Curious about how others are feeling about "canceling" student loans

Parents Forum
201

@creekland, I didn’t say that either one was good. Either way, you’re poor as hell, you have no benefits usually, and you never know when you’re going to be working – you’re at the mercy of scheduling managers.

Please don’t look at some sort of imagined cheerful poor and believe that people are just happy being poor and prefer to live that way. That’s is an attitude I encounter regularly on this site, and it’s no truer now than it was when Reagan was saying people just like being homeless.

However happy those kids you mention were with their low-pay factory work, I’m sure they’d have been even happier if their salary for that work had hit living-wage or professional money.

202

I remember my immense shock when I was looking through prospective investments’ filings some years ago, I got to the Student Loan Corporation, and there was a picture of societal ruin. An immense transfer of wealth from young and poor to old and rich. Must’ve been around 2004.

I’m not too far from retirement myself now, and I’m fine with making less money by not ripping off young people for something that we ought to be providing them with, if we’re going to be making it essentially mandatory in order to make a reliable living.

203

The bar to high school graduation was not high even a few decades ago. When I was in high school, there were plenty of students doing just enough to pass (D grade) the minimum set of courses needed to graduate. Based on what I saw in courses that included the full range of students (i.e. from the high achievers aiming for more selective colleges to those doing just enough to pass courses to graduate), the academic standards needed to earn D grades to pass courses and graduate were quite low, particularly in elective courses (i.e. not mainline courses like English or US history).

204

It is not like high school graduation standards were that high a few decades ago. So what is the difference between the minimal expectation for a high school graduate a few decades ago versus now that causes employers to want a bachelor’s degree for jobs that they used to require a high school diploma for?

1 Like
205

Just an observation apropos of some of the points made on this thread-

In the world of employee benefits (talking large corporations here), Educational Benefits are considered a terrific “add-on” for companies considering beefing up their offerings. Why? Because they are cheap (since so few employees actually take advantage of them so it doesn’t cost much to offer) and because employees AND candidates love to talk about how great the benefit is, even though they themselves aren’t using them.

I’ve worked for companies that had hoops to jump through (needed a B or better in the course before the company would pay, employee had to pay for the class and THEN get the money back) and companies where there were no hoops at all (take a course at an accredited institution and the company pays). Some companies limit what they’ll pay for (an accounting analyst can take Valuation or Real Estate finance, but not Philosophy 101) and other companies only restrict the benefit to degree-granting institutions (so yes to Philosophy 101 but no to Zumba at your local health club).

So for all the talk about all the young people who are desperate for grad school, desperate to advance, really want to make more money (which often means finishing that BA, or getting a Masters, whether we think corporate America is bonkers for requiring it, that’s reality in many fields) the % of young adults who actually take advantage of these programs is relatively low.

I don’t always understand human behavior. I’ve had people working for me who could be making a lot more money if they’d “finish up” whatever degree they started. They can do it online (there are some recommended “low residency” programs but it’s their choice if they want a local college). The reasons given are often hard to understand although I get it that life gets in the way and makes it hard to turn things around if you are moving in one direction.

But it does make me skeptical that the ONLY barrier to education is financial. It is a significant barrier for a large number of people, but it’s not the only barrier.

3 Likes
206

The main problem, as I’ve pointed out repeatedly in our conversations, is that work itself has become vastly more complex, and that’s true whether you’re teaching college or selling widgets or installing water softeners. Decades ago we had millions of (by comparison) simple jobs that needed to be performed by meat robots. Sure, they were incredibly dull, but you didn’t need to be able to figure out complex problems on the fly, document much of anything in original paragraphs, call on knowledge that ranged far outside your job, be aware of “trends” outside your own doors or city, or communicate well with teams. You do need that now even to do mundane jobs without people complaining about how nothing works because the workers are so dumb/incompetent/unmotivated.

There are two solutions here, neither of which the CC community likes, but without such solution the alternative is a very large class of unemployed, which the CC community also doesn’t want. I’m here saying you’re going to be stuck with some combination of the three.

Solution 1: Provide the education this society requires for work that can sustain an adult life. This does not entail pretending that complex jobs are not complex or complaining that they have become unnecessarily complex and someone orta fix it.

Solution 2: Do not allow industry to produce highly-engineered systems and enterprises willy-nilly, so that the vast numbers of people who once flourished in the age of meat robotry can go on making a decent living. I understand that this is unpalatable, and have suggested compromises in other threads here that went ignored in favor of the fun of shouting about Luddites.

Solution 3: Support people for doing nothing, UBI/Player-Piano style, and be surprised when people aren’t happy with just getting money for rotting away.

I guess there’s always Solution 4, A Modest Proposal.

207

I don’t really understand what’s so hard to understand. If your work and commute are eating 10-12 hours a day, and you have any obligations outside your own skin, and you’re crushed by having been batted around by systems that do their level best to make you feel inadequate and unequal to normal adult life, and you’ve had 20 years of having rewards dangled that then turn out not actually to be rewards but just more obligation without much advancement or improvement in your life, and you’ve been handed gutted health insurance and other necessities that require you to be a jailhouse lawyer in order not to fall into financial traps, and when you look around at your peers it’s the same story all over town, then I’m really not surprised that people don’t go on knocking themselves out further.

I’ve said elsewhere that at this point I see students walking in hostile. As freshmen. First day. They’ve already been so beaten up by the unintended (and, at times, intended) consequences of NCLB and our delightful college-application gauntlet that they’ve decided they know what the system can do to itself and they’re barely willing to play anymore, and are doing it only because they see no other way of making a living. But they’re not hiding anymore how angry they are about it. And year after year, I watch the cost to them of being in that classroom rise, and year after year I think about what I can give them that justifies that cost, even though as an adjunct, I’m there getting paid less than I’d make at Costco. The only reason that I’m still in that classroom is that it’s a public university classroom, which means tuition is obscene, but much lower than it’d be at my alma mater. If it were what they charge there, I’d tell the children, “I have no way of giving you any education that’s worth this money. If you find such a thing, please let me know, because I would like to come see this marvel. Since I can’t give you value for money, I decline to participate in robbing you. I’ll be outside under that tree holding a no-tuition teach-in every Wednesday, for which you won’t get any credit, but at least you might learn something.”

208

Right now, about 34% of the age 25+ population in the US has a bachelor’s degree or higher, and an additional 11% has an associates degree. That means that about 55% does not have a college degree (although they may have had some other types of post-high-school education and/or training). Are you suggesting that (a) there are no jobs that they can do effectively (then where are many of them working now?), and/or (b) they are considered “dumb/incompetent/unmotivated”?

4 Likes
209

Yes, they’re struggling very hard. Many of them are not working or are marginally employed at poorly-paid jobs that disappear easily. Many are working retail or warehouse jobs where they’ll be replaced as soon as the next improvement in robots comes along. Some struggle along in trades where they’ve long since been overwhelmed by the complexity of what they’re dealing with. Some are older and terrified that they’re past it, because not only do their new co-workers have college degrees, their new co-workers talk all the time about how old so-and-so is very “set in their ways” and sweet and all but will have to be edged out or worked around. And one day, the boss installs a new incomprehensible system, and that older worker goes home and cries and then sometimes quits. Or stands there arms across chest at work insisting that the new system isn’t necessary and trying not to cry.

Some of them get experience in these jobs and figure they know what they’re doing, then lose those jobs, then find the only similar jobs are offered by local branches of some larger corporation that has HR software their applications won’t get through.

These are the people the for-profits prey on.

Long ago I worked on setting the new scoring rubrics for the revised, corporate GED. You get a GED because you need one for work, mostly. When Pearson bought a majority stake in the GED, they shifted the “passing” bar from “can graduate high school” to “is ready for college”. There’s a wide gulf between those two statements, but they wanted to sell college-ready people. Other employees and I argued vociferously at the time that this was going to hurt a very large number of people who didn’t have the ability to try again. Many of the people who have that little cushion in the world have one shot, and while they would’ve scraped by past “can graduate high school”, in no realm of the imagination would they have been ready for college. Pearson ignored us, the new test went through, and a few years later several states scrapped it because it was indeed smashing people who needed to work against the wall.

Now, however, they’re in trouble anyhow. I think Yang’s a dope mostly, but this thing he’s yelling about with AI is real. If you tell me you’re willing to pay someone a living wage to come take care of your lawn and landscaping when, for an $8K one-time layout, you can have robots do it, then…well, then you’re an unusual person. But this is what people who can’t stay ahead of the robots are now up against.

The most recent person to talk to me about being worried about competition from AI? My dentist.

1 Like
210

I respect your experience and admire the work you do, and the fact that your students manage to hang in there.

I am talking about young people who already have jobs, have health insurance. If they are walking around feeling inadequate, and “crushed”, then even more so- take advantage of MORE education (paid for by your employer, who I guess is the entity “crushing” you? Or batting you around?). I am not describing low income students at a public U which is the population you see. I am describing entry level employees whose employers offer tuition benefits, and in many cases, it is extremely easy to qualify for said benefits. Sign up online for a college course, send the screenshot that you are starting a college course at an accredited institution to your HR rep. And then take the course.

What jailhouse lawyer are you referring to?

And gutted health insurance???

2 Likes
211

FWIW, @bennty and I live in different worlds (so it seems). I’ve no desire to move to theirs!

I live in a county where the percentage of bachelor’s or higher is 24%, the median household income is 67K, and plenty of people enjoy what they do - enjoy life in general. Our students who go off to college (most to state schools) return back with more good stories than bad (far more) and almost always end up in a job they enjoy either around here or elsewhere in the world. Our students who opt for trade school (or trades in general) also enjoy what they do and rarely wish they had done something else. They tend to stay local.

Quite honestly, those who tend to not enjoy themselves are those who get caught up in the drug culture and can’t escape. Usually - not always - but usually we have a good idea who they are going to be prior to leaving high school. (Some, of course, are already there.)

Yes, we have those who I see in the police blotter, but the percentages are quite low.

Among my neighbors, church friends, oodles of H’s clients, and kids’ friends, people are generally happy with their choice for occupations.

Maybe that’s why we moved here a couple of decades ago - when we were searching for an area to settle down in - maybe we felt the difference in the air - who knows?

11 Likes
212

It’s also why noncoastal regions have been suffering brain drain now for decades, and why it’s increasingly difficult for people to get out. 20 years ago, I used to hear young people trying very hard to stay after getting their college degree, not wanting to leave, or vowing they’d find a way to come back. Now a lot of them just run, and if you suggest they come back you’ll feel some heat. That’s not just the economics; it’s also the politics that have changed with the economics.

Suppose you grow up here, or in some similar place in the broad middle of the country, with a not-great K-12 system funded poorly by both the state and local property values. That’s not your fault, obviously, but you’re told that you’ve had a wonderful education, and how would you know the difference? You get good grades, which probably isn’t very hard, and go to college, which makes everyone happy and proud, and despite some family opposition you decide to go to the state university rather than the community college because you want some kind of profession and you just feel ambitious. You’re also told that your state university is the bee’s knees, and nothing in your world tells you much different. Sure, there are people freaking out online about going to these wildly expensive schools you can’t even think about, but it’s hard for you to imagine having that much money in the first place, and if you did, the idea of throwing it away like that is beyond how you think about the world. You see zero advantage to doing any such thing and don’t know anyone who has. If you brought it up to your parents, they’d just laugh.

So you go to college, you come out, you’re a cheerful and gregarious person and your parents have a lot of friends, so you get some sort of entry-level something that pays around $40K and is close enough to home to make you and your family happy, which is great because you’re about to get married anyway and you want to be close to someone’s mom. You both have student debt, it’s a lot, and you kind of weren’t expecting how much you were going to struggle, especially once you have a kid, which will be soon because everyone has a big family and while you think that’s excessive, you definitely want a couple of kids and you think it’s wrong to give them old parents who can’t do much with them. In fact, once you do have a kid, you’re aware that you couldn’t make it if it weren’t for your moms doing daycare for you. Both of you are employed, but loans plus kid stuff plus your house that your dads helped you buy so you could catch a break on monthly housing costs (rent! it’s too high!) plus cars plus…it’s too much. You hunt around but the jobs that really pay well either require experience or ed you don’t have or are basically scams.

Nobody helped you figure this out ahead of time because all your parents have spent their adult lives seeing everything upended time and again and they get through by just trusting that something will turn up and relying on family and trusting in God, which is most of what they’ve got. Not all of your parents went to college. Money conversations are few and grave: it’s not done to talk about money.

After four or five years of this you and your spouse are coming to the conclusion that while you love everyone you’re never going to get ahead this way, and you’re starting to be worried for your kids. You’re checking up on the school situation and fretting about it. And you want to get out. You spend a lot of time talking about how family members managed it – an aunt who works for an airline, a cousin who has a mysterious business in Delaware, someone who became a lawyer, people who went career military – and you’ve been scrolling Glassdoor and other such sites to find out where people make money.

Problems: one, you know no one in these other places, meaning that you’d move somewhere with zero supports, hard enough on your own, a serious problem when you have young children – you’d have to figure in a lot more in childcare (and because you’re thinking about what friends pay, you’re wildly underestimating it).

Two, where are you going to live? Housing is so crazy expensive in all these other places that you can’t figure it out. If you sell your house, that’s good for…approximately nothing that you’re seeing. You can rent tiny apartments forever and you don’t want your kids growing up that way.

Three, although you don’t know that you’re not trained in competitiveness like people in these other places have been all their lives and you’re likely to get smashed by people who really know how to go after a job and make the job go, you sense that there are important things you’re not picking up on and you’re nervous. You’re beginning to suspect that you have what you have because you know local people, not because your college education’s making you such a worldbeater.

Four, you’ve got loans. Like together you’ve got $60-70K worth because your spouse got tricked by a private college’s teaser rate and had an expensive year before they bailed and transferred to a state U. You’re trying to pay them off. You’re worried about risking leaving your jobs and going into a bad situation where you can’t even make your payments, because you know the way to really get sucked under is to let the debt snowball.

Welcome to “bird in the hand”, where the situation obviously isn’t great, but you’re getting by, your kids have lots of family around, and things could be worse. What you’re not really aware of is that this situation arose somehow, and that post-industrial America has been just fine with sucking all the resources to the coasts and letting the invisible hand sort it out and letting the military be the employer of last resort. While being heavily subsidized in sucking the resources to the coasts. You’re not stupid, you sense things are going in the wrong direction, there are family members whose politics are so conspiratorial you won’t let them babysit the kid if you can get out of it, but there isn’t a whole lot you can figure out to do apart for going back for more school of some kind (which you might do), so you decide to suck it up, be as positive as you can, especially in public, and fret a lot at your spouse at home. Odds are excellent that the resolution will involve church. Now and then you’ll have a private conversation with a young person who’s got a shot at leaving and you’ll get suddenly super-focused and urgent and tell them to get the hell out while they’ve got a chance. No one will speak of that conversation again, though the kid will take it seriously.

It’s a problem that I think is much bigger than the ed problems are. I don’t know how you fill that hole. But I do know that what these places need more than anything is good jobs, and if you have a well-educated workforce, that’s an attraction. Which is part of why I’m fully in support of dumping a ton of money into public K-16. By itself, I don’t think it solves the middle-of-the-country problem, but I do think it’s a necessary piece.

213

I’m talking here not about my students, but about the 20- and 30-somethings in cities where you’re supposed to want to be, people who aren’t leaping at what you see as opportunity and a doorway to advancement and they see as yet one more probable scam. They’re not paid well for 24-hour-tethered work, they’re carrying ridiculous debt burdens (so aren’t really feeling the benefit of working like this), odds are decent they’ve got side gigs, they’re supposed to be presenting themselves as happy/successful like life’s an all-day photo shoot, and if they’re in cities their housing and/or commute is ridiculous. People have been telling them since they were eleven years old that it’s totally crucial that they work hard and go to college so they can have good lives. Well, they worked crazy hard, they fought their way into the opportunity to borrow some nutty amount for college, they got told all through college that their endless work there was going to lead to greatness or at least solid professional jobs, they’re excruciatingly aware of what it’s cost their parents, they came out the other side, and now they’ve got…this. So when you get all excited at them about this marvelous free opportunity, they’re both exhausted and giving you side-eyes you can’t see. They see a marvelous chance to knock themselves out harder for something that won’t make that much difference.

I find that a lot of them have no bandwidth for thinking longterm, either. It’s not that they’re stupid or unimaginative or lazy. It’s that they’re in a continuous panic loop about money and whether or not their jobs will be there tomorrow and whether family members are okay, and they’re coming off of decades of training in very short-term thinking. Tick that box, get that grade, win that thing, move on. There’s no larger dream because honestly they don’t believe any such things are realistic, dreaming’s been discouraged in favor of proximal advantage, and the prospect of imagining yet more things they can’t have is just exhausting and depressing. Netflix or a yoga class sounds preferable.

My kid used to tell me she couldn’t do x because she was just too stressed, and I’d be looking around and asking, what the bleep are you so stressed about? What do you have to do around here? What’s so demanding in your life, because I see you staring into your phone a lot? And then I started paying closer attention, and the school and social things were just insane. Absolutely mad, and the kids were all little overshocked hamsters about grades and opportunities and schedules and extracurriculars and you name it. And this is a pretty relaxed place next to many. So even if your kid wasn’t living some pathologically overscheduled life, with 12-15 hour days in the school building (early bird, school school, activities/sports) and then more homework and games/performances/etc. at night, everything in the culture was screaming at them to run for their lives and smile and look great while doing it. We get a weekly school newsletter that I bet mirrors such newsletters all over the country,and I call it the Weekly Winners List. It’s mostly lists of prizes, awards, competitions kids have won. The school’s got 1600 kids but you wouldn’t know it by this thing; if you aren’t in there winning your heart out, with your parents freaking at you the whole way along to do more, you may as well not exist.

They’re exhausted, the young people. You can’t panic and overwork people from childhood on like that, and hand them not much at the end, and expect a good and hopeful result in their young adulthood. (How I know, incidentally: apart from keeping in touch with former students, I answer the phone when people call and the door when people knock. And if they’re much younger I’ll usually engage them in conversation just to get the news. How they’re living, what they think, what they think their prospects are, how they feel about things. Election seasons are good for this, but really just about any time. Alumni development calls, brokerage calls, insurance calls, you name it. It doesn’t really matter what kind of job it is because so many people with 4-year degrees, even graduate degrees, wind up working the phones.)

Some do brilliantly. Some really get on an escalator right after school, and they’re happy and prosperous people rocketing through the ranks. Honestly, though, it’s luck for most of them. They just happened to choose the door with an escalator behind it and not a trap door. They’ll say as much several years on, because from where they are now they can see how the other choices on offer would’ve treated them. At the time, they had no way to know.

If you’re advising people about great opportunities that they won’t go for, and it’s not just one person but a pattern, it’s a good time to ask what’s wrong with the opportunity, because something’s wrong with the opportunity, not the people. Same thing happened when whatshisface at the College Board offered poor kids bonanzas for applying to prestige schools, then wondered why the uptake was so low.

Jailhouse lawyer: a metaphor. If you don’t want to get snagged by your student loan servicer’s rules, bank’s rules, insurance company’s rules, all the rules, you’re spending a lot of time reading rules and being jumpy about them, especially if you’re at the bottom of the ladder and you can’t absorb much loss. Gutted health insurance: ACA’s done some persistent good things, but providing decent and affordable health insurance for all isn’t one of them. As ACA’s receded, employer health plans have, too, though from what I can tell not as springily.

214

Wow…

There are plenty of people in this country, in areas across this country, that are happy at various education and SES levels. Not everyone wants the same thing. Not everyone will get the same thing.

Perhaps too many people have been pushed to get a college education in a degree (any degree just because) without looking at the opportunities, or lack thereof, provided by that degree.

Taking on debt makes sense for many college degrees and college students. Taking on excessive debt that doesn’t offer a ROI is ludicrous. There’s where much of the issue lies. Life isn’t fair. There are opportunities available for paths in life. We all make decisions daily about how to move forward.

Cancelling student loans doesn’t reduce education costs. Making better economic choices reduces costs. Low interest money should he available for training and education resources. Students should he expected to pay it back. There are lower cost paths that lead to the same outcome. Unfortunately we don’t all have the same start.

Even if college is suddenly made “free” to all, their would be great discrepancies. There simply aren’t enough seats at the UCs, Michigan, Penn State, UNC, Georgia Tech, etc to accommodate everyone. Who would choose the winners/losers?

It’s certainly an extremely complicated issue. I’m not sure the car mechanic or grocery store ckerk should be subsidizing his dentist’s education though and then paying the high cost of service afterwards. YMMV.

8 Likes
215

I can see that you have seen a lot of the negative things happening to the 20- and 30- somethings that you are around. But I do not think that it is “luck” for the folks who are doing well in that age range, but a set of choices and mindsets that have set certain people on happier or not so happy trajectories. The part that can be luck is being born into a family without as many financial restraints, but even having money is not a guarantee of avoiding the miserable lives (at least my interpretation) that you have portrayed in your posts.

Two of my siblings are Millennials along with my oldest nephew, and I have watched them live really happy and financially successful lifestyles (each makes over 6 figures) and I believe that success came down to a few choices along with being “built” with a certain mindset. Our society today is built on “keeping up with the Jones’s”, but I have watched my family think more around figuring out things you love to do and then figuring out how to do those things (and monetize them). My young family members have avoided college debt through high level academic success in areas that they absolutely love, live well below their means, and find greater joy in experiencing the world through books, traveling abroad, and unique experiences than social media, grinding work schedules and “running a rat race” just to be like everyone else. They work hard (but its not really hard when they love what they do for a living), play hard, give back with “our time, our talents and our treasures”, and always give thanks for what has been provided for us as a family.

I can tell you as a Black man that waiting for the government to solve your problems (whether it be cancelling loans, or any of the many promises that are made) will have you waiting for a very long time. @MarylandJOE is right that there will still be “winners and losers” so one’s mindset and choices matter more than any government intervention.

12 Likes
216

Brain drain to the coasts? I’m not seeing that at all. We know many people actively avoiding the coasts and the COL. I grew up in NY. Have lived in the Midwest almost my entire adult life. Way better work life balance and much less stress. Our quality of life is way higher.

While I appreciate the conversation happening here, the sweeping generalizations aren’t accurate.

11 Likes
217

Really too much to unpack here- but if you were to show some of these posts-- stressed out/limited opportunities/tethered to a region with no jobs because Mommy provides free childcare and Daddy helped you buy a house so your kids wouldn’t have to live in an apartment, and you can’t move for professional advancement because you won’t know anyone there-- to an immigrant or a refugee in this country, they would howl with laughter. Absolutely howl.

And I’m not talking about the immigrant who was a neurosurgeon back in his own country who is now driving a cab while learning enough English to pass the Boards. Talking about refugees who got here- some with enormous personal agency and well honed survival skills plus luck, and others who only had luck- and who have NONE of the family supports you are talking about as limiting opportunity and tethering people to “go nowhere” jobs which don’t pay a living wage.

If the plan to cancel student loans is to enable ANOTHER generation to not being able to think past next Tuesday-- Gee, I’ll have to think about it. I thought the plan was to help people pay off loans whose lives turned to $%^& for reasons outside their control- cancer diagnosis, can’t work. Kid with autism, needs thousands of dollars in therapies not covered by insurance. House flooded by hurricane whomever and insurance only covers the structure, not the beds and furniture.

You ask any child (who will be my age, so in their 60’s or older) of someone who made it out of Nazi Germany if they spend time worrying that if they move for their job they won’t know anyone they will fall over in astonishment. Ditto for refugees (who are likely in their 40’s now) who made it out of Uganda, refugees in their 30’s who got sponsors when they were trying to leave Somalia, and more recent arrivals fleeing famine and war in Yemen and Ethiopia.

Talk about rich folks problems- even when the folks aren’t rich. Bird in the hand? Sounds pretty luxurious to first Gen Americans.

And I will point out that you are describing a generation of people (20’s and 30’s, starting and raising families) who will Yelp 20 different places before ordering a pizza. They will check 15 different Instagram feeds to see which shampoo to buy. And they are too dumb to google to find a reasonably priced neighborhood in a city with better economic opportunities??? Nah, don’t think so.

“While being heavily subsidized in sucking the resources to the coasts.” Who is doing this subsidy? Last time I checked, the largest “subsidies” were to farming communities with agricultural giveaways, energy producers in places like Tulsa OK, and military installments which are in the middle of the country and often in rural areas.

Who is subsidizing Boston and SF?

6 Likes
218

There is certainly an element of luck involved, but it rarely surprises the teachers I work with when we see the outcomes of most of our students. Sure, we might not know exactly what job they go for since many will change their minds post high school or even after their first job, but personality traits show us a lot. And it certainly isn’t always the top academic students who are the happiest. It tends to be those who learned the most in kindergarten I think.

I know adults with a great education and lots of options who didn’t really make it and do nothing but complain about everything (weather, politics, people parking incorrectly in a space, and more), and I know adults who never cared to go to college, make below our county’s median income, and are fun loving, happy people. I know recent immigrants who work their tails off so their kids can have a better life, yet they’re still quite fun to be around. And I know people who always preferred the darker side of life.

Personality and people skills count for as much in life as education for most of us. For those born into super wealthy, probably not so much as they have a gazillion safety nets.

I still think it’d be terrific for the US to provide more of a safety net educationally for the rest of society, esp since many well-paying jobs require post high school additional education now.

3 Likes
219

I believe we are on the same page… I do believe luck is involved in some cases, but the fact that teachers are not often surprised by outcomes may come from seeing certain traits in students that lead to those outcomes.

I think most on this thread think that we should do something, but the question is what that something is. I disagree with dismissing any amount of debt without some type of service or payback, but the rising costs of a college education has to be dealt with. I would prefer dealing with the rising costs 1st, and then addressing how to help those in debt (although interest rates should immediately be capped at low rates), but I will always have an issue sending tax payer money for people who ran up large private school debt and OOS debt well above an in-state degree, and those with large graduate/professional school debt.

6 Likes
220

I’m not fond of anything more than the 27K the feds provide for “typical” undergrad. That’s enough for most people to have done something with. If they want/wanted more, that’s on them.