Ron Paul Wants To End the Federal Student Loan Program

On the heels of declaring his intent to axe a few departments from the federal government, Ron Paul has revealed more plans should he become President. The_THOMAS writes "Ron Paul wants to end Federal student loans stating that the Government involvement artificially inflates the cost of a college education and that once the government is out of the situation, students will be able to work their way to a college degree. What do you think?"

Comments

Subsidies inflate pricing.

[ZHaDoom]

Subsidies inflate pricing. I agree.

Re:Subsidies inflate pricing.

[BasilBrush]

And what of the flip side? The people who really achieve in the field they studies at University, but wouldn't have been able to go were it not for student loans. Are they a price worth paying for libertarian ideology?

Can America afford to be less educated?

Re:Subsidies inflate pricing.

[mcgrew]

A loan isn't a subsidy. But if student loans were indeed the cause of the high price of college, what makes you think stopping them would make the price go down?

I went to school on the GI bill, and the state of Illinois paid my tuition. That's s subsidy. But I still had to work and was still dirt poor. That was in 1975; when did the school cost inflation begin?

Without student loans, only children of the wealthy will be able to go to college. The price keeps it out of reach of the working class, and always has. Education never was inexpensive.

Re:Subsidies inflate pricing.

[Crudely_Indecent]

And what's the flip side?

Traditional financing. You finance a car, a house, a TV, why not an education?

This puts college education back in the private sector (that is, without government meddling). Let the market decide.

Re:Subsidies inflate pricing.

[bluefoxlucid]

I actually advocated this to a coworker friday. Do we have a half-intelligent politician or a lucky retard? Even a broken clock is right once in a while, whether it's stopped or spinning backwards...

Student debt spins out of control because there's no accountability. The Federal Loan Program is an automatic bank bail-out, but for the universities. Without a student loan program, the universities have three choices:

• Find a bank to supply loans
• Operate as a bank themselves
• Demand students find their own financing

In the second case, the university must take on risk itself; in the first and last, they offload the risk to the student or a bank (the student can pay out of pocket or find a bank and get their own loan in the third case). In any case involving a loan, someone takes a risk of a default and a bankruptcy declaration, meaning student loan offerings will become more stringent. Tuition may decrease due to lack of liquidity--no access to free money means you can't sell as much crap.

The current situation leaves a case where universities have their greatest interest in getting students spending money freely. If those students default, who cares? There's no bank that cares, and the university doesn't care. This means they're best off encouraging students to get into debt they can't handle, and that they can charge ungodly high tuition levels and people will just pay it because the money is there.

Shove all that shit on the bankers and suddenly there will be some explaining to do if you want money handed to you. Another recession caused by excess borrowing WILL put a stop to this shit, and when the banks cry and the students complain they just can't afford college because bank loans aren't easy to get for $250,000 when you're a jobless starving artist, tuition will come down.

Re:Subsidies inflate pricing.

[bhcompy]

California had free higher education for residents paid by taxpayers(and it is set in the charter for higher education in the state, which all of the school systems now openly violate). From UCLA and UC Berkeley to Bakersfield Community College. Free. Over time this has changed while at the same time loans have been backed by the government and student debt has been increasing. Correlation doesn't equal causation, but it's there, it happened

Re:Subsidies inflate pricing.

[Nadaka]

Speaking as a successful software developer who needed student loans to attend college. Bullshit. Student loans SUCK, but they are the only thing that allows a large number of low to middle income people get into the career they want and need.

There are alternatives to student loans:
Ron Pauls solution: only the wealthy may attend college. Tuitions will skyrocket even farther because there are so few new students. Hundreds of universities are forced to close their doors and all we are left with are a lot of trade schools and the Ivy Leagues.
Something rational: Recognize that state universities are state universities and have no profit obligation and should not be run like corporations. Cut administrative costs (tuition increases go almost 100% to higher administrative wages and more administrative positions instead of to professors and facilities) and offer low or free tuition subsidized by the state.

Re:Subsidies inflate pricing.

[Pawnn]

But...but...schools NEED a Dean of Campus, a Dean of Students, a Dean of Faculty, a Dean of Character, a Dean of Lawn Mowing, and a Dean of Deaning!

Re:Subsidies inflate pricing.

[RingDev]

How many 18 year olds do you know with good enough credit to buy a car, let alone a house?

How many private banks are going to be willing to fork over $20,000-200,000 for an education for an 18 year old kid with no credit history, no job, and a low likelihood of gaining employment in their first 5 years that will pay anything close to enough to be able to aford the payments on that loan?

The reason the federal student loan program exists is because it ISN'T profitable to make that loan. Most kids are going to default, and the banks will be left holding the bag.

The government program exists in a market where the private market doesn't want to go. That's a significant purpose of the government in a capitalist society.

-Rick

Re:Subsidies inflate pricing.

[Kierthos]

So, he's got his. Fuck the rest of us.

Ah, you understand the Republican philosophy perfectly.

Now, before anyone jumps in my shit and stirs, I'm not saying that the Democrats don't pull this kind of crapola too. They just don't tend to do it so overtly.

Re:Subsidies inflate pricing.

[BasilBrush]

because we oversaturated the market with college educated people, who dont really need that degree for what they do for a living.

A university education isn't for a particular job, it's for life. People aren't commodities in a market. People are more than worker bees.

maybe, just maybe the prices will drop because they will need to admit more people to their schools instead of costs going up. i mean thats simple supply and demand right there

Supply and demand is just one aspect of pricing. At the end of the day, without subsidy, you can't price lower than cost. 3 or 4 years of tuition at university level, with all the buildings, staff, equipment and other things that come into that isn't ever going to be cheap enough for a young person with minimum wage earning parent(s).

I'm all for removing student loans, as long as they are replaced with grants or other ways by which everyone who is willing and capable of being educated at university level is enabled to do so.

Re:Subsidies inflate pricing.

[Altus]

So the answer is to cut off higher education at the knees and hope that eventually the market comes around before we enter a new dark age?

Maybe there is some other way we could go about doing this.

Re:Subsidies inflate pricing.

[Attila Dimedici]

However, since the advent of student loans, the cost of a college education has risen at an astronomically higher rate than inflation. If one looks at products which have a price increase significantly greater than the rate of inflation for an extended period of time (more than a decade), most, if not all, are products that are to one degree or another paid for with government subsidies of some kind.

Re:Subsidies inflate pricing.

[roman_mir]

A gov't GUARANTEED loan IS a subsidy.

It's a worst kind of subsidy, every gov't program that guarantees something only does so at the expense of everyone's savings - the Fed will print (inflate) and steal your purchasing power to pay the bad debt off (bail outs to banks, companies, home owners, eventually to students, etc.)

The prices will come down if gov't money is removed from making these guarantees and quality will go up. Right now quality is shit, because nobody competes on quality. It's not like fewer people will want to enter your facilities if your quality is not that great, because space is limited, but gov't guarantees are not.

Yes, if the gov't guarantees are cut the tuition prices will fall (as it should) and based on qualities a number colleges will fail and NOT as many people will go if they have to take a private loan and prove it's not a waste of time and money (and that's what you have to do, you have to prove that there is some value there, some asset, or that your degree will allow you to pay the interest and loan back).

But this is a GOOD thing. Not everybody should go to college, not by a long shot. Right now the number of sociology majors is ridiculous, who needs any of them? Nobody does, they are worthless degrees and they are given out like candy. It happens because of the money transfer from gov't to educational facilities and students are the collateral.

Students are collateral, money is given to universities, universities in their turn support the political system that gives them this money, and the vicious cycle continues and economy worsens and those degrees are not worth anything and the lie of Keynesian solutions grows as the Fed counterfeits further.

Re:Subsidies inflate pricing.

[bennomatic]

My first semester's registration fee at UC Berkeley: $600.00

My final semester's registration fee, also at UCB: $2400

Granted, I took five years, but still, 400% change in four years is really something. The state pulled back funding, the universities increased their costs to make up for it (and more?), and yes, private U's probably do take advantage of the situation by raising their own bars.

Re:Subsidies inflate pricing.

[HereIAmJH]

After a couple years, every university in the country will radically adjust their prices and cut waste in order to not cease to exist since no one will be able to afford the ridiculous cost anymore.

Either that, or they would more actively recruit foreign students. There have already been news stories of state funded schools preferring foreign students because they don't have to give them the in-state discount rate. We'll just end up with more tax funded institutions that Americans can't afford to attend.

A better solution would be to push trades and entrepreneurial skills in high school. Reduce the demand for student loans by showing students how they can earn a living without a college requirement. Many of the trades taught at Vocational Technical schools can earn above median incomes. Personally, I don't know that I wouldn't have been just as happy doing engine repair for the last 30 years as I have been working in IT. I certainly would have been healthier with a less sedentary job, and once you calculate in all that I have spent on education expenses I probably would have earned more.

Re:Subsidies inflate pricing.

[RingDev]

Not at all, it would just trend back towards where it was prior to the creation of the federal student loan program, and with the colapsing of the middle class, back to what it was prior to WWII.

Which is to say, we would have a 2 education system solution: Ivy League schools where the children of the rich go, and trade skill schools/apprentiships/OJT for everyone who won't ever have the opportunity to be rich.

It's just another way for the plutocracy to further strengthen its own position and isolate themselves from everyone else.

-Rick

Re:Subsidies inflate pricing.

[luis_a_espinal]

Speaking as a successful software developer who needed student loans to attend college. Bullshit. Student loans SUCK, but they are the only thing that allows a large number of low to middle income people get into the career they want and need.

There are alternatives to student loans: Ron Pauls solution: only the wealthy may attend college. Tuitions will skyrocket even farther because there are so few new students. Hundreds of universities are forced to close their doors and all we are left with are a lot of trade schools and the Ivy Leagues. Something rational: Recognize that state universities are state universities and have no profit obligation and should not be run like corporations. Cut administrative costs (tuition increases go almost 100% to higher administrative wages and more administrative positions instead of to professors and facilities) and offer low or free tuition subsidized by the state.

^^^ This. This a million times.

I find Ron Paul's position akin to an bone-headed, no-hold-barred adherence to an extremist interpretation of laissez faire capitalism and libertarianism, everything else be damned. This is just the libertarian doppelgänger of the tragically known Maoist great leap forward. I do subscribe (to a point) with libertarianism, but this is just insane!

Ok, we cut federal student loans. Great. Does that immediately solve the problems of high cost of education? No. Will it solve it? Maybe... if you are willing to believe federal intervention is the primary culprit of the rising cost of education (it is not.) We need a serious reform in education. Too many people go for a 4-year degree, and far too many companies require such a degree for jobs that, in truth, only require a AA/AS degree.

But a true reform requires support for vocational school at the HS and post-HS level (as done in the German and Japanese models of education), providing for true and diversified alternatives (at the county community college level) other than a 4-year degree. Cutting federal student loans simply does not resolve the root cause, and will cause people to pursue any form of education, independently of whether they are qualified or not.

It's not fucking rocket science to come up with something rational. But nooooooooooooooooooooooo, we have to go ZOMG! berserkers all the way to the fringe extreme of an ideological kaleidoscope. What Ron Paul is suggested is akin to having a headache, and instead of looking at the root causes, he's suggesting a lobotomy.

Ron Paul has completely jumped the shark on this one. He has foregone all reasonable explanations and solutions to the rising cost of education by pushing an extremist, radical and harmful action as a solution solely for ideological reasons.

Re:Subsidies inflate pricing.

[s73v3r]

Only for a couple of years, and its a nessecary evil.

Bullshit. Try telling people that making jobs LESS available for the next few years is a "necessary evil."

After a couple years, every university in the country will radically adjust their prices and cut waste in order to not cease to exist since no one will be able to afford the ridiculous cost anymore.

Based on what evidence? And furthermore, why the fuck should the poor and middle class have to suffer for your ideology? Why should the poor and middle class be cut out of college educations for the next few (more like 20-30) years?

Re:Subsidies inflate pricing.

[dgatwood]

After a couple years, every university in the country will radically adjust their prices and cut waste in order to not cease to exist since no one will be able to afford the ridiculous cost anymore.

That's just laughable, and tells me that you have no freaking idea what's been going on in higher education for the past two decades. I've watched as the states have slashed and slashed the subsidies that they pay for in-state residents. As that budget shrinks, sure, they cut where they can, but any realistic cuts were made almost two decades ago back when they started slashing the subsidies. What remains are the unrealistic ones—the changes that would reduce the quality of the education you receive.

Educators aren't willing to compromise the quality of education to save a buck, and as a result, for the past several rounds of state subsidy cuts, every time the state has taken more money out, the cost of education has gone up proportionally. There are no more cuts that can usefully be made when most of the operating costs are teacher salaries and benefits (which are still usually below industry norms), and when the rest is going into building maintenance, which you can only defer for so long before it comes back to bite you.

Sure, in theory, you might be able to cut out some administrative positions, but the administrators are the ones in charge, and they'll never decide to cut themselves, which means that you cannot possibly achieve any cuts that do not gravely impact the quality of education unless you start by replacing all of the leadership from the top down. It's like trying to kill cancer by starving the patient. The cancer is still going to take all the energy it needs, so the only real effect is that the patient won't get the energy that he or she needs. You have to start by cutting it out, then go from there.

More to the point, nearly every single recent cut in government subsidies to higher education has resulted in a tuition increase. You'd have to be completely naïve to believe that the next such cut will miraculously cause tuition to drop. The only effect that cuts to federal student loans will have is that the poorest students will be unable to attend. That means that there will be fewer students paying tuition.

The problem is that students still have to be able to get all of the classes they need to graduate within any given four-year period. That means you'll still need roughly the same set of classes, which means that you can't cut faculty except possibly in certain general classes like freshman English composition (which are mostly taught by poorly paid part-time adjunct instructors anyway, and thus have almost no real impact on the bottom line).

Because, faculty have to get paid by the class/hour, not by the student count (the alternative would be absurd), this means that you'll have roughly the same total operating cost divided by fewer people paying those costs. In other words, guaranteed higher cost. Anyone who says otherwise is simply delusional.

Now I will admit that making college less affordable might cause improvements in the breadth of our K-12 education offerings to compensate, but to do so requires bringing in more people at that level, so you're really just shifting the costs around into a program where all the costs are borne by the state instead of only part of the cost, which clearly increases the use of public funds, not decreases it. Also, there are a lot more K-12 schools, so increasing the quality of education at that level is a lot more expensive than increasing the quality of education at the state college level.

I should emphasize that all of this is fairly basic math, coupled with a fairly basic understanding of the history of the program in question. It's downright scary that Ron Paul is so utterly clueless about the things he wants to cut and the effect that it will have, as that tells me that he hasn't bothered to do even a few minutes of actual research on the subject. That's the absolute last kind of person we need as our next President.

Re:Subsidies inflate pricing.

[chill]

Sigh...no. The idea is *if* government regulation is necessary, then the lower level it occurs at the better. The issue is the interpretation of the phrase "if government regulation is necessary". He leans a lot more towards "no, it most likely isn't" than most people.

It really helps to put your partisan preconceptions aside and listen to what *he* says. This actually works for *ALL* politicians, believe it or not.

Stop listening to what other people -- supporters or detractors -- say and go right to the source. Follow that up with an analysis of what he has actually *DONE* over the years. You can see for yourself whether he does what he says and whether or not his actions are consistent with his words.

Re:Subsidies inflate pricing.

[bolthole]

Maybe there is some other way we could go about doing this.

This is a great thing to do, if you also make sure that the low cost educational avenues are met. To do so, would be trivial. Even by "government program stupidity, which ensures at least 200% overhead.

95% of classes, involve sitting in lectures. There is no reason to be paying thousands of professors in a field, to be teaching the same overall subject matter, but in thousands of slightly different and unique ways. The subject matter itself, is uniform.

khanacademy.org style: you record ONE person, doing a lecture series, and share with everyone. for miniscule incremental cost.

The only "must be fresh every time" required action, is verified testing of the individual in the class. 2-5 hours per class, per semester. Shove 20 people in a room, hire a person for a reasonable hourly rate... $20 an hour? that's $1 per person per hour. Add another $1 for room rental costs, etc. $2x5 hours == $10 per class per semester. There is NO REASON that base line college should cost more than this.

You want more handholding? fine, pay more. but for those who can handle the above scenario, there's no need to make them pay more than the above, to get their "piece of paper" enabling them to get a job.

Re:Subsidies inflate pricing.

[StillNeedMoreCoffee]

Besides not having a clue about Education, how it works or whats going on in a University. The idea that shoving people in a room and thinking that $1 per student for "rental" costs makes any real sense.

As for the purpose of an Instructor neigh Educator in the class, if showing the material, in written or video form was effective then you would find those institutions that are for profit and run by business men, implementing that years ago. They haven't because it is not as effective a teaching tool as having someone there to answer your questions, on the spot and to clarify things not understood through example, analogy.
Everyone comes to the classroom from a different background. All disciplines have their own sub-dialect. The Educator translates that sub-dialect for the un-initiated so they can understand and adopt that sub-dialect going forward in their studies. I have yet to pick up a book on material that spoke exactly my sub-dialect, causing me to miss-understand or do extensive work tracking down the problem. So having an Educator there is the most efficient, I would estimate about 500% more efficient than the material alone. Then there are the aspects of focus and the synergy of the group of questions fielded answering questions you did not even know you had.

Having a $20/hr temporary worker cheapens that whole idea of an Educator and comes from a missunderstanding of what is really going on, what its value is and what its long term effects are.

What

Re:Subsidies inflate pricing.

[fyngyrz]

A degree teaches people how to think critically, boosts intelligence, confidence, ability to self-motivate, how to relate to peers, gives an appreciation of a much wider range of what life has to offer. etc. A university education makes a person better.

Someone's been drinking the koolaid straight from the pitcher.

The best job applicants I have had (in programming and electronic design) have been the self-taught ones. Because they are *already* intelligent, motivated, inventive, creative, critical thinkers. Putting lipstick on a pig doesn't turn it into an Orion slave girl. Neither would teaching it to put the lipstick on itself.

If you're really a high quality engineering type, you'll prove it before a college ever gets its hands on you. And if you're the best, you won't waste your time in college at all. You'll buy books and do research on your own while the college kids waste time muddling through unrelated topics, being inculcated with years-old outlooks on relevant technical topics, and after graduation, are then years behind the really excellent candidates, who've probably already done quite a few useful things, some of which may have been excellent money earners.

But hey... if you're looking for another warm body to fill staff at mangement-driven junkware mills like defense contractors and Big Company Inc., by all means, select only from college graduates. And good luck with that. LOL.

Ron Paul should give away his money

[loftwyr]

Maybe if he had to actually work for a living at a minimum wage job, he'd stop asking those with little to no money to give up their chance to be raised up.

Re:Ron Paul should give away his money

[tmosley]

He gives back his salary every year. He makes NO money off of being a Congressman.

Re:Ron Paul should give away his money

[MightyYar]

Because without government education, you end up with a large uneducated class of people. When a bunch of uneducated people have voting rights, they will vote themselves so many government programs that you'll wish you'd bent your libertarian views just a smidgen. Venezuela is a good example.

I say this as someone who's ideology is based in libertarian, but with a hefty dose of pragmatism.

Re:Ron Paul should give away his money

[hedwards]

Which is a really good justification for him shutting the hell up when it comes to issues of welfare. I can't personally afford to work for free, in fact most Americans can't afford to do so either. We just don't have the money in the bank to allow for that. Perhaps if the GOP kleptocracy would stop looking for new and innovative ways of stealing from the poor to give to the rich, we might be able to afford to give back more.

At the end of the day, any politician that can afford to do that, whether or not they do, has no right to suggest that we cut back on our minimalist safety net.

Re:Ron Paul should give away his money

[jareth-0205]

He gives back his salary every year. He makes NO money off of being a Congressman.

You idiot. He has enough money so that he *can* give back his salary. He's not and never has been living hand-to-mouth. That's the entire point the original post was making!

Re:Ron Paul should give away his money

[tibit]

The problem is that the federal student loans, while genuinely useful to some, have been exploited pretty much to death by the for-profit colleges. Those do powerful marketing and have pretty much established the idea that everyone should go to college, no matter what. It's the same with diamond jewelry: somehow a semi-rare rock is elevated to cult status, and every woman in the U.S. feels that getting a big one on a golden ring is cool and shit. The colleges merely took a good marketing lesson from DeBeers and applied it to a different market. The outcome is pretty much the same. Couples get into debt for shiny rocks. Students get into debt for college education that can be very well useless to them. Nothing new here, move along.

As much as I think some of RPs ideas are overreaching, I do believe that axing or at least reforming the federal loan program is a must. As an alternative to axing, I'd limit its availability to people who to non-profit schools. I'm sure a more extreme option exists, say limiting it to people who go to non-profit public schools.

Re:Ron Paul should give away his money

[_KiTA_]

What a great talking point. Do you have any evidence of this whatsoever? Because there are actual laws, regulations, and all sorts of other fun things (like the fact that this money has to be paid back and can't be wiped out by bankruptcy) that make what you're suggesting completely implausible.

It's a bit like the old "Don't help the homeless, they're really all rich and slumming it" meme that was going around when I was in high school. A fun way to distract ourselves from real problems.

Re:Ron Paul should give away his money

[BasilBrush]

Education doesn't just benefit the person educated. It benefits society.

Re:Ron Paul should give away his money

[jareth-0205]

Why is it the governments responsibility to pay those "with little to no money" way through college?

And I thought the American Dream was all about equal opportunity... about breaking entrenched class systems and allowing anyone with ability to improve themselves. If you have no way to save enough money to buy a good education, how is that better?

Re:Ron Paul should give away his money

[CRCulver]

And all those countries some are going to list for me with "free healthcare" and "free education" all have one thing in common, they are either failing or were bailed out by the U.S. of A.

That's a bizarre claim. Take Finland, for example: same welfare state as its Nordic neighbours, including universal healthcare and no tuition fees. It's doing pretty well economically, so it's hardly "failing", and they have refused to join NATO and provide for their own defense, so the USA is hardly "bailing them out."

Re:Ron Paul should give away his money

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I have relatively little interest in the question of what Dr. Paul may or may not be doing personally; but that is sort of the whole point of paying politicians a salary.

On the minus side, you do run into situations where City Counselor McSleazy passes an obscure bill such that the clock for his retirement started when he worked as a volunteer at the library one summer back in high school, leaving him to retire at 40.

On the plus side, if being a politician actually pays in vagely the same bracket as other jobs requiring similar qualfiications, you don't have a class of "representatives" that is 100% either bought-and-paid for because they couldn't afford it otherwise, or economic gentry who can afford to retire from day to day work in order to focus legislating in the favor of the local gentry.

That's why, historically speaking, legislative salaries have been something of a contested issue between the proponents of approximately egalitarian democracy, and the proponents of limited-sufferage democratic aristocracy. Career politicians generally leave a slime trail, and it is hard to like them as a class; but if you can't can't earn wages as a legislator, you can be pretty much assured that legislating will be done entirely by people who have other ways of obtaining support...

Re:Ron Paul should give away his money

[janeuner]

The average annual income for an individual with a high school diploma is $35k. For an individual with a bachelors degree, it is $50k.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States

For a married man in that tax bracket, the difference in income is taxed at 15%.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rate_schedule_(federal_income_tax)

The average annual cost of tuition at a public university in 2009 was $7020.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_education_in_the_United_States#Finances

Last year, 7.2 percent of those loans to public universities resulted in a default.

Assumptions: 4 years to complete a bachelors degree plus 1 year to start repayment and loans have a 3% APR and are dispersed in full at the start of the school year. Let's also say the government bears the full cost for all defaults, and the defaulter never pays a cent in taxes.

Subsidized Interest: $7020 * (1+2+3+4+4 years) * 0.03 = ~$3000
Marginal cost of default: $7020 * 4 * 0.072 = ~$2000

Marginal annual tax revenue from graduate: ($50k - 35k) * 0.015 * 0.928 = ~$2000

So, for a college student on a loan-driven ride through college, the total cost to the government is about $5000. That cost is recovered from said graduate within 3 years via increased income tax revenue. Since most workers will remain in the economy for another 30 years, this investment represents a 10:1 return on investment.

There are separate issues wrt private schools, MAP grants, etc. But this exercise almost always shows a substantial return on the investment. This isn't about poor lazy people. This raises people out of poverty, with a side dose of increased tax revenue and decreased welfare costs.

Only a fiscal lunatic would eliminate subsidized loans.

Re:Ron Paul should give away his money

[Anonymous Coward]

Ron Paul can be creditably accused of many things, but being an aristocrat isn't one of them. He paid for his education with military service, and retired from medical practice (OB/GYN) to go into politics. He is at least consistent in his principles, and as honest a man as you're going to find in politics.

Re:Ron Paul should give away his money

[tnk1]

You're right. He does have money and he doesn't need his government salary.

However, the problem isn't with what he does with his salary, the problem is with the situation where people are attacking Ron Paul instead of attacking his position. He is entitled to both his salary and whatever he has made in private life. And that doesn't make him any less qualified to make a point about what is needed to improve the country.

I don't live in Africa, but I doubt anyone would call me out about condemning abuses and corruption that happens there. The fact that I am not needy does not make me unqualified to make decisions to help alleviate the problem. Indeed, being somewhat successful might well make me more qualified to help other people be more successful. Of course, that doesn't mean I am the only voice that should be listened to, we do need the viewpoints of the unemployed, the students and the otherwise disadvantaged to make a good policy, but we seem to be arguing that only a needy person has any right to talk about the safety net, and that is just plain wrong. After all, it's the well-off people in previous Congresses who set it up to begin with, was it not?

Mind you, I don't like his idea of pulling the rug out from under the student loan system, but I don't like hearing talk about him being rich and therefore unable to empathize with anyone else. It makes me think that his opponents in this case have no better points to make than an appeal to emotion and the language of class division.

Re:Ron Paul should give away his money

[SlippyToad]

He is not a politician, he is a Statesman

He is an ignorant blowhard who thinks his medical degree makes him an expert on economics. Any problem that is too complicated for Ruin Paul to understand, he simply proposes destroying all affected institutions.

This isn't statesmanship. It's demagoguery. But you as many Glibertarian fanbois are so entranced by the simplicity of Ruin Paul's message that you apparently fail to actually think any of his ideas through to their conclusions.

Which are disastrous. Ruin Paul's political philosophy seems to be that since government has been unable to completely solve every problem perfectly, we should just stop using it. Of course, he forgets that all of these solutions, including the government itself, came into being because the original problems were real and in need of a solution that the so-called "free market" had failed to provide.

As it will fail to solve this problem as well. Doing nothing about a problem is not a solution.

I can tell you what happens to people who do nothing while living in some lotus-dream that it's all going to fix itself -- they end up HOMELESS, HOPELESS, JOBLESS, and DEAD. Your philosophy proposes treating all of our urgent social needs like a drug addict treats his personal needs -- by ignoring them.

Unfortunately, after we've paid the price by doing it your stupid way, YOU will not be around to help us clean up the mess. I'm pretty sure of that one. Lazy is as lazy does. And your philosophy is in a nutshell, LAZY. I have zero respect for it.

Re:Ron Paul should give away his money

[Anrego]

I used to think that way.. why should my tax dollars taken from my paycheck which I work hard for go to someone else who contributes nothing to society.

But the truth is, while I didn't exactly grow up rich, I didn't grow up poor. It's largely random chance that I was born to middle class parents .. and as I didn't have to claw my way up from poverty, I try not to judge those who would have to in order to get to my lifestyle.

I don't have much problem with my tax dollars going towards helping out those less fortunate (I'm Canadian though, we tend to be a little more minded in this direction) .. as long as it's not being spent foolishly or abused, and with an emphasis on fixing the problem rather than just keeping the status quo.

"Free" money

[tmosley]

Subsidized student loans are "free" money that enslaves most for a lifetime, moreso today than at any time in living memory. There was a time when working part time over the summer would be enough to pay ALL college expenses, now you have to work some 35 hours a week during the semester plus full time in the summer and over breaks. This is outrageous.

Re:"Free" money

[garcia]

Ahhh, yes. The old misconceptions about college!

College is not necessarily a free-for-all experience where you spend the weekends drunk/recovering and Thursday nights doing the pre-party for those who are suitcasing it that weekend.

No, college is about being an adult and making adult decisions. I've worked for colleges in a variety of roles over the last 10 years and two of those years were in admissions for a community/tech college.

Here in Minnesota you can go to college and complete your undergrad for very little money. You start as a PSEO student in HS and the state pays your way through many of your first two years of college undergraduate credit without your taking out any loans. They count towards your HS diploma AND your college degree.

If you don't choose to go that way (or even if you do) you can enter the state's community college system and live at home (working part time hopefully) while taking college courses at costs far lower than you'd spend elsewhere--especially out of state.

Then you move on to an in-state four year institution, preferably close to home so you don't have to pay many boarding expenses and ride mass transit or carpool to save on driving costs. Then you complete your degree with very few student loans and nothing hanging over your head.

---

However, most people instead have dreams of grandeur and take out ridiculous student loans to attend some out-of-state school or in-state private institution which sets them back far more than they could ever afford. Instead of checking the lists for the mid-life salary range for a graduate of one of these schools they instead check the Best Party Lists instead.

No, this doesn't apply to everyone--like those of us who had a scholarship or some other way of affording school without loans lasting forever--but it seems to be a growing trend of those complaining now.

You are a legal adult at 18 years of age and regardless of your (and your parents') poor choices for your future does not mean that you could not have chosen another path.

Re:"Free" money

[CRCulver]

If my cultural insight is of any value (I'm from norway) the travelling is usually done after high school, most people go to work fresh after finishing their college education.

FWIW, I'm a postgraduate student in Finland. I know a load of people who, once they finished studying, went WWOFing in Australia for a year, or now they are accustomed to work in Finland for the summer and then travel during the cold months. Even if it's a minority of people who decide to pursue leisure like that, at least they can. The average American university student doesn't get a chance to do fun things like that.

Re:"Free" money

[vlm]

There was a time when working part time over the summer would be enough to pay ALL college expenses

20 years ago I found sorta-full time (lets say, 30 hrs/wk average) minimum wage work, year around, easily paid for a nice live-by-myself apartment in a nice area, a cheap and rusty yet reliable car, and full to part time tuition while earning my associates degree. No benefits, no health insurance, no dental, nothing. That degree led to a "real job" that had benefits including full tuition reimbursement for my bachelors degree...

Since then, minimum wage has gone from 5 something to 7 something, gas has gone from 90 cents a gallon to $4, my old bachelor apartment rent has gone from $400/month to $575/month, and tuition at the local school has quadrupled due to federal student loans...

The other interesting issue is tuition reimbursement 20 years ago was typically unlimited, other than having to be accredited, C or better grade, and vaguely related my job and/or employer. Then it dropped to $5K/year which at that time was pretty generous, going to school part or quarter time 3 semesters per year, I was paying about $160/credit long term average including all books and fees, I usually spent less than $4K/yr, I had to be careful to submit each semester's expenses in the proper calendar year but it was no big deal.

Since then, reimbursement remains at $5K/yr, but full time tuition at the local engineering school a couple blocks from where I work has risen to ... $540/credit (I checked online while writing this), before endless fees and parking permits and $200 each textbooks. Let's round that up to $640/credit. So I would only be able to afford about two semesters per year were I to start another degree. Has the value of the education provided increased by a factor of 4 in the last 20 years?

Re:"Free" money

[RazorSharp]

You can preach personality responsibility all day long, but that doesn't change the fact that it's bad for society when we just let the vast majority fail. That's why prison populations are growing at outrageous rates. Why unemployment is skyrocketing. Why the United States is in decline.

What you consider 'very little money' is a whole lot to some people. And mentioning post-secondary options for high schoolers is just insulting. I wasn't able to attend post-secondary because I didn't have a car. All the kids who were in post-secondary classes when I was in high school were the ones with parents who could buy their education anyway. Also, a student has to be an above-average performer for post-secondary. How do you expect someone with uneducated parents to perform at that level in high school?

This attitude of, "it's your fault if you don't succeed, society has no business ensuring that you do" is the same attitude that has led to all the problems this country is facing. The college students who spend their time getting drunk and partying aren't the ones who cut their teeth just so they can attend. They're the rich fucks who have all their bills paid by mommy and daddy.

Re:"Free" money

[ohnocitizen]

Mod parent down. I went to a state school which saw budget cuts and associated tuition and fee raises. Even with loans and scholarships, my undergrad cost a lot. Why did I go to a state university and not the local state college? Because like it or not where you get your degree does matter - a lot. People look at the reputation of your school when it comes to jobs or graduate school. Different schools offer different majors, different classes, internship opportunities, and other "perks" that can change the course of your career. Higher quality professors tend to get recruited by the more expensive schools, even the public ones. If you want to get involved in research your best bet is at a University with a graduate school, not a community college. Those "dreams of grandeur" you speak of are simply the dreams of students looking to have a career - which in other countries they manage to do without crippling loans because higher education is subsidized more heavily than here. Those "ridiculous" student loans can take forever to pay back. Look at median income and average income, and then figure in a $40k loan. That's $10k a year. How long would it take someone at the median income to pay that back? How about average income? How about your income. Now keep in mind some of the crazier loans are not for undergraduate but for graduate school - especially medical and law. Not everyone who gets a law degree graduates into a 6 figure salary at a corporation. Some work for nonprofits or in law-enforcement pulling in far less, but with loans no less high. Now get the hell off your privileged high horse and stop telling Americans that the American Dream is still alive - just not for them. Tell anyone who cannot afford a decent college degree to go be a plumber, or to go to a community college that doesn't have the courses in any of the subjects they want because they cannot afford to go to University. Myself? I'm going to advocate for making college cheaper without shattering the backbone of US financial aid like Mr Ron Paul seems set on doing.

Of course it does

[Elros]

In a lot of ways, they do inflate the cost of education. However, the quality is also going down. The bigger problem is that the demand is being artificially inflated at the same time. Nearly every job requires a BS or BA...even if they don't care which subject. A University should be a place of higher learning and research, not a factory for just the next step in education.

I agree that eliminating the student loan program will help. However, there need to be a lot more changes then that.

Re:Of course it does

[antifoidulus]

Yeah, it's always amazing reading biographies about people who grew up before around the 1980s, namely the huge # of opportunities they had without having to go through the whole corporate/educational grind. Look at how Hemingway lived and worked, he was far from independently wealthy, and yet he managed to maintain a pretty decent lifestyle working as a foreign correspondent, a gig he was just able to sort of pick up. Ditto for Steve Jobs, he was given opportunities in places like factories and engineering firms that would never even look twice at a kid with almost no experience and little formal education beyond high school. And it wasn't like Jobs was well connected or even incredibly good at engineering, pretty much anyone in those days could get a job like those that Jobs had just by showing up and showing that you weren't a complete dumbass.

Nowadays I doubt you could get a job at Apple doing anything besides retail or janitorial work without a degree.....

Re:Of course it does

[swillden]

On the other hand, why would employers be demanding a college education if they didn't see that it actually makes a significant difference in employee performance? They could hire people for less money if they didn't require a degree, so if less-educated employees could do the job, employers would be all over it.

The only reasonable conclusion, IMO, is that it does matter. Of course, it's entirely possible, perhaps even likely, that the education isn't so much the cause of good performance as the education and good job performance both result from the habits and character of the individual. By that I mean that the sort of industrious, intelligent person who will be a good employee is also the sort of person who will pursue and achieve a good education.

But I don't think so. My former employer, IBM, long had programs where they provided educational opportunities for factory workers so those people could advance within the company. I worked with a couple of gentlemen who had taken this route, starting on an assembly line, bolting computers together and ultimately achieving technical and managerial leadership positions in the company, getting the equivalent of a college education in the process. I noticed a couple of things about these people. The first was though they were given greater responsibilities at the same time they were getting their educations, those responsibilities were limited -- and even still they felt underqualified and somewhat overwhelmed by them. They, at least, felt that the education they received was essential in their ability to succeed.

The other was that I always felt they were less effective than they could have been if they'd had a "normal" college education. IBM didn't bother providing, or requiring, a liberal education curriculum and the result was people with deep knowledge and skill in a narrow focus. It was less problematic for the technical guy; he'd earned the equivalent of an MSCS, and within the context of software and hardware he knew his stuff -- but don't expect him to understand much about the social or historical context of his work. For the manager, he'd earned the equivalent of an MBA and again he knew business, negotiation and the economic theory of pricing, and again he lacked the broader education, but for him that lack really caused him to make some, IMO, poor decisions.

But the key point of my anecdotes is this: IBM is big enough and at one time had a large pool of low-skilled employees they could search for capable people to educate in job-specific skills and advance. And you know what? They more or less abandoned that approach. Partly because they shipped all manufacturing overseas and no longer had many unskilled positions from which to draw, but I think also because those trained-up people, however motivated, intelligent and hardworking, were actually less effective than their college-educated counterparts. Instead IBM disbanded its "IBM University" programs and shifted to the more common method of offering to subsidize a normal college education.

I'm convinced that they did this because they found that the sort of education offered by universities did a better job of preparing people to be effective technologists, businessmen and administrators.

Re:Of course it does

[tibit]

As for the job requirements: this is very true even outside of the U.S. I have a first hand experience in a tax-related govt job in Poland. If you get employed, they expect you to get a master's degree ASAP. Then, they'd like to you get a Ph.D. as well. All that cost for what is essentially a bureaucracy where if you know high-school maths and pick up some law along the way, you'll do fine until retirement. There's plenty of countries in Europe where bank clerks are expected to have BS degrees. The fuck?

Re:Of course it does

[RatPh!nk]

I think this hits part of the nail right on the head:

Nearly every job requires a BS or BA...even if they don't care which subject.

This is just wrong, IMO. IMO college is not trade school (not that there is anything wrong with trade school), but it has been turned into one by this notion that pretty much any job that is not Jiffy Lube or the Quickie Mart requires a college degree. There was some research published recently about gains in knowledge and critical thinking skills, this was the conclusion:

Students majoring in business, education, social work and communications showed the least gains in learning. However, the authors note that their findings don't preclude the possibility that such students "are developing subject-specific or occupationally relevant skills."

In other words, there were learning "subject specific" or occupationally relevant skills", we have a name for a program like this -- trade school.

Students who majored in the traditional liberal arts — including the social sciences, humanities, natural sciences and mathematics — showed significantly greater gains over time than other students in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing skills.

Interesting...

[bradgoodman]

Extremely interesting...

I'm no republican, and at first I was thinking "here we go again - another GOPer trying to take money away from the little guy" - but I think he has a valid point.

People would only be willing to spend a hundred-grand on education if there was someone standing right there willing to easily loan them a hundred-grand to do so. I've always thought there was some odd market force that was allowing the cost of education rise in such a bizarre way - this is probably it.

If if were really up the the "free market" - i.e. there were no "special" loans, scholarships, or free-rides, people would be willing (and able) to spend a LOT less. Schools would have to come *WAY* down in price to get people in. It would be a very different landscape.

Re:Interesting...

[Phrogman]

A lot of those schools exist to process students and take their money. They are money making institutions that happen to award credits when you pay the exorbitant fees. A lot would shutdown if the loans system was removed.

Another problem is that until the prices lowered, superior education would only be the purview of the rich - RPs kids would do just fine, but the average person's ability to help get their children into a higher level of living would be removed. People say there are far too many university graduates, and far too many positions for which a degree is the expected minimum, and thats definitely true. I have no degree and many many jobs are closed to me, despite the fact that I could easily do many of those jobs. However no one wants to be amongst the first people who no longer get the benefit of a good education, when the other side of the equations (business/Government) is not going to change their standards any time soon. Why should they, they can ask whatever they want, at whatever rate of pay, and someone will come along and take the job, no matter how awful it is.

At my old Alma Mater the pressure seems to be on generating income, so the Engineering Department gets brand new buildings, while the Fine Arts department only got out of its WWII Quonset huts a few years ago - they had been there for 30 years at least. The university education system is focusing on things which can turn quick bucks (business degrees, Engineering degrees and people getting the school patents, new business development), all because the Government has stopped supporting the schools and they are expected to survive on their own. The problem is that the nature of education gets changed in the process.

Re:Interesting...

[Inglix the Mad]

The problem isn't the loans in a practical sense. The real problem is companies driving degree inflation. Example: early Internet days, how many ISP technical personnel had 4 year degrees? I'm talking about the guys maintaining the lines / switches / routers. Not very many at all. The guys in charge often did, but even that wasn't guaranteed. I, personally and through company programs, trained many High School kids on the intricacies of R&S. Try getting in today without at least a 2 year degree. A 4 year degree will be preferred, if not required. Heck, even help desk which is entry level, often requires a 2 year.

Companies drove us here because a 4 year degree student is "better" even if it doesn't really matter.

Of course

[TheSpoom]

Because deregulating financial matters always ends well.

I learned the value of money by paying as I went..

[teambpsi]

I don't want to be "that old guy" -- but I didn't qualify for student loans in the 80's & early 90's because my parents were in that bracket where they were supposed to be able to contribute, but just couldn't.

I had up to three part-time jobs while doing my undergrad, and I definitely wanted the education -- I found that as "consumer" I demanded more from my instructors for my hard earned cash.

In the end it made me who I am, and I subsequently went on to get both an MS in Software Engineering and an MBA recently -- both paid for with cash that I earned and saved.

Sure it took a little longer to finish the degree's and barring Alzheimer's, the lessons learned all around will be mine for life!

Re:Why is this a problem?

[CRCulver]

Where does it say that the Federal Government can give away my money to other people?

Taxation is a valid function of government and has been since 1787. And if the government was going to spend the money you pay in taxes solely on you, then it would hardly need to raise taxes to begin with.

Acquaint yourself with American history. Some degree of redistribution of wealth has always been part of the operation of the federal government. Now, you may disagree on particular spending, and you have a right to choose representatives who might push for change -- it's taxation with representation, a just way of doing things. But your rhetoric is out of touch with American democracy even as the Founding Fathers conceived it.

Re:FP

[tmosley]

Not having worldwide military bases is "isolationist"?

Then I guess it is time we join the rest of the world in being "isolationist".

Fixing Student Loans

[sanosuke001]

Student Loans should include two things:

1. Fixed low-rate loan (2-3% even for private loans)
2. Allowed to be paid with pre-tax income (like money put towards retirement etc)

If they want to remove the government's involvement and make it private only, these rules should still be added. We should be helping student's get through school to make this country a better place.

If you can get a $60,000 loan for school

[assemblerex]

All of the sudden all the schools cost $60,000.

Re:Ron Paul is an idiot

[ahow628]

Tadaa!!! http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2071147,00.html

Re:I wonder who he blames when his car doesn't sta

[tmosley]

I guess the fact that higher education costs are spiraling out of control even as the jobs these degrees are supposed to help you to get have all but disappeared means nothing to you?

If you like indentured servitude so much, why don't you use your useless advanced degree to build a time machine and go back to 1720?

Screw the poor and lower middle class!

[RazzleFrog]

Of course, the best solution to the shrinking middle class is to not educate the poor and lower middle class. Let them be happy with their barely literate high school education and mind-numbing menial labor jobs (which by the way are in other countries now).

Do the Republicans have any sane candidates? It makes being and independent really tough.

Re:Free market fairy

[tmosley]

Yes, like the last time it was applied, from 1875-1913 in the USA. You know, the time where the US went from being a colonial backwater to an industrial superpower.

Oh, or did you mean to imply that the disaster that is today's economy was caused by the free market? Well, you can't have a free market when the government is intervening every five minutes to keep some company from collapsing. Can't even have one when you have a central bank that sets interest rates. What we have now is a MIXED market. The MIXED market has failed us.

Same goes for healthcare

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason a broken leg costs so much to fix is that the doctor, nurse, and hospital administration are all paying student loans. On top of that doctors are having to pay for insane insurance coverage.

If getting an MD wasn't so expensive then healthcare wouldn't be so expensive. I hate that we're always talking about how we pay for healthcare instead of how to make it cheaper.

A trillion dollars in student loan debts

[tomhudson]

The education bubble

"students are borrowing twice what they did a decade ago after adjusting for inflation" and in the past five years total outstanding debt has doubled. That compares with falling debt on loans for houses and credit cards.

Remember, that's a trillion dollars of debt that can't even be wiped out by bankruptcy, unlike the previous bubbles of the dot-bombs and real estate.

Re:A trillion dollars in student loan debts

[Rockoon]

Sure, so then those of us that did not benefit from the schooling that the loans garnered will also have to pay for them. Thats such an awesome idea that I have come up with a similar idea.. I think I might mug you in the dark of night and take your cash and valuables.

Re:A trillion dollars in student loan debts

[JoeMerchant]

I got one of the earlier student loans in 1984-88. During those four years, tuition at my U cost $60K, $10K in 1984-5, then 13K, 17K, and finally 20K in 1987-8. We didn't have anything else to protest, so some (not me) marched on the president's office to protest tuition hikes. Me, personally, the U and the state were giving me scholarships that meant my out of pocket tuition costs dropped from $3K in 1984-5 down to 0 by 1988.

College costs will drop when employers start hiring people who didn't go to expensive colleges and giving them the same compensation as those who did. It doesn't matter if the Feds, or your church, or your great aunt Tillie is financing it, if there is a cost-benefit advantage, the cost will rise until there isn't.

The opposite side of Ron Paul's thinking would be to inject government cost controls on a select number of highly regarded universities (State schools?) and make a respectable, employable college education affordable as competition for the endowment based institutions that are fattening up their war chests with inflated tuition.

Re:A trillion dollars in student loan debts

[tomhudson]

You're absolutely right. Originally, the overhaul was supposed to get rid of the non-performing for-profit colleges. Turns out that well over 90% would have been disqualified for making student loans, so ... rather than push through the reform, they watered down the criteria.

Yet another example of government regulatory capture.

In a perfect world

[milimetric]

I love Ron Paul. He's the most idealistic person I've ever known. He's basically lying to everyone though. Most of the things he says go like this:

1. Cut funding
2. ??? Allow free market to do it's thing ???
3. Problem solved

He doesn't mention two crucial things. One is that step 2. may take a very long time. The other is that for 2 to happen effectively, we have to equalize any unfair and corruption-driven advantages that others have gained in a crooked system over two hundred years. Once highly paid yuppies get busted for illegally claiming "expenses" as tax free money and corporations get busted for gambling with pension funds at the same rate that people get busted for stealing a piece of bread or robbing a grocery store, then we'll have a truly fair environment for the free market to do its thing. In the meantime, Ron Paul is selling pipe dreams. Awesome pipe dreams, but ultimately dreams without good plans to back them up.

Re:In a perfect world

[dcornewell]

You're not understanding his stance on things. It goes like this.

1. Cut government funding
2. Let Citizens keep their money rather than paying taxes
3. Solve your own problems. It is the government, not your mommy.

He isn't selling any dreams to you. He wants everyone to understand that the government has NOTHING to do with your dreams. It should be there to serve few purposes. Everything else in your life should be up to you.

Re:In a perfect world

[Plastic Pencil]

I still don't understand what motivation the "free market" has to ensure a chance at a better a life for everyone. A large class of cheap, desperate, un-educated labor, sounds better to a lot of businesses, than educated, aware of rights, and demands a living wage. We've tried Ron Paul's way before, whether they were Kings and Monarchs, or Robber-Barons. Sure, our current system is warped and broken, and needs a fix, but to throw away everything, even the regulations and safe-guards, that do work, will only bring us further backwards.

So why hasn't UC Berkeley been getting cheaper?

[spinninggears]

In California, since the 1970's, the state has subsidized less and less of the tuition for students, while student loan amounts have not been increased substantially, and yet the state universities have not gotten less expensive in the process.

Sometimes Ron Paul says things that are correct, but silly (like how we could lower health care costs by removing the requirement medical providers be licensed. Probably true, but....) Mostly though, he just says things that are incorrect and silly. His supporters piece together some sort of reality from this that makes sense to them, I guess.

Re:I'll Hold My Breath

[mewshi_nya]

The thing is, schools "need" to have multi-million-dollar sports facilities and useless crap like that, and they can't do that if they can't charge people 20k/year or more. Now that the price is up, it sure as hell isn't going to come back down any time soon.

Re:Free market fairy

[imric]

Nah it's the "No True Scotsman" of economic theory. The closer you get to it, the fewer regulations, the worse things get.

Apologists always have 'reasons for it though', and it starts with not considering voters to be part of the market, and believing that regulation comes from an entity independent of the people. That's why they are currently trying to make people believe that they aren't represented by our representative government. They are working very hard online to convince people of this, too.

In any case, it's always 'No TRUE free market has (X)' or 'a TRUE free market would need (Y)' as an excuse as to why things get so much worse when 'free market' principles are applied. It's really amusing to hear adherents claim that no matter how hard their 'solutions' fail, they would have worked if it was a TRUE 'free market'. Its a matter of dogma, of faith with most of them. Finger-pointing is a way of life for the free-marketeer.

Almost as funny as the current ifn-yer-aint-fer-us-yer-agin-us meme that anyone against deregulation or for common worker representation at contract negotiations is Socialist/Communist scum trying to destroy the economy - when deregulation is what did it this time, around, and lack of regulation is what did it last time. And the ridiculous notion that we should trust 'market forces' and some magic invisible hand to adjust the market (while ignoring the fact that the people are the market, and the voice of the people is the 'vote', so gov regulation IS their invisible hand) as the only answer? That depends on all things being interchangeable, and there being an infinite job market not subject to supply and demand...

The 'Free Market' would seem to be a frail thing indeed - so frail it could never exist or last, even if it worked...

Re:FP

[TangoMargarine]

Cthulhu will flay you for your inability to even remotely accurately spell his name.

University 'market' is a con

[openfrog]

See what is happening in the UK. They are on the route to a 'market' experiment in higher education. This has been launched by no other than lord Browne, the CEO of BP who had to resigned in 2007, and then named at the head of a commission to review higher education finances.

Academics are waking up to the meaning of a law that has been passed without the preliminary white paper, that is, without sufficient public discussion.
They are going to cut 90% of public financing to the universities, and harnessing the student with the resulting debt. They call that: "putting the student at the center of the reform".

Stefan Collini is the foremost critic of this idea and has just published a book about this. Read this article in The Guardian (free access) to get an idea of how the UK is on the path to destroying one of the finest higher education system: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/19/university-market-white-paper

An experiment of this sort has been carried on in New Zealand in the 90's. The result has been catastrophic. Proposals of this kind, all with a libertarian/market flavor, are being proposed in legislatures all over the world at the moment. It is as if the right had found its next target.

Re:I learned the value of money by paying as I wen

[Oswald McWeany]

I had it easier than you- 90% of my schooling was paid through scholarship and grants- of the remainder my parents paid some towards my school- and I worked 35hrs a week (just one job... but year round) for the rest of it. I emerged from University with no loans.

I HAD to complete it in 4 years because of scholarships- I didn't have the option of spreading it out over more time to spread the burden. So despite major scholarships I still worked full time in order that I could live a meagre existence of 50cent microwavable mini-pizzas and TJ Maxx clearance clothes- I hit the jackpot on super cheap rent- paying only $250 a month- a great place with free cockroaches and lead paint.

Had I not had the scholarships- I couldn't have done it. Had I not had support from my parents- I couldn't have done it.

This was over a decade ago- since when costs have skyrocketed.

College now costs more than what an uneducated full-time worker makes.

You might have been able to get by in the 80s working jobs to pay your way- nowadays kids don't have that option.

$1 trillion of student debt

[Chuck Messenger]

Some points to consider:

Total outstanding student loan debt recently topped $1 trillion (e.g. see link).

Student loan debt now exceeds household credit card debt (see link).

It isn't possible to escape student loans via bankruptcy - they will follow you your whole life, no matter what. This puts them in a class by themselves.

Obviously, the current system is badly broken. Why should the federal govt be in the business of hooking young adults on these onerous loans? If the goal is social leveling (a goal I can get behind), then we should be talking about grants, not loans. What we're doing is creating a new class of indentured servants.

SHHHHH! No Factual Examples!

[SlippyToad]

You are disturbing the Glibertarian Om. Only in a fact-free plane of existence where no real-world examples of their horribly misanthropic ideas can be found will Glibertarianism succeed.

You're FUCKING UP HIS GROOOVE! Finland isn't a real country anyway! Quiet!

Well duh...Economics 101.

[Panaflex]

Anytime a government subsidizes a product or service - the price will increase to match the subsidy. Period. The producers know how much the subsidy is(A), and how much a consumer can spend(B). They will always add a+b in the end because the elasticity of price can be known to support that level.

There isn't even an unknown pricing curve here - the University already knows your finances when you apply for financial aid. They can simply and easily price an education to target the population of students they want.

How many (fiscally) bankrupt universities have you seen lately? I only know of Huron University in South Dakota in 2005.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Defunct_universities_and_colleges_in_the_United_States

Supporting Ron Paul feels cool, is stupid

[ansak]

Disclaimer: I am a Canadian, so I do not have a dog in this race; except we are your nearest neighbours (nearer than México in two minor ways only: longer border, no local outcries for a fence) so if you systematically self-destruct, it'll be bad for us, too.

Support for Ron Paul by the young and sometimes geeky has intrigued me for some time. Is it a result of reading Ayn Rand? Is it because his ideas seem so much more sensible than so many others? Is it because he does not appear beholden to any lobbyists? Is it primarily because he wants to end drug Prohibition? Possibly all of the above.

But it's also confused me because a number of the things Ron Paul wants to do away with are things that help the young find their first footholds -- things like student loans (or even grants). When I read this headline, I thought for just a second that perhaps Dr. Paul wants to throw open the universities for all, call a full education a civil right that you get to take advantage of based on merit. But I dismissed that thought before I saw the rest of the post, and I was right to do so. My response: his analysis may have some truth in it but it's so simple as to be suspect, in my view. On balance, like much of what Ron Paul says, it's too simple to be right.

Whoever thinks Ron Paul is cool, whatever lobby groups he is not beholden to, make no mistake: the über-rich and powerful wish his ideas well because their adoption would entrench and deepen the growing class divisions in America and put an end to the American dream as anything but that: a wistful dream of what expectations used to be.

Something is rotten in the way the US is going these days. For instance, in my lifetime, before 2008, I had never heard a leading politician in the US say of their president from the opposing party that they wanted him to fail. Whether you agree with Mr. Obama or not, that attitude on the part of any member of your government is pernicious. I'll stop there because the list of things going wrong is so long (most of them decades in the making) as to make this too-long post ridiculously so.

But Ron Paul is not the answer to those problems: his ideas (and incidentally those of the Tea Party) are only going to help the rich get richer and inherit the meek (and the not so meek). Do yourselves a favour, folks, and elect leaders that remember what they learned in Kindergarten (without forgetting all the things they learned since) and value their neighbours over hard lines -- internal neighbours, of course! I wouldn't advocate that you would elect the people I, your Canadian neighbour, want you to elect. I'm just confident that if, overall, you voted in line with your interests (and that may take a lot of thinking to figure out who's going to serve those best) and do well, then you won't become neighbours that we have to fear from across that longest unarmed border in the world.

be good to each other, folks...ank

Someone needs to take his medicine...

[mangu]

Chill, dude. The market isn't so bad as that.

What you guys don't realize is that there are no activities that aren't regulated today. Everything any company does is subject to regulations at all levels of government.

When you say "activity X should be regulated" what you really mean is that "current regulations for activity X aren't working".

Re:I learned the value of money by paying as I wen

[dkleinsc]

Congratulations for working your way up. You worked hard to get where you are today, and I salute you.

But now, doing what you did is essentially impossible:
* Average annual in-state tuition, room and board at a state university, books and basic supplies - $7600+$1100+$2000=$10,700 (numbers from the College Board. Private schools are about 3 times that cost.
* US minimum wage: $7.25 per hour. After taxes, about $6.00.
* So weekly hours worked to earn your way through school: $10,700 / $6 / 52 (weeks per year) = about 35 hours per week.
* Being a student requires basically full-time hours, so schoolwork takes up about 35-40 hours per week.
That leaves, of your 168 hours in a week, 94 hours for everything that isn't working or studying. If you assume 8 hours of sleep a night, you have a total of 5 hours a day to do everything else: eating, dressing, laundry, cleaning, bathing, traveling to and from work and class, etc. Your only chance of relief would be the summer, where you might be able to live with your parents. I've worked those kind of hours for short bursts, but the human body simply can't handle that over long periods.

And of course this all assumes that minimum wage jobs are available in your area, which is probably not true at the moment.

Re:The problem with Ron Paul's solution

[bluefoxlucid]

The way to introduce accountability is to push the loans onto the commercial space, where people are in it to make money, and for one person to make money another loses. Another who can't just jack up taxes and doesn't live on politics.

The universities only win if they get money. The banks only win if the students pay. And the students only win if they can afford the loan. Currently, the banks can't lose; thus, the banks and the universities both win if the student takes loans, and the student is naive and easily manipulated.

In reality, when it becomes impossible for students to afford college, and too damn risky to give them loans, the universities will collapse. Don't want to collapse? Lower your prices.

It has to hurt if it's to heal.

They are not only accessible to the rich.

[tlambert]

They are not only accessible to the rich. They are also accessible to the intelligent, thanks to scholarships.

Most people are getting college degrees for the wrong reason in any case; one of my faculty advisors put it best: diplomas are the modern version of a union card.

I see lots of people getting degrees in things they have no interest in, and no passion for, in order to follow the money (or where they think the money is, which is often not the same thing). Historically, this has resulted in a lot of bad doctors; around 2000, it resulted in a lot of bad programmers, and it's currently tilted toward resulting in a lot of bad lawyers. Whatever ends up being the next big ticket field, expect that 4 years later there will be a lot of bad whatevers, waving their shiny new union cards and giving the people who actually have a passion for the field a bad name.

-- Terry

If we could just get rid of all those regulations

[sean.peters]

We could return to the land of milk and honey that was the Gilded Age. Geez, I can hardly wait to return to horrific labor conditions, tainted food, and rampant criminality! Who could possibly be opposed? (I mean, except for child laborers, people who eat, etc).

tl;dr: Government intervening in society is a good thing.