7 ms·

Putting Kids in Debt (2015)

30 points by firefoxd 4y ago

theamk 4y ago
How does a "a very good programmer".. "spent over five years looking for a job after graduation" happen? A lot of companies are hiring right now, and for fresh-out-of-college grads, the requirements are pretty basic and basically cover the schoolwork. And there are (paid) internship opportunities too, whose internal goals are to convert the person from intern to full-time, and the requirements for interns are even lower.
- ejb999 4y ago
  >>How does a "a very good programmer".. "spent over five years looking for a job after graduation" happen? One of those two things is necessarily not true, not in this market (i.e. for the past 5 years).
  - sanxiyn 4y ago
    If your definition of a good programmer includes being good at job hunting, maybe. Otherwise no.
- glasss 4y ago
  I know lots of good programmers that had no connections, couldn't do internships for personal reasons, and aren't great at interviewing.
- Spoom 4y ago
  > A lot of companies are hiring right now, and for fresh-out-of-college grads, the requirements are pretty basic and basically cover the schoolwork. And as a result, they receive hundreds or thousands of nigh-identical applicants. If you don't stand out somehow, you don't get hired. Check r/cscareerquestions, you'll see many examples. The entry level job market is much tougher than the experienced market.
  - shagie 4y ago
    The flip side of that is that most of r/cscareerquestions is fixated on big tech jobs that have starting pay much better than the median for the area (or for that matter, industry) that are 100% remote for a junior position. Yes, if you apply to Google you will be one of the countless resumes that applies and need something to stand out (see also the two types of college students in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33318407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33318407 ). However, there are lots of other companies that are hiring that get a much smaller set of resumes. The entry level job market for applying to a well known company that pays much better than average is much tougher than most people realize. And yet less well known companies can post https://exactsciences.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Exact_Sciences/job/US---Remote/Software-Engineer---All-Experience-Levels-Considered_R22-823 https://exactsciences.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Exact_Scie... or https://careers.garmin.com/careers-home/jobs/9307?lang=en-us https://careers.garmin.com/careers-home/jobs/9307?lang=en-us (there are lots more there, just pulled the first one) and only get a handful of applicants.
- sanxiyn 4y ago
  It happens all the time. I was incredulous too, but companies are really bad at hiring. For example, many companies may not even interview a very good programmer if they didn't major in computer science. I am not sure why.
  - shagie 4y ago
    Because they have enough applicants, some of who are qualified, that have a college degree that adding the filter of a college degree results in a reduction of the amount of work that HR or a manager needs to do to consider the resumes and has a higher percentage of qualified applicants in the pool of degree holders.
  - theamk 4y ago
    One of the job postings actually spells it out: they want "experience" and coursework counts for it > Bachelor’s degree in Computer Sciences, Engineering, Sciences; or High School Degree/General Education Diploma and 4 years of relevant experience in lieu of Bachelor’s degree. > 1+ years of work experience or coursework in design capabilities using modern technologies. We can argue if modern CS curriculum is really equivalent to work experience, especially with reduction in number of large projects, but at least the companies are pretty upfront about what they want and why.
OrangeMonkey 4y ago
By kids they mean “adults”. By putting kids in debt the mean “allowing them to take out loans that will put them, statistically, in a higher income bracket than people who don’t go to college” College is important - it’s why there is a cost to it. I can argue - and I do in fact - that the federal guarantee that student loans not be dischargeable in bankruptcy led directly to the increased cost of education. This doesn’t mean someone else should pay your student loan bill. I’d be quite happy, though, taking away that provision letting students who got a raw deal discharge in bankruptcy. Let’s let lenders and colleges be required to make good investments again.
- bluedevil2k 4y ago
  That’s one of the issues though, colleges have no skin in the loan game and don’t really care if the students made a good investment or not. They have no principal in the loan and therefore no risk. To them, every student is free money. If the kid drops out and can’t pay any more, they don’t care. If the kids graduates with some liberal arts degree, 6 figure debt, and no job prospects, they don’t care. The real solution to soaring college costs HAS to include some provision where the university incurs some of the risk of repayment. Imagine how much more selective they’d be if they held 20% of every student loan. Or, imagine the guidance counselor resources that would suddenly appear when they have to care about what you do after you graduate.
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    Colleges ACTIVELY game the system by enrolling people in programs they will drop out of. 500+ student freshman lectures turn a profit. 50 student capstones are a loss. So the universities don't mind it if people enroll in stuff they're not qualified for and drop out or transfer after a year or two.
- j_walter 4y ago
  > College is important - it’s why there is a cost to it. True...but the cost varies widely and people need to understand that going to an ivy league school for a degree that gets you into something like being a social worker is not ever going to be worth it...other than to have a news article written about you one day talking about the $300K in debt you are while having a $45K/year job.
recursivedoubts 4y ago
The west used to have a strong moral sense that usury was wrong. The idea of shackling your naive children with exponentially expanding debt before they earned a single dollar would have struck us as insane. Perhaps we were right. "And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;"
- troon-lover 4y ago
- j_walter 4y ago
  You also have people that sign themselves up for a bunch of debt for their kids college that they themselves can't afford with the expectation that their kids will be better off for it. Not everyone is smart enough to realize this is a terrible idea. Case in point - Parent making $13/hr decided it was a good idea to take out $40K in loans... https://www.yahoo.com/news/stuck-until-die-parents-buried-110209657.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/stuck-until-die-parents-buried-11...
koinedad 4y ago
18 year olds getting into 50-100k debt (or even more) with pretty crazy interests rates and no real idea that you’ll actually get or stay in a job that can pay it off in any reasonable time is not a plan for success
- twelve40 4y ago
  if you can't hold down a job with a CS degree, something is really really really wrong. afaik student loan rates are in single digits, is that considered pretty crazy?
nico 4y ago
> The average adult will never get a personal loan in the hundreds of thousand dollars. As a matter of fact, bankers will refuse to give you such a loan unless you have a carefully planed path with return in investment. > But for a young lad, fresh out of high school, dumb as a thumb, a signature is all it takes to have a loan. Of course a kid sees no problem with it. Even the smart kids are convinced. This is messed up. And it probably only happens because you cannot discharge student debt through bankruptcy. You are in debt for life (or until you finish paying). This type of situation also reminds me of people who pay thousands in rent every single month, but are not deemed credit-worthy enough to get a mortgage for the same or even lower amount (in monthly payments), thus getting stuck renting.
Test0129 4y ago
I am generally sympathetic to student loan exploitation. I took out student loans, but responsibly held a job through college and paid them off once I got my first real programming job (at 50k/year!) > That's the trick they use on kids to get them to sign up for these loans. You don't have to pay it until you graduate. Sometimes until you get a job. Sometimes they don't even tell you until when. MOST student loans do not accrue interest while in college. The problem comes when you exceed that limit and start to take out other loans. Perhaps to go to a better school. But to imply that most students pay interest during college is nonsense. Yes school is expensive. Even my no name local University was expensive. But I had 30k of loans at graduation, not 200k. Parents are just as responsible here. Loan companies can only exploit your kid if you let them. We have a generation of people terrible with money encouraging the same behavior in the youth. It's this intersection of idiots that is the problem. The schools encourage it to fund new facilities, the loan companies encourage it because its free money to them. The parents encourage it by teaching their bad money habits to their children. > Don't get me wrong we do need computer science graduates. It's just that most are not in it for computer science jobs. They are in for web programming and Apps. It's nothing new see people studying one thing and ending up in a completely opposite career space. The purpose of going to school is not to get a job it's to learn to think. Often times, having the ability to think confers a higher salary than not. In particular, STEM program rigor creates people who are HIGHLY adaptable to most fields. Hence why you see them everywhere. In summary the problem is not the loans, it's that they are not dischargeable. Make them dischargable and the problem goes away.
- glasss 4y ago
  > But to imply that most students pay interest during college is nonsense. I didn't read that line as any implication that interest accrues during college. I didn't read anything like that in the blog. But I definitely agree with your later point that parents shoulder a lot of responsibility here, and their own parents or education institutions for not teaching them more about money management. > The purpose of going to school is not to get a job it's to learn to think. While I agree, the issue is that career advisors and entire school systems are explicitly told to advise their high school students that they must go to college, regardless of their interests, hobbies, goals, or lack of goals. I'm not exaggerating. My friend who taught high school physics was scolded by school administration for not being a college evangelist. "The kids who live in [wealthier neighboring town] don't get told to go work in the trades, they get told to go to college, and our kids deserve the same". While noble, the fact is that college for most kids nowadays is seen as the only option to get a _career_ instead of _just a job_.
ThatGeoGuy 4y ago
I think getting rid of a stigma for those that didn't go to college is fine and probably something we should work at more as a society. But the focus on work, jobs, etc. and the general assumption that education is purely vocational and only to serve our capitalist overlords is a really dismal thing. We should also make education free as many countries have, so that getting an education isn't about taking out hundreds of thousands of loans as much as it's about having the resources to better one's life.
- j_walter 4y ago
  > I think getting rid of a stigma for those that didn't go to college is fine and probably something we should work at more as a society. This tends to be pushed by those with college degrees though (high school teachers). As parents who push kids to do something more blue collar but still in major demand (welding, plumbing, electrical, etc) you are up against an entire schooling system that has been heavily pushing college for the last 30 years.
teddyh 4y ago
I thought this would be about school lunch debt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunch_shaming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunch_shaming
teddyh 4y ago
> They wake up and realize this piece of paper with old English typography and curvy signatures is no guaranty to land a job. It might, however, have taught them to spell. EDIT: “guaranty” is indeed a valid, if archaic, spelling of “guarantee”. I ſtand rectified and expiated.
- sublinear 4y ago
  "guaranty" is the archaic spelling
- notdonspaulding 4y ago
  https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/guaranty https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/guaranty
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  (a) probably not based on my personal observations (b) where is the spelling error? If you're thinking it's 'guaranty,' that's a non-standard but correct use of the word (and in context, possibly a pun juxtaposed with "old English typography and curvy signatures").
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- japhyr 4y ago
  That's a variant of guarantee.
ouid 4y ago
this is committing the fallacy of equating student loan debt with other types of debt. if student loan debt were dischargeable in babkruptcy, even if only after some period of time like 10 years, it would be a much more sensible propsition. If we are so committed to charging people to go to school, and thereby become much better citizens, (utility to the eventual company that hires you be damned), then the structural problems with the current system can be resolved by requiring that the schools themselves be the lenders and adding this delayed bankruptcy protection.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
FigurativeVoid 4y ago
There are two things here that really bother me. 1. Schools should be mandated to report outcomes for degree programs. I know that isn't the point, but it should at least be known. We have so much data, I should be able to see the expected salary of a major 10 years out. 2. It is clearly predatory that loans are given to students when we can guess that they will never pay it back. This follows from the first point.
- bismuthcrystal 4y ago
  Point 1 would be very effective. Just a glimpse at this number and the enrollment will drop like a stone. No more dream selling, no more exploiting the naive.
- jcheng 4y ago
  The US Dept of Education has a College Scorecard website/dataset that has a lot of good information (though 3 years out, not 10 years). For example, here is a page with median earnings for different majors at USC: $109,271/yr for Computer Science, $28,604/yr for English Lit. https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/fields/?123961-University-of-Southern-California https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/fields/?123961-Univer...
  - FigurativeVoid 4y ago
    Oh thanks! This is actually wonderful.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
I totally agree with the notion that putting 18 year olds into non-dischargeable debt is crazy. I did take some issue with this paragraph: > One was the obvious one: Unemployment. It is becoming very common for graduates to throw their hats in the air only to have them fall back and knock them in the head conscious. They wake up and realize this piece of paper with old English typography and curvy signatures is no guarantee to land a job. In my experience, there were 2 types of people that prepared for jobs after college: 1. Some folks worked every summer, building connections and experience they could use to get later jobs. They were also working part time in the last year or two of college in an area directly related to what they wanted to work on after school. 2. Other kids basically either treated college as primo party time, or they just looked at it solely from an academic mindset. Point being, this group generally didn't do any preparation toward full time employment during their time in college. So what I often saw with the group 2 people was that, in their last semester of college, they'd suddenly feel the anxiety of getting a job and would send out a flood of resumes during on-grounds recruiting, then they would lament how they didn't get interviews without really thinking much about (a) they had built no relevant experience in the previous four years and (b) their grades were often middle-of-the-road or worse, making it that much more difficult to stand out. Point being, when you say "They wake up and realize this piece of paper with old English typography and curvy signatures is no guarantee to land a job." I mean, no shit. People have to take some responsibility for building the skills they'll need to get a job.
- j_walter 4y ago
  I saw similar...and would say people of type 1 were more likely to have worked in college and had lower amounts of debt. Type 2 generally didn't think of the consequences of taking out more and more debt to fuel their lifestyle in college and those are the ones that are pushing for full debt cancellation today. I would say we should require all debt to be paid back 100% but cancel all interest (or make it minimal like 1%). If you irresponsibly took money to go on spring break every year, then you should pay it back.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  In my experience most people, conditioned on studying an employable degree, just coasted with a reasonable end-of-degree effort to get a job and were just fine. It was not an extreme in either direction of your 1 or 2.
acuozzo 4y ago
I started working at 14 at a telemarketing firm. During this time I did a stint at an ice cream parlor. At 16 I worked at Toys я Us and a local pharmacy named "Drug Fair" and, at 17, I worked a non-union demolition job. At 18 I worked the overnight at Target and once university started I worked first as a research assistant and later as a systems operator until graduation. I list all of this here to establish that, from a relatively young age, I (1) knew the meaning of a dollar and (2) was never shy of working. With all of this being said, I can state with absolute certainty that, as a first generation college student, I had NO IDEA in 2006 what the numbers in front of me represented. "$30K/year with room and board? OK, that doesn't seem too bad. The starting salary range for my desired career is $70-99K." Add to all of this the stress about what the forthcoming workload would be like and the fact that most of my peers were taking on similar loans and I feel that I can cut my younger self some slack for paying $120K for an education.
- howeyc 4y ago
  What is this an argument for? That education should be publicly funded? Agree. More education on financial literacy before college/university/ageOf18? Agree. That adult's should not be held responsible for financial decisions made at 18? Disagree.
  - acuozzo 4y ago
    > What is this an argument for? It's not an argument. It's an anecdote.
kwils 4y ago
Just a thought, lots of issues with student loans and how they are issued/pushed Bigger question - why does education cost that much? Universities and Colleges (many who receive federal funding, state funding and endowments, etc.) have consistently raised their tuition costs. The loans were created because the costs are so high. Why are the costs so high? It reminds me of the health insurance debacle.

30 points by firefoxd 4y ago

How does a "a very good programmer".. "spent over five years looking for a job after graduation" happen? A lot of companies are hiring right now, and for fresh-out-of-college grads, the requirements are pretty basic and basically cover the schoolwork. And there are (paid) internship opportunities too, whose internal goals are to convert the person from intern to full-time, and the requirements for interns are even lower.

ejb999 4y ago
>>How does a "a very good programmer".. "spent over five years looking for a job after graduation" happen? One of those two things is necessarily not true, not in this market (i.e. for the past 5 years).
- sanxiyn 4y ago
  If your definition of a good programmer includes being good at job hunting, maybe. Otherwise no.
glasss 4y ago
I know lots of good programmers that had no connections, couldn't do internships for personal reasons, and aren't great at interviewing.
Spoom 4y ago
> A lot of companies are hiring right now, and for fresh-out-of-college grads, the requirements are pretty basic and basically cover the schoolwork. And as a result, they receive hundreds or thousands of nigh-identical applicants. If you don't stand out somehow, you don't get hired. Check r/cscareerquestions, you'll see many examples. The entry level job market is much tougher than the experienced market.
- shagie 4y ago
  The flip side of that is that most of r/cscareerquestions is fixated on big tech jobs that have starting pay much better than the median for the area (or for that matter, industry) that are 100% remote for a junior position. Yes, if you apply to Google you will be one of the countless resumes that applies and need something to stand out (see also the two types of college students in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33318407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33318407 ). However, there are lots of other companies that are hiring that get a much smaller set of resumes. The entry level job market for applying to a well known company that pays much better than average is much tougher than most people realize. And yet less well known companies can post https://exactsciences.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Exact_Sciences/job/US---Remote/Software-Engineer---All-Experience-Levels-Considered_R22-823 https://exactsciences.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Exact_Scie... or https://careers.garmin.com/careers-home/jobs/9307?lang=en-us https://careers.garmin.com/careers-home/jobs/9307?lang=en-us (there are lots more there, just pulled the first one) and only get a handful of applicants.
sanxiyn 4y ago
It happens all the time. I was incredulous too, but companies are really bad at hiring. For example, many companies may not even interview a very good programmer if they didn't major in computer science. I am not sure why.
- shagie 4y ago
  Because they have enough applicants, some of who are qualified, that have a college degree that adding the filter of a college degree results in a reduction of the amount of work that HR or a manager needs to do to consider the resumes and has a higher percentage of qualified applicants in the pool of degree holders.
- theamk 4y ago
  One of the job postings actually spells it out: they want "experience" and coursework counts for it > Bachelor’s degree in Computer Sciences, Engineering, Sciences; or High School Degree/General Education Diploma and 4 years of relevant experience in lieu of Bachelor’s degree. > 1+ years of work experience or coursework in design capabilities using modern technologies. We can argue if modern CS curriculum is really equivalent to work experience, especially with reduction in number of large projects, but at least the companies are pretty upfront about what they want and why.

OrangeMonkey 4y ago

By kids they mean “adults”. By putting kids in debt the mean “allowing them to take out loans that will put them, statistically, in a higher income bracket than people who don’t go to college” College is important - it’s why there is a cost to it. I can argue - and I do in fact - that the federal guarantee that student loans not be dischargeable in bankruptcy led directly to the increased cost of education. This doesn’t mean someone else should pay your student loan bill. I’d be quite happy, though, taking away that provision letting students who got a raw deal discharge in bankruptcy. Let’s let lenders and colleges be required to make good investments again.

bluedevil2k 4y ago
That’s one of the issues though, colleges have no skin in the loan game and don’t really care if the students made a good investment or not. They have no principal in the loan and therefore no risk. To them, every student is free money. If the kid drops out and can’t pay any more, they don’t care. If the kids graduates with some liberal arts degree, 6 figure debt, and no job prospects, they don’t care. The real solution to soaring college costs HAS to include some provision where the university incurs some of the risk of repayment. Imagine how much more selective they’d be if they held 20% of every student loan. Or, imagine the guidance counselor resources that would suddenly appear when they have to care about what you do after you graduate.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  Colleges ACTIVELY game the system by enrolling people in programs they will drop out of. 500+ student freshman lectures turn a profit. 50 student capstones are a loss. So the universities don't mind it if people enroll in stuff they're not qualified for and drop out or transfer after a year or two.
j_walter 4y ago
> College is important - it’s why there is a cost to it. True...but the cost varies widely and people need to understand that going to an ivy league school for a degree that gets you into something like being a social worker is not ever going to be worth it...other than to have a news article written about you one day talking about the $300K in debt you are while having a $45K/year job.

recursivedoubts 4y ago

The west used to have a strong moral sense that usury was wrong. The idea of shackling your naive children with exponentially expanding debt before they earned a single dollar would have struck us as insane. Perhaps we were right. "And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;"

troon-lover 4y ago
j_walter 4y ago
You also have people that sign themselves up for a bunch of debt for their kids college that they themselves can't afford with the expectation that their kids will be better off for it. Not everyone is smart enough to realize this is a terrible idea. Case in point - Parent making $13/hr decided it was a good idea to take out $40K in loans... https://www.yahoo.com/news/stuck-until-die-parents-buried-110209657.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/stuck-until-die-parents-buried-11...

koinedad 4y ago

18 year olds getting into 50-100k debt (or even more) with pretty crazy interests rates and no real idea that you’ll actually get or stay in a job that can pay it off in any reasonable time is not a plan for success

twelve40 4y ago
if you can't hold down a job with a CS degree, something is really really really wrong. afaik student loan rates are in single digits, is that considered pretty crazy?

nico 4y ago

> The average adult will never get a personal loan in the hundreds of thousand dollars. As a matter of fact, bankers will refuse to give you such a loan unless you have a carefully planed path with return in investment. > But for a young lad, fresh out of high school, dumb as a thumb, a signature is all it takes to have a loan. Of course a kid sees no problem with it. Even the smart kids are convinced. This is messed up. And it probably only happens because you cannot discharge student debt through bankruptcy. You are in debt for life (or until you finish paying). This type of situation also reminds me of people who pay thousands in rent every single month, but are not deemed credit-worthy enough to get a mortgage for the same or even lower amount (in monthly payments), thus getting stuck renting.

Test0129 4y ago

I am generally sympathetic to student loan exploitation. I took out student loans, but responsibly held a job through college and paid them off once I got my first real programming job (at 50k/year!) > That's the trick they use on kids to get them to sign up for these loans. You don't have to pay it until you graduate. Sometimes until you get a job. Sometimes they don't even tell you until when. MOST student loans do not accrue interest while in college. The problem comes when you exceed that limit and start to take out other loans. Perhaps to go to a better school. But to imply that most students pay interest during college is nonsense. Yes school is expensive. Even my no name local University was expensive. But I had 30k of loans at graduation, not 200k. Parents are just as responsible here. Loan companies can only exploit your kid if you let them. We have a generation of people terrible with money encouraging the same behavior in the youth. It's this intersection of idiots that is the problem. The schools encourage it to fund new facilities, the loan companies encourage it because its free money to them. The parents encourage it by teaching their bad money habits to their children. > Don't get me wrong we do need computer science graduates. It's just that most are not in it for computer science jobs. They are in for web programming and Apps. It's nothing new see people studying one thing and ending up in a completely opposite career space. The purpose of going to school is not to get a job it's to learn to think. Often times, having the ability to think confers a higher salary than not. In particular, STEM program rigor creates people who are HIGHLY adaptable to most fields. Hence why you see them everywhere. In summary the problem is not the loans, it's that they are not dischargeable. Make them dischargable and the problem goes away.

glasss 4y ago
> But to imply that most students pay interest during college is nonsense. I didn't read that line as any implication that interest accrues during college. I didn't read anything like that in the blog. But I definitely agree with your later point that parents shoulder a lot of responsibility here, and their own parents or education institutions for not teaching them more about money management. > The purpose of going to school is not to get a job it's to learn to think. While I agree, the issue is that career advisors and entire school systems are explicitly told to advise their high school students that they must go to college, regardless of their interests, hobbies, goals, or lack of goals. I'm not exaggerating. My friend who taught high school physics was scolded by school administration for not being a college evangelist. "The kids who live in [wealthier neighboring town] don't get told to go work in the trades, they get told to go to college, and our kids deserve the same". While noble, the fact is that college for most kids nowadays is seen as the only option to get a _career_ instead of _just a job_.

ThatGeoGuy 4y ago

I think getting rid of a stigma for those that didn't go to college is fine and probably something we should work at more as a society. But the focus on work, jobs, etc. and the general assumption that education is purely vocational and only to serve our capitalist overlords is a really dismal thing. We should also make education free as many countries have, so that getting an education isn't about taking out hundreds of thousands of loans as much as it's about having the resources to better one's life.

j_walter 4y ago
> I think getting rid of a stigma for those that didn't go to college is fine and probably something we should work at more as a society. This tends to be pushed by those with college degrees though (high school teachers). As parents who push kids to do something more blue collar but still in major demand (welding, plumbing, electrical, etc) you are up against an entire schooling system that has been heavily pushing college for the last 30 years.

teddyh 4y ago

I thought this would be about school lunch debt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunch_shaming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunch_shaming

teddyh 4y ago

> They wake up and realize this piece of paper with old English typography and curvy signatures is no guaranty to land a job. It might, however, have taught them to spell. EDIT: “guaranty” is indeed a valid, if archaic, spelling of “guarantee”. I ſtand rectified and expiated.

sublinear 4y ago
"guaranty" is the archaic spelling
notdonspaulding 4y ago
https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/guaranty https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/guaranty
shadowgovt 4y ago
(a) probably not based on my personal observations (b) where is the spelling error? If you're thinking it's 'guaranty,' that's a non-standard but correct use of the word (and in context, possibly a pun juxtaposed with "old English typography and curvy signatures").
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
japhyr 4y ago
That's a variant of guarantee.

ouid 4y ago

this is committing the fallacy of equating student loan debt with other types of debt. if student loan debt were dischargeable in babkruptcy, even if only after some period of time like 10 years, it would be a much more sensible propsition. If we are so committed to charging people to go to school, and thereby become much better citizens, (utility to the eventual company that hires you be damned), then the structural problems with the current system can be resolved by requiring that the schools themselves be the lenders and adding this delayed bankruptcy protection.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

FigurativeVoid 4y ago

There are two things here that really bother me. 1. Schools should be mandated to report outcomes for degree programs. I know that isn't the point, but it should at least be known. We have so much data, I should be able to see the expected salary of a major 10 years out. 2. It is clearly predatory that loans are given to students when we can guess that they will never pay it back. This follows from the first point.

bismuthcrystal 4y ago
Point 1 would be very effective. Just a glimpse at this number and the enrollment will drop like a stone. No more dream selling, no more exploiting the naive.
jcheng 4y ago
The US Dept of Education has a College Scorecard website/dataset that has a lot of good information (though 3 years out, not 10 years). For example, here is a page with median earnings for different majors at USC: $109,271/yr for Computer Science, $28,604/yr for English Lit. https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/fields/?123961-University-of-Southern-California https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/fields/?123961-Univer...
- FigurativeVoid 4y ago
  Oh thanks! This is actually wonderful.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

I totally agree with the notion that putting 18 year olds into non-dischargeable debt is crazy. I did take some issue with this paragraph: > One was the obvious one: Unemployment. It is becoming very common for graduates to throw their hats in the air only to have them fall back and knock them in the head conscious. They wake up and realize this piece of paper with old English typography and curvy signatures is no guarantee to land a job. In my experience, there were 2 types of people that prepared for jobs after college: 1. Some folks worked every summer, building connections and experience they could use to get later jobs. They were also working part time in the last year or two of college in an area directly related to what they wanted to work on after school. 2. Other kids basically either treated college as primo party time, or they just looked at it solely from an academic mindset. Point being, this group generally didn't do any preparation toward full time employment during their time in college. So what I often saw with the group 2 people was that, in their last semester of college, they'd suddenly feel the anxiety of getting a job and would send out a flood of resumes during on-grounds recruiting, then they would lament how they didn't get interviews without really thinking much about (a) they had built no relevant experience in the previous four years and (b) their grades were often middle-of-the-road or worse, making it that much more difficult to stand out. Point being, when you say "They wake up and realize this piece of paper with old English typography and curvy signatures is no guarantee to land a job." I mean, no shit. People have to take some responsibility for building the skills they'll need to get a job.

j_walter 4y ago
I saw similar...and would say people of type 1 were more likely to have worked in college and had lower amounts of debt. Type 2 generally didn't think of the consequences of taking out more and more debt to fuel their lifestyle in college and those are the ones that are pushing for full debt cancellation today. I would say we should require all debt to be paid back 100% but cancel all interest (or make it minimal like 1%). If you irresponsibly took money to go on spring break every year, then you should pay it back.
spywaregorilla 4y ago
In my experience most people, conditioned on studying an employable degree, just coasted with a reasonable end-of-degree effort to get a job and were just fine. It was not an extreme in either direction of your 1 or 2.

acuozzo 4y ago

I started working at 14 at a telemarketing firm. During this time I did a stint at an ice cream parlor. At 16 I worked at Toys я Us and a local pharmacy named "Drug Fair" and, at 17, I worked a non-union demolition job. At 18 I worked the overnight at Target and once university started I worked first as a research assistant and later as a systems operator until graduation. I list all of this here to establish that, from a relatively young age, I (1) knew the meaning of a dollar and (2) was never shy of working. With all of this being said, I can state with absolute certainty that, as a first generation college student, I had NO IDEA in 2006 what the numbers in front of me represented. "$30K/year with room and board? OK, that doesn't seem too bad. The starting salary range for my desired career is $70-99K." Add to all of this the stress about what the forthcoming workload would be like and the fact that most of my peers were taking on similar loans and I feel that I can cut my younger self some slack for paying $120K for an education.

howeyc 4y ago
What is this an argument for? That education should be publicly funded? Agree. More education on financial literacy before college/university/ageOf18? Agree. That adult's should not be held responsible for financial decisions made at 18? Disagree.
- acuozzo 4y ago
  > What is this an argument for? It's not an argument. It's an anecdote.

kwils 4y ago

Just a thought, lots of issues with student loans and how they are issued/pushed Bigger question - why does education cost that much? Universities and Colleges (many who receive federal funding, state funding and endowments, etc.) have consistently raised their tuition costs. The loans were created because the costs are so high. Why are the costs so high? It reminds me of the health insurance debacle.