Student Loan Forgiveness

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Originally Posted by Mustonen

what do you propose they should have done instead?

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Make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy and make schools more accountable when that happens.

Most of all, schools should change their priorities and adopt something more like the Purdue model. They should make it possible for the majority of students to leave school without any debt at all like Mitch Daniels has done at Purdue for more than a decade. Purdue's 11-year tuition freeze has saved Boilermaker families over a billion dollars. Sometimes it's what you don't do that matters most.

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Originally Posted by MultiVerse

Make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy and makes schools more accountable when that happens.

Most of all, schools should change their priorities and adopt something more like the Purdue model. They should make it possible for the majority of students to leave school without any debt at all like Mitch Daniels has done at Purdue for more than a decade. Purdue's 11-year tuition freeze has saved Boilermaker families over a billion dollars. Sometimes it's what you don't do that matters most.

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that's a cool story, for sure (minus the Kaplan private business portion)...and it'd be great if schools did economize instead of leaning in to pushing loans on everyone
but it will require incentivizing from the federal government to make them all comply...what form does that take? removing govt-backed loan programs?

Price caps are currently being floated as a possible solution. I don't understand how they would work to weigh in on that particular solution but I think those are the kinds of questions we should asking.

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Originally Posted by MultiVerse

Make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy and make schools more accountable when that happens.

Most of all, schools should change their priorities and adopt something more like the Purdue model. They should make it possible for the majority of students to leave school without any debt at all like Mitch Daniels has done at Purdue for more than a decade. Purdue's 11-year tuition freeze has saved Boilermaker families over a billion dollars. Sometimes it's what you don't do that matters most.

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You’re forgetting the policy goals. One of them is to ease the debt burden RIGHT NOW on the middle class. You’re also forgetting that not many levers are available for pulling, and certainly there isn’t a lever that will allow changes to the bankruptcy code via EO (congress….hah!). It’s unclear to me what levers are available to penalize schools when their students have their debts discharged in bankruptcy, but it doesn’t matter much without the former.

So, like…..try that again.

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Originally Posted by MultiVerse

Price caps are currently being floated as a possible solution. I don't understand how they would work to weigh in on that particular solution but I think those are the kinds of questions we should asking.

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meanwhile, with a non-functional congress...

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Originally Posted by Mustonen

So, like…..try that again.

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If the goal is to ease the debt burden RIGHT NOW, then fine. Just know that probably means even higher costs in the future. It's a beggar thy neighbor solution.

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Originally Posted by MultiVerse

It's all one big pot to future generations of Americans. Do we owe them anything?

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Still no. In the future the cost burden isn’t going to divvied up between every citizen equally.

(And won’t anyone think of the children! - Just not the particular ones we as a country chose to unduly burden, fuck those ones)

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Originally Posted by MultiVerse

If the goal is to ease the debt burden RIGHT NOW, then fine. Just know that probably means even higher costs in the future.

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Dude, you’re the one wrapped up in “policy goals.” I’m just reading a three page article and reporting back. You can do the same thing….

Costs for who? It’s all the same pot. If the middle class doesn’t pay it now, then somebody else is gonna pay it later? That’s exactly right. That’s what a loan is. That’s what a loan does.

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Originally Posted by MultiVerse

It's a beggar thy neighbor solution.

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Which country is gonna pay for it? Is this like the Mexico wall thing?

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Originally Posted by MultiVerse

If the goal is to ease the debt burden RIGHT NOW, then fine. Just know that probably means even higher costs in the future. It's a beggar thy neighbor solution.

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‘probably’ is doing ALL of the heavy lifting here…

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Originally Posted by MultiVerse

If the goal is to ease the debt burden RIGHT NOW, then fine. Just know that probably means even higher costs in the future. It's a beggar thy neighbor solution.

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we are responding to COVID & RU invasion effects in the economy, not poor planning (tho the Fed could shoulder some blame for trying to overstoke things)

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Originally Posted by Mustonen

Dude, you’re the one wrapped up in “policy goals.” I’m just reading a three page article and reporting back. You can do the same thing….

Costs for who? It’s all the same pot.

Which country is gonna pay for it? Is this like the Mexico wall thing?

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Originally Posted by J. Barron DeJong

‘probably’ is doing ALL of the heavy lifting here…

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Are you two purposely trying to be obtuse? Of course subsidizing higher ed even more is going to increase the increasing rate of college costs. Try and make an argument where it doesn't?

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Originally Posted by MultiVerse

Are you two purposely trying to be obtuse? Of course subsidizing higher ed even more is going to increase the increasing rate of college costs. Try and make an argument where it doesn't?

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Yeah sure. We should do that too. I’d propose that making community college free (alternative to expensive schools with all the amenities that still provide you a future) and making student loans harder to get and dischargeable in bankruptcy would have a pretty chilling effect on rising college tuition costs.

That isn’t an argument against this, though. Which I agree, isn’t the greatest thing I’ve ever seen; I’m just having a hard time mounting too compelling an argument against it.

Like I said, no reason to stop at this. We should do more things too! Sounds like you’ve got all kinds of energy to attack these problems. The world needs folk like you.

I want to be clear that I am in no way shape or form rooting for this outcome but it seems to me this is the most likely way this all plays out if eneacted:

1 - It's a one-time benefit
2 - It will have either no impact or it will increase college costs
3 - It will make the college culture wars even worse
4 - As a result of #3 government support for higher ed will decline in the future

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Originally Posted by Mustonen

Which country is gonna pay for it? Is this like the Mexico wall thing?

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Zing!

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Originally Posted by MultiVerse

I want to be clear that I am in no way shape or form rooting for this outcome but it seems to me this is the most likely way this all plays out:

1 - It's a one-time benefit
2 - It will have either no impact or it will increase college costs
3 - It will make the college culture wars even worse

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Now you’re being obtuse.

1 - the debt relief is a one time benefit that addresses the policy goal of relieving the debt burden on the middle class.
2 - the debt relief is not targeted at college costs, there are other elements of the action that address those. Do you care to opine on those elements of the plan that actually addresses college costs? Things like re-establishing enforcement units, new measures to increase accountability, etc.?
3 - is that even a stated policy objective? You mean blue collar against white collar kind of things? What?

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Originally Posted by MultiVerse

Of course subsidizing higher ed even more is going to increase the increasing rate of college costs. Try and make an argument where it doesn't?

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Wouldn't that depend on how the subsidy is set up?
I think we agree that the current loan structure does encourage tuition inflation, much as badly structured sub prime loans did to housing.

But I think you've used a more clumsy, wide brush than normal.

Point being that before Reagan, higher ed got more federal subsidies.


In the 1970s, states paid 65 percent of the costs of college. By 2013, states covered a mere 30 percent of college costs.
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Today’s student aid crisis has its roots in the 1980s. In 1981, the Reagan administration, with a coalition of congressional Republicans and conservative Democrats, pushed through Congress a combination of tax- and budget-cutting measures.

No federal program suffered deeper cuts than student aid. Spending on higher education was slashed by some 25 percent between 1980 and 1985. In raw dollar figures, cuts totaled $594 million in student assistance and $338 million in Pell grants. Students eligible for grant assistance freshmen year had to take out student loans to cover their second year. For middle-class families, eligibility was changed as well. Low-cost, low-interest, subsidized federal loans were limited to families with household incomes of less than $32,000, regardless of family size.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poste...-blame-reagan/

My tuition at one of these derided snooty liburahl ahts colleges where I wrote a thesis in the most useless math - Algebraic Topology, was $3200 in 1974. It's now around $80000.

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Originally Posted by Mustonen

Now you’re being obtuse.

1 - the debt relief is a one time benefit that addresses the policy goal of relieving the debt burden on the middle class.
2 - the debt relief is not targeted at college costs, there are other elements of the action that address those. Do you care to opine on those elements of the plan that actually addresses college costs? Things like re-establishing enforcement units, new measures to increase accountability, etc.?
3 - is that even a stated policy objective? You mean blue collar against white collar kind of things? What?

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It's a cautionary note about the long-run ramifications, not a policy objective in any way shape or form.

So what I mean is in a Republican vs Democrat kind of thing. When Republicans regain power they may well enact their own reforms now that college funding is in play. Arguably, the things Republicans will want to do in response will end up being more popular with a larger percentage of voters.

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Originally Posted by MultiVerse

Are you two purposely trying to be obtuse? Of course subsidizing higher ed even more is going to increase the increasing rate of college costs. Try and make an argument where it doesn't?

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But costs have been falling for over a decade is the point I’ve tried to make numerous times:

Attachment 425161

https://twitter.com/tobinjstone/stat...1P0sSrbBhZ8lag

So maybe this policy increases cost compared to the baseline, all else equal, but the baseline has been trending down, so it’s not clear that this policy is going to create some new un-affordability crisis.

Fair enough, apologies for the obtuse comment. The fact that they have been falling from a peak speaks to Matthew Yglesias' argument and not necessary a larger trend. He's saying a bad economy increased tuition, increased enrollment, and hurt earnings after graduation all because of the Great Recession.

So even though federal expenditures are down that doesn't mean college costs are down. Another way to think about it is when there's another recession per capita federal expenditures will go up even more with more generous subsidies.

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Originally Posted by J. Barron DeJong

But costs have been falling for over a decade is the point I’ve tried to make numerous times:

Attachment 425161

https://twitter.com/tobinjstone/stat...1P0sSrbBhZ8lag

So maybe this policy increases cost compared to the baseline, all else equal, but the baseline has been trending down, so it’s not clear that this policy is going to create some new un-affordability crisis.

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yet another entry in the dialogue failure that was the Great Recession. Austerity and upskill were dumb.

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Originally Posted by MultiVerse

Instead of bad poorly targeted policies that don't address the deeper issues, we need more things like this that do:

"As a part of my announcement to get relief to Americans with student debt, I'm holding colleges accountable for jacking up costs without delivering value to students.

We’ve terminated college accreditors that allowed colleges – like ITT and Corinthian – to defraud borrowers.

will also publish an annual list of colleges that leave students with unmanageable debt so that students can avoid these programs."


Also, too, second-tier affordable state schools are the gems of the American higher ed system because they do a good job graduating low-and-middle class kids into the upper-middle class, without requiring massive debt.

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I completely agree with all this.

Also, worth nothing that the Obama administration was also cracking down on predatory and shitty schools. It is absolutely correct than the Trump admin basically ended the crackdown. I'm glad it is resuming.

I do think the problem is much wider spread than those very obvious problem schools. "Jacking up prices without providing value" is IDing the target. The cause is a natural combination of free market responses to increased 3rd party secured money supply to customers who have disconnected motivations vs long term consequences while the price setting entities have few strings attached from the money supply policy controllers.

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Originally Posted by MultiVerse

It's a cautionary note about the long-run ramifications, not a policy objective in any way shape or form.

So what I mean is in a Republican vs Democrat kind of thing. When Republicans regain power they may well enact their own reforms now that college funding is in play. Arguably, the things Republicans will want to do in response will end up being more popular with a larger percentage of voters.

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So you’re saying this is gonna make the Ogre Paolowaskis of the world hate the NNEEEERRRRRDS! more? That’s why we shouldn’t do it? And by doing it, the republicans are gonna do what? Give money to the blue collar tradespeople?

Again. What?

Republicans will want to “Cut off the government dole to universities as fully and quickly as possible.”

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Originally Posted by MultiVerse

Republicans will want to “Cut off the government dole to universities as fully and quickly as possible.”

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"Operating on the absurd and socially corrosive assumption that all people should have the opportunity to go to college, the federal government has been backing loans open to virtually any American—regardless of merit or post-graduation earning potential—to finance the cost of a college education."

So according to this complete fucking douchebag, not all Americans should have the opportunity to go to college and further their education. Ya...fuck the fuck off. Classic conservative cunt.

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Originally Posted by MultiVerse

Republicans will want to “Cut off the government dole to universities as fully and quickly as possible.”

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Not even the pope can pretend to give a fuck about rod dreher and his bullshit mag that chases where trends were years ago