Americans, how would you feel about making student loans completely illegal?
Americans, how would you feel about making student loans completely illegal?
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.
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.
Ah yes, let's make getting an accredited degree something only the wealthy can afford, that'll do well for the working class you betcha.
Class mobility is stagnant enough, I truly cannot see any upside to this for the vast majority of people.
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.
Shoulda been illegal/actually regulate, in the first place. Removing restrictions on raising tuition was also another lame move.
This is a horrible idea.
Ban, no. Cap, maybe. Completely overhaul, yes.
- Any school that receives any public funds should make school completely free to all students with a permanent address in that constituency. If my tax money is going to a school, I shouldn't have to pay tuition for my kids to go there.
- Students who graduate and are not offered (or are laid off or fired without cause from) a job that provides them sufficient pay and benefits to get them to 300% of the local poverty level should be forgiven each month's payment for as long as they are in that state. Not deferred or paused, forgiven.
- Anyone who graduates and takes a job with a federal, state, or local governmental entity or nonprofit organization should likewise have their student loan payment forgiven for every month they are employed.
- Anyone who takes a K12 teaching position after graduation should have their student loans forgiven at a rate of one year's worth of payments per month of teaching.
- Student loan forgiveness should be taxed at 0% in every state and nationally.
- Student loans should be capped at a total value that would limit repayment to 10 years, while allowing a student to maintain an income after repayment of 300% of the poverty line during that time. After reaching the cap, if the student is more than 50% complete with their degree, they should be permitted to complete that degree.
- Students who do not graduate, or who change their major partially through the program, should be able to apply the value of tuition already paid, adjusted for inflation, toward eventually returning to school; or pass that credit on to a child or other family member.
This is just off-the-cuff; I haven't thought about the implications of all of these. But I think it would help significantly.
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.
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
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?
Permanently Deleted
Health insurance first please.
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.
In the short term, only the children of the wealthy could continue into higher education. Anyone else who had dreams of doing anything that required higher ed, including professions that are already in short supply like doctors, nurses, and pharmacists, would be SOL. I can see how "starve the beast" makes an appealing, easy to understand fix for the issues in higher education, but I think the cost to people is too high to do it like that.
The loans in my country aren't too bad.
It's not a normal loan, it doesn't appear on my credit checks.
It's provided by the government and has low interest.
You only pay it back once you earn over a certain amount and they take a single digit percentage of your wages.
It's more like a graduate tax as paying it off doesn't matter, short of not wanting it taken from your wages.
I earn around double the national average and pay around 100 a month. Which isn't a huge amount. Basically a decent meal out + drinks a month.
Yeah. "Internet education" 🤓
(EDIT: You can hire me for the job. I'm right on top of 'mount stupid' in the Dunning-Kruger effect. I'm an expert in shitposting and a self-taught know-it-all when it gets to know what american politics gets wrong. I'd even volunteer some strong oppinions on gun laws.)
Not without destroying Citizen United legal premise first which I am also in favor of doing.
Right now spending money == free speech
Then giving loans is free speech, too. That is the the tackle.
I wouldn't say outlawing loans solves anything. Capping interest rates, sure - probably even at a pretty modest figure. Making repayment reasonably flexible is also a good idea. But the underlying problem is that the tuitions themselves are insane, leading to insanity when trying to pay it all off, no matter how it's financed. Subsidies or grants or loans (or specifically messing with any of them) seem like workarounds for the insane and largely arbitrary/"greedflated" price tag.
As a Norwegian, I paid maybe a couple hundred USD per year in pure fees - all my student loan practically went to rent (cheap at the time) and groceries (admittedly less cheap in Norway). Was it an Ivy League whatever-the-fuck education? No, it stank - but I got out into the world with a paper that said I could do work. And in geekier lines of work, even that might not have been strictly necessary, assuming you know the craft.
Go for it.
Let's just make state owned universities and community/junior college funded by a tax on employers that require college degrees for their jobs with free tuition and free required learning materials. The issue isn't the loans or the cost, it's that corporations are lumping those costs on the employees and the corporations are reaping the benefits of an educated workforce without appropriately compensating their employees for their knowledge.
University study for useful degrees that benefit society should be free and paid for by society. It used to be the case in my country until they decided to take a leaf out of America's book and screw everyone over.
So for example, something like an art degree should be paid (with no interest imo) however most STEM degrees should be free. Same with nursing and similar degrees too.
It's ok if these free degrees come with strings attached, such as having to work and apply your skills in the country for X years as a minimum.
It would definitely force colleges to bring down prices to a reasonable level.
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.
TFW Americans have an orphan crushing machine and have a full debate on the color of the machine's knobs. 😨
I think universities would be forced to compete on price to survive, so I’m all for it.
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.
Consider that maybe people shouldn't be taking 50k in debt right out of highschool for a degree they aren't sure they really want in a field that's already over saturated. I feel for the kids who were young and dumb and goaded into signing on the dotted line but ultimately it was their choice to take on debt and they reap what they sow.
In general, I'm opposed to the idea. College professors don't work for free, and colleges have to pay them. Like it or not, we live in a capitalist society, and everyone needs to be paid. You could raise taxes and fund college publicly, but then you're just passing off the cost of a college education to the taxpayers.
What does need to happen is a tighter regulation of tuition fees. A student should be able to take out a student loan, work a minimum wage job to pay for rent and personal expenses, and be able to pay off their student loan within a few years of graduation. The problem right now is that even if a college student manages to get a job in their field immediately after school, they're stuck paying student loans for a decade or more. 50 years ago, you could work a job flipping burgers, pay for school, and be firmly on your feet a few years after you get your degree. I went to college about 20 years ago, and tuition fees have just about doubled since then. The cost of higher education has far outpaced the average income of a college student.
Nobody should get a free ride; students should pay for school, but they shouldn't be in crippling debt afterwards. There needs to be legislation that forces the cost of education to fit with the minimum wage.