Posted on 01/30/2016 7:31:23 PM PST by TigerClaws
Every once in a while, when Iâm feeling overwhelmed, I watch college commencement ceremonies on YouTube.
These rituals remind me how perverse our higher-education system isâand 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!
Iâm a consumer of those vacuous platitudes and a victim of this system. After finishing my masterâs degree in 2008, I found outâas in, I didnât already knowâthat I had $200,000 in student debt.
Some well-paying professions might make this amount manageable, but for a bioethicist like me, itâs been crushing. Many things had to go wrong for this to happenâor right, if youâre 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 ...
This guy is too stupid, weaselly and/or irresponsible to be any kind of ethicist. At least Wesleyan was smart enough to turn him down.
UW-Madison is a better, more highly ranked and regarded school than CT College, too. I take it they turned him down as well?
Yet he and his parents, signing all the loan docs each semester, didn’t know what they were getting him into? And he chose to major in music performance along the way? Then by grad school, coming from a third-tier college, he was taking on that further amount of debt in hopes of a high-paying academic career?
Bioethics must not involve ethics either, except the Marxist kind. Ethical people consider their ability to repay a loan before borrowing. They don’t blame lenders for being “predatory”.
The answer to whether this person is a moron, a thief, or a scoundrel, is “Yes”.
If they’re eligible for bankruptcy relief then the rates ought to be much higher, because they’re already defaulted on at incredible rates.
Really though, all we need to do is to get the feds out of funding college at all. Let low-cost online colleges flourish in the breech and everyone will be much better off.
*breach*
Time for my morning coffee.
No, President Trump should pull the plug on federal funds for college—which is essentially another form of crony capitalism. But he won’t—as won’t any of the other candidates.
something like this obamacare navigator
Navigator...."your voting record here ...and here does not conform to current standards."
lemmee see if I got this straight...
person has a masters degree yet cannot add or subtract..
person has a masters degree yet cannot read what he or she is signing yet signs it anyway....
person has a masters degree in a useless subject that virtually guarantees little to no employment...
conclusion: person with a masters degree is an idiot and should be made to pay back every penny wasted on this endeavor...
So he ran up $200,000 in loans, didn’t pay enough attention to realize it, and now it’s everyone’s fault but his?
Maybe he’s a victim of his credit card debt too.
If student loans were eligible for bankruptcy relief, nobody would be able to borrow $200K for a Master’s degree in “Bioethics” (whatever that is).
Get rid of the free-money fire hose and all these goofy “Studies” majors will disappear and tuitions for everyone else will revert to the levels they were a generation ago when a person could pay for the bulk of their college expenses with summer/weekend work.
I’d just get the gov out of the SL business completely and of course banks can write private sector SLs with whatever terms they want.
But I am totally against “forgiving” or changing for the worse to taxpayer or private-sector lenders the terms on the government-involved loans that have already been given out.
It proves my point. Maleducation should not be rewarded. Numbnuts can go dig ditches for which he is qualified and the university can stop offering crap degrees. STOP any government funding to education and the value of a degree will climb.
Years ago I worked in the student loan dept. of a regular bank. Clerks spent all their time sending out payment books for loan amounts of $500-$3000. (Beauty schools, air conditioning, like that). However, once the students had to pay, they went back to school! The payment schedule would be suspended and the new loan would be rolled over into the balance of what the student already owed. Payments delayed!
As I recall, $5,000 was the maximum. And those students had to make those payments eventually. The bank charged a government subsidized interest rate, but soon the politicians blamed the banks for gouging the underclass. I think the government took over completely . . . who knows.
Also, each ‘school’ had to be certified by the federal government. You can imagine how effective that was. Those students really got cheated.
The feds decimate every new field of funding that they open.
Well, there's your problem right there.
It appears that his parents played a role in this C__F___ as well.
If this is true, this is a ridiculous policy.
Would it be wrong to eradicate mosquitoes?
By Claire Bates
BBC News Magazine
28 January 2016
2 thoughts:
1. Financial Peace University would be a class wide requirement during Freshman Fall and “Total Money Makeover” would be the required reading during orientation versus some 3d world crap.
2. GI Bill would be the only form of Federal Financial aid (ok - this is a wish...)
See, this is why I write off Free Republic on my income taxes as Therapy / Medical Expense.
I read an article like this, and all the replies calm down my blood pressure.
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