[HN Gopher] Dept. of Ed cancels $3.9B in student debt for over 2...
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       Dept. of Ed cancels $3.9B in student debt for over 200k borrowers
        
       Author : latchkey
       Score  : 22 points
       Date   : 2022-08-16 18:55 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
        
       | balentio wrote:
       | Great. Now apply it to all the other colleges who marketed
       | themselves as money making for students and an "investment" only
       | to saddle them with unforgivable student loan debt.
        
         | verdverm wrote:
         | Does that fix the problem? Will the universities still be
         | allowed to keep doing this and thus create another generation
         | of indebtedness?
        
           | balentio wrote:
           | No. The problem is greed. I'm not sure what fixes that, other
           | than usually tragedy.
        
             | jmoak3 wrote:
             | At scale, everyone looks out for #1, and kids have a
             | tendency to be a little naive.
             | 
             | I'm no expert, but it sounds like the problem is that we
             | keep giving gov-backed money to kids to spend at schools
             | who are telling them that paying 120k to be a history major
             | is an excellent idea.
             | 
             | These schools are not their friends, and if we want to fix
             | this, it feels like we have several choices:
             | 
             | A. Dictate to kids which programs they can get easy loans
             | for.
             | 
             | B. Punish schools that produce tons of screwed over
             | indebted kids, and hope they begin to downsize programs and
             | costs.
             | 
             | C. Cut out the easy loans altogether, let schools fail, and
             | see what happens.
             | 
             | D. Keep forgiving debt, and watch as angry people who
             | avoided college and the loans vote in radical politicians
             | with axes to grind.
             | 
             | Maybe we could see schools move to some sort of income
             | sharing program, but I'm somewhat confident we'd soon see
             | schools getting kids to sign on deals that are wildly
             | exploitative (like 20 years of 10% of income sharing with
             | the school...).
             | 
             | I know it sucks, but this whole situation sucks - I'm
             | leaning towards A.
             | 
             | Open to more discussion on this.
        
               | verdverm wrote:
               | My hunch is that the underlying problems are
               | 
               | 1. Easy, govt backed loans allow the schools to raise
               | prices without reducing demand
               | 
               | 2. Most of this extra revenue is not spent on academics,
               | but rather admin staff, new student housing / amenities,
               | and loss centers like sports
               | 
               | 3. Students choosing paths that cannot pay back the debt
               | they take
               | 
               | I think all parties have blame to share, though the
               | schools maybe the most through their exploitive practices
               | 
               | I'm hopeful that new learning paths will emerge so that
               | people can find meaningful, sustaining work without the
               | traditional 4 year degree
        
               | balentio wrote:
               | The simple solution would be to make the debt
               | hypothetically discharge-able again and to get the
               | government bubble of money out of the picture of higher
               | education. I suspect the market would mostly regulate
               | itself at that point, but then you get into the whole
               | "not equal opportunity" crap. I hate to say it, but it
               | isn't equal now. You trade proportions of colors of
               | students for everyone has a degree, no one has a job, and
               | everyone is in debt.
        
       | foxyv wrote:
       | Great, now make all student debt dischargeable in bankruptcy. Too
       | many people end up deeply in debt with degrees that don't do what
       | was promised. Especially the trade schools! ITT Tech, Silver
       | State Helicopter, Culinary Schools, and all sorts of garbage
       | private schools are taking advantage of people who were told to
       | get an education at all costs.
       | 
       | Right now we already "socialize the downside" for all sorts of
       | debt. I don't honestly know why student debt is any different.
        
         | westmeal wrote:
         | Because a lot of large organizations stand to make a lot of
         | money! :D
        
           | dominotw wrote:
           | are you saying they don't stand to make a lot of money on
           | other kinds of debts.
        
         | ffggvv wrote:
        
       | public_defender wrote:
       | This is only for people who attended ITT Tech.
        
       | cuteboy19 wrote:
       | Debt cannot be cancelled, only transferred.
        
         | guywithahat wrote:
         | Yeah this title doesn't really make sense, and seeing as ITT
         | Tech is now defunct it looks as though taxpayers (funded with a
         | new 1.9 billion dollar funding allocation) will be picking up
         | the tab, and people who worked hard and paid off their loans
         | early won't be seeing anything.
         | 
         | I feel like a much better option would have been to make loans
         | private and defaultable (so that if you get a loan it's not
         | government money, and if you plan to get a worthless major
         | private banks can simply charge you more for your loan or even
         | refuse to give loans for a certain degree). ITT Tech was known
         | to be a bad school for a long time and this would have been
         | preventable through a freer market
        
       | Blackstrat wrote:
        
         | supercanuck wrote:
         | I had no idea ITT Technical Institute (ITT) was in the Ivy
         | league.
        
           | Blackstrat wrote:
           | I'm betting the majority loans are not to ITT
        
             | BugsJustFindMe wrote:
             | The article addresses your bet in the first and second
             | sentences.
        
       | electric_dreams wrote:
        
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       (page generated 2022-08-16 23:02 UTC)