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While I can empathize here as someone with no degree and a job at FAANG, it's hard for me to have a lot of sympathy. I put the blame squarely on these instituti

While I can empathize here as someone with no degree and a job at FAANG, it's hard for me to have a lot of sympathy. I put the blame squarely on these institutions and our government for this situation. The institutions should be held liable for this debt, not the tax payer, and our government should not guarantee or subsidize these loans. Higher education is important in our society, but the situation we're in now is a complete disaster. 18-year olds taking on huge debt for useless degrees that can't be bankrupted, what could possibly go wrong?

brodouevencode 2y ago
I too took a non-traditional route. My employer paid for my degrees, and they reaped the benefits of that. The whole notion of "you have to go to college right after high school" is rather ignorant.
- yareal 2y ago
  A lot of neurological development happens between 18 and 24, college is not just a practical skills education, it's also a space you're allowed to practice being an adult while that neurological development happens. Ideally everyone can go to college and the costs are manageable and the counselors there help people understand what their degrees might be worth to them at the end of the process.
  - brodouevencode 2y ago
    Why would you take on any debt especially given that there's a chance you're not neurologically developed enough to understand the risks?
    - yareal 2y ago
      I mean, I'm out here saying college should be a public service that everyone gets and we all fund because it's a net good for our society for young adults. I don't think it should require debt at all.
      - randomdata 2y ago
        > it's a net good for our society for young adults. Nearly 70% of Canadians 24-35 have a post-secondary degree and is considered the most educated nation in the world. For comparison, only 51% of Americans and 37% of Germans have the same. The trend is the same when expanding out to the entire population. What net good is found in Canada that is not seen in the USA and especially Germany to the same degree? It is not economic. Canada is quite poor, comparatively. It does not appear to be political. Germany is considered much more democratic than Canada (Canada beats the USA, granted). It does not appear to be in, say, happiness. Canada is unhappier than both Germany and the USA. Cost of living? Haha. Don't even try to talk to Canadians about that. You will make them cry. Maybe health? Canada does seem to be more healthy than the other two. But is still not as healthy as many other countries that are less educated, so I'm not sure we're actually seeing any correlation there. I'm not sure there is correlation, let alone causation, in any of these cases. So what is it? Let's say we implement your plan. What measures are we using to ensure that it is and remains a net good? > I don't think it should require debt at all. Indeed, it shouldn't. The idea that it requires debt is built on a false premise. The utility of college can only be useful after you have established a clear goal and need to engage in research to achieve your desired result. Young people who haven't yet contributed anything to the world lack that. Interestingly, it turns out that those who are truly ready for college and those who have already saved up for college by way of productive efforts on the way to finding a meaningful goal are the same set. The reality is that debt isn't needed if college is to be used for the role it claims to serve. But, let's be honest, the only reason most people go to college is to access a curated dating market. Here, there is something to be said about the people being 18 years old and not 45. Now, you might argue that should produce a net good (more children being born), but the data shows that is not the case[1]. In fact, once people get the uninhibited college sex (with protection) out of their system, it seems they are less likely to have children. [1] In fairness, there is the perspective that fewer children born domestically with more immigration is the greater good. But at the same time these nations will only accept top immigrants, not any old random Joe who wants to emigrate, which is quite bad for the countries losing those people. As such, I am not sure this take is being honest.
        yareal 2y ago
  - nanolith 2y ago
    As a counterpoint to this, I went to college in my late twenties. I did this specifically to resolve some gaps in my knowledge regarding higher mathematics instead of getting a degree. It's certainly possible to self-study math, but the classes covered exactly what I needed at the time. Anyway, what I noticed is that most of my classmates simply weren't equipped to study or pass these classes. It wasn't for a lack of skills: they went through the motions as they were taught. It was a problem of maturity. I was approaching these classes as a way to gain valuable knowledge. To them, it was a means to a nebulous end (obtain a degree). Their maladaptive behaviors, which got them through public school, were simply not scaling for harder subjects. I got As, often perfect scores, on my tests. This is because I studied and did the work. I wanted to be there, and I wanted to excel, because I needed that knowledge. Credit hours were some silly "degree points" metric I didn't care about, because I didn't really care about getting a degree at that point. I was paying out of pocket to be there. I wasn't racking up debt or burning through a grant / scholarship to be there. Empathy is another thing that gets stronger as our prefrontal cortexes mature. Our mirror neurons deepen as we get older. So, I took pity on these folks. It wasn't really their fault. From my perspective, they went to college too soon. They should've taken a decade off to grow up, like I did. I organized study groups for these classes. To sweeten the pot, I made it a rule that for every 30 minutes of hard work doing board problems, there was 30 minutes of socializing and venting. Then, rule 2 was that everyone did board problems, and new people were up first. I won't go into more detail, but everyone who attended the study groups started getting As on their tests. The results and the social aspect made these study groups popular. Pretty soon, most of the class was in these groups, and that made it very easy to work with the professor to get classroom time instead of schlepping to the college library or the public library for a meeting room. Although these classes were requirements for engineers and medical doctors, most of the folks who I stayed in contact with eventually changed majors / declared different majors, dropped out, or got unrelated jobs after graduation. I also saw this as a problem with maturity. I knew exactly what I was doing when I started these classes. These kids were burning money to try to figure out what they wanted to do with their lives. Eh... that's a broken system. Kids shouldn't be saddled with debt nor should they have to make a decision about what they want to do for the rest of their lives before their prefrontal contexes have finished forming.
  - nradov 2y ago
    That hardly seems like an ideal. Many people, perhaps the majority, are simply not suited to college. While I am aware of the research on neurological development I think some people are too ready to use that as an excuse for immature behavior. When Horatio Nelson was 19 he was already the commanding officer of a warship, leading men in combat and doing a pretty good job of it. And I don't believe he was really unique; many young people are capable of taking on adult responsibilities when necessity thrusts it upon them.
  - caseysoftware 2y ago
    > A lot of neurological development happens between 18 and 24, college is not just a practical skills education, it's also a space you're allowed to practice being an adult while that neurological development happens. If true, asking people to make potentially catastrophic life-changing decisions prior to then is risky for them and predatory by the person asking. And if we follow that reasoning, we have to reconsider many things we allow/ask sub-24yo's to do and provide them a way to prove they are able to make those decisions.
- listless 2y ago
  Ignorant is a bit of a strong word here. The reason why people index on college so much is they are looking at the data... https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2014/02/11/the-rising-cost-of-not-going-to-college/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2014/02/11/the-ris... This is not to say that college is causal here, but it is a variable and at least one you can control. The problem is that everyone wants to go to a nice college and live the dream. Nobody wants to do 2 years free at community college and then transfer to a state school even though the outcomes would be nearly identical as if you went to some high-end private university (ivy not withstanding). This is an entitlement problem, and the universities are exploiting it.
  - Traubenfuchs 2y ago
    Putting MDs, computer scientists and religious science graduates in the same cohort, for statistics or arguments sake, is extremely misleading.
  - brodouevencode 2y ago
    Maybe I didn't do a good job of stating my point, and my example reenforces that college is ultimately a good thing. So please let me clarify: The point was that everyone graduating high school in the 1990s and onward were constantly fed this idea that you graduate high school and then do your four years (even if that requires racking up a ton of debt) that you'd live a successful, productive life making enough money to at least be comfortable. The averages are proving this to not only to not be true, but that debt incursion is causing major drags on the entire economy. Incursion of debt without a plan of payoff is ignorant. No bank would ever lend money to you for a business if your business plan didn't contain sufficient enough detail of how you planned to pay them back. Working while in school (and thereby avoiding debt) is IMO the best solution to those who want to attend college but may not be able to get full-ride scholarships and aren't financially well off. To be fair, many (if not most) university systems do not make this easy. Night classes are generally hard to come by, there are tons of fees that non-traditional students don't see benefit from, many coursework plans are so rigid to the point where pre-reqs will derail schooling for semesters at a time, etc.
  - randomdata 2y ago
- alistairSH 2y ago
  In general, the lifetime earnings for a college graduate exceed those of a non-graduate by in excess of $1,000,000. There is nothing "ignorant" about choosing college. The debt situation isn't sustainable. But "go to college to earn more money" continues to be largely true. edit - fixed a typo
  - Traubenfuchs 2y ago
    Once again: Counting MDs, computer scientists and religious science graduates as a combined group opposed to a "no college" group that consists of electricians and McDonalds toilet cleaners is extremely misleading, makes absolutely no sense and quite frankly, dumb. One needs to discern between mostly useless degrees and degrees that almost guarantee a life in the upper class.
    - alistairSH 2y ago
      My response was to the comment that going to college as a young adult is "rather ignorant". Slicing and dicing the data and making informed policies choices needs to be done, but a blanket statement that college is dumb is, well, dumb.
  - rufus_foreman 2y ago
    >> the lifetime earnings for a college graduate exceed those of a non-graduate by in excess of $1,000,000 Is correlation causation?
    - alistairSH 2y ago
      There's certainly selection bias at play. If you look at 2-year degrees vs no degree, the lifetime payoff is still hundreds of thousands.
lapcat 2y ago
> The institutions should be held liable for this debt, not the tax payer, and our government should not guarantee or subsidize these loans. A lot of the institutions are government entities, taxpayer sponsored public universitites. It's analogous to suing police departments for police brutality: it's not the police officers who end up paying (police officers don't have millions of dollars to pay out) but rather the taxpayers of the cities.
kgdiem 2y ago
> The institutions should be held liable for this debt, not the tax payer, and our government should not guarantee or subsidize these loans. This seems fair to me. Many universities have tremendous endowments and should be in a position to offer financing to their students. The extent of government subsidy could be no tax on the interest gained from the loans they write. It seems like the paradise papers at large and especially the connection to higher ed have been largely forgotten and maybe never fully acknowledged in the mainstream. https://www.icij.org/investigations/paradise-papers/universities-colleges-offshore-leaks-database/ https://www.icij.org/investigations/paradise-papers/universi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Papers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Papers
- webworker 2y ago
  > Many universities have tremendous endowments and should be in a position to offer financing to their students. This is exactly why every time my university comes calling for donations, I decline. Sorry, but I'm not making a donation that you'll use to rebuild a stadium when you're setting your students up to graduate with six-figure debt. Figure your priorities out, whether you want to educate students or play tone-deaf real estate developer.
- ThrowawayR2 2y ago
  Anytime you hear somebody claiming that university endowments aren't being used or aren't fully being used to aid students, you can safely dismiss their other opinions as being uninformed. There's a lot of articles out there about what endowments are and the restrictions on how they can be used, e.g. https://www.case.org/resources/debunking-5-myths-about-endowments https://www.case.org/resources/debunking-5-myths-about-endow...
caseysoftware 2y ago
> The institutions should be held liable for this debt, not the tax payer, and our government should not guarantee or subsidize these loans. Yes. I'd have a lot more compassion about the debt forgiveness if they were enacting some plan to FIX the problem at the same time.
- lapcat 2y ago
  > I'd have a lot more compassion about the debt forgiveness if they were enacting some plan to FIX the problem at the same time. The problem is that typically the very same people who are opposed to debt forgiveness are also opposed government-sponsored higher education that's free for students, like higher school and earlier; likewise, the very same people who are in favor of debt forgiveness also advocate government-sponsored higher education. I don't think there is a fix as long as higher education is treated like a luxury good. And if that's society's choice, so be it, but then I don't want to hear another word about so-called "meritocracy" when it's pay-to-play.
  - caseysoftware 2y ago
    When your solution to any societal problem is always "make it free!", maybe you need to broaden your thinking.
    - lapcat 2y ago
      What's your solution? I considered the alternative in my second paragraph. You didn't respond to that point. How do you reconcile meritocracy with pay-to-play?
      - caseysoftware 2y ago
        "Make it free" doesn't work when costs are out of control, regardless of the product, service, or industry. An idea solution would more closely connect the buyer (student) to the consequences of their decision (both good and bad) while holding the seller (university) accountable for the quality of their product/service. Until you can address all three, there's no solution just pandering after the fact. > I considered the alternative in my second paragraph. You didn't respond to that point. How do you reconcile meritocracy with pay-to-play? Because it wasn't worth responding to. Most meritocracy has pieces that are pay to play. Maybe it shouldn't but acting like it doesn't is foolish. The more interesting question is: How many students get a net benefit - financially, socially, etc - from college?
dansiemens 2y ago
> I put the blame squarely on these institutions and our government for this situation Maybe we should advocate for some personal responsibility as well. Institutions may have offered dead end programs, banks may have financed it, but many individuals took out these loans quite thoughtlessly.
- silverquiet 2y ago
  Systemic problems require systemic fixes; waxing on about personal responsibility might assuage your feelings, but it does not change the facts.
  - pc86 2y ago
    It can be both. There can be systemic issues but you can also look at someone with a Bachelor's in Contemporary French Literature or Gender Studies or Political Science (me) and say "that was pretty dumb of you." Being able to look at that objectively doesn't mean it's feelings but that was a pretty good attempt at turning that around.
    - lapcat 2y ago
      What's the alternative though? Having nobody study political science? Except perhaps rich kids, and having only rich kids study political science might be even worse than having nobody...
      - nradov 2y ago
        Just to play devil's advocate here, what would be the down side if no one studied political science? The country managed to survive pretty well before that field of study was even a thing.
        lapcat 2y ago
        > Just to play devil's advocate here Sorry, I don't play with devil's advocates. If this is your actual view, then just admit it, and don't pretend to hide behind an imaginary devil.
spywaregorilla 2y ago
You don't think it's their fault but have no sympathy for them?
- kcmastrpc 2y ago
  The two aren't mutually exclusive, and that's also a misrepresentation of what I said. I believe I said something to the effect of I don't have a lot of sympathy for them 18-year olds make poor life choices all the time, but not all of those choices have repercussions which last 30-50 years.
  - spywaregorilla 2y ago
    Well if somebody is entrapped in a situation and you don't it's their fault you probably ought to have a lot of sympathy for them.
derbOac 2y ago
I agree with you, but also think corporate hiring and HR practices also deserve a lot of blame as well. I think this is a big part of the antimeritocracy sentiment that's started rising in the US. It's not so much antimeritocracy as much as it is anticredentialing, and I'd go so far as to say debates about standardized testing fall under the same umbrella. It's a general pattern: take some thing — a degree, a test score, whatever — that bears some legitimate but also weak signal of skill, ability, or aptitude, and then mindlessly apply it as a criterion as if it were the underlying thing you're interested in. If corporations and HR wouldn't use these kinds of credentials mindlessly, there wouldn't be quite the unchecked demand that allows universities and colleges to feed off of it, and we wouldn't have all these debates about student debt. I've seen it in practice in administration at large companies, making certain kinds of degrees required for positions that absolutely do not require them, even of people currently working very successfully in those positions (i.e., they have to go get a degree to maintain a position they already have), because HR basically decides it will make the company look good, and the management gets a monetary bonus for implementing it successfully as policy. Debtholders get a lot of criticism on HN, but I usually feel very differently in these discussions. I have no debt, but it's hard for me to blame people getting masters in religious studies when they see people will other bullshit masters degrees in administrative positions basically because HR has decided a masters degree in something, anything, is required for administration. It's also absurd that we can see the value in a manifest self-taught computer science or math skillset but then somehow imagine that someone getting a degree in philosophy means they can't also have those skills. There's probably a lot more that could be said about a general problem in our society, of using weak metrics and algorithms as if they were precise, substituting poor measures for the thing itself. We have these neverending debates about whether the test score, or degree, or whatever, is a valid indicator of skill or not, as if that's the actual problem; it's never that these things aren't valid indicators of something, it's how much of an indicator they are and whether we should rely on them so heavily. It feels like it comes up everywhere: educational debt, medical regulation, everything. Reading stories of earlier times are really sobering to me. I'm sure there's a certain amount of survivorship bias in the stories themselves, but it never ceases to amaze me how often people would actually apprentice in positions, or actually work themselves up the ladder, or just show up at places and get jobs. That still happens today but it's like we can't function without a rubber stamp that has the flimsiest of basis to it. It feels like admittance and hiring decisions are basically nonsense in a lot of places, so rather than fix it we just play pretend with these proxies.
pc86 2y ago
This seems good in theory but as someone who just started grad school in my late 30s I have forgotten just how Kafkaesque dealing with higher education administration can be. I'm in the midst of an ordeal trying to get an itemized $25 receipt right now for my employer reimbursement. I'm not exaggerating when I say it's been weeks, talking to multiple departments and multiple people in each department. I still do not have a receipt. I can think of no scenario where letting these idiots manage financing for 18-year-olds ends well.
Traubenfuchs 2y ago
> taking on huge debt for useless degrees That‘s the one and only mistake here and for societies sake, it would probably be best to forbid this. If someone wants to take a loan for a useless degree, they are not mentally fit to do so.
ElevenLathe 2y ago
> The institutions should be held liable for this debt, not the tax payer, and our government should not guarantee or subsidize these loans. Isn't this just "dealer financing" but for college degrees? It's predatory in autos and real estate. Why is it a better fit for education?

brodouevencode 2y ago

I too took a non-traditional route. My employer paid for my degrees, and they reaped the benefits of that. The whole notion of "you have to go to college right after high school" is rather ignorant.

yareal 2y ago
A lot of neurological development happens between 18 and 24, college is not just a practical skills education, it's also a space you're allowed to practice being an adult while that neurological development happens. Ideally everyone can go to college and the costs are manageable and the counselors there help people understand what their degrees might be worth to them at the end of the process.
- brodouevencode 2y ago
  Why would you take on any debt especially given that there's a chance you're not neurologically developed enough to understand the risks?
  - yareal 2y ago
    I mean, I'm out here saying college should be a public service that everyone gets and we all fund because it's a net good for our society for young adults. I don't think it should require debt at all.
    - randomdata 2y ago
      > it's a net good for our society for young adults. Nearly 70% of Canadians 24-35 have a post-secondary degree and is considered the most educated nation in the world. For comparison, only 51% of Americans and 37% of Germans have the same. The trend is the same when expanding out to the entire population. What net good is found in Canada that is not seen in the USA and especially Germany to the same degree? It is not economic. Canada is quite poor, comparatively. It does not appear to be political. Germany is considered much more democratic than Canada (Canada beats the USA, granted). It does not appear to be in, say, happiness. Canada is unhappier than both Germany and the USA. Cost of living? Haha. Don't even try to talk to Canadians about that. You will make them cry. Maybe health? Canada does seem to be more healthy than the other two. But is still not as healthy as many other countries that are less educated, so I'm not sure we're actually seeing any correlation there. I'm not sure there is correlation, let alone causation, in any of these cases. So what is it? Let's say we implement your plan. What measures are we using to ensure that it is and remains a net good? > I don't think it should require debt at all. Indeed, it shouldn't. The idea that it requires debt is built on a false premise. The utility of college can only be useful after you have established a clear goal and need to engage in research to achieve your desired result. Young people who haven't yet contributed anything to the world lack that. Interestingly, it turns out that those who are truly ready for college and those who have already saved up for college by way of productive efforts on the way to finding a meaningful goal are the same set. The reality is that debt isn't needed if college is to be used for the role it claims to serve. But, let's be honest, the only reason most people go to college is to access a curated dating market. Here, there is something to be said about the people being 18 years old and not 45. Now, you might argue that should produce a net good (more children being born), but the data shows that is not the case[1]. In fact, once people get the uninhibited college sex (with protection) out of their system, it seems they are less likely to have children. [1] In fairness, there is the perspective that fewer children born domestically with more immigration is the greater good. But at the same time these nations will only accept top immigrants, not any old random Joe who wants to emigrate, which is quite bad for the countries losing those people. As such, I am not sure this take is being honest.
      - yareal 2y ago
- nanolith 2y ago
  As a counterpoint to this, I went to college in my late twenties. I did this specifically to resolve some gaps in my knowledge regarding higher mathematics instead of getting a degree. It's certainly possible to self-study math, but the classes covered exactly what I needed at the time. Anyway, what I noticed is that most of my classmates simply weren't equipped to study or pass these classes. It wasn't for a lack of skills: they went through the motions as they were taught. It was a problem of maturity. I was approaching these classes as a way to gain valuable knowledge. To them, it was a means to a nebulous end (obtain a degree). Their maladaptive behaviors, which got them through public school, were simply not scaling for harder subjects. I got As, often perfect scores, on my tests. This is because I studied and did the work. I wanted to be there, and I wanted to excel, because I needed that knowledge. Credit hours were some silly "degree points" metric I didn't care about, because I didn't really care about getting a degree at that point. I was paying out of pocket to be there. I wasn't racking up debt or burning through a grant / scholarship to be there. Empathy is another thing that gets stronger as our prefrontal cortexes mature. Our mirror neurons deepen as we get older. So, I took pity on these folks. It wasn't really their fault. From my perspective, they went to college too soon. They should've taken a decade off to grow up, like I did. I organized study groups for these classes. To sweeten the pot, I made it a rule that for every 30 minutes of hard work doing board problems, there was 30 minutes of socializing and venting. Then, rule 2 was that everyone did board problems, and new people were up first. I won't go into more detail, but everyone who attended the study groups started getting As on their tests. The results and the social aspect made these study groups popular. Pretty soon, most of the class was in these groups, and that made it very easy to work with the professor to get classroom time instead of schlepping to the college library or the public library for a meeting room. Although these classes were requirements for engineers and medical doctors, most of the folks who I stayed in contact with eventually changed majors / declared different majors, dropped out, or got unrelated jobs after graduation. I also saw this as a problem with maturity. I knew exactly what I was doing when I started these classes. These kids were burning money to try to figure out what they wanted to do with their lives. Eh... that's a broken system. Kids shouldn't be saddled with debt nor should they have to make a decision about what they want to do for the rest of their lives before their prefrontal contexes have finished forming.
- nradov 2y ago
  That hardly seems like an ideal. Many people, perhaps the majority, are simply not suited to college. While I am aware of the research on neurological development I think some people are too ready to use that as an excuse for immature behavior. When Horatio Nelson was 19 he was already the commanding officer of a warship, leading men in combat and doing a pretty good job of it. And I don't believe he was really unique; many young people are capable of taking on adult responsibilities when necessity thrusts it upon them.
- caseysoftware 2y ago
  > A lot of neurological development happens between 18 and 24, college is not just a practical skills education, it's also a space you're allowed to practice being an adult while that neurological development happens. If true, asking people to make potentially catastrophic life-changing decisions prior to then is risky for them and predatory by the person asking. And if we follow that reasoning, we have to reconsider many things we allow/ask sub-24yo's to do and provide them a way to prove they are able to make those decisions.
listless 2y ago
Ignorant is a bit of a strong word here. The reason why people index on college so much is they are looking at the data... https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2014/02/11/the-rising-cost-of-not-going-to-college/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2014/02/11/the-ris... This is not to say that college is causal here, but it is a variable and at least one you can control. The problem is that everyone wants to go to a nice college and live the dream. Nobody wants to do 2 years free at community college and then transfer to a state school even though the outcomes would be nearly identical as if you went to some high-end private university (ivy not withstanding). This is an entitlement problem, and the universities are exploiting it.
- Traubenfuchs 2y ago
  Putting MDs, computer scientists and religious science graduates in the same cohort, for statistics or arguments sake, is extremely misleading.
- brodouevencode 2y ago
  Maybe I didn't do a good job of stating my point, and my example reenforces that college is ultimately a good thing. So please let me clarify: The point was that everyone graduating high school in the 1990s and onward were constantly fed this idea that you graduate high school and then do your four years (even if that requires racking up a ton of debt) that you'd live a successful, productive life making enough money to at least be comfortable. The averages are proving this to not only to not be true, but that debt incursion is causing major drags on the entire economy. Incursion of debt without a plan of payoff is ignorant. No bank would ever lend money to you for a business if your business plan didn't contain sufficient enough detail of how you planned to pay them back. Working while in school (and thereby avoiding debt) is IMO the best solution to those who want to attend college but may not be able to get full-ride scholarships and aren't financially well off. To be fair, many (if not most) university systems do not make this easy. Night classes are generally hard to come by, there are tons of fees that non-traditional students don't see benefit from, many coursework plans are so rigid to the point where pre-reqs will derail schooling for semesters at a time, etc.
- randomdata 2y ago
alistairSH 2y ago
In general, the lifetime earnings for a college graduate exceed those of a non-graduate by in excess of $1,000,000. There is nothing "ignorant" about choosing college. The debt situation isn't sustainable. But "go to college to earn more money" continues to be largely true. edit - fixed a typo
- Traubenfuchs 2y ago
  Once again: Counting MDs, computer scientists and religious science graduates as a combined group opposed to a "no college" group that consists of electricians and McDonalds toilet cleaners is extremely misleading, makes absolutely no sense and quite frankly, dumb. One needs to discern between mostly useless degrees and degrees that almost guarantee a life in the upper class.
  - alistairSH 2y ago
    My response was to the comment that going to college as a young adult is "rather ignorant". Slicing and dicing the data and making informed policies choices needs to be done, but a blanket statement that college is dumb is, well, dumb.
- rufus_foreman 2y ago
  >> the lifetime earnings for a college graduate exceed those of a non-graduate by in excess of $1,000,000 Is correlation causation?
  - alistairSH 2y ago
    There's certainly selection bias at play. If you look at 2-year degrees vs no degree, the lifetime payoff is still hundreds of thousands.

lapcat 2y ago

> The institutions should be held liable for this debt, not the tax payer, and our government should not guarantee or subsidize these loans. A lot of the institutions are government entities, taxpayer sponsored public universitites. It's analogous to suing police departments for police brutality: it's not the police officers who end up paying (police officers don't have millions of dollars to pay out) but rather the taxpayers of the cities.

kgdiem 2y ago

> The institutions should be held liable for this debt, not the tax payer, and our government should not guarantee or subsidize these loans. This seems fair to me. Many universities have tremendous endowments and should be in a position to offer financing to their students. The extent of government subsidy could be no tax on the interest gained from the loans they write. It seems like the paradise papers at large and especially the connection to higher ed have been largely forgotten and maybe never fully acknowledged in the mainstream. https://www.icij.org/investigations/paradise-papers/universities-colleges-offshore-leaks-database/ https://www.icij.org/investigations/paradise-papers/universi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Papers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Papers

webworker 2y ago
> Many universities have tremendous endowments and should be in a position to offer financing to their students. This is exactly why every time my university comes calling for donations, I decline. Sorry, but I'm not making a donation that you'll use to rebuild a stadium when you're setting your students up to graduate with six-figure debt. Figure your priorities out, whether you want to educate students or play tone-deaf real estate developer.
ThrowawayR2 2y ago
Anytime you hear somebody claiming that university endowments aren't being used or aren't fully being used to aid students, you can safely dismiss their other opinions as being uninformed. There's a lot of articles out there about what endowments are and the restrictions on how they can be used, e.g. https://www.case.org/resources/debunking-5-myths-about-endowments https://www.case.org/resources/debunking-5-myths-about-endow...

caseysoftware 2y ago

> The institutions should be held liable for this debt, not the tax payer, and our government should not guarantee or subsidize these loans. Yes. I'd have a lot more compassion about the debt forgiveness if they were enacting some plan to FIX the problem at the same time.

lapcat 2y ago
> I'd have a lot more compassion about the debt forgiveness if they were enacting some plan to FIX the problem at the same time. The problem is that typically the very same people who are opposed to debt forgiveness are also opposed government-sponsored higher education that's free for students, like higher school and earlier; likewise, the very same people who are in favor of debt forgiveness also advocate government-sponsored higher education. I don't think there is a fix as long as higher education is treated like a luxury good. And if that's society's choice, so be it, but then I don't want to hear another word about so-called "meritocracy" when it's pay-to-play.
- caseysoftware 2y ago
  When your solution to any societal problem is always "make it free!", maybe you need to broaden your thinking.
  - lapcat 2y ago
    What's your solution? I considered the alternative in my second paragraph. You didn't respond to that point. How do you reconcile meritocracy with pay-to-play?
    - caseysoftware 2y ago
      "Make it free" doesn't work when costs are out of control, regardless of the product, service, or industry. An idea solution would more closely connect the buyer (student) to the consequences of their decision (both good and bad) while holding the seller (university) accountable for the quality of their product/service. Until you can address all three, there's no solution just pandering after the fact. > I considered the alternative in my second paragraph. You didn't respond to that point. How do you reconcile meritocracy with pay-to-play? Because it wasn't worth responding to. Most meritocracy has pieces that are pay to play. Maybe it shouldn't but acting like it doesn't is foolish. The more interesting question is: How many students get a net benefit - financially, socially, etc - from college?

dansiemens 2y ago

> I put the blame squarely on these institutions and our government for this situation Maybe we should advocate for some personal responsibility as well. Institutions may have offered dead end programs, banks may have financed it, but many individuals took out these loans quite thoughtlessly.

silverquiet 2y ago
Systemic problems require systemic fixes; waxing on about personal responsibility might assuage your feelings, but it does not change the facts.
- pc86 2y ago
  It can be both. There can be systemic issues but you can also look at someone with a Bachelor's in Contemporary French Literature or Gender Studies or Political Science (me) and say "that was pretty dumb of you." Being able to look at that objectively doesn't mean it's feelings but that was a pretty good attempt at turning that around.
  - lapcat 2y ago
    What's the alternative though? Having nobody study political science? Except perhaps rich kids, and having only rich kids study political science might be even worse than having nobody...
    - nradov 2y ago
      Just to play devil's advocate here, what would be the down side if no one studied political science? The country managed to survive pretty well before that field of study was even a thing.
      - lapcat 2y ago
        > Just to play devil's advocate here Sorry, I don't play with devil's advocates. If this is your actual view, then just admit it, and don't pretend to hide behind an imaginary devil.

spywaregorilla 2y ago

You don't think it's their fault but have no sympathy for them?

kcmastrpc 2y ago
The two aren't mutually exclusive, and that's also a misrepresentation of what I said. I believe I said something to the effect of I don't have a lot of sympathy for them 18-year olds make poor life choices all the time, but not all of those choices have repercussions which last 30-50 years.
- spywaregorilla 2y ago
  Well if somebody is entrapped in a situation and you don't it's their fault you probably ought to have a lot of sympathy for them.

derbOac 2y ago

I agree with you, but also think corporate hiring and HR practices also deserve a lot of blame as well. I think this is a big part of the antimeritocracy sentiment that's started rising in the US. It's not so much antimeritocracy as much as it is anticredentialing, and I'd go so far as to say debates about standardized testing fall under the same umbrella. It's a general pattern: take some thing — a degree, a test score, whatever — that bears some legitimate but also weak signal of skill, ability, or aptitude, and then mindlessly apply it as a criterion as if it were the underlying thing you're interested in. If corporations and HR wouldn't use these kinds of credentials mindlessly, there wouldn't be quite the unchecked demand that allows universities and colleges to feed off of it, and we wouldn't have all these debates about student debt. I've seen it in practice in administration at large companies, making certain kinds of degrees required for positions that absolutely do not require them, even of people currently working very successfully in those positions (i.e., they have to go get a degree to maintain a position they already have), because HR basically decides it will make the company look good, and the management gets a monetary bonus for implementing it successfully as policy. Debtholders get a lot of criticism on HN, but I usually feel very differently in these discussions. I have no debt, but it's hard for me to blame people getting masters in religious studies when they see people will other bullshit masters degrees in administrative positions basically because HR has decided a masters degree in something, anything, is required for administration. It's also absurd that we can see the value in a manifest self-taught computer science or math skillset but then somehow imagine that someone getting a degree in philosophy means they can't also have those skills. There's probably a lot more that could be said about a general problem in our society, of using weak metrics and algorithms as if they were precise, substituting poor measures for the thing itself. We have these neverending debates about whether the test score, or degree, or whatever, is a valid indicator of skill or not, as if that's the actual problem; it's never that these things aren't valid indicators of something, it's how much of an indicator they are and whether we should rely on them so heavily. It feels like it comes up everywhere: educational debt, medical regulation, everything. Reading stories of earlier times are really sobering to me. I'm sure there's a certain amount of survivorship bias in the stories themselves, but it never ceases to amaze me how often people would actually apprentice in positions, or actually work themselves up the ladder, or just show up at places and get jobs. That still happens today but it's like we can't function without a rubber stamp that has the flimsiest of basis to it. It feels like admittance and hiring decisions are basically nonsense in a lot of places, so rather than fix it we just play pretend with these proxies.

pc86 2y ago

This seems good in theory but as someone who just started grad school in my late 30s I have forgotten just how Kafkaesque dealing with higher education administration can be. I'm in the midst of an ordeal trying to get an itemized $25 receipt right now for my employer reimbursement. I'm not exaggerating when I say it's been weeks, talking to multiple departments and multiple people in each department. I still do not have a receipt. I can think of no scenario where letting these idiots manage financing for 18-year-olds ends well.

Traubenfuchs 2y ago

> taking on huge debt for useless degrees That‘s the one and only mistake here and for societies sake, it would probably be best to forbid this. If someone wants to take a loan for a useless degree, they are not mentally fit to do so.

ElevenLathe 2y ago

> The institutions should be held liable for this debt, not the tax payer, and our government should not guarantee or subsidize these loans. Isn't this just "dealer financing" but for college degrees? It's predatory in autos and real estate. Why is it a better fit for education?