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Cancelling Student Debt Is Unforgivable

36 points by smoyer 4y ago

jleyank 4y ago
Confused. Is cash the limit for college attendance or is qualification? I thought Germany had free uni but you had to do reasonably well and proceed towards a degree? The problem might be for profit unis rather than the debt itself. This, coupled with the explosion of non teaching or researching staff and facilities jacks the price.
- eesmith 4y ago
  It seems the author doesn't think as many people should be going to university, and the reason people go to university is because credential inflation makes it harder for non-college-graduates to get a job, and more people will go to university if they think it will be cheaper because debt cancellation implies the possibility of future debt cancellation, hence lowering the effective code of going to college.
- hansword 4y ago
  In Germany university is mostly free. There are administrative fees in the range of ~200eu per year, and most universities have a subsidized but mandatory transit pass, which might be another ~400eu per year. There were explicit tuition fees in some states, a decade ago, but since they have been abolished it's usually below 1000eu/year (exception are private universities of course). You need to have finished high school to qualify for university, but if you then get into an unpopular field, that is the only real restriction. More popular fields of study at more popular universities require a good high school diploma, but even there it's possible to sit on a waiting list for a couple of years.
raxxorraxor 4y ago
> and thanks to swift inflation, the debt burden is melting as we speak Tough luck, that is true for everyone having monetary capital. Mostly people without the means to strategically invest. Sure, they are bit better off than those living from paycheck to paycheck. I think the argument against education due to degree inflation doesn't have the correct goal. Sure, more people would have degrees and perhaps there is an inflation. This is without consequence while higher education does have tangible benefits. The author confirms that these arguments are already blowing in his face. I would recommend that the author takes a look at other countries without education that costly. We live in the 21st century, the logistics of information have changed and spreading it takes fewer efforts. It is certainly unfair to those that did need to pay their loans and those that granted them with the belief that they will get the money back at some point. The state really cannot really expropriate their loans as far as I understand it.
- eesmith 4y ago
  > and those that granted them with the belief that they will get the money back at some point Most people who loan money factor in the chance that the money won't be paid back, for example, if the person who took out the loan files for bankruptcy. Student loans, however, are much harder to discharge than other loans. (See https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/student-loan-debt-bankruptcy.html https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/student-loan-debt-ba... for how the process works.) What the state can do is get let student loans be dischargable as normal consumer debt, just like it once was. This opinion piece titled "Don't Cancel Student Loans. Let Bankruptcy Law Forgive Them" at https://www.newsweek.com/dont-cancel-student-loans-let-bankruptcy-law-forgive-them-opinion-1717664 https://www.newsweek.com/dont-cancel-student-loans-let-bankr... is one of many pieces arguing for that change to bankruptcy law.
  - XorNot 4y ago
    The reason this isn't done is because the obvious play is for a student with no assets to take the loans, get a degree, declare bankruptcy, and cruise out the next 7 years with a better paying job - it's not like they'll be ready to afford anything they'd need financing for anyway. The problem of course is that the fix flips it the other way: student loan debt is functionally the safest possible debt because it can't be discharged through bankruptcy. Loan someone any amount of money, and provided you estimate their net productivity over their life accurately, you'll get your money back. In isolation all of this sounds somewhat justifiable, but in the real world the results are disastrous: students are gate kept from higher income by getting a degree in a serious way, so they take on this undischargeable debt which people are happy to keep lending, so there's never any counter-pressure to colleges raising tuition rates, and government can say "everything is fine! Look at these enrollment numbers not changing!"
    - raxxorraxor 4y ago
      Framed this way it seems to be a very safe capital investment that also provides student ownership.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
h2odragon 4y ago
How about those of us who've never had student loans? Credit for future "educational services"? Straight cash payment?
- roflyear 4y ago
  Why does you not getting something disqualify others? I don't get food stamps. I don't complain that I'm more fortunate than those that do.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    Every poor person is eligible for food stamps, that is the difference. So if you want to help poor people, help all poor people. Not just the ones with student loans.
    - juve1996 4y ago
      I don't see what's wrong with a benefit that only goes to specific people. We have many tax breaks designed this way. If it is a net positive to help a specific group for society, why not?
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
        I see everything wrong with benefiting only specific people. It is inevitable an avenue or excuse for corruption. Why should only people of <characteristic X> get $y of help from the taxpayer funds that come from everyone? The goal is not let the income/wealth gap get too wide, or to provide more opportunities for all people at the bottom. Giving cash to everyone involves zero politics, wastes zero time in arguing politics, and does the job. For the record, I am against tax breaks period. If the government wants to incentivize something, it should pony up the cash to do it. This would reduce corruption, make it impossible to fudge the numbers, and increase transparency to prevent corruption.
        juve1996 4y ago
atemerev 4y ago
Sorry, but higher education is not about getting a job. It is for opening new possibilities and for learning to think on your own, it is about acquiring instruments for intellectual work. I would suggest making higher education even more disconnected from “preparing to enter the workforce”, because it is not what it is about.
- MR4D 4y ago
  > higher education is not about getting a job That was probably true in the past, but the GI Bill after WWII definitely changed that.
- overthemoon 4y ago
  In theory, that's not what education is for. In practice, that's absolutely what people go to college for.
- lesam 4y ago
  ‘Not what it is about’ according to whom? Most students are in school because they want jobs, not to learn to think. The professors may be interested in that goal but how can they possibly achieve it with a student body that just wants their degree papers and a shot at the upper middle class?
midislack 4y ago
Does anybody think Joe Biden, the guy who made it impossible to discharge student debt at the behest of the banksters, would forgive their student debt? Raise your hands, I have some billion dollar NFT’s to sell you suckers.
- overthemoon 4y ago
  This is why this conversation is moot. People keep wringing their hands over this "moral hazard" or whatever, but it's been like pulling teeth to get him to commit to 10k with a bunch of dumb qualifiers and means testing. It's not happening, except as a token for a few people come election time.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    I suspect Dems are (correctly) predicting it would turn off a lot of undecided (or sway-able) voters that the Dems need.
kareemsabri 4y ago
> The message, though, is deafening: You don’t have to pay for college in America. Once we grasp the consequences of “free college for all,” we’ll know the approximate effects of a full-fledged student debt jubilee. The most straightforward effect of free college would be a massive increase in college attendance and college completion. A standard estimate is that cutting tuition by $1000 raises college completion by about 2 percentage-points. I disagree with Caplan's interpretation of this message (and I am also against "free college", generally speaking). I don't understand how one would conclude that "hold a debt for decades that you won't have sufficient employment opportunities to pay down, and then it might be forgiven" is a proposition that will increase attendance in college. To me this is a huge red flag to almost never take out a student loan, or do my due diligence very carefully before I do. It appears disingenuous to consider student debt forgiveness to be "trillions in spending" (the government will not spend this money, the colleges have already been paid, they will simply stop removing it from the economy via payments from the debt holders). Surely Caplan, as an economist, knows this. He may think that increase in purchasing power due to the lack of debt payments is akin to new spending, but given 99% of debt holders haven't made a payment in 2 years (and we're, apparently, on the brink of a recession) that doesn't ring true to me.
mbfg 4y ago
Sounds like the author is mostly worried about losing his job.
- petercooper 4y ago
  As a professor within 10-15 years of retirement, wouldn't the selfish position be for him to strongly support entirely free tertiary education? He'd never be out of a job, and it'd take a while to have a surfeit of qualified economics PhDs who can't land jobs outside of academia, I assume.
hprotagonist 4y ago
…they began to grumble against the landowner. 'These who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, 'and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.' "But he answered one of them, 'I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?'
jcon321 4y ago
itt: a bunch of people who want to pay off the debt that my degenerate college friends have from taking out loans to buy drugs and alcohol.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  It is crazy to me. Imagine being a responsible parent and advising your kids to go to trade school and have them getting their hands dirty because you correctly predict that student loans will not yield a sufficient return. I have a cousin who refused to sit down with me to model their future cash flow, and plowed ahead with borrowing $300k between ages 18 and 27 to buy credentials that would only earn them $60k per year! I knew all this, I warned them, tried to educate them, showed them data, and they ignored me.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hansword 4y ago
So he is an Economics Professor, and from his experience what professors teach is mostly useless. Ahem, with all due respect, but perhaps he is just not very good at his job...?
mocha_nate 4y ago
> ...almost no student in American has made a payment in over two years. Uhhhhh... I have been aggressively paying off my loans during this freeze. I'm not expecting the forgiveness of my debt.
- senectus1 4y ago
  yeah that sort of overreaching statement is pretty easy to discount and with it the rest of the article has a great deal diminished perceived value/credibility.
CraigJPerry 4y ago
>> An individual with prestigious credentials prospers, but society can’t get rich simply by awarding multitudinous fancy degrees Me learning more doesn't make you less knowledgable. Me printing money makes you poorer. This comparison of the money vs education case isn't useful. >> colleges rarely teach new, cutting-edge skills Do colleages teach ANY skills? Is that their purpose? I studied at the University of Glasgow in 2001, in my first programming class when i arrived, i had to land a rocket, SpaceX style, exploring the concepts of safety in the Ada language in the process. In my second year i was thrown into functional programming in Haskell. Are these skills i could apply in the real world? Not directly, but the concepts were mind-expanding.
NickLamp 4y ago
The key problem I see with the current semi-permanent student debt payment holiday is that there are no added stipulations for ensuring a finished degree will come close to a net economic benefit. Otherwise, we're executively making a very expensive fiscal policy decision and allowing tertiary education costs to balloon without anchoring those costs to the expected added value to society.
daviddever23box 4y ago
It is possible, if not implicitly rational, to advocate for student loan debt relief AND to concurrently suggest that some fields no longer need a college degree. For those of you who were too young to remember, there was once a time where merit-based scholarships were not bound to household income; thanks to the Reagan administration, that changed radically in the middle 1980s, with the result that gifted students from middle-income households which possessed any sort of investment income were harshly penalized, without an offset for family size, when it came to financial aid. Even at a state school, the costs associated with student financial aid (or, stated differently, resulting indebtedness post-graduation) remain one of the key factors at ensuring positive financial stability after graduation. The issue, though, is that most colleges and universities excel at a narrow range of innovation, while leaving much of the heavy lifting and banal achievement to private industry (in the general sense), whether corporate or individual in scale of effort. Much of this effort is by its nature experiential (though not all of it) and requires individual, life-long learning to contribute to the ecosystem. The degree farm approach has harmed us all.
DougN7 4y ago
I don’t understand why we’re even talking about cancelling debt (which is sort or a euphemism anyway - it means using tax payer money to pay off the debts). Why do the current debt holders get their debt canceled? What about previous and future student debt holders? Why are we paying off people’s student debts? What about other forms of debt too? It doesn’t make sense to me.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  It causes sufficient outrage to get clicks, and generates publicity for some politicians for the same reason.
- orwin 4y ago
  What's interesting is that taxpayer money is rarely used to pay debt (in modern economies, it happened once in the US, around the 2000s, and i think one year in Germany too). Instead, we just issue lees debt than the year prior as our GDP grow. Debt is just another name for obligations. Right now, pension fund (and the government i guess?) hold most of them. If the US governement choose to forget that debt, it will take it upon itself. Or issue money to repay it. However, there is another danger than inflation or more government debt: people choosing to play an alternate game. Each generation have those. The hippies, then the back to landers were probably the first to check out. But now, you can see full communities stopping to play our game. They get an education, grow on adult's production, then after they grew up check out and join an alternative way of life, and produce mainly for themselves. But the proportion is growing way too fast, especially if you count the NEET staying at their parent's home and knowing that they can reach FIRE without the FI with their parent's assets (often high-middle class guys). I am involved in this communities in my country. I fix electronics and configure arduinos for them. I know that if this continue, this will be an issue for my way of life, but really, the only difference between me and them asset-wise is luck and timing. I can't really blame them for stopping, if i was a minwage earner i would've stopped too.
zeno_walks 4y ago
If the purpose of college is something other than babysitting and coddling young adults while they socialize, the vast majority of kids going to college should not be going to college. In the vast majority of cases they take easy majors that have nothing to do with the work they end up doing. I agree with the author. There is a credentialing arms race that must be cut off at the root - easy access to student loans. The solution is simple - Government predicates receiving a federal student loan on demonstrating high academic ability, beyond just getting into a college. Standardized tests must be leveraged more to this end - not less - since they're the purest intellectual measure we have left.
- eesmith 4y ago
  High school grades are a better predictor of college success than standardized tests. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/0013189X20902110 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/0013189X20902110 > High school GPAs (HSGPAs) are often perceived to represent inconsistent levels of readiness for college across high schools, whereas test scores (e.g., ACT scores) are seen as comparable. This study tests those assumptions, examining variation across high schools of both HSGPAs and ACT scores as measures of academic readiness for college. We found students with the same HSGPA or the same ACT score graduate at very different rates based on which high school they attended. Yet, the relationship of HSGPAs with college graduation is strong and consistent and larger than school effects. In contrast, the relationship of ACT scores with college graduation is weak and smaller than high school effects, and the slope of the relationship varies by high school. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3102/0002831219843292 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3102/00028312198432... > Since World War II, high school report card grades and standardized college entrance exams—most prominently the SAT and ACT—have been the two gatekeepers of university admissions ... It is surprising, perhaps, that high school grades are a stronger incremental predictor of college outcomes—including what is arguably the most important outcome of all: graduation.
hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
This is one of the most ridiculous arguments against free education I've ever heard. It's enough to have a look at the job market in Europe where higher education is mostly free to understand how misleading this argument is.
taylodl 4y ago
The effect for society, however, is otherwise. When the share of college graduates rises, the availability of good jobs barely changes. The more degrees job seekers have, the more degrees job seekers need to keep their applications out of the garbage can. When formal education expands, students need college degrees to get the same jobs their parents got with high school degrees - and their grandparents got with even less. University != Trade School American's insistence on a University education leading to a "good job" is profoundly misguided. If we forgive college debt it shouldn't be because we're trying to provide "college for all", it's because we should be held accountable for lying to vulnerable 18 year olds. What we should be doing is encouraging, and providing funding for, professions and trades. We can start with the classical professions such as nursing, teaching, law, medicine, engineering and the natural sciences. The trades would include things such as plumbing, electrician, mechanic, welder, carpenter, heavy machinery operator, etc. I'm old enough to remember when one had the opportunity to go to a "career center" in lieu of high school and you could get an education in one of the trades and be ready to go with a job upon graduation. Now you have to pay to get the education that used to be provided for free.
- parrellel 4y ago
  Some places trade school can easily run 30K now! The US system of single track high school with focus on college is all sorts of horrible compared to most countries.
- beej71 4y ago
  I'd push a little more and say that the artificial split between the trades and professions should be removed. It should all just be higher ed.
sys_64738 4y ago
Student debt should follow you to the grave. You chose to take it on so it's your debt to pay back. It doesn't help that the loan is owed to the US Government who should NO be in the student loan business at all. Those are federal tax dollars you want to "forgive" but taxpayers don't agree.
- eesmith 4y ago
  Why should student debt be special? People and companies go into debt for many reasons, and can declare bankruptcy. That includes income tax debt - also money owed to the government. And, those who loan money know there's a risk of default.
  - sys_64738 4y ago
    A taxpayer gave you a dollar for dollar loan to go to college if you take out federal loans. You ain't robbing me so you will take your student debt to your grave. If you don't want to be in debt then don't go in debt.
    - eesmith 4y ago
      Again, why are student loans so special compared to all other loans from the government? Quick DDG search finds https://www.bankruptcysoapbox.com/government-loans-that-bankruptcy-wipes-out/ https://www.bankruptcysoapbox.com/government-loans-that-bank... : > Believe it or not, certain unsecured loans from government entities are dischargeable in bankruptcy. > This includes SBA loans, and loans made through The Department of Veteran’s Affairs (VA), Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and others. or from https://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/bankruptcy/discharge-sba-loan.html https://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/bankruptcy/discharge-sb... > On the contrary, with the exception of student loans, most government loans including SBA loans can be easily discharged in bankruptcy.
      - sys_64738 4y ago
        Maybe we need to fix those other government loans being forgiven then by fixing bankruptcy laws.
ghusto 4y ago
We have free university education in many places in Europe, and the effect is that there are more educated people. The. Fucking. End. They stopped it I'm the U.K. and do you know what the result was? Slightly fewer educated people. There are existing data points, you don't need to speculate endlessly about all the terrible things you think could happen. And while I'm ranting, where the hell does the stigma in the U.S.A. come from around helping people? It's not communism, it's just common sense.
asojfdowgh 4y ago
I'm confused how "people arn't paying off their student loans" and "credentials are still inflating" Like, I wouldn't say the Zimbabwe dollar is inflating, its instead inflated

36 points by smoyer 4y ago

Confused. Is cash the limit for college attendance or is qualification? I thought Germany had free uni but you had to do reasonably well and proceed towards a degree? The problem might be for profit unis rather than the debt itself. This, coupled with the explosion of non teaching or researching staff and facilities jacks the price.

eesmith 4y ago
It seems the author doesn't think as many people should be going to university, and the reason people go to university is because credential inflation makes it harder for non-college-graduates to get a job, and more people will go to university if they think it will be cheaper because debt cancellation implies the possibility of future debt cancellation, hence lowering the effective code of going to college.
hansword 4y ago
In Germany university is mostly free. There are administrative fees in the range of ~200eu per year, and most universities have a subsidized but mandatory transit pass, which might be another ~400eu per year. There were explicit tuition fees in some states, a decade ago, but since they have been abolished it's usually below 1000eu/year (exception are private universities of course). You need to have finished high school to qualify for university, but if you then get into an unpopular field, that is the only real restriction. More popular fields of study at more popular universities require a good high school diploma, but even there it's possible to sit on a waiting list for a couple of years.

raxxorraxor 4y ago

> and thanks to swift inflation, the debt burden is melting as we speak Tough luck, that is true for everyone having monetary capital. Mostly people without the means to strategically invest. Sure, they are bit better off than those living from paycheck to paycheck. I think the argument against education due to degree inflation doesn't have the correct goal. Sure, more people would have degrees and perhaps there is an inflation. This is without consequence while higher education does have tangible benefits. The author confirms that these arguments are already blowing in his face. I would recommend that the author takes a look at other countries without education that costly. We live in the 21st century, the logistics of information have changed and spreading it takes fewer efforts. It is certainly unfair to those that did need to pay their loans and those that granted them with the belief that they will get the money back at some point. The state really cannot really expropriate their loans as far as I understand it.

eesmith 4y ago
> and those that granted them with the belief that they will get the money back at some point Most people who loan money factor in the chance that the money won't be paid back, for example, if the person who took out the loan files for bankruptcy. Student loans, however, are much harder to discharge than other loans. (See https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/student-loan-debt-bankruptcy.html https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/student-loan-debt-ba... for how the process works.) What the state can do is get let student loans be dischargable as normal consumer debt, just like it once was. This opinion piece titled "Don't Cancel Student Loans. Let Bankruptcy Law Forgive Them" at https://www.newsweek.com/dont-cancel-student-loans-let-bankruptcy-law-forgive-them-opinion-1717664 https://www.newsweek.com/dont-cancel-student-loans-let-bankr... is one of many pieces arguing for that change to bankruptcy law.
- XorNot 4y ago
  The reason this isn't done is because the obvious play is for a student with no assets to take the loans, get a degree, declare bankruptcy, and cruise out the next 7 years with a better paying job - it's not like they'll be ready to afford anything they'd need financing for anyway. The problem of course is that the fix flips it the other way: student loan debt is functionally the safest possible debt because it can't be discharged through bankruptcy. Loan someone any amount of money, and provided you estimate their net productivity over their life accurately, you'll get your money back. In isolation all of this sounds somewhat justifiable, but in the real world the results are disastrous: students are gate kept from higher income by getting a degree in a serious way, so they take on this undischargeable debt which people are happy to keep lending, so there's never any counter-pressure to colleges raising tuition rates, and government can say "everything is fine! Look at these enrollment numbers not changing!"
  - raxxorraxor 4y ago
    Framed this way it seems to be a very safe capital investment that also provides student ownership.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago

h2odragon 4y ago

How about those of us who've never had student loans? Credit for future "educational services"? Straight cash payment?

roflyear 4y ago
Why does you not getting something disqualify others? I don't get food stamps. I don't complain that I'm more fortunate than those that do.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  Every poor person is eligible for food stamps, that is the difference. So if you want to help poor people, help all poor people. Not just the ones with student loans.
  - juve1996 4y ago
    I don't see what's wrong with a benefit that only goes to specific people. We have many tax breaks designed this way. If it is a net positive to help a specific group for society, why not?
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      I see everything wrong with benefiting only specific people. It is inevitable an avenue or excuse for corruption. Why should only people of <characteristic X> get $y of help from the taxpayer funds that come from everyone? The goal is not let the income/wealth gap get too wide, or to provide more opportunities for all people at the bottom. Giving cash to everyone involves zero politics, wastes zero time in arguing politics, and does the job. For the record, I am against tax breaks period. If the government wants to incentivize something, it should pony up the cash to do it. This would reduce corruption, make it impossible to fudge the numbers, and increase transparency to prevent corruption.
      - juve1996 4y ago

atemerev 4y ago

Sorry, but higher education is not about getting a job. It is for opening new possibilities and for learning to think on your own, it is about acquiring instruments for intellectual work. I would suggest making higher education even more disconnected from “preparing to enter the workforce”, because it is not what it is about.

MR4D 4y ago
> higher education is not about getting a job That was probably true in the past, but the GI Bill after WWII definitely changed that.
overthemoon 4y ago
In theory, that's not what education is for. In practice, that's absolutely what people go to college for.
lesam 4y ago
‘Not what it is about’ according to whom? Most students are in school because they want jobs, not to learn to think. The professors may be interested in that goal but how can they possibly achieve it with a student body that just wants their degree papers and a shot at the upper middle class?

midislack 4y ago

Does anybody think Joe Biden, the guy who made it impossible to discharge student debt at the behest of the banksters, would forgive their student debt? Raise your hands, I have some billion dollar NFT’s to sell you suckers.

overthemoon 4y ago
This is why this conversation is moot. People keep wringing their hands over this "moral hazard" or whatever, but it's been like pulling teeth to get him to commit to 10k with a bunch of dumb qualifiers and means testing. It's not happening, except as a token for a few people come election time.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  I suspect Dems are (correctly) predicting it would turn off a lot of undecided (or sway-able) voters that the Dems need.

kareemsabri 4y ago

> The message, though, is deafening: You don’t have to pay for college in America. Once we grasp the consequences of “free college for all,” we’ll know the approximate effects of a full-fledged student debt jubilee. The most straightforward effect of free college would be a massive increase in college attendance and college completion. A standard estimate is that cutting tuition by $1000 raises college completion by about 2 percentage-points. I disagree with Caplan's interpretation of this message (and I am also against "free college", generally speaking). I don't understand how one would conclude that "hold a debt for decades that you won't have sufficient employment opportunities to pay down, and then it might be forgiven" is a proposition that will increase attendance in college. To me this is a huge red flag to almost never take out a student loan, or do my due diligence very carefully before I do. It appears disingenuous to consider student debt forgiveness to be "trillions in spending" (the government will not spend this money, the colleges have already been paid, they will simply stop removing it from the economy via payments from the debt holders). Surely Caplan, as an economist, knows this. He may think that increase in purchasing power due to the lack of debt payments is akin to new spending, but given 99% of debt holders haven't made a payment in 2 years (and we're, apparently, on the brink of a recession) that doesn't ring true to me.

mbfg 4y ago

Sounds like the author is mostly worried about losing his job.

petercooper 4y ago
As a professor within 10-15 years of retirement, wouldn't the selfish position be for him to strongly support entirely free tertiary education? He'd never be out of a job, and it'd take a while to have a surfeit of qualified economics PhDs who can't land jobs outside of academia, I assume.

hprotagonist 4y ago

…they began to grumble against the landowner. 'These who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, 'and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.' "But he answered one of them, 'I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?'

jcon321 4y ago

itt: a bunch of people who want to pay off the debt that my degenerate college friends have from taking out loans to buy drugs and alcohol.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
It is crazy to me. Imagine being a responsible parent and advising your kids to go to trade school and have them getting their hands dirty because you correctly predict that student loans will not yield a sufficient return. I have a cousin who refused to sit down with me to model their future cash flow, and plowed ahead with borrowing $300k between ages 18 and 27 to buy credentials that would only earn them $60k per year! I knew all this, I warned them, tried to educate them, showed them data, and they ignored me.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

hansword 4y ago

So he is an Economics Professor, and from his experience what professors teach is mostly useless. Ahem, with all due respect, but perhaps he is just not very good at his job...?

mocha_nate 4y ago

> ...almost no student in American has made a payment in over two years. Uhhhhh... I have been aggressively paying off my loans during this freeze. I'm not expecting the forgiveness of my debt.

senectus1 4y ago
yeah that sort of overreaching statement is pretty easy to discount and with it the rest of the article has a great deal diminished perceived value/credibility.

CraigJPerry 4y ago

>> An individual with prestigious credentials prospers, but society can’t get rich simply by awarding multitudinous fancy degrees Me learning more doesn't make you less knowledgable. Me printing money makes you poorer. This comparison of the money vs education case isn't useful. >> colleges rarely teach new, cutting-edge skills Do colleages teach ANY skills? Is that their purpose? I studied at the University of Glasgow in 2001, in my first programming class when i arrived, i had to land a rocket, SpaceX style, exploring the concepts of safety in the Ada language in the process. In my second year i was thrown into functional programming in Haskell. Are these skills i could apply in the real world? Not directly, but the concepts were mind-expanding.

NickLamp 4y ago

The key problem I see with the current semi-permanent student debt payment holiday is that there are no added stipulations for ensuring a finished degree will come close to a net economic benefit. Otherwise, we're executively making a very expensive fiscal policy decision and allowing tertiary education costs to balloon without anchoring those costs to the expected added value to society.

daviddever23box 4y ago

It is possible, if not implicitly rational, to advocate for student loan debt relief AND to concurrently suggest that some fields no longer need a college degree. For those of you who were too young to remember, there was once a time where merit-based scholarships were not bound to household income; thanks to the Reagan administration, that changed radically in the middle 1980s, with the result that gifted students from middle-income households which possessed any sort of investment income were harshly penalized, without an offset for family size, when it came to financial aid. Even at a state school, the costs associated with student financial aid (or, stated differently, resulting indebtedness post-graduation) remain one of the key factors at ensuring positive financial stability after graduation. The issue, though, is that most colleges and universities excel at a narrow range of innovation, while leaving much of the heavy lifting and banal achievement to private industry (in the general sense), whether corporate or individual in scale of effort. Much of this effort is by its nature experiential (though not all of it) and requires individual, life-long learning to contribute to the ecosystem. The degree farm approach has harmed us all.

DougN7 4y ago

I don’t understand why we’re even talking about cancelling debt (which is sort or a euphemism anyway - it means using tax payer money to pay off the debts). Why do the current debt holders get their debt canceled? What about previous and future student debt holders? Why are we paying off people’s student debts? What about other forms of debt too? It doesn’t make sense to me.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
It causes sufficient outrage to get clicks, and generates publicity for some politicians for the same reason.
orwin 4y ago
What's interesting is that taxpayer money is rarely used to pay debt (in modern economies, it happened once in the US, around the 2000s, and i think one year in Germany too). Instead, we just issue lees debt than the year prior as our GDP grow. Debt is just another name for obligations. Right now, pension fund (and the government i guess?) hold most of them. If the US governement choose to forget that debt, it will take it upon itself. Or issue money to repay it. However, there is another danger than inflation or more government debt: people choosing to play an alternate game. Each generation have those. The hippies, then the back to landers were probably the first to check out. But now, you can see full communities stopping to play our game. They get an education, grow on adult's production, then after they grew up check out and join an alternative way of life, and produce mainly for themselves. But the proportion is growing way too fast, especially if you count the NEET staying at their parent's home and knowing that they can reach FIRE without the FI with their parent's assets (often high-middle class guys). I am involved in this communities in my country. I fix electronics and configure arduinos for them. I know that if this continue, this will be an issue for my way of life, but really, the only difference between me and them asset-wise is luck and timing. I can't really blame them for stopping, if i was a minwage earner i would've stopped too.

zeno_walks 4y ago

If the purpose of college is something other than babysitting and coddling young adults while they socialize, the vast majority of kids going to college should not be going to college. In the vast majority of cases they take easy majors that have nothing to do with the work they end up doing. I agree with the author. There is a credentialing arms race that must be cut off at the root - easy access to student loans. The solution is simple - Government predicates receiving a federal student loan on demonstrating high academic ability, beyond just getting into a college. Standardized tests must be leveraged more to this end - not less - since they're the purest intellectual measure we have left.

eesmith 4y ago
High school grades are a better predictor of college success than standardized tests. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/0013189X20902110 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/0013189X20902110 > High school GPAs (HSGPAs) are often perceived to represent inconsistent levels of readiness for college across high schools, whereas test scores (e.g., ACT scores) are seen as comparable. This study tests those assumptions, examining variation across high schools of both HSGPAs and ACT scores as measures of academic readiness for college. We found students with the same HSGPA or the same ACT score graduate at very different rates based on which high school they attended. Yet, the relationship of HSGPAs with college graduation is strong and consistent and larger than school effects. In contrast, the relationship of ACT scores with college graduation is weak and smaller than high school effects, and the slope of the relationship varies by high school. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3102/0002831219843292 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3102/00028312198432... > Since World War II, high school report card grades and standardized college entrance exams—most prominently the SAT and ACT—have been the two gatekeepers of university admissions ... It is surprising, perhaps, that high school grades are a stronger incremental predictor of college outcomes—including what is arguably the most important outcome of all: graduation.

hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago

This is one of the most ridiculous arguments against free education I've ever heard. It's enough to have a look at the job market in Europe where higher education is mostly free to understand how misleading this argument is.

taylodl 4y ago

The effect for society, however, is otherwise. When the share of college graduates rises, the availability of good jobs barely changes. The more degrees job seekers have, the more degrees job seekers need to keep their applications out of the garbage can. When formal education expands, students need college degrees to get the same jobs their parents got with high school degrees - and their grandparents got with even less. University != Trade School American's insistence on a University education leading to a "good job" is profoundly misguided. If we forgive college debt it shouldn't be because we're trying to provide "college for all", it's because we should be held accountable for lying to vulnerable 18 year olds. What we should be doing is encouraging, and providing funding for, professions and trades. We can start with the classical professions such as nursing, teaching, law, medicine, engineering and the natural sciences. The trades would include things such as plumbing, electrician, mechanic, welder, carpenter, heavy machinery operator, etc. I'm old enough to remember when one had the opportunity to go to a "career center" in lieu of high school and you could get an education in one of the trades and be ready to go with a job upon graduation. Now you have to pay to get the education that used to be provided for free.

parrellel 4y ago
Some places trade school can easily run 30K now! The US system of single track high school with focus on college is all sorts of horrible compared to most countries.
beej71 4y ago
I'd push a little more and say that the artificial split between the trades and professions should be removed. It should all just be higher ed.

sys_64738 4y ago

Student debt should follow you to the grave. You chose to take it on so it's your debt to pay back. It doesn't help that the loan is owed to the US Government who should NO be in the student loan business at all. Those are federal tax dollars you want to "forgive" but taxpayers don't agree.

eesmith 4y ago
Why should student debt be special? People and companies go into debt for many reasons, and can declare bankruptcy. That includes income tax debt - also money owed to the government. And, those who loan money know there's a risk of default.
- sys_64738 4y ago
  A taxpayer gave you a dollar for dollar loan to go to college if you take out federal loans. You ain't robbing me so you will take your student debt to your grave. If you don't want to be in debt then don't go in debt.
  - eesmith 4y ago
    Again, why are student loans so special compared to all other loans from the government? Quick DDG search finds https://www.bankruptcysoapbox.com/government-loans-that-bankruptcy-wipes-out/ https://www.bankruptcysoapbox.com/government-loans-that-bank... : > Believe it or not, certain unsecured loans from government entities are dischargeable in bankruptcy. > This includes SBA loans, and loans made through The Department of Veteran’s Affairs (VA), Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and others. or from https://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/bankruptcy/discharge-sba-loan.html https://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/bankruptcy/discharge-sb... > On the contrary, with the exception of student loans, most government loans including SBA loans can be easily discharged in bankruptcy.
    - sys_64738 4y ago
      Maybe we need to fix those other government loans being forgiven then by fixing bankruptcy laws.

ghusto 4y ago

We have free university education in many places in Europe, and the effect is that there are more educated people. The. Fucking. End. They stopped it I'm the U.K. and do you know what the result was? Slightly fewer educated people. There are existing data points, you don't need to speculate endlessly about all the terrible things you think could happen. And while I'm ranting, where the hell does the stigma in the U.S.A. come from around helping people? It's not communism, it's just common sense.

asojfdowgh 4y ago

I'm confused how "people arn't paying off their student loans" and "credentials are still inflating" Like, I wouldn't say the Zimbabwe dollar is inflating, its instead inflated