Did you tink doze checks you was gettin' were comin' from da tooth fairy?
We could work it out dat way if youse really want to.
Posted on 01/30/2016 7:31:23 PM PST by TigerClaws
Every once in a while, when I’m feeling overwhelmed, I watch college commencement ceremonies on YouTube.
These rituals remind me how perverse our higher-education system is—and of the empty idealism that colleges and universities sell us:
We are here today, donning our ceremonial robes and caps, to recite the traditional vacuous platitudes and wish you well in paying off high-interest student loans for which we are in no way held accountable.
Let us now further romanticize our fair institution by singing the alma mater and conveniently forget that tuition has gone up 1,120 percent since 1978. Good luck out there, kids!
I’m a consumer of those vacuous platitudes and a victim of this system. After finishing my master’s degree in 2008, I found out—as in, I didn’t already know—that I had $200,000 in student debt.
Some well-paying professions might make this amount manageable, but for a bioethicist like me, it’s been crushing. Many things had to go wrong for this to happen—or right, if you’re a school or a lender. Although the hefty amount I owe is unusual, my experience is not: Motivated by an idealistic view of education and career and vulnerable to predatory, disingenuous, or at least negligent institutions, young people and their families too often take on large amounts of student debt.
No matter how much they owe, the consequences of that debt can be outsized. These young people may have to abandon their educations early; pay back far more, after interest, than they took out; manage exceptionally exploitative loan terms; shoulder serious, chronic mental distress; delay important life decisions; and participate less in the economy than they otherwise would.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Bioethics is the study of the typically controversial ethical issues emerging from new situations and possibilities brought about by advances in biology and medicine. It is also moral discernment as it relates to medical policy and practice.
In short should we pull the plug on grandpa?
He has lots of money = yes
Then he could pay his school bill.
That school saw him like a casino sees a compulsive gambler.
Did you tink doze checks you was gettin' were comin' from da tooth fairy?
We could work it out dat way if youse really want to.
I swear they almost forced my granddaughter to take a loan. You get preferential treatment if you have an account with Wells Fargo and you get a credit card and hey, they just give you money to put in your account, They were shocked when she refused and told her how she didn’t have to pay it back until she graduated.
My eldest granddaughter is in her last semester with absolutely no debt. The two who are sophomores are also debt free thanks to scholarships, parents and grandparents.
I worked construction in Denver
The Mexican laborers and cement finishers were sending there kids to apprentice school to become electrician, plumbers, carpenters, and elevator workers
They have jobs and no debt
There. Thank you!
Why, my great grandfather was a bioethicist.
And my grandfather too, in Italy, was a bioethicict.
Pop was one of the best bioethicists in NYC.
And I wont have you insult my heritage!!!
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I know something about dfwgator that you may not know, he doesn’t brag about it a lot but his father was a mail man,
I'd respond, but I'm a busy guy, being Governor of Ohio and running for President and all.
You don't know how proud you've made me, son!
:) my father wasn’t really a bio...whatever. he was a plumber in Brooklyn :)
Sounds like my daughter. School was paid for with scholarships, summer jobs, and some help from mom and dad. She finished her PHd at 27 with a total debt of $2,000, which she paid a few weeks after getting her PHd. She was still driving the used Saturn her dad bought her for a high school graduation present, but she and her husband had already purchased their first home. There are a lot of kids like these who worked really hard and paid their own way who are not going to be happy about picking up the tab for slackers.
As with most crises the government in primarily responsible and the following story to illustrate this point. Colleges applying for participation in federal programs each year prepare sets of student budgets. These then appear in student award letters. The Department of Education when analyzing the student and family data provide an expected family contribution. The difference between the budget and expected family contribution the college then attempts to fill up with awards of grants and loans. In most cases, at least for privates, there remains an unmet need. However, students still successfully complete the school year. I analyzed this figure annually to hold financial aid people accountable for adopting standard for awards which took into account reasonable measures (they did not think so) of this unmet need for the next year.
During my time the feds enacted as tax benefits American Opportunity Credit and Lifetime Learning Credit that were supposedly of direct benefit to the student and their parents. I plugged those into the figures for unmet need to require greater average contributions and lesser awards by the college. I made sure the student and their parents were conduits for and not recipients of the majority of these tax benefits. Of course the result was the same or increased pressure to borrow for education or use more income and savings.
This story illustrates how financial people have behaved ever since the feds started throwing money at colleges. Similar information has always been part of the pervasive public knowledge available for Pell, SEOG, GSL, etc. There was always any number of professionals who were available to testify concerning the inevitable consequences of these programs.
Such individuals were ignored and/or never given a forum. The programs were just too attractive to assist in reelection. I would propose the Law of Premeditated Ignorance accounts for this phenomenon much more accurately than the Law of Unintended Consequences that is usually proposed to evade responsibility for obviously stupid actions.
Federal Student Aid and the Law of Unintended Consequences
http://www.capoliticalreview.com/top-stories/federal-student-aid-and-the-law-of-unintended-consequences/
Student loan subsidies blamed for nearly all college tuition increases
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/12/student_loan_subsidies_blamed_for_nearly_all_college_tuition_increases.html#ixzz3v4icBMmf
There will be no need.
The laws of economics are as certain and as brutal as the law of gravity.
Think of all those people who rushed into the housing market some years ago. It should have been obvious to anyone that things couldn't continue as they were.
Housing prices were rising at 25% per year in some markets. Realtors had to stay on the phone continuously in order to track which listed homes were still for sale. Morgage underwriters were making money hand over fist just generating loan papers.
When the bubble burst there was plenty of agony to go around.
The same will be true for the student loan bubble. Professors, schools, students, and college communities will all get to participate in a violent shakeout. There will be many survivors in the STEM fields, certainly. But there will be many casualties. Darkened lecture halls. Depressed communities. Lines of people willing to take virtually any job.
The government will print plenty of money but it won't have the impact one might expect.
Some of us have wondered why the liberals don't just raise the minimum wage to $100 per hour so that everyone can be wealthy. They just might end up doing that but it won't have the intended effect.
Re: “Go to a trade school. I don’t see too many poor plumbers, electricians, painters and carpenters.”
All of the above professions require real work, real production of something.
Shocked, shocked. Right after commencement I discovered the $200,000 debt. No idea THAT was coming, no sir. It just appeared out of no where. If only Bernie were president. Then college would be free just like kindergarten
“make the educational institution a co-signer”
boy, I really like this idea. No better way to align interests of the school and the student borrower than this.
I agree with you 100% - they should be dischargeable in bankruptcy. This aligns the interests of the lender and the student borrower.
This would drastically lower college tuitions, turn colleges into institutions of higher learning, not vast entertainment complexes for the unenlightened and unteachable.
“So, then, I guess if you walk out of a store with a TV and say “I only found out after I walked out that it cost 1000$” You should be able to keep the TV and have the government pay it back for you.”
People do this every day - they buy stuff with credit cards and then discover they can’t pay them back. The creditor assumes all risk.
Student loans should be no different.
“As a former finance director at a small college, I know students are given all the information about debt they need every year when they sign the loan. “
So what would have happened to your small college if loans could be discharged in bankruptcy - giving lenders a stake in making sure loans could be paid back after being issued?
This is a serious question, I would really value your opinion on this.
I had a unique experience in college: I had the same accounting professor for over 30 hours, and he never used numbers. He was all about teaching the theory that went with each transaction, whether it was tax, audit, governmental, etc.
He only gave midterm and final exams, each consisted of five questions that he thought up on the walk from his office to the classroom.
Of those five questions, two or three would engender the following for the first sentence of the answer: based on the information you've given me, I can't answer the question. That would be followed by a detailed analysis of the situation. It was nothing to churn out ten pages in 45 minutes.
Sophomores feared him, juniors respected him, seniors loved him. He was a great man, and a trusted advisor to his students. He also signed his paycheck back over to the university, as he had a very successful CPA practice in Spokane.
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