4 ms·

Right this is why I like the idea (that will never happen) of having schools being on the hook to backstop some % of federal loans on their degrees. May quickl

Right this is why I like the idea (that will never happen) of having schools being on the hook to backstop some % of federal loans on their degrees. May quickly change how many kids they allow to get $300K in debt for useless degrees.

xapata 5y ago
How many kids are currently induced into that situation per year?
- Spooky23 5y ago
  Many. I can think of a dozen people who got schnookered into 3+2 business/mba programs. They graduated with $150k in the hole (this was in 2000) and ended up in retail banking or working for the government in some civil service job that required 15 accounting credits. The classic example of this phenomenon is art majors, who are basically unemployable in a “job” outside of teaching, and those job openings are usually cyclical.
  - xapata 5y ago
    Many means many things. It could be a few hundred annually and someone might still call that "many." I'm dubious that many art majors wind up $300k in debt. Undergrad doesn't cost that much.
    - Spooky23 5y ago
      If your parents are wealthy enough to not qualify for need based aid, but not enough to be rich, your $50k tuition + $30k NYC living situation adds up quick.
      - xapata 5y ago
        Ok, so we've got $320k debt for NYU grads. They're at around 6.5k students graduating each year. I don't know what portion have "useless" majors paid entirely by debt. Let's say half. That's probably one of the worst offenders, but let's imagine there are around 10 more schools in a similar situation. Ok, 30k students out of around 4 million students graduating college each year in the US ... that's a tad less than 1%. More than I thought, and enough to call "many", but perhaps still an acceptable level.
lhorie 5y ago
There's programming bootcamps that basically take a fraction of the graduate's income for a few years instead of charging tuition. But since they optimize for quick employability, and not necessarily a more depth/breadth oriented curriculum as is common in traditional higher education, they have relatively superficial curriculums and thus they don't have the greatest of reputations among companies looking for brainpower rather than fad cookie cutters. Incentives are hard.
- zdragnar 5y ago
  I worked for a company that hired a few from these. We weren't expecting them to know everything, but to have the drive, determination and perhaps a bit of natural skill in understanding programming. They were easily the best junior developers we had hired, and all have done quite well in their careers. Perhaps we just got lucky?
  - Notanothertoo 5y ago
    I've worked with one, hired right before I joined, I became lead 6 months later. He would ask for help and then when I gave him things to do or lookup he would just fail, and would subtly try and get others to do it for him. Total mooch. Multiple meetings and attempts about it. Couldn't fire him. Had him on a plan immediately after being lead. It was so bad at one point I had his desk moved to be next to mine and I had to tell him he can talk to me but stop interrupting other seniors. Eventually that became work in whatever you want so long as you don't need anyone. He sat there for 3 months and did nothing before he was finally payed off. Parent company transfered him to his own department essentially and then "restructured" it. He had a mech engineer background, two years out of engineering school went to code camp. Ceo was an idiot and payed him 90k starting which was a lot more than one of the other seniors who was an self taught English grad. He worked his ass of an was performing as a senior. Ceo stiffed him on the raise, he didn't know any better until he found out code campers salary and was gone in two weeks. My director left shortly after and so did I. They haven't kept a lead for more than 6 months since, that was 3 years ago... Sorry I digress.
  - camjohnson26 5y ago
joe_the_user 5y ago
What about loan companies, who definitely issued the loans, being on the hook? It's a lot simpler and it follows the chain of moral responsibility. Note: All it takes is changing the law back to the way it was before - debts forgiven in an ordinary bankruptcy.
- zdragnar 5y ago
  Student loans would evaporate. Full time students have no income or collateral, since the degree and knowledge and skills cant be taken away and sold to recover losses. All this would do is ensure that higher education is utterly inaccessible for anyone not rich enough to pay cash.
  - joe_the_user 5y ago
    Student loans would evaporate. Good! Let education be paid for by grants and the student own income, most grants. Plus force the universities to make their tuition cost effective. Edit: However many years ago, public universities charged a fairly nominal tuition and survived for many doing that (financed by their respective US states). These public universities today have massively expanded their costs, primarily based on capital spending and follow the model of private universities.
    - bpodgursky 5y ago
      Every student would with good cause declare bankruptcy immediately upon graduation, because they have debt and no assets and no job. I get where you're coming from, but this is not a workable solution.
      - lazide 5y ago
        It didn’t happen that way until many, many years after student loans started to be a thing. Some enterprising law students figuring out they could get a loan to learn how to get out of the loan - and end up with a very valuable degree out of it that could not be repossessed - and by the time they needed good credit, it would be off their records. It took awhile for word to get out, and then they banned getting out of student loans. So blame the lawyer (students) I guess?
ineedasername 5y ago
BestBuy isn't on the hook if I buy $20k of stuff on my credit card and can't pay it back. The bank that gave me the card is on the hook. We don't blame BestBuy for having prices that are too high, or not educating shoppers that their quantum dot TV's will be obsolete and valueless in a few years. The main problem is that not only is the government subsidizing the loan, but they're never dischargeable in bankruptcy. The banks are the ones that truly have no skin in the game. Universities at least need to be able to point to graduation rates and successful graduates of their programs, the quality of their internship opportunities and career services department. Not that they're worth $250k/student, but the universities at least have some vague reputational stake in this that will impact their ability to recruit more students. For a little while when someone google's the quality of Columbia's program they may see these posts. The more these issues come out, the bigger the impact on schools. Banks on the other hand? They won't lose money, business, reputation, prospective employees... Nothing.
marcusverus 5y ago
How about students pay for college with a state-brokered income share agreement? As in, for every year of university, a student pledges to pay that university .25% of their annual income, for life. The government could easily facilitate this via the income tax process. This would eliminate the issue of student loan debt, and finally put the incentives of our universities in line with the students they're supposed to serve. I imagine we'd see a lot fewer frivolous degrees once it was in the universities interest to actually equip their students for financial success. The way things are, I doubt these institutions care. They get paid either way!

xapata 5y ago

How many kids are currently induced into that situation per year?

Spooky23 5y ago
Many. I can think of a dozen people who got schnookered into 3+2 business/mba programs. They graduated with $150k in the hole (this was in 2000) and ended up in retail banking or working for the government in some civil service job that required 15 accounting credits. The classic example of this phenomenon is art majors, who are basically unemployable in a “job” outside of teaching, and those job openings are usually cyclical.
- xapata 5y ago
  Many means many things. It could be a few hundred annually and someone might still call that "many." I'm dubious that many art majors wind up $300k in debt. Undergrad doesn't cost that much.
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    If your parents are wealthy enough to not qualify for need based aid, but not enough to be rich, your $50k tuition + $30k NYC living situation adds up quick.
    - xapata 5y ago
      Ok, so we've got $320k debt for NYU grads. They're at around 6.5k students graduating each year. I don't know what portion have "useless" majors paid entirely by debt. Let's say half. That's probably one of the worst offenders, but let's imagine there are around 10 more schools in a similar situation. Ok, 30k students out of around 4 million students graduating college each year in the US ... that's a tad less than 1%. More than I thought, and enough to call "many", but perhaps still an acceptable level.

lhorie 5y ago

There's programming bootcamps that basically take a fraction of the graduate's income for a few years instead of charging tuition. But since they optimize for quick employability, and not necessarily a more depth/breadth oriented curriculum as is common in traditional higher education, they have relatively superficial curriculums and thus they don't have the greatest of reputations among companies looking for brainpower rather than fad cookie cutters. Incentives are hard.

zdragnar 5y ago
I worked for a company that hired a few from these. We weren't expecting them to know everything, but to have the drive, determination and perhaps a bit of natural skill in understanding programming. They were easily the best junior developers we had hired, and all have done quite well in their careers. Perhaps we just got lucky?
- Notanothertoo 5y ago
  I've worked with one, hired right before I joined, I became lead 6 months later. He would ask for help and then when I gave him things to do or lookup he would just fail, and would subtly try and get others to do it for him. Total mooch. Multiple meetings and attempts about it. Couldn't fire him. Had him on a plan immediately after being lead. It was so bad at one point I had his desk moved to be next to mine and I had to tell him he can talk to me but stop interrupting other seniors. Eventually that became work in whatever you want so long as you don't need anyone. He sat there for 3 months and did nothing before he was finally payed off. Parent company transfered him to his own department essentially and then "restructured" it. He had a mech engineer background, two years out of engineering school went to code camp. Ceo was an idiot and payed him 90k starting which was a lot more than one of the other seniors who was an self taught English grad. He worked his ass of an was performing as a senior. Ceo stiffed him on the raise, he didn't know any better until he found out code campers salary and was gone in two weeks. My director left shortly after and so did I. They haven't kept a lead for more than 6 months since, that was 3 years ago... Sorry I digress.
- camjohnson26 5y ago

joe_the_user 5y ago

What about loan companies, who definitely issued the loans, being on the hook? It's a lot simpler and it follows the chain of moral responsibility. Note: All it takes is changing the law back to the way it was before - debts forgiven in an ordinary bankruptcy.

zdragnar 5y ago
Student loans would evaporate. Full time students have no income or collateral, since the degree and knowledge and skills cant be taken away and sold to recover losses. All this would do is ensure that higher education is utterly inaccessible for anyone not rich enough to pay cash.
- joe_the_user 5y ago
  Student loans would evaporate. Good! Let education be paid for by grants and the student own income, most grants. Plus force the universities to make their tuition cost effective. Edit: However many years ago, public universities charged a fairly nominal tuition and survived for many doing that (financed by their respective US states). These public universities today have massively expanded their costs, primarily based on capital spending and follow the model of private universities.
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    Every student would with good cause declare bankruptcy immediately upon graduation, because they have debt and no assets and no job. I get where you're coming from, but this is not a workable solution.
    - lazide 5y ago
      It didn’t happen that way until many, many years after student loans started to be a thing. Some enterprising law students figuring out they could get a loan to learn how to get out of the loan - and end up with a very valuable degree out of it that could not be repossessed - and by the time they needed good credit, it would be off their records. It took awhile for word to get out, and then they banned getting out of student loans. So blame the lawyer (students) I guess?

ineedasername 5y ago

BestBuy isn't on the hook if I buy $20k of stuff on my credit card and can't pay it back. The bank that gave me the card is on the hook. We don't blame BestBuy for having prices that are too high, or not educating shoppers that their quantum dot TV's will be obsolete and valueless in a few years. The main problem is that not only is the government subsidizing the loan, but they're never dischargeable in bankruptcy. The banks are the ones that truly have no skin in the game. Universities at least need to be able to point to graduation rates and successful graduates of their programs, the quality of their internship opportunities and career services department. Not that they're worth $250k/student, but the universities at least have some vague reputational stake in this that will impact their ability to recruit more students. For a little while when someone google's the quality of Columbia's program they may see these posts. The more these issues come out, the bigger the impact on schools. Banks on the other hand? They won't lose money, business, reputation, prospective employees... Nothing.

marcusverus 5y ago

How about students pay for college with a state-brokered income share agreement? As in, for every year of university, a student pledges to pay that university .25% of their annual income, for life. The government could easily facilitate this via the income tax process. This would eliminate the issue of student loan debt, and finally put the incentives of our universities in line with the students they're supposed to serve. I imagine we'd see a lot fewer frivolous degrees once it was in the universities interest to actually equip their students for financial success. The way things are, I doubt these institutions care. They get paid either way!