<story><title>Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-pushes-colleges-to-the-breaking-point-forcing-hard-choices-about-education-11588256157</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gwd</author><text>It will force &amp;quot;the system&amp;quot; to come up with some other way to pay for tuition.&lt;p&gt;What do you think about Income Share Agreements?&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.thesimpledollar.com&amp;#x2F;loans&amp;#x2F;student&amp;#x2F;income-share-agreements-a-new-way-to-pay-for-college&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.thesimpledollar.com&amp;#x2F;loans&amp;#x2F;student&amp;#x2F;income-share-a...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>jedberg</author><text>To be clear, I don&amp;#x27;t think college should be paid for with loans.  I agree with you that we shouldn&amp;#x27;t be enslaving people.&lt;p&gt;But I also don&amp;#x27;t think allowing these loans to be discharged in bankruptcy will solve anything (and will arguably make things worse) without systemic changes in the way college is paid for.</text></item><item><author>gwd</author><text>&amp;gt; The reason they aren&amp;#x27;t dischargeable is because what bank in their right mind would give a loan to an 18 year old with no collateral?&lt;p&gt;If it&amp;#x27;s a bad bet for the &lt;i&gt;bank&lt;/i&gt;, it must be &lt;i&gt;far&lt;/i&gt; worse of a bet for young adults.  That&amp;#x27;s the point -- right now we&amp;#x27;re essentially suckering millions of naive young adults into a life of wage slavery by giving them a &amp;quot;bet&amp;quot; which they are completely unequipped to evaluate; and many of them are making a bet when they shouldn&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;What you&amp;#x27;re essentially arguing is, &amp;quot;We have to enslave these people or society wouldn&amp;#x27;t function&amp;quot;.  On the contrary: we must not enslave these people; if stop doing it, society will figure out some other way to get things done.</text></item><item><author>jedberg</author><text>&amp;gt; All of us should be regularly lobbying our lawmakers to make student loans dischargeable by bankruptcy, just like any other loan.&lt;p&gt;The reason they aren&amp;#x27;t dischargeable is because what bank in their right mind would give a loan to an 18 year old with no collateral?  They only guarantee they get that it will be paid back is the fact that it can&amp;#x27;t be discharged.&lt;p&gt;Student loans would dry up overnight if they could be discharged at bankruptcy.&lt;p&gt;That being said, I actually think that&amp;#x27;s a good thing, because it would force colleges to charge reasonable tuition rates and also offer scholarships if they want to get the best students.&lt;p&gt;But barring shifting to a European model of college funding, I don&amp;#x27;t see the US allowing dischargeable loans, nor do I think they should, because the reality of it is that colleges won&amp;#x27;t reduce their rates nor increase their scholarships, they would just be completely out of reach of poor and middle class students.</text></item><item><author>gwd</author><text>&amp;gt; He had some massive college bills too and i didnt understand how those worked, but you cant get rid of them like you can a car loan.&lt;p&gt;This is the thing that is really the most shameful and outrageous thing about the US system.  Our entire K-12 educational system and our culture is set up to paint a college degree as a ticket to &amp;quot;the good life&amp;quot;.  Then an 18-year-old, potentially with parents who aren&amp;#x27;t great at math but have great aspirations for their child, is sat down and asked to sign a load of papers, not realizing that this will lock them into decades of unforgiveable debt and wage slavery.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a reason many ancient religions forbid loaning money at interest entirely; and it&amp;#x27;s the same reason we have bankruptcy laws.  None of those reasons somehow go away just because it&amp;#x27;s a student loan -- on the contrary, an 18-year-old thinking they&amp;#x27;re buying a ticket to a better life is far &lt;i&gt;more&lt;/i&gt; vulnerable than the vast majority of people who will ever be seeking a loan.&lt;p&gt;All of us should be regularly lobbying our lawmakers to make student loans dischargeable by bankruptcy, just like any other loan.</text></item><item><author>nimbius</author><text>Disclosure: i never went to college, I went to a trade school.&lt;p&gt;Colleges really only started scaring the heck out of me when I started enjoying my career.  After spending a day wrenching in a garage, we&amp;#x27;d hit miller time and head down to the Soapbox Bar and Grill.  Over the span of a month or two ordering buckets and shooting pool I learned our bartender Javon had a masters in biology and his fiancee Cortisha who bussed the tables had a bachelors in mining science.  The both of them came in well below what I earned, had no healthcare and no retirement.  I remember having a few too many boilermakers one night and I asked why he was serving grease monkey clowns like us instead of working on flowers.  Javon just said theres no work, and the work he would get would pay about as well as a fry cook anyway.  He had some massive college bills too and i didnt understand how those worked, but you cant get rid of them like you can a car loan.&lt;p&gt;That scared the hell out of me.  You could waste a hundred grand on something I always thought made people into millionaires and still wind up serving suds to a drunk in a blue jumper covered in soot from a runaway 2 stroke who thinks you &amp;quot;invent flowers.&amp;quot;  I woke up the next morning with a hangover and anxiety.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>btilly</author><text>I think that they help universities raise tuition as long as the projected lifetime income increase from going to college exceeds the cost of tuition.  Which will just allow our unsustainable &amp;quot;tuition rises faster than inflation&amp;quot; trend to last a few more years before it falls apart.&lt;p&gt;Note that &amp;quot;projected lifetime income increase&amp;quot; is generally overestimated.  What we do is compare average income of a college graduate with a high school graduate and attribute the difference to college.  However people who could get through college likely would have made more than people who couldn&amp;#x27;t, even if they hadn&amp;#x27;t gone to college!</text></comment>
<story><title>Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-pushes-colleges-to-the-breaking-point-forcing-hard-choices-about-education-11588256157</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gwd</author><text>It will force &amp;quot;the system&amp;quot; to come up with some other way to pay for tuition.&lt;p&gt;What do you think about Income Share Agreements?&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.thesimpledollar.com&amp;#x2F;loans&amp;#x2F;student&amp;#x2F;income-share-agreements-a-new-way-to-pay-for-college&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.thesimpledollar.com&amp;#x2F;loans&amp;#x2F;student&amp;#x2F;income-share-a...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>jedberg</author><text>To be clear, I don&amp;#x27;t think college should be paid for with loans.  I agree with you that we shouldn&amp;#x27;t be enslaving people.&lt;p&gt;But I also don&amp;#x27;t think allowing these loans to be discharged in bankruptcy will solve anything (and will arguably make things worse) without systemic changes in the way college is paid for.</text></item><item><author>gwd</author><text>&amp;gt; The reason they aren&amp;#x27;t dischargeable is because what bank in their right mind would give a loan to an 18 year old with no collateral?&lt;p&gt;If it&amp;#x27;s a bad bet for the &lt;i&gt;bank&lt;/i&gt;, it must be &lt;i&gt;far&lt;/i&gt; worse of a bet for young adults.  That&amp;#x27;s the point -- right now we&amp;#x27;re essentially suckering millions of naive young adults into a life of wage slavery by giving them a &amp;quot;bet&amp;quot; which they are completely unequipped to evaluate; and many of them are making a bet when they shouldn&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;What you&amp;#x27;re essentially arguing is, &amp;quot;We have to enslave these people or society wouldn&amp;#x27;t function&amp;quot;.  On the contrary: we must not enslave these people; if stop doing it, society will figure out some other way to get things done.</text></item><item><author>jedberg</author><text>&amp;gt; All of us should be regularly lobbying our lawmakers to make student loans dischargeable by bankruptcy, just like any other loan.&lt;p&gt;The reason they aren&amp;#x27;t dischargeable is because what bank in their right mind would give a loan to an 18 year old with no collateral?  They only guarantee they get that it will be paid back is the fact that it can&amp;#x27;t be discharged.&lt;p&gt;Student loans would dry up overnight if they could be discharged at bankruptcy.&lt;p&gt;That being said, I actually think that&amp;#x27;s a good thing, because it would force colleges to charge reasonable tuition rates and also offer scholarships if they want to get the best students.&lt;p&gt;But barring shifting to a European model of college funding, I don&amp;#x27;t see the US allowing dischargeable loans, nor do I think they should, because the reality of it is that colleges won&amp;#x27;t reduce their rates nor increase their scholarships, they would just be completely out of reach of poor and middle class students.</text></item><item><author>gwd</author><text>&amp;gt; He had some massive college bills too and i didnt understand how those worked, but you cant get rid of them like you can a car loan.&lt;p&gt;This is the thing that is really the most shameful and outrageous thing about the US system.  Our entire K-12 educational system and our culture is set up to paint a college degree as a ticket to &amp;quot;the good life&amp;quot;.  Then an 18-year-old, potentially with parents who aren&amp;#x27;t great at math but have great aspirations for their child, is sat down and asked to sign a load of papers, not realizing that this will lock them into decades of unforgiveable debt and wage slavery.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a reason many ancient religions forbid loaning money at interest entirely; and it&amp;#x27;s the same reason we have bankruptcy laws.  None of those reasons somehow go away just because it&amp;#x27;s a student loan -- on the contrary, an 18-year-old thinking they&amp;#x27;re buying a ticket to a better life is far &lt;i&gt;more&lt;/i&gt; vulnerable than the vast majority of people who will ever be seeking a loan.&lt;p&gt;All of us should be regularly lobbying our lawmakers to make student loans dischargeable by bankruptcy, just like any other loan.</text></item><item><author>nimbius</author><text>Disclosure: i never went to college, I went to a trade school.&lt;p&gt;Colleges really only started scaring the heck out of me when I started enjoying my career.  After spending a day wrenching in a garage, we&amp;#x27;d hit miller time and head down to the Soapbox Bar and Grill.  Over the span of a month or two ordering buckets and shooting pool I learned our bartender Javon had a masters in biology and his fiancee Cortisha who bussed the tables had a bachelors in mining science.  The both of them came in well below what I earned, had no healthcare and no retirement.  I remember having a few too many boilermakers one night and I asked why he was serving grease monkey clowns like us instead of working on flowers.  Javon just said theres no work, and the work he would get would pay about as well as a fry cook anyway.  He had some massive college bills too and i didnt understand how those worked, but you cant get rid of them like you can a car loan.&lt;p&gt;That scared the hell out of me.  You could waste a hundred grand on something I always thought made people into millionaires and still wind up serving suds to a drunk in a blue jumper covered in soot from a runaway 2 stroke who thinks you &amp;quot;invent flowers.&amp;quot;  I woke up the next morning with a hangover and anxiety.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dnautics</author><text>Ironically, income share agreements are increasingly being challenged on the grounds that they violate the 14th amendment (being rather close to the indentured servitude model).&lt;p&gt;I think the (optics) problem is that it&amp;#x27;s a &amp;quot;more obvious voluntary fractional slavery program&amp;quot;.  So it&amp;#x27;s easy to criticize.  Of course, because it&amp;#x27;s a less obvious voluntary fractional slavery program, non-dischargeable loans are simultaneously harder to criticize and harder for people to see the trap they&amp;#x27;re walking in to.</text></comment>