Current Events > Student loans are a scam

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/0/9/AAet7JAAD2rp.jpg

Lets make everyone stupid now!

Oh wait....

Game was rigged from the start like Diablo Immortal.

Mandatory reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/prestoncooper2/2017/02/22/how-unlimited-student-loans-drive-up-tuition/

Always seemed like a money game to tell Teenager they HAVE to go to college, but it costs 3k a semester or higher to go there, not counting needing to spend $500 on books.

wanderingshade posted...

Always seemed like a money game to tell Teenager they HAVE to go to college, but it costs 3k a semester or higher to go there, not counting needing to spend $500 on books.

What fucking college did YOU go to that only charges $3k a semester?????

Garioshi posted...

What fucking college did YOU go to that only charges $3k a semester?????

It was a CC. Didn't even get a degree so it was a complete waste of time.

wanderingshade posted...

Always seemed like a money game to tell Teenager they HAVE to go to college, but it costs 3k a semester or higher to go there, not counting needing to spend $500 on books.

That's part of the scam. If a student can take out up to $5k in loans in a semester, a school would be pretty dumb to not charge at least that full $5k

Questionmarktarius posted...

That's part of the scam. If a student can take out up to $5k in loans in a semester, a school would be pretty dumb to not charge at least that full $5k

So what is your solution?

ScazarMeltex posted...

So what is your solution?

Dismantle DirectLoans.
It does no good to write off a shitton of student loans, while still issuing more.

Questionmarktarius posted...

Dismantle DirectLoans.
It does no good to write off a shitton of student loans, while still issuing more.

Yeah, totally great to let only the rich get education.

It shouldn't be that expensive in the first place. Back in the 1960s you could pay for 4 years of college with a $11/hr job without owing anything after you get handed your degree. Now you'd need like a $40/hr job to do the same thing, but if that's the case, why are you even going to college?

wanderingshade posted...

why are you even going to college?

To learn things.

Psuedo_Audacity posted...

To learn things.

Not when yearly tuition and dorm board is like $22,000 a year all together you aren't. You're going for that degree that gets you a job well above the poverty line. That's IF they're hiring.

Psuedo_Audacity posted...

Yeah, totally great to let only the rich get education.

When the schools are tossed into "cut the price or die" mode, the prices will come down.
Maybe they won't get that fancy new performing arts building, but that's about it.

Might as well become a twitch streamer with no education and make millions a year doing nothing.

Personally I think the government should pay for college the same way they pay for school before college to make the population smarter

Questionmarktarius posted...

When the schools are tossed into "cut the price or die" mode, the prices will come down.
Maybe they won't get that fancy new performing arts building, but that's about it.

There is no "cut the price or die" mode. The federal govt backs the loans, there's very little risk to the lenders. They will get their money either from the borrower or from the government. They can't even discharge them through bankruptcy which basically means they'll always get theirs.

trappedunderice posted...

Might as well become a twitch streamer with no education and make millions a year doing nothing.

Let's be honest you're not good looking enough to be a Twitch streamer.

Questionmarktarius posted...

When the schools are tossed into "cut the price or die" mode, the prices will come down.
Maybe they won't get that fancy new performing arts building, but that's about it.

Assuming that would ever happen, you are just fine with the generations of irreperable damage that would happen in between?

And then even still, you still need a way to make it accessible to poor people, because even if it is "affordable", that won't be true for everyone.

Lol at calling it capitalized interest

theAteam posted...

There is no "cut the price or die" mode. The federal govt backs the loans, there's very little risk to the lenders.

That's also part of the scam: private profits, public losses.

Psuedo_Audacity posted...

And then even still, you still need a way to make it accessible to poor people, because even if it is "affordable", that won't be true for everyone.

Killing off loans doesn't necessarily mean killing off grants.

Flockaveli posted...

Let's be honest you're not good looking enough to be a Twitch streamer.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/3/6/AAfF4vAADOEE.jpg

Questionmarktarius posted...

When the schools are tossed into "cut the price or die" mode, the prices will come down.
Maybe they won't get that fancy new performing arts building, but that's about it.

Also this is a pretty ignorant statement lol. Most operating expenses are staff salary and cost of operations. Big projects almost always are done via grants and government capital budgeting. Tuition keepa the lights on, so whats the solution.....use less lights? Pay staff less?

wanderingshade posted...

It shouldn't be that expensive in the first place. Back in the 1960s you could pay for 4 years of college with a $11/hr job without owing anything after you get handed your degree. Now you'd need like a $40/hr job to do the same thing, but if that's the case, why are you even going to college?

$11 in 1963 is the equivalent of $100 in 2022 according to this calculator
https://www.saving.org/inflation/inflation.php?amount=11

Sounds like schools cheap now then, based on those numbers.

Naysaspace posted...

Tuition keepa the lights on, so whats the solution.....use less lights? Pay staff less?

Yes, actually. Or rather, pay less staff.
What student loans also did, was gut admission standards. Let everyone in, and even if they crash out after a semester or two, the school's already got that sweet loan money. Of course, you gotta hire more people to at least pretend to teach those warm bodies until they drop out.

If you think the solution to universities is fewer professor slots, you literally have no idea what you're talking about.

Psuedo_Audacity posted...

If you think the solution to universities is fewer professor slots, you literally have no idea what you're talking about.

The churn of burnouts don't really affect professors. That's all assistant-professors and "instructors" covering the gen-eds.

Do you know what an associate professor is?

Psuedo_Audacity posted...

Do you know what an associate professor is?

"Am I tenured yet?"

...that should have been "assistant" up there anyway.

You could have just answered "no, i have no idea what ranks mean when it comes to professorships".

We all have asstons of student debt because education costs too much.
Education costs too much because loans are easy to get.

That's it. The schools don't care, because they already got that money from burnouts.
You want to help the burnouts (and also the rest of us, by extension), then lock the interest at 0% forever.

You haven't actually thought about the problem deeply. You read that one article that you repeatedly post on this board and pretend like you have the answer.

A good rule of thumb is that if you are facing a very large and complicated socioeconomic problem that has persisted for years and you think that the solution is so simple that you can state it in a single sentence, then you probably haven't really thought deeply about the problem.

Psuedo_Audacity posted...

A good rule of thumb is that if you are facing a very large and complicated socioeconomic problem that has persisted for years and you think that the solution is so simple that you can state it in a single sentence, then you probably haven't really thought deeply about the problem.

Okay, that is a good rule, but rather pointless to follow on the internet.

The student loan disaster is a series of good-intentions steps that all barely prop up the last one, and dismantling the whole thing is the only long-term fix. However, you can't really just leave nothing there while doing that, so the continuous propping-up remains.

Comprehensive solutions are a bit more involved.

We need to realize that not everyone needs a four-year degree, and stop stigmatizing vocational training.
We need to accept that some degrees are useless outside of academia itself, and that's okay.
Maybe education needs to be more segmented, instead of "universal" universities. Do the gen-eds at a community college, then find a specialized college for whatever degree you're pursuing.
White-collar jobs need to stop requiring a degree, just to get a foot in a door.

You have to have a degree, for some reason, to any sort of job that isn't awful, and that's not even any guarantee of finding a not-awful job. That's the outer-rim of the loan/tuition death spiral.

The_Critic posted...

$11 in 1963 is the equivalent of $100 in 2022 according to this calculator
https://www.saving.org/inflation/inflation.php?amount=11

Sounds like schools cheap now then, based on those numbers.

I mean I'm not really data crunching numbers, I've just heard over 50 years ago you could basically go to college and save for a house earning just a little bit over minimum wage and owe the college no money. I don't know if that was $7.00/hr or or $8.00/hr or whatever it was. College absolutely is way more expensive now. And the loans are some bullshit. Some people pay into loans for years and years and end up paying tens of thousands in interest money and still owe more then 50% of the capital.

And the people making the most money of this shit are College presidents. The only reason some colleges are like $10,000 in state and $35,000 out of state is so College/University Presidents can make $4Million a year or some shit. Some college used to be free. Some college in the 1970s used to be $405 a year.

I originally borrowed $4375 (just did part time community college for a couple years)

I paid back roughly $5000 of that and still owed $4000

the fuck

littlebro07 posted...

I originally borrowed $4375 (just did part time community college for a couple years)

I paid back roughly $5000 of that and still owed $4000

the fuck

You got taken for a ride.

Student loans are a scam

And in other news: water is wet!

Join the military first then go to college.

The fact that predatory loans targeted at mostly 17/18 year olds who haven't handled their own finances before are considered acceptable in this country is appalling.

They are a valuable learning experience.

Extreme sink or swim finances.

Flauros posted...

They are a valuable learning experience.

Extreme sink or swim finances.

yes, managing a 6 figure debt is such a great way to learn about finances *rolls eyes*

Those 'teenagers' are adults who should've read the fine print thoroughly prior to taking on a debt that they're not prepared to tackle.

Their financial struggles are not our problem.

Vicious_Dios posted...

Those 'teenagers' are adults who should've read the fine print thoroughly prior to taking on a debt that they're not prepared to tackle.

Their financial struggles are not our problem.

I know you're...you. But many of them are literally minors. I also don't know why the word teenagers is in quotes as if they aren't teenagers

famfam posted...

yes, managing a 6 figure debt is such a great way to learn about finances *rolls eyes*

Why do we fall?

It should not be legal for adolescents who don't know shit about money yet to be taking on loans of that magnitude.

It fucks them over before they even get the chance to realize how much being an adult can suck.

Australia has a good system

1) government pays all tuition up front to the university and hands the student a HECS debt
2) the hecs debt is equal to whatever the tuition is, no interest ever, but it is slightly increased annually due to inflation
3) no due date on the hecs debt. No mandatory payments until you have a job paying above a certain threshold. If your income drops below the threshold for any reason your mandatory payments are paused
4) the mandatory payments are fuck all, but you can optionally pay extra to try and get rid of the debt quicker
5) if you never get a job paying above the threshold, you never need to make a payment
6) payments are automatic so you never need to think about it

this is about the best it can be done IMO, short of just making it free and accounting for the costs via tax same as other services. No predatory loan sharks, repayments are never significantly more than what the tuition actually was, theres no stress of making payments when you are not financially comfortable to do so

Kloe_Rinz posted...

6) payments are automatic so you never need to think about it

how does that work?

Questionmarktarius posted...

how does that work?

When you get employed somewhere you need to provide certain info to your employer such as if you have a HECS debt. Your employer then deducts any mandatory payments from your pay and sends it to the government.