Explain to me why we should pay off any of your student loan!

I think most people agree there is a problem with the current education system. The disagreement comes with what the problem with education is and what the solution is.

Right now the government backs loans for education. As a result, a person who normally would not have access to tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars, because it would be irresponsible to lend them those amounts is being given access to that kind of money. Universities, knowing that students will be able to get the loans, now have the power to hike up the price of tuition because students will be able to get the loans, and they are backed.

In addition, this old school belief that you need a degree to be capable of doing a job is a pressure that is forcing students to make this decision to go to college. To be very frank, most people with a college degree are still incapable of doing a lot of jobs... This is not the fault of the student, in my opinion, but a failure to adapt the curriculum to be job ready. So now we have many students that have debt they shouldn't have been able to acquire, with essentially a piece of paper, but no practical skills.

Now because students don't have any practical skills, companies don't want to pay good wages to these "non-contributors." This means most students either can't find a job, or they can't get a job paying a decent wage. (Can you blame companies? Would you want to pay dead weight a salary?)

On to forgiveness. The main issue here is not the debt the students have, (yes it is an issue, but it is an issue that is a result of other issues). The main issue is that colleges are not preparing students for the real world, and they are doing so at an unreasonable cost, because they can (backed loans).

Student loan forgiveness will temporarily ease the burden on current debt holders, however it will not prevent the cycle from happening again.

What I believe we should do:

We need to stop giving students access to money they should have no business controlling through these backed loans. If students can't get the money, colleges can't charge the prices so they will have to respond by lowering it to an affordable cost. Another thing is remove the stigma that a degree somehow makes you qualified, as stated before right now someone with or without a degree could be equally unqualified. We should instead focus on changing the curriculum so that degrees does ensure that a candidate can actually function in a job. In addition if the candidate is able to do the job without a degree, the piece of paper should not be a barrier. (Big tech for example is giving software engineering jobs to people without degrees who have either self taught, or went to a boot camp to get the skills, but have proven they are capable of doing the job.)

We are currently seeing a lot of online courses come out for a variety of fields that are a fraction the cost of a college education. If students get the necessary skills from this for a fraction of the cost, I say good for them! I think this competition that colleges are facing from online courses is going to help in lowering the prices.

I understand everyone has different situations and what applies to one person may not apply to other so our opinions and beliefs may differ - and that is ok. From where I sit, however, his is what I see.

Tl;dr - Loan forgiveness would ease the burden of current debt holders, but it does not fix the actual problem. Which we should prioritize.

Jokes on you. In the UK most aren't paying their student loan as the repayment threshold is above the average salary.

Others emigrate and never pay a penny either.

I agree with you completely. Student loan forgiveness is a band-aid on a larger problem. I bolded what I think is particularly true. A college degree does not necessarily prepare you for the real world. Real-life experience is far more important. Apprenticeships, internships, etc. provide the experience that employers are looking for. Most jobs in the business world are learned through experience, as business school tends to be very strategic and macro-focused. You might learn how to build a business plan, but as a recent college graduate, you are going to be crunching numbers, writing advertising copy, cold calling, or programming something.

Not my ideas but these are good ones -

We need to allow federal student loans to be refinanced, which is currently only an option with private lenders. You can refinance your mortgage, why can't you refinance student debt?

We need to allow for it to be easier to discharge student loan debt through bankruptcy. It can be done now but it's difficult. No reason this has to be a weight that you carry around your neck for the rest of your life.

We need to cap the cost of higher education, maybe tie increases to CPI or some other index to slow the growth in these costs. Should be easy enough to do at public universities. And we can make sure federal loans only go to institutions that are meeting this target, which will reign in private universities but doesn't explicitly force them in case they want to tell the federal government to buzz off.

Why do we need to do all this? It's not to allow deadbeat borrowers to get a hand out, but rather because it will improve the economy for all of us. Helping the "deadbeats" is an unintended consequence, but I'd rather have that "deadbeat" buying a house, going on vacation, having kids, etc and contributing their taxes to society than taking an ideological stand and forcing them to be crushed under the never ending burden that they agreed to when they were 17 or 18 years old and didn't have a freaking clue in the world. At some point you just have to be pragmatic.

We could do some kind of universal income or guaranteed shelter deal.

X-Runner wrote:

We could do some kind of universal income or guaranteed shelter deal.

We can do whatever we want. There are no brakes on this anymore. Guaranteed income, house, medical, transportation and higher education package is needed, as a bare minimum.

I am sure this would never fly with many people, but maybe getting a student loan should be more like getting a mortgage loan. The size of a mortgage loan that a bank will approve is determined by your potential, or likelihood, to repay the loan.

Will a degree in "XYZ" land you a job that will afford you the ability to pay the student loan?

Going to school for six years on student loans to get a masters in gender studies, or something similar, is not a safe choice.

Going to school for six years on student loans to get a masters degree in computer science, or something similar, is a safer choice.

People don't get degrees because they believe it makes them capable of a job. They get degrees because it is required to get the job. You can't watch enough Khan Academy or read enough books to qualify for a job that requires a 4 year degree. There are no cheap online programs--it's the same colleges gatekeeping the same gates. You literally made that up.

Part of fixing the problem is counteracting its effects. Claiming you want to focus on the "actual problem" is a bad faith argument allowing you to do nothing and to continue using all taxpayer money (much of it paid by people with student loans) to prop up YOUR 401k.

People like you are more than happy to change nothing, idk why you hide behind the thinly veiled argument of "actually that's not quite how I think it should be handled".

DSA wrote:

People don't get degrees because they believe it makes them capable of a job. They get degrees because it is required to get the job. You can't watch enough Khan Academy or read enough books to qualify for a job that requires a 4 year degree. There are no cheap online programs--it's the same colleges gatekeeping the same gates. You literally made that up.

I agree with this statement. It is required. My question is why? Why are students required to do something that will not help them in the job? What difference does it make where/or how somebody learns the material. I will use my self as an example. I am a Software Engineer, and I went through the 4 years of college. All of sudden, now that I graduated I am supposedly capable of doing the job. What I found, is that is not the case. Most of my contributions to my employer have been through skills I learned after the fact through self-study, work experience, and personal projects.

If I skipped the 4 years of college, and did just the stuff that made me capable to contribute, I would be contributing equally, but would also possess no threat. Why do employers care if you have a degree if you are capable of the job? That is what I believe we should question.

I do not believe it is bad faith. I believe the problem is we allow students to get into this situation for a very poor ROI and we should stop that. If we bail out these people and don't attack the real problem, we will find ourselves in this never ending cycle of having to bail people out, so why not put preventative measures in place so this bail out is a one time thing that can be prevented again in the future?

I very much so want the price to come down, I believe it has gotten out of control.

but would also possess no debt**

sorry auto correct

facing facts wrote:

Tatar wrote:

Because they were arguably in a lose-lose situation: don't go to college and struggle to get a financially rewarding job or go to college and struggle financially paying it back. It all ends up the same.

The point is that they CHOSE the expensive route to get an education due to entitlement. You can get a 4 year degree without huge loans if you are willing to go state college or the 2 yr college first route or graduate early.

This. I am all for the investment of higher education but its the poor choices people make to get that degree.

The show me campus' have gotten ridiculous too and add to the price. State of the art athletic building, great dorms. etc. etc.

think it through wrote:

facing facts wrote:

The point is that they CHOSE the expensive route to get an education due to entitlement. You can get a 4 year degree without huge loans if you are willing to go state college or the 2 yr college first route or graduate early.

This. I am all for the investment of higher education but its the poor choices people make to get that degree.

The show me campus' have gotten ridiculous too and add to the price. State of the art athletic building, great dorms. etc. etc.

Doesn't this require making an assumption about future earnings? If you take out a mortgage it's on the assumption you'll earn next month what you earned last month. With college you can't really be expected to forecast your future earnings can you? At the very least it's an educated guess. Therefore you choose the best education you can to give yourself the best chance. Inevitably this means the one with state of the art facilities and invariably means higher costs. I don't understand what you mean by poor choice? If a college wants you, are you going to reject it because you don't back yourself to make a success of your education?

TDubs7 wrote:

All of sudden, now that I graduated I am supposedly capable of doing the job. What I found, is that is not the case. Most of my contributions to my employer have been through skills I learned after the fact through self-study, work experience, and personal projects.

If I skipped the 4 years of college, and did just the stuff that made me capable to contribute, I would be contributing equally, but would also possess no threat. Why do employers care if you have a degree if you are capable of the job? That is what I believe we should question.

I'm an engineer (not software, and I agree that that seems to be a different beast), and I agree with what you've said. The bold part is always true. That is called life. If you are going to be successful, then you must always learn and adapt to new technology.

The rest of it that I left unbolded (although I'm a great writer and writing is an important part of my job, I'm going to take the liberty that engineers are have notoriously poor grammar and make up a new word there), is questionable. I certainly would not have the capabilities that I do without the fundamental education behind my degree. Hiring people with accredited engineering degrees is a great way for companies to ensure that candidates fulfill certain minimum requirements. Even then though, I have seen people with degrees, who interview well, get hired despite the fact that they are actually idiots. So, if I were hiring someone... and two people interviewed well... and seemed equivalent but one had an accredited engineering degree and one did not... Which one would I hire?

Oh, and to relate to this thread, I still have enough student loan debt to benefit from some relief/forgiveness and I would gladly take it.

I also personally bring in enough funding for my employer to employ myself and multiple others that work for me. These are the people with no education and limited skills that believe they are entitled to a high-paying manufacturing job simply because they were born in the USA.

Do I NEED my loans forgiven? No.

Do I benefit society as a direct result of my high-priced education by creating jobs for uneducated workers? Yes, many times over.

Do I get paid very much? No.