<story><title>U.S. Citizens Now Hold About $1.3 Trillion in Student Loan Debt</title><url>http://financeography.com/us-citizens-hold-about-13-trillion-student-loan-debt/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Lazare</author><text>Okay, but how does that translate into policy?&lt;p&gt;Fact 1:  Education in the US is very expensive, in large part because the ready availability of loans removes most downwards pressure on prices.&lt;p&gt;Fact 2:  If you are loaned money to obtain a degree which is not economically valued then you will not be able to pay it back.&lt;p&gt;Fact 3:  If you loan people money without expecting people to pay it back, then it&amp;#x27;s not a loan, it&amp;#x27;s a grant.&lt;p&gt;Fact 4:  If you offer grants to high school graduates to take non-economically values classes, a lot of them will do so.  This pushes up the cost of the education, and pushes down the wages graduates will make, excerbating the problem.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; For that reason these fields absolutely should be subsidised&lt;p&gt;Perhaps.  But in which case by how much, by whom, and in what fashion?  Because offhand offering free arts degrees sounds like one of the worst possible ways you could subsidise art as a field, and one of the best ways you can cause a lot of harm to young people while enriching the existing education institutions and not really advancing art at all.&lt;p&gt;Mind you...&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; otherwise art becomes about marketing, journalism becomes about propaganda, and science becomes about start-ups...&lt;p&gt;Artists, journalists, and scientists have always had to earn a living.  To the best of my knowledge, there was no &amp;quot;golden age&amp;quot;.  We&amp;#x27;ve never subsidized artists (or scientists, or journalists) in the way you say we should; the future you&amp;#x27;re afraid of &amp;quot;becoming&amp;quot; is our present and past.</text></item><item><author>skwosh</author><text>There seems to be a strong sentiment in this thread that the only value provided by education is the contribution to career (e.g. that loans should only be provided for financially viable courses, that studying arts is as useful to one&amp;#x27;s career as studying finger painting, etc).&lt;p&gt;This just seems &lt;i&gt;so&lt;/i&gt; wrong.&lt;p&gt;Optimising for vocational training means you&amp;#x27;re effectively tuning out the abstract arts and sciences and... oh, the humanities. These fields don&amp;#x27;t usually&amp;#x2F;directly translate into a financial success, but they broaden our perspective and deepen our experience. And in doing so provide the tools and language to more effectively analyse and engage with human culture.&lt;p&gt;And to a certain extent, &amp;quot;true&amp;quot; art is antithetical to capitalism, in a similar way that &amp;quot;true&amp;quot; journalism is antithetical to surveillance (honesty&amp;#x2F;transparency vs main-stream popularity), and I&amp;#x27;d argue equally as important. For that reason these fields &lt;i&gt;absolutely&lt;/i&gt; should be subsidised, otherwise art becomes about marketing, journalism becomes about propaganda, and science becomes about start-ups...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>huxley</author><text>Those aren&amp;#x27;t facts, they are premises&lt;p&gt;It is as likely that tying a university degree as the minimum pre-requisite for a decently paying career is driving the price upwards. Increased competition for desirable placements is the classic limited supply high demand scenario.&lt;p&gt;The problem isn&amp;#x27;t the availability of loans which are just a side effect but the focus of education as a gate to future success.&lt;p&gt;BTW from ancient times up until the last couple of centuries, patronage was often the primary income source for artists and scientists, the rich and powerful would subsidize them, offer sinecures to allow them to create, and the patron would get to show how wealthy and sophisticated they were.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Patronage#Arts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Patronage#Arts&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>U.S. Citizens Now Hold About $1.3 Trillion in Student Loan Debt</title><url>http://financeography.com/us-citizens-hold-about-13-trillion-student-loan-debt/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Lazare</author><text>Okay, but how does that translate into policy?&lt;p&gt;Fact 1:  Education in the US is very expensive, in large part because the ready availability of loans removes most downwards pressure on prices.&lt;p&gt;Fact 2:  If you are loaned money to obtain a degree which is not economically valued then you will not be able to pay it back.&lt;p&gt;Fact 3:  If you loan people money without expecting people to pay it back, then it&amp;#x27;s not a loan, it&amp;#x27;s a grant.&lt;p&gt;Fact 4:  If you offer grants to high school graduates to take non-economically values classes, a lot of them will do so.  This pushes up the cost of the education, and pushes down the wages graduates will make, excerbating the problem.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; For that reason these fields absolutely should be subsidised&lt;p&gt;Perhaps.  But in which case by how much, by whom, and in what fashion?  Because offhand offering free arts degrees sounds like one of the worst possible ways you could subsidise art as a field, and one of the best ways you can cause a lot of harm to young people while enriching the existing education institutions and not really advancing art at all.&lt;p&gt;Mind you...&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; otherwise art becomes about marketing, journalism becomes about propaganda, and science becomes about start-ups...&lt;p&gt;Artists, journalists, and scientists have always had to earn a living.  To the best of my knowledge, there was no &amp;quot;golden age&amp;quot;.  We&amp;#x27;ve never subsidized artists (or scientists, or journalists) in the way you say we should; the future you&amp;#x27;re afraid of &amp;quot;becoming&amp;quot; is our present and past.</text></item><item><author>skwosh</author><text>There seems to be a strong sentiment in this thread that the only value provided by education is the contribution to career (e.g. that loans should only be provided for financially viable courses, that studying arts is as useful to one&amp;#x27;s career as studying finger painting, etc).&lt;p&gt;This just seems &lt;i&gt;so&lt;/i&gt; wrong.&lt;p&gt;Optimising for vocational training means you&amp;#x27;re effectively tuning out the abstract arts and sciences and... oh, the humanities. These fields don&amp;#x27;t usually&amp;#x2F;directly translate into a financial success, but they broaden our perspective and deepen our experience. And in doing so provide the tools and language to more effectively analyse and engage with human culture.&lt;p&gt;And to a certain extent, &amp;quot;true&amp;quot; art is antithetical to capitalism, in a similar way that &amp;quot;true&amp;quot; journalism is antithetical to surveillance (honesty&amp;#x2F;transparency vs main-stream popularity), and I&amp;#x27;d argue equally as important. For that reason these fields &lt;i&gt;absolutely&lt;/i&gt; should be subsidised, otherwise art becomes about marketing, journalism becomes about propaganda, and science becomes about start-ups...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JulianMorrison</author><text>Basic income. Free tuition. An outright grant, no repayments. Literally zero barriers except ability for anyone, for any level of academic achievement in anything. Result: a culture with a lot more understanding of the real world, and the preservation of human and humane values, rather than a laser focus on the hand-to-mouth of Jobs Right Now.</text></comment>