11 ms·

Ehh eh. I went to a CSU for like 6k a year. If you want to be elitist and attend the most expensive school possible, you have to eventually pay for it. > Ms.

Ehh eh. I went to a CSU for like 6k a year. If you want to be elitist and attend the most expensive school possible, you have to eventually pay for it. > Ms. Fowler, a 2018 graduate, enjoyed the program but owes $307,000 in total student-loan debt, including about $200,000 from the master’s degree. She said she earns $48,000 as a community mental-health therapist in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. This translates into paying 300k to feel prestigious. At dinner parties she gets to tell everyone about how she's a USC grad. Adults have a right to make poor choices. That said, having a hard cap of 100k unless enrolling in a high paid field ( Dr , Lawyer, anything that requires a state sanctioned license) would be a good idea. The problem with Student Loan forgiveness is it would typically help the highest paid Americans. Most people with 100k plus in loans also make very good money. Why in God's name would you go 300k in debt to make 50k ? I see the same problem with boot camps, instead of accepting that building a six-figure career just takes a while, people want a shortcut. I got to six-figure figures without even having a BA, but it took a long time in a lot of very hard work. Actually it only took me about 3 years from dropping out of college to my first six-figure job, but I was programming at least 40 hours a week back then. This was after work of course. Even now I'm off and happiest when I'm building my side projects.

908B64B197 5y ago
> This translates into paying 300k to feel prestigious. At dinner parties she gets to tell everyone about how she's a USC grad. With an online degree? Why would anyone brag about that?
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  With a USC degree? Why would anyone brag about that? Snobbery is fractal. People who went to elite schools look down on places that are very good, like USC.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    USC is a great university. It's bragging to have graduated from what looks like an obvious cash cow program that I'm skeptical of. All online, no cap on enrollment and full price. Should raise red flags.
rauljordan2020 5y ago
> If you want to be elitist and attend the most expensive school possible, you have to eventually pay for it. Eh, I feel like this isn't true. Most of top schools in the US offer full, need-blind financial aid. This means no scholarship that can be taken away nor student loans. Many fellow classmates were there completely free of charge. The best schools have money, and they're interested in making sure their talent attends.
- 999900000999 5y ago
  Um USC is still considered one of the top schools. The full rides you're referring to are often reserved to students from very low income backgrounds. Let's say your mom and your dad make 150 combined, that doesn't mean they have a spare $60,000 for you to go to school. Meaning you might have to take out some student loans. I still think student loans are an amazing program, and no they don't need to be forgiven. As long as you take out loans the right way, for example in my case I went to the cheapest possible School, and I finished college at my own pace. It worked out very well for me. With student loans I was able to get away from my horrible family. When I see these stories of insanely irresponsible people who take out a quarter million in loans I the good student loans do is lost. Regardless in this case the students only took on so much debt because they wanted that sweet sweet USC degree. When you're 25 you can do a bunch of stupid things. That doesn't mean we need to pass a law to stop everyone from doing anything silly.
  - barry-cotter 5y ago
    > Um USC is still considered one of the top schools. This is true only by an extremely expansive definition of top school. It's not even a top 20 school.
opinion-is-bad 5y ago
If the colleges had to take a stake in the debt repayment, or lack thereof, they probably would do a better job ensuring their graduates don’t take out impossible loans. Adults can make bad decisions, but many that are getting trapped in student loan debt are making the decisions while still technically underage.
- jeffy90 5y ago
  I really like this idea, only edge case I wonder about is if such a policy would incentivize colleges to avoid letting in students from low income backgrounds.
  - opinion-is-bad 5y ago
    It’s possible. A lot of top universities already do need-blind admissions, so I don’t think it’s an unsolvable hurdle.
BizarroLand 5y ago
I don't know if there is a solution to this, but it seems like the cost should be somehow equivalent to the average payout. I feel that college in general would serve the country better if the results were tied to the expenses and efforts required. A Sociology degree that empowers people to make life changes for disadvantaged and neglected people (while living on subsistence wages) would serve our future better if it were basically free, whereas STEM degrees that increase your likelihood of retiring a millionaire by 50% over the average could be feasibly worthwhile if they cost $300k. I took on $65k of loans for my BS but make six figures myself, so it was worth it for me. I can't image 5x the cost for 1/3rd the reward. That's just stupid. I admit that the person who took this path is to blame for some of it, but a college tying $300,000 to a degree that earns $5/hr more than a fry cook is also at some level to blame along with the path society took to enable this scenario to exist in the first place.
- eindiran 5y ago
  This creates an incentive structure that is exactly the opposite of what you want.
  - BizarroLand 5y ago
    How so? Take a lower paying course that benefits society for little or no cost to you or a higher paying course that will push you into the upper middle or lower upper class that costs more. The only losers here would be the colleges that no longer get to charge the same $300k for every degree they stamp. Where is my logic wrong?
    - jeffy90 5y ago
      There's a shortage of software engineers and we need more students to enroll in STEM. When deciding between an expensive STEM degree or a free liberal arts degree, students are incentivized to chose the free degree in your proposed solution.
      - BizarroLand 5y ago
aserdf 5y ago
- Adults have a right to make poor choices. agree however the vast majority of high school kids are marketed to and forced to make decisions about college, while having little to no comprehension of the magnitude and permanence of their decision, when they are 17 years old (minors). graduate school of course being a different story.
- WalterSear 5y ago
  The career counselor at my expensive private school didn't know what an engineer does.
  - zsmi 5y ago
    Wow. I thought everyone knew they drive trains.
    - psyc 5y ago
      And I thought everyone here knew they make React apps.
      - notJim 5y ago
        Im pretty sure they evaluate the structural soundness of buildings.
        abeyer 5y ago
        I thought they were supposed to disrupt the whole industry of evaluating building structures while developing a react app to drive trains remotely as a side hustle?
adamredwoods 5y ago
I think the article is pointing towards USC-specific predatory behavior for social-worker degrees. >> In increasing enrollment in its social-work program, USC benefited from federal loan dollars: Graduates from 2015 through 2018 collectively borrowed more than half a billion dollars in federal student loans, more than those at any other graduate program in the country, the Journal found. USC had an endowment of $5.9 billion last year, making it one of the 20 wealthiest private schools in the country.
- morelandjs 5y ago
  Set the government student loan ceiling according to the university and degree program. One way to do this would be to peg it to the median earnings of recent grads (determined via tax reporting). Want to pursue a pre-medical degree at USC? Great! The government will loan you up to some large amount. Want to pursue a humanitarian degree at XYZ tech online? Great! The government will loan you a small amount. Remove the externality on society.
alex504 5y ago
The school spends 60% of its revenue selling itself as an elite education to people who don't qualify or need an elite education. They employ salesmen and incentivize them to be as aggressive as they legally can. They then deliver a subpar education, by every metric, compared to schools that cost half as much. This is a predatory scam that targets low-income individuals who want an education and a career and pretty much guarantees an outcome of long-term financial instability. Of course the victims have some of the responsibility, but >Adults have a right to make poor choices. Puts these supposedly prestigious schools at about the same ethical level as a casino, a tobacco company or a pay day loan operation. What USC is doing is arguably worse than a casino because it's using the reputation of a prestigious university to take advantage of people who want an education, while simultaneously siphoning money from taxpayers.
- jamestimmins 5y ago
  Where are you getting the 60% number? I have an extremely hard time believing this is anywhere close to accurate.
  - alex504 5y ago
    From the article: >The social-work school was contractually required to share about 60% of revenue with 2U and ran into financial trouble. My impression was that most of what 2u did was marketing, I might be wrong about that though. It seems like a combination of marketing and their online platform.
    - jamestimmins 5y ago
      Ah ok, I missed that. I thought you meant 60% of USC funds were getting redirected 3rd parties like that; my mistake.
ndesaulniers 5y ago
> Adults have a right to make poor choices. Perhaps, but I do think we should defend the stupid from predators and predatory behaviors. > Why in God's name would you go 300k in debt to make 50k ? Takes money to make money. What's the break-even point? That 300k is a one time cost; that 50k is recurring yearly.
- jeffy90 5y ago
  I guess the question should be why would you spend 300k at USC to make 50k, when you could spend 50k somewhere else to make the same 50k.
  - rahimnathwani 5y ago
    Or spend $0 to make 50k.
david38 5y ago
Yes, adults can make poor choices. Agreed. Said choices should be constrained though. She wouldn't be allowed to buy a 300k car with no possibility of bankruptcy. The lender is made of adults as well. They also made poor choices. Why is a group of adults hiding behind a piece of paper allowed to be saved from their poor choices while an individual not?
- nickff 5y ago
  >"Why is a group of adults hiding behind a piece of paper allowed to be saved from their poor choices while an individual not?" The piece of paper is the law, which does not allow for defaults on these loans. These laws were created to allow students to take massive loans, and transfer their future earnings to a school. I would agree that something should change, but the schools will fight tooth and nail to prevent it.
- romwell 5y ago
  >Why is a group of adults hiding behind a piece of paper allowed to be saved from their poor choices while an individual not? Because rich people lending money to poor people needs to be a risk-free endeavor backed up by the state. This way, it's easier for the banks to make money. And at the same time, it's easy to spin predatory lending as "helping out" when it shouldn't exist to begin with, and victim-blame people who are taken advantage of (which, in the case of student loans, is children: college applications are sent out well before a typical freshman turns 18).
  - jjeaff 5y ago
    I don't agree with that take. Without government backing, the alternative is that banks would not lend. Just like they don't currently lend to the poor and that market is instead filled by predatory loan sharks and payday lenders. In other words, the purpose is not to help the banks, but to help people get the loans in the first place. However, the unintended consequences are that the banks are incentivized to make way to many loans. Obviously, there need to be better limits placed on lending for education.
    - 5y ago
romwell 5y ago
>The problem with Student Loan forgiveness is it would typically help the highest paid Americans. Most people with 100k plus in loans also make very good money. Why would that be a problem? First, your "typically" needs a citation. The average student loan is about $40K. Second, it's not a problem to help struggling people if a percentage of people who are not struggling benefits too. Nothing is 100% efficient, and the inefficiency of not checking tax forms at a soup kitchen to make sure only the Actually Poor™ get the soup is made up tenfold by the outcome of nobody needing to be hungry. >Adults have a right to make poor choices. Yeah, unless it's buying alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana. Somehow that doesn't apply to enlisting in armed forces or taking on a lifetime debt that, unlike anything else, won't be erased in a bankruptcy, and thus is nearly risk-free for the lender.
- clairity 5y ago
  while the parent poster indeed made an unsubstantiated assertion, it's not that hard to understand the perverseness of giving money to already well-off people. i personally think we should make federal loans highly progressive, both in amount and interest rate, and make them dischargeable via ordinary bankruptcy proceedings (also, revert the bankruptcy-tightening laws that were passed in the mid-oughts). that would be something like loans for 100% of tuition, room & board for those from families under median income (~$68K in recent years) smoothly varying (but not linear) down to 0% for those above 3× median household income (~$200K). same for interest rates: risk-free rate (~2.5%) for under median to market rate for unsecured personal loans (in the 10-20% range) at 3× median income. anyone above 3× median will likely have an established banking relationship somewhere to be able to get private loans. this would put downward pressure on tuition, while still meeting the objective of providing opportunity for the less privileged majority. same goes for loan forgiveness--make them highly progressive based on recent earnings/wealth (including unrealized gains).
  - romwell 5y ago
    I agree with what you say. The idea for total loan forgiveness is that for a reasonable progressive scheme, the difference between that and total forgiveness may be marginal. We have plenty examples of how drug-testing for government benefits ends up costing more than simply giving those benefits to all who qualify even if they are drug users. Same applies here. It'd be interesting to see the actual numbers. But sure, I'd take a progressive scheme like the one you proposed. Hell, just your first sentence (re: bankruptcy) warms my heart and fills my soul with glee :)
ttcbj 5y ago
My favorite idea for this issue is that the gov't should pay for college, except it should pay a multiple of the student's increase in earned taxable income averaged over the 5 years preceding and following the degree. High school students would have near zero income, so it would mostly be a multiple of their 5 year average income after graduation. This pays directly for what the gov't wants (increase in the student's productive utility in the economy), it correlates increasing expenditures with increasing long term tax income, and I think in the long term it would create structural incentives guiding students towards more practical degrees.
- jayski 5y ago
  id never heard this, but it makes a lot of sense.
- imtringued 5y ago
  It's a nice idea but people will insist that they should have the right to get $115k in debt for a degree that doesn't let them repay their debt.
dillondoyle 5y ago
I agree with poor choices with a big caveat on regulating super shady behavior and marketing. We should make students sign a single page summary (or warning in many cases) just like when getting a mortgage. Our company makes __ profit, future graduate income average/mean, % of graduates who get a coding job within 1, 5 years. Etc And I think restrictions on marketing bs for-profit 'trade schools' and 'coding bootcamps' to ensure a minimum curriculum and education. Make bait and switching more difficult. Especially with for profit schools. Plus it seems many Universities will contract out a 'bootcamp' using the schools built up brand and it's not even connected to he actual school.
yumraj 5y ago
> having a hard cap of 100k unless enrolling in a high paid field ( Dr , Lawyer, anything that requires a state sanctioned license) would be a good idea. I think you have a valid point, which probably got missed in the rest of your comment. Why are student loans not tied to the value of the program, which determines their ability to pay? I cannot get a $100K loan for a Corolla nor can I get $5 million loan for a $500K home. So, why are students provided loans that are not tied to the income potential of their choice of program? I believe once we do that, education cost will undergo a rebalancing.
- bsder 5y ago
  > Why are student loans not tied to the value of the program, which determines their ability to pay? They used to be because they could be discharged through bankruptcy. Once you prevent people from being able to discharge the loan through bankruptcy, this is what you get.
- brutal_chaos_ 5y ago
  How would humanities, arts, pure reasearch and the like survive in this model?
  - yumraj 5y ago
    Reduce the tuition, which last I checked is still a substantial portion of the total cost of education. How can a school charge the same amount of tuition, per unit, for different fields that pay substantially, sometimes orders of magnitude, different over the lifetime. For example: MBAs, JDs, Medical fields' tuition is much higher. Why is that not the case across the board?
    - brutal_chaos_ 5y ago
      Would this then force companies to pay according to what universities charge? How are those levels determined?
      - 5y ago
quantified 5y ago
I wish people who have a mission to do good could also do math and plan for their own futures. You’d think they should be protected a bit. Except protections would be scammed and we’d have to be ok writing scam losses off as well.
devoutsalsa 5y ago
Student loans that can’t be wiped out in a bankruptcy should not be a thing, in my opinion. Combine that with the loans being guaranteed by the government & you get a system that is ripe for abuse by the people in power. There’s an incentive to create low quality, high margin degrees for profit. It’s horrible.
- mrep 5y ago
  The problem with that is that no bank is going to give a kid with no assets $81,659 a year [0] that they can just wipe out instantly after college. Thus you'll likely create a two tier system of colleges. One will be low cost enough that declaring bankruptcy after college is not worth it. These will likely be crappy because they cannot afford good facilities or the best professors. Then you will have the super expensive ones with nice facilities and the best professors that only kids with rich parents who can pay for it can go. [0]: https://admission.usc.edu/learn/cost-financial-aid/ https://admission.usc.edu/learn/cost-financial-aid/
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kongolongo 5y ago
>The problem with Student Loan forgiveness is it would typically help the highest paid Americans. Most people with 100k plus in loans also make very good money. That's very true. People often don't realize that blanket loan forgiveness is a very regressive policy. The higher you go up in the income bracket, the higher share of the student loan debt. Some kind of income-based or extreme situational (life-changing events, health, etc) forgiveness would be much better. >Why in God's name would you go 300k in debt to make 50k ? True especially for a masters program you should be well into early adulthood and it's even more difficult to argue that you were too young to understand the consequences. Schools publish their students past and expected incomes. Unless you have a good reason to believe you are exceptional, those numbers should definitely be used for planning your academic path.
JimTheMan 5y ago
I think it shouldn't be objectionable to protect the public from decisions so bad, they might as well be scams.

908B64B197 5y ago

> This translates into paying 300k to feel prestigious. At dinner parties she gets to tell everyone about how she's a USC grad. With an online degree? Why would anyone brag about that?

barry-cotter 5y ago
With a USC degree? Why would anyone brag about that? Snobbery is fractal. People who went to elite schools look down on places that are very good, like USC.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  USC is a great university. It's bragging to have graduated from what looks like an obvious cash cow program that I'm skeptical of. All online, no cap on enrollment and full price. Should raise red flags.

rauljordan2020 5y ago

> If you want to be elitist and attend the most expensive school possible, you have to eventually pay for it. Eh, I feel like this isn't true. Most of top schools in the US offer full, need-blind financial aid. This means no scholarship that can be taken away nor student loans. Many fellow classmates were there completely free of charge. The best schools have money, and they're interested in making sure their talent attends.

999900000999 5y ago
Um USC is still considered one of the top schools. The full rides you're referring to are often reserved to students from very low income backgrounds. Let's say your mom and your dad make 150 combined, that doesn't mean they have a spare $60,000 for you to go to school. Meaning you might have to take out some student loans. I still think student loans are an amazing program, and no they don't need to be forgiven. As long as you take out loans the right way, for example in my case I went to the cheapest possible School, and I finished college at my own pace. It worked out very well for me. With student loans I was able to get away from my horrible family. When I see these stories of insanely irresponsible people who take out a quarter million in loans I the good student loans do is lost. Regardless in this case the students only took on so much debt because they wanted that sweet sweet USC degree. When you're 25 you can do a bunch of stupid things. That doesn't mean we need to pass a law to stop everyone from doing anything silly.
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  > Um USC is still considered one of the top schools. This is true only by an extremely expansive definition of top school. It's not even a top 20 school.

opinion-is-bad 5y ago

If the colleges had to take a stake in the debt repayment, or lack thereof, they probably would do a better job ensuring their graduates don’t take out impossible loans. Adults can make bad decisions, but many that are getting trapped in student loan debt are making the decisions while still technically underage.

jeffy90 5y ago
I really like this idea, only edge case I wonder about is if such a policy would incentivize colleges to avoid letting in students from low income backgrounds.
- opinion-is-bad 5y ago
  It’s possible. A lot of top universities already do need-blind admissions, so I don’t think it’s an unsolvable hurdle.

BizarroLand 5y ago

I don't know if there is a solution to this, but it seems like the cost should be somehow equivalent to the average payout. I feel that college in general would serve the country better if the results were tied to the expenses and efforts required. A Sociology degree that empowers people to make life changes for disadvantaged and neglected people (while living on subsistence wages) would serve our future better if it were basically free, whereas STEM degrees that increase your likelihood of retiring a millionaire by 50% over the average could be feasibly worthwhile if they cost $300k. I took on $65k of loans for my BS but make six figures myself, so it was worth it for me. I can't image 5x the cost for 1/3rd the reward. That's just stupid. I admit that the person who took this path is to blame for some of it, but a college tying $300,000 to a degree that earns $5/hr more than a fry cook is also at some level to blame along with the path society took to enable this scenario to exist in the first place.

eindiran 5y ago
This creates an incentive structure that is exactly the opposite of what you want.
- BizarroLand 5y ago
  How so? Take a lower paying course that benefits society for little or no cost to you or a higher paying course that will push you into the upper middle or lower upper class that costs more. The only losers here would be the colleges that no longer get to charge the same $300k for every degree they stamp. Where is my logic wrong?
  - jeffy90 5y ago
    There's a shortage of software engineers and we need more students to enroll in STEM. When deciding between an expensive STEM degree or a free liberal arts degree, students are incentivized to chose the free degree in your proposed solution.
    - BizarroLand 5y ago

aserdf 5y ago

- Adults have a right to make poor choices. agree however the vast majority of high school kids are marketed to and forced to make decisions about college, while having little to no comprehension of the magnitude and permanence of their decision, when they are 17 years old (minors). graduate school of course being a different story.

WalterSear 5y ago
The career counselor at my expensive private school didn't know what an engineer does.
- zsmi 5y ago
  Wow. I thought everyone knew they drive trains.
  - psyc 5y ago
    And I thought everyone here knew they make React apps.
    - notJim 5y ago
      Im pretty sure they evaluate the structural soundness of buildings.
      - abeyer 5y ago
        I thought they were supposed to disrupt the whole industry of evaluating building structures while developing a react app to drive trains remotely as a side hustle?

adamredwoods 5y ago

I think the article is pointing towards USC-specific predatory behavior for social-worker degrees. >> In increasing enrollment in its social-work program, USC benefited from federal loan dollars: Graduates from 2015 through 2018 collectively borrowed more than half a billion dollars in federal student loans, more than those at any other graduate program in the country, the Journal found. USC had an endowment of $5.9 billion last year, making it one of the 20 wealthiest private schools in the country.

morelandjs 5y ago
Set the government student loan ceiling according to the university and degree program. One way to do this would be to peg it to the median earnings of recent grads (determined via tax reporting). Want to pursue a pre-medical degree at USC? Great! The government will loan you up to some large amount. Want to pursue a humanitarian degree at XYZ tech online? Great! The government will loan you a small amount. Remove the externality on society.

alex504 5y ago

The school spends 60% of its revenue selling itself as an elite education to people who don't qualify or need an elite education. They employ salesmen and incentivize them to be as aggressive as they legally can. They then deliver a subpar education, by every metric, compared to schools that cost half as much. This is a predatory scam that targets low-income individuals who want an education and a career and pretty much guarantees an outcome of long-term financial instability. Of course the victims have some of the responsibility, but >Adults have a right to make poor choices. Puts these supposedly prestigious schools at about the same ethical level as a casino, a tobacco company or a pay day loan operation. What USC is doing is arguably worse than a casino because it's using the reputation of a prestigious university to take advantage of people who want an education, while simultaneously siphoning money from taxpayers.

jamestimmins 5y ago
Where are you getting the 60% number? I have an extremely hard time believing this is anywhere close to accurate.
- alex504 5y ago
  From the article: >The social-work school was contractually required to share about 60% of revenue with 2U and ran into financial trouble. My impression was that most of what 2u did was marketing, I might be wrong about that though. It seems like a combination of marketing and their online platform.
  - jamestimmins 5y ago
    Ah ok, I missed that. I thought you meant 60% of USC funds were getting redirected 3rd parties like that; my mistake.

ndesaulniers 5y ago

> Adults have a right to make poor choices. Perhaps, but I do think we should defend the stupid from predators and predatory behaviors. > Why in God's name would you go 300k in debt to make 50k ? Takes money to make money. What's the break-even point? That 300k is a one time cost; that 50k is recurring yearly.

jeffy90 5y ago
I guess the question should be why would you spend 300k at USC to make 50k, when you could spend 50k somewhere else to make the same 50k.
- rahimnathwani 5y ago
  Or spend $0 to make 50k.

david38 5y ago

Yes, adults can make poor choices. Agreed. Said choices should be constrained though. She wouldn't be allowed to buy a 300k car with no possibility of bankruptcy. The lender is made of adults as well. They also made poor choices. Why is a group of adults hiding behind a piece of paper allowed to be saved from their poor choices while an individual not?

nickff 5y ago
>"Why is a group of adults hiding behind a piece of paper allowed to be saved from their poor choices while an individual not?" The piece of paper is the law, which does not allow for defaults on these loans. These laws were created to allow students to take massive loans, and transfer their future earnings to a school. I would agree that something should change, but the schools will fight tooth and nail to prevent it.
romwell 5y ago
>Why is a group of adults hiding behind a piece of paper allowed to be saved from their poor choices while an individual not? Because rich people lending money to poor people needs to be a risk-free endeavor backed up by the state. This way, it's easier for the banks to make money. And at the same time, it's easy to spin predatory lending as "helping out" when it shouldn't exist to begin with, and victim-blame people who are taken advantage of (which, in the case of student loans, is children: college applications are sent out well before a typical freshman turns 18).
- jjeaff 5y ago
  I don't agree with that take. Without government backing, the alternative is that banks would not lend. Just like they don't currently lend to the poor and that market is instead filled by predatory loan sharks and payday lenders. In other words, the purpose is not to help the banks, but to help people get the loans in the first place. However, the unintended consequences are that the banks are incentivized to make way to many loans. Obviously, there need to be better limits placed on lending for education.
  - 5y ago

romwell 5y ago

>The problem with Student Loan forgiveness is it would typically help the highest paid Americans. Most people with 100k plus in loans also make very good money. Why would that be a problem? First, your "typically" needs a citation. The average student loan is about $40K. Second, it's not a problem to help struggling people if a percentage of people who are not struggling benefits too. Nothing is 100% efficient, and the inefficiency of not checking tax forms at a soup kitchen to make sure only the Actually Poor™ get the soup is made up tenfold by the outcome of nobody needing to be hungry. >Adults have a right to make poor choices. Yeah, unless it's buying alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana. Somehow that doesn't apply to enlisting in armed forces or taking on a lifetime debt that, unlike anything else, won't be erased in a bankruptcy, and thus is nearly risk-free for the lender.

clairity 5y ago
while the parent poster indeed made an unsubstantiated assertion, it's not that hard to understand the perverseness of giving money to already well-off people. i personally think we should make federal loans highly progressive, both in amount and interest rate, and make them dischargeable via ordinary bankruptcy proceedings (also, revert the bankruptcy-tightening laws that were passed in the mid-oughts). that would be something like loans for 100% of tuition, room & board for those from families under median income (~$68K in recent years) smoothly varying (but not linear) down to 0% for those above 3× median household income (~$200K). same for interest rates: risk-free rate (~2.5%) for under median to market rate for unsecured personal loans (in the 10-20% range) at 3× median income. anyone above 3× median will likely have an established banking relationship somewhere to be able to get private loans. this would put downward pressure on tuition, while still meeting the objective of providing opportunity for the less privileged majority. same goes for loan forgiveness--make them highly progressive based on recent earnings/wealth (including unrealized gains).
- romwell 5y ago
  I agree with what you say. The idea for total loan forgiveness is that for a reasonable progressive scheme, the difference between that and total forgiveness may be marginal. We have plenty examples of how drug-testing for government benefits ends up costing more than simply giving those benefits to all who qualify even if they are drug users. Same applies here. It'd be interesting to see the actual numbers. But sure, I'd take a progressive scheme like the one you proposed. Hell, just your first sentence (re: bankruptcy) warms my heart and fills my soul with glee :)

ttcbj 5y ago

My favorite idea for this issue is that the gov't should pay for college, except it should pay a multiple of the student's increase in earned taxable income averaged over the 5 years preceding and following the degree. High school students would have near zero income, so it would mostly be a multiple of their 5 year average income after graduation. This pays directly for what the gov't wants (increase in the student's productive utility in the economy), it correlates increasing expenditures with increasing long term tax income, and I think in the long term it would create structural incentives guiding students towards more practical degrees.

jayski 5y ago
id never heard this, but it makes a lot of sense.
imtringued 5y ago
It's a nice idea but people will insist that they should have the right to get $115k in debt for a degree that doesn't let them repay their debt.

dillondoyle 5y ago

I agree with poor choices with a big caveat on regulating super shady behavior and marketing. We should make students sign a single page summary (or warning in many cases) just like when getting a mortgage. Our company makes __ profit, future graduate income average/mean, % of graduates who get a coding job within 1, 5 years. Etc And I think restrictions on marketing bs for-profit 'trade schools' and 'coding bootcamps' to ensure a minimum curriculum and education. Make bait and switching more difficult. Especially with for profit schools. Plus it seems many Universities will contract out a 'bootcamp' using the schools built up brand and it's not even connected to he actual school.

yumraj 5y ago

> having a hard cap of 100k unless enrolling in a high paid field ( Dr , Lawyer, anything that requires a state sanctioned license) would be a good idea. I think you have a valid point, which probably got missed in the rest of your comment. Why are student loans not tied to the value of the program, which determines their ability to pay? I cannot get a $100K loan for a Corolla nor can I get $5 million loan for a $500K home. So, why are students provided loans that are not tied to the income potential of their choice of program? I believe once we do that, education cost will undergo a rebalancing.

bsder 5y ago
> Why are student loans not tied to the value of the program, which determines their ability to pay? They used to be because they could be discharged through bankruptcy. Once you prevent people from being able to discharge the loan through bankruptcy, this is what you get.
brutal_chaos_ 5y ago
How would humanities, arts, pure reasearch and the like survive in this model?
- yumraj 5y ago
  Reduce the tuition, which last I checked is still a substantial portion of the total cost of education. How can a school charge the same amount of tuition, per unit, for different fields that pay substantially, sometimes orders of magnitude, different over the lifetime. For example: MBAs, JDs, Medical fields' tuition is much higher. Why is that not the case across the board?
  - brutal_chaos_ 5y ago
    Would this then force companies to pay according to what universities charge? How are those levels determined?
    - 5y ago

quantified 5y ago

I wish people who have a mission to do good could also do math and plan for their own futures. You’d think they should be protected a bit. Except protections would be scammed and we’d have to be ok writing scam losses off as well.

devoutsalsa 5y ago

Student loans that can’t be wiped out in a bankruptcy should not be a thing, in my opinion. Combine that with the loans being guaranteed by the government & you get a system that is ripe for abuse by the people in power. There’s an incentive to create low quality, high margin degrees for profit. It’s horrible.

mrep 5y ago
The problem with that is that no bank is going to give a kid with no assets $81,659 a year [0] that they can just wipe out instantly after college. Thus you'll likely create a two tier system of colleges. One will be low cost enough that declaring bankruptcy after college is not worth it. These will likely be crappy because they cannot afford good facilities or the best professors. Then you will have the super expensive ones with nice facilities and the best professors that only kids with rich parents who can pay for it can go. [0]: https://admission.usc.edu/learn/cost-financial-aid/ https://admission.usc.edu/learn/cost-financial-aid/

deleted 5y ago

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kongolongo 5y ago

>The problem with Student Loan forgiveness is it would typically help the highest paid Americans. Most people with 100k plus in loans also make very good money. That's very true. People often don't realize that blanket loan forgiveness is a very regressive policy. The higher you go up in the income bracket, the higher share of the student loan debt. Some kind of income-based or extreme situational (life-changing events, health, etc) forgiveness would be much better. >Why in God's name would you go 300k in debt to make 50k ? True especially for a masters program you should be well into early adulthood and it's even more difficult to argue that you were too young to understand the consequences. Schools publish their students past and expected incomes. Unless you have a good reason to believe you are exceptional, those numbers should definitely be used for planning your academic path.

JimTheMan 5y ago

I think it shouldn't be objectionable to protect the public from decisions so bad, they might as well be scams.