This would save young Americans from going into crippling debt, but it would also make a university degree completely unaffordable for most. However, in the age of the Internet, that doesn’t mean they couldn’t get an education.
Consider the long term impact of this. There are a lot of different ways such a situation could go, for better and for worse.
I think it’s a great idea. It’ll be really good for society when most of your population are finally highly educated and have their own PhDs in internet research!
I also look forward to the day where you Americans beg Cuba for a humanitarian dispatch of doctors to treat your plague and leprosy epidemics.
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Maybe my understanding of the wording is wrong, but I think you assume a total return of investment of 4.125% and 4.375%. Hence, your total payments correspond to fixed rates of less than 0.5% per year.
For a fixed rate of 4.125% (per year), I calculate a total repayment of $51,016.80, over 20 years.
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Why not make it free? At the end of the education cycle the student will get a job and start paying taxes. Isn’t that what society needs? Having educated people to do various jobs. Why putting that behind a crazy paywall?
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That’s not at all what OP proposed though. They want to keep tuition as is, just eliminate loans.
Where does it say that?
Imagine if they made student loans illegal, with current tuition prices in America there literally arent enough people wealthy enough to afford to keep the schools full.
The schools would either have to close, or find a way to make attending them affordable. As it is they can charge an arm and a leg, convince people to take loans, its all someone elses problem in 10 years and the “someone else” isnt the school.
Not exactly. I’m saying that banning loans would lower the price of education, either through cost cutting by universities or by a new education system taking its place.
But unless it’s free, the majority of people wouldn’t be able to afford it anyway. Remember most people live week to week with no savings buffer.
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Better solution would be a cap on tuition imo.
But even no interest loans or at the very least let them be discharged in bankruptcy would be better than what we have.
It’s not the tuition, it’s the funding being cut by the states that’s the problem (for public universities). States used to fund universities significantly more than they do now.
It’s not the tuition? The same tuition that has risen 70% in the last 20 years? The same tuition that colleges know they can charge any amount cuz the government will give out loans regardless. That’s not the issue?
I’m not saying colleges aren’t getting less state funding but I just don’t see colleges lowering tuition if they got more state funding. They’d keep charging more cuz they know they can.
Ah yes, let’s make getting an accredited degree something only the wealthy can afford, that’ll do well for the working class you betcha.
Class mobility is stagnant enough, I truly cannot see any upside to this for the vast majority of people.
Ban, no. Cap, maybe. Completely overhaul, yes.
- Any school that receives any public funds should make school completely free to all students with a permanent address in that constituency. If my tax money is going to a school, I shouldn’t have to pay tuition for my kids to go there.
- Students who graduate and are not offered (or are laid off or fired without cause from) a job that provides them sufficient pay and benefits to get them to 300% of the local poverty level should be forgiven each month’s payment for as long as they are in that state. Not deferred or paused, forgiven.
- Anyone who graduates and takes a job with a federal, state, or local governmental entity or nonprofit organization should likewise have their student loan payment forgiven for every month they are employed.
- Anyone who takes a K12 teaching position after graduation should have their student loans forgiven at a rate of one year’s worth of payments per month of teaching.
- Student loan forgiveness should be taxed at 0% in every state and nationally.
- Student loans should be capped at a total value that would limit repayment to 10 years, while allowing a student to maintain an income after repayment of 300% of the poverty line during that time. After reaching the cap, if the student is more than 50% complete with their degree, they should be permitted to complete that degree.
- Students who do not graduate, or who change their major partially through the program, should be able to apply the value of tuition already paid, adjusted for inflation, toward eventually returning to school; or pass that credit on to a child or other family member.
This is just off-the-cuff; I haven’t thought about the implications of all of these. But I think it would help significantly.
Consider that maybe people shouldn’t be taking 50k in debt right out of highschool for a degree they aren’t sure they really want in a field that’s already over saturated. I feel for the kids who were young and dumb and goaded into signing on the dotted line but ultimately it was their choice to take on debt and they reap what they sow.
Just like the PPP loans right? Pay it back if you took it out.
Oh wait that absolutely didn’t happen.
I’m from a country with free university education and we also have student loans available.
Here’s something that works for us: forget about private universities, invest in federal or state owned collages so that they can compete with the private ones.
Do a scholarship program where students can get free entry into these universities if their grades are high enough in high school, or make it dependent on an entry exam. Those that don’t get in have a paid option that’s still partially funded by the state or federal government.
Student loans will still be useful, not for tuition but for families who can’t afford to send their kids to study in the cities where the universities are located.
The sad part about relying on scholarships is that disadvantaged kids are much less likely to have excellent grades. These people need school more than anyone else. The system works backwards.
That’s a fair point, where I live we have a point system for entry and you get the majority of your points through your grades. You also get points if you’re economically disadvantaged and some other factors like certain disabilities, if I remember correctly.
It seems from the outside that a systematic change would indeed be a good idea, not something that would just help the poor but address the root cause of why people become poor in the first place.
I personally believe that society in general should be healthy and educated. If your citizens aren’t sick and/or dumb, there’s a higher likelihood of the country as a whole having a better economy with a higher quality of life. Besides, it’s just good for humanity to treat sick people and educate those who are looking to learn.
I don’t believe that there should be an individual cost for these items. I don’t think that a rich person should be healthy while a poor person remains sick or worse. I also don’t think that a rich person should have a great education while a poor person stays held back from not being able to afford school. In my opinion, this economic disparity doesn’t make sense.
It does make sense that a rich person might live in a large house while a poor person lives in a quaint apartment, or a rich person has a PlayStation while a poor person may not have one. In the US, your health and your education is in the same market as PlayStations. To me, this doesn’t make sense at all.
Exactly this. I grew up poor and didn’t have a quiet place to study. My grades suffered greatly as a result, and a number of other reasons. I needed education for upward mobility.
After struggling to get an education, finally in my 30s I eas able to get out of poverty.
I hate capitalist economics, but the ease of obtaining student loans is one of the reasons for the high price of college tuition.
If student loans didn’t exist, then most people would not be paying outrageous tuitions. Colleges will be forced to accomodate.
Canada recently stopped charging interest on their student loans, that goes a long way to affordability. The other thing though is just plain cost of education. It can be cheaper to get a 4-year degree from a Canadian University than take one year of a comparable program in the US.
And yet as a Canadian I know a lot of people who did not persue higher education because it’s too expensive to do so. Only the rich can afford a “good” education.
The ease of student loans would not exist without government backing. In a pure capitalism, this wouldn’t be a problem.
There’s no such thing as capitalism without a state. It cannot exist.
Yeah. Anarchy doesn’t work. No argument there. But the blame for exorbitant college tuition lies with the state, not with capitalism.
I can agree that it lies with the state, but that doesn’t absolve capitalism. It’s the capitalist state, and we shouldn’t separate the two.
Most of the activities of the state happen to be anti-capitalist though.
So… Yes. We can separate the two because if the state ceased it’s anti-capitalist activities, this wouldn’t be a problem.
Shoulda been illegal/actually regulate, in the first place. Removing restrictions on raising tuition was also another lame move.
You may know everything, but no degree no luck?
Why not think a but further? Money for people that need it, free universities? Like… in the EU?
Not without destroying Citizen United legal premise first which I am also in favor of doing.
Right now spending money == free speech
Then giving loans is free speech, too. That is the the tackle.
Go for it.
I think student loans are a symptom of the problem. But not the problem itself. The problem is that college is so incredibly unaffordable for many American students. If higher education wasn’t so absurdly expensive, many students could take out fewer loans.
The loans are not just a symptom. Is probably the main cause of current college prices. Prices would not be so high if students would not be given money to pay them.
They are the cause for the high tuition. I don’t have it on me, but I saw a graph showing that when Biden made Student Loans impossible to forgive via Bankruptcy, the prices for tuition positively skyrocketed.
when Biden made Student Loans impossible to forgive via Bankruptcy
That’s a curious way to describe Republican-led, bipartisan legislation with where Biden was one of 18 Democratic votes in the Senate.
While he didn’t do it by himself, his support was critical in getting it passed:
He was still only a single yes vote on a bill that only 25 Democrats voted against, and it most certainly was not his bill.
The original claim was “Biden made Student Loans impossible to forgive via Bankruptcy.” You can argue that Biden could have or should have done more on the topic but attributing this solely to him is just ridiculous, and that’s before delving into the reasons why a senator with a reputation for working across the aisle and building consensus might strategically accept provisions he doesn’t really like in a bill in order to achieve other, higher priorities.
It’s just especially juicy since now he’s president when the cows have come home.
I had edited my post to add that he didn’t do it himself but was critical in getting in passed. Perhaps you started your reply before my edit.
I would have settled for him having done less in getting it passed. Your version of what happened or may have happened is way too charitable to Biden. He was known for being very friendly to banks and credit card companies, as a Senator from Delaware would be inclined to be, considering that Delaware is home to many of those types of businesses.
He was known for being very friendly to banks and credit card companies, as a Senator from Delaware would be inclined to be, considering that Delaware is home to many of those types of businesses.
Is it? Visa is in San Francisco, Discover is in Illinois, and Mastercard and Amex are in New York.
JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley are in New York. Bank of America is in Charlotte. Wells Fargo is in San Francisco. Those are the nation’s six largest banks. Delaware doesn’t make an appearance until #94 on the biggest bank list.
Delaware is a popular state for essentially paperwork, due primarily to its efficient and well-established Chancery Court, but it’s not really a major player in the banking industry. There aren’t a many people or businesses in Delaware involved in banking beyond the local branch stuff in every community.
Senator from DE wanted loans not to be dischargeable in BK…
Biden didn’t do that. It’s been that way for a long time.
remember back when biden was a senator? yes, he did that.
You can’t expect kids to understand concept of time priror to mom shitting them out dawg!
That didn’t seem to be what the person who said that was trying to convey.
That seems valid. I think at least part of the problem is culture. Millennials were taught that college is a necessary stepping stone to a superior job, which it was in previous generations, but not so much nowadays.
In general, I’m opposed to the idea. College professors don’t work for free, and colleges have to pay them. Like it or not, we live in a capitalist society, and everyone needs to be paid. You could raise taxes and fund college publicly, but then you’re just passing off the cost of a college education to the taxpayers.
What does need to happen is a tighter regulation of tuition fees. A student should be able to take out a student loan, work a minimum wage job to pay for rent and personal expenses, and be able to pay off their student loan within a few years of graduation. The problem right now is that even if a college student manages to get a job in their field immediately after school, they’re stuck paying student loans for a decade or more. 50 years ago, you could work a job flipping burgers, pay for school, and be firmly on your feet a few years after you get your degree. I went to college about 20 years ago, and tuition fees have just about doubled since then. The cost of higher education has far outpaced the average income of a college student.
Nobody should get a free ride; students should pay for school, but they shouldn’t be in crippling debt afterwards. There needs to be legislation that forces the cost of education to fit with the minimum wage.
Why have tuition fees doubled? Where is that money going?
I think the answer to this is to make more community colleges offer four year degrees. They are mainly funded through property taxes just like grade school and the professors get paid just fine. $300 per class is a reasonable fee for students.
In general, I’m opposed to the idea. College professors don’t work for free, and colleges have to pay them.
Professors don’t make up near as much of the bill as the administrators and coaches that pull down 7-figure salaries. There’s almost as much bloat in the US University system as in US Healthcare. The answer to both is the same: they should ideally be free. Failing that, it should be illegal for either to be profitable businesses.
Nobody should get a free ride
Why?
If you send someone to school for free, somebody is still paying for it. Use childhood education for example; property owners pay for schools with their property taxes, regardless of whether or not they have children in school.
People should pay for themselves, but the cost of education needs to be reasonable enough that they can.
