Loans that can't be discharged are the problem. Tuition went out the roof when universities discovered this gold mine.
We could go back to government guaranteed loans based on financial circumstances. And we could go back to tuition rates that were compatible with working your way through college. That system worked pretty well. It did drop some students through the cracks because their families were too wealthy for them to qualify and they couldn't or wouldn't work their way to tuition, but it seems like it did a lot less damage than the current system.
Student loans seem to be a massive part of the problem of out of control tuition increases. The National Bureau of Economic Research published this study in 2016 that showed that changes to the Federal Student Loan Program accounted for the majority of the 106% increase in tuition between 1987 and 2010. Whether that's some right-wing scheme to divert attention from reduction of states' funding of public universities I haven't looked into, but it seems to me that it's at least a significant factor on its face.
Your logic completes ignores costs of business. Property taxes. Utilities. Staffing. Those must still be covered
Your also skipping the dual function of universities as research institutions.
What you're describing is a community college. Which are fine, and do a great job. But they don't excel at giving deep specialized knowledge, or advancing the frontiers of human knowledge.
They're just not equipped with the staff or materials.
Reworking the foundation of how we do advanced education and research in our society seems quite a bit more work than making a program where the taxpayers just pay for qualifying people to get as much education as they want.
You're talking about changes that will take a generation or more to settle. While these things are in flux, professors will lose their jobs, research grants and budgets will be gutted, and educational assets will be liquidized (imagine museums being sold off to private collections - this is incredibly damaging to the collective knowledge base). Meanwhile, the generations that wait for prices to come down will be left having to educate themselves on the internet, which not everyone has the motivational drive to do or the ability to spot which sources are providing reliable, accurate material they can learn from.
I get that something's gotta give, but banning loans altogether ain't it unless your entire goal is to turn Gen A's moniker into Ass-Backwards.
Not all degrees can be done in a classroom with a projector
Context.
I am a non traditional student, who has spent a significant amount of time working between highschool and college. The degree is about $18k/year for tuition. My STEM degree has a track record of 100% job placement, in your degree field, within one year of graduation. and, with a BS, average starting salary is approaching $80k.
With average rent and stuff, lets call it about $25k/year for the degree. Maybe $30k.
Is there stuff that the university is spending money on that they shouldn't? Yes. But, we also have many millions of dollars in equipment, some for undergrad, and some for graduated program use. All that equipment/lab spaces takes up space, and that equipment, our professors, and the reputation of our graduates are what makes the companies want to hire from pur school. We're not even that big of a school, but we have a large reputation for academics.
If you started cutting funding and forcing downsizing, you're losing decades of experience im teaching, many hundreds of millions in labs and equipment, and reducing the quality of the education that can be offered.
Now, I will grant you that some schools are too expensive, or degrees aren't worth the cost. And yes, changes in student loan structures are needed, but blanket statements, like that loans should be made illegal, is painting the issue with too broad of a brush stroke. What about making student loans able to be discharged in bankruptcy, and not being federally guaranteed? That could create an environment where loan companies are denying loans based on the cost vs income potential of the degree. Even with that though, we want to be very careful that it is structured in a way that is not going to disenfranchise low income students or minorities. Some degrees will either disappear, or get a lot cheaper. If you can't get a loan for a $400k underwater basket weaving degree, then it will either go away, or get cheaper.
A lot of programs need space and equipment to effectively produce a good product. You don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water.
You are saddling the horse from behind.
Yea, the education must get cheaper. A lot. But the lever to do that is a cost adjustment for the education, not artificially lowering demand by discriminating against the poor even more.
This only works if the product isn't in demand. Degrees are in high demand - jobs require them, better jobs require multiple and higher prestige degrees. That isn't going to change.
Instead those rich enough would still get a degree, but middle and lower classes would be cut out. In the end it would create a wider gap between the classes.
A. That would only be true in a culture where employers don't think you need a degree for basic jobs. From what I've seen, the US isn't like that.
B. Even if people are practically able to turn down uni, all the universities will most likely agree to keep prices high, similar to what landlords do. If all of them keep their prices high, then all of them get more money.
Education is how people get out of poverty op. The issue is that the US has a dog eat dog fuck the poor mentality that keeps the ladders out of poverty out of reach then blames them for their situation. The only thing that should determine whether you get into college should be your capability to do the work or not. Not what is or is not in your bank account.
The actual solution is to make college free given academic benchmarks are hit and institute mechanisms to keep costs under control that go beyond "how can we maximize profit?"
So education for the wealthy only? Bugger off.
No. I predict we would revert to the status quo of 20-100 years ago, with very affordable state-run schools providing excellent education, and high price private schools catering to the rich. Cheap schools got expensive because we allowed the for-profit student loan industry to run wild.
Assuming nothing is done to curb the recent capitalist tendencies of universities to inflate tuition then yeah it would be mostly restricted to the wealthy. It might be possible that market forces would coerce them to become cheaper again in order to not end up getting shut down from lack of funding from lower enrollment though.
It's also possible that lack of access to higher education would cause SOME kind of populist uprising, which people then hope would lead sweeping economic and social reforms.
But I'm increasingly pessimistic that populist uprisings in America would lead anywhere other than Christian fascism.
I think student loans are a symptom of the problem. But not the problem itself. The problem is that college is so incredibly unaffordable for many American students. If higher education wasn't so absurdly expensive, many students could take out fewer loans.
They are the cause for the high tuition. I don't have it on me, but I saw a graph showing that when Biden made Student Loans impossible to forgive via Bankruptcy, the prices for tuition positively skyrocketed.
when Biden made Student Loans impossible to forgive via Bankruptcy
That's a curious way to describe Republican-led, bipartisan legislation with where Biden was one of 18 Democratic votes in the Senate.
While he didn't do it by himself, his support was critical in getting it passed:
That seems valid. I think at least part of the problem is culture. Millennials were taught that college is a necessary stepping stone to a superior job, which it was in previous generations, but not so much nowadays.
Given the other massive catastrophic defects in the fabric of our society, making student loans illegal makes about as much sense as outlawing flat tires. The law you'll probably write isn't going to punish the people who need to be punished, and it won't help the people you're trying to help.
I'm from a country with free university education and we also have student loans available.
Here's something that works for us: forget about private universities, invest in federal or state owned collages so that they can compete with the private ones.
Do a scholarship program where students can get free entry into these universities if their grades are high enough in high school, or make it dependent on an entry exam. Those that don't get in have a paid option that's still partially funded by the state or federal government.
Student loans will still be useful, not for tuition but for families who can't afford to send their kids to study in the cities where the universities are located.
That's a fair point, where I live we have a point system for entry and you get the majority of your points through your grades. You also get points if you're economically disadvantaged and some other factors like certain disabilities, if I remember correctly.
It seems from the outside that a systematic change would indeed be a good idea, not something that would just help the poor but address the root cause of why people become poor in the first place.
I personally believe that society in general should be healthy and educated. If your citizens aren't sick and/or dumb, there's a higher likelihood of the country as a whole having a better economy with a higher quality of life. Besides, it's just good for humanity to treat sick people and educate those who are trying to contribute to society.
I don't believe that there should be an individual cost for these items. I don't think that a rich person should be healthy while a poor person remains sick or worse. I also don't think that a rich person should have a great education while a poor person stays held back from not being able to afford school. In my opinion, this economic disparity doesn't make sense.
It does make sense that a rich person might live in a large house while a poor person lives in a quaint apartment, or a rich person has a PlayStation while a poor person may not have one. In the US, your health and your education is in the same market as PlayStations. To me, this doesn't make sense at all.
Exactly this. I grew up poor and didn't have a quiet place to study. My grades suffered greatly as a result, and a number of other reasons. I needed education for upward mobility.
After struggling to get an education, finally in my 30s I eas able to get out of poverty.
Ah yes, let's make getting an accredited degree something only the wealthy can afford, that'll do well for the working class you betcha.
Class mobility is stagnant enough, I truly cannot see any upside to this for the vast majority of people.
Ban, no. Cap, maybe. Completely overhaul, yes.
This is just off-the-cuff; I haven't thought about the implications of all of these. But I think it would help significantly.
Completely nonsensical and screws everyone involved.
Student loans are supposed to be an investment the government takes in its population. If it works properly then the money that the government spent on the students tuition is both paid back monetarily by the student as well as societally because now you have an educated citizen providing ever increasing tax revenue. If you make student loans illegal you not only make it impossible for students to educate themselves beyond public school you destroy the entire post secondary school industry now that so few can afford to educate themselves.
What needs to happen is cutting out all the middleman bullshit and just making post secondary education free with your taxes, at least a couple years worth. If someone wants to be a doctor or a lawyer or someone who needs to have more than a couple years worth then sure that can be on their dime. Otherwise those first 4 years are just unnecessarily saddling people with mountains of debt that there is no guarantee they can pay back after they are done
Generally oppose.
We would need massive structural changes in education and funding before banning student debt; you'd need to make university free, and give students a living stipend while they were there, as loans usually cover living expenses as well. I can't see that happening in the current political climate. So if we simply outlawed educational loans, the effect would be that millions of people would no longer have access to higher education at all.
The idea that you can learn things on the internet ignores the fact that the internet is rife with misinformation--i.e., bullshit and outright lies--and it allowed people to get into thought bubbles, which higher education fights against pretty effectively.
I want to add:
Most books have never been digitized. Most information that you would learn in college is still in books and not on the Internet. You can't replace access to information (and reading that information) in college with lack of access to information (and thus not reading that information) online.
In addition, the Internet doesn't give you access to passionate subject-matter experts who are necessary guides to help us travel down the path of acquiring the knowledge that they have. Sure, there's recordings of MOOC lectures, but they become outdated and you can't ask them questions or have them help you by giving useful assignments and answer your questions and give you constructive criticism.
If higher education is going to work we would do better to pay those experts (the poor teachers) a fair living wage so that they can focus on the quality of their teaching and not be desperately trying to survive and navigate departmental politics while hoping that bureaucratic administrators don't cut the library budget (again) while dumping money into a new football field (why is sports part of college anyway? Why can't there be a separate and unrelated sports-academy system for the sports people so that it's impossible to misappropriate from academic budgets in favor of sports?).
Totally agree.
In addition, the Internet doesn’t give you access to passionate subject-matter expert
You can find them on Discord servers, message boards, and YouTube channels. But knowing who is actually an SME, and who has a great line of believable bullshit, is quite challenging. In a university system, you have a group of peers that are making that determination.
I hate capitalist economics, but the ease of obtaining student loans is one of the reasons for the high price of college tuition.
If student loans didn't exist, then most people would not be paying outrageous tuitions. Colleges will be forced to accomodate.
Canada recently stopped charging interest on their student loans, that goes a long way to affordability. The other thing though is just plain cost of education. It can be cheaper to get a 4-year degree from a Canadian University than take one year of a comparable program in the US.
There's no such thing as capitalism without a state. It cannot exist.
I can agree that it lies with the state, but that doesn't absolve capitalism. It's the capitalist state, and we shouldn't separate the two.
I feel the same way about that as I do about making ALL education - K through 16 (or tech/vocational) FREE.
I am all for it. We have way too many stupid people shoving their voices in matters that don't concern them. Educated would be better.
That's not at all what OP proposed though. They want to keep tuition as is, just eliminate loans.
Where does it say that?
Imagine if they made student loans illegal, with current tuition prices in America there literally arent enough people wealthy enough to afford to keep the schools full.
The schools would either have to close, or find a way to make attending them affordable. As it is they can charge an arm and a leg, convince people to take loans, its all someone elses problem in 10 years and the "someone else" isnt the school.
Right, but I don't like that idea in the least. Loans - gone. Need for loans - gone. Education available for all - reduction of trumpistic stupidity - I am in favor of intelligent humans opposed to the ongoing increase in stupid ones.
You may know everything, but no degree no luck?
Why not think a but further? Money for people that need it, free universities? Like... in the EU?
What issue are you looking to solve? You state that you believe people are able to seek out, and attain their education independently through resources like the internet. So why would it matter if there are alternatives that cost money which one can pay, and receive loans for?
It matters because American culture currently prefers everyone to have a college degree as opposed to any other type of education. [...] If this avenue was cut off then the attitude of the public would change to allow other means of education.
I completely agree that our favoring of, or requiring of post-secondary degrees for employement is an important cultural issue. I don't agree, however, that the solution is to make the provision of loans illegal -- illegalization is rarely anything else than a band-aid on top of a gaping wound. An argument could be made that the government provision of student loans should be stopped (in countries where that occurs e.g. Canada), but I don't think the solution is to simply make all student loans illegal.
and then yoke them into debt for the rest of their lives.
Hm, that is an assumption. There's a few issues with that statement. The total cost of one's loans are directly related to the cost of the post-secondary institution that they decide to attend. There is little reason to go to a very expensive institution. I do understand that some employers are elitist in that they won't hire anybody outside of an ivy league school, but I would wager that that issue is not very prevalent -- the free market should take up the slack. Furthermore, one's ability to get out of such debt is related to the income that they expect from employment after attaining their degree, as well as their level of monetary responsibility, and savviness. If one decides to blindly go into student debt for studies that will offer little in return, that is one's own risk to take. You must also not forget that there is no requirement that one must do white-collar work. Trades do not require such degrees, and are just as well-paying, if not better.
with destroying your life
(͡•_ ͡• )
Loans can’t be free in a capitalist society. No one would offer them.
I presume that anywhere where interest-free loans are offered, they are offered by that country's government. Canada, for example, as of April 1st 2023, offers federal student loans interest-free. Depending on the province, some may not have interest on provincial loans, as well.
That’s the only way it makes any sense.
You see, even under capitalism, the government is allowed to do stuff, even provide services under actual cost.
This is called a public service, and yes, I know, it's the government doing stuff, and that sounds like that scary socialism, but you see:
It's not. It's what the government is supposed to be doing.
Better solution would be a cap on tuition imo.
But even no interest loans or at the very least let them be discharged in bankruptcy would be better than what we have.
It's not the tuition, it's the funding being cut by the states that's the problem (for public universities). States used to fund universities significantly more than they do now.
It's not the tuition? The same tuition that has risen 70% in the last 20 years? The same tuition that colleges know they can charge any amount cuz the government will give out loans regardless. That's not the issue?
I'm not saying colleges aren't getting less state funding but I just don't see colleges lowering tuition if they got more state funding. They'd keep charging more cuz they know they can.
Health insurance first please.
In the short term, only the children of the wealthy could continue into higher education. Anyone else who had dreams of doing anything that required higher ed, including professions that are already in short supply like doctors, nurses, and pharmacists, would be SOL. I can see how "starve the beast" makes an appealing, easy to understand fix for the issues in higher education, but I think the cost to people is too high to do it like that.
It wasn't that long ago that college was free if you could get in. It doesn't make any sense to prevent smart people from being educated just because of money. They'll put far more back into the economy as educated workers than it would cost to send them to college, especially if we stop the huge inflation in administrative pay that's happened lately.
The loans in my country aren't too bad.
It's not a normal loan, it doesn't appear on my credit checks.
It's provided by the government and has low interest.
You only pay it back once you earn over a certain amount and they take a single digit percentage of your wages.
It's more like a graduate tax as paying it off doesn't matter, short of not wanting it taken from your wages.
I earn around double the national average and pay around 100 a month. Which isn't a huge amount. Basically a decent meal out + drinks a month.
Yeah. "Internet education" 🤓
(EDIT: You can hire me for the job. I'm right on top of 'mount stupid' in the Dunning-Kruger effect. I'm an expert in shitposting and a self-taught know-it-all when it gets to know what american politics gets wrong. I'd even volunteer some strong oppinions on gun laws.)
That's the wrong question. Just nationalize higher education and subsidize or make it free, at least to the point the we're producing enough engineers, medical doctors, scientists, artists, and etcetera every year.
Yeah, I would be 100% on board with living in a society that says "go as far as you can". If people doing the teaching say that a person is able to benefit and they have room, I want that person to learn.
A more educated society is a benefit to everyone, not just the person who's getting the education.
Why make it illegal? Why not offer only federal loans?
How about:
20 year loan, 4.125% fixed rate 30 year loan, 4.375% fixed rate
No early repayment penalties and maybe interest returned incentives for full repayment return before term at certain benchmarks.
The average debt for a 4-year Bachelor's degree is $34,700. At the end of 20 years the total repayment amount would be $36,131.375, 30 years would be $36,218.125.
Looks good to me.
Why not make it free? At the end of the education cycle the student will get a job and start paying taxes. Isn't that what society needs? Having educated people to do various jobs. Why putting that behind a crazy paywall?
I’d be in favor of that too. My point was to highlight that it’s not the loans themselves that are the problem.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. Those aren’t APRs, they are the fixed loan rates. Whatever amount is borrowed is repaid plus 4.125% or 4.375% interest depending on the term selected.
It’s like a reverse bond. The government has established that those rates are a fair return on money they “borrow” from citizens in bonds, it seems fair to give the same terms in the other direction.
I wouldn't say outlawing loans solves anything. Capping interest rates, sure - probably even at a pretty modest figure. Making repayment reasonably flexible is also a good idea. But the underlying problem is that the tuitions themselves are insane, leading to insanity when trying to pay it all off, no matter how it's financed. Subsidies or grants or loans (or specifically messing with any of them) seem like workarounds for the insane and largely arbitrary/"greedflated" price tag.
As a Norwegian, I paid maybe a couple hundred USD per year in pure fees - all my student loan practically went to rent (cheap at the time) and groceries (admittedly less cheap in Norway). Was it an Ivy League whatever-the-fuck education? No, it stank - but I got out into the world with a paper that said I could do work. And in geekier lines of work, even that might not have been strictly necessary, assuming you know the craft.
Chicken and egg. The tuitions have been able to reach the insane heights due to the ready availability of these loans.
It was a lot harder to get loans thirty years ago. Almost on par with the criteria for any other personal loan. A four year CompSci degree that could be had for under $25K, in total, opened the door to a $45K to $60K entry level position for a typical graduate.
Availability of loans broke wide open, under the guise of providing opportunity, and now the same degree costs 5-10x with yet the typical entry level salary remains more or less the same, give or take a few inflation points.
Not without destroying Citizen United legal premise first which I am also in favor of doing.
Right now spending money == free speech
Then giving loans is free speech, too. That is the the tackle.
It would definitely force colleges to bring down prices to a reasonable level.
University study for useful degrees that benefit society should be free and paid for by society. It used to be the case in my country until they decided to take a leaf out of America's book and screw everyone over.
So for example, something like an art degree should be paid (with no interest imo) however most STEM degrees should be free. Same with nursing and similar degrees too.
It's ok if these free degrees come with strings attached, such as having to work and apply your skills in the country for X years as a minimum.
Art can bring joy to life. Joy brings productivity. See the issue with what you’ve stated?
What you describe is to some extent existing in multiple countries. Basically the degrees in industries that lack specialists get more free slots whereas the others get less. As a student you can still start studying for a fee, if you don't match the requirements (usually it is based on grades) but you can get to a free slot later on if your grades are good enough.
Meme making is a degree level activity now? God damn...
I think it's a great idea. It'll be really good for society when most of your population are finally highly educated and have their own PhDs in internet research!
I also look forward to the day where you Americans beg Cuba for a humanitarian dispatch of doctors to treat your plague and leprosy epidemics.
Go for it.
Let's just make state owned universities and community/junior college funded by a tax on employers that require college degrees for their jobs with free tuition and free required learning materials. The issue isn't the loans or the cost, it's that corporations are lumping those costs on the employees and the corporations are reaping the benefits of an educated workforce without appropriately compensating their employees for their knowledge.
Consider that maybe people shouldn't be taking 50k in debt right out of highschool for a degree they aren't sure they really want in a field that's already over saturated. I feel for the kids who were young and dumb and goaded into signing on the dotted line but ultimately it was their choice to take on debt and they reap what they sow.
In general, I'm opposed to the idea. College professors don't work for free, and colleges have to pay them. Like it or not, we live in a capitalist society, and everyone needs to be paid. You could raise taxes and fund college publicly, but then you're just passing off the cost of a college education to the taxpayers.
What does need to happen is a tighter regulation of tuition fees. A student should be able to take out a student loan, work a minimum wage job to pay for rent and personal expenses, and be able to pay off their student loan within a few years of graduation. The problem right now is that even if a college student manages to get a job in their field immediately after school, they're stuck paying student loans for a decade or more. 50 years ago, you could work a job flipping burgers, pay for school, and be firmly on your feet a few years after you get your degree. I went to college about 20 years ago, and tuition fees have just about doubled since then. The cost of higher education has far outpaced the average income of a college student.
Nobody should get a free ride; students should pay for school, but they shouldn't be in crippling debt afterwards. There needs to be legislation that forces the cost of education to fit with the minimum wage.
Nobody should get a free ride
Why?
If you send someone to school for free, somebody is still paying for it. Use childhood education for example; property owners pay for schools with their property taxes, regardless of whether or not they have children in school.
People should pay for themselves, but the cost of education needs to be reasonable enough that they can.
I think the answer to this is to make more community colleges offer four year degrees. They are mainly funded through property taxes just like grade school and the professors get paid just fine. $300 per class is a reasonable fee for students.
In general, I'm opposed to the idea. College professors don't work for free, and colleges have to pay them.
Professors don't make up near as much of the bill as the administrators and coaches that pull down 7-figure salaries. There's almost as much bloat in the US University system as in US Healthcare. The answer to both is the same: they should ideally be free. Failing that, it should be illegal for either to be profitable businesses.
thanks for using Leebra!
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Loans aren't the problem. Insane loan debt is a symptom of an unsustainable higher education system.
You can learn a lot on your own, but many careers require a formal education (medicine, law, engineering, etc.). By itself, banning student loans within our current system merely makes it harder for poorer people to attain those careers.
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