Culture Student Loans are Destroying America

Sailor.X

Cold War Veteran
Founder
Because as long as you're still going to school you don't have to pay it back. I know a few people who are gaming the system this way. They know the debt is crushing so they keep going to school so that the bill isn't due while hoping for either that high-paying job they've been promised so that they can living on what's left after the debt, or that the entire system gets reformed and they're allowed to declare bankruptcy.

Edit: Basically I'd say it's a real-life version of shooting the moon in hearts.
Yep I think an easy fix can be you must graduate from a College or Trade School within 6 years. If you can't do so by that time frame you are blacklisted from getting financial aid period.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
Yep I think and easy fix can be you must graduate from a College or Trade School within 6 years. If you can't do so by that time frame you are blacklisted from getting financial aid period.
Gonna disagree. A Doctorate of Medicine degree (MD) frequently takes more than that. Somebody who's just going to operate in a family clinic treating tummy aches and dispensing flu shots might get in under that time but the a highly trained specialist like brain surgeons need six to eight years. A doctor who's going for a career in medical research can easily break 10 years of college time (though there's usually a couple year break of residency in there for them to get some hands-on experience).

Better to reform the college loan system from the ground up than try to apply patches that will only break other things. Reducing the number of doctors available would be an absolutely horrible knock-on effect.
 

Sailor.X

Cold War Veteran
Founder
Gonna disagree. A Doctorate of Medicine degree (MD) frequently takes more than that. Somebody who's just going to operate in a family clinic treating tummy aches and dispensing flu shots might get in under that time but the a highly trained specialist like brain surgeons need six to eight years. A doctor who's going for a career in medical research can easily break 10 years of college time (though there's usually a couple year break of residency in there for them to get some hands-on experience).

Better to reform the college loan system from the ground up than try to apply patches that will only break other things. Reducing the number of doctors available would be an absolutely horrible knock-on effect.
Um was talking about taking more than 6 years to get a bachelors or a trade certificate. Not graduate school.
 

ParadiseLost

Well-known member
You know the really sad fact. I know and have run into a few people I call the career student. They are people who went to College after graduating High School. And are still in college. 10 years later. They have not graduated. All they do is get college loans and do some courses. Then they change their major rinse and repeat. I have no idea why they want to rack up the gargantuan debt they now have. But they just keep staying in school and not graduating.

What company would loan to you after that much time? And holy shit, what kind of interest rates would they be paying after that time? 15, 20%???
 
D

Deleted member

Guest
Yep I think an easy fix can be you must graduate from a College or Trade School within 6 years. If you can't do so by that time frame you are blacklisted from getting financial aid period.

It took me 10 years, though I wasn't attending classes the entire time, to be sure, and part of that was at a community college, then a university, then back to a community college, then back to university. A lot of that time, I was not accruing debt, but I badly needed the loans later on when aggressively pushing to finish. I then completed my Master's in the idealised 2 years. Sometimes life is very hard, and it's very hard to take a full course load or avoid interruptions in your studies. So your policy would blindly result in the world having one less successfully employed person making twice the median income of my township and having to write checks to the IRS at tax-time instead of getting money back. While the student loan system is deeply broken and badly needs reform (it needs to be tied to the field of study, to employment prospects, and to the school--I played it smart and stayed at community colleges and State Ag schools, but debt was still needed), the reality is some simple policy like that may well hurt the chances of as many people to become productive adults as it punishes the chances of useless layabouts.
 

Sailor.X

Cold War Veteran
Founder
It took me 10 years, though I wasn't attending classes the entire time, to be sure, and part of that was at a community college, then a university, then back to a community college, then back to university. A lot of that time, I was not accruing debt, but I badly needed the loans later on when aggressively pushing to finish. I then completed my Master's in the idealised 2 years. Sometimes life is very hard, and it's very hard to take a full course load or avoid interruptions in your studies. So your policy would blindly result in the world having one less successfully employed person making twice the median income of my township and having to write checks to the IRS at tax-time instead of getting money back. While the student loan system is deeply broken and badly needs reform (it needs to be tied to the field of study, to employment prospects, and to the school--I played it smart and stayed at community colleges and State Ag schools, but debt was still needed), the reality is some simple policy like that may well hurt the chances of as many people to become productive adults as it punishes the chances of useless layabouts.
I went to College with Zero College debt after graduation. I had

GI Bill
2 Scholarships
Work Study
And Pell Grants.

And many of my classmates my age worked full time jobs and still got their degrees on time. You are the exception that proves the rule not the rules standard bearer.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
I went to College with Zero College debt after graduation. I had

GI Bill
2 Scholarships
Work Study
And Pell Grants.

And many of my classmates my age worked full time jobs and still got their degrees on time. You are the exception that proves the rule not the rules standard bearer.
That's an incredibly fortuitous set of advantages you've listed there. I mean, less than half a percent of Americans are military so very few can possibly get GI Bills, much less stacking all those other programs (granted a large percentage can gain Pell Grants). I think you're proving that you're the one who was an exception rather than the standard bearer here.

I personally was able to get through college with no debts via a combination of working while going and Pell Grants/Scholarships and having spent a couple years saving up myself, but I would never say everybody else can do the same, I know I was in a fortunate position, at a time when the economy was booming and I could actually earn enough to do it. That doesn't mean I expect everybody else, who may be trying in a time with a worse economy and without my specific chances, can do the same. It's unreasonable.
 

Sailor.X

Cold War Veteran
Founder
That's an incredibly fortuitous set of advantages you've listed there. I mean, less than half a percent of Americans are military so very few can possibly get GI Bills, much less stacking all those other programs (granted a large percentage can gain Pell Grants). I think you're proving that you're the one who was an exception rather than the standard bearer here.

I personally was able to get through college with no debts via a combination of working while going and Pell Grants/Scholarships and having spent a couple years saving up myself, but I would never say everybody else can do the same, I know I was in a fortunate position, at a time when the economy was booming and I could actually earn enough to do it. That doesn't mean I expect everybody else, who may be trying in a time with a worse economy and without my specific chances, can do the same. It's unreasonable.
What I did took years of planning. I planned for going to College at age 18 so that when I was 28 years old I could pull it off the right way. I am not the exception. I am just your average Veteran.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
What I did took years of planning. I planned for going to College at age 18 so that when I was 28 years old I could pull it off the right way. I am not the exception. I am just your average Veteran.
"I'm just an ordinary person like everybody else with resources 99.5% of the population doesn't have access to who pulled off a 10-year long master plan to avoid going into debt nearly the entire population suffers from."

You're not making any kind of case that you're an Average Joe here.
 

JagerIV

Well-known member
Being an "average veteran" is sorta like being an "average millionaire". Your talking about a very narrow part of the population. And given where many of the vetrans I know are, your probably not average for a veteran either.

Edit: many of them have no real plan for next year, let alone 10 years from now.

Student lonas just have to be stopped subsidized by the state. Thats as complicated as it has to be. Let the banks figure out if someone on their 10th year of college is there for a good reason or not, and let them suffer the gain or loss of their desicion.
 
D

Deleted member

Guest
Require subsidized student loans to be linked to the economic value of the degree. That's the real solution. We want to encourage people to go into productive industries where they are taught to innovate, while making it impossible for them to study in other fields unless they're independently wealthy or talented enough to win merit scholarships. The objective should be to eliminate the problem of BA's in Anthropology working at Starbucks and paying on 60k in debt.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
I suspect that if banks are actually responsible for the loans, they will enforce linking to the value of the degree automatically.

Assuming I'm running a bank's loan department and want to turn a profit, I'm going to be much more keen on loaning money to future doctors, engineers, and businessribs than fluff courses. The current bloat of cruft courses is because there's no risk so the bank will loan for any kind of degree.

And of course once the loans won't come through for cruft courses colleges will have a strong disincentive to actually push cruft courses and will probably soon start dismantling their more useless departments since few people will be taking the cruft classes.
 

Sailor.X

Cold War Veteran
Founder
"I'm just an ordinary person like everybody else with resources 99.5% of the population doesn't have access to who pulled off a 10-year long master plan to avoid going into debt nearly the entire population suffers from."

You're not making any kind of case that you're an Average Joe here.
I took the advice of my uncles and cousins who served a few years before me. Not really supervillian level planning just taking advice from people who had my best interests at heart.
 

Argent

Well-known member
I am going to voice something that is unpopular. But I don't think that Amercia has that massive of a problem with student loans. About 69% of students from the Class of 2018 took out student loans, graduating with an average debt balance of $29,800, according to Student Loan Hero.

Yes, that is a lot of money but it is not the life ruining amounts that the media likes to portray. If you budget right it is very possible to pay off. It is only a couple grand more then the average car loan.

I know a lot of people like to point out the 2008 housing bubble and how hard it was but the Boomers did have multiple recessions in the 1970s do deal with.

When I see OP Ed's and other articles focusing on college debt it tends to focus on millennials that are pulling down 100,000 grand a year. I look at the life stlye they live and how they talk about not being able to afford things. But things like multiple subscription services or Plated are mentioned along side with Prime or brand name gluten free food.

I do think millennials are catching on by seeing how migration patterns show people leaving California, New York and New Jersey. The problem is that they also seem to be importing the same poltics that made those places unlivable.



The main real problem is with students that do not graduate and still have a loan payment. They do not have the benefit degree to get a decent job instead are stuck with low paying McJobs. So they have 20 grand in debt and very little way to pay it off.

The other problem is that goverment secured loans have lead to a massive ballooning of college costs. Especially as colleges have to compete with each other. They are forced to offer resort like features to keep competitive. There is also the expanding administration with millions spent on things like Title 9 compliance.

In Amercia there is a sense of college being it own community and that you travel there to find yourself. I know that popular movies like Accpeted like to promote this and decry degree factories but overall a return to people focusing more on getting a degree that will secure them a job instead of find their bliss Eat, Pray, Love stlye.

Greater emphasis on local schools and trade schools as vible options to student in High School could help. But it will take a lot of time and effort since everything post WWII has been go get a four year degree to live the good life. Also reworking or even limits on the amount of goverment backed money may help bring down the cost of college as students will start caring about cost.
 
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