patrick.net

I think high school students qualify as “stupid people” considering we give them zero courses in economics or personal finance before encouraging them to dive deeply into debt to someday (hopefully) obtain their dream job.

Then definitely do not give these kids loans. From what you are saying, giving the loans to the financial illiterate is like giving a person who has never ridden a motorcycle a crotch rocket and sending them on their way.

I really detest the "Give and Forget" policy of cancelling any student loans. Maybe paying back that loan is the "education" they need.

HeadSet says

But none would exist without the enablers and their easy loans.

100% agreed. If gov't would loan 5K per year max, tuition in those schools would magically drop to 5K per year. At 0 K per year, all online diploma mills would go out of business.
Also, it would be difficult to cut off all types of gov't loans for education at once as there are genuinely poor people who would not be able to pay anything and would not get any private loans because they are poor. But loans could be limited to a relatively small amount (no more than 5-10K per year) which would solve 95% of problems.

HeadSet says

From what you are saying, giving the loans to the financial illiterate is like giving a person who has never ridden a motorcycle a crotch rocket and sending them on their way

It’s worse than that. It’s giving putting them in a super cross on that crotch rocket...without a helmet or gear...and a sticky accelerator. Sure they have a minuscule chance of coming in first. But they have a much greater chance of crashing horribly.
If we can’t punish the people who committed this atrocity, at least we can help the victims and prevent it from happening again.

No loans greater than $3000/semester for college of any sort. No loans if you’re not in a degree program with a realistic chance of employment, or at least are taking at least 50% science, business, or technology classes. And mandatory intern programs facilitated by the state to get your some career experience in your chosen field.

Curtail the easy loans and the H1B type programs and this might happen:

Apple decides it needs engineers. It also wants diversity. Therefore, it recruits minorities and women for a scholarship program that pays for school as part of a post grad work commitment to Apple. You can be sure that Apple would make sure that selected college provides quality engineers. Rural areas have used a similar plan to get Doctors to their community, and the Military does same with ROTC and Service Academies to acquire some officers.

HeadSet says

Curtail the easy loans and the H1B type programs

In my field outsourcing is much, much more worse than H1's

No loans if you’re not in a degree program with a realistic chance of employment, or at least are taking at least 50% science, business, or technology classes.

And maybe these loans/grants sponsored and provided by professional organisations as recruiting tools. That will insure the money is spent well.

I agree. These companies want fully trained workers with lots of expensive technical skill but they don’t want to pay for either the education or the salary commanded by such a proficient worker!
H1B is a total cop out for them. They remove the cost of the education completely, and claim “diversity” because they hired 30,000 (super racist) Indians.

d6rB says

HeadSet says

Curtail the easy loans and the H1B type programs

In my field outsourcing is much, much more worse than H1's

If I may ask, what field is that? My company has as part of its business a call center. Some new rules have come down requiring call centers to have language speakers if a certain population (very small) of the service areas speaks that language. So for us, we need to have 24 hour Spanish and Tagalog speakers. The amount of non-English speakers that use out service is minuscule, and despite efforts, we cannot recruit such speakers. Therefore, we are forced to outsource calls to comply. Cheaper, but not as quality as locals. Also, now I have to implement "For English Press 1, Para Espanol, marque el dos" or similar.

HeadSet says

If I may ask, what field is that

Chem/ChemE
Pharma was outsourcing like crazy to Chindia.

Where to draw the line?

Recall law school grads suing their schools as they graduated without decent jobs.

What about 30 year olds who took out loans from Corinthian?

Let's take this out of the school context. When does the gubberment make folks whole who took out loans to purchase a service from a company that went out of business? Did you receive the service? Yes, we took the courses. OK,......

d6rB says

Chem/ChemE

D6rB, can you recommend some good online Chem Courses? I'm on a crusade to rectify my hormone riddled failure to pass HS Chemistry. I actually find it fascinating.

In Chemistry Class I was too busy playing air guitar and tickling girls.

This is just for shits and giggles, not a career change.

I majored in chem! I loved the topic. Pchem was my fav class.

Of course then I went and got an MFA in film school.

MisterLefty says

law school grads suing their schools as they graduated without decent jobs.

Hahahahahaha! Yes! Give them the tools to sue their alma mater! The law schools deserve it for creating fresh human piranhas to prey upon society at large! I hope their graduates sue them all into insolvency!

Corinthian couldn't afford diploma printers for third worlders and ghetto whompers any more? Wonder how much of the money went for clubbing and blow.

TwoScoopsOfSpaceForce says

D6rB, can you recommend some good online Chem Courses?

You need to be very careful - most of online courses are complete crap.
These are pretty good - I have looked only at exams and lecture handouts though.
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/chemistry/

MisterLefty says

Recall law school grads suing their schools as they graduated without decent jobs.

Lately, there is a new trend - students threaten to sue school if they get poor grades "because that decreases their job opportunities".

Quigley says

Debt is slavery and this kind of debt shouldn’t exist. Americans can’t be productive consumers with “the price of admission to the workforce” hanging over their heads the rest of their lives.
Our government spends money on much sillier things.

Right, so now the American Taxpayer has extra debt instead.

Except
• the American Taxpayer didn't choose to attend a fraudulent "university"
• the American Taxpayer had no chance of ever getting benefit from those loans (only the people getting the loans reap the potential benefits)
• If students pre-pay at most a single year of tuition, only those enrolled within the most recent year before going under would have paid money and gotten nothing.
• If the students thought they were ripped off, they should have fought that in courts years ago. It would have forced the "university" into bankruptcy much earlier, saving countless future students from the fraud.

Quigley says

I think high school students qualify as “stupid people” considering we give them zero courses in economics or personal finance before encouraging them to dive deeply into debt to someday (hopefully) obtain their dream job.

True, they definitely need s course explaining how bad taking on that debt is.

Quigley says

We shouldn’t allow corporations and institutions to take advantage of the naivety of youth to enslave the next generation and each successive one.

We don't. That's why there's this thing called "their parents". You do know many parents sign on to Parent Plus loans for their kids. What do you propose we do about the financially illiterate and stupid parents?

MegaForce says

Except they signed up for it voluntarily. Can't claim it is slavery in this case.

But, but , but the banks just gave me the money.... sounds a lot like the last housing blow up, doesn't it?

MrMagic says

We don't. That's why there's this thing called "their parents". You do know many parents sign on to Parent Plus loans for their kids.

The kids can take out many thousands of dollars in student loans all by themselves without parents. I know because I did it. I paid them all back, all 50 grand. But I worked like an angry bastard to do so in a timely manner.

This will explain why Obama struck down these loans:

"...for-profit colleges are largely drawing low-income students, students of color and women, putting these residents at risk of incurring more debt compared to their peers at nonprofit schools, according to a new report."

https://www.blackenterprise.com/profit-colleges-still-not-option/

Quigley says

No loans greater than $3000/semester for college of any sort. No loans if you’re not in a degree program with a realistic chance of employment, or at least are taking at least 50% science, business, or technology classes.

I agree, we need to stop giving govt money to useless majors.

I think they should introduce market aspects/forces to the loans, so that majors which have high chances of success have more loan money available and at lower rates. Those who wish to study crap like gender studies can still do it, but the price of their loans would reflect their lower chance of economic success. Naturally, money would flow to where it's best used.

People need a cold hard splash of reality. They need to see real stats on what each major at each school is likely to give them - none of that "oh, the average pay is low but if you work hard the sky is the limit" crap that snowflakes gobble up.

I sympathize with children who make poor college decisions. It's such an important decision, yet I feel not much quality time is invested into helping them prepare for the decision. I have met SOOO many people who chose a major based on the horrible saying "chose something you'll love, because you'll be great at it, and you'll never work a day in your life." While it's somewhat true, it takes a complicated multifaceted criterion decision and dumbs it down into one with little criteria. While I'm not suggesting people totally chase money at the expense of happiness, I do think people need to be realistic and find a balance between happiness and money. All those art majors who thought they would "be happy doing what they love every day" are miserable because they went into debt and struggle to pay their bills. Debt can be a life ruining trap.

Debt forgiveness isn't the way to solve this problem. We need to stop it at the source and stop enabling people who, despite their hard work and good intentions, will shoot themselves in the foot.