Student Debt and Responses

I graduated in 1973 with a degree in English. After nine years of knocking around and trying to support a young family (I also joined a religious cult which didn't help my situation) I went back to school. I spent one year doing an intensive accounting program at a private, for profit school. I found work after completing that, and had reasonably decent career, mostly in investment real estate. Having a degree may have helped some because I had a BA plus a certificate. But I think I could have done OK without it.

So, I think my experience speaks to the value of trade schools or community college. There are LOTS of careers that pay well and don't require a college degree.
 
I really wished that there had been just a shop class when I was growing up that I could have taken, and learned the basics of how to weld and work on my own car. There was a class that had some of that in it, but it was an ag class, and I had no interest in the agricultural aspects that made up the majority of it.

I also kind of wished now that I had gone to a tech school to learn computers and networking and the like. Of course, at the time, aside from having a huge boner for engineering, I knew next to nothing about computers and didn't really have an interest in them.
 
ParadiseLost said:
1) The only way you can accomplish this at this point is through deep reform. A good example would be to make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of education level when the degree is not necessary for the job.
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Deep reform is the idea

2) This is just silly. The elite schools provide better outcomes in general (with some caveats), and they allow America to brain drain other nations. Also, the vast majority of people are not going to elite schools.
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The elite schools are producing the class with the boots on my neck. We have no power over them, and yet they have immense influence over us. Razing them to the ground would be a net benefit in the long run. Conservatives need to attack and dismantle the institutions dominated by their enemies, not defend them. If Harvard vanished tomorrow, you would lose little.

And i am uninterested in brain draining other nations. I dont want to be dominated by the top 10% of India and China. As long as we import intellectual and technical expertise, we will never fix our schools. I want to generate an internal Elite, not import one. We need to create an intellectual class that drawn from a wider variety of universities, the way it was in North America prior to the 60's.
 
Jeff Thomas said:
I graduated in 1973 with a degree in English. After nine years of knocking around and trying to support a young family (I also joined a religious cult which didn't help my situation) I went back to school. I spent one year doing an intensive accounting program at a private, for profit school. I found work after completing that, and had reasonably decent career, mostly in investment real estate. Having a degree may have helped some because I had a BA plus a certificate. But I think I could have done OK without it.

So, I think my experience speaks to the value of trade schools or community college. There are LOTS of careers that pay well and don't require a college degree.
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I went to DeVry for an associates degree in Electronics and Computer Technology about a decade ago; ended up learning that no amount of schooling was going to make up for my complete inability to network with people, because that's how you land jobs. You could be the most incompetent moron out there, but still end up at least somewhat successful so long as you can charm the pants off of the right people. Meanwhile someone like me; someone with a 4.0 GPA in a marketable field but no charisma to speak of, always ends up wasting their time in the end.
 
Doomsought said:
The solution is really simple. Just take away the special status that makes student loans impossible to default on. Make it identical to all other forms of debt and allow people to declare bankruptcy on it.
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If you had to wait 10 years to bankrupt on education debt, I think that would be reasonable.
 
Robovski said:
If you had to wait 10 years to bankrupt on education debt, I think that would be reasonable.
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Do businesses have to wait as long? If banks want to loan money to shady looking people without requiring collateral or co-signers, why should I enable them? The common man being asked to bailout the ridiculous risk taking of banks and funds while gaining none of the profits is a blight on our current society.

In this case, letting them collude with the universities in fleecing ill inform young adults is more of the same.
 
Wargamer08 said:
Do businesses have to wait as long? If banks want to loan money to shady looking people without requiring collateral or co-signers, why should I enable them? The common man being asked to bailout the ridiculous risk taking of banks and funds while gaining none of the profits is a blight on our current society.

In this case, letting them collude with the universities in fleecing ill inform young adults is more of the same.
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As previously stated by others, education isn't something you can reclaim off of someone. It is also something that can become outdated. Preventing a college student fresh from graduation before they utilize their new skills from filing bankruptcy seems like a reasonable provision while, if after 10 years they are still in a place that they cannot support their debts, then why burden them with this mistake longer? The whole reason bankruptcy exists is to release these bad debts so everyone can move on, for the betterment of society. I would expect interest rates to reflect this risk, which they currently do not. Will that make these loans more expensive? Very likely so, and I do not think that is a bad thing. Clearly money is in over supply here and needs to be harder to obtain and/or more expensive.
 
I guess my aim would be to either discourage these banks from engaging in these predatory loan practices to begin with. The only reason they do it is because they know that there's no way these borrowers can get out of it. So if bankruptcy was on the table again, they might actually have to weigh the decision to grant the loan, just like with every other kind of loan, and probably you wouldn't have as many that were so eager to give out loans. It would suck for people hoping to get loans, but it also hopefully might make them weigh whether going to university is really worth it, and with less people going to university, they might actually have to make some cuts and lower the cost of going in order to remain competitive. It would also mean the value of a degree would increase.
 
My proposal is this if the Government pays off all the Student debt. Then said students will owe the American Taxpayer 10 years of service to the Country. We have infrastructure that needs to be built and fixed. We have Military Services undermanned. And we have jobs they say no one wants to do. So we put them to work doing the above mentioned. That is the price for getting ride of all that Student loan debt.

Points at the field..... "That Cotton ain't gonna pick itself!!"
 
Sailor.X said:
My proposal is this if the Government pays off all the Student debt. Then said students will owe the American Taxpayer 10 years of service to the Country. We have infrastructure that needs to be built and fixed. We have Military Services undermanned. And we have jobs they say no one wants to do. So we put them to work doing the above mentioned. That is the price for getting ride of all that Student loan debt.

Points at the field..... "That Cotton ain't gonna pick itself!!"
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I am basically saying this.
Of course everyone can't join the military.
 
Sailor.X said:
My proposal is this if the Government pays off all the Student debt. Then said students will owe the American Taxpayer 10 years of service to the Country. We have infrastructure that needs to be built and fixed. We have Military Services undermanned. And we have jobs they say no one wants to do. So we put them to work doing the above mentioned. That is the price for getting ride of all that Student loan debt.

Points at the field..... "That Cotton ain't gonna pick itself!!"
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Wage-slavery does not stay contained once started. It’s a very short jump to say that if you bankrupt and now owe the state money for a student loan, then why not normal creditors? Or if your debt can only be called in like that by the state, now all debts are sold to said state before your debt contract being passed or sold back to your creditors. From there the normal historical ways of keeping someone a debt space are applied.

I don’t understand why so many people seem to think that allowing people with power and money to set outrageous terms is a good idea.
 
Wargamer08 said:
Wage-slavery does not stay contained once started. It’s a very short jump to say that if you bankrupt and now owe the state money for a student loan, then why not normal creditors? Or if your debt can only be called in like that by the state, now all debts are sold to said state before your debt contract being passed or sold back to your creditors. From there the normal historical ways of keeping someone a debt space are applied.

I don’t understand why so many people seem to think that allowing people with power and money to set outrageous terms is a good idea.
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This will be a one time act to end the Student Loan Debt crisis. There is a hard fact some young people need to learn. There are no free rides in life. You always have to pay in one way or another for a service rendered. And what I propose in only 10 years of service in some form to the Nation for the giant bailout they are getting.
 
Sailor.X said:
This will be a one time act to end the Student Loan Debt crisis. There is a hard fact some young people need to learn. There are no free rides in life. You always have to pay in one way or another for a service rendered. And what I propose in only 10 years of service in some form to the Nation for the giant bailout they are getting.
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What are you talking about? There are all kinds of free rides and second chances and do overs. They are just all coincidentally given to scions of the rich and powerful or their pet group of the month.

Charity and forgiveness are core values of civilization. Obviously there is such a thing as too much, but let’s try more then zero for a change.
 
Wargamer08 said:
What are you talking about? There are all kinds of free rides and second chances and do overs. They are just all coincidentally given to scions of the rich and powerful or their pet group of the month.

Charity and forgiveness are core values of civilization. Obviously there is such a thing as too much, but let’s try more then zero for a change.
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Warfare is human nature.

We also need a large military. And everyone learns a useful thing or two.
 
Wargamer08 said:
What are you talking about? There are all kinds of free rides and second chances and do overs. They are just all coincidentally given to scions of the rich and powerful or their pet group of the month.

Charity and forgiveness are core values of civilization. Obviously there is such a thing as too much, but let’s try more then zero for a change.
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Forgiving 1.6 Trillion dollars in Student loan debt is not a small thing. And those who signed on the dotted line need to repay the Nation for bailing them out. 10 years of service in some form is a small condition for such relief.
 
Wargamer08 said:
There is a difference between offering incentives alongside entrance requirements and admitting everyone and then locking them in.
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It would need to be optional of course. You can have your student debt forgiven in exchange for X national service, but if you'd rather pay it off the old-fashioned way that should still be acceptable.
 
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