[rosterface]

Actually, I don't have a degree. That's sort of my point. It's very possible to just enter the labor market and make money if you work hard and smart. I'm a developer but I know plenty of people I grew up with who went on to be: military people, plumbers, cops...

> there's a good number of folks with student loan debt they can't easily manage who made all the right decisions but got a bad break somewhere.

I don't think it's ever the right decision to take out a massive amount of debt. Even to study something you love. You can't fight against the real world economics of that decision. I saw the option to get what I considered to be a lifetime's worth of debt and looked for alternatives. Lots of people who come from lower class backgrounds do the same.

I think it's going to be very hard to get those people on board with paying off other people's student debt.

[goodells]

What makes the student debt such a crappy situation is the fact that we're dealing with young people and families who may not necessarily have all the information to do an educated cost/benefit analysis. Students are pressured from very early on to plan to go to college. Teachers, guidance counselors, administrators, and often parents all fall into the narrative of "yes, college is a good decision and will pay for itself". It is completely taboo to tell a student that there are other options because that can be construed as telling the student they have less potential than others.

[alkibiades]

right but if someone like that came to you and asked for 200k in loans you’d laugh in their face. But now instead the govt decided to back student loans and these people got them like candy

[AngryData]

I think we should also consider the pressures and advertising from all sides that pushed many kids into taking loans of quantities they didn't truly comprehend with potential consequences that weren't all that well explained to them. We know advertising works great on young people and when someone comes and tells them "Come here, you will make $120K a year out of college, you are the perfect candidate! You can pay off your loans in 2-3 years if you want and still have tons of money!" And then everyone around them jumps on board "OMG thats so great! Of course you need to jump on that now!", but then in reality it is a completely unprepared student with no idea what they are getting into, middling grades at best, signing their name over on documents that can barely decipher, to get a degree in either something incredibly hard or incredibly useless.

We know advertising works well and makes people do and buy shit they don't need or want, and in this case it was primarily targeted at kids during and immediately after highschool who are especially vulnerable.

[troutwine]

> Actually, I don't have a degree. That's sort of my point.

Apologies, you didn't state that and I assumed.

> It's very possible to just enter the labor market and make money if you work hard and smart. I'm a developer but I know plenty of people I grew up with who went on to be: military people, plumbers, cops...

Then again, it's also not. Some fields absolutely require credentials and long-term education and we, as a society, need those jobs to be filled: social work, doctoring, teaching, plant management, accounting, licensed engineering etc. Some of these jobs have high potential -- medicine, if you choose the right sub-field -- and others not so much. In fact, the reason why we have a shortage of GPs in the US is a result of medical students looking at their debt burden and deciding they need to move into cosmetics or other high-paid fields. This strikes me as bass ackwards.

> I don't think it's ever the right decision to take out a massive amount of debt. Even to study something you love. You can't fight against the real world economics of that decision.

Well, the consequence of this stance is that only the rich will ever be credentialed, or the rich and the fortunate. Societies in which this is the rule haven't tended to fare well over the long-term.

> I saw the option to get what I considered to be a lifetime's worth of debt and looked for alternatives. Lots of people who come from lower class backgrounds do the same.

Well, good on you; that's quite an accomplishment. It used to be the case that people from lower class backgrounds, in the US, could go get an education without taking on debt loads, gambling that they'd be able to pay it off once their salaries kicked in. We, as a nation, used to subsidize schools and apprentice programs. My argument, essentially, is that 40 years ago we chose to make schools subject to market forces and this has been one of the main movers of rising inequality in the population and we have proof that it doesn't have to be this way from prior experience. We should consider this a failed policy experiment and reverse course in the most direct manner possible.

An individual can only swim so hard against the tide. Even if some do happen to make it to shore that doesn't mean there's no tide.

> I think it's going to be very hard to get those people on board with paying off other people's student debt.

Which people, sorry?

[rosterface]

I actually agree with you. We need to rethink how education works and is funded. I also think education is valuable and needed in lots of fields.

I just don't think we should excuse people's existing debt. We should look to fix things in the future. Some of that is the realization that there's value to be created outside of credentialed fields. Some of that is also probably the removal of credentials as a requirement for many fields as well.

[troutwine]

> I actually agree with you. We need to rethink how education works and is funded. I also think education is valuable and needed in lots of fields. > > I just don't think we should excuse people's existing debt. We should look to fix things in the future.

Ah, okay, there's the difference. I tend to think that solutions to issues that don't address defects in the present moment are partial at best. Maybe, also, I don't imagine that most people with student debt were profligate, and, even of those that were, I don't think they ought to be held to account in perpetuity for that, especially if we end up settling on the notion that the root cause was a failure to properly value education as a society.