Yeah, I think I’m sold as well on that point alone. If we had only made college students take a brief class on what interest rates mean, what default means, what other rights and obligations they had as borrowers, and made them sign something promising that they would pay back their loans, starting six months from time they finished school, then we would be on more solid ground holding them to their end of the deal. But alas …
It’s not that hard of a choice. I couldn’t afford it, nor could my parents. I went to cc for two years. Worked while I went saved money and continued that while at UF. I drank more than most anyone during this trek. It’s not like I missed out on the college life lol. No student debt
Well, that would be something more useful than your understanding of economics or higher Ed. There are definitely degrees that have better ROI’s than others, unfortunately as is typically observed from “conservatives” you seem to simply target niche fields you don’t like (art history, women’s studies). Come on. Is that what’s really driving the debt crisis? I guarantee you UF churns out more useless “general business” grads by a large multiple. Shall we ban that degree as well? Even a popular field like psychology is potentially useless towards a career path if a person only has a bachelors. Yet, it would obviously be absurd to ban the undergraduate study of psychology. This thing needs to be looked at the institution level, starting with high priced private schools and the maximum loans being guaranteed. I think everyone agrees observationally people shouldn’t take on more debt than they are likely to pay back. Yet, the issue is what it is. We can tighten the screws on lending in other ways that make more sense, starting with targeting the institutions that produce the highest % of loan defaults and flagging them - even suspending colleges that cross a default threshold, I suppose that would be too obvious. I’m not in favor of the crazy “debt forgiveness” schemes btw, at least not the maximalist ones that some dems proposed. I do think restructuring is needed, and Biden’s plan wasn’t that crazy to me. Not sure I’ve seen anything practical proposed as a counter point. Conservatives seem to view this topic like they do immigration or dreamers - “nO aMnEsTy”.
I don't think this is you being an a$$ and feel it's likely that many, if not most, agree with your message. Your point about gov screwing up education is spot on. Only think I'd quibble with it your thought on the year-long econ of life class. Any attempt to standardize that would likely get screwed up akin to the ways gov screws up education.
When you sign your loan documents you have to make an election on how/when you pay your loan back, which has an impact on interest. You also get the total payback amount. If you can’t figure out that a loan has interest tacked on, then you probably shouldn’t be going to college in the 1st place.
So, in review, you think the president using a law that says he can waive loans to waive loans is “catastrophic” for the country, but see no problem with a Supreme Court animated by politics and not genuine legal judgement. Puzzle me this, what happens when someone with stones gets in office? How much respect do you think he’s going to give to a Supreme Court that operates in this manner. It’s like you’re playing a game where you’ve bought the refs. Yeah, you might win one or two. But when you keep doing it, and what’s more bragging about how awesome it is that you own the refs, people will start ignoring those refs pretty dang quickly.
So which party has the most national debt? Let's see, the debt mongers Reagan, Herbert, W, and the biggest of all Trump versus Clinton, Obama and Biden. so who doesn't mind making decisions with others peoples money? Trump alone did 8 Trillion in four years - doubling Obama.
Noted once more that you pointedly ignored discussion of attacking the root of the problem in concert with eliminating the debt. No point in the discussing the Court decision anymore. We’ve done that. I agree. You don’t. Doesn’t matter. It’s done. The only realistic way forward is legislation. You have no other workable recourse apart from amplifying your complaints, which will serve no other purpose than to entertain the right wing lunatics. I’m at least willing to discuss a method for getting to yes on the loan forgiveness as long as said method mitigates a recurring debt crisis.
So for those supportive of Biden wiping away loans, do you think the 20 year old law gives him the ability to unilaterally wipe out all $1.8 trillion in total student loans in the US, if he so chose? Do you think it is reasonable that a president unilateral fiscal authority like that?
Most lawyers are textualists and have been for many decades. It used to be that judges would largely ignore the text of laws and just try to implement what they thought the legislature wanted to accomplish. That fell out of favor, and now the starting point is the text, subject to debate on how to resolve ambiguities. Or at least that was the method of interpretation until the last few years, when the court started developing the major questions doctrine as a way to ignore unambiguous text, albeit based on their political preferences rather than a genuine attempt at implementing legislative purpose.
Do you always misrepresent what other people say to make you feel better? See my other post about the types of students who create these issues. I’m not picking on niche degrees because I don’t like them, I’m picking on them because they have a negative ROI. There are so many fields of study that you can get a degree in that do not have any correlating job potential. It is literally a waste of money. As for your second example regarding general business grads becoming baristas, I addressed that in my other post as well. That is an example of a student who was pushed into school, and had no idea what they wanted to do so they just followed in their parents’ footsteps, or got into the field because they were chasing a skirt. Let me be crystal clear, I’m not for banning any field of study as a society, I’m for banning them for my child. I would not let my child attend college to get a degree in women’s studies. Parents need to start taking responsibility for their children. Likewise, children, who turn into young adults in college, have to understand there were consequences for their decisions. If you take on $400,000 in debt so you can get a degree from Vassar in humanities, don’t come crying to me about your student debt. You are an idiot, you made your choices, you live with the consequences. One good thing that’s coming out now from all of the woke children of pronouns, etc., is that all of the rising high school students are now seeing, and hopefully learning, the mistakes of the class before them. I love your third point, and couldn’t agree more. Schools that have a high degree of default, and/or a low degree of job placement, should be investigated and charged with fraud. They are selling a dream that they cannot produce. The problem is, that the schools exist because society has tricked families, and young adult, into believing that any college degree is better than nothing. That mindset needs to be changed. It all starts with talking with our children.
You’ll note that I’ve not one word about whether Biden should have forgiven the loans. I’m undecided on whether it was a good idea, or would be a good idea if constructed in a different way. But what is unequivocally a bad idea is allowing the Supreme Court to make these calls based on their political preferences rather than the law. That is a far more consequential danger than anything posed by a one off student debt relief program.
I would go one further and say the president has too much authority across the board. But the way to reign that in is through superseding legislation, not selective action by the Supreme Court, divorced from the framework set up by congress.
You could say I was channeling any number of former justices from across the ideological spectrum for that unremarkable proposition.
Legislation vs. greed is very difficult, maybe next to impossible. That said and many have said it, but the predatory/private loans need to be eliminated. This is contrary to the thought of removing gov from the lending industry, but the truth is that gov loans have 1) more competitive interest rates 2) more grace periods where interest is subsidized 3) borrowing caps that most people here are not familiar with. Last I checked, the undergrad borrowing cap was around 67k. People who accrue 100k+ debt are either taking the wrong kind of loans, or pursuing grad degrees. So . . . is there a mechanism for eliminating private loans, many which begin accruing interest from the disbursement date? Perhaps, but then folks would yell "gov monopoly!" It would be a good start, anyway. The other would be eliminating loans to for-profit scam schools. That's a whole nother can o worms, but solving those two issues (ironically both from the private sector) might go a long way toward mitigating the SL crisis.
My two cents, we should be making public universities far, far more affordable. Higher education is a public good that makes our national workforce more competitive. We want more people pursuing higher education. I also don't think the government should charge an interest rate for their loans. It shouldn't profit off of Americans pursuing a public good.
