Student Loans
- Thread starter Bird Dog
- Start date
"Loans" aren't the problem. The problem is the expectation of parents and their spoiled rotten, expect everything handed to them children.
Loan programs are absolutely needed. To say otherwise is just stupid.
The loan is not the burden. Dumb decisions are. There is no reason to spend $30-40,000 (plus room and board) on the first two years. The smart kids with financially smart parents spend the first two years at a community college. They spend on a semester what the dumb kids and their financially stupid parents spend on one class. The stupid parents spent the first 18 years of the child's existence carting them all over creation playing sports...but they don't save a plug nickel for the kid's education. No...the loan programs aren't the problem...the mentality of the parents and the mentality they impart on their kids is the problem.
Screw forgiveness. They signed the papers...pay the freaking bill. Modify the loan, stretch out the payment cycle. Forgiveness would only occur under extreme circumstances.
Grumpy
Well-Known Member
A rare sighting of a TJ post not on attack. Good points.
Restitution
New Member
I have to agree with ALL of this.
The problem is 2 fold. First is that schools are allowed to charge outrageous sums for education with little to no oversight. I believe that any institution that accepts federal funds for education should be subject to auditing to determine if tuitions are inappropriate. Second.... parents need to educate their snowflakes about job field selection. Are you really going to leverage a $100K loan for an Art Major or Women's Science degree?
Clem72
Well-Known Member
Y'all are correct that a degree in the humanities (or in any field) is not necessary for most trades or services, but unfortunately it is often required now simply because so many already have one. As a prime example, most of the hospitals in the area are moving towards requiring their nursing staff to have a BA or higher. Doesn't matter that you only need an associates (and to pass the test) to be an RN in Maryland. And of course Maryland is moving to have Nurse Practitioners get a PHD. What the hell; Doctor Nurse (or is it Nurse Doctor).
But in my opinion you can't un-ring this bell. Damage is done, and an undergrad degree is the new high school diploma. So if we are going to continue to treat undergrad education as almost a mandatory 13-16th grade, then might as well offer it the same way we do k-12 (at a state school anyways). If you choose to go above and beyond and make it into an Ivy League, then you can pay for that yourself (just like private school costs more than public).
It will suck for it to come out of my taxes, but it also sucks to saddle young people with a basically non-optional debt.
Also, I am not opposed to tying in a mandatory couple of years of military (17th/18th grade if you will). Plus this would put the youngest military age in line with drinking/other privileges (21).
But in my opinion you can't un-ring this bell. Damage is done, and an undergrad degree is the new high school diploma. So if we are going to continue to treat undergrad education as almost a mandatory 13-16th grade, then might as well offer it the same way we do k-12 (at a state school anyways). If you choose to go above and beyond and make it into an Ivy League, then you can pay for that yourself (just like private school costs more than public).
It will suck for it to come out of my taxes, but it also sucks to saddle young people with a basically non-optional debt.
Also, I am not opposed to tying in a mandatory couple of years of military (17th/18th grade if you will). Plus this would put the youngest military age in line with drinking/other privileges (21).
kwillia
n/a
to both of the above.And I'd like to add that the government and schools are all trying really, really hard to push everyone into an engineer degree... and I fully expect, much like they did back in the 80s/90s pushing folks into computer programming degrees, that those currently making bank as engineers and those about to become engineers will eventually face the same saturation that us programmers have hit where you will no longer be paid fairly for the time, effort and expense you've put into your field because engineers will eventually be a "dime a dozen".
Im still paying on mine from 2003, my parents gave me zero help, its a burden, especially if you make over 75k you cant claim a dollar on your income taxes, which is bogus.....
Im not in a public position to have the forgiveness... Sure wish I did..
Thats interesting, Didnt hear about the CRNP, exactly agree with your point... WTF is the point then... ugggh
Well! I'm impressed!
I'll add to that that I think some young people use college to defer adulthood, and some parents use it as a "get this ahole teenager out of my house" mechanism, which is fine but you have to expect to pay for that and not cry when the kid graduates with a worthless degree and a mountain of debt. As TJ indicated, parents are the key; they are supposed to be guiding their kid through these decisions.
I think the military is a sweet deal and should definitely be considered. Get paid while you learn some skills, AND get money for college as well. What's not to like about that?
Larry Gude
Strung Out
Student loans, mortgages, credit cards and the stock market are all confidence games. We, as a nation, via our elected representatives, promote the economic 'right' choice be it a bigger house, more education, keeping up with the Jone's or passive income from stocks.
As such, there is a societal obligation when we, as a people, engage in the activities we're promoting and that's because there is a net benefit all the way around.
You make it easy to borrow money for more house, it promotes building, furnishing, developments, infrastructure, flowers, you name it.
You make it easy to get money for school, you have more education, more teachers, expansion of schools and building, more people able to borrow more money to then buy a home.
You do the same thing with consumer credit to help facilitate the buying of stuff.
You make it easier to promise societal goods by leveraging the stock market to bundle bad loans, bad credit cards, to sorta mix it all together so that the good outweighs the bad.
Individuals are always free to, and will, make choices outside the masses. The winners will get out of the market sooner, not make that next purchase, made a better choice as to schooling. But that's not whom you make policy for, the winners. You make policy for the masses. As such, to bring it back full circle to the question at hand, student loans, we, as a society, have said 'you gotta have more schooling' and, because we all benefit to varying degrees, we have a shared obligation for when the thing gets out of balance.
This is my hope for Trump based on his business knowledge; when you have too much debt,m you need to dump it. We could really use massive write offs of mortgage, student loan and consumer debt. Trump knows that and I look forward to this being his string suit, as it long has been. Too much debt does nothing but drown people. Write it off. Get rid of it. Start fresh and do new business.
As such, there is a societal obligation when we, as a people, engage in the activities we're promoting and that's because there is a net benefit all the way around.
You make it easy to borrow money for more house, it promotes building, furnishing, developments, infrastructure, flowers, you name it.
You make it easy to get money for school, you have more education, more teachers, expansion of schools and building, more people able to borrow more money to then buy a home.
You do the same thing with consumer credit to help facilitate the buying of stuff.
You make it easier to promise societal goods by leveraging the stock market to bundle bad loans, bad credit cards, to sorta mix it all together so that the good outweighs the bad.
Individuals are always free to, and will, make choices outside the masses. The winners will get out of the market sooner, not make that next purchase, made a better choice as to schooling. But that's not whom you make policy for, the winners. You make policy for the masses. As such, to bring it back full circle to the question at hand, student loans, we, as a society, have said 'you gotta have more schooling' and, because we all benefit to varying degrees, we have a shared obligation for when the thing gets out of balance.
This is my hope for Trump based on his business knowledge; when you have too much debt,m you need to dump it. We could really use massive write offs of mortgage, student loan and consumer debt. Trump knows that and I look forward to this being his string suit, as it long has been. Too much debt does nothing but drown people. Write it off. Get rid of it. Start fresh and do new business.
Restitution
New Member
The problem with this is that it is a Utopian idea......
Most debtors are like drug addicts. You can take away the drugs, send them to rehab, and start them "fresh" but..... Most, if not all, will jump right back into it and create the problem all over again.
The only way to deal with this is to educate them BEFORE they make the decisions and ensure that there is no money grabbing going on to cause unnecessary debt.
glhs837
Power with Control
Please, while I totally agree on the two year term of public service, do not restrict it to the military. Go wash homeless peoples clothing, scrape pigeon poop off statues, plant hemp seedlings in the Embarcadero, whatever. But only serve in the military if you want to.
Clem72
Well-Known Member
FYI, "income" with regards to stocks refers to dividends, not gains in value of the stock itself. A dividend is a share of profits from a company, which doesn't fit your "confidence game" criteria, whereas stock valuation and making profits buying/selling stocks do.
Clem72
Well-Known Member
Sure, If you are treating the "2 years" as a means of recouping some of the cost of funding their education alone. Military serves the dual purpose of providing additional structure for those that need it and didn't get it growing up. Might be the first time in their lives they rise before the sun or work up a sweat putting in a hard days work.
But I'm open to compromise. A Civil Service Corps (CSC) if you will. Stricture of the military, but primarily tasked with local activities (maintaining memorials, providing civil engineering services, pigeon poop scraping if necessary) and get to go home on the weekends.
Larry Gude
Strung Out
The only thing utopian about any of this is folks who think like you not addressing the collapse of the economy that could only come from 'educating' people to not borrow and spend money. Have you ever given this ANY thought? At all?
What happens to the economy when $1 trillion in credit card debt and $1 trillion in student loans isn't happening, year after year? Same goes for gummint spending. While it may sound great to 'cut' government spending, what happens to the people who eat off of that?
Individual households, individuals, can and will cut and save and make better choices. Winners will always win. As I say, you don't make policy based on them. You make policy based on the masses and if the masses were 'educated' as you suggest, our economy collapses. Over night.
Larry Gude
Strung Out
My bad. I was trying to speak generically and not get into the weeds too much. Point being the stock market, especially, is a confidence game and we rely on it to finance and support enormous public spending. And the point of that is to reiterate the interdependence in our economy. We all NEED students taking loans and consumers using credit cards and people borrowing for homes.
Restitution
New Member
Soooooo.... Too big to fail :shrug:
You talk about it. I SEE it every single day. People who are obviously WAY overpaid for the work they do. Janitors making $35/hour and baseline electricians making $50/hour simply because it's "what is required in the contract" or "it is what was negotiated by the union"
You say "what about the people who live off of that" when I say "what about the people who are funding these programs and paying these salaries?"
Vicious circle so, how does the circle get broken and the problems fixed? Because, just forgetting about it and moving on does not solve the problem.
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Larry Gude
Strung Out
Too big to fail. Exactly. That's the entire point. I didnt like it then and it was wrong then but the genie was let out of the bottle. It's not going back in and I'd submit it should not. It certainly does not need to go back in. We've simply entered an era where less and less workers are needed and more and more consumers are.