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I'm all for making education more accessible but this isn't it. It only keeps kicking the can down the road and signals to lenders that borrowers have higher ca

I'm all for making education more accessible but this isn't it. It only keeps kicking the can down the road and signals to lenders that borrowers have higher capacity to borrow and thus will inflate the prices of higher education.

nerdjon 3y ago
It isn't the perfect solution, but fixing our education system is going to be much harder to accomplish especially with so many colleges being for profit. It won't be a single thing that fixes it and will instead be multiple things that will take many years to accomplish. Meanwhile this is an overnight way to address a problem for students that are out of college. If we only focus on fixing school but ignore those that already went through it, that isn't right either. It feels like we often get too stuck on waiting for the perfect solution that addresses everything when we have smaller things that can be done to improve the current situation. Yes there is a risk that we never go further than that, but there is also a chance that more fundamental changes will never happen regardless. I would prefer a small something happen than nothing.
- pknomad 3y ago
  Incremental solution is absolutely fine. The problem is that is genuinely 1 step forward, 2 steps backwards. It provides immediate relief for the cohort who qualify but others who don't have to pay for them and rewards bad behavior from both for and non-profit universities.
  - nerdjon 3y ago
    I am not seeing the 2 steps backwards though, or the rewards. The universities already have their money, in my case they have had it for 10 years now. At best this sets a precedence that, oh we can charge whatever we want because the government will bail the student out. Which is valid, but I don't see it as rewarding them. The schools are not getting anything from this directly unless I am missing something.
    - pknomad 3y ago
      I should clarify. When I say "rewarding bad behavior" I mean it further incentivizes the universities to keep raising prices, faster. There are myriad of reasons why college costs goes up but the biggest driver is the inelasticity of college degree. College administrators can raise prices because they see that the market will bear them. If college administrators and students see that the government will forgive student debts (btw it's not even dischargeable through bankruptcy), then the administrators will charge higher prices ("don't worry prospective students, the government will forgive the debts!") and students will also include it in their calculus for college-decision making process ("maybe there will be another loan forgiveness down the road, I can definitely take the risk"). Think how Tesla and all these EV companies display the car price with the tax break. This is what I mean.
      - nerdjon 3y ago
        That is very valid, and I don't want to discount the risk of that happening. However, the way that I see it. If we were to actually put some serious political pressure behind fixing our education system so that was no longer a valid risk. (I mean ideally the idea of price and school for the first 2 or 4 years wasn't even a conversation, but clearly we are not ready for that) than if/when we were able to address some of these fundamental issues, we would do something like this already. Acknowledge that due to policy failures there are students that went through school before fixing these problems and do something about the debt they are dealing with. At least getting it in line with what a current student would expect to be going through taking years of payment into account. My thing is though, why wait? Why not do something about it now. Especially given the realities of the current political climate that, frankly I am not convinced we could get anything else actually done. I fully acknowledge that risk exists and the high likelihood that there have been conversations in school boards or whoever actually makes those pricing decisions about what exactly this means. It's ridiculous that I look at some schools that have a yearly tuition inching closer and closer to $100,000. The way I see it there is no best solution. Either we do nothing, we keep things as they are, maybe we slow down tuition price increases a bit, and millions of people are still stuck with underwater loans years after graduating. Hoping that we will get the right people with the right political power to actually do something about the school system now. Or, we do something, we take that risk, we watch what happens. But also giving relief to a lot of people, who will also then have more money to be able to spend in the economy.
- datavirtue 3y ago
  Fund the community colleges and make everyone filter through them to get to any other university. The need to be accessible, as in free or so cheap that it's negligible. No loans at all. Incentivize industry to require an associates degree for any position (serious tax or workers comp discounts, the same way they do for drug testing). As we do now, tap industry to help with training costs. This is all stuff we are already half way doing. I think we can find a few billion for federal education grants to state community colleges.

nerdjon 3y ago

It isn't the perfect solution, but fixing our education system is going to be much harder to accomplish especially with so many colleges being for profit. It won't be a single thing that fixes it and will instead be multiple things that will take many years to accomplish. Meanwhile this is an overnight way to address a problem for students that are out of college. If we only focus on fixing school but ignore those that already went through it, that isn't right either. It feels like we often get too stuck on waiting for the perfect solution that addresses everything when we have smaller things that can be done to improve the current situation. Yes there is a risk that we never go further than that, but there is also a chance that more fundamental changes will never happen regardless. I would prefer a small something happen than nothing.

pknomad 3y ago
Incremental solution is absolutely fine. The problem is that is genuinely 1 step forward, 2 steps backwards. It provides immediate relief for the cohort who qualify but others who don't have to pay for them and rewards bad behavior from both for and non-profit universities.
- nerdjon 3y ago
  I am not seeing the 2 steps backwards though, or the rewards. The universities already have their money, in my case they have had it for 10 years now. At best this sets a precedence that, oh we can charge whatever we want because the government will bail the student out. Which is valid, but I don't see it as rewarding them. The schools are not getting anything from this directly unless I am missing something.
  - pknomad 3y ago
    I should clarify. When I say "rewarding bad behavior" I mean it further incentivizes the universities to keep raising prices, faster. There are myriad of reasons why college costs goes up but the biggest driver is the inelasticity of college degree. College administrators can raise prices because they see that the market will bear them. If college administrators and students see that the government will forgive student debts (btw it's not even dischargeable through bankruptcy), then the administrators will charge higher prices ("don't worry prospective students, the government will forgive the debts!") and students will also include it in their calculus for college-decision making process ("maybe there will be another loan forgiveness down the road, I can definitely take the risk"). Think how Tesla and all these EV companies display the car price with the tax break. This is what I mean.
    - nerdjon 3y ago
      That is very valid, and I don't want to discount the risk of that happening. However, the way that I see it. If we were to actually put some serious political pressure behind fixing our education system so that was no longer a valid risk. (I mean ideally the idea of price and school for the first 2 or 4 years wasn't even a conversation, but clearly we are not ready for that) than if/when we were able to address some of these fundamental issues, we would do something like this already. Acknowledge that due to policy failures there are students that went through school before fixing these problems and do something about the debt they are dealing with. At least getting it in line with what a current student would expect to be going through taking years of payment into account. My thing is though, why wait? Why not do something about it now. Especially given the realities of the current political climate that, frankly I am not convinced we could get anything else actually done. I fully acknowledge that risk exists and the high likelihood that there have been conversations in school boards or whoever actually makes those pricing decisions about what exactly this means. It's ridiculous that I look at some schools that have a yearly tuition inching closer and closer to $100,000. The way I see it there is no best solution. Either we do nothing, we keep things as they are, maybe we slow down tuition price increases a bit, and millions of people are still stuck with underwater loans years after graduating. Hoping that we will get the right people with the right political power to actually do something about the school system now. Or, we do something, we take that risk, we watch what happens. But also giving relief to a lot of people, who will also then have more money to be able to spend in the economy.
datavirtue 3y ago
Fund the community colleges and make everyone filter through them to get to any other university. The need to be accessible, as in free or so cheap that it's negligible. No loans at all. Incentivize industry to require an associates degree for any position (serious tax or workers comp discounts, the same way they do for drug testing). As we do now, tap industry to help with training costs. This is all stuff we are already half way doing. I think we can find a few billion for federal education grants to state community colleges.