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The problem with student loans is that people need them in the first place. In a world pervaded by technology, one can no more live without education than with

The problem with student loans is that people need them in the first place. In a world pervaded by technology, one can no more live without education than without water; and the first twelve years having been reduced to day care, "higher" education is the only education there is.

formerly_proven 2y ago
Wrong way around. Student loans provide a state-subsidized, leveraged instrument to buy a commodity. It should surprise absolutely no one that this increases prices in accordance with the applied leverage.
eru 2y ago
You are mixing up two different meanings of education. The kind of 'education' you need for technology, ie education in the sense of knowledge, is almost free or can (largely!) be had for very cheap. Look at libraries, Wikipedia, online courses, or even just ask the professor if you can sit in on lectures. The kind of 'education' that is so expensive you need a loan is education in the sense of getting a piece of paper at the end. That's credentialism. (Just to be clear: not all education in the knowledge sense is cheap. But most things most universities teach falls in this category.)
- macNchz 2y ago
  While the loan-fueled runaway cost of traditional university diplomas in America has created a big mess that seems to serve everyone except high level administrators poorly, I don't really see the solution at a societal level being self-teaching. I say this as a 100% self taught programmer who started learning (unprompted) from a book as a 10 year old in 1998. I slowly built a base of marketable skills and CS fundamentals over time, and have done well for myself, but I don't really see this as a viable alternative to formal education programs at scale. I'm not saying that I'm somehow super special, but I do think that I approach learning things differently than the great majority of other people I know. I also very much appreciated my traditional liberal arts education (I studied Political Science thinking I wanted to go to law school), and feel that our society would benefit from tech workers having a broader background in history, humanities, religion, and social sciences overall.
  - eru 2y ago
    > [...] I don't really see the solution at a societal level being self-teaching. Sorry, if I wasn't clear: self-teaching can be part of a solution, but it's not required. (See eg what I said about sitting in on lectures or doing online courses etc.) There's also relatively cheap universities you can attend. > I also very much appreciated my traditional liberal arts education (I studied Political Science thinking I wanted to go to law school), and feel that our society would benefit from tech workers having a broader background in history, humanities, religion, and social sciences overall. There's nothing wrong with people choosing to learn about these things, yes. Though I don't think making these topics mandatory would do much (or does much). Just have a look at all the mandatory crap in school, and what people actually remember. Eg they have years and years of math (or history etc) and barely anything sticks.
Bostonian 2y ago
Solve the problem of the "first twelve years having been reduced to day care" instead of spending more money to subsidize college. College graduates do earn more than non-grads on average, but there are many non-grads who earn more than grads, so it's not true that everyone must be encouraged to attend college.
senorrib 2y ago
I’d challenge that assumption. If you look outside of the US context, Germany invested heavily in trade schools, which by no means are considered “higher education”. Seems to be working pretty well for them.
- spwa4 2y ago
  Unless you want an actual education. This works, of course, by kicking near everyone out of general education. This has lead to the value of general education (which everyone wants for their children) to go up by A LOT, and that means the pressure on teachers to cheat is absurd (making sure the right children end up in university). The government KEPT saving money on the number of children in general education, and kept increasing control over school, which has lead to in most places ONLY children who get let through achieve a general education (ie. the number of free places is so low, only the children let through get a place. Effort, actually being good at it, doesn't get you a place anymore. It only gets jealous people to intensely sabotage you) The government saving money on this has ALSO of course reduced the quality of teachers. Everywhere, but also in general education, so one can ask "even if you do get a place ... what's the use of that? Teachers won't help you beyond what's required of them and won't teach you all the material". In most places you cannot get a general education from your teachers EVEN if you have a place in general education. Leading to ridiculous drop-out rates: starters in 1st year gymi / people who succeed in "abitur" (ie. final exam 6th year) is 10-30%. Somewhere between 2/3 and 90% of kids drop out, or otherwise fail to pass the final exam. Oh and to make matters worse yet again: the government has ALSO saved money on libraries. Which means that not having access to the material goes quite far. In anything but the largest cities you CANNOT get free access to anything but the most basic math or scientific materials. I guess one tiny bit of good news is that it's cheaper than ever on amazon and available illegally, but unless you know what material is good and how to download illegally ... good luck. Even private schools have become cheaper than ever, but "cheaper than ever before" should not be confused with "affordable". We're still talking 30% of yearly pre-tax wage per child (and, I just checked, 80% of pre-tax AVERAGE German wage per child). Most people, even with really good jobs, cannot afford them and so almost no kids have access to people who actually know science. This has lead to the resumption of the situation my grandfather complained about: in "a good family" ONE kid gets educated. Obviously, usually the oldest. The rest ... tough. So now you have the worst of all possible outcomes: 1) WAY too few children have a general education 2) the ones that do pass a general education, do not know the material 3) this is still getting worse every year Yes, there's exceptions. People who achieve a general education almost exclusively under their own power. However, as you can imagine, this is a small minority. It is already at the point that Germany is completely dependent on immigration of highly educated people. "highly educated" does not mean university degree, it means "passed high school education". You know, people actually capable of doing general minimally scientific work (think accounting, lab work, nursing (where it's nursing including administering medicine or managing a diagnostic machine, not just changing beds), "production work", anything dealing with computers, ...) Oh and absolutely NOBODY is happy with this situation. Not parents. Not children. Not employers. Not the government. Not universities. Not trade schools. Most people are very angry how they were treated, personally, and they do understand that this will cause more and more problems as time goes on. But you're not allowed to suggest improving this situation, you see that would be VERY unfair to the people who already got fucked by the system, ie. to them. I kind of agree that it would be unfair to them, but of course it means nothing will ever get better.
fullshark 2y ago
In a world pervaded by technology, where you are competing for labor positions with countless other capable humans who can get access to the information/vocational training required to successfully do the position, you cannot live without the $200k credential required to get your foot in the door to the interview room.
- yimmothathird 2y ago
  McDonald's is hiring though
- randomdata 2y ago
  There is likely something be said about marketing yourself in a unique way when competition is fierce, which a degree might have served at one point in history when virtually nobody had them, but everyone and their bother has a degree these days. That's not interesting. That doesn’t make you stand out. If you are going to spend $200,000, a billboard is likely to yield better job prospects.
- casenmgreen 2y ago
  The amount of work available - number of labour positions - is also in proportion to how many people there are. More people means more jobs, as well as more people looking for work. Broadly speaking, if you say double population of country, you double size of economy. Everyone is generally better off, because there are efficiency gains, but amount of work per person is we can say remains in some sense of proportion.
freitzkriesler2 2y ago
With all due respect, no one needed these loans. The belief that you HAVE to go to college led us into this mess and now we have highly paid tradesmen making more while we have coders sitting idle. It's time to eliminate student loans entirely, hard cap student visas, tax college endowments, and remove higher education non profit status and let the higher education industrial complex collapse in on itself. It's become a leviathan of highly paid over credentialed demigods with dubious benefit.
- gruez 2y ago
  >hard cap student visas ??? Don't international students subsidize domestic students because they pay much higher tuition? I'm not sure how reducing their numbers would be a good thing, at least for domestic students. >tax college endowments Endowments come from donations, not tuition, and if anything they subsidize the tuition. At best taxing them would be breaking the piggy bank for a one time cash infusion. >remove higher education non profit status Eliminating non-profit status won't matter when the institutions are blowing all that revenue on bloated staff. >and let the higher education industrial complex collapse in on itself. Based on this and your other suggestions, it seems like you're more interested in smashing the "higher education industrial complex" rather than fixing it.
  - freitzkriesler2 2y ago
    Colleges prefer international students because they pay full tuition without any aid whatsoever. Eliminating student loans would then encourage colleges to seek students abroad and lobby for their entry into the country. See Canada. Endowments are almost entirely used for dubious things like sports and football programs which have a nebulous educational value at best and a negative impact at worst. If you were aware of the industry (which you're not down d00ter) you'd know that there are efforts by the government to already start taxing sports and football programs in particular because of how much money these programs bring in. Eliminating the non profit status allows business taxes to be collected from bloated college programs, sports, and more. The goal is to return higher education to its pre 1960s status of being affordable from basic income and not a 4 year long resort with learning sprinkled on top.
fallingknife 2y ago
And they are even dumbing down college now so anyone can get a degree. When are the idiots who run our government going to figure out that a credential only as value because someone else can't get it?

formerly_proven 2y ago

Wrong way around. Student loans provide a state-subsidized, leveraged instrument to buy a commodity. It should surprise absolutely no one that this increases prices in accordance with the applied leverage.

eru 2y ago

You are mixing up two different meanings of education. The kind of 'education' you need for technology, ie education in the sense of knowledge, is almost free or can (largely!) be had for very cheap. Look at libraries, Wikipedia, online courses, or even just ask the professor if you can sit in on lectures. The kind of 'education' that is so expensive you need a loan is education in the sense of getting a piece of paper at the end. That's credentialism. (Just to be clear: not all education in the knowledge sense is cheap. But most things most universities teach falls in this category.)

macNchz 2y ago
While the loan-fueled runaway cost of traditional university diplomas in America has created a big mess that seems to serve everyone except high level administrators poorly, I don't really see the solution at a societal level being self-teaching. I say this as a 100% self taught programmer who started learning (unprompted) from a book as a 10 year old in 1998. I slowly built a base of marketable skills and CS fundamentals over time, and have done well for myself, but I don't really see this as a viable alternative to formal education programs at scale. I'm not saying that I'm somehow super special, but I do think that I approach learning things differently than the great majority of other people I know. I also very much appreciated my traditional liberal arts education (I studied Political Science thinking I wanted to go to law school), and feel that our society would benefit from tech workers having a broader background in history, humanities, religion, and social sciences overall.
- eru 2y ago
  > [...] I don't really see the solution at a societal level being self-teaching. Sorry, if I wasn't clear: self-teaching can be part of a solution, but it's not required. (See eg what I said about sitting in on lectures or doing online courses etc.) There's also relatively cheap universities you can attend. > I also very much appreciated my traditional liberal arts education (I studied Political Science thinking I wanted to go to law school), and feel that our society would benefit from tech workers having a broader background in history, humanities, religion, and social sciences overall. There's nothing wrong with people choosing to learn about these things, yes. Though I don't think making these topics mandatory would do much (or does much). Just have a look at all the mandatory crap in school, and what people actually remember. Eg they have years and years of math (or history etc) and barely anything sticks.

Bostonian 2y ago

Solve the problem of the "first twelve years having been reduced to day care" instead of spending more money to subsidize college. College graduates do earn more than non-grads on average, but there are many non-grads who earn more than grads, so it's not true that everyone must be encouraged to attend college.

senorrib 2y ago

I’d challenge that assumption. If you look outside of the US context, Germany invested heavily in trade schools, which by no means are considered “higher education”. Seems to be working pretty well for them.

spwa4 2y ago
Unless you want an actual education. This works, of course, by kicking near everyone out of general education. This has lead to the value of general education (which everyone wants for their children) to go up by A LOT, and that means the pressure on teachers to cheat is absurd (making sure the right children end up in university). The government KEPT saving money on the number of children in general education, and kept increasing control over school, which has lead to in most places ONLY children who get let through achieve a general education (ie. the number of free places is so low, only the children let through get a place. Effort, actually being good at it, doesn't get you a place anymore. It only gets jealous people to intensely sabotage you) The government saving money on this has ALSO of course reduced the quality of teachers. Everywhere, but also in general education, so one can ask "even if you do get a place ... what's the use of that? Teachers won't help you beyond what's required of them and won't teach you all the material". In most places you cannot get a general education from your teachers EVEN if you have a place in general education. Leading to ridiculous drop-out rates: starters in 1st year gymi / people who succeed in "abitur" (ie. final exam 6th year) is 10-30%. Somewhere between 2/3 and 90% of kids drop out, or otherwise fail to pass the final exam. Oh and to make matters worse yet again: the government has ALSO saved money on libraries. Which means that not having access to the material goes quite far. In anything but the largest cities you CANNOT get free access to anything but the most basic math or scientific materials. I guess one tiny bit of good news is that it's cheaper than ever on amazon and available illegally, but unless you know what material is good and how to download illegally ... good luck. Even private schools have become cheaper than ever, but "cheaper than ever before" should not be confused with "affordable". We're still talking 30% of yearly pre-tax wage per child (and, I just checked, 80% of pre-tax AVERAGE German wage per child). Most people, even with really good jobs, cannot afford them and so almost no kids have access to people who actually know science. This has lead to the resumption of the situation my grandfather complained about: in "a good family" ONE kid gets educated. Obviously, usually the oldest. The rest ... tough. So now you have the worst of all possible outcomes: 1) WAY too few children have a general education 2) the ones that do pass a general education, do not know the material 3) this is still getting worse every year Yes, there's exceptions. People who achieve a general education almost exclusively under their own power. However, as you can imagine, this is a small minority. It is already at the point that Germany is completely dependent on immigration of highly educated people. "highly educated" does not mean university degree, it means "passed high school education". You know, people actually capable of doing general minimally scientific work (think accounting, lab work, nursing (where it's nursing including administering medicine or managing a diagnostic machine, not just changing beds), "production work", anything dealing with computers, ...) Oh and absolutely NOBODY is happy with this situation. Not parents. Not children. Not employers. Not the government. Not universities. Not trade schools. Most people are very angry how they were treated, personally, and they do understand that this will cause more and more problems as time goes on. But you're not allowed to suggest improving this situation, you see that would be VERY unfair to the people who already got fucked by the system, ie. to them. I kind of agree that it would be unfair to them, but of course it means nothing will ever get better.

fullshark 2y ago

In a world pervaded by technology, where you are competing for labor positions with countless other capable humans who can get access to the information/vocational training required to successfully do the position, you cannot live without the $200k credential required to get your foot in the door to the interview room.

yimmothathird 2y ago
McDonald's is hiring though
randomdata 2y ago
There is likely something be said about marketing yourself in a unique way when competition is fierce, which a degree might have served at one point in history when virtually nobody had them, but everyone and their bother has a degree these days. That's not interesting. That doesn’t make you stand out. If you are going to spend $200,000, a billboard is likely to yield better job prospects.
casenmgreen 2y ago
The amount of work available - number of labour positions - is also in proportion to how many people there are. More people means more jobs, as well as more people looking for work. Broadly speaking, if you say double population of country, you double size of economy. Everyone is generally better off, because there are efficiency gains, but amount of work per person is we can say remains in some sense of proportion.

freitzkriesler2 2y ago

With all due respect, no one needed these loans. The belief that you HAVE to go to college led us into this mess and now we have highly paid tradesmen making more while we have coders sitting idle. It's time to eliminate student loans entirely, hard cap student visas, tax college endowments, and remove higher education non profit status and let the higher education industrial complex collapse in on itself. It's become a leviathan of highly paid over credentialed demigods with dubious benefit.

gruez 2y ago
>hard cap student visas ??? Don't international students subsidize domestic students because they pay much higher tuition? I'm not sure how reducing their numbers would be a good thing, at least for domestic students. >tax college endowments Endowments come from donations, not tuition, and if anything they subsidize the tuition. At best taxing them would be breaking the piggy bank for a one time cash infusion. >remove higher education non profit status Eliminating non-profit status won't matter when the institutions are blowing all that revenue on bloated staff. >and let the higher education industrial complex collapse in on itself. Based on this and your other suggestions, it seems like you're more interested in smashing the "higher education industrial complex" rather than fixing it.
- freitzkriesler2 2y ago
  Colleges prefer international students because they pay full tuition without any aid whatsoever. Eliminating student loans would then encourage colleges to seek students abroad and lobby for their entry into the country. See Canada. Endowments are almost entirely used for dubious things like sports and football programs which have a nebulous educational value at best and a negative impact at worst. If you were aware of the industry (which you're not down d00ter) you'd know that there are efforts by the government to already start taxing sports and football programs in particular because of how much money these programs bring in. Eliminating the non profit status allows business taxes to be collected from bloated college programs, sports, and more. The goal is to return higher education to its pre 1960s status of being affordable from basic income and not a 4 year long resort with learning sprinkled on top.

fallingknife 2y ago

And they are even dumbing down college now so anyone can get a degree. When are the idiots who run our government going to figure out that a credential only as value because someone else can't get it?