This would save young Americans from going into crippling debt, but it would also make a university degree completely unaffordable for most. However, in the age of the Internet, that doesn’t mean they couldn’t get an education.
Consider the long term impact of this. There are a lot of different ways such a situation could go, for better and for worse.
Loans aren’t the problem. Insane loan debt is a symptom of an unsustainable higher education system.
You can learn a lot on your own, but many careers require a formal education (medicine, law, engineering, etc.). By itself, banning student loans within our current system merely makes it harder for poorer people to attain those careers.
Loans that can’t be discharged are the problem. Tuition went out the roof when universities discovered this gold mine.
Student loans seem to be a massive part of the problem of out of control tuition increases. The National Bureau of Economic Research published this study in 2016 that showed that changes to the Federal Student Loan Program accounted for the majority of the 106% increase in tuition between 1987 and 2010. Whether that’s some right-wing scheme to divert attention from reduction of states’ funding of public universities I haven’t looked into, but it seems to me that it’s at least a significant factor on its face.
On the flip side, consider this. If no one can afford university, then the universities will have a reduced income and they’ll be forced to adapt by shrinking and lowering tuition rates. Cheaper institutions will end up with a competitive advantage. This could ironically make degrees more affordable.
You are saddling the horse from behind.
Yea, the education must get cheaper. A lot. But the lever to do that is a cost adjustment for the education, not artificially lowering demand by discriminating against the poor even more.
This only works if the product isn’t in demand. Degrees are in high demand - jobs require them, better jobs require multiple and higher prestige degrees. That isn’t going to change.
Instead those rich enough would still get a degree, but middle and lower classes would be cut out. In the end it would create a wider gap between the classes.
A. That would only be true in a culture where employers don’t think you need a degree for basic jobs. From what I’ve seen, the US isn’t like that.
B. Even if people are practically able to turn down uni, all the universities will most likely agree to keep prices high, similar to what landlords do. If all of them keep their prices high, then all of them get more money.
If no one could get a degree, employers would have to change their requirements to reflect this. Otherwise they won’t be able to find any employees.
Universities need to have their classrooms filled to stay in business. If attendance plummets, then they will be forced to adapt by reducing tuition prices and reducing expenses, i.e. providing less amenities.
They wouldn’t change the requirements. We see it now. When a company can’t find “qualified” candidates, they outsource it to international contractors.
It cost 70k to get my degree. Any idea how much tuition would have had to be for someone living out of a trailer to be able to afford it? If your answer was zero dollars you are correct.
I don’t believe encouraging someone to go into crippling debt over a certification will help them.
Education is how people get out of poverty op. The issue is that the US has a dog eat dog fuck the poor mentality that keeps the ladders out of poverty out of reach then blames them for their situation. The only thing that should determine whether you get into college should be your capability to do the work or not. Not what is or is not in your bank account.
The actual solution is to make college free given academic benchmarks are hit and institute mechanisms to keep costs under control that go beyond “how can we maximize profit?”
The benchmarks have to be weighted in order for this system to be fair across income levels. Also, making college free benefits well-off students more than poorer students. So many public schools offer full rides for low-income students, especially if they are first-generation students.
I was low income. This idea that the poor have enough aid is so divorced from reality.
How long ago were you in college? From my friends’ experiences, the lower income ones have had a really easy getting their educational expenses covered through grants and first-gen scholarships offered by my university. This does ignore living expenses, but strictly from a university perspective, they get more money than they pay.
So education for the wealthy only? Bugger off.
No. I predict we would revert to the status quo of 20-100 years ago, with very affordable state-run schools providing excellent education, and high price private schools catering to the rich. Cheap schools got expensive because we allowed the for-profit student loan industry to run wild.
Assuming nothing is done to curb the recent capitalist tendencies of universities to inflate tuition then yeah it would be mostly restricted to the wealthy. It might be possible that market forces would coerce them to become cheaper again in order to not end up getting shut down from lack of funding from lower enrollment though.
It’s also possible that lack of access to higher education would cause SOME kind of populist uprising, which people then hope would lead sweeping economic and social reforms.
But I’m increasingly pessimistic that populist uprisings in America would lead anywhere other than Christian fascism.
Shoulda been illegal/actually regulate, in the first place. Removing restrictions on raising tuition was also another lame move.
Given the other massive catastrophic defects in the fabric of our society, making student loans illegal makes about as much sense as outlawing flat tires. The law you’ll probably write isn’t going to punish the people who need to be punished, and it won’t help the people you’re trying to help.
I’m from a country with free university education and we also have student loans available.
Here’s something that works for us: forget about private universities, invest in federal or state owned collages so that they can compete with the private ones.
Do a scholarship program where students can get free entry into these universities if their grades are high enough in high school, or make it dependent on an entry exam. Those that don’t get in have a paid option that’s still partially funded by the state or federal government.
Student loans will still be useful, not for tuition but for families who can’t afford to send their kids to study in the cities where the universities are located.
Completely nonsensical and screws everyone involved.
Student loans are supposed to be an investment the government takes in its population. If it works properly then the money that the government spent on the students tuition is both paid back monetarily by the student as well as societally because now you have an educated citizen providing ever increasing tax revenue. If you make student loans illegal you not only make it impossible for students to educate themselves beyond public school you destroy the entire post secondary school industry now that so few can afford to educate themselves.
What needs to happen is cutting out all the middleman bullshit and just making post secondary education free with your taxes, at least a couple years worth. If someone wants to be a doctor or a lawyer or someone who needs to have more than a couple years worth then sure that can be on their dime. Otherwise those first 4 years are just unnecessarily saddling people with mountains of debt that there is no guarantee they can pay back after they are done
I hate capitalist economics, but the ease of obtaining student loans is one of the reasons for the high price of college tuition.
If student loans didn’t exist, then most people would not be paying outrageous tuitions. Colleges will be forced to accomodate.
Canada recently stopped charging interest on their student loans, that goes a long way to affordability. The other thing though is just plain cost of education. It can be cheaper to get a 4-year degree from a Canadian University than take one year of a comparable program in the US.
The ease of student loans would not exist without government backing. In a pure capitalism, this wouldn’t be a problem.
There’s no such thing as capitalism without a state. It cannot exist.
You may know everything, but no degree no luck?
Why not think a but further? Money for people that need it, free universities? Like… in the EU?
Generally oppose.
We would need massive structural changes in education and funding before banning student debt; you’d need to make university free, and give students a living stipend while they were there, as loans usually cover living expenses as well. I can’t see that happening in the current political climate. So if we simply outlawed educational loans, the effect would be that millions of people would no longer have access to higher education at all.
The idea that you can learn things on the internet ignores the fact that the internet is rife with misinformation–i.e., bullshit and outright lies–and it allowed people to get into thought bubbles, which higher education fights against pretty effectively.
I want to add:
Most books have never been digitized. Most information that you would learn in college is still in books and not on the Internet. You can’t replace access to information (and reading that information) in college with lack of access to information (and thus not reading that information) online.
In addition, the Internet doesn’t give you access to passionate subject-matter experts who are necessary guides to help us travel down the path of acquiring the knowledge that they have. Sure, there’s recordings of MOOC lectures, but they become outdated and you can’t ask them questions or have them help you by giving useful assignments and answer your questions and give you constructive criticism.
If higher education is going to work we would do better to pay those experts (the poor teachers) a fair living wage so that they can focus on the quality of their teaching and not be desperately trying to survive and navigate departmental politics while hoping that bureaucratic administrators don’t cut the library budget (again) while dumping money into a new football field (why is sports part of college anyway? Why can’t there be a separate and unrelated sports-academy system for the sports people so that it’s impossible to misappropriate from academic budgets in favor of sports?).
Totally agree.
In addition, the Internet doesn’t give you access to passionate subject-matter expert
You can find them on Discord servers, message boards, and YouTube channels. But knowing who is actually an SME, and who has a great line of believable bullshit, is quite challenging. In a university system, you have a group of peers that are making that determination.
I feel the same way about that as I do about making ALL education - K through 16 (or tech/vocational) FREE.
I am all for it. We have way too many stupid people shoving their voices in matters that don’t concern them. Educated would be better.
That’s not at all what OP proposed though. They want to keep tuition as is, just eliminate loans.
Not exactly. I’m saying that banning loans would lower the price of education, either through cost cutting by universities or by a new education system taking its place.
But unless it’s free, the majority of people wouldn’t be able to afford it anyway. Remember most people live week to week with no savings buffer.
Right, but I don’t like that idea in the least. Loans - gone. Need for loans - gone. Education available for all - reduction of trumpistic stupidity - I am in favor of intelligent humans opposed to the ongoing increase in stupid ones.
I think it’s a great idea. It’ll be really good for society when most of your population are finally highly educated and have their own PhDs in internet research!
I also look forward to the day where you Americans beg Cuba for a humanitarian dispatch of doctors to treat your plague and leprosy epidemics.
What issue are you looking to solve? You state that you believe people are able to seek out, and attain their education independently through resources like the internet. So why would it matter if there are alternatives that cost money which one can pay, and receive loans for?
It matters because American culture currently prefers everyone to have a college degree as opposed to any other type of education. Loans exist to allow the poor to “keep up with the Joneses” for a few years and then yoke them into debt for the rest of their lives. If this avenue was cut off then the attitude of the public would change to allow other means of education.
Why make it illegal? Why not offer only federal loans?
How about:
20 year loan, 4.125% fixed rate 30 year loan, 4.375% fixed rate
No early repayment penalties and maybe interest returned incentives for full repayment return before term at certain benchmarks.
The average debt for a 4-year Bachelor’s degree is $34,700. At the end of 20 years the total repayment amount would be $36,131.375, 30 years would be $36,218.125.
Looks good to me.
Why not make it free? At the end of the education cycle the student will get a job and start paying taxes. Isn’t that what society needs? Having educated people to do various jobs. Why putting that behind a crazy paywall?
I’d be in favor of that too. My point was to highlight that it’s not the loans themselves that are the problem.
In my country loans are interest free. This makes them easy to pay off with destroying your life. You can also pause payments with no issue.
with destroying your life
(͡•_ ͡• )
Sounds like he means work
You could also just not take out college loans.
In the early 2000s I did community College and then got my bachlors. 6 years and no debt.
