This would save young Americans from going into crippling debt, but it would also make a university degree completely unaffordable for most. However, in the age of the Internet, that doesn’t mean they couldn’t get an education.
Consider the long term impact of this. There are a lot of different ways such a situation could go, for better and for worse.
Loans aren’t the problem. Insane loan debt is a symptom of an unsustainable higher education system.
You can learn a lot on your own, but many careers require a formal education (medicine, law, engineering, etc.). By itself, banning student loans within our current system merely makes it harder for poorer people to attain those careers.
Loans that can’t be discharged are the problem. Tuition went out the roof when universities discovered this gold mine.
But on the other hand, if loans were subject to bankruptcy, most poor people would never be approved to get them.
We could go back to government guaranteed loans based on financial circumstances. And we could go back to tuition rates that were compatible with working your way through college. That system worked pretty well. It did drop some students through the cracks because their families were too wealthy for them to qualify and they couldn’t or wouldn’t work their way to tuition, but it seems like it did a lot less damage than the current system.
On the flip side, consider this. If few can afford university, then the universities will have a reduced income and they’ll be forced to adapt by shrinking and lowering tuition rates. Cheaper institutions will end up with a competitive advantage. This could ironically make degrees more affordable.
Your logic completes ignores costs of business. Property taxes. Utilities. Staffing. Those must still be covered
We can lower all of these costs by shrinking the university. Fewer buildings, fewer utilities, fewer classrooms. Not to mention the many extraneous amenities that don’t directly relate to coursework.
What about online university? Then you don’t even need a building and students don’t need to travel to the campus.
Your also skipping the dual function of universities as research institutions.
What you’re describing is a community college. Which are fine, and do a great job. But they don’t excel at giving deep specialized knowledge, or advancing the frontiers of human knowledge.
They’re just not equipped with the staff or materials.Reworking the foundation of how we do advanced education and research in our society seems quite a bit more work than making a program where the taxpayers just pay for qualifying people to get as much education as they want.
That’s a good point, research would be affected. However it’s worth mentioning that the US government already subsidises research, which might cushion the impact.
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Not all degrees can be done in a classroom with a projector
Context.
I am a non traditional student, who has spent a significant amount of time working between highschool and college. The degree is about $18k/year for tuition. My STEM degree has a track record of 100% job placement, in your degree field, within one year of graduation. and, with a BS, average starting salary is approaching $80k.
With average rent and stuff, lets call it about $25k/year for the degree. Maybe $30k.
Is there stuff that the university is spending money on that they shouldn’t? Yes. But, we also have many millions of dollars in equipment, some for undergrad, and some for graduated program use. All that equipment/lab spaces takes up space, and that equipment, our professors, and the reputation of our graduates are what makes the companies want to hire from pur school. We’re not even that big of a school, but we have a large reputation for academics.
If you started cutting funding and forcing downsizing, you’re losing decades of experience im teaching, many hundreds of millions in labs and equipment, and reducing the quality of the education that can be offered.
Now, I will grant you that some schools are too expensive, or degrees aren’t worth the cost. And yes, changes in student loan structures are needed, but blanket statements, like that loans should be made illegal, is painting the issue with too broad of a brush stroke. What about making student loans able to be discharged in bankruptcy, and not being federally guaranteed? That could create an environment where loan companies are denying loans based on the cost vs income potential of the degree. Even with that though, we want to be very careful that it is structured in a way that is not going to disenfranchise low income students or minorities. Some degrees will either disappear, or get a lot cheaper. If you can’t get a loan for a $400k underwater basket weaving degree, then it will either go away, or get cheaper.
A lot of programs need space and equipment to effectively produce a good product. You don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water.
A. That would only be true in a culture where employers don’t think you need a degree for basic jobs. From what I’ve seen, the US isn’t like that.
B. Even if people are practically able to turn down uni, all the universities will most likely agree to keep prices high, similar to what landlords do. If all of them keep their prices high, then all of them get more money.
If no one could get a degree, employers would have to change their requirements to reflect this. Otherwise they won’t be able to find any employees.
Universities need to have their classrooms filled to stay in business. If attendance plummets, then they will be forced to adapt by reducing tuition prices and reducing expenses, i.e. providing less amenities.
You are saddling the horse from behind.
Yea, the education must get cheaper. A lot. But the lever to do that is a cost adjustment for the education, not artificially lowering demand by discriminating against the poor even more.
It cost 70k to get my degree. Any idea how much tuition would have had to be for someone living out of a trailer to be able to afford it? If your answer was zero dollars you are correct.
I don’t believe encouraging someone to go into crippling debt over a certification will help them.
Education is how people get out of poverty op. The issue is that the US has a dog eat dog fuck the poor mentality that keeps the ladders out of poverty out of reach then blames them for their situation. The only thing that should determine whether you get into college should be your capability to do the work or not. Not what is or is not in your bank account.
The actual solution is to make college free given academic benchmarks are hit and institute mechanisms to keep costs under control that go beyond “how can we maximize profit?”
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I was low income. This idea that the poor have enough aid is so divorced from reality. But youre right, the academic requirements probably should be weighted according to demographic because the rich are so heavily showered with resources by their parents. But youre wrong about free college benefitting them more than the poor.
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I think student loans are a symptom of the problem. But not the problem itself. The problem is that college is so incredibly unaffordable for many American students. If higher education wasn’t so absurdly expensive, many students could take out fewer loans.
That seems valid. I think at least part of the problem is culture. Millennials were taught that college is a necessary stepping stone to a superior job, which it was in previous generations, but not so much nowadays.
So education for the wealthy only? Bugger off.
No. I predict we would revert to the status quo of 20-100 years ago, with very affordable state-run schools providing excellent education, and high price private schools catering to the rich. Cheap schools got expensive because we allowed the for-profit student loan industry to run wild.
Assuming nothing is done to curb the recent capitalist tendencies of universities to inflate tuition then yeah it would be mostly restricted to the wealthy. It might be possible that market forces would coerce them to become cheaper again in order to not end up getting shut down from lack of funding from lower enrollment though.
Ah yes, let’s make getting an accredited degree something only the wealthy can afford, that’ll do well for the working class you betcha.
Class mobility is stagnant enough, I truly cannot see any upside to this for the vast majority of people.
Ban, no. Cap, maybe. Completely overhaul, yes.
- Any school that receives any public funds should make school completely free to all students with a permanent address in that constituency. If my tax money is going to a school, I shouldn’t have to pay tuition for my kids to go there.
- Students who graduate and are not offered (or are laid off or fired without cause from) a job that provides them sufficient pay and benefits to get them to 300% of the local poverty level should be forgiven each month’s payment for as long as they are in that state. Not deferred or paused, forgiven.
- Anyone who graduates and takes a job with a federal, state, or local governmental entity or nonprofit organization should likewise have their student loan payment forgiven for every month they are employed.
- Anyone who takes a K12 teaching position after graduation should have their student loans forgiven at a rate of one year’s worth of payments per month of teaching.
- Student loan forgiveness should be taxed at 0% in every state and nationally.
- Student loans should be capped at a total value that would limit repayment to 10 years, while allowing a student to maintain an income after repayment of 300% of the poverty line during that time. After reaching the cap, if the student is more than 50% complete with their degree, they should be permitted to complete that degree.
- Students who do not graduate, or who change their major partially through the program, should be able to apply the value of tuition already paid, adjusted for inflation, toward eventually returning to school; or pass that credit on to a child or other family member.
This is just off-the-cuff; I haven’t thought about the implications of all of these. But I think it would help significantly.
Shoulda been illegal/actually regulate, in the first place. Removing restrictions on raising tuition was also another lame move.
Given the other massive catastrophic defects in the fabric of our society, making student loans illegal makes about as much sense as outlawing flat tires. The law you’ll probably write isn’t going to punish the people who need to be punished, and it won’t help the people you’re trying to help.
Generally oppose.
We would need massive structural changes in education and funding before banning student debt; you’d need to make university free, and give students a living stipend while they were there, as loans usually cover living expenses as well. I can’t see that happening in the current political climate. So if we simply outlawed educational loans, the effect would be that millions of people would no longer have access to higher education at all.
The idea that you can learn things on the internet ignores the fact that the internet is rife with misinformation–i.e., bullshit and outright lies–and it allowed people to get into thought bubbles, which higher education fights against pretty effectively.
I want to add:
Most books have never been digitized. Most information that you would learn in college is still in books and not on the Internet. You can’t replace access to information (and reading that information) in college with lack of access to information (and thus not reading that information) online.
In addition, the Internet doesn’t give you access to passionate subject-matter experts who are necessary guides to help us travel down the path of acquiring the knowledge that they have. Sure, there’s recordings of MOOC lectures, but they become outdated and you can’t ask them questions or have them help you by giving useful assignments and answer your questions and give you constructive criticism.
If higher education is going to work we would do better to pay those experts (the poor teachers) a fair living wage so that they can focus on the quality of their teaching and not be desperately trying to survive and navigate departmental politics while hoping that bureaucratic administrators don’t cut the library budget (again) while dumping money into a new football field (why is sports part of college anyway? Why can’t there be a separate and unrelated sports-academy system for the sports people so that it’s impossible to misappropriate from academic budgets in favor of sports?).
Totally agree.
In addition, the Internet doesn’t give you access to passionate subject-matter expert
You can find them on Discord servers, message boards, and YouTube channels. But knowing who is actually an SME, and who has a great line of believable bullshit, is quite challenging. In a university system, you have a group of peers that are making that determination.
This is a horrible idea.
I’m from a country with free university education and we also have student loans available.
Here’s something that works for us: forget about private universities, invest in federal or state owned collages so that they can compete with the private ones.
Do a scholarship program where students can get free entry into these universities if their grades are high enough in high school, or make it dependent on an entry exam. Those that don’t get in have a paid option that’s still partially funded by the state or federal government.
Student loans will still be useful, not for tuition but for families who can’t afford to send their kids to study in the cities where the universities are located.
The sad part about relying on scholarships is that disadvantaged kids are much less likely to have excellent grades. These people need school more than anyone else. The system works backwards.
Exactly this. I grew up poor and didn’t have a quiet place to study. My grades suffered greatly as a result, and a number of other reasons. I needed education for upward mobility.
After struggling to get an education, finally in my 30s I eas able to get out of poverty.
That’s a fair point, where I live we have a point system for entry and you get the majority of your points through your grades. You also get points if you’re economically disadvantaged and some other factors like certain disabilities, if I remember correctly.
It seems from the outside that a systematic change would indeed be a good idea, not something that would just help the poor but address the root cause of why people become poor in the first place.
I personally believe that society in general should be healthy and educated. If your citizens aren’t sick and/or dumb, there’s a higher likelihood of the country as a whole having a better economy with a higher quality of life. Besides, it’s just good for humanity to treat sick people and educate those who are trying to contribute to society.
I don’t believe that there should be an individual cost for these items. I don’t think that a rich person should be healthy while a poor person remains sick or worse. I also don’t think that a rich person should have a great education while a poor person stays held back from not being able to afford school. In my opinion, this economic disparity doesn’t make sense.
It does make sense that a rich person might live in a large house while a poor person lives in a quaint apartment, or a rich person has a PlayStation while a poor person may not have one. In the US, your health and your education is in the same market as PlayStations. To me, this doesn’t make sense at all.
I hate capitalist economics, but the ease of obtaining student loans is one of the reasons for the high price of college tuition.
If student loans didn’t exist, then most people would not be paying outrageous tuitions. Colleges will be forced to accomodate.
The ease of student loans would not exist without government backing. In a pure capitalism, this wouldn’t be a problem.
There’s no such thing as capitalism without a state. It cannot exist.
Yeah. Anarchy doesn’t work. No argument there. But the blame for exorbitant college tuition lies with the state, not with capitalism.
I can agree that it lies with the state, but that doesn’t absolve capitalism. It’s the capitalist state, and we shouldn’t separate the two.
Most of the activities of the state happen to be anti-capitalist though.
So… Yes. We can separate the two because if the state ceased it’s anti-capitalist activities, this wouldn’t be a problem.
Completely nonsensical and screws everyone involved.
Student loans are supposed to be an investment the government takes in its population. If it works properly then the money that the government spent on the students tuition is both paid back monetarily by the student as well as societally because now you have an educated citizen providing ever increasing tax revenue. If you make student loans illegal you not only make it impossible for students to educate themselves beyond public school you destroy the entire post secondary school industry now that so few can afford to educate themselves.
What needs to happen is cutting out all the middleman bullshit and just making post secondary education free with your taxes, at least a couple years worth. If someone wants to be a doctor or a lawyer or someone who needs to have more than a couple years worth then sure that can be on their dime. Otherwise those first 4 years are just unnecessarily saddling people with mountains of debt that there is no guarantee they can pay back after they are done
I feel the same way about that as I do about making ALL education - K through 16 (or tech/vocational) FREE.
I am all for it. We have way too many stupid people shoving their voices in matters that don’t concern them. Educated would be better.
That’s not at all what OP proposed though. They want to keep tuition as is, just eliminate loans.
Where does it say that?
Imagine if they made student loans illegal, with current tuition prices in America there literally arent enough people wealthy enough to afford to keep the schools full.
The schools would either have to close, or find a way to make attending them affordable. As it is they can charge an arm and a leg, convince people to take loans, its all someone elses problem in 10 years and the “someone else” isnt the school.
Not exactly. I’m saying that banning loans would lower the price of education, either through cost cutting by universities or by a new education system taking its place.
Right, but I don’t like that idea in the least. Loans - gone. Need for loans - gone. Education available for all - reduction of trumpistic stupidity - I am in favor of intelligent humans opposed to the ongoing increase in stupid ones.
What issue are you looking to solve? You state that you believe people are able to seek out, and attain their education independently through resources like the internet. So why would it matter if there are alternatives that cost money which one can pay, and receive loans for?
It matters because American culture currently prefers everyone to have a college degree as opposed to any other type of education. Loans exist to allow the poor to “keep up with the Joneses” for a few years and then yoke them into debt for the rest of their lives. If this avenue was cut off then the attitude of the public would change to allow other means of education.
It matters because American culture currently prefers everyone to have a college degree as opposed to any other type of education. […] If this avenue was cut off then the attitude of the public would change to allow other means of education.
I completely agree that our favoring of, or requiring of post-secondary degrees for employement is an important cultural issue. I don’t agree, however, that the solution is to make the provision of loans illegal – illegalization is rarely anything else than a band-aid on top of a gaping wound. An argument could be made that the government provision of student loans should be stopped (in countries where that occurs e.g. Canada), but I don’t think the solution is to simply make all student loans illegal.
and then yoke them into debt for the rest of their lives.
Hm, that is an assumption. There’s a few issues with that statement. The total cost of one’s loans are directly related to the cost of the post-secondary institution that they decide to attend. There is little reason to go to a very expensive institution. I do understand that some employers are elitist in that they won’t hire anybody outside of an ivy league school, but I would wager that that issue is not very prevalent – the free market should take up the slack. Furthermore, one’s ability to get out of such debt is related to the income that they expect from employment after attaining their degree, as well as their level of monetary responsibility, and savviness. If one decides to blindly go into student debt for studies that will offer little in return, that is one’s own risk to take. You must also not forget that there is no requirement that one must do white-collar work. Trades do not require such degrees, and are just as well-paying, if not better.
Health insurance first please.
