Yeah, I can work with these.
How can you graduate HS and go to college without understanding that?
California public colleges are significantly cheaper than most other states. Using them as a ruler is slightly misleading for anyone who doesn’t already live in California (my state, for example, is significantly more expensive for both the community colleges and the state schools). Also the “transfer from a two year school to a four year one” may not be the best advice these days. Only about 1 in 7 community college students end up with a bachelors; the pipeline has problems. It might be much better advice to go straight for the four year degree.
Hey, Dr Deth, are you my twin. Your collegiate path is very much like mine.
I do agree that the community college has its pitfalls. In my opinion, the greatest is getting sidetracked by life (new cars, babies, etc) and sometimes not being surrounding with other students who have the drive and talent to do great academically. However, those 2 year colleges often have great career programs. I absolutely do not think that college is for everyone, and absolutely think that employers need to consider that a degree may not be considered as a requirement for graduation.
As a younger man, I was in the Air Force, and worked with so many men and women who did not have a college degree. They were really good at their jobs…those jobs would require a degree in the public sector. So perhaps we need to look more closely at employment practices.
I received a great education in my opinion, and saved a lot of money in the process.
As an interesting aside, my two sons both went to Stanford (expensive) for their undergraduate degrees, but one had no debt and the other had $3500. They both graduated in 4 years, and were required by Stanford to work 10-20 hours per week. The actual total cost to our family was slightly less than UC Berkeley; obviously Stanford provided enormous amounts of financial grants which didn’t require repayment. Basically Stanford paid them to attend with academic scholarships.
There are various paths. My sons worked hard pre college, during college and post graduate. So these two examples show just a bit of the many ways to get that education.
Be careful what you incentivize. If schools are on the hook for students who don’t graduate, they’re going to be motivated to hand a diploma to every warm body, no matter how qualified. Or to be very restrictive with who they let in: only those who they’re reasonable confident will be successful, or who don’t need loans. That would make it much harder for at-risk (academically or financially) students to attend college in the first place.
Right now we’re incentivizing schools to add students let them take out large loans, let them flounder, and then drop them. The schools get their tuition & fees. The students end up in a really bad place - high student loan debt and no degree. (their default rate is expectedly much higher than people who at least got a degree (cite) as is their debt load).
Also, right now, all of the risk of the loan is on the side the less information and power…there’s something off there.
Thanks. Yeah, my college path took six years to get the sheepskin, since i worked nites as a security guard. My student loans= $1500.
I got my higher degree mostly online and nites while working since they gave me a raise for it.
Because the schools and banks responded to a government created incentive. People always act surprised when easily predictable second or third order effects eventually manifest.
It certainly isn’t “surprising” that a policy designed to line the pockets of the banks/lenders did just that.
Higher education is a duty or something like a duty we all owe to society. If you are capable and have the inclination, you should go. It’s fine not to go and a lot of people are better suited to doing other things, but overall it’s better if people do go.
Society benefits hugely from a more educated populace, especially from humanities and science degrees. STEM is probably a bit overrated right now as we look like killing our species while repeating the mistakes of history and having muddled ability to discuss economic and political choices.
So well done bookworms, you should get paid to live while you attend university and not have to pay to learn.
Don’t stick knowledge behind a paywall, show people that education is not just encouraged, it is something you owe society to do. Do education, it’s good.
Oh and some universities seem weird. Why such a big difference in fees? Sort that out too.
It seems to me the biggest complaint about student loan forgiveness is people being mad that they had to pay for something and others won’t.
I get it. It seems unfair. But we cannot progress as a society if everyone is mad that someone may get something that they did not have.
Suck it up. Move on.
We all pay for stuff we don’t “use”. That does not mean it is wrong that we pay it. I do not have children but help to pay for schools for people who do have children. And I am fine with that. It is important and, indeed, helps me in the end too.
The fact is higher education has gotten absurdly expensive and outstripped normal inflation and rational pricing long ago. We know why this happened.
It needs fixing. A start is loan forgiveness and if you paid off your $100k loan by busting your ass sorry you didn’t benefit. That is no reason to not do this.
My problem with straight-up forgiveness is it does nothing for fixing the problem going forward. Making student loans subject to bankruptcy does.
I agree that a one-time forgiveness of loans misses the larger issue. We don’t want to be here again.
Bankruptcy could sort some of it but government backed loans where the government assumes all of the risk and gets none of the profits is at the root of it.
No. There is also:
The cost
the fact that many don’t need a bailout and can & will pay it off.
The fact that many students spent like drunken sailors on tuition when there were cheaper choices.
And the general moral principle of following thru on your obligations.
We gave billionaires a trillion dollar tax break they absolutely did not need. Reverse that and paid for.
This is in the details. Should someone who went to Harvard at a cost of $120,000 be treated the same as some native of Nebraska who went to the University of Nebraska for $45,000? I don’t think so. I am sure some lines could be drawn even if nothing more than wiping up to (say) $50,000 of debt and anything more stands. Don’t nitpick…just an example and the point being this is certainly something to be figured out.
See point above
Most people do. The problem here is banks handed 18-year-olds $100,000 and told them it will all work out. No interest till they graduate, easy repayment plans, they’d have great jobs…no problem!
Where is the moral obligation of the banks and society? These kids see there are no good blue-collar jobs left and the ONLY road to prosperity is through a university.
Then the university jacks its prices outrageously and the kids graduate and there are none of the good jobs they thought would be there for them.
I’m not sure a moral argument that the kids owe something is supported here.
Lots better stuff to spend that on, like health insurance.
Look it is simple, allow them to again, like it used to be- discharge the debt in bankruptcy, and you dont need any more new laws, the court will determine if they are eligible. Simple, easy, fair.
I’d say they need a one-time loan forgiveness of up to $50,000 (certainly debatable) and THEN get bankruptcy back in to it.
Also, if the government is gong to back the loans the government should profit from them too. Take it away from banks.
Where does this $50K figure come from? Average student loan debt is $30K. Median is $17K.
And again - is the plan to do this again in 15-20 years when the current crop of high school students has amassed a lot of debt (possibly even more - because this forgiveness plan will shoot both tuition and student loan interest rates higher in the hope that another round of forgiveness will show up for the former an attempt to both recoup some of the lost money for the latter?)
From societal and policy levels, student loan debt is a problem - but it’s also the kind of problem that we have time to put together a comprehensive solution to. “Forgive up to $50k and figure out the details later” is the kind of thing you do when something needs to be done immediately.
Ok…$30k
Or $20k.
Quibble all you want over the final amount but there should be some loan forgiveness.
And then what?
I think that was what he meant when he said “certainly debatable”. It was a number that he’s not tied to, just throwing it out there to get the conversation started.
The last 7 words of what you quoted addressed that.