It is in folklore. The problem is, when I began graduate school, PhDs in folklore were teaching in English departments (Jan Brunvand, the guy who popularized “urban legend”), Anthropology departements (e.g. Alan Dundes at Berkeley), and a variety of other departments.
By the time I graduated, a number of changes in academic had taken place.
The ratio of graduates to tenure-track jobs shifted dramatically.
Humanities has been under threat across the academy, retrenching and less able to expand. Retiring folklorists were replaced with more mainstream specialists.
(these two are the biggest)
The rist of assessment culture: hiring committees in (say) English departments grew more reluctant to hire people whose degrees were not in English.
In my field specifically, terrible PR. People think that “folklore” is akin to entertaining kindergartnyers, or wasting time on stupid crap that’s not even true. So my degree is highly respected by those in the field, but occasionally highly disdained. That’s not my fault, but it’s also not a reason to forgive my student loans!
I’m not saying that my student loans should be forgiven at all. I’ve been paying them consistently for over ten years, and I’ll continue. What I’m saying is that some of the comments in this thread represent a simplistic assessment of the problem. A lot of us were caught flat-footed by massive economic shifts.
No offense. Truly no offense. One more time for the record: No offense.
But you have a PhD in folklore and your concern is that you were “caught flat-footed by massive economic shifts” that caused this degree to no longer be in demand in this era of technology? UCLA or not, this wasn’t a good investment.
No offense taken. I assume some ignorance, though: Folklorists specialize in the overlap between belief and narrative and social interaction, so it’s a field balanced between psychology, comparative literature, and anthropology; it is older than either psychology or anthropology and has a sophisticated theoretical literature. Why would a degree in folklore be any less employable than a degree in some other branch of the humanities, when prominent people with such degrees are employed in English and Anthropology departments?
But again, this isn’t about me. I am telling you that I know many people with degrees in all sorts of fields from prestigious institutions that have been unable to find full-time work. (And I have been continuously employed, albeit usually underemployed, since I graduated, so I’ll have to agree to disagree about the value of the degree: it’s hardly worthless.)
Let me put it this way: If bankruptcy exists at all, it should be an option for student loans. The fact that it currently exists for everything except student loans seems completely ass backwards to me.
EDIT: In other words, I can think of a few reasons not to, but those reasons apply to non-student loan related debt as well. I can’t think of any reason to single out student loans except to encourage banks to give bad loans to people who can’t pay them back.
Heh, I bet getting the degree was a lot of fun and interesting (and a butt ton of work). But you are comparing your degree from other humanities degrees in a thread that is discussing the economics of debt forgiveness. Perhaps you should have compared your degree to one in math, science or IT?
I’d respectfully suggest you’ve been talking with your fellow humanities PhDs and convincing yourselves how valuable your degrees are because the world needs folklore degrees. Not sure that’s reality. You pay your money and you take your chances as the man says. I would have taken my chances elsewhere. YMMV.
The only reason I brought it up was to show that the massive student loan debt wasn’t all from clueless, stupid people. I knew my lifetime earning potential was nowhere near that of someone with a degree in a STEM field, and I was okay with that. I and my colleagues had no way of knowing that I would almost never have full-time employment as an adult, because of the sea change that took place in my field while I was in school.
As you say, though, you pays your money and you takes your chances. This could—and does—happen in lots of fields. Technology has done a number on a huge number of fields, and brought new opportunities as well.
This is true, but at risk of getting anecdotal, I know several people with master’s degrees in STEM fields that can’t find work. It’s not because there aren’t jobs, it’s because they got the education and somehow missed that being a complete tool will cause you to not pass an interview.
Now, I don’t think Dr. Drake is a tool (AFAIK, he or she is a nice person), but I think something left out of many of these situations is that a college degree may be necessary for many jobs (even if only because employers overvalue a degree), but it is certainly not sufficient to get a job.
In cases where the degree is not even worth the “it checks the box” value, then I think a case can be made for the tuition dollars needing to be returned, as is the case with Corinthian, and in the case the tuition dollars can’t be returned, I think a case can be made for debt forgiveness.
Except for the reason that is already states - it’s an unsecured loan (after all, the bank can’t take your degree away if you choose not to pay), so it either needs to not be forgiveable (so loans will continue to be offered), taxpayers need to subsidize colleges (which I would like, but good luck getting that to happen in the US), or a lot of people are going to stop going to college.
You also cant (usually) discharge tax obligations , Alimony and child support,* Debts obtained through fraud, false pretenses or false representation
Debts you failed to schedule in time to allow creditors to file proofs of claim (unscheduled debts)
Debts for fraud while you were acting in a fiduciary capacity, or for embezzlement or larceny
Debts for willful and malicious injury
Debts for fines or penalties to governmental units
Debts for judgments in wrongful death or personal injury lawsuits resulting from motor vehicle, vessel or aircraft accidents while you were intoxicated
Condominium or cooperative association fees or assessments*
However, like I pointed out- many students are insolvent when they first leave college. Why wouldn’t all of them file Chapter 7?
Except student loans are given at below market rates. Allow them to be subject to regular bankruptcy laws, and the rates will go up significantly. And, as noted above, someone right out of college has little to lose by declaring bankruptcy, and you’re looking at even higher rates.
Now, as a libertarian-ish guy, I’m actually OK with letting the rates rise to market level. However, I’m thinking most of the folks here would not find that acceptable.
many people who jumped on the bandwagon and started majoring in computer science in 1999 wound up high and dry when they graduated to a burst bubble.
Law students who started just before the recession hit also got clobbered, even if they went to excellent schools.
There are no guarantees.
A friend of mine from college got a PhD in folklore long before the crunch and did well. I respect the field.
Well, yeah. That’s my point. We guarantee loans and then wonder why banks issue them to unqualified people, who then go on to earn very little money, don’t pay them back, and then leave taxpayers with the bill. The entire system of credit falls apart when you guarantee loans.
I mean, if the money’s guaranteed, why charge interest at all? Just calculate inflation using the CPI. The bank takes zero risk so there’s no reason to reward them. It just seems far, far more financially naive than, say, giving welfare to “lazy” people or paying inner-city women to pop out children or whatever other economic boogeymen people are always scared about. “If people can’t repay loans, let the government guarantee them” is equivalent to “if people are poor, just print more money”, IMO. Or “let them eat cake”. I’m not one to underestimate the stupidity of politicians, but even I have trouble believing legislators thought this was a good idea.
[QUOTE=yellowjacketcoder]
…the much-maligned Corinthian colleges group, which 350,000 students took out an average of $10K in student loans to attend, is a sham college with worthless degrees.
<snip>
I’m not so thrilled with the taxpayers picking up the tab for someone else’s bad decisions in picking a college without checking to see if that college was worthwhile first.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t know much about WyoTech offhand, but Heald College was pretty well-known and respected in the Bay Area. They were founded in 1863, and have among their alumni, A.P. Giannini, founder of Bank of America, so it’s not entirely unreasonable for an incoming student to think “This place is over 150 years old, the founder of one of the largest banks in the world took classes here, so they must be doing something right.”
If anything needs to be blamed, it’s the inflation of requirements for jobs. What purpose is there in requiring a bachelor’s degree for a receptionist or admin assistant? We don’t need perfunctory degrees, we need people with what are variously called soft skills or life skills - things like knowing how to show upon time, present themselves respectfully, look at you in the eye when having a conversation, etc. Oh, add to that list being able to go to the boss and say “I don’t like it here, so I’m quitting” rather than just not coming back from lunch on the first day.
How did you you rack up massive student loan debt in graduate school in California? Between tuition/fee remission and stipends I would think you’d come out ahead.
It’s not just about bad choices. Policy changes can make a big difference, too. In 2011 Congress allowed the subsidized graduate loan program to sunset. As a result, I will have to pay about 8% more for my law school education than I would otherwise. I worked full time, so I didn’t have to borrow that much, but 10% of 150,000 would be a crushing blow to many people.
Think of this like the mortgage market: banks are just as much to blame for bad mortgages as borrowers, because they’re supposed to investigate the borrower’s ability to pay.
As a loan guarantor (or direct lender), the feds should be making sure that borrowers will have the ability to repay. At present, it looks like the only requirement for federal loans is “was the school accredited by somebody, somewhere?”
Personally, I think it’s well past time the federal government got into the accreditation business itself. Not for the benefit of employers, but for the benefit of taxpayers whose money is going to for-profit diploma mills.
Some of it was changes in policy: a major tuition waiver was removed when I was two years into the program, meaning that graduate students were on the hook for full tuition. A lot of it was my own ignorance (=my fault) in choosing a program without knowing to ask about funding first; my department did not have full funding for its students. In retrospect, I should have switched programs because of that. There were insufficient TAships. I know a friend in Physics was making nearly $10K / year more than I was as a fourth-year student, simply because it was his fourth year as a TA while it was my first.
I made a lot of stupid financial decisions in my 20s, which is basically the definition of student loans.
My father paid for his college working a summer job at a paper factory. That was no longer possible by the time I was in college and is even less possible now. The reason for this is a cycle of good intentions and human nature.
People noticed that college graduates got better jobs than non college graduates and so more people wanted to go to college. When demand increases faster than supply, prices go up. In response to rising tuition governments started to offer loan programs and other forms of aid. This drove up the number of people who could afford college which drove up the demand and thus prices started rising even faster. Since the government guarantees the loan and makes the bankruptcy rules the loans are not dis-chargeable in bankruptcy. There is no risk for the banks and so anyone can get a loan. Since anyone can get a loan the higher education business is awash in money. Unscrupulous people then start opening colleges to get some of this money while fleecing ignorant students for their student loan money.
The only solution is to stop the cycle. Student loans should be treated like any other loans in bankruptcy and should not be subsidized at all. Student loans will be much harder to get and more expensive. Students will not be able to use them and placing offering useless diplomas will go out of business. Fewer people will go to college and this will lower demand and prices will have to fall. Legalizing the use of intelligence tests and encourage lower performing high school students into vocational education will also lower the demand for college degrees and cause college tuition to fall or at least stop it from rising so fast.
What do you mean, “legalizing the use of intelligence tests”? The SAT I is essentially an IQ test and it’s not illegal to use it in college admissions.
Exactly. Students are accepted to college in the US because most of them meet the criteria set by the institution, and these includes in most cases a minimum score in either the SAT or ACT. Despite what some think, not everyone who applies is admitted.
WITH one possible exception, and these are the diploma mills mentioned in the OP. Institutions that have so low standards that people who should not attend college, or at least should start by going to community college/2-year institutes/review their high school material, are allowed admission, and most likely graduation.
They should not be allowed to continue, or if they do, to depend on student loans.
I also want to reiterate what Voyager mentioned above. For some careers, it takes years to train. By the time the student graduates, it means that the economy has tanked or that a path that was not saturated 4-6 years ago is now full and there are very few job opportunities easily available.
For my profession, in the US, it can take roughly around… oh… 10 years or more. I’ve seen some “future of the profession” articles and graphics that mentioned how, around the time I graduated, there should be lots of demand. Well, the economy tanked, and tanked my career with it. It is recovering, but not to what it was before. I can tell you now that I think nobody should really study what I did, but at the time I started this pathway, nobody could have told me that or foreseen that. Hindsight is 20-20 and most of us don’t believe in fortunetellers.
Allowing the discharge of student loans through bankruptcy would be interesting. The rate of doctors and lawyers who declare bankruptcy would skyrocket. If strategic default on mortgages was bad a few years ago, strategic bankruptcy would dwarf that.
I actually think student loans/tuition will be the next bubble that impacts the overall US economy.