I'm not advocating for any particular method in dealing with the "problem" of student loans, but what I find odd about this debate is that there's no middle ground. On the one side, there are those who say, "You signed on the dotted line and the terms were laid out in plain English when you did. Pay it."

Others who insist that these loans should be forgiven, and those who signed shouldn't have to pay a single penny.

No one ever advocates for partial forgiveness, or slashing the usurious interest rates.

The best way to lower costs would be to make them day schools, (students live at home), and cut all the clubs and extracirruculers.

Schools would be purely for teaching and research. Students would go to class, and if they're chosen to do research they'd do that.

If students want to join a theatre troupe they would join the local community theatre, if they want a race-specific house they find a bunch of roommates, and if they want to play football they join a football club.

Slashing interest rates would be good. I remember getting a very good rate for the 04-05 year, and my brother got his MBA a couple years later and had horrible rates, ending up with a huge monthly payment (granted his was a 2-year program but still)

Patrick, what rate do you think student loans are currently going for to call them 'usurious'? Fixed rate loans are under 4%. There isn't any room to cut them. The balloon payment issue with variable rate loans NicoleK brings up is very real. But they are an issue with that type of loan and not specific to education.

As for the lack of middle ground on the issue, there is also a lack of middle ground on the loans.

Median Student Loan Debt: $17,000
Mean Student Loan Debt: $32,731

This is a sign of a non-Gaussian distribution. The two averages don't match.

Median Student Loan Payment: $222

That means half of the people with student loan debt are paying $222/mo or less. Not exactly a crushing level of debt.

So who is getting crushed with student loans? People with high income parents. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me right now but from fallible memory it is something like 50% of student loan debt is owed by 20% of borrowers. And those students have the highest income parents.

Forgiving student loans is pretty much a gift to the rich. And once you look at the political angle it is pretty much a gift to rich Democrats. Hence little room for a middle ground or alternate forms of compromise.

balloon payment issue with variable rate loans

Did no one learn anything from the Fannie Mae/Freddy Mac debacle of 2008? variable rate loans are garbage. And if the only way you can afford that house/car/tuition is thru one, you really can't afford the item you wish to obtain.

The proper way to rein student debt in is to make the degree granting institution co-signer. That will cure the problem right quick. Sorry, we won't cosign on the loan for gender/race studies. Come back when you want a nice STEM degree.

Otherwise: trade school.

I think of Warren as more of a power/control freak than an ignoramus. She's smart enough to understand the unintended consequences of her ideas. But what she's really interested in is WHO MAKES THE DECISIONS about how people live their lives. And she thinks the answer should be ... not YOU.

Socialists care about money, yes. But what they really value--what they want to make more precious by making it scarce and subject to constant control from above--is PERMISSION.

To be fair IRA young people are young. They are always inventing 'new' things. Like sex. And learning that long term variable rate loans are a bad idea is just one of those 'new' things.

The better side to consider things is that all these loans come through the federal government. It would be a good idea if they would stop approving variable rate loans. They at least don't get the excuse that they are young and ignorant.

A very real benefit of having a price for college is that people (kids and their parents) can decide how much it is worth to them. Perhaps a 2 year community college degree is enough. Maybe a school where you can live at home. If you want to go to the fun school with all the luxuries and are willing to pay for it, fine. Currently 60% of college students are female. I think men have noticed that it doesn't pay and are working instead. Removing price would mean even more people who should not be in college would go and get a worthless degree. Bad incentives all around.

I still like my solution, have the colleges back the loans, not banks or gov't. If the university doesn't think a student will graduate - no loan, if they don't think that degree will pay off in the long run- no loan. If degree doesn't get student a job that can pay it back, the University takes it in the wallet.

Colleges co-signing is a good idea.

I'd like to see a more serious research university than a community college be a day school without amenities. They do it in several European countries.

"I took out $300,000 in student loans and now they expect me to PAY THEM BACK?!"

> The two averages don't match.

Median is by definition not an average.

Mean, median, and mode are all three commonly termed average. Get an education Crid.

https://www.purplemath.com/modules/meanmode.htm

It's not until the second paragraph that your brightly-colored web page concedes that nothing of the kind is true… Unless you're running a pipeline of potential wealth to a centralized clearinghouse.

How about this story from Matt Taibbi:

Student Loan Horror Stories: Borrowed: $79,000. Paid: $190,000. Now Owes? $236,000
At 59, Chris pleaded for a renegotiation. "My life expectancy is 15 more years. At this rate, you're not going to get very much...' Their response was, 'So?'"

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/student-loan-horror-stories-borrowed

Bob, I'm just going to go ahead and say it. Fuck "Chris". I'm sorry but if you took out a $14k loan in the 80s and your plan was to never pay it then you were stupid. Chris had 40 years to get it together and learn how to be financially responsible. He didn't. Chris's woes are entirely self manufactured.

And as for "the student loan controversy is almost universally presented as a “youth” issue." that is because it almost universally is a "youth" issue. Yes guys like Chris exist. And then there are the 35 million other guys.

Ben Says:

"Mean, median, and mode are all three commonly termed average. Get an education Crid."

This is correct.

The general population has very limited understanding of statistical breakdowns and what the different metrics indicate.

This is why professionals are generally interested in looking at the distribution that generates the various statistical metrics.

Mean, median, mode, and standard deviation are only useful if you are making some assumptions on what the shape of the distribution looks like in advance.

If the distribution is not Gaussian then those numbers will indicate VERY different things.

Unfortunately most folks don't have the slightest bit of familiarity with functions that describe the distributions of data.

My favorite example of where all this breaks down is when talking about the "average" person.

The "average" person has approximately 1 testicle and approximately 1 ovary... and they have on average less than two legs and less than two arms.

Such a description is clearly useless though because it lacks a proper understanding of what we are describing.

So you've never looked a business, math, or science major in the eye?

Crid,

You said that "Median is by definition not an average."

I don't really think you really fathom just how ignorant and uneducated you look to anyone with a math or science background when you said that.

Ben rightly corrected you... and justifiably instructed you to get an education.

There is even an entire subreddit devoted to people such as yourself called "confidentlyincorrect":

https://www.reddit.com/r/confidentlyincorrect/

You almost never know what you are talking about and yet live in this fantasy land where you think you are the arbiter of truth.

For the love of god please learn something... anything... at this point I think you just sit around all day in an adult diaper drooling into a cup while wearing a helmet.

Solider on, little pilgrims.

I still like my solution, have the colleges back the loans ~ Joe j at December 3, 2020 9:12 AM

Unfortunately, your solution puts the college in a conflict of interest situation. Their job is to flunk the student who won't or can't do the work and pass the test. If their financial incentive is to pass every student, then what's the incentive to make classes challenging, to be more than a babysitter?

Also, at what point is the college no longer responsible for the behavior of a graduated student? If a forty-year-old decides to stop repaying his student loan, is the college responsible for that?

The solution is actually to eliminate student loans, to get rid of the free money in the system. This would help to put price competition back into higher education.

Theoretically, wouldn't degrees from different schools eventually wind up in Consumer Report et al, whence product rankings might betoken some reliable judgments about where best to [A.] spend some tuition or [B.] do some hiring?

Much to hate about American colleges concerns the influence of federal (and sometimes state) government.

Let's ask ourselves again why the endowments of Harvard ($41.9B), Yale ($30.3B) and Princeton ($26.6B) aren't taxed by somebody? Ohio State, $5.2B… If these people aren't going to be taxed, why should they be permitted to charge tuition, particularly when taxpayers and charitable enterprises are on the hook to put kids through these schools? Georgia Tech, $2.2B. WTF?

"Unfortunately, your solution puts the college in a conflict of interest situation. Their job is to flunk the student who won't or can't do the work and pass the test."

No, that is their incentive right now. The college has already been paid in full before the diploma is handed out, whether or not the graduate can get or keep a job is irrelevant to the colleges bottom line/ So they have little incentive to give a quality product.

But if the colleges are on the hook for the loans. They don't get fully paid till the loan is fully paid back. Their incentive is that the graduate must be able to find and keep a good paying job, since if the student defaults the college doesn't get the money.

No, Joe. Making the colleges responsible for a graduate's student loans puts yet another roadblock in the way of people growing up; another babysitter bailing them out. The bottom line is the people who take out the loans are solely responsible for paying them back.

What the government has done by flooding the system with easy money is taken the cost control incentive out of the system. Schools have no incentive to keeps costs under control because tuition can simply be raised while students borrow more. If we really want to get tuition costs under control, we need to reduce the amount that can be borrowed. The best solution would be to eliminate the program altogether.

Without the easy money, colleges would be forced to compete on price and quality, as they should have been doing all along. Useless programs and classes would be eliminated. No more grievance studies programs, diversity coordinators making high six-figure incomes, or luxurious student life centers. The colleges would be forced to rededicate themselves to the actual education of students, to making them work to achieve a degree.

If private entities then want to establish student loan programs, they can, but without a federal guarantee. The private lender can work out a system of risk mitigation for the program - e.g., higher interest rates, collateral, collateralized debt obligations, etc.

> The bottom line is the people
> who take out the loans are solely
> responsible for paying them back.

Certainly, but if we can, in turn, project that pain into the hearts of the colleges and administrators who are so slickly exploiting America's pornographic adoration of Higher Ed, won't our higher purposes be achieved just as quickly?

It's difficult to imagine anything that's going to protect a generation or two from the burden of inflated tuition for mediocre degrees. Going forward, if the market for snake oil is really this hot, we ought to be able to insist that the elixir will, in fact, cure your rheumatiz: When the degrees deliver reliable incomes to pay for themselves, we're good.

The federal government can, in fact, solve a number of problems for consumer comity. A friend in TV tech had been a truck driver in a previous life, and said that it was a business fraught with worries: Costs and distances and weather and certifications and on and on. What he didn't worry about was having his load stolen from the trailer while he was grabbing a plate of eggs: The convention was to slap a seal on the door of the trailer at the pickup point, to be broken only at the destination, one with the letters "FBI" featured prominently. Idiot gangs in the United States (known elsewhere in the world as "warlords") knew well that they really, reeeeeeleee didn't want to fuck with cargo in transit.

I think of the goods that have come so reliably to me over oceans and continents and state lines for a lengthening lifetime, including this very week during a global crisis, and marvel.

Delivery of meaning in higher ed should be at least as well-defended.




I certainly agree that youths who've been burned by this —having affirmed that they're sharp enough to deserve higher ed— deserve the clearest lesson about fine print which their mistake can offer.

But meanwhile, or additionally....

And honestly, Conan, hasn't each of us dreamt of slapping a seal at least once in our lives?

OookOookOook!

I can see the problem in the girl I almost dated a little over a year ago. She had gone back to school and just graduated when I met her. She could not get a job...well not that met her desires. Her biggest constraint was it had to be in a certain area of the city which eliminated at least 95% of the jobs of they type she was looking for in the metro area. Where I worked was too far out and way too "big corpie." I am sure she could have gotten a job at my employer if she tried. How could a University account for such things? There is no problem with degree.

How could a University account for such things? There is no problem with degree. ~ The Former Banker at December 6, 2020 8:12 AM

Exactly. Despite what people think, the university cannot fix stupid choices by someone no longer under their influence.

And honestly, Conan, hasn't each of us dreamt of slapping a seal at least once in our lives? ~ Crid at December 5, 2020 7:59 PM

Well, slapping a seal is better than blowing a seal - both literally and figuratively.

Designed to fail is a huge thing with the Millennial generation. It really takes the stress out of life when you don't have to worry if things will or wont work out. Once failure is guaranteed you can just walk out the steps and move on to the next thing.

My sister had a guy living on her couch post college. The guy was bright. Good degree. All the paperwork pointed to him being a success. But he was one of those people so afraid to fail he made sure it happened and bragged about how great he was all the way down. All those little skills like showing up for work on time, understanding you aren't in charge of everything (yes you do have a boss), and what to do when things didn't workout were lessons he didn't learn growing up.

"Despite what people think, the university cannot fix stupid choices by someone no longer under their influence." ~Conan

Ah, but can they test for it when the person is still working with them? Honestly it would be nice if they would just stop teaching and encouraging people to make those stupid choices.

> both literally and figuratively.

My sister's punch line to that joke circa '75 was "No, that's just mayonnaise from my sandwich."

Throwing more money at the student loan problem will only stimulate the economy for colleges and universities, who are the only groups that benefit.

Students get massive debt burdens that grow unseen and ignored while they study. It's a lottery, each student hoping to get a good enough job afterward that the loan payments aren't crippling. And believing the lie that "a good education" will solve their future. Almost never true for liberal arts. Over half the kids attending college should probably not be there in the first place.

Graduated students just get sucked into lifelong servitude, unable to turn down mediocre jobs because they have loan payments to make.

It's a modern version of the slave trade, encouraged by the institutions of academic higher education and our own government.

The losers are the taxpayers and the students.

Ah, but can they test for it when the person is still working with them? Honestly it would be nice if they would just stop teaching and encouraging people to make those stupid choices. ~ Ben at December 6, 2020 3:23 PM

How do you test for predicting someone will change careers mid-stream, or burn out by forty?

I understand the desire to hold colleges responsible for the crippling debt with which they've saddled graduates through ridiculously high tuition and classes in navel gazing or TV watching.

However, the colleges are the symptom here, not the cause. There's free money in the system and, like any institution in need of money, the colleges are scrambling for it. They have to, they need to pay the bill for meeting government diversity regulations in administration, faculty, and student body.

To attract students, colleges need to offer them a luxury experience, a four-year respite from the real world. No college-age kid is going for the barracks-like residence halls of old centered around academic rigor anymore. Dorms are now luxury hotels with cable, high-speed internet, and private bathrooms. Student life centers include spas, gyms, and coffee bars. Students expect college to be a four-year bacchanal, not four years of work and study.

"Dorms are now luxury hotels with cable, high-speed internet, and private bathrooms."

Ah yes... the "luxury" of high-speed internet on the modern day campus.

I hear tell that they also have electrical outlets to provide power to those completely luxurious contraptions they call computers.

Why aren't all of these students busy writing their papers on typewriter by candle light.

Now that the sarcasm is out of my system... the reason modern students need access to high speed internet is precisely because there are web-based instructional resources and there is a great deal of research that is done using online resources outside of the physical stacks in the university library.

If you want to bitch and moan about deluxe bathrooms be my guest... but complaints about internet access demonstrate that someone is out of touch.

Oh boy. Artie's here. Well, there goes the neighborhood.

Yes, Artie, I understand why modern students use high-speed internet. Now pay attention to what I said, not to what you want me to have said. Colleges are providing more amenities than they used to and are competing more on amenities than on education.

That a school has high speed internet is nice, but not vital. That it provides it in the dorms is also not vital. One can use high speed ports in libraries and labs for research.

Students also use high-speed internet to stream entertainment, not just research and instructional material. That kind of load requires a big pipe; and that big pipe costs the college money, an additional cost which helps to drive an increase in tuition.

Students expect high speed internet and home-like dorms, and would likely reject a college that offered the spartan experience of old with shared bathrooms and sacks of Malt-O-Meal for dorm mattresses.

Yes, Artie, students in general, do not want a college experience of solely work and study.

There is a tendency to treat college like Carnival (Mardis Gras, here in the US), a raucous bacchanal before the deprivations of Lent. Witness how many students went to Florida for Spring Break during the pandemic and brought some nice germs home from the tropics.

Of course, with movies like Van Wilder, Animal House, Back to School, Accepted, Old School, et al, the alleged adults haven't helped their progeny be serious about higher education, so it's not all on the students.

Now then, Artie, in this, I'm essentially explaining and repeating my earlier comment, trying to show you where your sarcasm and snark is misplaced, as I often have to do with you since you don't read for comprehension.

What do you do, Artie. Prowl this blog to find my comments so you can leave some snarky off-key comment? Kinda stalkery, Artie. I'm beginning to think you have a crush on me.

Conan Says:

"That a school has high speed internet is nice, but not vital. That it provides it in the dorms is also not vital. One can use high speed ports in libraries and labs for research."

Yes Conan... I paid close attention to your anachronistic perspective on what it and is not vital in the modern age.

An internet connection is in fact vital for modern students to succeed and be well prepared for the modern job market.

You might as well be suggesting that phones aren't vital because they can head down to the student union to use pay phones... or that outlets aren't vital because they can charge their laptops in the library.

You are in fact very out of touch.

If you want to argue that certain amenities such as gym or exercise equipment within a dorm are not necessary I would agree with you... but internet access is actually vital for a student to be properly prepared for the modern world.

Including internet access in your list of examples does not demonstrate a deep understanding of what is needed to compete within the modern job market for young people.

It also makes no sense in terms of an argument for why college expenses have sky rocketed. High-speed internet in a home costs ~$100 per month... so in terms of a University we are talking about ~$1,000 per year if we assume rates equivalent to what one would expect when owning a home (it should in principle be cheaper than this because the buildings are outfitted differently and should be able to negotiate bulk rates from ISP's).

This is not a major source of increased costs for universities and it is in fact vital for student education in the modern age.

Conan,

"What do you do, Artie. Prowl this blog to find my comments so you can leave some snarky off-key comment? Kinda stalkery, Artie. I'm beginning to think you have a crush on me."

What I do is look for baseless assertions and correct the record when the evidence suggests someone is incorrect.

Just the other day I corrected Crid when he falsely made a statement about statistics that Ben was wrong on something Ben was correct about.

There have been other times Ben has said things that were demonstrably wrong and I chime in to correct the record there.

If/when you say something coherent without serious logical flaws I would be happy to give you credit.

I'm just fact checking.

I'm just fact checking. ~ Artemis at December 8, 2020 3:50 PM

Well, to no one's surprise, you suck at it.

I got no facts wrong in what I posted. You assumed a meaning on my part that had no basis in fact or in what I said. You fired off snark based on your false assumption and you got it wrong.

And, Artie, your assumption that your role here is to fact check anyone is presumptuous and conceited; but then, you are a conceited ass, so such behavior is consisted with your ego.

Artie, you comb other people's comments constantly, deliberately misinterpreting most of them, searching for ways to boost your ego.

You never offer original or insightful ideas here, just wordy schoolmarmish scolding.

Your "predictions" are recycled media stories that you claim are products of your keen insight and "analysis."

So no, Artie, you don't "look for baseless assertions and correct the record when the evidence suggests someone is incorrect." You make pathetic attempts to boost your ego, to convince people you're smarter than they are. What's the matter, Artie, you not getting enough validation in real life?

This is a blog; there's no record here to "correct" and, if there were, you're not the person any one here would trust to make a correction.

As for "average" as Crid tried to apply it; yes "average" is a vague term and can actually refer to a number of statistical measures. Ben is capable of standing up for himself and letting Crid know about the multiple references for which "average" can be used.

You, Artie, chose to insert yourself into the argument so you could feel superior and validate your own ego. You chose to do that with snark rather than politely pointing out that "average," although understood most commonly to refer to the mean, could refer to other measures, as Ben used it. Instead you jumped in, like an emotional two-year-old to scream "Look at me! I'm the superior intellect! I win!"

This is not a major source of increased costs for universities and it is in fact vital for student education in the modern age. ~ Artemis at December 8, 2020 3:41 PM

It ain't cheap, Artie.

You've never looked at a large corporate budget, have you. Building a high-speed network for large organizations is not cheap. Thousands of students watching movies, playing games, and doing homework are going to need a pretty big pipe and signal routers that can handle lots of traffic.

Inside Higher Ed reported in 2018 that the cost of providing students with always-on high-speed wi-fi runs into the millions.

A college's network is not simply a big pipe, but routers, servers, memory, databases, phone boosters, and other equipment, as well as technicians to service them. It's wi-fi systems that can handle thousands of students logged in at the same time, along with faculty and administration.

And, yes Artie, it costs a lot of money.