Student Debt Think Tank

[Rezi]

4 minutes ago, jvikings1 said:

My dad works as a recruiter for a technical school which specializes in diesel engines (though does provide other training like welding as well). He gets extremely frustrated with the high schools which refuse to let him speak to students directly because they don't care about alternative options. These are well paying jobs (6 figures easily attainable) for kids stuck in eastern KY. But the schools don't give a crap because it doesn't help them look better in college their "college ready" numbers.

I always feel lucky for where I went to school with situations like that. My high school offered 11th and 12th graders the opportunity to opt out of certain classes and be bussed to a technical school for half of the school day where they could enroll in a program that would teach them real world career and technical skills.

Lots of people I knew came out of high school with technical training in trades or other marketable skills for employers, and I knew lots of people who were able to go straight from high school to a well paying job in something like carpentry, manufacturing, mechanics because of it. Even those that didn’t still got real world skills out of it. It’s really something that I wish would be more standardized because we need to be teaching our kids that there are options other than 4-year university and that not everyone needs to or should go to one.

I think that’s become a societal mistake in the last few generations is that we’re teaching kids that they need to go to a 4-year school and get a degree or they’ll be failures in life, which just isn’t true at all. It only ends up with an over saturation of Bachelors Degrees and people who went to a 4 year school that don’t have a good job coming out of it, such that their degree ends up being useless and they’re in debt for no reason. Hell, this over saturation of people enrolling in 4-year schools could even be partially blamed for why tuition prices have increased so much: because there’s a lot more demand than there should be. 

[jnewt]

12 hours ago, Patine said:

in the modern professional job market, unless you want a job in medicine, law, engineering, or something like that, employers don't actually look at post-secondary degrees or education

I don't know about that. Most office jobs require a specific major or range of majors. When I was looking for a job earlier this year, essentially every job I applied to listed "Must have a bachelors degree in a, b, c, or related field". I applied for a job for my college's city, and they couldn't interview me because I didn't have the exact education requirement. Now, I would agree that once you've established your career, no one cares about your education. But breaking in is often the hardest part to establishing your career.

6 hours ago, jvikings1 said:

At the undergrad level, where you get your degree from really does not matter a whole lot in the long run.

There are plenty of lower cost options if one is willing to seek them out. In KY for example, if you go to community college for the first 2 years, your tuition will stay the same for finishing at UK during your last 2 years. Going to CC for 2 years isn't sexy, but it gets the job done for a lot cheaper.

One of the problems with the above model is that high schools create a stigma towards 4-year college and put down other excellent options. This is in part because high schools are judged heavily by 4-year university attendance rates.

I agree with all of this, so long as your degree isn't from what is essentially a diploma mill like University of Phoenix or even a real school that just has a terrible reputation. It also matters if you want to go to grad school. But yes, most of the time, if you make the most out of what your school has to offer, then it won't make a huge difference.

We also 100% need to de-stigmatize going to community college or not going to college at all. Trade jobs are in high demand and often pay a lot better than most jobs you can get right out of college. They're not for everyone, but we shouldn't be persuading kids NOT to go into a trade.

[ShortKing]

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-04-10/student-loan-forgiveness-will-make-inflation-worse

saw a piece (it is paywalled, sorry) by Matt Yglesias that seemed relevant. “The economy no longer needs stimulus—in fact, it needs to restrain demand,” he writes, noting the non-collection of student loans has the “opposite” effect. “A majority of the public, meanwhile, has $0 in student debt. If you limit your analysis to people under 30, the median student loan balance is still $0. For African-Americans, it’s $0. Most people do not go to college and do not incur student loan debt, and those non-debtors have lower incomes on average than the people who do go to college and do have debt. Restarting student debt collections would restrain inflation at the expense of a disproportionately high-income minority of the population. Broad debt cancellation, by contrast, would boost inflation.”

[The Blood]

7 hours ago, Patine said:

The inflation boogey strikes again to terrorize belaboured students! Really, it's just as a Government delaying excuse, like so many others. A Government who wants to avoid an issues that has a degree of popularity from their voters will (and has in the past) thrown endless excuses like this in succession. The inflation excuse, in and of itself, holds little. It's the matter of lack of political will by the Government despite it's voting base. Let's be honest, here.