<story><title>Student Loan Debt Is Now as Big as the U.S. Junk Bond Market</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-05/student-loans-raise-other-risks-as-debt-equals-u-s-junk-market</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>smallnamespace</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve seen this form of scientism playing out frequently on Reddit and other Internet forums lately. Discussion will be about some piece of controversial research, e.g. GMOs or vaccines. People who want to discuss the merits of the research are shouted down by what I can only describe as &amp;#x27;science fanbois&amp;#x27; -- anything that is &amp;#x27;against science&amp;#x27; must be wrong.&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;re missing the inherent tension in science between a received body of knowledge and the skepticism it takes to produce new knowledge.</text></item><item><author>cloakandswagger</author><text>&amp;gt; We have too many people thinking it&amp;#x27;s okay to discredit scientists and scholars because they don&amp;#x27;t understand how research works.&lt;p&gt;And a similar number of people who elevate science to the level of religion, marching in its name and developing a brand of hero worship for scientists when they too know nothing at all about the scientific process. Both are forms of anti-intellectualism that are growing in our polarized political environment.</text></item><item><author>umbrellathorn</author><text>&amp;gt; for a useless degree they&amp;#x27;ll never use&lt;p&gt;I went to school for such a degree. While I don&amp;#x27;t use it in my day to day now, I still consider it priceless. There&amp;#x27;s some inherent value added to a person who pursues to study a bit of humanities, history, philosophy and art in college  apart from their major. Scholarly work really helps shape the way you look at life for the better.&lt;p&gt;Part of this is that you really understand why you need to trust academic work for general human advancement. We have too many people thinking it&amp;#x27;s okay to discredit scientists and scholars because they don&amp;#x27;t understand how research works.</text></item><item><author>jedberg</author><text>There is definitely an education bubble.  It&amp;#x27;s way too easy to get money for college.  You hear a lot of stories about the increasing costs of college and crushing debt on graduation, but you don&amp;#x27;t hear a lot of stories of &amp;quot;I wanted to go to college but couldn&amp;#x27;t get a loan&amp;quot;.  Almost everyone gets approved, regardless of their future ability to pay it back.&lt;p&gt;We need a fundamental shift in the way college is paid for.  Some (many?) would like to see a government funded system, others would like to see the removal of subsidized loans to bring prices back down (and leaving many unable to afford college in its wake).&lt;p&gt;Another solution is to let you go to school for free and then pay a percent of all your future earnings back to your college, or at least into a pool that pays for the next generation&amp;#x27;s college.  Of course with that system, colleges would bias towards people who are pursuing profitable majors, so you&amp;#x27;d probably see a lot more STEM degrees and a lot fewer of everything else, until it got oversaturated, but there is a very long lead time between &amp;quot;too many degrees&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;no one studies this anymore&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;In other words, the fundamental problem is that we tell kids that college is the only path, creating insanely high demand for the product, when in reality there would be plenty of people much better served learning a trade or skill instead of four years doing something hate for a useless degree they&amp;#x27;ll never use.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>xenihn</author><text>&amp;gt;Discussion will be about some piece of controversial research, e.g. GMOs or vaccines. People who want to discuss the merits of the research are shouted down by what I can only describe as &amp;#x27;science fanbois&amp;#x27; -- anything that is &amp;#x27;against science&amp;#x27; must be wrong.&lt;p&gt;Discussions on reddit (and all sorts of other social platforms) are being influenced and manipulated by people who are being paid to do so, and anyone who denies that at this point is delusional.&lt;p&gt;Source: I know people who run firms that provide this service.</text></comment>
<story><title>Student Loan Debt Is Now as Big as the U.S. Junk Bond Market</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-05/student-loans-raise-other-risks-as-debt-equals-u-s-junk-market</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>smallnamespace</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve seen this form of scientism playing out frequently on Reddit and other Internet forums lately. Discussion will be about some piece of controversial research, e.g. GMOs or vaccines. People who want to discuss the merits of the research are shouted down by what I can only describe as &amp;#x27;science fanbois&amp;#x27; -- anything that is &amp;#x27;against science&amp;#x27; must be wrong.&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;re missing the inherent tension in science between a received body of knowledge and the skepticism it takes to produce new knowledge.</text></item><item><author>cloakandswagger</author><text>&amp;gt; We have too many people thinking it&amp;#x27;s okay to discredit scientists and scholars because they don&amp;#x27;t understand how research works.&lt;p&gt;And a similar number of people who elevate science to the level of religion, marching in its name and developing a brand of hero worship for scientists when they too know nothing at all about the scientific process. Both are forms of anti-intellectualism that are growing in our polarized political environment.</text></item><item><author>umbrellathorn</author><text>&amp;gt; for a useless degree they&amp;#x27;ll never use&lt;p&gt;I went to school for such a degree. While I don&amp;#x27;t use it in my day to day now, I still consider it priceless. There&amp;#x27;s some inherent value added to a person who pursues to study a bit of humanities, history, philosophy and art in college  apart from their major. Scholarly work really helps shape the way you look at life for the better.&lt;p&gt;Part of this is that you really understand why you need to trust academic work for general human advancement. We have too many people thinking it&amp;#x27;s okay to discredit scientists and scholars because they don&amp;#x27;t understand how research works.</text></item><item><author>jedberg</author><text>There is definitely an education bubble.  It&amp;#x27;s way too easy to get money for college.  You hear a lot of stories about the increasing costs of college and crushing debt on graduation, but you don&amp;#x27;t hear a lot of stories of &amp;quot;I wanted to go to college but couldn&amp;#x27;t get a loan&amp;quot;.  Almost everyone gets approved, regardless of their future ability to pay it back.&lt;p&gt;We need a fundamental shift in the way college is paid for.  Some (many?) would like to see a government funded system, others would like to see the removal of subsidized loans to bring prices back down (and leaving many unable to afford college in its wake).&lt;p&gt;Another solution is to let you go to school for free and then pay a percent of all your future earnings back to your college, or at least into a pool that pays for the next generation&amp;#x27;s college.  Of course with that system, colleges would bias towards people who are pursuing profitable majors, so you&amp;#x27;d probably see a lot more STEM degrees and a lot fewer of everything else, until it got oversaturated, but there is a very long lead time between &amp;quot;too many degrees&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;no one studies this anymore&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;In other words, the fundamental problem is that we tell kids that college is the only path, creating insanely high demand for the product, when in reality there would be plenty of people much better served learning a trade or skill instead of four years doing something hate for a useless degree they&amp;#x27;ll never use.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>simias</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s really about science, it&amp;#x27;s more about reddit. You&amp;#x27;ll find the same thing on any discussion on any somewhat popular subreddit regardless of the subject. There&amp;#x27;s almost always a reddit hivemind sanctioned Good Answer to any issue and if you stray away from the Good Path you&amp;#x27;ll get buried in downvotes, regardless of how much effort you put into arguing your point. Conversely if you make a completely useless one-liner comment agreeing with the Good Answer then you&amp;#x27;ll be showered with upvotes and propelled to the top of the page.&lt;p&gt;Upvote&amp;#x2F;downvotes are de-facto agree&amp;#x2F;disagree buttons on reddit. As a forum it&amp;#x27;s completely useless to discuss anything beyond cat pictures and funny gifs.</text></comment>