<p>Its not $400 a month. Please stop perpetuating a falsity, unless you can back it up with facts.</p>
<p>For the record, I don’t think college should be completely subsidized by taxpayers, or whether it should be subsidized at all. I think it is appropriate to require some contribution. It is definitely true that people value more what has a cost. </p>
<p>College is a privilege, not a right, that much I know. Maybe I took college more seriously when I had to contribute some of my own sweat to it. I know that was certainly true for grad school.</p>
<p>However, the cost should not be so prohibitive that it limits access to those that qualify. It is frustrating in California to see all of the UCs gradually raise their GPA requirements so that they have effectively become private schools. Saying a 3.0 GPA is a basic requirement and then only admitting 4.0 and above, is a bait and switch. </p>
<p>I am happy that I had to take out loans for both undergrad and grad, and had to learn the discipline of paying off the loans and managing my money.</p>
<p>^ Bay, you left out if the ratings agencies weren’t paid huge fees by the banks to rate the tranches AAA instead of the junk they really were…</p>
<p>College is a privilege, not a right? </p>
<p>Education is not a right? </p>
<p>Why?</p>
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<p>I know I have left out a lot of links in the chain. Including construction of those brand new beautiful 4,000 sft homes in the middle of nowhere that created X number of jobs…</p>
<p>Yup, those jobs aren’t coming back (especially here in San Diego where housing construction is DEAD)…</p>
<p>Build it and they will come. ;)</p>
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<p>They will come back, because our population will continue to increase. It just may not be in our lifetimes.</p>
<p>COLLEGE education should be considered a privilege. By the time a person is 17 or 18 years old it is reasonable to expect a certain level of dedication and responsibility for one’s higher education. When does the “babying” stop???</p>
<p>The taxpayers should in no way subsidize really bad decisions. </p>
<p>For some their expensive college degree was a really bad investment. Like taking out a loan to buy a Maserati to commute to that barista job.</p>
<p>"I know I have left out a lot of links in the chain. Including construction of those brand new beautiful 4,000 sft homes in the middle of nowhere that created X number of jobs…
Bay is offline "</p>
<p>I have a particular disdain for what the ratings agencies did at the behest of the banks as institutional investors (pensions, etc.) are barred from buying anything rated less than AAA. Buy rating that junk AAA enormous amounts of money were lost - college endowments got hit substantially from this fraud.</p>
<p>"College is a privilege, not a right? </p>
<p>Education is not a right? </p>
<p>Why? "</p>
<p>I think that K-12 education is a right. I don’t think that we should have a society where everyone needs to have a job that requires college. If that were the case, then it would be a right. </p>
<p>Higher education is a privilege, because it is something that I work hard for. It is not something that should automatically be provided to me just because I am of the proper age. I should have to work for it. I don’t have to ‘work’ to get my K-12 education, it is there and I am required to complete it. </p>
<p>We have the ‘right’ to be educated beyond K-12, but that doesn’t mean it should be without any personal cost. It just means that we should have the ability to achieve that goal.</p>
<p>“COLLEGE education should be considered a privilege. By the time a person is 17 or 18 years old it is reasonable to expect a certain level of dedication and responsibility for one’s higher education. When does the “babying” stop???”</p>
<p>I have no words…</p>
<p>emilybee—??? What don’t you understand about that?</p>
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<p>The bank would never give a loan for that maserati unless the loan was gauranteed by the government. The bank gave a bad loan. </p>
<p>If somebody believes this debt benefits us, show me how. </p>
<p>As for whether I believe there “should” be debt foregiveness, let me explain what I think using the situation Bay and eb are discussing. When AIG went under, the government stepped in and bought it and honored the risky CDO’s, (insurance against mortgage defualt) at 100%. This money wasn’t paid back to the government, nor was it the “market” move, or what the market would bear. Our government bought the company and paid high returns on high risk investments to Goldman Sachs, Duetchebank, UBS, Societe General, JP Morgan, to the tune of billions of dollars.</p>
<p>Now, you want to tell me that student loan debt ought not to be forgiven? </p>
<p>The double standard for those not named Paulson or Blankfien is astonishing. Truly astonishing.</p>
<p>You don’t think a COLLEGE-AGED STUDENT should be dedicated and responsible???</p>
<p>Here’s an example of how the current president’s give-away, er, student loan program can end up (please post if it’s wrong) -
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<p>Why is no one responding to my points about the qualifier for the term ‘college’ in the context of this thread when posters are proposing ‘free college’ directly and ‘free college’ by proxy through loan forgiveness on the backs of the taxpayers? All colleges, just some colleges, privates, publics, for profit, not for profit, a new suite of ‘national publics’, or what? How would you do it if it were up to you? Forget the idealistic view and talk about how you think it should be done practically.</p>
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<p>That was not my decision. I would not have forgiven any of it. We would have survived. If I have the chance to broadcast my disdain for loan forgiveness NOW, I’m taking advantage of it.</p>
<p>But, Bay, I think that is the problem. </p>
<p>If the government hadn’t already given all those billions to government sachs and Jamie Dimon and the geniuses in France and Germany? I would agree with you.</p>
<p>But, part of the reason the economy is not coming back is because that money was given away like that on those bad insurance bets and not used the way it was used in the savings and loan bailouts, the way Paulson and Berneke promised.</p>
<p>These kids walk out of college having made an incredibly bad bet on the economy, for which they deserve at least as much consideration as the French and German bankers. </p>
<p>You can’t have it both ways and not end up with class warfare. It’s a little bit too, “let them eat cake.”</p>
<p>Bay—If CC had a “like” tab to click, I’d like your posts! (I’ll just have to do it this way!)</p>