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Let Them Eat Teslas
theodp writes "If you're a bright kid who wants to prepare for the 21st century workforce (PDF) by studying engineering at Purdue, the government will help your parents pay the $100,000 or so tuition tab with a 7.9% interest loan (plus 4% fees) that's likely to be non-dischargeable in bankruptcy and paid back with after-tax money. If, on the other hand, you want to buy a tricked-out $100,000 Model S, Tesla has teamed up with the government, Wells Fargo, and U.S. Bank on what it calls a 'Revolutionary New Finance Product' that enables those who play the game right to avoid paying sales tax, get the government to pick up the first $15,000 (no down payment needed!), and also receive a 2.95% bankruptcy-dischargeable loan for the balance, the payments for which could be tax-deductible. Yep, 'Revolutionary' may be about right!"
They can always repo your car.
This is why Education should be funded where the risk is borne by the one making the loan. The repayment terms should be based on a percent of the students income for a fixed number of years.
These guys are trying to do it.
https://www.upstart.com/
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
I don't really have a problem with this. Everyone knows that a car, even considering that they quickly depreciate, is much more valuable to the average person than most college degrees.
:|
I defy you to prove me wrong.
Sell Tesla.
Use funds for college.
1. Buy a tesla
2. Sell the tesla for 90% of its market value
3. ???
4. Profit from a government-financed education at 2.95% (minus 10k or so "lost in transaction")
Our government is being managed for the benefit of corporate elites. It's the simplest and most reasonable explanation for what looks like total idiocy from the outside.
It benefits the wealthy. That is what America does: increase the value of the already wealthy, while the rest of us can suck garbage out of a landfill.
Welcome to America! Land of the greatest disparity between the wealthy and the rest of us.
While it would be easy to say Government just prefers the sheeple broke and stupid... These really aren't the same. Cars can be repo'ed.. Your education can't be repo'ed.. Further from a Govt perspective the return in tax income from your education is risky.. You might never finish school. Might end up working in India and not paying taxes.. You might never repay those loans if given the choice because you won't lose anything.. The car might seem like a loss, but you will definitely pay taxes on stuff for the car like tires, registration and property taxes etc the employees who built the car will pay income tax etc. Plus there is the political side of green jobs.....
Nissan took 1.4 billion from the feds for the Leaf and produced laughable results. Tesla took a third of that and produces the Motor Trend car of the year, and is set to pay off the loan early. I don't blame the DOE for wanting to help them out some more. Note: from a student with a non-dischargeable 7.9% loan.
also need to cut fluff and filler from Education.
The non-dischargeable in bankruptcy leads to lot's of joke majors and lot's of iffy schools that spend more ad's then Education.
Also more non college options need to be hear as well as more apprenticeship / trades / tech schools that don't take 4+ years of pure class room.
Welcome to the real world kiddies.
It's not just the corporate elites. It's the elites period. Once day you'll be one of them. And you will shit on your fellow man with just as much disdain as the current batch of elites do now.
The only fair system is the one that does nothing equally for everyone, when it doesn't people pick favorites, and there is nothing in this world like being the adopted, bastard, redheaded stepchild in the family.
so is it news or is it rhetoric?
Trust me, I'm an engineer.
Is this energy efficient spam??
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
It's always funny to hear your illiterate, anti-education rants. Maybe if you had taken some of those "fluff and filler" classes that maybe you could form cogent sentences?
Man geeks are drinking the Tesla Kool-Aid.
The Tesla program costs about $1,100/mo even for their cheapest model and the $15,000 only applies for people in West Virginia.
The $500/mo pricing they keep quoting is a huge fabrication based on "total cost of ownership". Even with their calculator, and assuming the lowest model, you would need to drive that sucker to it's max range 5 days a week every week for three years to actually make the ownership cost $600/mo less than a gas car.
A larger fraction of the US population has college degrees than in most other industrialized nations. Encouraging more people to get college degrees will not raise the standard of living or incomes, it will simply mean that we end up with more waiters and cab drivers with college degrees. Subsidizing more college degrees with public funding or loans will mean that tuition rates will keep rising and more and more jobs will require college degrees even though they don't need it.
As for electric vehicles and subsidies for them, it's unclear what purpose these subsidies are supposed to serve. The Tesla is not a mass market car, and no amount of subsidies is going to help it develop the economies of scale to bring the price down. Either electric vehicles make economic sense, in which case subsidies aren't needed, or they don't, in which case subsidies are wasted.
Elon Musk == Space Jesus
You sir, need some more Business classes! : )
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I was with you until the end, I have seen tech school output and it sucks.
Sure they know a couple software products, but nothing of what is going on under the hood. They can tell you what a subnet mask is but not why or how it works. They think packet captures are black magic and that reboot is the solution to all tech problems. They have no idea at a basic level. I had one recently try to claim his network speeds to a host on the same subnet and the same switch changed when he changed the gateway. He had no concept of why that is. That is the difference between knowing what button to push and why you would push that button. A few years down the road and they are totally useless since the products they learned on are now out of the market. Since they have no basic understanding moving on to the next product is a huge struggle.
Dammit slashdot let me edit!
"He had no concept of why that is" should have been "He had no concept of why that is wrong."
It is not uploaded until the reporter brings it back to the factory. They already stated that they only do this for the vehicles they loan out for reviewers.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
Maybe if you had taken some of those "fluff and filler" classes that maybe you could form cogent sentences?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry's_law
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Just take the loan, buy the car, sell it for cash and pay your tuition fees. Easy-peasy :)
From the outside?
well what?
They are going to tell someone I went to a legal establishment and paid for legal services?
They already stated they disable this logging on customer cars, but even if they did not who cares if I went to a strip club?
All right, I can't stop myself (and I tried, believe me). Don't you mean "coherent"?
The word "cogent" might fit there, but it sounded like you were irritated by poor grammar, rather than the post being generally unpersuasive...
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
- point
That was awesome. Also, now I have a new Wikipedia page to share.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
Actually, the lease is over $1000/month. The $500/month figure is a made up number that comes from applying savings they are wanting you to think you'll make. But the assumptions behind the putative savings specify how much you drive, what your time is worth (assumption being $100/hour), an average price of gas being $5/gallon, and that electricity prices remain stable, and that electricity doesn't suddenly acquire a road tax to make up for the fact that you're using the roads, but not paying for them like the rest of us.
Bottom line, though, is you'll be putting out over $1000/month on that lease for those thirty months if you take the deal as advertised. Whatever your circumstances.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
from King of the Hill: "That guy's done more in a quarter mile than I've done in my entire life."
College isn't a scam, but you have to know what you want out of it. If you don't know what you want to do yet when you graduate high school, you should probably get some employment experience in fields that interest you. You should still take some base level courses at a community college (and do well in them)... all of the 101 courses will probably transfer into whatever you end up doing - but there's no sense in going into deep debt without a clear goal in mind.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Our entire economy and society is being managed for the benefit of corporate elites. It's the simplest and most reasonable explanation for what looks like total idiocy from the outside.
FTFY
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
CS degrees have nothing to do with what I just discussed. Believe it or not their are universities that have IT and Network administration(Not active directory, actual network stuff, windows people) programs.
Theory and having learned how to learn will mean they can pick up job skills quickly. A lack of theory means those tech school grads will likely never know why or the best way just the way the book says to do it.
Priceless.
s/their/there/
Slashdot, please let us edit our posts for a couple minutes at least.
The education loan is a tax. The only reason it is not called a tax is because you can't collect taxes when people leave the country, but you are still in obligation to a debt.
They still aren't really comperable. Even with this sweeheart loan deal, you are going to be out 85 grand in an "investment" that will depreciate down to nearly $0 in 10-15 years. In the mean time you get transportation that you could have had with a couple of $5-10K used cars. That's a whole lot of money down the toilet.
For the student loan, you get an education, which cannot be taken from you by a bankrupcy court either, and is a ticket to the upper 60% of the job market, culminating in 1.6 to 3 times the expected lifetime earnings (depending on how much education you get).
If you have to pick only one, take the student loan.
also need to cut fluff and filler from Education.
Why? Seems to me like trust fund kids wasting seven years in pursuit of a communications degree generates a lot of income for the school.
Granted, that's probably wasted on new lockers for the football team rather than a scholarship for smart kids getting engineering degrees, but that would be true even if you cut down all the joke majors. The executive types would just take a pay increase.
I do think a lot of fluff and filler will be cut from education through online courses. I expect that universities will try to take bigger cuts of research grants and offer even less to researchers in return. So that's going to be awesome for everyone for a while.
What bugs me about the whole higher education mess is that all public colleges and universities are already heavily subsidized by our government in some way or another. I live in a town with a land-grant university and I can tell you that nothing is more important than sports with increasing enrollment a close second. Nobody seems to realize that education has no economies of scale so budgets are consumed by new construction of better and fancier facilities.
What higher education really needs is to be modeled after a business. It should be light on management, heavy on instructors and facilities should be just adequate. Maybe then the subsidies would be enough and insane borrowing by students who are there to learn instead of for the college experience would be minimal.
Disclaimer: I would love a Tesla model S, but even with the mentioned loans could not possibly justify buying one over saving up for my children's education.
It is ridiculous to try to prop up the success of a company by government backed loans. If electric cars will succeed, let them do so on their own. I personally hope they do, but think that X-Prize style awards for better batteries/chargers is the best way to do that.
However, I think student loans are one of the worst things our government has ever backed(worse than the Tesla loans). By providing them we encourage an already existing problem of people getting degrees when they should be learning a trade instead, and mounting up debt that will take them twice as long to pay back. Scholarships and Pell Grants already exist as an excellent tool for providing assistance to the most needy, and the most deserving. Furthermore, working your way through college is not only doable, but builds character while reducing the amount of trouble students get in to. For those instances where there is a real need for a loan, such as medical school, the government isn't really needed. In addition to grants, the government already provides assistance for those who have served (GI Bill) and those who will promise to serve (ROTC Scholarships). There is some of that in the private sector (hospitals, chick-fil-a, etc.), but I'm all for the government encouraging more of it.
Finally, if we did a better job at the grade school level we wouldn't be trying to squeeze unprepared students into college curriculum while they are building up tremendous debt attending institutions they won't be able to graduate from. The real problem with government assisted student loans (and most risky/payday loans in the private sector, but that is a separate gripe) is that they are an attack on those the current system has already failed while giving an empty promise of an easy out.
The "innovative" financing is a lease.
A lease on ANY car is a low-interest loan paying for the depreciation of the vehicle.
Monkeying with the residual value is how *all* lease deals work.
And *all* leases allow business owners to write off the lease, because you can always write off the depreciated value of a company asset.
So, basically, you're comparing a student loan to exactly how nearly half the vehicles in the US are "sold" to people.
So you're basically comparing an unsecured loan to a secured lease. That's comparing apples and cheeseburgers. No wonder they don't stack up.
I think Johnny 5 speaks very well for a four day old.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
You just have to slow down a bit there nate.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Did someone forget that it's April 3, not April 1?
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
I am biased as I already have a Purdue degree, earned 12 years ago. It was far cheaper back then - tuition and fees were less than $7500 per year. Add in the cost of housing and food and I was all in for around $50000. My first job after college paid more than that per year.
Now, 12 years later, I have three quarters of a million dollars in the bank and a six-figure job. I can write a check for a Tesla sedan without flinching. And as the years pass, I will continue to increase my financial standing.
On the other hand, if I were to buy a Tesla sedan and use it for 12 years I would have an obsolete car with a severely diminished battery. Now, don't think that I dislike Tesla. I have high hopes for them. I made a lot of money buying long-term call options several years ago - in fact it was when the Model S was announced and everyone thought they would be out of business in a year. I put my own money on the line, in the face of overwhelming negative opinion.
I think that electric cars will prove to have far lower operating costs than IC cars - and the benefit gets larger the longer you own and the more miles you drive. But let's be perfectly honest. A degree helps you make money. A car costs you money.
Probably they tried to type 'coherent' but a spell-checker misfired without them noticing in time. With auto-spellcheck it happens all the time if you don't carefully review before clicking 'submit.'
My first name is not Nate. It starts with an S and is probably the most common english name to start with that character for a male.
also need to cut fluff and filler from Education.
The non-dischargeable in bankruptcy leads to lot's of joke majors and lot's of iffy schools that spend more ad's then Education.
Also more non college options need to be hear as well as more apprenticeship / trades / tech schools that don't take 4+ years of pure class room.
Here is an interesting point that I am not sure if you intended to make.
We say that education debt is non-dischargeable because the student has all the liability, takes no risk, and has nothing to repossess. However, should we be holing the schools responsible for talking people into pursuing joke majors for students that have no hope of actually graduating or for fields that have no hope of making enough money to repay the loans? I can remember when getting into university was a big deal with difficult entrance exams and whatnot. Now it seems that at least some school will take anyone in as long as they are paying.
Universities that offer masters in basketweaving should be held accountable. Trade schools that offer training in specific skills that transfer directly to job skills should be more treated more leniently.
The issue here, of course, is that the onus is on the student to get a job in their field, how can we fault the university if a student graduates and is simply too lazy to get a job. Additionally this would mean almost nobody would offer any Fine Arts degrees... though some people would be happy with this, I think it would degrade the total knowledge of society.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I did, preview is nearly pointless anyway. You can just reread it in the edit window. What we need is the ability to edit for X amount of minutes.
"Free"? As in: somebody else picks up the tab, even if that somebody never actually has gone to a university himself?
I can see how this is in line with the kind of thinking that never caused any problems, like: everybody should have an affordable house, everybody should have social security, everybody should have medicare, everybody should have risk free bank deposits, everybody should have minimum wage, everybody should have this and that, yeah, that always works in the long run, all of it is a great idea and it doesn't cause damage to the economy in reality by completely misallocating resources and causing massive moral hazards.
You can't handle the truth.
... even more stupid people going to college to get degrees in things they have no talent for. I see them all the time, developers with 'degrees' who can only code if you put a spec in front of them, they are incapable of creative thought and have no real-world experience to pull from.
.. I'm not saying that some truly great people have not come out of college and done great things. I know some people far smarter than me that have degrees and will always make more than me. And no matter how much college I had, I would never have been them. They had the talent already.
.. go to college.
I went for a job interview last week, and the hiring VP said their biggest problem is finding developers who know how to program instead of just knowing how to code. Programmers who actually understand things like operations and systems. Programmers who are capable of seeing the big picture and coding at the systems level instead of at the method level.
These days that type of programmer is hard to find, because the days of becoming a computer programmer by starting as an operator or trainee are over. No one will hire anyone without a degree now. And no developer with a degree is willing to start as an operator, they all want $100k/year to pay off their debts. And of course, no one will hire a programmer with a degree as an operator because they are overqualified.
Yet some of the brightest programmers I know don't have degrees. They started at the bottom and worked up. They attended classes here and there, either at school or online, to learn what they needed to learn. They bought books and learned new tech.
But back when I started, companies were willing to hire someone simply because they were smart, creative, and had a great curiosity about how things work. People with good work ethics that worked smarter, not necessarily harder, than their peers.
And we do none of it now because we have been lied to that programming requires a degree. Bullshit. Programming is one of the easiest things in the world to do. I've seen 10 year old kids write code without ever having been to a class. Simply because their brain works a certain way. I've seen programmers learn new styles of programming over a weekend simply be reading a book. Their biggest stumbling block wasn't not going to college, they understood how to do things. But they didn't know the fancy words for everything. They just programmed and got the job done without worrying about technical mumbo-jumbo that really doesn't mean jack squat. Like how 'initialization' was change to 'instantiation'.
If all we want is code monkeys who need a complete spec before writing anything, go ahead. Keep sending them to school. Continue to let the government subsidize people who really have no business writing code because their brain just doesn't have the spatial aptitude that is required for programming. Because they thought it was just a great way to make a buck. Continuing only hiring people based on a piece of paper that only says they know how to pass tests.
Now
It wasn't college that made them successful, it was themselves. College was just a tool they chose to use because it served a purpose. They already had the ability, college was a different way of getting the information.
Starting at the bottom is not a bad way to learn. Sure, it sucks at first. But in 3 or 4 years, you get 3 or 4 years of experience and little or no college debt. Many companies will help with tuition. Granted, it cuts out a lot of companies that will only hire if you have a degree. And it can take a lot of time to find someplace that will do it. But someone that has been writing code at home or part-time for friends and family, and knows how to write a resume, should be able to find something if they truly have talent and interview well. If you don't interview well
But really, do you want to work for a company that is so procedure oriented that they won't look beyond the resume to what a pe
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Lease it out, and go to college.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I though he was the dude from PayPal, which we hate.
College isn't a scam, but you have to know what you want out of it. If you don't know what you want to do yet when you graduate high school, you should probably get some employment experience in fields that interest you. You should still take some base level courses at a community college (and do well in them)... all of the 101 courses will probably transfer into whatever you end up doing - but there's no sense in going into deep debt without a clear goal in mind.
I agree, except you are not going to get hired for a job in a college-educated field without a college education. There are exceptions, but this is the base reason why so many "undeclared major" kids get into university. Maybe if there was some way to do a"1st year of University you do some internship work at several companies to figure out what you want to do". While most schools have mandatory internship programs (which I thoroughly support), these are usually held at the end of school one the student is years-invested into the education. A lousy time to find out you hate the line of work.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I just bought a Tesla. I paid sales tax (a lot). I got a 1.9% loan from BofA that wasn't subsidized by anybody. My accountant would laugh if I suggested that this would be deductible. The federal grant is $7500, there may be a little more from Illinois. From what I understand, what is "revolutionary" is Tesla and Elon Musk personally guaranteeing the resale value of the Tesla as part of their new financing plan. The taxpayer isn't on the hook for that - Elon Musk is. Frankly, if I wasn't planning on keeping the car for 8 years with it's "everything but tires" warranty option, I'd jump on this new deal if I could. As for the subsidy, I suppose that's a matter of opinion. Any reasonable person has to agree that we cannot burn gasoline in our cars forever. But there is a chicken and egg problem. A completely free market will likely fail to protect the environment for our children. Alternative fuel cars are prohibitively expensive and always will be without the economy of scale. The government's role is to to serve the long term public good and the tax break's intent is to resolve the chicken/egg problem.
Greed is the root of all evil.
The correct solution is to strip that power from government rather than imagine it will never happen.
"Vox populi vox dei" is the servant of corruption, yet as a meme it turns said masses into useful idiots. Politicians seek power for the purpose of getting in the way of things, for the purpose of getting paid to get back out of the way. This is endemic and obvious in most countries. It is just hidden a little better in some.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Our government is being managed for the benefit of corporate elites.
Well, someone has to buy their services. The corporate elites happen to be the ones with the money. If you were wealthy, I imagine you'd find yourself with plenty of opportunity to buy government services whether you wanted to or not.
Yes, my school had a co-op program, and I think it was a fantastic experience. While it was great to get money, the real benefit was finding out that I wanted to change majors after the first co-op! Since the co-op program was baked-in, we got three 6-month co-op terms starting our sophomore year.
I agree that it can be difficult to find work in a relevant field before you have a college degree. However, agreeing to do some unpaid intern work while enrolled in a community college is something that many companies would be amenable to. You'll come out ahead in the end, since I made nowhere near enough during my co-op to cover the costs of school.
Of course, if you are smart or athletic enough to get a free ride, the economics change :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Government guaranteed loans are responsible for the increased cost of education. The best thing for students would be to eliminate the cheap loans. Way too many of the degrees given out are completely useless. Why would you borrow 100k to get a degree that will barely assist you in getting a 40k a year job? You will never pay it back. The notion that this encourages upward mobility is a complete myth. It myers people in debt.
We need to take the money out of higher education. At least for liberal arts majors. Eliminate the incentive for schools to spend wildly on gyms and sports and campuses, force them to focus on competing to deliver quality instruction in useful skills. This means turning the tap of unlimited student loan money off. No government guarantees, treat it like normal debt and leave it to the private sector to price debt based on actual risk.
...did someone make the claim that Fascism makes sense? I must have missed it.
My father always told me to get the best education possible because nobody can take it away from you. Excellent advice. That said, because it's intangible, nobody can take it away from you when you default on your student loan, declare bankruptcy, and stick the taxpayers with the bill. Nice work if you can get it. Perhaps if people actually studied for a marketable skill, they wouldn't wind up working at job that requires no thought or training, making an average salary, and stuck with a $200k loan. On the other hand, if the universities did a better job of training students for skills that will be relevant in four years, we'd all be better off. As an engineer graduating in the late 80s, I was taught things that were relevant for the early 80s instead of cutting edge technology. An ultra-left-wing friend of mine once boasted that she spent a semester in Australia and it only cost $150. I said "So let me get this straight: you got a semester of education for $150 but the professors all made much more than that as did all of the support staff but you didn't stick around in the country long enough to contribute to the tax base." She bleated "Well, how do you know I won't go back there?" To which I responded "That was 30 years ago. You're not going back and even if you did, you still wouldn't earn enough to offset the cost of your education."
But a great example from history of why we're doing it wrong can be seen in the episode of Connections entitled "The Long Chain". In essence, Burke discusses the Victorian British system of education versus the German system when the chemical industry was just getting started. The Germans' priority was to open technical schools but to the Brits, training for a career was considered "lower class". The Germans also accepted students based on merit rather than because of their family background. The Germans encouraged links between universities and industry. A practice that was unheard of to Victorians. So when the British had a golden opportunity to get in on the ground floor of the fledgling chemical industry, they scoffed at it, preferring the easy profits from the colonies. It seems that we're seeing a version of this chapter in history being replayed here in the U.S. We accept people in universities because of their background rather than on merit but instead of it being the elite upper class, it's now to satisfy "diversity". In addition, too many schools spend too much time, money, and energy on athletics instead of skills that have value in the world economy.
You want a Tesla car but you do not need one. You want a college degree but it does not have to be expensive. I graduated from a University that only charged $2000/yr. Now I earn 6 figure/yr from consulting and contracting.
I'm a big proponent of education. However I am guessing that the banks see a car as a recoverable asset as college tuition is hard to repossess. More risk in the financial world usually equals higher interest rates.
I'd like to see a system where graduates could seek financial redress from the university they graduated from if they can't find work after say, 2 years of looking. Why not have the USG seek repayment directly from the school in that case for the federally backed loans given to so many students? Schools would change overnight and they'd focus on 'hirable' graduates PDQ.
Organization? You must be joking..
I also have quite favorable loan terms on my house - better than my girlfriend has on her student loans. I'm not going to go pound on my credit union's door and demand social justice. The problem is with the education loans, not the home or car loans. Demonizing Tesla or the auto industry for striving to provide a means of buying their products is asinine and childish.
Education finance has some serious issues that need to be addressed. We aren't going to solve them by crying about auto loans. This entire discussion is flamebait - just fishing for angry rants.
+1 Disagree
I also have quite favorable loan terms on my house - better than my girlfriend has on her student loans.
A house can be repossessed. An education can not. Interest rates should reflect risk.
Demonizing Tesla or the auto industry for striving to provide a means of buying their products is asinine and childish.
Nobody here is demonizing Tesla. We are demonizing the government. It is not Tesla's responsibility to make sure tax dollars are spent wisely.
I see your point, and the summary makes for good hyperbole, but the average student at Purdue (Main campus, 2011) who qualifies for grant aid received $5,496 in Federal grant aid, $5,158 in State / Local grant aid, and $5,405 in institutional grant aid. That's $16,059 a year, x 4 years = $64,236. Only 44% of students took out loans in 2011, at an average of $6,480 each, extrapolating to $25,920 borrowed over 4 years--which is less than many car loans, I'd imagine.
Data is from NCES IPEDS. http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/
Most students DO NOT pay the sticker price for higher education.
No I meant cogent. He doesn't make a very convincing or persuasive argument against education when he can't write any better than an elementary school kid.
And that applies to my post how? What error did I supposedly make?
"if parents don't want their children to be educated, that's child abuse."
When well funded school systems 'pass' students that cannot read or write, that's child abuse.
When well funded school systems refuse to use standardized tests because their students always fail them, that's child abuse.
Yes, I know what teachers and administrators get paid, that data is freely available.
Claiming that the education failures in the U.S.A. are because there isn't enough funding is like listening to the alcoholic complain that she just needs more booze.
No brain, no pain.
I'm not arguing that education loans should have lower interest rates - just pointing out that the submitter (and maybe the article, but who RTFAs anyway) is specifically picking on Tesla when his beef is with education. Hell, I could walk down to the Subaru dealership and get at worst a 2.9% rate loan with no money down. In any case, I don't think you and I really have differing opinions on the interest rates for school loans and car loans because you are spot on about the investment risk and options in the event of default.
However, I stand by my main point that this summary is written just to rile up the masses.
Nobody here is demonizing Tesla. We are demonizing the government. It is not Tesla's responsibility to make sure tax dollars are spent wisely.
The only federal government involvement here is a $7500 tax credit. This is the same type of credit that's been around for hybrid vehicles for years. You may not agree with them - I don't - but enough people have decided they're worthwhile, so they stick around. Sales tax exemption and state tax credits are the state's issues, write your (much more local) state legislator about those. I know I'd pay full sales tax. TFS is making it sound like everybody's going to run out and get a check from Uncle Sam for $15k and dodge sales tax just for buying a Tesla, but that's a stretch at best and - depending on the tax credit situations in Washington and New Jersey - a outright lie at worst.
Anyhow, I think it's important to talk about the costs of education. People talk about education loans these days as if they're mandatory - ignoring options like scholarships, grants, less expensive school choices, or part time work during college. But this Tesla thing is just an attention grab.
+1 Disagree
If you have to carefully review what you typed then why bother with a spellchecker in the first place?
I'm long out of school. Now, if they give this kind of deal, AND..they start making Tesla Roadsters again that are eligible for this deal, I'm IN!!
I don't need a family car (S car has too many seats), but I'd love an electric performance sports car with a nice tax break and loan built in!!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
And let's face it, not everyone needs to go to college, nor can they cut it in college. Go be a plumber or something.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
You're encouraging people to buy an American-made green car instead of a German-made polluting car. That money would have been spent by those people anyway, the government is simply directing where it is going.
On the other hand, helping poor people get access to higher education is almost a net loss for the economy.
he can't write any better than an elementary school kid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
One of the issues is that financial aid packages assume loans will be taken out. So if you skip the loan, and work more instead, you may be able to cover the expense. But what happens next year? Oh yeah, your grant is reduced because of the amount of money you made this year. So now you have an even bigger funding gap to close.
Also, the scale at which students take loans means that colleges and universities have no issues raising tuition. College tuition is increasing far faster than inflation -- which already outpaces earnings growth for part-time workers.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Jefferson tried that by creating the Democratic Party when the Federalist Party was inundated with corporate interests. That party is long-gone. Did that do the trick? No, the 'special interests' just jumped ship to another party. I'd say the correct solution is to remove greed from the equation... While I like to remain fairly optimistic, I'd have to say that's not gonna happen anytime soon.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
Well, you would also need to strip power from the judicial branch as well as the legislative, because the elites wield the law as a weapon against the poor.
Claiming that the education failures in the U.S.A. are because there isn't enough funding
This is not exactly what the post you replied to claims.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
And that applies to my post how? What error did I supposedly make?
It's always funny to hear your illiterate, anti-education rants. Maybe if you had taken some of those "fluff and filler" classes that maybe you could form cogent sentences?
Stop! Dremel time!
Let's face it, using apostrophes for plurals and choosing the wrong homophone is something that should have been handled in grade school, or high school at the latest.
OTOH, I used to work with a couple of people who moved to the USA from West Germany in their teens (following their parents, or rather their jobs). They had no trace of accent by the time that I knew them (while the younger one was still in his PhD Math program) but neither could spell as well as Davy Crockett, let alone Joe_Dragon above. Maybe it isn't his or his schools' fault, since it seems that there is a window for learning the tricks of English grammar and spelling, just as there is for becoming literate or learning to speak. Show me his first grade attendance record from Normal, KS and I'll blame him, again.
You're right, off the cuff I'm going to say the typical skilled tradesman will have better financial success than a typical college grad.
Master plumber in my state requires 5 years apprenticeship with mandated tests to be licensed. I wouldn't compare it to a 5 year engineering program but it sure the hell beats the pants off of a typical management or lib arts class load. Although there are a lot of people who call themselves plumbers or engineers who aren't really those things.
Actually step 2 should be quite obvious. Sell the Tesla and use the money to pay for tuition, and then you default.
I once had a signature.
That is awesome. They have finally found the way to encourage purchase of electric vehicles by offsetting the INSANE MAINTENANCE COSTS with TAX DOLLARS. Go Tesla! (and not the real Tesla, may his soul rest in peace and not roll over too much further in the grave)
Hell, about the only thing that sucks about it...is having to work outdoors and under houses....often at times when the weather isn't the best, but still, good money, and you're independent, etc.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........