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 ...
Bullshit..This idiot was getting statements the entire time and every single semester when he applied for more. He chose to throw them away...I was in a Dave Ramsey FPU course and one of these idiots showed up with 145K of debt for some BS degree and the tears were flowing from her. I can’t sympathize. I just can’t. It is not some secret that student loans make you a slave.
Yeah, right, but he’s smart enough to get a Masters in a discipline that will enable/entitle him to tell the rest of us what to do with our bodies, ourselves as the Feminists used to say.
File under: schlemiel
Oh and I just know we’ll all get ponies, rainbows and a big ol’ rock candy mountain too! How did this idea of anyone deserving free anything in life take off?!
My daughter living at home and working her way through a state college. She's banking money each year. If she has to bail out these morons...
$200k? Dude did higher education wrong.
It’s more than that.
I believe you have your student loans forgiven if you work for the government or a non-profit for 10 years, in my understanding.
It is a zero-sum game. If the student does not repay the debt, taxpayers ultimately do. It’s that simple. Take your pick.
Ether the responsibility lands on the shoulders of those who either wisely or unwisely pursued a particular course of education, or it falls on the backs of fellow citizens who had nothing to do with the decision made by the student. The benefit of the education is some increment of enhanced personal capital of the student. The benefit does not spill over to fellow citizens and taxpayers. The cost and the benefit of these loans should be very specifically localized on the student borrower and no one else.
Think of it as the non human equivalent in earning power to gender studies or lesbianism in Shakespearian England et.al.
I want this guy to do my taxes & come up w/ a huge refund! Why would he write this & out himself as not too swift?????
You can bet your ass if you could discharge student loans in bankruptcy no one in their right mind would loan these idiots this kind of money. Majors like this would cost about $20/credit and the professors that taught it would get paid minimum wage.
Since you CANT discharge them, you get tenured douchebags making 5-low6 figures teaching it, whole school departments built for it and a raft of people worthy of foaming lattes or asking if you’d like fries with that signing themselves into indentured servitude for life for a degree in it...
Hopefully the mountain will erupt in nonpareils & cherry jelly bellies ;)
If somebody applies for a job with me and I find out their loan was discharged, their resume goes straight into the trash.
No one is going to let you out of a store with $1000 or more in goods without signing a contract. Your response is specious.
That’s fine and well, but the risk for a financial transaction like a loan needs to fall on one of two parties, a lender and a borrower (and possibly a co-signer) Anything else is theft or fraud.
If you stand back and look at this....it’s a 2008-like scenario waiting to unfold and crash.
I would agree...a restriction on loans has to be implemented....but it’d trigger a massive gutting of school programs across the US and probably a quarter of all professors would have to be let go. Go and try to explain that to several thousand such professors or their school bosses.
A bioethicist is one who thinks they are a superior person capable of passing judgment on others. The bio qualifier is one I hear from those a lot in the medical field - they want to help people. Another superior person pretense as if other jobs don't help people.
This kid is a schmuck.
No excuse; there seems to be a lack of maturity with the younger crowd. Basic finance skills and fiscal responsibility is missing from many.
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