applied for a degree in 17th century Mongolian literature? If someone believes that such a person will get a decent salary after graduating, they should put their money where their mouth is.
  - pnw_hazor 8y ago
    I think the schools should play this role. They are the ones with the best information.
- danschumann 8y ago
  Would they be less oppressed than having $xx,000 in debt, which they cannot pay off, and cannot get rid of? By the way, they were admitted access to a school which was beyond their ability, and they didn't even get a degree to go with this debt. They were set up for failure in many ways. The loan assumed they'd have a job. The school assumed they needed a leg up, and would adapt to the work load. Is this oppression? Or is this death by assistance? Hansel and Gretel were fattened up before they were eaten, as well. Is this toxic assistance, where people drown in the programs meant for their benefit?

roenxi 8y ago

There are a lot of details here, but from the high level the problem is that loans that can't be discharged through bankruptcy are unfair. Some very successful people have gone bankrupt once or twice on their way. Obviously allowing student loans to be discharged through a normal bankruptcy isn't feasible, because students leave college basically bankrupt. There needs to be a sensible mechanism to default on student loans, and probably a matching hard political conversation about what education is actually worth.

pnw_hazor 8y ago
Put schools on the hook for a portion of the defaults.

_bxg1 8y ago

I was privileged to have parents who paid my tuition, but this phenomenon that I've watched many of my friends go through is so unjust it's giving me a headache as I type.

wickoff 8y ago

One person making unwise financial decisions is a dummy. A generation of people being systematically lured into making unwise financial decisions is a racket. How do people rationalize putting young people into debt slavery instead of having them spend their earnings in the free market, stimulating the economy?

lbotos 8y ago
>How do people rationalize putting young people into debt slavery instead of having them spend their earnings in the free market, stimulating the economy? Because they (the people rationalizing) didn't realize the game has changed since they left college (or their lack of access to college)
Mirioron 8y ago
Because they already spent it "on the free market" they just thought going to an expensive university was a good idea. The blame lies as much with all the people telling students that they must go to university as it does with the students themselves.
porpoisely 8y ago
The government says a 18 year old is too immature to legally purchase beer. But a $30K loan which they can't bankrupt out of, they sure are mature enough for that. It's getting teenagers to sign away a significant part of their 20s to indentured servitude.
- Mirioron 8y ago
  That's different though. Alcohol has negative effects on development and your brain continues to develop until you're about 25. So the reason to limit alcohol isn't that they can't handle it, but rather that it's bad for them physically.
- pnw_hazor 8y ago
  Colleges already provide an entire department or two of professionals to guide their students through the process. This is why schools should bear more of the risk. They are ones that are recommending that the kids takes the loans and help them select majors. I couldn't believe how much financial aid (all loans) I was offered for law school. (I took about 10% of what was offered.)

victoro 8y ago

It seems to me that a relatively simple to implement (I'm not going to say simple in aggregate, because the knock-on effects would be hard to predict) solution to all of this is to make student loan debt dischargeable in bankruptcy. At the very least, this would shift the burden of determining which degrees are "worth it" from high-school-aged kids and their families to large lending institutions that are much better equipped to analyze risk.

mountainofdeath 8y ago

I need to dig up the article but an article I read a few years ago confirmed what I already thought about schools in Europe. While it is true that higher education in Europe is mostly free, it's extraordinarily competitive. There are far fewer universities and the admissions standards are much higher. Students are sorted going into high school based on their ability and those that are not on the university track on placed into normal or trade high schools. I have no problem paying taxes toward humanity or other "useless" degrees if the person is truly profoundly talented. Student loans provide all of the wrong incentives.

wickoff 8y ago
Russia adds its own twist. Education is free, but all young men except who fail admission exams or drop out at any point in their education are conscripted into the military service. It used to be two years of service, now it's one. Russian army is not a nice place to be, to put it mildly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dedovshchina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dedovshchina
- iguy 8y ago
  I think this was not so uncommon, although often phrased differently -- in many places conscription was obligatory, but could be deferred while in university... and after graduating you'd be useful enough not to spend 2 years digging ditches. And perhaps by the time you had a PhD would be exempt.
SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
I guess Europe hasn't figured out how that you can make guaranteed money off a subset of the population whose risk vs rewards centres have literally not totally developed in their brain, or it has enough ethics not to.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  I think it's more accurate to say that they are missing information, rather than being mentally underdeveloped.

mountainofdeath 8y ago

About 1/3 of the US federal government's receivables are student loans. Allowing people to default on their loans has huge downstream consequences.

Stronico 8y ago

An open question to people born after 1980 - did you hear "what will you do with that degree" early and often? The end career was an important part of the decision making process when I started college, harped on by parents, advisers, processors, etc, - but maybe things changed over time.

freedomben 8y ago
I never heard that from teachers, school counselors, or anybody in the educational system. In fact I heard the opposite: basically "go to college for something (anything) or you'll flip burgers for a living."
- Stronico 8y ago
  I heard it pretty constantly, over the whole college experience actually. It just seems irresponsible not too.
- Frondo 8y ago
  I also never heard that, not once. The entirety of the pro-education message I received all through my youth and schooling was, "get a degree, it doesn't matter what in, and you'll get a white-collar office job." That's it. My parents weren't of the socio-economic class to give me any more detailed information, either. They didn't know better, no one else said better, and I know my experience is common among my peers.
tamalesfan 8y ago
No. Never. Graduated high school in '88. All I heard from infancy was the 'Education!' chant. It was understood that 'Education!' was the answer and the rest would fall into place. Every degree is equally valid and damn anyone that dares claim otherwise. No thought given to the fact that a large fraction of people aren't really capable of intellectually challenging tasks and professional class behavior, and I mean from the womb. Just 'Education! Education!'

dawhizkid 8y ago

I took out some student loans for a grad degree and still have around $20k left. This was a few years ago so my fixed interest rate is 5.6%, which today is only a little higher than the rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage. I stretched out the repayment to 25 years and it's on autopay. The monthly payment is around $150/month. Also, interest is tax deductible if you make less than $85k. I barely think about this loan at all except for filing taxes. Of course everyone's situation is different, but even ~$40k in debt for one of the most forgiving loans you can take out (both in terms of the fixed rate, the amount of time you can stretch out, and the tax deductibility of the interest) is not worth the stress.

alando46 8y ago

Student loans reinforce existing socioeconomic boundaries. Effectively, if a student can't afford to pay tuition and living expenses upfront then the cost of a college education is 15-50+% more than for a student who comes from a wealthy family. How is this equal opportunity?

freeopinion 8y ago

This article frustrates me. I suppose the whole debacle of student debt frustrates me. I would fall into what the article labels a "retributive view." '“I think there’s this assumption that millennials are spoiled, naive, and entitled,” Jen said.' That's because they often are. Jen racked up $50K of students loans in one year at an Ivy League school. My daughter is finishing up her first year of grad school at a state university, debt free. She works multiple jobs while going to school. It's hard. Sometimes it's really hard. And when she's done she won't have a diploma from an Ivy League school. But she won't have any debt, either. Jen's case is intentionally special because she had a stroke in the middle of all this. So we can't criticize Jen. We have to sympathize with her. By extension, we are supposed to sympathize with everyone who has racked up student debt. The cost of a college education is crazy. I agree with that. But the onus for student debt should fall on the debtor. Just like the onus for a car loan so that somebody can drive to work. Or the onus for a mortgage, or credit card debt. You can't repossess an education. When a student defaults, that knowledge and experience can't just be transferred back to the bank. So it is fair that such loans are secured differently than debt on hard assets. If you don't currently have a cash flow that would allow you to make a $2000/month mortgage payment, don't take out that mortgage. If you don't currently have a cash flow that would allow you to make a $500/month student loan payment, don't take out that loan. If you could afford a $200 monthly payment, find a degree that fits your budget. Try a $3000/semester school instead of a $25000/semester school. Don't rack up $50K/year and then pretend that you're not entitled.

m_ke 8y ago
I got into an ivy league school and ended up going there because I was offered a fairly generous financial aid package. Then in my final year my grants went from covering 80% of my tuition to practically 0 because my father was working 80 hour weeks and made 5k more than the previous year. I thought I would graduate with around 20K in loans but ended up having closer to 70K because of that.
- pnw_hazor 8y ago
  Was it worth it? You could have went to a cheaper school?

jeffdavis 8y ago

So many problems here: * Public service loan forgiveness * Inability to get out of loans through bankruptcy * "College, college, college" mantra where college is specifically defined as a big expensive place you go * Kids' first "grown up" financial decision is a big one * Majors that don't have a track record of paying off with no real counseling or information to encourage more realistic choices * Kids taking easy or "cool" majors without thinking very hard about the financial trade offs * Going back to (expensive) school as a way to hide from debt payments * Many colleges more like joining a social club than an educational institution. The first two years at university are very expensive but no better at educating than a community college. We know these are all problems, we just have no will to fix them. Politicians are looking for a political money-shuffling solution after the damage is already done, not looking for policies that will prevent the harm.

hurryskurry 8y ago
I actually think the problem isn't unrealistic major choices, but the fact that college shouldn't cost so much in the first place. There is really no reason college has to be as expensive as it is. It isn't like college professors pay went up as tuition did or anything, or as if students got their own microscope or something to make up for the cost. It just went to staff, and buildings.

tamalesfan 8y ago

Interesting phrase: “the retributive view” Apparently criticizing poor decision making is a bad thing and so here we're provided a convenient pejorative with which to dismiss it. Recently we've seen many notables dismiss uneducated white Trump supporters as poor decision makers; their outcomes being entirely their own fault and so we need consider their views no further. I wonder if they'll be permitted to demean such behavior as “retributive.” I don't actually wonder that. The answer is as certain as a physical law. These kids were sold a bill of goods. One might hope they've learned that good paying jobs will not magically appear simply by chanting 'Education!' We can't actually evacuate most of our industrial base to Asia and force the remaining employers into ever greater oligopolies through regulatory pressure and still have a middle class. But I think that's a false hope. Instead they'll do precisely as they've been trained and vote for the promises of the political class; the very people that taught them to mindlessly chant 'Education!' in the first place.

jonahrd 8y ago

I see a lot of HN comments on these issues treating college education as a commodity/investment, blaming students/society for making poor "choices" (I'd like to remind you of the cost and selective nature of STEM programs, not everyone is able to enroll in the highest valued degree due to circumstances beyond their control-- it's not always a choice), and using economic indicators like ROI to measure the "value" of degrees. Some commenters go so far as to even suggest letting the free market lower the price of education by restricting access to education [1] However, I'd like to propose that there's alternative value to education beyond short-term individual capital gains. First off, having a degree teaches you more than the hard skills promoted by the individual degree program, it opens up new pathways to learning that you can use to later-on learn new skills [2] This is increasingly important as the pace of technology changes, and skillsets will need to be adjusted multiple times in one lifetime. Also, the overall prosperity of the economy, as well as other indicators such as happiness, is tied to the number of college graduates in a particular society. [3] [4] To me it makes sense to invest in education as a whole, instead of targeting one specific area, or pitting individuals against each other to compete over education resources. I'm surprised by the number of well-educated people on this site who don't see the value of any degrees that aren't directly related to current economic trends, and who don't see the value of expanding access to education through society as a whole. To me, it seems like a case where having been given a certain set of privileges it's easy to dismiss other situations as being a result of poor decisions or poor societal structure. I just hope that people reading my comment will take a moment to step back and recognize that there may be much longer-term humanitarian reasons to support education as a whole, even if that means supporting degrees in 'underwater basket weaving' [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19138961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19138961 [2] https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED465040 https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED465040 [3] https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/news/Pages/Nation%27s-prosperity-relies-on-more-people-of-all-ages-going-to-university.aspx https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/news/Pages/Nation%27s-prosp... [4] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1474904118770818?journalCode=eera https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/147490411877081...

anongraddebt 8y ago

I attended an elite institution for my grad degree, but attended a state school for undergrad. My parents are also middle-class but reside in a low-income area of the country. All of this being said, I can attest (anecdotally) to the following: (1) There are low-income, middle-income, and upper-income individuals with student loan debt so large it will never be paid back. I know at least two people in each income bracket. The ones from the upper-income bracket come from families that are well-off, but not so well-off that they are willing to throw away a quarter of their life-savings to payback their child's student loan debt. (2) I know people with $200K+ in student loan debt, but who pursued degrees which have career trajectories not aligned to paying off such debt. (3) Even at elite institutions, and even within different acclaimed grad programs, the 'country club' experience of American undergrad education is creeping in. That is, even at elite grad programs, students are beginning to treat education as secondary and socializing, partying, etc. as primary. Grade inflation, among other signs of systemic institutional rot, is rampant. ---- Having graduated and joined the professional class, as well as being connected to various professional social circles spanning different industries, I can also attest (anecdotally) to witnessing only ~20% of the people I know spending the vast majority of time at their job doing work rather than playing around. To those with limited data on what actually takes place at the mid and senior levels of management in large corporations and firms, I can tell you many stories of people making ~$130-$200K/yr while spending a non-trivial amount of work time shopping on-line, scrolling social media feeds, etc. Take that FWIW.

dba7dba 8y ago
I personally know someone who went to a state college AND a private, expensive private law school (not top tier). All while getting loans/grants. That is 7 years of borrowing. Not graduating from a top tier program meant the lawyer job with really high enough income was out of reach. I just remember hearing that individual amassed about a quarter of a million of US $ in debt. And he will be paying about $2000 - $3000 a month to repay the debt, till he reaches 40ish, provided there is no hiccup in employment. That's enough for mortgage for a really good house in most parts of US. Was it worth it? I think not personally. Not with that kind of loan. And yes, people in mid/senior management spend non trivial time doing non-work related activities on computers behind closed doors of the private offices. I've seen it as a help desk guy.

therobot24 8y ago

there's going to be a great http://n-gate.com/ http://n-gate.com/ paragraph from this thread

hurryskurry 8y ago

I want to point out that university ought to really be about the pursuit of knowledge. It isn't, or shouldn't be about prestige or income. Many people seem to have this massive chip on their shoulder, "these fing kids just thinking they're so much smarter than me but they're just hipsters getting useless degrees." God forbid anyone should pursue knowledge for knowledge's sake. You want to work in the private sector and make a killing? Good for you here's a pat on the back. You might not realise this, because you're close minded, but fundamental research happens to pay terribly, requires long hours, is super stressful, but is good for everyone. Pharmaceuticals, for example, almost always rely on fundamental biological discoveries made by academic science. You need to sort of understand a disease a bit, before you find a drug to cure it, and guess who is figuring that stuff out? It's the grad student over there who went to lab on christmas, because that's when the mice were born. Let nerds spend 60+ hours a week in the lab or library doing what they love, and let's make sure they can eat and survive, so we can all reap the benefit. These people will literally go to work all day including weekends for fun. What motivates these people is discovery of new information, and having the respect of their peers. They aren't motivated by money, but they need enough to be mentally and physically healthy. Have the kind of rationality that sees what a terrific resource that is. You can pay them less than half of any worker in private industry and they will work twice as much. Just the sheer ignorance, hautiness, and closed mindedness of some of these comments. Chill, university isn't really supposed to be there for that annoying kid you all think of when you think of college loans. There are literally people trying to give us their lives as long as we allow them to do research. And y'all are ruining it.

vidro3 8y ago

Everyone is ignoring that 98% of students doing the Public Service Loan Forgiveness are rejected for some vague inexplicable reason. I don't think 98% of people are doing it wrong

apta 8y ago

It makes a lot of sense why what are known as the Abrahamic religions prohibit interest/usury. It's an exploitative practice that destroys societies. Of course, that's one part of the issue at hand here.