MoveOn.Org Calls For The Wiping Of Student Load Debt

[lothar]

The social policy of allowing lower class kids a shot is the argument for maintaining the student loan regime/FED guarantees. I'd go a third way, do away with both and do like Europe and publicly finance education and only those with strong merit could attend the university level free of charge..

The European system provides equal opportunity, but doesn't provide equal outcomes.

 

[halik]

Remove all federal government subsidizes on student loans and let lenders discriminate against majors.

This, going forward they should remove the no-dischargeable clause for student loans. My Applied Economics master's financed at 6.8% is subsidizing someone else's degree in medieval literature, financed at the same 6.8% rate.

 

[lothar]

This, going forward they should remove the no-dischargeable clause for student loans. My Applied Economics master's financed at 6.8% is subsidizing someone else's degree in medieval literature, financed at the same 6.8% rate.

JSt0rm: Then only wealthy people would get a degree in medieval literature.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=32459835#post32459835

 

[Dman8777]

Ok, great. So all those people can get jobs as professional voters. Hope it allows them to pay back the $80,000 in debt they chose to finance it with.

... On second thought, that's basically exactly what they are trying to do, isn't it? Get a degree, then 'vote' away their debt. Brilliant minds.



So you argue that people should study nothing but 'liberal arts' fields instead?

I'm going to assume that you would agree that people should seek a well-rounded education, with at least some time dedicated to the liberal arts. You seem to be arguing right now that it is more important for people to get degrees that allow them to be better informed in voting, and not to learn any skills that will benefit society in other ways.

Do you think the framers really envisioned a society without engineers, scientists, farmers, businessmen, and laborers?

The reason most universities require a few gen ed credits is because the public school system does such a crappy job of teaching the social sciences. You can focus all of your efforts and money on economically valued degrees but you'll end up with a bunch of easily manipulated drones who are ignorant of the past, allowing stupid things to continue repeating themselves.

What really costs society more? Too many medieval lit majors or de-regulation of the financial sector?

 

[mchammer187]

The reason most universities require a few gen ed credits is because the public school system does such a crappy job of teaching the social sciences. You can focus all of your efforts and money on economically valued degrees but you'll end up with a bunch of easily manipulated drones who are ignorant of the past, allowing stupid things to continue repeating themselves.

What really costs society more? Too many medieval lit majors or de-regulation of the financial sector?

Deregulation obviously but that doesn't mean the other is not a problem. I have no problem with "chasing your dream" but I do have a problem with having the government subsidize your dream at the expense of others who are fiscally prudent. Especially those opt to go to a 50K a year liberal arts college without worrying about how to pay for it.

 

[theevilsharpie]

The reason most universities require a few gen ed credits is because the public school system does such a crappy job of teaching the social sciences. You can focus all of your efforts and money on economically valued degrees but you'll end up with a bunch of easily manipulated drones who are ignorant of the past, allowing stupid things to continue repeating themselves.

Your statement is baseless, and your implied belief that people without "economically valued" degrees are wise and enlightened thinkers is equally absurd.

 

[thepd7]

Remove all federal government subsidizes on student loans and let lenders discriminate against majors.

Definitely. I don't necessarily think banks should discriminate by major but they could by test scores and school. IE, don't let someone with a crappy SAT score go to a $40k/year private school.

Then the schools would create zillions of in demand positions and then they would no longer be in demand.

Only wealthy people would go to school in liberal arts.

Good, why does anyone need a liberal arts degree? The way I see it, if you're degree can be gotten with a library card you should probably not pay more than a few thousand a year.

 

[Exterous]

And you expect an 18 year old to know this how? Kids are told throughout high school that if they want a good paying job, they HAVE to go to college. Regardless of the truth of that statement, that's our societal expectation of kids in high school these days. Hell, high schools are even judged based on the number of kids they succeed in sending off to 4 year universities. Yet, you somehow think that 18 year olds should be smart enough to ignore this constant pressure on them (which ultimately has resulted in tons of debt for useless majors.)

:thumbsup:

I busted my ass off in college pursuing a computer science degree, I applied for scholarships and made the grades such that I ended up only paying for about 1 year of my ~4.5 years in undergrad out of pocket. I continued to work hard in graduate school via a research assistantship.

I emerged with zero debt from a Tier one (US News) public university with an MS in CS. It was paid for with sweat, tears and sleepless nights at the library.

Some of us applied for a ton of scholarships only to be told we don't meet the income requirements. It seems there are some families that fall into the "too rich to pay for it out of pocket, not poor enough to qualify for assistance". My dad lost his job one year and - let me tell you - the scholarship opportunities just fell in my lap. Don't get me wrong there are a lot of options out there that can apply to everyone but very few that are widly available and are enough to make a dent in your payments.

Also - you can't just assume that people are able to work enough to pay for school as well. (Insert my personal work during college anecdote here) Where I went the Grad research programs were a rare, rare bird. We had 100 applicants for 2 positions.

I am not saying this applies to everyone - just that the automatic assumption that working hard during college will leave you with little to no debt is not necessarily the case

What's really funny is that we're on page 2 of this thread and no one has said a word about the high prices that public colleges and universities are charging the students. The local college here has increased tuition by 300% in less then 10 years and done nothing to cut the bloated non-educational bullshit programs. Cut the faculty fat, reduce spending or do any other common sense program to reduce spending. What they have been doing is cutting the number of students admitted and raising tuition. FFS start looking at some of the reasons why higher education is so expensive.

Having worked for a major university I am going to place the blame for that on the availability of cheap loan money for students. Students and families have access to cheap loan money so whats a couple of grand more for that college with the nicer facilities/professors? Universities then feel pressured to up the quality of services/buidings/teachings offered to attract students (and professors.) They need to make it worth the extra money to go there. It's a vicious cycle.

Many top universities also feel the pressure of trying to woo top experts in the field in order to keep their status as 'One of the Top 10 Universities in X' or whatever other title they are gunning for. They need to offer lavish pay/benefits/opportunities because other Universities are leveraging the cheap loan money of students to offer nearly as lavish pay/benefits/opportunities. Its another vicious cycle

 

[Exterous]

See my comment about in-state tuition. If the kids are truely worried about their student loans at graduation, there are plenty of decent (perhaps not Amazing) schools to go to that are pretty affordable ($4-$6k range). Not to mention doing things like a community college for 2 years then transferring to a 4-year university.

We need to get rid of the stigma about community colleges. There seems to be view (at least across several HS in this state) that if you go to a CC you are not as good/smart as the people who got right in to a high ranking 4 year. (You also may need the forethought to make sure that your credits will transfer)

There are opportunity costs for lending AND borrowing. The first mistake we make in the US is to not educate students in this type of finance as a requirement in HS. They should HAVE to take a basic personal finance class which discusses simple topics like TVM, micro-economics, personal finance, especially student loans and credit cards to show the basic impact of this type of decision. I think that alone would probably cure some of the issue and it'd only be a single semester. That one class alone would probably help significantly.

It has nothing to do with "stupid" kids. Plenty of smart kids take out these loans because they don't fully understand the consequences. Parents should be part of that but, as a whole, I think our society would be vastly improved by simple educational tweaks in finance.

I compeltely agree and have lobbied for this in the past (My wife and some of her colleagues finally got this instituted at her HS). It was shocking to us how few of the students had even basic finance management. Clearly we have a large segment of parents that are failing their children in terms of money management but given the current state of our collective finances I suspect more and more that this is a result of a general financial ignorance than anything else

 

[Exterous]

There is no one fix to this issue but I think the 4 below would make a pretty big dent in it

1. HS education about personal finances and a segment on paying for college
2. Make it harder to get outrageous amounts of loan money
3. Get rid of the idea that everyone needs to go to college*
4. Push more for a couple of years at a community college - esp if your major is 'undecided'

*I think this will be the hardest. not only do you have to change cultural values but there is such a glut of degrees out there that some places won't even look at your app unless you have a degree in something

I think there is too much abuse of the student loan program to allow discharge in bankruptcy or complete forgiveness (Just ask pretty much any college student loan advisor) but we do need to reign in the costs

 

[WackyDan]

I'm torn on the issue... on the one hand, it seems only fair that you should have the bankruptcy option if you're truly desperate.

but on the other hand, I can think of many, many, many people who would take 5-6 years to graduate from a $50,000/year school with a useless major, declare bankruptcy, and just live at home for a couple years waiting for their credit to improve.

Solution...

Allow bankruptcy on student debt only after ten years and if bankruptcy is leveraged to absolve themselves of student debt, then they lose the degree the loan paid for, employer is notified, etc.

 

[xBiffx]

Solution...

Allow bankruptcy on student debt only after ten years and if bankruptcy is leveraged to absolve themselves of student debt, then they lose the degree the loan paid for, employer is notified, etc.

Too bad after 10 years the degree you have is a distant second to the experience that you have acquired. So this would do nothing.

 

[lothar]

Solution...

Allow bankruptcy on student debt only after ten years and if bankruptcy is leveraged to absolve themselves of student debt, then they lose the degree the loan paid for, employer is notified, etc.

How many people actually use the degree they earned during college for their career?

Most speech/liberal arts/sociology/psychology/communication/journalism/film history/fine art history/medieval history/theater or a music majors end up working as an assistant manager at CVS, Target, or Wal-Mart.
Revoking their degree won't achieve anything because their degree has no relation to their current line of work. By the time you revoke their degrees, they might even have already been promoted to store manager.
You don't need any special degree to be a store(or assistant) manager at a Wal-Mart. You certainly don't need to rack up $50-100k debt to get a liberal arts or fine art history degree to work as a manager at Wal-Mart either.

Work experience > degree.

 

[WackyDan]

How many people actually use the degree they earned during college for their career?

Most speech/liberal arts/sociology/psychology/communication/journalism/film history/fine art history/medieval history/theater or a music majors end up working as an assistant manager at CVS, Target, or Wal-Mart.
Revoking their degree won't achieve anything because their degree has no relation to their current line of work. By the time you revoke their degrees, they might even have already been promoted to store manager.
You don't need any special degree to be a store(or assistant) manager at a Wal-Mart. You certainly don't need to rack up $50-100k debt to get a liberal arts or fine art history degree to work as a manager at Wal-Mart either.

Work experience > degree.

I agree. I also know that for a well paying job with benefits you need that degree just to get past HR and get an interview. I know as I don't have a degree, work for a large corp in a fairly technical customer facing role. I felt the sting of not having a degree when I was laid off last year for 8 months and I have 15 years of proven, productive experience in my industry.

 

[ElFenix]

We need to get rid of the stigma about community colleges. There seems to be view (at least across several HS in this state) that if you go to a CC you are not as good/smart as the people who got right in to a high ranking 4 year. (You also may need the forethought to make sure that your credits will transfer)

i wish i'd have done my language requirement at CC like a lot of other people did. they were mostly doing it to avoid the GPA hit but it was very cost effective as well.

Watch 'Waiting For Superman' and get back to me.

the wiki article on it doesn't show why public funding for 13th grade is necessarily a bad thing.

i'm going to guess most community colleges are publicly funded. with much better results for lower prices than thievery mills like UoP.

 

[Jaskalas]

yeah not gonna happen. We need reform in this area though.

What sort of reform, make it illegal to give out loans to these douchebags in the first place?

 

[xBiffx]

What sort of reform, make it illegal to give out loans to these douchebags in the first place?

LOL that made me laugh.

Maybe only give student loans when you have collateral...and I'm not talking about the prospects of a supposed future job. Something concrete.

 

[MagickMan]

Let them find a way to dig themselves out. I'm not paying for some hippie's Harvard degree in 16th century French poetry. Studying Ronsard is fine, but try picking something a little more marketable if you're going to take out >$100K in loans, cupcake.

 

[Darwin333]

there's a list of things that aren't dischargable, so, no, it's not ALL OTHER FORMS OF DEBT.

Pretty damn close, so far I have found the following that isn't dischargable:

student loans, most federal, state and local taxes, money borrowed on a credit card to pay those taxes, and child support and alimony, debts arising from a martial settlement or divorce decree, debts incurred based on fraudulent acts, debts from willful and malicious acts to another person or another person's property and debts from embezzlement, larceny, or a breach of fiduciary responsibility.

Perhaps I should have used "credit" instead of "debt".

 

[Dr. Detroit]

I thought the Govt will pay back the majority of your student loans if you go to work for them for a 3-6 year period of time?

Go down to your local Armed Services Recruiting Station and ask them about getting a $50K repayment so long as your complete your enlistment term.

Military before bankruptcy. Art history majors I hear make great mortar-men.

 

[Jaskalas]

LOL that made me laugh.

Maybe only give student loans when you have collateral...and I'm not talking about the prospects of a supposed future job. Something concrete.

Then they'd be protesting in the street that rich people took their collateral (car / home / wife) away from them. It'd be a protest to end the taking of collateral.

 

[xBiffx]

Then they'd be protesting in the street that rich people took their collateral (car / home / wife) away from them. It'd be a protest to end the taking of collateral.

You would think at some point they would figure out the only way out of this is to go to the #OccupyWork rally. Probably too much to ask.

 

[xBiffx]

Art history majors I hear make great mortar-men.

QFT and because I just fell out of my chair.