Elephants and Jackasses...

I think they'd do well with just actually doing the loan forgiveness program that's on the books now: 10 years of on-time payment in some sort of public service. You could make an argument for cutting the number of years in the public service down, but just automatically enrolling folks into that program would do wonders.

You couldn't remove the bankruptcy clause, because you'd have permanent students amassing six figures in debt that could then discharge it in bankruptcy. The "value" of the education isn't discharged, therefore the debt incurred shouldn't be either.

I think something like "any debt held by students after 10 years is charged back to the university" would do nicely to keep costs down. My friend in DC is a former professor and the main thing he describes as changing over the past few years is administrative bloat.

We did a bograt session around education and realized what a fucking sham most of it is. It's ripe for disruption, especially post-pandemic.

I'll tweak Juice's wording to respectfully disagree: everyone deserves the highest education they want to attain. Is that a college degree, in a very antiquated, illogical system that somehow is a cash cow making millions off the backs of 17 year old's? Nah, I think that shit could be adjusted.

It's starting to feel more like shared trauma that's just be codified: some of us could learn everything we need to learn to complete the degree requirements in less than a year, but had to sit through (and pay for) four years of English 101 and associated nonsense.

I remember Young Jamie on Rogan saying that everything he learned in college you could now learn on YouTube, and you didn't have to pay thousands a semester. Given the challenges we face with technical education anyway, our university system probably needs to be re-worked.

 

One of the problems with our system is the entrance requirements.

My original undergrad was an open enrollment school, and I adore that model: "We don't really give a fuck what you did in high school, because in rural SC the difference between valedictorian of a class of 23 and someone who scores 1480 on the SAT, yet is 177th out of 1700 kids is a county line drawn around cows and high school football. Take your pre-tests, and that determines whether you start at English 101 or 100, if you don't have AP/tech school credit to transfer in." It took so much pressure off the kids, that they could actually....learn and grow as people? Like, I was in university at 17, and had I gone through the pressure cooker some of my HS classmates went through to spend $100k on a school/degree/program that they had no idea if they would even like, or could realistically do....I would have lost my shit. It's too big a decision for a teenager.

The entrance requirements skew the ability to get into the good schools heavily towards people who don't view the school as an opportunity, but as a stamp they need to collect on their path to privilege.

Also, imagine the disruption stemming from COVID on the kids applying to college in the next few years. They will be set back, through no fault of their own. We see it in disasters all the damned time, unfortunately.

I think our public education could be stepped up several notches to remove some of the demand for a 4 year degree, but I dislike the notion of making education harder to get. We aren't going to inhabit a simpler, less complex world any time soon, and I like the idea of my fellow countrymen having the education to equip them to navigate that. Not everyone deserves a degree, I know a FUCK TON of business majors that aren't "college material" in any other major. However, I like to think that more often than not, the education they got makes them better. It's just not the golden ticket to a middle class job they make it out to be, and it needs to not cost as such.

 

I just don’t think anybody high in the government will ever give a shit about what a rip-off college is, they would have a long time ago if that was the case. It simply makes too many people too much money. Money always wins. All these things that would improve college (and financial stress) are such a pipe dream to anybody but the rich. How do you stop big money from influencing and corrupting colleges? What, the chick from Full House does two hours in jail and justice is served? Smart people with real value to the world don’t get to go to top colleges in the same way that rich kids who are usually FAR less smart or driven get to. That’s something that needs to be evened out.... but it is never, EVER going to happen.

The rich will not allow this sort of regulation to happen, they HAVE to be in the driver’s seat, And if it somehow effects them negatively, they will immediately demand regulation to prevent it, just like Hedge fund fucks and RobinHood.

Who exactly is this this hypothetical Elliot Ness than can’t be bought, and has the balls to say no? Spitzer went after these people but he paid for sex, so he had to be hung from the gallows as the monster he is.

 

There's also a lot of blame to put on the working world that decided it was easier to shunt their entire hiring process onto the credentialing system of a college degree. Sure, your degree has absolutely nothing to do with our business, but we won't hire you without one, because without some college doing the leg work for us, how could we be certain we're not hiring a complete moron?

 

The impact on everything else is indirect. If I'm paying hundreds of dollars a month to pay down loans, I'm not putting that money towards a down payment on a house, retirement, or anything else. There's a reason why that trope of millennials still living at home is a thing. It's because they're trying to pay off student loans while working a shitty job that probably doesn't have anything to do with their degree.

Personally, I think it's horseshit that we expect high school freshmen to figure out what exactly they want to do for the rest of their working lives and start planning for it. When I was 14, the only things I gave a shit about were video games, jerking off and eating. I suspect that the only difference between my generation and the ones after me were that I didn't have school shooting drills or pandemics to show me how absolutely worthless adults are.

I'd much rather public education through high school focused on things that made you less of a drain on society, like literacy (financial or otherwise), civics, and PE. If you want to go into the depths of how iambic pentameter enriched Shakespearean prose, go to college for that. Nobody in high school gives a flying shit about Shakespeare at 8 in the morning. A high school diploma should, at the very least, show people that you are capable of living without repeatedly zipping your pants up on your genitals. As it is now, we're pushing kids through to college as barely literate graduates. They are completely unprepared to make decisions that will burden them with debt that they are stuck with until it's paid off.

Oh, and fuck administrators. They are the education field's ineffective, bureaucratic parasitic middle managers that don't give a shit about anybody but the school district and/or themselves. Also, stop making teachers spend money on school supplies out of their own pockets. Pay them more money.

 

There are dozens of lenders, and the federal government taps out at a certain level of debt/loans. My ex was into it six figures, and she had a combination of federal and private loans. The private ones were just like any other financial instrument: dealt with only the bank. Her "loan advisor" suggested she focus on paying off the private ones first, as they had a higher interest rate, and no eligibility for forgiveness.

I assume most of this debate is centered around the federal student loan debt, as I can't imagine the shit-storm around cancelling private debt at that scale.

 

The problem with that (in my opinion) is that there's no real way to measure the effectiveness of that kind of education in the short-term.

The way we have it now, there are tests and grades that give a number that a school administrator can show to a board of education to explain why they deserve more money.
Of course, I think we've all seen how far off the rails standardized testing has gotten...

And I'm going to say the same thing that I've been saying most of my life: Not everyone NEEDS to go to college. Not every job NEEDS a college degree.
And for fuck's sake, stop telling kids that a college degree is a guaranteed path to a wonderful life; shit, just telling them that NOT having a college degree ISN'T a guarantee of poverty would be a good start.

I remember one time my 4th grade teacher got off on some rant about how necessary higher education was, and she said:

"IF YOU DON'T HAVE A COLLEGE DEGREE, YOU'RE NO BETTER THAN A WINO IN AN ALLEY!"

It really stuck with me, because at the time, I didn't know what a wino was, but she was so worked-up, I was afraid to ask.

 

Also, everyone I've ever heard complain about "not being taught things that are useful" was too stupid to learn the things that useful skills are built on.

"Why wasn't I taught about the stock market?!"
"Oh Idunno Brad, maybe because you flunked pre-algebra and exponential functions would have made your brain melt."

 

Yup. And these people thinking that tech/trade school will be some sort of “remedial” post-secondary experience will enjoy the advanced trigonometry and scientific notation that gets shoved sideways up your ass upon arrival.

I always stress to my daughter “I know it’s boring and I can totally relate, but please be good at it.” It opens up so many more career doors, it really is important to know math. It’s just very difficult to make it interesting unless Winnie Cooper is teaching it.

 

I think also the definition of what constitutes a good paying job is different depending on who the person is and their perspective.

When I went to xray school in 2007, everyone I knew was so excited because they had heard that radiology jobs pay really well. I guess in their minds, $22-$24/hour was really good. It’s not bad as far as entry level jobs go, but I wasn’t happy making sub $50k/year. A lot of the trades pay somewhere around there starting out. With a flooded market, those wages won’t grow too much. But it’s better than any fast food type gig.

 

Another thing is a lot of folks start a trade and don't work it their entire careers. Lots of the trades have pretty significant burn rates, and I've seen it in EMTs, masons and massage therapists (ex taught at a massage school). You know what you can always do, well into your 70s?....

 

If you want people to enroll in trade school, it’s simple: you have to explain to kids the advantages of having Fuck You Talent. It’s not just having better pay, it’s the fact that when you have a trade you’re usually the smartest guy in the room- because you more often enough in a climate where you are surrounded by not-so-motivated/knowledgeable people, including your boss. While I was a millwright, nobody could argue with me, even the company president because they didn’t know shit about the mechanics of large machines. So when you have this Fuck You Talent your job goes a lot easier: you matter. People listen to you. You get things when you ask for them. Also as a bonus, I could say any fucking jargon if I wanted to be left alone. “You see, the problem is here is we viscosity breakdown in the transverse mounted induced-torque modality propounders.” ... none of that actually makes any sense, especially to every single other person there.

 

Well, you can still work at McDonald’s or in show business. In fact, those are also the only two jobs besides roofing where you can murder somebody and still have a job waiting for you there when you get out.

 

For most, the addition & subtraction isn't the issue...its having the discipline to not blow their money on wants. I have a hard time feeling sympathy for someone bitching about their lack of money when they're riding around in a $60k+ car/truck with thousands of dollars worth of bolt on mods, thousands in tattoos, boats, & other toys etc.

Its fine to have and spend money on a hobby, but hobbies get funded after needs.

 

Ah, I have my own term for this: "The Shop Badass." (I'm a mechanic, in case y'all didn't know)

Over the years, I'd always envied the guys at my old jobs who knew it all, could explain it all, could fix it all (or at least seem to).

Those guys could get away with murder in the workplace.
I always wanted to be one of those guys.

Now I am one of those guys.
My boss IS NOT a mechanic. He's a salesman. A shady one, at that.
He can't tell me JACK FUCKING SHIT about how to do my job.

If he tries to sell some bullshit procedure to the customer, I've got veto power over that, and if he's got a problem with it, I'll explain in great detail and very polite technical terminology how his plan is bullshit, and mine is the true way.

Now I just need to find a better boss, who will pay more, because he was the only guy that would hire me when I got out of prison...