The article calls this abusive loan-sharking at the behest of the state's evil Goldman Sachs overlords. But the woman co-signed her son's loan. What did she think that meant?
Yeah it's pretty straightforward to pair a loan like this with life insurance (which is not only cheap for someone of college age but also generally requires no medical exam).
That is a good idea. For someone that age, it would be quite cheap and probably could get rolled in with auto insurance for more savings. A $50K policy would cover the average college debt.
"Most significant, New Jersey’s loans come with a cudgel that even the most predatory for-profit players cannot wield: the power of the state. New Jersey can garnish wages, rescind state income tax refunds, revoke professional licenses, even take away lottery winnings — all without having to get court approval."
For precisely that reason. Loans aren't dischargeable via bankruptcy, but the lenders still want their money if the primary loan holder can't or won't pay. It's some insurance that they'll get their money back, especially when lending to people with no credit (like 18 year old college students).
Student loans are an impending financial disaster. Over a trillion in loans outstanding not, most of which have provided no benefit and serve little more than as the modern equivalent to a high school diploma. The debt burden follows students through life and impedes home ownership, children, and other middle class consumptive activities, and as a result the demand driven economy muddles along.
What is the solution? Forgive all loans after paying 10% of salary for 10 years? I don't know, but something needs to change.
Imagine if we did something like that for home loans what would happen?
In reality, a student loan amount should not be given more than some percent of 10 year salary estimate for that enrolled major. That obviously means some professions like teachers or social workers may have difficulty in affording an education. In those cases they should be supported through grants.
Atleast we need some feedback loop to keep education costs under control otherwise schools will keep raising the costs.
Limit the maximum percentage of a person's salary that can go to "loan" repayment, and put the school on the hook for anything over that amount - they have to repay the bank or government. The problem to me is that the schools, who decide who gets in, have very little on the line if they make a bad decision.
I think the percentage should be fairly high - say, 33% - but only on the amount of money a person makes above what an average high school graduate makes.
It's gotta be some sort of unbundling of education from certification. I've no idea how this might happen though. The technical challenge is difficult enough on its own, but there are also enormous cultural forces that must be overcome as well.
So, trade schools? Reintroducing shop class and welding into high schools? An optional 2 year program similar to national guard, but for domestic efforts?
I'm in favor of affordable higher education for those who want it, either way.
Anyone who sues an indigent cancer patient in order to recover some vanishingly small fraction of the state's budget is a predator, and should be treated as such.
School is for suckers anymore. Who in their right mind would put themselves through what amounts to institutional training for a life of future labor, middle class if you're lucky, working for a corporation as an at-will employee?
You've paid thousands and given up four years of your youth, and for what? To go to work (if you're lucky for many) for a big corporation making a select few wealthier? Meanwhile your salary is barely enough to make only but marginal dents in the debt you now owe.
You struggle to find meaning in your life, as you battle politics, desperately try to stay relevant in an environment of anxiety and fear; your peers are just as worried as you.
There needs to be an awakening where we stop telling our kids the "one way" to happiness and the dream is through an expensive undergraduate education. Sure, if you want to go to school to learn something, go...but something tells me, that to the architects of this system, education is the least of the priorities.
man, K-12 is no more. K-16 is the bare minimum to function in the current civilization. Obviously this new reality should be reflected in school organization, i.e. whole K-16 should be covered by the public.
In which case the "bare minimum" signaling will just move up to the next level, and then graduate degrees will be required. At which point post-graduate will be required. You can't signal that you're above average if everybody comes up to the same "above average" at the same time.
This isn't even hypothetical, there are already industries where this is how it works. A 4-year-degree in teaching or social work just gets you in the door; you are very much expected to keep going and get masters degrees if you want any sort of raise. (It is not clear to me how this makes anyone a better teacher or social worker. It is credentialism in a pure form.) Combined with the general drop in signaling quality of a 4-year-degree as the curricula get easier, this is the inevitable outcome.
We don't need to pour even more money into funding people's walking on the treadmill, we need to attack the reason why the treadmill is necessary in the first place.
>In which case the "bare minimum" signaling will just move up to the next level, and then graduate degrees will be required. At which point post-graduate will be required.
definitely. In the future where all "simple" jobs are automated the basic necessary skill level would be an ability to do research, ie. the post-graduate level. Without it, one would be able only to enjoy the life provided by the automated systems and wouldn't be able to contribute to the society. It has already happened several times for previous levels of education - from reading/writing as a sign of being "educated" hundreds years ago to manufacturing jobs (K-12 level) which were middle-class jobs just a few decades ago.
>A 4-year-degree in teaching or social work just gets you in the door; you are very much expected to keep going and get masters degrees if you want any sort of raise.
these are government jobs, not subject to market forces, it is more like armed forces in that regard.
Nope, social work is not just government jobs. My wife is a social worker at a hospice (not government). She had to have her masters to get the job. The next thing she has to get is a clinical license. Fun fact, that's a paying internship. She pays a mentor for 2 years to watch her do her job. After the monitoring, my wife is eligible to take a test. If she passes that test, she gets the license. That licenses enables her to increase her odds of getting a social work job in a hospital or government job like the VA, which is not just hospitals.
When all of this is said and done, she had her undergrad (fortunately paid for by her mother's employer, the school), which cost about 100k. Then we paid for her 30k masters. Now we'll pay 2-4k depending on the license mentor. So 132k for a job that pays...wait for it... at best 60k a year! Compare this to my BS in CS which opened at 42k and now is somewhere around 120k. Yay idiotic higher ed inflation.
As an interesting side note, most of this stupidity is caused by the social workers themselves. Like Rodney Dangerfield, they felt like they got no respect from the doctors, legislators and nurses. So they actually pushed for laws around mandated education! They pushed for licenses. They pushed for licenses that could only be obtained with job experience! You couldn't get experience to get the license to get the job that would get you the experience! We actually fled Indiana because of it. Florida is more reasonable.
How much value is added during 9-12th grade? A k-8 program with a little bit of life skills and shop would be better than what I did in 12 years. Especially if you consider that people were working sub-minimum wage jobs for a few years after getting through 8th grade in those days, which were effectively apprenticeships.
I'd find it hard to navigate life competently without learning geometry, algebra and trigonometry. Calculus as well.
Painting a room, taking out a loan and (in ways) driving a car all incorporate those skills. You can do each task without any knowledge of those math subjects, but you can reason about them much better with a solid understanding of the fundamentals.
I wouldn't bet on that. I've known too many carpenters and general contractors who flunked out well before calculus. Now, they may figure stuff out the hard way, working off approximations and rules of thumb, but they figure it out, and do the hard work, too.
How do you determine how much paint you'd need to paint a wall without basic geometry? How about figuring out what angles and lengths to cut materials? If you can't physically measure a side of wall/house/etc you're going to have to use algebra, trig and/or geometry to figure out the lengths.
> How do you determine how much paint you'd need to paint a wall without basic geometry?
You guess, and if you're short, you buy more. If you're over, you use it on the next job of throw it out.
> How about figuring out what angles and lengths to cut materials?
There are lots of methods. You can lay it out and mark it on the ground before making cuts. You can build forms and templates out of scrap or cardboard via eyeballing and adjustment.
Math can save some time, but you can usually get by without it.
> To go to work (if you're lucky for man) to make a select few wealthier? Meanwhile your salary is barely enough to make only but marginal dents in the debt you now owe.
>You struggle to find meaning in your life, as you battle politics, desperately try to stay relevant in an environment of anxiety and fear; your peers are just as worried as you.
Oh wait. But I guess you don't have to worry as a founder, your safety net will catch you if you fail unlike the rest of us :)
