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This isn't an article about the morality of student loans. It's about the economy. If the economy is struggling because of people unable to pay student loans, t

by qntty 7y ago

This isn't an article about the morality of student loans. It's about the economy. If the economy is struggling because of people unable to pay student loans, that's a problem. Doesn't matter whether it was 'right' that it ended up this way. The problem is that people have student loans that they are unable to pay. How to solve it is another issue.

AmericanChopper 7y ago
The article doesn’t make any case for the economy struggling. ‘Struggling’ in this context would mean that there’s less skilled employment opportunities available than there used to be. The article doesn’t put forward any argument to say that’s the case. With increasing enrolments, the economy could be doing great and still produce underemployment. The question is why are people completing unmarketable (or not sufficiently marketable) degrees? The article provides no insight into what the answer to the question might be. ‘Many degrees are less marketable than the used to be’ is one (partial) explanation. But it’s not the only potential explanation, it’s not obviously the correct explanation, and it’s not an explanation that the article provides any content to support.
- cf141q5325 7y ago
  >The question is why are people completing unmarketable (or not sufficiently marketable) degrees? For the pursuit of knowledge. Universities are not job training. You getting a good job with your degree is a bonus not the intend outcome for a university.
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    That explanation likely accounts for some of the underemployment. How much, I’m not sure, perhaps a lot of it. Now, this still leaves people with a debt they may be unable to service. Which is still a problem, and raises its own set of questions. But it’s a completely different problem to any of the other potential explanations.
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    That used to be called a "liberal education", which meant an education that was appropriate for free men, as opposed to slaves, who would be trained in a trade. Today, that corresponds to pursuing knowledge if you don't need the money. If you do, pursue something that pays. (Pursue as much knowledge as you can work in around the edges, but the main focus has to be on something that pays.)
    - mamon 7y ago
      Ok, so are you saying that there should be no student loans on humanities degrees? Because that's the logical conclusion of what you're saying here. Would it make sense for the government to make a list of fields where they do back up student loans (which would probably be mostly STEM fields)?
      - ericd 7y ago
        Perhaps the loan requirements should be more stringent on fields that are unlikely to support repayment for people that aren’t in a financial position to repay them? Not very different to lending in other areas of life. Or remove the non-dischargeability and the govt backing at the same time, and let interest rates and lending requirements fall where they may.
      - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        I'm talking about students, not institutions or rules. I'm saying that if you're a student, and you need to work for a living, pick your major with some wisdom, no matter how much you want to "seek knowledge". My position is "Student, protect yourself." I take no position on whether the rules ought to change to protect students. (Perhaps they should, because 18-year-olds probably will get carried away with the romance of "pursuing knowledge" and ignore the way the real world works...)
      - imtringued 7y ago
        There can always be a private loan market for student loans. Government guaranteed student loans basically happen out of goodwill. The assumption is that it will be a net benefit and therefore everyone should be given the opportunity. However this didn't turn out to be true. If the government keeps funding loans that will never be paid back then it won't be able to fund the loans that can be paid back. I don't really see why limiting certain degrees is seen as pure evil. In Germany some university degrees only accept a limited amount of participants. People with higher grades will be prioritized. This restriction however doesn't apply to the STEM degrees (not an exhaustive list) because they never get enough students. Therefore even if someone is poor and suffers from low intelligence, they are not barred from a degree that leads to a prosperous career.
  - wutbrodo 7y ago
    Man, this canard gets really tiring. Don't get me wrong: I was crazy about university as a place of learning and added a "useless" major & minor from a career perspective to take advantage of the opportunity to learn But 1) this doesn't reflect the priorities of the vast majority of people, 2) this wasn't to the exclusion of paying attention to what's marketable (ie my other major), and 3) it beggars belief to claim that any significant number of people are intentionally taking on high debt loads in order to play-pretend being an unemployable philosopher-aristocrat. Leaving aside whether society _should_ be providing the no-strings-attached opportunity for a broad-based education[1] as disconnected from economic productivity, it's beyond laughable to claim that students are actually making this choice en masse in the knowledge that their education is unmarketable. A misguided and anachronistic belief in the marketability of arbitrary degrees is a far more plausible explanation. [1] I certainly think it would be nice in the abstract, pending feasibility obviously
    - cf141q5325 7y ago
      People are taking one of those courses because universities in the USA are basically companies. As a result you get marketing to sucker people into buying stuff they dont need and cant afford. That doesnt change the fact that we have those programs in the first place for the pursuit of knowledge in the hope that it will benefit society. That benefit doesnt have to be an economic one. A degree in your native language has arguably little financial value, but you only have to look to countries like France to see how much a society still collectively values their language. Investing in universities is historically something nations afford themselves in the hopes it will be of benefit to society. The idea of individuals investing into themselves is a rather American one. I would argue the only reason a large amount of US universities exist is because they have a special tax status and people get to take special loans to pay for their services. Alternatively you would just have companies providing job training. From the outside it looks like much of the problems with the US system stems from purposefully not communicating that difference to new students edit: To word it differently, the sole purpose of the teaching arm of a classical university is to enable the next generation to introduce novel ideas into their fields. Thats what a doctoral dissertation is. You advancing your field and adding to the collective knowledge.
- qntty 7y ago
  > The question is why are people completing unmarketable (or not sufficiently marketable) degrees? There's no reason to single this out as 'the question'. There are many interesting questions around student loans. The article singles out the question 'What caused the student loan debt load to get to the level of “crisis” in the United States?' There is no reason that an answer to this question needs to involve the actions of individual students. You could answer the question by talking about how states are reducing the % of tuition they they contribute to state universities, or the explosion of university administration, or how student loans are easier to get now than in the past.
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    The problem statement in the article is ‘student loan crisis an underemployment catastrophe’. If you accept the idea that some degrees are more marketable than others, then ‘the question’ absolutely is ‘why are people completing unmarketable degrees?’. That’s not to say there aren’t also other problems. But the problem this article is discussing is that people are completing college degrees that do not improve their employment opportunities.
    - qntty 7y ago
      If you're talking about a single individual, doing a degree in something employable might be a good strategy for getting a job, but it doesn't follow that getting more people into professional degree programs will significantly change the underemployment situation. Our economy only needs so many teachers, engineers, doctors, etc. Underemployment of an entire generation isn't caused by the degrees they choose.
      - AmericanChopper 7y ago
        The article doesn’t put forward a case for underemployment of an entire generation. It puts forward a case for a certain level of increased underemployment for a generation of student loan holders. It’s self-evident that if those college graduates who are underemployed had chosen different courses, then the problem would look quite different. The fact that developed nations have to import large amounts of skilled labour proves this (although you could make a solid argument that they import more than they strictly ‘have to’). There’s likely a number of factors that contribute to this problem. Generally increasing enrolments seems like it would be having some level of impact. But this article does not even attempt to shed light onto what those factors might be, and how they might be weighted. I don’t know what I’m supposed to have learned from reading this that I couldn’t have picked up from just looking at the graphs it includes.

by qntty 7y ago

AmericanChopper 7y ago

The article doesn’t make any case for the economy struggling. ‘Struggling’ in this context would mean that there’s less skilled employment opportunities available than there used to be. The article doesn’t put forward any argument to say that’s the case. With increasing enrolments, the economy could be doing great and still produce underemployment. The question is why are people completing unmarketable (or not sufficiently marketable) degrees? The article provides no insight into what the answer to the question might be. ‘Many degrees are less marketable than the used to be’ is one (partial) explanation. But it’s not the only potential explanation, it’s not obviously the correct explanation, and it’s not an explanation that the article provides any content to support.

cf141q5325 7y ago
>The question is why are people completing unmarketable (or not sufficiently marketable) degrees? For the pursuit of knowledge. Universities are not job training. You getting a good job with your degree is a bonus not the intend outcome for a university.
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  That explanation likely accounts for some of the underemployment. How much, I’m not sure, perhaps a lot of it. Now, this still leaves people with a debt they may be unable to service. Which is still a problem, and raises its own set of questions. But it’s a completely different problem to any of the other potential explanations.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  That used to be called a "liberal education", which meant an education that was appropriate for free men, as opposed to slaves, who would be trained in a trade. Today, that corresponds to pursuing knowledge if you don't need the money. If you do, pursue something that pays. (Pursue as much knowledge as you can work in around the edges, but the main focus has to be on something that pays.)
  - mamon 7y ago
    Ok, so are you saying that there should be no student loans on humanities degrees? Because that's the logical conclusion of what you're saying here. Would it make sense for the government to make a list of fields where they do back up student loans (which would probably be mostly STEM fields)?
    - ericd 7y ago
      Perhaps the loan requirements should be more stringent on fields that are unlikely to support repayment for people that aren’t in a financial position to repay them? Not very different to lending in other areas of life. Or remove the non-dischargeability and the govt backing at the same time, and let interest rates and lending requirements fall where they may.
    - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
      I'm talking about students, not institutions or rules. I'm saying that if you're a student, and you need to work for a living, pick your major with some wisdom, no matter how much you want to "seek knowledge". My position is "Student, protect yourself." I take no position on whether the rules ought to change to protect students. (Perhaps they should, because 18-year-olds probably will get carried away with the romance of "pursuing knowledge" and ignore the way the real world works...)
    - imtringued 7y ago
      There can always be a private loan market for student loans. Government guaranteed student loans basically happen out of goodwill. The assumption is that it will be a net benefit and therefore everyone should be given the opportunity. However this didn't turn out to be true. If the government keeps funding loans that will never be paid back then it won't be able to fund the loans that can be paid back. I don't really see why limiting certain degrees is seen as pure evil. In Germany some university degrees only accept a limited amount of participants. People with higher grades will be prioritized. This restriction however doesn't apply to the STEM degrees (not an exhaustive list) because they never get enough students. Therefore even if someone is poor and suffers from low intelligence, they are not barred from a degree that leads to a prosperous career.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  Man, this canard gets really tiring. Don't get me wrong: I was crazy about university as a place of learning and added a "useless" major & minor from a career perspective to take advantage of the opportunity to learn But 1) this doesn't reflect the priorities of the vast majority of people, 2) this wasn't to the exclusion of paying attention to what's marketable (ie my other major), and 3) it beggars belief to claim that any significant number of people are intentionally taking on high debt loads in order to play-pretend being an unemployable philosopher-aristocrat. Leaving aside whether society _should_ be providing the no-strings-attached opportunity for a broad-based education[1] as disconnected from economic productivity, it's beyond laughable to claim that students are actually making this choice en masse in the knowledge that their education is unmarketable. A misguided and anachronistic belief in the marketability of arbitrary degrees is a far more plausible explanation. [1] I certainly think it would be nice in the abstract, pending feasibility obviously
  - cf141q5325 7y ago
    People are taking one of those courses because universities in the USA are basically companies. As a result you get marketing to sucker people into buying stuff they dont need and cant afford. That doesnt change the fact that we have those programs in the first place for the pursuit of knowledge in the hope that it will benefit society. That benefit doesnt have to be an economic one. A degree in your native language has arguably little financial value, but you only have to look to countries like France to see how much a society still collectively values their language. Investing in universities is historically something nations afford themselves in the hopes it will be of benefit to society. The idea of individuals investing into themselves is a rather American one. I would argue the only reason a large amount of US universities exist is because they have a special tax status and people get to take special loans to pay for their services. Alternatively you would just have companies providing job training. From the outside it looks like much of the problems with the US system stems from purposefully not communicating that difference to new students edit: To word it differently, the sole purpose of the teaching arm of a classical university is to enable the next generation to introduce novel ideas into their fields. Thats what a doctoral dissertation is. You advancing your field and adding to the collective knowledge.
qntty 7y ago
> The question is why are people completing unmarketable (or not sufficiently marketable) degrees? There's no reason to single this out as 'the question'. There are many interesting questions around student loans. The article singles out the question 'What caused the student loan debt load to get to the level of “crisis” in the United States?' There is no reason that an answer to this question needs to involve the actions of individual students. You could answer the question by talking about how states are reducing the % of tuition they they contribute to state universities, or the explosion of university administration, or how student loans are easier to get now than in the past.
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  The problem statement in the article is ‘student loan crisis an underemployment catastrophe’. If you accept the idea that some degrees are more marketable than others, then ‘the question’ absolutely is ‘why are people completing unmarketable degrees?’. That’s not to say there aren’t also other problems. But the problem this article is discussing is that people are completing college degrees that do not improve their employment opportunities.
  - qntty 7y ago
    If you're talking about a single individual, doing a degree in something employable might be a good strategy for getting a job, but it doesn't follow that getting more people into professional degree programs will significantly change the underemployment situation. Our economy only needs so many teachers, engineers, doctors, etc. Underemployment of an entire generation isn't caused by the degrees they choose.
    - AmericanChopper 7y ago
      The article doesn’t put forward a case for underemployment of an entire generation. It puts forward a case for a certain level of increased underemployment for a generation of student loan holders. It’s self-evident that if those college graduates who are underemployed had chosen different courses, then the problem would look quite different. The fact that developed nations have to import large amounts of skilled labour proves this (although you could make a solid argument that they import more than they strictly ‘have to’). There’s likely a number of factors that contribute to this problem. Generally increasing enrolments seems like it would be having some level of impact. But this article does not even attempt to shed light onto what those factors might be, and how they might be weighted. I don’t know what I’m supposed to have learned from reading this that I couldn’t have picked up from just looking at the graphs it includes.