Student Debt Discussion! Oooooh a can of worms I have opened!

You do realize sometimes positions in your city can get filled right? Its not that hard of a concept to understand lol

 

But as a young college student you have the greatest tool of all. Mobility and nothing holding you down. If everything is dried up in your area, you either move industries or location. What other choice do you have? Starbucks? Hey that fine but its your choice.

 

I actually made my last student loan payment last month , But I have to drive 2 hours to and from work every day so yeah I can see why some people have issues with getting a job.

 

This is an excellent and relevant topic. Student loan is something on the order of a $1 Trillion dollars and it is crippling students and the economy. One of this nation's top priority should be to establish policies which allow for affordable higher educations. Students with student loan debt, I believe the national average is $24K, are not getting auto and housing loans and putting off consumption of other goods which are required to keep the economy growing. This is another sub-prime crisis just waiting to happen similiar to the mortgage debt crisis.

The government needs to regulate the higher education "racket." It is appalling that the cost of education has risen by, triple, sometimes quadruple that of the consumer price index (inflation), over the years. The cost of textbooks rising at often five times that of the rate of inflation.

Obviously government intervention is not very popular among conservatives and in particular libertarians...addressing specifically libertarians...it is probably the most absurd notion to think market corrections will "fix" everything on their own. Libertarianism does not work in the real World...it completely ignores the very real process of social/economic entropy which occurs when a system is simply "left alone." Without maintenance, the tendency is for a system to increase in entropy, to increase in disorder. It's an absurd philosophy when applied to actual real World applications and our higher education system is a prime example.

The education "market" has not self-corrected, the cost of getting an education and it's related costs, for example textbooks...have risen 3 - 4 times that of inflation...as a result students are graduating with crushing debt, thus limiting their consumer spending in other areas, home/auto purchases as examples. The current rate of student loan default is around 10%, if this increases significantly it will lead to another sub-prime crisis similar to the home mortgage crisis in 2009.

It is precisely why allowing markets to "self-correct" has disasterous results in the REAL World...and why libertarianism will remain forever, great on paper, but lousy when actually applied.

We need more government regulation and control in the higher education system, specifically to lower costs and alleviate the potential student debt bomb that awaits to explode on an unsuspectiing economy in the form of increasing loan defaults.

To sum up...

A consumer driven market is not self-correcting!

My opinion of course.

 

I don't know how the student loans system is structured in the US or how much per annum it is.

However here the loans system is quite humane as it banks on the willingness of the student to earn more and to succeed.
This is due to the fact that you only pay back after a certain amount of time after the completion of your course and when you earn above £21,000 per year.
Also most courses at university level are around £9,000 per year.

But that being said education is the one of biggest chunks of the budget and not all loans are recovered and are also available to EU students.
I think that certain courses need to have their fees capped so as to minimise the government's investment particularly with courses that have a very low probability of leading to higher earning jobs.

 

Agreed.

The student loan hoax is just another example of illicit government meddling in a market (see mortgages) it has no business in under do-gooder window dressing, but actually towards its own benefit, and the inevitable sorry if not disastrous results.

The gov-bureau-edu-union-MSM complex has poured billions of dollars of PR into convincing the people they will not have a happy, fulfilled life without a college degree. It is the second largest government beneficiary scam of the last 100 years right behind the "can't have a happy, fulfilled life without owning a large house and lots of crap to put in it" hoax. The proles continue to fall for these scams by the tens of millions.

We have all heard the "degree leads to higher income" stats blared out over and over at parents and children. Of course they don't tell you that the -habits- that make someone likely to delay gratification and complete a four year goal (of any type, degree or 70 golf score) have far more to do with the results than the hideously expensive pieces of paper themselves.

Now, college and graduate loan financiers, in cahoots and often the same people as college administrators, have successfully inflated the cost of postsecondary education into the stratosphere. The academic hub of the gov-bureau-edu-union-MSM complex has become hideously unjustly enriched by perpetuating what amounts to a fraud on the public. In the private sector, they would be shut down and sent to jail. The product is -that- oversold and overpromised.

Education is not a product, but a process that cannot be bought and sold. Those who seek to become educated will do so, those who don't value it never will regardless of the amount of tuition forked over. Edu bureaucrats like Warren will of course conveniently forget the fraudulent gov-edu complex role in getting this whole education fraud sh-t snowball rolling, and you won't hear a peep out of her about outrageously overpaid professors, administrators and other personnel at the trough. Surprise surprise.

 

Ya I agree with you. The sad thing is that the whole experiment seems to have backfired, every country needs more engineers but everyone goes for what they think will make them the most money, regardless of anything else. The interesting thing about engineers is that even though they're needed, the nature of their services means they won't pay as much (theoretically) as a lawyer or a stock broker even though it's clear that the world has a lesser need for more lawyers and stock brokers. What it comes down to is people's values are in the wrong place when they put money ahead of everything.

 

Assuming you find a job in the career you chose, there is absolutely nothing wrong with some debt. I truly don't understand the b!itching from some people. You pay of your loans; you'll probably be paying rent or just live at home to pay it off quicker, and as long as you don't lease a BMW as soon as your graduate how is this hard? Live within your means and within 5 yrs you should be golden and have your sh1t in order, unless your'e a maroon=)

 

Reading your posts makes me think of this SNL skit. And I agree, there isn't anything wrong with having some school debt. It is insane that people want to complicate the student debt issue with caps and what not. When you are going to college, you technically are the age of majority, and there really has to be a point in each person's life in which they take responsibility for the decisions and decide if debt is worth it. If we babysit children from cradle to grave they won't learn. Life has to teach some kids the hard lesson of making a good decision about taking out debt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb8hTzUoI54

 

Some of you saddled with student loans must have used that money for something other than school. Proof read your posts before hitting the post reply button.

 

Explains why they can't find jobs=)

 

Come on man, lets be honest, there's very little "Learning" anymore in anything, Public schools, Personal problems, etc.

Public schools = Indoctrination Stations
Why are we not taught anything about the real world in school? You know learning about paying taxes, explaining mortages, Balancing checkbooks?
We don't learn from these places, they give us an answer for a question and even if you prove the given answer is wrong they will deny it. (You'll also get a detention for being "Disruptive")

 

I always thought if the government were really serious about higher education that they'd increase funding for colleges so that tuition rates come down.

Lower tuition, and that, I think, is a win-win for everyone.

 

In public school, simple math can balance checkbooks, mortgages are understood with simple math plus percentages, and paying taxes is an obligation defined by tax codes which no one could learn! It's all right there in your public school system...

 

I advocate the public education system should provide college studies 100% funded by taxpayers. However, high school should end in grade 9 and college studies can begin in year 10...

 

Great idea but won't happen . Most of the kids are capable of handling College courses in 8th grade but government regulations ,like everything else it controls, won't let the majority gain intelligence over a minority. Don't forget everyone's equal in an unequal way . Some kids will be tradesmen and some will use the accelerated teaching for those type of jobs. Plus the university system that extorts the kids won't allow the elementary schools to teach accelerated courses and give the kids credit for them when they apply to a college. It's a big cluster screw. The government should stop giving loans to these universities that are over rated and are charging high rates for the school name . Government loans should only go to community colleges . The kids want $ for anything higher let the family pay for it , then watch the rates dive at these schools.

 

When we discuss these things we need to 'assume' that government can change, if not, all of our discussions are a waste of time.

IMO there is no government conspiracy to control anyone? The reason we don't do better in public education is a lack of money, a lack of change, a lack of finding consensus, and primarily because of voters and students who are all over the chart on the topic. Why can't government do better on any topic...because of voters...people!

Community colleges, many of which are great, started competing with universities and have done quite well. Public education could do the same.

All of this IMO goes back to the root reason for having public education? And no one, not the president or DofEd or anyone on this forum know the actual root reason for public education? If we don't know why we are doing something then how can we do it well? Why are the collective we so afraid to set solid public education goals then implement for success?

It's the Peter Principle! Collectively we simply are incapable of doing better...

 

It took me more then 15 years to pay off my student loan...due to hard times, a lack of priority and miscalculating the math in relation to principal and interest when a collection agency got it. Behavior like that will add thousands to your original amount. My student loan pretty much became another utility bill...something I paid seemingly indefinately, and my goal was to advance into jobs to cover all my expenses including that one. We just can't live above our means when we have debt.

When a person chooses to go college and take out loans, they should be responsible enough to understand they will pay the debt. Wishing and hoping tax payers will ultimately take it on ....isn't really a healthy attitude to get you ahead. Student loans is just one of many debt a person takes on in life. There is nothing special about it.