Free Republic

Federal student loans began in the late 1950s after Sputnik, when the United States wanted to compete in the Space Race with Russia/USSR. We wanted to get more Iowa farm boys a college education.

Private student loans do exist, but private entities are understandably reluctant to lend to 18 year olds with no job. That can be solved with parent co-signers, but many US parents aren’t in great financial shape either (no guarantee of repayment). So for decades there were federal FFEL loans—private loans, sort of, but the federal government guaranteed them in the event of default. And subsidized them. Since 2010 all federal student loans have been directly issued and managed by the federal government. No new FFEL loans were disbursed.

One solution is to have universities have more skin in the game, or loans tied to certain more useful degrees only. Like STEM perhaps. BS degrees, not BAs.

Agree about the GI Bill and equivalents.

Federal student loans are a huge problem. They serve to increase tuition horrendously, mostly.

A lot of what the Dept of Education does, both funding and staffing, is Federal Student Aid. There are about 4000 employees at the Dept of Ed and 1600 of them are FSA.

That’s federal student loans and grants. About 80 percent of college students get those now.

Those functions are in the law (Higher Education Act of 1965) but could be moved to the Treasury, and independent agency, or perhaps to the states.

Thank you. He was pretty prepared. He was 80 and starting his third decade with Parkinsons. My husband heard his final words the day before he died and I was with him 2 days before he died and the day he died.

He was a Marine pilot in Vietnam and so now I stop by and freshen up the flowers and the little flag every few months at the military cemetery.

My father just died in hospice care (in Dec) and his last month of life all he ate was Ensure and then later on just a spoonful or two of ice cream a day.

It’s all he wanted to eat, and barely that. He got thin. I learned that we don’t die because we don’t eat; we don’t eat because we are dying. The body doesn’t need or want that energy anymore. I learned a LOT from the hospice people.

Ice cream. That will probably be my final month of food too. We come in the world with sweet dairy (breastmilk is very sweet and tastes like melted ice cream—I’ve tasted my own out of curiosity); we go out of the world with sweet dairy. And sometimes in diapers too.

Chico CA reported a case last week—CSU Chico warned students who attended a certain party about it in an email.

Ominous.

The new anti-alcohol sentiment is because our governments want us hooked on weed instead: making us docile and uncaring, easy to control. They call it “dope” for a reason.

Drunks get angry and plan revolutions (ie, the Revolutionary war in taverns, the beer hall putsch with Hitler, etc) against their governments.

I myself will stick with a modified French plan—a generous glass of wine with dinner. A nice part of the Mediterranean diet.

School closures were almost directly correlated with blueness of a state and teachers union strength. The public schools that were closed the longest were in the bluest of the states, CA, NM, HI, WA, OR. . .the ones that opened soonest were the red states.

I will never forget because I followed state and even county closures closely. I had 2 high school teens at the time, in public high school in CA. One I moved to homeschooling (he promptly flunked out of “remote” high school) and the other I moved to a private school.

The closures affected three academic years: closure beginning the Spring of 2020, the entire following academic year of complete “remote” virtual school, and the year after that they were all masked and couldn’t learn AP Spanish. (Hard to learn when both the teacher and the student are masked.)

I’ll never forget. I attended 7 rallies to reopen schools, 2 to reopen sports, and 3 signature gathering events to recall the school board.

Nothing to do with Trump. All to do with leftist county health directors, leftist states, and teachers unions.

Total disregard for students K-12 and college in blue states. Some athletes forced to compete masked collapsed! An awful time to be a teen in a blue state.

I still have my “Gore Loserman” T shirt!

I’m going to watch it in the path of totality from the deck of a cruise ship docked outside Mazatlan. Four full minutes if no clouds! I’m not getting off the ship to the beaches which will be packed with revelers.

I saw the 2017 eclipse in the path of totality as well. Very primal feeling; so glad I went.

I’m a woman, but married and evangelical and not woke at all.

It’s about marriage, and Christianity.

We need to encourage both, as a nation.

Did the research paper say anything about the non-RNA vaccines, like the J&J? The more “traditional” vaccine.

My son is a junior in college majoring in Computer Science. He’s excellent at coding (has had 2 paid internships already) and loves it but not good at math. I’m sad for him as coding (and chess and music) is his superpower but he will graduate exactly when it all disappears. . .

Still, he’ll have a STEM degree so presumably he’ll be hirable.

It isn’t immoral (IMO) to create frozen embryos as long as those embryos are used in an implantation attempt or adopted by organizations such as Snowflakes.

My libertarian son got that way by being an Econ major at a college in the UK, I believe, although he always trended “left” from a very young age. Doesn’t seem to believe much in borders/the nation-state, abandoned Christianity, and likes crypto.

He’s a good guy though, and married, and smart and otherwise reasonable. Maybe after he has kids he’ll trend a bit more right.

Yes—but now that so many more people go to college, really “living on their own” is not expected until after undergrad or grad school is completed—meaning mid to late 20s.

My young adult children didn’t “live at home after 18” but that’s because they were away at college, and they DID live at home every summer until they were done with college.

Yes, three of my 4 (Gen Y and Z) young adult kids are conservative and vote GOP. One is a libertarian, and. . .doesn’t. Too bad the 3 conservatives live in a blue state (CA) and so their votes don’t matter much, but unfortunately the libertarian lives in a purple state (NC) when each vote matters a lot.

It is stunning to ME (Gen X) how much Gen Z spends on DoorDash. But to each his own. . .if they can “afford” it, good for them.

We all spend our money on things we prioritize, and Gen Z prioritizes DoorDash.

I agree with you to some extent, but there’s no need for one young adult to “pay $2500 for an apartment.”

The young adult could marry, or get a roommate, and then there’d be two people paying $2500 for that apartment, not one.

I don’t think Dr. Spock is to blame here, anymore. The (majority) single parent households (ie, a single mom, likely on welfare) now raising Gen Z likely don’t read anything at all. They’ve never read Dr. Spock or really anything else.

The problem is much deeper than Dr. Spock.

Agreed. Marriage AND a job (if married, that means two incomes) is the key to affording to move out of the parental home.