There is something really rotten with loan forgiveness. The left ignores and dismisses this point , but it is unequivocally unfair to people who study real disciplines and get real jobs and pay their loans.
Although I do see a problem with the loan complex. At 18 years old you really don’t understand the economics of the burden. Ther…
There is something really rotten with loan forgiveness. The left ignores and dismisses this point , but it is unequivocally unfair to people who study real disciplines and get real jobs and pay their loans.
Although I do see a problem with the loan complex. At 18 years old you really don’t understand the economics of the burden. There has to be a better way. Perhaps a simple solution is to require students pursue a real major? Happy for the taxpayers to risk capital on potential engineers, but these liberal studies are terrible in so many ways. Most of these kids just show up at college and “take classes” with no real dedication to an investment in skill development.
• Private tuition, fees, room and board per year: $2,930 (inflation adjusted: $18,140)
• Public tuition, fees, room and board per year: $1,410 (inflation adjusted: $8,730)
• Adults with a bachelor's degree: 11.4%
2017
• Private tuition, fees, room and board per year: $46,990 (inflation adjusted: $48,380)
• Public tuition, fees, room and board per year: $20,790 (inflation adjusted: $21,400)
• Adults with a bachelor's degree: 34.2%
That's what the combination of the federal student loan and the "everyone goes to college" mindset has made. And outside of engineering, does anyone really think the education these kids are getting today is superior to that of 50 years ago?
I've read through a lot of comments bemoaning loan forgiveness and making suggestions for dealing with debt. Not one person has suggested that students take a year or two to work and save money while living with their parents.
A diligent young person can save enough to cover the first two years' tuition, and co-op jobs can cover the rest. Why does higher education need to follow high school immediately?
The one-two years of work is a good idea for maturity and focus to be able to complete a four year degree in four years. Bless the heart of the student who assumes the luxury of dithering and being unfocused in college and needing 6 years or more to leave with loads of debt and no degree, because they will get bitten on their backside by loan repayment. It is also equally absurd that many universities do not guarantee that they will offer the classes needed to allow a student enrolled in a four year program to succeed in graduating in four years.
How many students pay that out of pocket? At least students from lower income families. And who borrows $75 K per year for education that doesn't lead to similarly gainful employment?
There are plenty of students from wealthy families who pay these exhorbitant amounts for useless degrees. Students from families that didn't throw money around tend to get scholarships that cover most of the tuition.
I've heard a proposal to make loan amount commensurate with predicted income based on a student's chosen major major. Engineering? Maximum allowable, as this major predicts high income after completion. Gender studies (or any other major that leads to jobs involving fry oil and a small hat)? Minimum allowable, because that loan will never be paid. This might also return students to considering value rather than fads when it comes to higher education.
When gender studies, literature, philosophy, etc. is the educational domain of only the privileged few with trust funds that can afford to attend universities and not be concerned about a salary after years of expensive study then what is the result? Perhaps it is the current group of professors that are teaching at many universities who talk about social justice from gated communities; who understand that there is a need for John Kerry to use a private jet and their children to attend private schools; or can condemn an innocent baker of racism and accept a colleague that planned a genocide. Maybe, a few intellectuals "do you want fries with that" and saw the struggle and pride of their parents' hard work would bring a much needed honesty and evaluation to the "studies."
We need to construct and fund an educational system that heeds John W Gardner's advice when he wrote, " The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.”
Just a word of caution, engineering is made of of different fields, such as civil, mechanical, electrical and aerospace. There are employment booms and busts in those fields, and the curriculum in each is remarkably different.
During high school my son was the high school loan officer. He loaned money to selected students at 30% interest calculated weekly. We didn’t know at the time but we taught all our kids about finance and prudence, and all are financially stable adults.
He had hundreds of dollars in cash around his room when he left home because he understood the concept of delayed/denied gratification.
If an eighteen year old is ignorant of basic financial concepts that’s on the parents.
It’s hard to turn back the clock on a system that has allowed universities to raise tuition with no consequences for decades. It’s become a dog chasing its tail. The government should have never taken on loan guarantees - the universities needed to have some skin in the game. Not sure how to go back now.
Simple: just set a degree-wide loan limit = average amount a person with your major makes three years after graduation. The kicker is that a person with a gender studies degree may be flipping burgers or brewing coffee. Those get averaged in as well. Can’t limit the wages just to the 7 people who find jobs studying gender.
Don't fool yourself. Every government agency and most corporations now have diversity, equity and inclusion departments with jobs for "studies" majors. They are well-paid obstacles to productivity.
Turn college loan policy back to the states and get it out of the federal government.. Most states would divorce themselves from the process, while Cali would guarantee all undocumented migrants 6 years of free tuition. But the ultimate solution is to get the feds out of that business.
Reduce demand. The world needs doctors, lawyers, engineers, and teachers (I’m sure the list can be expanded a bit), and those folks probably need a higher education. Most vocations don’t require it (even if those in the given vocation think that they do). Universities are businesses, and they turn out a lot of garbage products. Stop buying.
Are you better off with a four-year degree in business or four years of sales experience? With a four-year degree in literature or four years as a working newspaper reporter? With a four-year degree in music or four years of playing gigs? With the exception of physical sciences, math, engineering and medicine, I think most college degrees are a poor investment. Maybe law, but then do we really need to subsidize more lawyers?
Historically, university degrees were never supposed to be an economic "investment" at all. They are supposed to be for the brightest and most gifted to study the best ideas in the history of the world with the goal of becoming a more virtuous person who might have a few original thoughts in the course of his lifetime and maybe be able to use one of them to improve the world in some small way.
Where we went wrong was allowing our corporations to talk us into converting our universities into job training centers. We had apprenticeship programs and internships for that, but big companies like it better when someone else (taxpayer or student) picks up the tab for their future employees' training.
Other than a few small schools, there's almost no one who actually teaches "the liberal arts" anymore, as in the study of the best ideas in the history of the world. Over the last decade, Hillsdale College has largely become the Harvard of classical school families for exactly this reason.
The better way is to get the federal government out of the process and let financial institutions and universities accept the risk for the debt. Let the universities decide whether a $100K loan for a 'whatever' studies degree is worth the risk of default.
The college industry needs to be disconnected from our federal government as we've created a progressive indoctrination program that's being subsidized by hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. Tuition costs have risen at six times the inflation rate, while the product has become less valuable. That only happens with federal intervention.
The student loan approval process has divorced itself from actual actuarial science and approved loans that aren't based on risk, but according to the benefit of the Universities, or the progressive movement, while putting the taxpayers at risk.
Correct. Schools need to assume responsibility for the loan money they are currently receiving in full, up front, while they have zero stake in the game for its repayment. This has incentivized schools to drive up costs that the loans have to increase to meet, and they walk away with the money, while the student (aka "vehicle for the money") is stuck with all the risk and responsibility.
I'm a Democrat, but I opposed this "forgiveness" program because it does nothing to address the larger issues but issue a one time band-aid for those already stuck with the consequences. It should have come witsh more strings attached for institutions - both lenders and educational institutions - to bear the ultimate risks for defaults, to incentivize driving down costs and issuing loans on the supply side. And frankly, employers need to be reined in as well on their hiring requirements. If they demand 4 year degrees for everything above "fry cook" then they need to be spending the money to provide for that workforce.
Well said and so true! The “endowments” of many of these universities are staggering! It’s criminal that they are not only tax exempt, but also that they are allowed to sit on that kind of money, acting as hedge funds (and pushing ESG, I’m sure). That money should be required by law to be used to fund, among other things, student scholarships and loans. Period.
I agree, the system we have now is flooding the market with skills that are not needed, classic overproduction. But the producer, the schools, are insulated by the government from the economic risks of what they are doing. A cluster fuck for sure.
I say put the credit risk on the schools. Make them assess the student’s potential to repay. This will reduce the production worthless degrees as well as reduce tuition prices. It will also shrink the pie, less students going to college and some poorly run schools going belly up, which would be good for the overall quality of the system.
Thanks for the link. Good comments. Any party not wholly owned by the professional-managerial class could implement his idea of putting schools on the hook for graduates whose degrees aren't worth anything economically. Right now, only 1 party appears even close to "not owned by the PMC", but you never know.
There is something really rotten with loan forgiveness. The left ignores and dismisses this point , but it is unequivocally unfair to people who study real disciplines and get real jobs and pay their loans.
Although I do see a problem with the loan complex. At 18 years old you really don’t understand the economics of the burden. There has to be a better way. Perhaps a simple solution is to require students pursue a real major? Happy for the taxpayers to risk capital on potential engineers, but these liberal studies are terrible in so many ways. Most of these kids just show up at college and “take classes” with no real dedication to an investment in skill development.
The loans are too burdensome because college tuition has skyrocketed.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/05/18/cost-of-college-the-year-you-were-born/39479153/
1971:
• Private tuition, fees, room and board per year: $2,930 (inflation adjusted: $18,140)
• Public tuition, fees, room and board per year: $1,410 (inflation adjusted: $8,730)
• Adults with a bachelor's degree: 11.4%
2017
• Private tuition, fees, room and board per year: $46,990 (inflation adjusted: $48,380)
• Public tuition, fees, room and board per year: $20,790 (inflation adjusted: $21,400)
• Adults with a bachelor's degree: 34.2%
That's what the combination of the federal student loan and the "everyone goes to college" mindset has made. And outside of engineering, does anyone really think the education these kids are getting today is superior to that of 50 years ago?
(and maybe medicine)
I've read through a lot of comments bemoaning loan forgiveness and making suggestions for dealing with debt. Not one person has suggested that students take a year or two to work and save money while living with their parents.
A diligent young person can save enough to cover the first two years' tuition, and co-op jobs can cover the rest. Why does higher education need to follow high school immediately?
The one-two years of work is a good idea for maturity and focus to be able to complete a four year degree in four years. Bless the heart of the student who assumes the luxury of dithering and being unfocused in college and needing 6 years or more to leave with loads of debt and no degree, because they will get bitten on their backside by loan repayment. It is also equally absurd that many universities do not guarantee that they will offer the classes needed to allow a student enrolled in a four year program to succeed in graduating in four years.
I had no idea that it was so bad in the US. It's much more organized in Canada.
Not sure how much you think tuition costs, but saving up $150,000 in cash in 2 years is quite an accomplishment (at $75k/year tuition).
How many students pay that out of pocket? At least students from lower income families. And who borrows $75 K per year for education that doesn't lead to similarly gainful employment?
There are plenty of students from wealthy families who pay these exhorbitant amounts for useless degrees. Students from families that didn't throw money around tend to get scholarships that cover most of the tuition.
That's my point - telling people to "work for a while to build savings and then pay out of pocket" is not remotely practical advice nowadays.
As a fellow Canadian, it's much better up here, but tuition rates in the US are just ridiculous.
I've heard a proposal to make loan amount commensurate with predicted income based on a student's chosen major major. Engineering? Maximum allowable, as this major predicts high income after completion. Gender studies (or any other major that leads to jobs involving fry oil and a small hat)? Minimum allowable, because that loan will never be paid. This might also return students to considering value rather than fads when it comes to higher education.
When gender studies, literature, philosophy, etc. is the educational domain of only the privileged few with trust funds that can afford to attend universities and not be concerned about a salary after years of expensive study then what is the result? Perhaps it is the current group of professors that are teaching at many universities who talk about social justice from gated communities; who understand that there is a need for John Kerry to use a private jet and their children to attend private schools; or can condemn an innocent baker of racism and accept a colleague that planned a genocide. Maybe, a few intellectuals "do you want fries with that" and saw the struggle and pride of their parents' hard work would bring a much needed honesty and evaluation to the "studies."
We need to construct and fund an educational system that heeds John W Gardner's advice when he wrote, " The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.”
What a brilliant piece of advice. Nobody needs a social justice professor when the sink clogs up.
Just a word of caution, engineering is made of of different fields, such as civil, mechanical, electrical and aerospace. There are employment booms and busts in those fields, and the curriculum in each is remarkably different.
Just as in medicine, where incomes vary wildly from pediatricians to neurosurgeons. None go hungry, though.
True enough, although there were a lot of unemployed aerospace engineers back in the day. And I knew some bitter civil engineers once.
Don’t forget: Obamacare federalize the entire student loan process.
https://blog.independent.org/2018/02/04/surprise-obamacare-projections-on-student-loan-profitability-hit-a-snag/
During high school my son was the high school loan officer. He loaned money to selected students at 30% interest calculated weekly. We didn’t know at the time but we taught all our kids about finance and prudence, and all are financially stable adults.
He had hundreds of dollars in cash around his room when he left home because he understood the concept of delayed/denied gratification.
If an eighteen year old is ignorant of basic financial concepts that’s on the parents.
You are right but many of these parents, if a child even has a parent at home, are also financially ignorant.
True and that’s a terrible situation al the way around.
But it has nothing to do with age. It has everything to do with parenting.
Tell him I'm hiring :)
Since he’s leaving the military very soon he may take you up on that!
It’s hard to turn back the clock on a system that has allowed universities to raise tuition with no consequences for decades. It’s become a dog chasing its tail. The government should have never taken on loan guarantees - the universities needed to have some skin in the game. Not sure how to go back now.
Simple: just set a degree-wide loan limit = average amount a person with your major makes three years after graduation. The kicker is that a person with a gender studies degree may be flipping burgers or brewing coffee. Those get averaged in as well. Can’t limit the wages just to the 7 people who find jobs studying gender.
Don't fool yourself. Every government agency and most corporations now have diversity, equity and inclusion departments with jobs for "studies" majors. They are well-paid obstacles to productivity.
Yes, but are there ~enough~ high-paying jobs to absorb all of the useless?
Not even close
Turn college loan policy back to the states and get it out of the federal government.. Most states would divorce themselves from the process, while Cali would guarantee all undocumented migrants 6 years of free tuition. But the ultimate solution is to get the feds out of that business.
Reduce demand. The world needs doctors, lawyers, engineers, and teachers (I’m sure the list can be expanded a bit), and those folks probably need a higher education. Most vocations don’t require it (even if those in the given vocation think that they do). Universities are businesses, and they turn out a lot of garbage products. Stop buying.
Are you better off with a four-year degree in business or four years of sales experience? With a four-year degree in literature or four years as a working newspaper reporter? With a four-year degree in music or four years of playing gigs? With the exception of physical sciences, math, engineering and medicine, I think most college degrees are a poor investment. Maybe law, but then do we really need to subsidize more lawyers?
Historically, university degrees were never supposed to be an economic "investment" at all. They are supposed to be for the brightest and most gifted to study the best ideas in the history of the world with the goal of becoming a more virtuous person who might have a few original thoughts in the course of his lifetime and maybe be able to use one of them to improve the world in some small way.
Where we went wrong was allowing our corporations to talk us into converting our universities into job training centers. We had apprenticeship programs and internships for that, but big companies like it better when someone else (taxpayer or student) picks up the tab for their future employees' training.
Love your first paragraph!
The second I think is a lesser cause.
This ^^
There is still enormous value in the "liberal arts". We just need to separate "career skills" from "academics".
Other than a few small schools, there's almost no one who actually teaches "the liberal arts" anymore, as in the study of the best ideas in the history of the world. Over the last decade, Hillsdale College has largely become the Harvard of classical school families for exactly this reason.
Any curriculum that ends with 'Studies' needs to be defunded. It's purely, in nearly all cases, indoctrination.
The better way is to get the federal government out of the process and let financial institutions and universities accept the risk for the debt. Let the universities decide whether a $100K loan for a 'whatever' studies degree is worth the risk of default.
The college industry needs to be disconnected from our federal government as we've created a progressive indoctrination program that's being subsidized by hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. Tuition costs have risen at six times the inflation rate, while the product has become less valuable. That only happens with federal intervention.
The student loan approval process has divorced itself from actual actuarial science and approved loans that aren't based on risk, but according to the benefit of the Universities, or the progressive movement, while putting the taxpayers at risk.
Correct. Schools need to assume responsibility for the loan money they are currently receiving in full, up front, while they have zero stake in the game for its repayment. This has incentivized schools to drive up costs that the loans have to increase to meet, and they walk away with the money, while the student (aka "vehicle for the money") is stuck with all the risk and responsibility.
I'm a Democrat, but I opposed this "forgiveness" program because it does nothing to address the larger issues but issue a one time band-aid for those already stuck with the consequences. It should have come witsh more strings attached for institutions - both lenders and educational institutions - to bear the ultimate risks for defaults, to incentivize driving down costs and issuing loans on the supply side. And frankly, employers need to be reined in as well on their hiring requirements. If they demand 4 year degrees for everything above "fry cook" then they need to be spending the money to provide for that workforce.
Well said and so true! The “endowments” of many of these universities are staggering! It’s criminal that they are not only tax exempt, but also that they are allowed to sit on that kind of money, acting as hedge funds (and pushing ESG, I’m sure). That money should be required by law to be used to fund, among other things, student scholarships and loans. Period.
I agree, the system we have now is flooding the market with skills that are not needed, classic overproduction. But the producer, the schools, are insulated by the government from the economic risks of what they are doing. A cluster fuck for sure.
I say put the credit risk on the schools. Make them assess the student’s potential to repay. This will reduce the production worthless degrees as well as reduce tuition prices. It will also shrink the pie, less students going to college and some poorly run schools going belly up, which would be good for the overall quality of the system.
yes ^^
Nailed it.
So much this!!
Interesting, I never thought about it that way. These loans are clearly not underwritten to any standard. More progressive BS
The Journal of Free Black Thought is running an excellent piece on Oregon's teachers union's successful effort to end standardized testing: https://freeblackthought.substack.com/p/for-equity-oregon-ditched-a-standardized
A professor of philosophy laid out his strategy for addressing the student loan debacle in the comments - Look for Jim - https://freeblackthought.substack.com/p/for-equity-oregon-ditched-a-standardized/comments"
Thanks for the link. Good comments. Any party not wholly owned by the professional-managerial class could implement his idea of putting schools on the hook for graduates whose degrees aren't worth anything economically. Right now, only 1 party appears even close to "not owned by the PMC", but you never know.