30% of America's Student Loan Borrowers Can't Keep Up After Six Years (cnbc.com) 287
The IRS recently ruled that under some circumstances employers can link their 401(k) matching contributions to the amount of an employee's student loan repayments -- making it easier for recent graduates to take advantage of this employer benefit. But that's one spot of good news in a sea of bad, according to one anonymous Slashdot reader:
Two new articles criticize America's student loan policies (under both the Obama and Trump administrations). CNBC cites reports that within six years, more than 15% of student borrowers had officially defaulted, while 10% more had stopped making payments and another 4.8% were at least 90 days late. And for-profit colleges fared even worse, where nearly 25% of graduates defaulted, and a total of 44% faced "some form of loan distress."
These trends were masked by Department of Education reports which stopped tracking repayment rates after just three years (reporting defaults rates of just 10%), according to Ben Miller, senior director for post-secondary education at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. "Official statistics present a relatively rosy picture of student debt. But looking at outcomes over more time and in greater detail shows that hundreds of thousands more borrowers from each cohort face troubles repaying."
These trends were masked by Department of Education reports which stopped tracking repayment rates after just three years (reporting defaults rates of just 10%), according to Ben Miller, senior director for post-secondary education at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. "Official statistics present a relatively rosy picture of student debt. But looking at outcomes over more time and in greater detail shows that hundreds of thousands more borrowers from each cohort face troubles repaying."
And of those that went to Trump University (Score:2, Funny)
100% can't keep up.
But MAGA
Re: (Score:3)
Trump "university" was never accredited, and thus students were never eligible for federal loans to cover admission.
Tax cuts for billionaires! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Go Betsy Devos!
Re: Tax cuts for billionaires! (Score:3, Insightful)
Betsy DeVos? How many people entered college, then left college, and fell years behind on their loan payments under Betsy DeVos? (Reminder, she's been in office less than two years.)
Betsy doesn't set admission criteria, Betsy doesn't set tuition rates, and she definitely didn't establish student loan repayment regulations... Pseudoscience ill-equipped, borrowing tens of thousands of dollars to finance remedial math and english classes to compensate for their miserable high school educations are a bit respon
Let's talk about debt and committment (Score:2, Insightful)
Help me out here; people accepted these loans, having access to the terms ahead of time, correct? They were adults, presumably, who made these commitments, right?
Why, then, should we be looking to forgive them for making bad choices? Stupid decisions should be painful, so as to teach people not to do them anymore.
I say this as someone who will be paying off his student loans for at least the next 20 years. I made a remarkably stupid decision and I'll own the consequences.
Re:Let's talk about debt and committment (Score:4, Interesting)
Stupid decisions should be painful, so as to teach people not to do them anymore.
This implies that attending college is a stupid decision. However, there is significant evidence to the contrary.
Honestly, someone should hit you upside the head for submitting that post because stupid decisions should be painful.
Re:Let's talk about debt and committment (Score:5, Informative)
This implies that attending college is a stupid decision. However, there is significant evidence to the contrary.
A college degree is correlated with financial success, but it is not clear if it causes that success, especially for artsy degrees. A tech degree is almost certainly worth it. A business degree is likely worth it. But not much else.
Re:Let's talk about debt and committment (Score:5, Insightful)
This implies that attending college is a stupid decision. However, there is significant evidence to the contrary.
Is there, though? What we have evidence for is the massive student debt problem across the country. Colleges may provide a boost in income, but apparently it's not enough to offset the cost; ie, they simply aren't worth it anymore.
That's what we have evidence showing. What were you suggesting?
Legally adults, probably, actually adults, (Score:3)
no fucking chance. I work K-12. Starting probably as early as elementary the lie that going to college will some how entirely protect you for life dropping you in to a high paying cushy job and all you have to do is plan your vacations is inculcated. This is the result of the shrill EVERYONE MUST GO TO COLLEGE!!! screaming for generations.
Education, like healthcare, should be good, and free, for all. We don't need more aircraft carriers.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
On a side note keep in mind. The cost of FREE will always collapse the system. Because those receiving services and those providing services have no skin in the game and will completely disregard those stuck with the bill (Middle Class Tax Payers).
Just my 2 cents
Re: (Score:2)
The cost of FREE will always collapse the system. Because those receiving services and those providing services have no skin in the game and will completely disregard those stuck with the bill (Middle Class Tax Payers).
Easy counter-example: Germany. Contrary to your statement, it doesn't appear to be collapsing, even though it offers free tuition.
Also, you see the problem on a very narrow time frame - but, after leaving college, the receivers of services earn larger salaries on average, and therefore pay larger taxes, so they do pay for their tuition.
There is also the Australian model, where tuition is free, but people who graduated pay back the tuition via a certain percent added to their tax. This payment is dependent o
Re: (Score:2)
An educated populace with highly trained workers including doctors and nurses has no benefit to the taxpayer?
Re: (Score:3)
So too many people go to college ... and the solution is to make it free so fewer people go?
And you are a school teacher? We may have found the root problem.
Re: (Score:3)
No, free means people don't take out loans they can never pay back and just like the health care means single payer which means driving a harder bargain and bringing price down. You're already paying for it since the Gov't backs the loans.
I also never said I was a school teacher I said I work K-12. Reading comprehension much, smart ass?
Re: (Score:2)
President Obama told that nation that it is everybody's patriotic duty to acquire some advanced education, but that doesn't mean everybody should go to college; for many this will mean technical training.
People are saying better things, in addition to what you talk about, but unfortunately not many of us are listening.
Of course he said that (Score:2)
Re:Let's talk about debt and committment (Score:5, Insightful)
Help me out here; people accepted these loans, having access to the terms ahead of time, correct? They were adults, presumably, who made these commitments, right?
Why, then, should we be looking to forgive them for making bad choices? Stupid decisions should be painful, so as to teach people not to do them anymore.
I say this as someone who will be paying off his student loans for at least the next 20 years. I made a remarkably stupid decision and I'll own the consequences.
True enough, but it's also true that incoming students are not well-qualified to figure out whether their education will result in good value for their money. An 18-year-old is taking on loans to pay for school because "everyone" says it's important. Or an older student is taking on loans to enable a career change because their existing setup isn't working out for them. Meanwhile, the school is like "Oh, yes, you absolutely need this, and here are some people to help pay for it."
I'm not saying that students shouldn't get to make these choices, or that they shouldn't have consequences. But we should realize that a completely unregulated market is going to result in a lot of unnecessary inefficiencies and pain, and insofar as schooling benefits society, society should optimize for benefits and against inefficiencies. The trite way to put this is that we don't need a billion people with advanced degrees in Underwater Basketry, but we also don't need a million Registered Nurses or teaching assistants who spend their lives under stress because they are subject to debts they didn't realize they'd never be able to pay off.
Re: (Score:2)
True enough, but it's also true that incoming students are not well-qualified to figure out whether their education will result in good value for their money.
The educators are qualified to figure this out, but they are foregoing this responsibility to get the money.
Re: (Score:2)
True enough, but it's also true that incoming students are not well-qualified to figure out whether their education will result in good value for their money. An 18-year-old is taking on loans to pay for school because "everyone" says it's important. Or an older student is taking on loans to enable a career change because their existing setup isn't working out for them. Meanwhile, the school is like "Oh, yes, you absolutely need this, and here are some people to help pay for it."
Well said. It can be hard to think through options and consequences without a lot of experience, especially when there seems to be a tide of propaganda pushing towards an expensive gamble.
Re: (Score:3)
True enough, but it's also true that incoming students are not well-qualified to figure out whether their education will result in good value for their money. An 18-year-old is taking on loans to pay for school because "everyone" says it's important. Or an older student is taking on loans to enable a career change because their existing setup isn't working out for them. Meanwhile, the school is like "Oh, yes, you absolutely need this, and here are some people to help pay for it."
If an 18 year old is not well qualified to figure out whether their education will result in good value, then wouldn't it be safe to argue they are not well qualified to figure out the election issues of the day? Sign contracts without consent of a legal guardian? Make medial decisions?
18 year olds are either responsible enough to be adults or they are not responsible enough to be adults. They cannot play both sides of the fence. If they agreed to the term of the loan, they should be held accountable to
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The bank does know it can get its money back as their loans cannot be dismissed through bankruptcy, unlike most other kinds of debt that the bank can hand out.
Re:Let's talk about debt and committment (Score:5, Interesting)
No one is talking about loan forgiveness. What the article is about the mess they and society are in.
Here are the facts:
1. If you have a HS diploma you will live with your parents until 40 and have a life of poverty. HR won't give you the chance to build your resume outside of your grocery store or McDonalds. It kind of forces you to go to a trade school or a university of you want a non horrible sucky life. Don't bother talking about your friend Jon or yourself if you developed computer skills in the late 1990s. That was abnormal and still a very minority statistic.
2. Cost of living is VERY VERY HIGH. You can't attack the kids for not planning when your first jobs pay $35,000 a year with no experience. How the fuck can you pay rent of $1500 a month with that kind of salary? Let alone pay off the loan and a car payment?
3. Asshole College Admins jerked up the prices. Free money Wahoo! What do you do? You jack up prices to the max. Now you Mr. Smarty Pants who doesn't want to pay $30,000 a semester has to compete with Mike Ditwiit who didn't do the math. If you don't pay he will!
4. Federal Government guaranteeing the loans. Hey if you can't loose either way why not keep screwing people over and raising prices?
5. State Governments no longer funding Universities. This is a HUGE one. During the recession of the early 2000s states no longer subsidize the universities due to the free money from the federal student loan program.
So you can blame the kids for being stupid but if you are older which I assume you are, then you have no right to speak as you never had to pay these outrageous prices the youngers folks pay today. In the 1970s you could work at McDonalds and pay your Harvard Degree no problem. This is not true today.
It is a mess in America and it needs fixing FAST. Solution would be caps on the Federal Student Loan Program and maybe an ability to pay calculation put in. If the degree doesn't have the odds statistically of being able to be paid then the government funds less. This will force states to pay back into the University program and lower costs for students. Also the Federal Government could finance trade schools and community colleges differently. Not everyone is meant for University and less than 1/3 people have degrees. Plumbing for example is much cheaper to learn and pays good if you have plenty of experience. Maybe tax breaks for apprentice programs with plumbers, air craft techs, electricians, etc?
Also Maybe a discount tax for those who completed these programs for 5 years so they can keep more of what they earn as well as $40,000 is shit pay and even programmers starting out make $50,000 only if you don't have years of experience to back you up.
Re: (Score:2)
No one is talking about loan forgiveness. What the article is about the mess they and society are in.
That is the best summary of the problem so far.
The colleges mostly didn't raise prices (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
5. State Governments no longer funding Universities. This is a HUGE one. During the recession of the early 2000s states no longer subsidize the universities due to the free money from the federal student loan program.
At every state school I've been able to find detailed budgets, the per capita cost of education has more-or-less matched inflation back to at least 1980. The major difference is that in the 70s and 80s, 70-ish% of the cost was paid by state allocations, while in 2000s-10s, 60-ish% of the cost is paid by tuition. States spending on education has not increased as fast as enrollment, and the difference has to come from somewhere.
Problem is exacerbated by colleges competing for students by offering better cam
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No one is talking about loan forgiveness. What the article is about the mess they and society are in.
Here are the facts: 1. If you have a HS diploma you will live with your parents until 40 and have a life of poverty. HR won't give you the chance to build your resume outside of your grocery store or McDonalds. It kind of forces you to go to a trade school or a university of you want a non horrible sucky life. Don't bother talking about your friend Jon or yourself if you developed computer skills in the late 1990s. That was abnormal and still a very minority statistic.
2. Cost of living is VERY VERY HIGH. You can't attack the kids for not planning when your first jobs pay $35,000 a year with no experience. How the fuck can you pay rent of $1500 a month with that kind of salary? Let alone pay off the loan and a car payment?
So you can blame the kids for being stupid but if you are older which I assume you are, then you have no right to speak as you never had to pay these outrageous prices the youngers folks pay today. In the 1970s you could work at McDonalds and pay your Harvard Degree no problem. This is not true today.
Being one of those "older" persons, lucky enough to have parents who could balance between paying for a state college and taking out manageable loans, this is spot on. Back when I was doing this (mid-80's) I rubbed elbows with plenty of less-fortunate students who hustled at grocery-store jobs to make it happen.
But today, if your demographic is such that your parents are in a position where their feasible contribution to your education is $0, you are more or less screwed.
I witnessed this close-up-and-perso
Why don't we teach basic finances in high school? (Score:3)
Which is comple
Re:Why don't we teach basic finances in high schoo (Score:5, Insightful)
I never understood...
That is abundantly clear based on your nonsensical post.
Instead of making shit up in a failed attempt to prove your point, why don't you do a little research first? Start here: https://www.bls.gov/emp/chart-... [bls.gov]
HS Diploma: $712/week or $37k/yr
Bachelor's Degree: $1173/week, or $61k/yr
Sure, making up a number and choosing $10k/yr more per year makes college not seem worth it. Now redo your math with $24k/yr more. And don't forget to include the difference in unemployment rate and benefits too.
Re: (Score:3)
No one is talking about loan forgiveness. What the article is about the mess they and society are in.
Here are the facts: 1. If you have a HS diploma you will live with your parents until 40 and have a life of poverty. HR won't give you the chance to build your resume outside of your grocery store or McDonalds. It kind of forces you to go to a trade school or a university of you want a non horrible sucky life. Don't bother talking about your friend Jon or yourself if you developed computer skills in the late 1990s. That was abnormal and still a very minority statistic.
I'm calling BS. Sure I work as a Unix systems administration and I came into the field in 2000, however 4 out of 5 people in my department with ages ranging from 22 - retirement do not have college degrees. The people in other departments (wireline installers, telephony switch engineers, sales team, etc) I work with routinely make $75K - $130K and most (if not all) do not have college degrees. My uncles who work in various blue collar jobs (1 is a machinist, 1 is a carpenter, and 1 is a factory worker) o
Re: (Score:2)
All you need to do is declare student loans to be unsecured. If the taxpayers are no longer guaranteeing the loans, investors will no longer agree to finance 100k for an average student to get a degree in poetry. This will cause all the poetry colleges to lower the price of their poetry classes so that the students no longer receiving massive loans to take the useless classes. Once again students will be able to afford to attend poetry college by taking a part time job at Starbucks.
This is the free market.
The problem with that approach is young kids have 0 assets and 100% liability of the cost of the loan. They do not qualify. If they did qualify then they wouldn't need to go to college.
Some of the costs too were funded by federal and state programs too so the kid can go to Starbucks. There needs to be something but just less of it and secured on different amounts depending on the major and a force of state backing.
Re: (Score:2)
Once again students will be able to afford to attend poetry college by taking a part time job at Starbucks.
This is the free market.
And they will already have a job when they finish their poetry degree.
Let's talk about bad information from older people (Score:2)
When I borrowed a quarter million dollars to buy my house as a rather young man, it made me really nervous, but everyone older than me told me it would be great! Housing values always go up! They did go up. Then they crashed in 2008. Shit. Fortunately I had a job and could keep making the payments, or may have had to be underwater, and bankrupt.
Almost all older adults will tell younger adults they have to get a college degree, even if they have to borrow money, and government programs help them do it
Re: (Score:2)
Almost all older adults will tell younger adults they have to get a college degree, even if they have to borrow money, and government programs help them do it. It must be OK right? It must be good advice, right?
If some "financial advisor" gave the elderly such good investment advice as we give younger adults regarding housing and college, that "financial advisor" would be in jail.
I tell young people to get the best education they can get for the lowest price possible.
Also consider the job prospects and income potential the education will provide.
Re: (Score:2)
These were pre-college people that thought they were getting a good quality continued education. They got ripped off at a time where they did not yet have toe education needed to see that. The problem is that the scam is not that obvious and that in addition there is no good alternative. Any good college or university education pays for itself, we see that in Europe. But in the US, except for some few elite institutions, they seem to be primarily interested in separating the students from their money. The p
Re: (Score:2)
So, it's a stupid decision to go to college?
All colleges are expensive (some more than others). Not everyone has a rich uncle to pay for their college.
Maybe the problem is greedy colleges.
Re: (Score:2)
However you are right in that these are bad loans and should have gone trough way more screening as to if the recipient can pay off the loans. My personal gut feeling is that the clear majority of these bad loans are for people getting degrees in fields with pretty terrible job prospects and they were just auto approvi
Um... they're not adults (Score:2)
But let's ignore all that. Are you a Doctor? How about a mechanical engineer? Or a financial analyst? Are you all of those things? Are you John Galt? If not then at some point you're go
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm in agreement with you. These people knew the terms of their loan, accepted them and are not honoring their commitment.
I see a lot of folks running up loans at expensive institutions in majors that will make it near impossible to repay the loans.
Go to a community college for general education and transfer to a less expensive, local university. Especially for a generic liberal arts degree that will pay mid 30K range upon graduation.
I went this route for Electronics Engineering and have zero regrets. On
Re: (Score:3)
Help me out here; people accepted these loans, having access to the terms ahead of time, correct? They were adults, presumably, who made these commitments, right?
Why, then, should we be looking to forgive them for making bad choices? Stupid decisions should be painful, so as to teach people not to do them anymore.
I say this as someone who will be paying off his student loans for at least the next 20 years. I made a remarkably stupid decision and I'll own the consequences.
OK, I'll try to help you.
Adults who made these decisions should pay the painful consequences of their stupid decisions. That will teach people not to do it any more, and it will eliminate the stupid people from the economy.
You're only looking at one stupid guy, the student. I'm looking at the other stupid guy, the banker who issued the loan.
During the S&L crisis, one banker said, "Anybody can loan money. What makes you a banker is that you can get your money back again."
In other words, a banker is suppo
Re: (Score:3)
It's time we also start looking at greedy colleges who continue to jack up tuition.
Obvious solution: Enroll at a different college.
Re: Let's talk about debt and committment (Score:5, Informative)
You don't say? Because I had to fish a resume out of the trash from HR because it came from a community college instead of a recognizable one.
Colleges are like brand names. You might not like to hear it but a lot of people get filtered out because of bullshit HR drones picking 4 year colleges over community colleges.
Re: (Score:2)
You don't say? Because I had to fish a resume out of the trash from HR because it came from a community college instead of a recognizable one.
Colleges are like brand names. You might not like to hear it but a lot of people get filtered out because of bullshit HR drones picking 4 year colleges over community colleges.
So fix the actual problem -- HR people (and executives, and managers) who worship college brand names and/or use them as a lazy screening tool -- and the higher-tier colleges will lose the market power employers have freely given them. Until then, people may as well bitch about the sun rising in the east.
Re: Let's talk about debt and committment (Score:5, Insightful)
So fix the actual problem
The "actual problem" is one nobody here even wants to admit exists.
It's government guaranteed/backed student loans. Colleges and universities have every economic motivation under such a system to raise tuition to ridiculous extremes as the current reality has born out.
You end up with people who should not have gone to college saddled with debt they cannot hope to ever repay. Even those for whom a college education would otherwise be a good choice are saddled with enormous debt they'll be repaying for a significant fraction of their lives.
Get the government out of the student loan business.
Strat
Yep. I graduated with more money than I started (Score:5, Insightful)
You're absolutely right. It doesn't have to be that way, either.
I took a long break from college, going back later in life. By that time I had already learned some painful lessons abkut debt, having learned from my own mistakes.
I went to a very inexpensive state university and rather than graduating with a mountain of debt, I graduated with MORE money than the roughly $0 I had when I started school. I chose a degree in a field that's in demand, and a program I which I earned respected industry certifications like Cisco CCNA as part of my degree program. Halfway through school, the certifications and things I had learned allowed me to double my income.
Shortly after graduating, I landed a job making just shy of $100K in Texas (equivalent to $200k on the coasts).
Tuition at WGU is $6,000 / year, minus the $1,500 tax credit, so my total cost of school for four years $18,000. Except halfway through I had those certs which got me a job where my employer paid part, so the total cost to me was about $15,000. No need to graduate with $90,000 in student loans!
The $24,000 (or $15,000) cost of my degree was a great investment to start earning $100,000/year, so perhaps it makes sense for the government to encourage people to study fields that are in demand, via a school that provides good value. The problem is some people's idea of "fairness" means they have the government encouraging people to spend any amount of money to study any ridiculous thing.
If you want to see seven years at $50,000/year studying French History, you can sure do that if you have the $350,000 to spend. If you DON'T have $350,000, it's probably dumb to go $350,000 in debt studying French History at Yale. Perhaps the government shouldn't encourage people to do that.
No, for what I wish was the last time, that's not (Score:5, Insightful)
Public Universities are _public_. They don't operate on supply and demand. They don't raise prices just because they can. Again, I'm putting a kid through college and saw this first hand. My kid's program had half as many slots as qualified (GPU > 3.8) applicants. They used interviews, sports and volunteer activities to sort out who got in (no, they did not use skin color). If it was supply & demand they'd have just raised tuition unit they only had the # of applicants for slots. Like you do for a Britney Spears concert or a sports game.
What made the price of college sky rocket was Clinton & Bush slashed federal funding. Again, college was _always_ expensive. You didn't notice because 70-80% of the cost was paid by the federal government. The Mega Corps allowed this because they needed a trained workforce. Now that they've got H1-Bs and outsourcing they don't need us anymore; and they wanted those tax dollars back. So they bought off Congress & the last several presidents for tax cuts and had funding slashed. You and your children have been made obsolete.
Go drag your ass down to your local University and pull up some college newspapers on microfiche from the late 90s/early 2000s. You'll find story after story, all meticulously researched by college economics professors, discussion this and how loans would start cropping up leading to a debt crisis. What you will _not_ find is any discussion of this in the regular newspapers (outside of a few left wing rags). Our mass media is owned by billionaires and they squashed these stories.
Re: (Score:2)
The idea is that if there was a limited amount of money that students could pay for tuition then the colleges couldn't have such high tuition rates because the number of students would drop. If students could only get $5,000 in loans a year and schools kept their tuition, say at $15,000, then only ones that had enough funding to start with, worked enough to make up the difference while going to school, or took much fewer courses (depending on tuition structure) and spent twice as long to complete a degree.
O
Re: Let's talk about debt and committment (Score:2)
:facepalm: quit the semantics. Do you actually work in a large business? This is one occurrence of this problem and now I simply do my own resume vetting.
It ain't going to have any impact on the business world at large.
Re: Let's talk about debt and committment (Score:5, Informative)
Solution: Go to CC for the first 2 years, then transfer to the 4 year college for your junior and senior year. Your degree is identical to those who were there for all 4 years, but it cost you much less. The tuition is much less, and you can live at home rent free, with Mom buying the groceries.
At least in California, the 2 year community colleges are set up as "feeders" to the UC and CSU systems. It is much easier to transfer CC->UC than CSU->UC.
Re: (Score:2)
This works, but be prepared to spend more than 2 years at CC. The UC schools keep changing their requirements to transfer in, so it is very difficult to achieve the requirements in 2 years.
Re: Let's talk about debt and committment (Score:2)
If you are going to do the CC first then check with the 4 year college you plan to attend. Most 4 year colleges keep a list of which classes they give credit for and how it matches up that way you don't end up taking classes that don't transfer.
Re: (Score:3)
That's precisely what I'm doing right now, and I checked with BOTH the CC and the University about which courses will transfer and which courses are needed. There was often a disconnect between the information that our CC had about the program requirements of the University that they are a feeder school for. Just blindly taking classes and hoping for the best at transfer time is a recipe for disaster.
Plan ahead and it's 100% transferrable (Score:4, Informative)
Every syate i have lived in has guarantees about which credits transfer from a community college to a state university, will degree programs that transfer 100% of all credit. The guarantee is "if you get an associates degree in any of rhe following majors, all credit will transfer to a bachelor's degree in the same field at the state university".
If you take puppetry, ceramics, and floral design at the community college, those may not transfer toward a bachelor's in chemistry. In orser for the credit to transfer 100%, one needs to plan ahead and take appropriate courses. One easy way to get transfer credit to virtually any school is to take the core general studies courses - English, Math, History. Floral design probably won't transfer, so don't take that course expecting it will count toward your bachelor of science.
Re: Let's talk about debt and committment (Score:4, Informative)
The four year colleges don't like to give credit for community college classes.
In California, it is very clear which CC credits will transfer to UCs and CSUs. The students know this information upfront. Remedial classes for stuff you should have learned in high school does not transfer. Most other credits do transfer.
CC is an especially good choice for people that goofed off in high school. After 2 years at a CC, the 4 year colleges will only look at your CC grades, and ignore your HS GPA.
Re: (Score:2)
True, but ...
This isn't true, or it wasn't true.
The UC system kept changing the requirements for transfer and so people often found that another year at CC was required to transfer.
Nevertheless, I still recommend anyone in CA to take the CC + transfer route. Even though it may take longer, it's likely to leave the student with much lower debts. So much lower that the extra year doesn
Re: (Score:2)
More like it wasn't true, possibly, and if that was the case, that was a very long time ago. ASSIST.org [assist.org] has been around a very long time (when I used it as a student, its design didn't look crappy; that's how old that website is), and students have certain rights which prevents universities from making courses not transferable retroactively.
P.S. My recommendation to any current high-school student would be to use CC + transfer model as a "second bite at the apple." Apply to all the UCs and CSUs you want as
Re: (Score:2)
What changed was not what courses were transferable, but what credits were required to transfer into the junior year of a UC school.
Re: (Score:2)
That's not how articulation [wikipedia.org] works. Courses transfer in place of specific degree requirements at the target school. It's not changeable at will, and certainly not retroactively, unless they are changing the requirements of major itself (in which case the change is not targeted at the transfer students).
Re: (Score:2)
Also, a community college is (in most parts of US) a 2-year college. If the job "requires" a B.A. or B.S., of course the HR should not take an A.A. or A.S. as fulfilling the requirement.
If your HR is throwing out resumes from people with degrees from your state universities, then, yes, they have issues, and they will have problems (with being able to hire good people).
Re: Let's talk about debt and committment (Score:4, Insightful)
There's plenty of contempt to go around.
Colleges and the government have effectively conspired with each other to transfer vast amounts of wealth from A to B, leaving C holding the bag. While the adult students are stupid for accepting the terms, the colleges are taking advantage of their immaturity to write a blank check for unlimited funds..so of course the price of college skyrockets. Why wouldn't it? They've been given a license to print money, and it's assured because the government presses teachers and other educations to espouse the values of college degrees.
I don't know how this carousel stops, but it's going to violent and messy when it does.
Re: Let's talk about debt and committment (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know how this carousel stops,
Speaking as someone who teaches at the university level, there is an amazing amount of wasteful spending. This is made possible by, in fact caused by, the schools being flush with money (in the form of federal student grants and loans). The solution is to let the air out of the balloon by reducing the amount of money available. Of course, as you point out ....
but it's going to violent and messy when it does.
Yes, it certainly will be. Cutting off the flow of money will prevent some students going to college and it will hurt the schools as they will have to decide what is important and what can be cut. However, there does not appear another viable path to restore the balance. The effect will be similar to a significant market disruption: painful for the established players and rewarding to those who can adapt.
Re: Let's talk about debt and committment (Score:2)
Cutting off the flow of money will prevent some students going to college
You don't need to cut off student loans but it should be limited. Only covering 80% of tuition and 0% of room/board should still allow anyone who wants to to go to college. If you need help with room/board there are other programs like SNAP/HUD that can help and you don't have to pay them back.
I paid my own way thru college, worked part time, shopped at aldis, ate off the dollar menu and a lot of ramen noodles, drove a $500 car and was careful with student loans. I graduated with less than 8k in loans an
Re: (Score:2)
Solution is simple actually. Take away the money. Same with healthcare. When free money is involved greed kicks in and darker folks take advantage of others.
Cap student loan for bachelors degrees at $35,000. That is $35,000 for whole degree! That is not unreasonable compared to what we had in the past. This will make the VPs of Diversity at every University do a headspin and rant on rightwing media about mean evil federal government forcing me to loose my job but tough shit!
A $35,000 limit will help the stu
Re: (Score:3)
They're just doing what comes naturally - trying to maximize profit by rent seeking. Blame the wide availability of grants and subsidized loans, which is well intentioned, but produces higher tuition as an unintended consequence.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Forgive it and make Big Education pay for the loss.
The debt load is $1.5T. "Big Education" does not have that kind of money, and the research universities with big endowments are not where the defaults are. Why should Harvard have to bailout Trump Univ?
Any plausible bailout will be paid by the taxpayers, or won't happen.
Re: (Score:3)
Because you shouldn't have to spend half your working life paying half you money to a university and the other half to a bank for an overpriced education and excessively inflated interest loans... from an EU students perspective it looks like pure insanity over there.
And you don't have to do either of these things in many cases in the U.S. I attended my state's public university - due to my (and my family's) lack of affluence, I received financial aid (grants), borrowed a reasonable amount of money, and worked through the school year to afford college. I graduated, got a job, and paid my (reasonable) loans back in a couple of years by not spending too much money on anything else. That was almost 30 years ago. Now my daughter is going to be attending college (my son
Re: (Score:2)
That's bullshit. There are a large number of things that I know I will fail without trying. Cartwheels and limbo dancing are high on that list.
Some things you won't know if you can succeed at until you try. :)
Am old school but (Score:4, Insightful)
A collage degree does not guarantee financial success. The entire process needs to be approached and executed with diligence and awareness.
Since it seems to me even public collages have no problem helping students run up huge debts they know won't provide the student with a marketable
skill set to lay a firm foundation for paying back the borrowed money. The collages (public and private) are corrupt and deeply involved in this problem.
Just my 2 cents
Re: (Score:2)
maybe those going to collage are not doing a proper ROI (Return on Investment) analysis
Maybe high schools should teach more about calculating ROI, and less about integrating the reciprocal of the cube root of the co-secant.
Re: (Score:2)
But it could be more like, teaching less gender is optional and a choice, how to have sex, becoming and activist and protester, socialism is good, etc
Does not seem like the 3 R's get taught much in school these days. But then again how would I know for sure what is being taught today in our schools.
Just my 2 cents
Re: (Score:2)
Sex-ed is taught in 5th and 6th grade, not high school. Schools that don't teach it have higher rates of pregnancy and STDs, although that may be correlation rather than causation, with the underlying cause being stupid parents.
My kids were taught nothing about gender options and choices, nor that "socialism is good". That happens in college, not high school. Public high school teachers can be disciplined for pushing their personal political or religious views.
Re: (Score:2)
When I finished high school, I was an adult, had a draft number, moved out and was on my own making my own choices. And being responsible for the choices and decisions I made.
Just my 2 cents
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The collages (public and private) are corrupt and deeply involved in this problem.
I think that is the core problem right there. The ROI analysis is a problem, because people before college cannot usually do them yet. They are dependent on the offering actually being quality and offered in good faith. If colleges turn into scams, a lot of people are vulnerable to being ripped off.
Re: (Score:2)
When you graduate from High School and turn 18 in our world you are an adult. I see things getting mushy now but what are the schools turning out? And if there is a problem there we need to fix it.
Charter Schools anyone
just my 2 cents
Re: (Score:2)
Close but not quite - it's not the students that need to do the ROI, it's the people offering the loans. College loans really should be issued on the basis of ability to pay it off -and they are not.
This will mean that medical, engineering, and other "high-value trade" students will get loans and other students will not - because as a society we are not willing to pay for those "other" degrees.
If we want to have some portion of the population having the intangibly-beneficial professions (which is not a bad
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair, most artwork ("collage") has a poor or negative ROI.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Once is a typo. Every time, what's that?
Adam Smith, laughing his ass off (Score:4, Insightful)
If we had just let the market work, the only people that would have been going to college would have been the wealthy, those that actually earned scholarships or those WHOSE STUDY HABITS & MAJOR SELECTION would have shown to a commercial lender that they were a worthwhile risk.
The end result would have been college costs not rising at 3x inflation, no public money wasted on students whose prospects were poor anyway, likely many more engineers and a lot fewer Russian Medieval Literature majors serving coffee at Starbucks.
But no. The social engineers felt it was necessary that everyone go to colleges, with Pell Grants and government backed loans, the result being now a college degree is pretty much a requirement for any job (whether it requires it or not), and students with no serious prospect of decent income are saddled with ridiculous debt.
Nice job, social engineers.
Re: (Score:2)
If we had just let the market work
In Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith included an appendix explaining why higher education does not result in a capitalism market. Not everything turns into a market. People don't choose a school based on cost; if one of the schools a student is accepted to offers a sale, or coupon, it does nothing. People choose the school with the highest reputation that they can afford, and that reputation is based on non-economic factors. So you can't make it capitalism, if you try you fail because demand is disconnected fro
Re: (Score:2)
This is where you are wrong. A kid out of highschool has 0 assets and a 100% liability. Who the hell would loan to someone like that?
The problem is you don't get the assets and ability for repayment until later in life. Sometimes much later in life when you start to accumulate. This creates a catch 22 as you can't have the ability to pay without having the ability to pay first and it feeds itself as HR weeds these people out of jobs.
Yes, HR is a problem too. At my employer they are still looking for folks w
Re: (Score:2)
During high school, the narrative pushed by the teachers was, "you are a failure if you don't go to college". That is an insult to all those people making excellent money as electricians, plumbers, carpenters, etc. This lie pushed many people into college who had no business being there.
Re: (Score:2)
The reason a degree is a requirement for any job is because the economy has been tilted so much in favor of the ultra-wealthy in recent decades.
Any rational person making hiring decisions is going to hire the best people who will accept the pay on offer. Because job prospects are still poor (unemployment is hi
Adam Smith wasn't all that keen on the market (Score:2)
You're putting the cart before the horse. The loans came after a decade+ of federal funding cuts. College was _always_ expensive. We were subsidizing it. We stopped in the late 90s (thanks, Clint
That is really horrible (Score:2)
It means that a large part of students do not have access to academic education worth its money. They have basically been ripped off. Now, whenever somebody posts here that college or university is not worth it, I typically strongly disagreed. But if academic education in the US is actually this bad (at least in Europe it is not), then I see their point. A good academic education is still worth all the time and money you invest, but if you cannot get a good one, then the situation is really bad.
Math was involved (Score:2)
Unfortunately, your typical high school graduate has rather limited math skills, so aren't able to figure out that a $50,000 loan to get a job that pays $30,000/year is probably a bad financial decision. The lenders have zero incentive to turn down these loans since they are guaranteed. A future fix is to limit loan amounts based on the degree being pursued. A STEM major can get a bigger loan. A genders studies major is sent back to community college.
A solution (Score:2)
It's all well and good to tout personal financial responsibility. However, the information you need to make a wise decision is often not available - because it is being deliberately withheld but the institutions. There are also a lot of predatory institutions out there which intentionally mislead the students.
The only solution I have been able to come up with is this: Require colleges and universities to purchase all non-performing loans at face value. (Note - this does not forgive the students' debt) If th
What about Foreign money? (Score:2)
Controls? (Score:2)
I know a lot of defaults are from distance learning and for-profit schools (University of Phoenix, DeVry, etc.) as well as college drop-outs, so what happens when we control for those?
What is the loan risk/default rate is for students who actually graduate from 4-year brick-and-mortar school.
Some ideas (Score:2)
Some ideas:
1) Have more certificate programs (classes only in the major, and no general education classes required). If I don't have to take an art class, and if an art major student doesn't have to take a programming class, then the other student and I save time and tuition money. If I want to take an art class, fine. But I don't want to have to take it.
2) If a school takes taxpayer money, then it should have to publicly state where it spends its money. Donors (including the government) might say they'll d
Re: (Score:2)
a growing attitude that it's okay to steal from the lenders.
Any plausible student loan bailout will be funded by the taxpayers, not the financial industry.
Total student debt is $1.5T. Not all is in distress, but if we start handing out free money, there will be a stampede of new defaults. The banks can't cover that, nor should they, since the government made the rules.
Re:Socialists: WTF did you think was going to happ (Score:4, Insightful)
It has nothing to do with Socialism. In most of Europe University if free or costs a token amount. This has not driven quality into the ground. What you actually observe is a market failure where blind trust in capitalism has turned out to be very, very stupid, because capitalism as practiced today is all about short-term profits and no strategic view.
Re: (Score:2)
The Free State Project is a bunch of cunts who want to take no responsibility for society. They claim that if they'd just get government off their backs,everything would be peachy. To do that, they had to move to a place where SOCIETY had already created everything they needed to survive, and then blew smoke up stupid peoples asses saying "look what we can do".... after not doing a fuc
Re: (Score:3)
I'm always amazed at the stupidity of socialists and the general population.
This is one of the most droolingly stupid posts on this thread. How on earth you can you believe that the loan based system with massive protection only for companies is "socalist"?