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US Student Loans Exceed $1 Trillion
sycodon writes "Politico reports that student loan debt now exceeds one trillion dollars, an amount that should impress even Dr. Evil. Politico further reports that this is one of the more concrete issues driving the OWS protests and provides some enlightening examples of their particular gripes."
Just wait until you see what happens if THIS group starts going en masse into default. At least with houses, there is some collateral there. What are you going to foreclose on when little Johnny goes into default on his $100,000 loan debt because he can't find a job? You going to foreclose on and resell his worthless degree?
And, sadly, this is only going to get worse. Tuition has been going through the roof at universities in the U.S., even as wages for the jobs post-grads get afterwards have remained stagnant. The wages of parents and post-grads have stayed the same, but they're having to fork out more and more for tuition--driving them to even more debt. So it's hardly surprising to find out that student loan debt has increased over 63% in just ten years.
So what do you think the end result is if this trend continues? Either large segments of the population are going to have to give up on college or they're going to have to put themselves in a position where default is almost an inevitability. I guess that could actually have one positive effect. It could finally dispel the idea that everyone can or should go to college (or that a college degree should be considered a prerequisite for any white collar job).
And, BTW, you know who pays when someone defaults? The U.S. government foots the bill, since these loans are federally guaranteed. So Uncle Sam gets to fund the bailout on that one too, just like he did with the banks and domestic car industry.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
We have a bad habit in this country of letting sales figures and the profit incentive "make" decisions for us. In this case, college is a huge business. We can promise people more income if they get a college degree, so everyone wants a college degree.
Educators will tell you that perhaps college should be reserved for those with the ability and initiative to do the work. Not everyone is ready for a college education, or able to engage in the rigorous critical thinking required. That's not popular with the salespeople, who want to sell college to everyone.
The result is that college has become more like another four years of high school. The classes are easy and emphasize memorization instead of developing critical thought. Expectations are low. It's not a time of great discovery, but of people pushing through because if they just get that piece of paper, they get richer.
Through this process, we have cheapened education for everyone. High school is now four years of day care because those teachers figure the kids will really learn to spell in college. College is now like high school, a dreary period of drudgery. All of it is motivated by money, not a desire to learn or to help the truly exceptional students get ahead.
By trying to sell education to everybody, we have cheapened it and now to get anywhere in this world, you need a graduate degree. When they cheapen those, too, we're going to have to cut out the middleman and bribe our way into careers.
Anyone that still believes that America's colleges and universities are "non-profit" institutions, should think again at this. For two of the most obvious examples, I cite you the "Bowl Championship Series" and most college sports in general (namely football and basketball), as well as the fact that student dormitories and student unions have largely been turned into country clubs, with just about every one of them having a Starbucks (heck, that's in the library now, too), and having such amenities as rock climbing walls, gyms with workout equipment that rival Gold's Gym, and many schools are giving every student their own iPad these days. Plus, when most schools in Division I pay their football or basketball coach twenty times the salary of the average professor, and four times the salary of the university president, you know something's fouled up,. . .
I have a hard time sympathizing with anyone who has voluntarily taken on large amounts of debt
With almost any decent job these days requiring a 4-year college degree, what the hell do you expect? Unless your parents are upper-class or have had the foresight to save up the money (with no intervening crises to eat it up), your only hope to get anything better than slave wages at some manufacturing plant (that's probably going to China at any minute) is to get a highly-competitive scholarship or take out a student loan. And there are only so many scholarships to go around.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Current quote at the foot of the page:
Look at it this way: Your wife's spending $280 a month on meditation lessons to forget $26,000 of college education. And you're still drinking ordinary scotch?
Here in the UK, repayments on your student loan are only taken while you're making over a certain threshold value (something like £14,000 a year). Also, once you hit 45 years old the debt will be wiped regardless of how big it is. I rather stupidly paid £2000 of my savings into repaying the loan after I left University, when if I'd been thinking sensibly I should have just saved it towards a deposit on a mortgage. It started at about £14000 and currently I have £8000 left to pay off on it.
which is totally what she said
With almost any decent job these days requiring a 4-year college degree, what the hell do you expect?
That is why high school is worthless now days. You might as well drop out with a GED and go to community college. High school and GED gets you the same job now days, there's no need to waste those 4 years when you could go to college and at least get an associates and move on to bachelors at a real school.
Of course this only applies to the 99%, the 1% go to Ivy League high schools and Ivy League colleges so they don't need to worry about community college.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
There are plenty of students who majored in very reasonable and marketable courses of study and came out with a mountain of debt and dramatically worse job prospects than what were available when they began their studies. These people have a very real complaint.
However there are also people out there who went to college and majored in drama, or comparative literature, or film studies, or any of a number of other fields that have very marginal job prospects even in a good economy. They are carrying debt because they took a foolish risk with 4 years of their lives. Of course, some of them may have been poorly informed by their college with regards to what they could do with their degree. Others didn't give a damn and set off determined to "study what I want" or whatever. This latter group dug their own hole and I don't have a lot of sympathy for them.
In short, if you majored in engineering and then couldn't find a job after the economy went down the toilet while you were in school working your ass off, I feel for you. But if you spent four years in a field with ordinarily terrible job prospects and now you are shocked that you have no job prospects, I don't have much sympathy for you as you took a great opportunity and managed to squander it.
However, those who excel at taking great opportunities and squandering them may yet have a future in American politics.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Just wait until you see what happens if THIS group starts going en masse into default. At least with houses, there is some collateral there. What are you going to foreclose on when little Johnny goes into default on his $100,000 loan debt because he can't find a job? You going to foreclose on and resell his worthless degree?
With that said (and something that should be said more often), even with rising costs in education, one should only get over $60K in student loans if you get a degree in medicine or law or STEM degree (in particular from a private university.) If you have $40K or more in student loans with only a B.A. degree in History from a public university, there is something fundamentally fucked up with you - that Mac laptop wasn't something you really, really needed, for example. Or you really, really, really didn't need to go to a university in another state (and rack up dorm expenses) when a suitable university was closer by and you could have stayed with your parents. And so on and so on.
Personal responsibility is something not being considered, with the assumption that all expenses covered by student loans are/were legitimate educational expenses.
Just as with the real state bubble, there is also a lot of personal responsibility lying out there when it comes to student loans. The current situation is untenable, and there needs to be a solution. What a solution might look like? I don't know. But whatever shape a solution takes, I sure hope that it does not involve extrication of an individual's financial responsibility.
I wont be the first or last to say it, but I have a hard time sympathizing with anyone who has voluntarily taken on large amounts of debt and doesn't understand that they made a poor choice.
OK, let me get this straight:
1. Don't go to college, can't find a job. Poor choice.
2. Go to college, can't find a job. Poor choice.
What we have here are a bunch of people willing to work, but the market is unable to find work for them. You blame the people, when the market is what's causing the problem.
First, there is usury. Student loans are unsecured, but federally backed. There is very low risk to the bank. Yet interest rates charged tend to reflect that of high risk loans. Further, while payments are deferred, interest isn't. Not all of this is fully disclosed to the borrower. For instance, do all students know that they are payig interest rates comparable to normal loans, yet with normal loans a borrower can default on a loan. With student loans the must must be paid back, and garnishment of wages and other restrictions on one's livelihood are very easy. Unlike most loans, which are regularly renegotiated, the student loan, with exorbitant interest given the level of risk, is not.
Then there is collusion in the defrauding of the american public. Much of the loan money goes to private distance Universities. These Universities are well known for having very high default rates, and are well known for being victims of straw men loans. In any other financial process, the banks would conduct due diligence to minimize exposure. However, as this is a way to transfer taxpayer money to private banks, there is almost no due diligence. The money is handed out. Banks know or should know the forms are fraudulent. There was one reported case of many forms asking for money to the same address. However, as there is no real risk, and it free money for the bank, no such diligence is performed and banks happily take tax payer money. Unfortunately, all risk and blame is placed on the university and student. While this is appropriate, more blame must be placed on the people who are fundamentally profiting from the fraud. The bankers.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
This is retarded. You expect an inexperienced, 16-18y/o KID to know in advance where all the jobs are gonna be, sort through employment statistics and guess correctly? 4 years ago they probably would all go into real estate. The education is pretty cheap and you could make bank. Or how about finance, another 'great' pick. How would that work out now? (and while some finance people are still making money hand over fist many have been laid off). It is hard to predict the future AND not everyone is well suited to the few career choices that have any decent wages (mainly IT). And those (IT again) keep seeing news stories about offshoring. Couple that with every adult, administrator, and advisor to this KID telling them BS like "follow your dreams" and there is NO WAY it is reasonable to expect any kid going into college to magically be 'responsible' and pick the perfect major.
My knee-jerk reaction is the same as yours. "Why did you take out loans you can't afford? Regardless of why, it's your fault for doing it."
However, looking at the times we live in, I have a lot of sympathy for the OWS movement. I recently got my PhD in Physics from a top university, and was a triple major as an undergrad. All of this happened without a single penny of student debt, and in fact I was actually supporting one of my parents on my grad student stipend. While I was in school, employers were often contacting me with offers of, "Please quit! Come work for us at Facebook!", and "Please quit! Come work for us at Hedge Fund!" I flew out to a few of the places to interview just because I wanted to see the city. Now that I'm done, the job market has since collapsed. It's hard to even get a call back, even with a decade of programming experience, several publications in an emerging field a PhD, and international recognition for my programming abilities. My university is balking at paying me a $2150/month stipend for me to continue doing research there as a postdoc.
I'm left thinking that leaving the good thing I had in high school and undergrad, a well-paying job in a contracting collective, was a big mistake. A huge mistake. Because even the opportunity cost of going to university for 10 years for free was greater than the value of the education. Now imagine you're one of the 99% who took out loans on the promise that they'd get a better paying job that would cover them in the future, and you're thrust into a workforce that doesn't want you. You can't bankrupt your way out of it. You can't take a job at McDonalds because the student loan payments are more than you'd be making. You feel like going to university in the first place as opposed to working a McJob was a mistake.
So, I do have a lot of sympathy for them. I can't imagine being in that position, and the promises they were given by their institutions are worth about as much as the paper the diploma was printed on. Their student debt has them saddled for life--they can't default or bankrupt their way out of it. They'll be paying until they die. I wish I could do something to help them, but until someone will call me back for something other than evil (damn you hedge funds), I'm out of luck too.
AC because this is embarrassing. I support you OWC. :(
Perhaps the issue is that the inflation rate for college tuition is well above the general inflation rate, that states are contributing a far lower percentage toward operating state unis and community colleges than they have in the past, and that more and more employers are requiring a 4 year degree for positions which don't really need one in the first place.
Perhaps they're not protesting their own debt. Perhaps they're protesting the current situation -- created by banks, governments, universities, and employers -- which has helped foster the enormous tuition rates being charged for students *today*, thereby necessitating massive student loans or a society in which upward social mobility is unnecessarily reduced.
Perhaps there's more to a strong and diverse society and culture than engineering. Perhaps your $USELESS_DEGREE has tremendous social value, and the real problem is that our current economic structure doesn't reward the people working in job($USELESS_DEGREE) well enough. Perhaps they think the problem is that we're simply not funding enough social workers and teachers and the arts -- not that there are too many young people with those degrees.
Look -- I earned a whole bunch of college degrees on full scholarship in tUSA, in fields which pay reasonably well. This isn't about me. Yet, I do agree with the OWS protesters. College debt is too high. Sure, it was all taken voluntarily, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't change the circumstance for future high school graduates. I believe that the Federal Gov't should open more universities at free/low tuition, and not require military service to be admitted -- and focus on areas where we have a national interest. Health care, energy, infrastructure, etc. I believe that state governments should pour far more money into their state universities. I believe that both Fed and state gov'ts should hire more teachers and fund more arts. I support raising taxes on folks with more money [both income and wealth] to pay for it. I think that if we moved in that direction, we'd have a safer, healthier, *better* society.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
>I spent my college years getting a useful degree and paying for it by working during the year and the summer
Yeah, you can't do that anymore. You'd have to have a full time minimum wage job to even come close to paying for college now.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
My wife is currently looking for a job after a decade off to raise 3 kids. She doesn't have a degree and doesn't have much current, relevant experience for anything specialized or an in-demand position. She's using a variety of job posting boards including Craigslist for a receptionist, office admin, etc type of job. She's found job postings from anywhere between $8/hr to $48k/year. So hey, attending a business college or similar to get a basic advanced education degree would be worth it to make $48k! In reality though, 90% of them turn out to be spam or phishing attempts and the remaining 10% that pay the much more realistic $8-10 usually are filled by people with 4 year degrees who take anything just to have some income.
I have a hard time sympathizing with anyone who has voluntarily taken on large amounts of debt
With almost any decent job these days requiring a 4-year college degree, what the hell do you expect?
1. Not buy brand new Macs (really, you don't need them to do your studies.)
2. Not go to a distant university if there is one within commuting distance.
3. Not go to a 4-year university for your freshman and sophomore years if there is a community college near you.
4. Get a A.S. degree first (what I should have done.) Then go to a 4-year university, even if it takes you an additional year to get your B.S/B.A degree. That will better prepare you for eventualities.
5. Not go to a dorm if you can live with your parents (yes, there will be less booze and less sex, but you get the drift, plus that's not the reason to go to a university anyways.)
6. Not live solely on student loans if you have a chance to work part-time in school or flipping burgers.
7. Don't get any degree just because you don't know what you want. Due your due diligence in your freshman and junior years to find out what you want. IT CAN BE DONE. And if you can't, then take a break, possibly study part-time and go to work. Allow yourself time to explore and understand what you want out of life (economically and emotionally.)
8. Don't get a B.A. degree in History or Psychology (or similar degrees) and stop there. You might as well go to grad school (as B.A. degrees in those fields are pretty much worthless.) If you are going to invest in an education, you might as well go to a level that gives a better chance to get a job with it.
9. Don't use money of student loans and pell grants to finance a Spring Break trip to Cancun (I've seen it happening, and it is not a rare occurrence... sadly.)
That's just off the top of my head.
Bank of America Corp. (BAC), hit by a credit downgrade last month, has moved derivatives from its Merrill Lynch unit to a subsidiary flush with insured deposits, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.
Bank of America’s holding company -- the parent of both the retail bank and the Merrill Lynch securities unit -- held almost $75 trillion of derivatives at the end of June, according to data compiled by the OCC. About $53 trillion, or 71 percent, were within Bank of America NA, according to the data, which represent the notional values of the trades.
That compares with JPMorgan’s deposit-taking entity, JPMorgan Chase Bank NA, which contained 99 percent of the New York-based firm’s $79 trillion of notional derivatives, the OCC data show.
I call BS. Statisticians frequently recommend against going with the trends, because they change so quickly. When I started out in college, IT was going crap, just after the dotcom bubble burst. These days, IT is doing rather well. Financial analysts can't see 5 years into the future, how are kids at age 18 going to do that? Of course, it's no surprise that an arts degree is going to get you unemployed, but that's a different story imho.
Let's review every decision you made at 17 years old and see if it was smart. Overborrowing towards an education and supposed better life sounds not so bad to me.
NIA today officially released the most comprehensive documentary ever produced about higher education in the U.S. NIA's hour-long documentary called 'College Conspiracy' exposes the facts and truth about America's college education system. 'College Conspiracy' was produced over a six-month period by NIA's team of expert Austrian economists with the help of thousands of NIA members who contributed their ideas and personal stories for the film. NIA believes the U.S. college education system is a scam that turns vulnerable young Americans into debt slaves for life.
It also remind us:
After the burst of the Real Estate bubble, student loans are now the easiest loan to receive in the U.S., and total student loan debts now exceed credit card debts.
It was written May 16, 2011 ...
It also is a replay of the mortgage market.
When consumption of goods becomes third party in nature the costs explode. This happened in medical care when employers and the government started to pick up the tab. People didn't realize the costs of services and they have become used to not caring. As a result the services got more expensive over time, usually outstripping inflation.
Student loans and student aid did the same thing. They separated the costs of education from the student. Oh sure the student knew they were going to pay but they didn't have to pay NOW and that was key. They had to make installment payments. That reduces the psychological sting all that money made.
Schools then abused that through incredible marketing both direct and indirect. By having all sorts of support industries to include the press and such espouse all the benefits a high dollar education conferred. The one fact they left out was, the majority would never succeed. Everyone is not equal and the same education does not mean all parties have the same out come.
As for the OWS, go read their site. If that doesn't frighten off people here then I would be shocked. It all centers around having GOVERNMENT become more oppressive. They want, want, want, want, and want. There is no talk about what they will do for others only what others should be compelled to do.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
the high costs as well.
Like forced meal plans that cost a LOT for meal times that do not always fit in with class times for any from sub par to good cafeteria food. Some places even forced cash cards that time out so you are in a use or lose it so some people buy a ton of candy just to drain the cash from the card before it times out and is lost.
Also room and board with (room mates) can cost more more then renting a apartment on your own. Can take the same room mate rent apartment and pay less.
Now a dorm may have stuff like high speed networking but that may be part of added tech fee on top of the room and board costs. Now most dorms have some kind of cable system but that can be a old analog only system like you see in hotels, a system with some channels but you have to buy the cable box, to like some apartment where a cable system like Comcast gives you basic / starter is part of rent and you can add on any pack that you want.
Now in a apartment you can get full digital cable or satellite tv and get the tv that you want and not be stuck with what the dorm has.
Debtors are "it" and have to tag the debt on non-debtors. Banks fail? Well, people who save money can pay more taxes have to bail them out. People with lot's of debt get tax breaks, and don't have any money anyway. So anyone with visible money ends up paying for those in debt.
So my advice is, dig yourself as deep into debt as the silly financial system helps you to. You will never have to pay for it. Someone with no debt will.
As the economist John Maynard Keynes said, "If I owe the bank 100 pounds, I have a problem. If I owe the bank 100,000 pounds, the bank has a problem."
Oh, and for US students with too much loan debt, that would be deducted from your paycheck? Flee the country, for the off-world colonies.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
And I don't just mean straight money. Housing? Washing? Mom bringing food? Old washing machine?
Mind you, as a European your story is proof that it can't be done. Do I really want my doctor to do 12 years over his story (6 years study, 6 years working for each study year)? Seems a bit wasteful.
But Hey, I am from Holland, the country whose economy isn't down the drain. What do know.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
DEBT, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slave-driver.
As, pent in an aquarium, the troutlet
Swims round and round his tank to find an outlet,
Pressing his nose against the glass that holds him,
Nor ever sees the prison that enfolds him;
So the poor debtor, seeing naught around him,
Yet feels the narrow limits that impound him,
Grieves at his debt and studies to evade it,
And finds at last he might as well have paid it.
- Barlow S. Vode
To many required classes and fillers classes are pushing the 4 year degrees out to 5 years.
Due to classes filling up, classes only being offered only at some times and the high number of credits needed a 4 year degree used to be 120 credits and now Colleges want more for the 4 year degree. Also the X credits to be a full time student should also be cut down or have some kind of fill in that force people to take stuff like art history.
Now some filler is ok but other times it's a waste that can be better spent and there are ways to make it better like say cut back on some of the math classes or make some of them no logger required, let people take some side classes in other ares with not having to meet all the prerequisites for that class, on the job training, work study, and so on.
The government helps students take on loans -> colleges increase tuition because students can afford more thanks to the loans -> there is societal and economic pressure to help people go to college -> the government helps students take on loans ...
The three sectors that increased much faster than inflation (housing, health care, higher ed) all have their cost subsidized by government. Is this a coincidence?
And this is the relative size of the higher education bubble: http://www.di.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/tuition-housing-cpi1.jpg
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Oddly enough - my parents are not upper class, I received no scholarships, and no funds from my parents or other relatives. I completed a 4 year degree with no debt.
The idea that school loans are inevitable unless one wants to be a part of the poor downtrodden masses is false.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
As the PHD system needs work
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110420/full/472261a.html
MBA? that is a masters but do you realty want a work place there the basic jobs needs Business Administration skills?
at interest that varies between 6.5 and 8.5%. The government sure likes to say that education is the future of this country, and that everyone who wants to should be able to go to school, but what does charging 6.5-8.5% on the loans say? Mortgages on houses can be had for 4% interest, and we've all seen how safe an investment a home is (thanks 1%ers for demonstrating it to us!). If getting an education is so important and means so much to the future, why is the interest charged so damned high? What investment is more secure than education? The interest rates for student loans should reflect the underlying security of that investment.
Watching OWS protests, where we have largely a population of educated middle-class or higher kids (who are staggeringly wealthy by any world standard), who have spent their lives:
- getting everything they need, and pretty much everything they want
- have never known hunger
- have always been basically healthy
- have never seen war except as volunteers, which is pretty damn unlikely anyway (more importantly, have never faced the ravage of war across their homes)
I recently graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering, easily one of the most "Useful and Marketable" undergraduate degrees you can have. I am also a veteran who spent 2 years serving his country, 6 of them getting shot at in Kandahar. I have relocated to the DC-Metro area, one of the areas of lowest unemployment in the country. I BARELY found a job, and at a significantly lower salary than what my peers were being offered in 2007. My tuition costs more than doubled while I was in school. All the while, we've been dumping trillions of dollars to cover the asses of bankers and insurers underwriting ridiculous risks in order to make a quick buck.
But sure, OWS is a bunch of whining leftist hippies. Seriously dude, get fucked.
First, Felix Salmon says USA Today's numbers are wrong, and student loans are around $600 billion: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/10/19/fact-and-fiction-about-student-loans/. But it still is a big number.
Here's the current system: if someone with a pulse wants to go to a for-profit school, he will get in. He will pay high tuition, almost all covered by student loans. He gets a worthless degree and cannot get a job. But federal student loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, so his life is now ruined.
There's some blame to go to the student, he should have known better. But chances are this is a young kid, and his first exposure to the adult world is a recruiter telling him he's smart, he's going places, he just needs to graduate college, preferably this really expensive for-profit school. He's been preyed upon as well. And this used to be considered fraud, preying on vulnerable people. If a guy went around to old ladies selling them useless junk, we used to toss him in jail. I'm not sure why our attitudes have changed.
I think federal student loans need a major overhaul--right now, it's a huge giveaway to the banks and for-profit schools with students as victims. Limit federal loans to for-profit institutions to 50% of non-profit tuition (it can go higher based on merit), and force for-profit schools to be accredited every year. Just somehow change the incentive system to reduce the number of non-qualified kids funneled into expensive and useless programs. Change the law so that student loan defaults impact the school they went to: say, reduce loans in the future, with no more student loans to that school if the default rate tops 15% (or whatever number makes sense).
This is another bubble, and the popping of it will be another huge blow to the economy.
Also, kids need to told loudly: getting a degree from a school not competitive in the field is not worth anything more than going to your closest state school. Expensive schools that aren't competitive to get in are just a place for rich kids to go get drunk. Don't take out loans to go to those schools!
dent loan debt is nondischargeable in bankruptcy unless the debtor can meet a very high burden of proving hardship.
It's no wonder that lenders lend insane amounts, when they can hound their borrowers for years and years.
No way is this in the long term interest of business, but since when has business ever cared about the long term. They buy their congressmen and this is what they get.
Same thing for the goddamn mortgage industry. Banks get super-protection for their residential mortgages in bankruptcy, so they can write stupid mortgages without fear that the mortgage will be modified in a Chapter 13. This is a contributor to all the stupid loans.
Then business sells us on the idea that it's all the debtor's fault. That's the stupidest thing of all. Sure it's the debtor's fault. When the moron takes the stupid home loan or the stupid mortgage, he has only himself to blame. But business interests want us to think: Fuck him. He can sort his own sorry shit out. And we're morons if we agree with that. If our stupid ass neighbor goes down with a bad mortgage--our property values suffer, our banks suffer, and we all suffer. We're all interdependent. Looking out for other people is looking out for ourselves. The frontier ethic doesn't work anymore when we're jammed together in cities.
Enough of a rant. Now I'll get flamed by the small government people who would rather be governed by banks than by elected representatives.
You nailed it. We are becoming a third world nation.
1) Huge wealth disparity between the rich elite and everyone else. (check)
2) Decreasing access to health care for the masses. (check)
3) Little social mobility. (check)
4) Decreasing access to education for the masses. (check)
--PM
One of the big problems I've heard lies with the for-profit universities. These schools actually seek out the kids who would not have likely gone post secondary, then sign them up with these big flipping loans. The for-profits are well known for having piss poor degrees that aren't nearly as respected as your regular universities, and employers don't want the second rate graduates they turn out. So in the States you get this horrible cycle of kids who need a post secondary education, are recruited by these shitty schools, sign up for these big loans and then after their program is over they get dumped into the real world where nobody wants them. The American school system is broken. Frontline has two great documentaries called "College Inc." and "Educating Sergeant Pantzke" - both are must-sees if you are interested in this issue.
Want to see a real uprising? Watch what the hard working middle class who already paid off their own student loans do when their earnings are taken away to forgive some occupy-wall-street-dirty-hippie's B.A. Art History debt.
I remember how you guys rose up over the Wall Street bailout. Boy are those guys reeling from how you gave 'em the scowling of a lifetime.
I am not a crackpot.
Make all education free for all. That's what Finland is doing, and it works brilliantly: the scientific output of this small (by population numbers) country is extremely high, as well as the effects of it on industry.
Now the UK has introduced tuition fees that are, in most cases, about GBP 9000/year. Many universities in The Netherlands (where education is free for all, as well) are now marketing all-English language master programmes to UK students that cannot afford the tuition fees. That will cause an influx of people who will, by studying in The Netherlands, contribute to the science in that country, and most likely stay as PhD students, contributing even more.
By the way, in addition to free education for all, the US should really introduce single payer, too. A system where children (as well as adults) are left without health insurance should alarm you.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Personally, I would rather those who are out of work and can't find work go to school for retraining (even if that means debt) to improve their job prospects later rather than one of:
1) Sit around on the dole
2) Turn to crime
3) Commit suicide
Buying a porsche is entirely not comparable. It doesn't improve one's job prospects or provide trained labor for the market.
That said, going to an expensive degree program might be a move. There are less expensive educational options.
--PM
I sympathize with the above. I've been hearing for years here in the US about "nursing shortages". There's been plenty of nursing programs in schools in our area which issue nursing degrees at various levels such as a 1 year LPN, 2 year associate and then the 4 year RN (I believe I got the names and years correct). The thing is, there's been a waiting list to get into these programs because people believed there was a shortage, and it's been this way for years even before the great recession. It smelled like a bubble, but Johnson and Johnson kept running ads about how nurses are kind hearted people who care implying the viewer should drop everything and enroll in the saintly nursing profession.
A similar thing seems to be happening on a site for American Actuaries. Apparently, the main site was touting extreme demand, but graduates were still having a hard time. We in the IT field keep hearing about an IT shortage from IT publications, but as has been discussed previously, the reasoning is to get more H1B or similar visa people in so that companies can pay a fraction of the US market based wage. People in the US cost more because it costs more for them to live.
Real people (not Mitt Romney's idea of one), like the almighty corporations which we're supposed to praise, love and worship, are chasing what they believe to be the best opportunity for them based on the best information they are given. The thing is, when these same entities rig the system with false information about supply and demand for their own benefit it's no longer a fair game. Then they have the gall to rig the bankruptcy code in their favor, which makes things even worse for real people.
In the meantime, the US government subsidizes the so called risk of lending to students, making credit even easier. Schools see this and raise their tuition with each increase in US government lending limits. At my MBA school, each student graduates after paying over $90k. They get this amount times about 1000 students, yet they still ask for alumni gifts. There's just no way it costs that much to run the school. This mentality of schools charging the maximum of whatever a student's borrowing abilities are exacerbates the problem.
The system is rigged and we in the US are just suckers playing a game many of us are loosing it.
well CS is theory and IT should be on it's own without all the theory and math.
I disagree. CS students should all learn a little about IT (so they don't try stupid crap that overtaxes a system), and also because IT people should come from the realm of CS. Sure, the math is partially irrelevant, but the theory makes a miserable IT button pusher into an IT wonder.
So you want people to do a 4 year CS and then a 2 year tech school?
The hard part is setting how much theory that IT people need and much how a IT a CS students should get also IT people need a good hands on part that is way better then theory.
Psst, I am GP ;) The source is http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_320.asp. The second column (in state public institution and required fees) is without room and board, which for for years is 11338 for 2006-2007 school year. The first column is with room and board, and comes out to 19232. I must have typo'd the original number, sorry about that.
Tax dollar subsidize a lower and lower portion of tuition every year. The university I graduated from in 2005 has more than doubled their tuition since then. In that time, wages have been stagnant or in many cases dropped. If you're over 30, you had a much, MUCH easier time than these kids today. And for the record, I'm one of those people who worked during school, got a nice scholarship, and graduated with zero debt. But not everyone is that fortunate.
Maybe it's not the biggest component, but college text book publishers are pulling a lot of shady tactics.
I'm in school now, and had to get a newer edition of a math book I already had. Yet when I compared the two editions the only changes were new chapter introductions and the homework problems had been rearranged in a different way for each chapter. Nothing new had been added, explanations and examples were all the same, but now you can't answer your homework correctly without buying the newest $180 edition . For that price the class, as a whole, could have contracted someone to write a damn math book for us
Then there are the "online access" classes. In which, to turn in your homework, you need to buy an additional $80 pass to the publisher's online content. Which is often looks like a third rate KhanAcademy knock off. So, especially in math, you end up paying $200+ for 1000+ year old information that is available for free.