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Well I didn’t have 25 pages to give you the full thesis. I mean, there’s a lot wrong with student loans, including predatory lending in the first place. But one

Well I didn’t have 25 pages to give you the full thesis. I mean, there’s a lot wrong with student loans, including predatory lending in the first place. But one subset of story you hear about are people who are followed for their entire lives by student loans because things never worked out for them in terms of income generation on their degrees. Those stories can be mitigated with proper bankruptcy protections. There’s 1000 other things we need to fix with the system too.

NonNefarious 4y ago
The primary problem with student loans is needing them in the first place. We as a society (and taxpayers) should not help people pay rip-offs, whether they be those perpetrated by colleges or those perpetrated by insurance companies. We should be stopping the rip-offs themselves.
- kaashif 4y ago
  > We as a society (and taxpayers) should not help people pay rip-offs The solution here appears to be that the government should not be involved with subsidising or backing student loans at all. Then you have a free choice - invest in student loans if you want to "help people pay rip offs" or don't if you don't.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    As a country, particularly one with an advanced economy, we need to subsidize education in order to remain competitive. Generally the left would have preferred to just directly subsidize schools by giving them money, but instead we have the compromise plan of student loans. And boy is our system compromised!
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      We have the compromise plan of transferring future cash flow of students and taxpayers in the case of defaulted borrowers into the pockets of college administrators. All under the guise of “helping” students while keeping taxes low.
  - NonNefarious 4y ago
    There's more. Colleges that perpetrate these rip-offs should lose their tax-exempt status. Otherwise, we all continue to subsidize them. A lot of these schools wallow in obscene endowments and own a shitload of prime real estate, while paying no taxes and bringing in loads of money on sports. It's time to bring them to heel.
- danaris 4y ago
  > The primary problem with student loans is needing them in the first place. Exactly. Education should be fully provided by the government for every person.
Aspos 4y ago
How failure to generate income on their degrees is a lender's problem? Clearly,there is an issue with inflated costs of getting a degree and finding a job with a low-demand degree, but why try solving it at the lender's expense? And how is it related to the friendly fraud issue?
- Ansil849 4y ago
  > How failure to generate income on their degrees is a lender's problem? Clearly,there is an issue with inflated costs of getting a degree and finding a job with a low-demand degree, but why try solving it at the lender's expense? Yeah, I've never really understood this logic either. If someone lends money from me to, let's say go buy a tow truck, and then is not able to repay the loan because there are too many other folks with tow trucks (or for whatever other reason), why should that be my problem? I gave money with the expectation that it would be paid back. That is by definition what lending is, yet student loans are somehow touted as an exception where repayment shouldn't be seen as compulsory.
  - jrockway 4y ago
    The most likely outcome in the tow truck case is that they repossess the tow truck and sell it at auction, only losing a small fraction of the money they loaned you. If someone can't afford a truck they borrowed, you still have a truck. You can't take back someone's education, which is what makes this type of loan intrinsically riskier. Because you can never get rid of student loans, though, they don't have to do any risk analysis or say "no" to any students. They say "sure", no matter what the data says on the ability to repay for the type of degree that you're applying for. Since nobody is denied funding to go to college, colleges have no economic incentive to price degree programs by expected income. The result is that college becomes more expensive and less accessible to everyone. It's a really bad situation.
    - Ansil849 4y ago
      > You can't take back someone's education Sure you could, you could rescind someone's diploma so that they no longer have the degree.

NonNefarious 4y ago

The primary problem with student loans is needing them in the first place. We as a society (and taxpayers) should not help people pay rip-offs, whether they be those perpetrated by colleges or those perpetrated by insurance companies. We should be stopping the rip-offs themselves.

kaashif 4y ago
> We as a society (and taxpayers) should not help people pay rip-offs The solution here appears to be that the government should not be involved with subsidising or backing student loans at all. Then you have a free choice - invest in student loans if you want to "help people pay rip offs" or don't if you don't.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  As a country, particularly one with an advanced economy, we need to subsidize education in order to remain competitive. Generally the left would have preferred to just directly subsidize schools by giving them money, but instead we have the compromise plan of student loans. And boy is our system compromised!
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    We have the compromise plan of transferring future cash flow of students and taxpayers in the case of defaulted borrowers into the pockets of college administrators. All under the guise of “helping” students while keeping taxes low.
- NonNefarious 4y ago
  There's more. Colleges that perpetrate these rip-offs should lose their tax-exempt status. Otherwise, we all continue to subsidize them. A lot of these schools wallow in obscene endowments and own a shitload of prime real estate, while paying no taxes and bringing in loads of money on sports. It's time to bring them to heel.
danaris 4y ago
> The primary problem with student loans is needing them in the first place. Exactly. Education should be fully provided by the government for every person.

Aspos 4y ago

How failure to generate income on their degrees is a lender's problem? Clearly,there is an issue with inflated costs of getting a degree and finding a job with a low-demand degree, but why try solving it at the lender's expense? And how is it related to the friendly fraud issue?

Ansil849 4y ago
> How failure to generate income on their degrees is a lender's problem? Clearly,there is an issue with inflated costs of getting a degree and finding a job with a low-demand degree, but why try solving it at the lender's expense? Yeah, I've never really understood this logic either. If someone lends money from me to, let's say go buy a tow truck, and then is not able to repay the loan because there are too many other folks with tow trucks (or for whatever other reason), why should that be my problem? I gave money with the expectation that it would be paid back. That is by definition what lending is, yet student loans are somehow touted as an exception where repayment shouldn't be seen as compulsory.
- jrockway 4y ago
  The most likely outcome in the tow truck case is that they repossess the tow truck and sell it at auction, only losing a small fraction of the money they loaned you. If someone can't afford a truck they borrowed, you still have a truck. You can't take back someone's education, which is what makes this type of loan intrinsically riskier. Because you can never get rid of student loans, though, they don't have to do any risk analysis or say "no" to any students. They say "sure", no matter what the data says on the ability to repay for the type of degree that you're applying for. Since nobody is denied funding to go to college, colleges have no economic incentive to price degree programs by expected income. The result is that college becomes more expensive and less accessible to everyone. It's a really bad situation.
  - Ansil849 4y ago
    > You can't take back someone's education Sure you could, you could rescind someone's diploma so that they no longer have the degree.