Student Debt and Responses

[Captain X]

Mine was two or three. My friend is still doing it

I'm curious what kind of jobs you had/have then, because I worked retail, actually did make a fair bit above minimum wage, and could barely make ends meet and I had a much lower than average number of credits for semester. I'm not even sure if living off campus saved me anything in the long run, as the only real advantage to living off campus near as I could tell was that the rent was split up into each month instead of having to pay thousands of dollars up front each semester to live in the dorms.

 

[Airedale260]

Europe circumvented a lot of these problems with stricter entrance exam requirements.

You don't pass the entrance exam, you don't qualify for the University program.

In this way they weeded out most of the people who in the US would end up dropping out and getting into debt they can't get out of.

Yeah but the question on that is what do the entrance exams look like. I completely suck at algebra and am not much better at physical science, yet when it comes to history, geography, politics, or English I can breeze right through a test.

I do agree we have an over saturation of college degrees rather than technical aptitude and such, but it’s a huge mess that’s built up over decades.

 

[Buba]

Yeah but the question on that is what do the entrance exams look like.

The norm is for the exams to concern the area (broadly) of your studies. If you wish to study e.g. medicine it'd be biology, chemistry etc. - you'd be spared physics or geography

 

[Zachowon]

I'm curious what kind of jobs you had/have then, because I worked retail, actually did make a fair bit above minimum wage, and could barely make ends meet and I had a much lower than average number of credits for semester. I'm not even sure if living off campus saved me anything in the long run, as the only real advantage to living off campus near as I could tell was that the rent was split up into each month instead of having to pay thousands of dollars up front each semester to live in the dorms.

I worked retail and did part time school during the summer. Two school days rest work days.
A buddy of mine I was partially wrong about. He had a loan for his first year, paid it off and then just works to pay for the rest since he paid it off.

 

[Airedale260]

The norm is for the exams to concern the area (broadly) of your studies. If you wish to study e.g. medicine it'd be biology, chemistry etc. - you'd be spared physics or geography

Makes sense. So if I were to go for political science (my undergraduate degree), then I’d be looking at, what, Civics, History, and the like?

 

[Captain X]

I was already pretty far in debt by the time I switched to trying to work to pay my way through school, so I got the worst of both worlds, because being less than a full-time student meant that I had to start making payments on that, too. Best part is, it was income-based, and the payments were low, but the interest is so high that I was never in any danger of touching that principle. Needless to say, it took me bloody years to get my degrees, and now I can't even get a job that requires them, so I feel extra jipped. I guess the first couple of years of grad school were mostly payed for by being a GRA, but after that I got to go back to retail, so that was fun.

 

[Buba]

So if I were to go for political science (my undergraduate degree), then I’d be looking at, what, Civics, History, and the like?

Yup - exactly the sort of subjects you mentioned.
Mind you - every country has its own system, where besides an "university entrance exam" your secondary school grades/end of secondary school exam (there is such in most countries) may count or not, secondary school grades/end of secondary school exam grades might only be considered (or given more weight) if from specific subjects relevant to your Major etc. etc.
Hence the role of "weeder out" could be played - entirely or partly - by end of secondary school exams. Run a search for "abitur" or "matura" or "A levels" and be prepared to be afraid

 

[ParadiseLost]

I was already pretty far in debt by the time I switched to trying to work to pay my way through school, so I got the worst of both worlds, because being less than a full-time student meant that I had to start making payments on that, too. Best part is, it was income-based, and the payments were low, but the interest is so high that I was never in any danger of touching that principle. Needless to say, it took me bloody years to get my degrees, and now I can't even get a job that requires them, so I feel extra jipped. I guess the first couple of years of grad school were mostly payed for by being a GRA, but after that I got to go back to retail, so that was fun.

The real problem there is that a lot of people don't actually understand why their degree is valued in the workplace, and a lot of people aim for degrees that aren't actually valued where they want to work.

Yup - exactly the sort of subjects you mentioned.
Mind you - every country has its own system, where besides an "university entrance exam" your secondary school grades/end of secondary school exam (there is such in most countries) may count or not, secondary school grades/end of secondary school exam grades might only be considered (or given more weight) if from specific subjects relevant to your Major etc. etc.
Hence the role of "weeder out" could be played - wholly or partly - by end of secondary school exams. Run a seach for "abitur" or "matura" or "A levels" and be prepared to be be afraid

Yeah, I have a UK friend who had four or five 8 hour finals. Its just excessive.

 

[sander093]

As someone who worked their way through University.....

No.

Unless, you're willing to pay me back every penny I worked for to pay for university.

 

[ParadiseLost]

As someone who worked their way through University.....

No.

Unless, you're willing to pay me back every penny I worked for to pay for university.

Student loan forgiveness or reform that ends up essentially being forgiveness is inevitable. The main question is what forms it'll take, how it will work, and how much it will be.

 

[Bear Ribs]

I was already pretty far in debt by the time I switched to trying to work to pay my way through school, so I got the worst of both worlds, because being less than a full-time student meant that I had to start making payments on that, too. Best part is, it was income-based, and the payments were low, but the interest is so high that I was never in any danger of touching that principle. Needless to say, it took me bloody years to get my degrees, and now I can't even get a job that requires them, so I feel extra jipped. I guess the first couple of years of grad school were mostly payed for by being a GRA, but after that I got to go back to retail, so that was fun.

I feel for you. I got my college degree many years ago specializing in tech support... and graduated the same year the entire county outsources all their tech support to India.

On the subject of the people taking the loans being adults, I agree but I have a bit of a caveat. If you buy a bad product you made a mistake. On the other hand if you buy a product who's label is deliberately falsified, you made a bad decision (perhaps you could have researched the product better), but the company that printed that label is guilty of fraud and should (may not given corruption) face some serious penalties for it.

I don't know that we can go all the way to that equivalent for colleges but it seems clear that what schools tell students about the value of degrees can have a fair bit of misinformation and a lot of social pressure in it, and I don't much like that.

 

[ParadiseLost]

I feel for you. I got my college degree many years ago specializing in tech support... and graduated the same year the entire county outsources all their tech support to India.

There's still plenty of need for tech support in the US, a good IT guy will do just fine.

This is part of what I was talking about when I said that people often don't understand the value of their degree.

 

[Bear Ribs]

There's still plenty of need for tech support in the US, a good IT guy will do just fine.

This is part of what I was talking about when I said that people often don't understand the value of their degree.

There is now... but when I got my degree Windows 98 was new technology and I'm completely lost trying to do tech support on newer systems.

 

[Abhorsen]

Wikipedia is not a source.

Given you have 0, and never really seem to have any actual ones, I think I win this. Also:

Rebranding Fascism: National-Anarchists

On September 8, 2007 in Sydney, Australia, the antiglobalization movement mobilized once again against neoliberal economic policies, this time to oppose the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit. Just as during the protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle, Washington...

www.politicalresearch.org

PublicEye.org - The Website of Political Research Associates

The Public Eye web page from Political Research Associates provides in-depth information, analysis, and news about threats to democracy and diversity.

www.publiceye.org

Here's the Daily Stormer complaining that the Third Position isn't nazi enough, because they (both) are scum of the earth.

Spoiler: NAZI SITE ONLY USED FOR CITATION

On the Issues: American Third Position vs. Total Fascism

Andrew Anglin Total Fascism January 27, 2013 I have recently been investigating the America...

dailystormer.su

Here's the SPLC:

Psych Prof Has New Job Running Racist Political Party

Cal State Long Beach psychology professor Kevin MacDonald has made the leap from academia to activism

www.splcenter.org

So yeah, that's a fascist opinion you got there, and that fascist opinion basically shares its economics with commies.

No it isnt. There are many forms of third position economics that dont follow the usual binary. Take social credit for example..social credit nationalises credit, eliminates finance capital, implements a kind of UBI while allowing for private ownership. Another would be Distributism. A third would be Dirigisme.

There's a difference between a third position and The Third Position. The latter is a specific position which is how fascism sold itself: morality of the extreme right and the economic policy of the extreme left. Given DocSolarisReich 's posting history and capitalization of Third Position in his post, I'm pretty sure I'm right here.

See for further example the neo-fascist British organization International Third Position. International Third Position

Here's him using Third Position in caps.

I don't really claim an 'economic theory'. I guess Third Position if you held a gun to my head. The important thing is ordering the political-economy to the common good and the final end of man.

That does not mean that an adult must be treated like an adult. If you are an adult, and you make a bad decision, you must face the consequences. The secular left's attempts to destroy the link between bad behavior and negative consequences is a huge portion of what ails our society, and in practically no circumstance is it right to push things further down that path.

I agree with this a lot. They consented to the debt out of there own free will. Not paying disassociates crime and punishment, or in this case behavior and predictable outcomes. I take out loans and need to pay it back is pretty predictable.

 

[Wargamer08]

As someone who worked their way through University.....

No.

Unless, you're willing to pay me back every penny I worked for to pay for university.

Do you also not want a dime spent on roads you don’t use? I take it you plan on never using Medicaid or anything like a pension then too?

Student debt is one of the single biggest issues among young voters. It is one of the biggest factors in the increasingly radical leftism of universities. It does not matter that someone people won’t benefit from it, the debts need to be forgiven and a more reasonable structure put it place.

 

[Morphic Tide]

So, policy thought for dealing with Student Debt: Forgive the interest on current loans and, moving forward, mandate a limit of interest rate change that explicitly goes negative until reaching the principal. For example, limit initial annual interest rates to 2% for the first four years, disallow any higher than 10% interest, and have mandatory payments and interest rates summarize to being payed off in 20 years with no more than thrice the original principal payed. With all particulars within these guidelines agreed on upon signing the documentation for the loan and not allowed to change.

This makes for a system where student loan forgiveness is built into the qualifiers for a student loan to begin with, as they're disallowed from spectacular growth through a regular four-year degree, cannot reach lunacy, and will eventually be required to outright reverse interest until falling back to the original sum loaned. You have to pay more than what you got out of it, but over a very long time, and not spectacularly more (relative to twenty years of income, anyway).

...Franky, I think such a restriction on return-on-investment for loans across the board should be a thing because there are so damn many ways loans can get predatory. The Abrahamic religious concept of "usury" goes too far for my liking because there's inherently risks being taken in loans, and interest rates are the single most straightforward way to accommodate that:

Take longer to pay, therefor showing increased risk of failing to pay, then you end up paying more in the end. This having no limit, no open relation to actual amount of risk, and becoming a business model unto itself is the problem, not the concept of interest rates.

 

[ParadiseLost]

I take out loans and need to pay it back is pretty predictable.

This is nonsense; our system hasn't been built with that assumption for decades, and for good reason. Billions, probably trillions, in money owed for goods and services is forgiven every year.

Not allowing bankruptcy on student loans is (effectively) a massive artificial government subsidy for banks and lenders.

The assumption on the bank for every other type of loan - from mortgages to car loans and credit cards - is that a person can declare bankruptcy or not pay back the loan, so the bank needs to seek assurance that the person has a good reason to pay back the loan.

Every time the government has tried to guarantee loans through some method its ended in disaster; student loans are just the latest example, and the government should be owning up to it here too.

 

[Airedale260]

The real problem there is that a lot of people don't actually understand why their degree is valued in the workplace, and a lot of people aim for degrees that aren't actually valued where they want to work.

Yeah, I have a UK friend who had four or five 8 hour finals. Its just excessive.

It's the equivalent of an IQ test, basically. The problem is that the traditional role of a university was for certain subjects where others were through trade schools or apprenticeships, and that's changed.

It's a complete mess. Though secondary school exams would probably hurt me -I really did horribly in math and science. Now, I understand accounting, auditing, and statistics just fine, and history and civics have always been easy subjects. But if my chances of getting into a school to study my field of choice depend as much on unrelated subjects and do badly on because I'm just not good at them...that's just as bad a system because it locks me out of my preferred field anyway. Especially when the alternatives are technical roles where my aptitude isn't the greatest (and despite having a decently high IQ anyway).

Or is it "they look at the whole picture as a tie-breaker, but acing your chosen fields even if you suck at algebra means you have a decent chance at getting into Oxford since you clearly have the aptitude for your preferred field"?

Do you also not want a dime spent on roads you don’t use? I take it you plan on never using Medicaid or anything like a pension then too?

False equivalency is false.

Paying taxes for roads is something that is covered under general welfare/public works, since it has tangible benefits to society. Same with programs like Social or Medicare.

A college degree, however, does not have anything like that. Bear Ribs has a point where the colleges make much of their reputations and alumni connections as an excuse for the cost of their product, but at the end of the day it's no guarantee that it'll land you a job in your chosen field. For some people it isn't a big deal, but for others it is a huge deal breaker.

I don't think we are at the level where fraud charges should be leveled, but academia has degenerated into a giant mess. Primary and secondary education have basically pawned their responsibilities off to colleges, and it has resulted in a giant disaster.

 

[ParadiseLost]

False equivalency is false.

Paying taxes for roads is something that is covered under general welfare/public works, since it has tangible benefits to society. Same with programs like Social or Medicare.

A college degree, however, does not have anything like that. Bear Ribs has a point where the colleges make much of their reputations and alumni connections as an excuse for the cost of their product, but at the end of the day it's no guarantee that it'll land you a job in your chosen field. For some people it isn't a big deal, but for others it is a huge deal breaker.

I don't think we are at the level where fraud charges should be leveled, but academia has degenerated into a giant mess. Primary and secondary education have basically pawned their responsibilities off to colleges, and it has resulted in a giant disaster.

This is wrong.

While college education has gone overboard, the amount of colleges in America and the universality of college education has definitely significantly effected the general welfare, both for bad, but also for good.

America has managed to cause massive brain drain throughout the world, and has a huge population of qualified service professionals, because of its colleges. A huge amount of America's growth is attributable to colleges.

There are problems with excessive college attendance, but generalizing the value of college is extremely inaccurate. There is a huge different between overpriced lower to mid level colleges and Cal Tech, MIT, Stanford, and other top colleges.

 

[Abhorsen]

This is nonsense; our system hasn't been built with that assumption for decades, and for good reason. Billions, probably trillions, in money owed for goods and services is forgiven every year.

Not allowing bankruptcy on student loans is (effectively) a massive artificial government subsidy for banks and lenders.

The assumption on the bank for every other type of loan - from mortgages to car loans and credit cards - is that a person can declare bankruptcy or not pay back the loan, so the bank needs to seek assurance that the person has a good reason to pay back the loan.

Every time the government has tried to guarantee loans through some method its ended in disaster; student loans are just the latest example, and the government should be owning up to it here too.

There is no way in hell trillions are forgiven every year. And yes, the economy does rely on people paying what they owe, or there being consequences. Almost all banks in the US rely on mortgages, which is a loan that needs to be paid. Most other debt? Also paid. This includes commercial paper, Treasury bills, and Credit Card debt, and I can go on. And you can usually figure out about how likely it is to be repaid by looking at the interest rate minus inflation. The lower that number, the safer the investment.

Also, bankruptcy is not forgiveness. Bankruptcy involves losing what got you into debt in the first place. But we can't do that for colleges. Hence the only options are the following for college loans: legally guaranteed loans, no loans, or free college. Because the only thing in the world that keeps loans available at any sorta interest rate is that they are legally guaranteed. Otherwise tell me what is people graduating then going through bankruptcy? It's just the logical option that saves tens of thousands of dollars, as you can't lose a degree in bankruptcy.