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Comment by tempnow987 | Hacker News Reader

The federal funding giveaway for crazy degrees is amazing.

If you pay $250,000 to become a chef/cook - that is insane. That is ONLY possible with federal funding, no private lender would fund that.

I think similar issues exist with a fair number social science / ethnic studies / minor language degrees (greek etc). If you go through to a Master or PhD in ethnomusicology, while very cool (yes, I took a class along these lines I very much liked) -> the market isn't there currently in academia and the private market is to some degrees worse.

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> If you pay $250,000 to become a chef/cook - that is insane.

I'm sorry, what are you referencing here? That number doesn't appear in the linked article.

I mean, I'm sure there's an anecdote somewhere that matches, but that's hardly a representative description of the program. The debts in question are things like $40k loans for tech-related degrees from degree factory places like DeVry and ITT which are known to not have the value claimed at enrollment.

Now, there's a really good argument that, indeed, the Federal government shouldn't be subsidizing DeVry to issue junk degrees! But that's not well argued by talking about hypothetical sous chefs with quarter million dollar balances.

CIA is 24K++ per semester. 12-18 credits.

I would expect 8-9 semesters needed to get the 129 credits needed.

9 * 24K = $216K.

So that's $200K+ for a culinary arts degree.

If you study ethnomusicology and get a PhD I could run some numbers that would make your eyes pop :)

https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/culinary-institute-o...

I liked the part where you made up the numbers you could've looked up. Average loan for CIA is 7k/yr = 28k per 4 years.

Yes, you can absolutely pick numbers that are unrepresentative to make a point. But as long as you're arguing in the real world, it would be cool if your argument was based in the real world.

> That is ONLY possible with federal funding, no private lender would fund that.

Is this not a double edge sword tho?

Prior to student loans you more or less had to fund it yourself, which people did with a part time job or summer job. When they decided they wanted education more accessible and introduced student loans, all of a sudden more people could afford school and schools increased their prices 10 fold over time.

I don't know if I'd say that people can afford schools when the debt mounds are so high for many people who are unable to pay. Strictly a hypothesis, but I would say that while more people are going to and completing school than before, the affordability is actually worse than it was previously because schools no longer have to compete for tuition.

Well from the schools perspective is that they can afford it. I was thinking of it from the schools perspective rather than the student.

That's the problem with this entire article. The Department of education, of course, is "forgiving" uncollectible debt, and attempting to pass it off as a bailout for students.

When, of course, it's a bailout for private lenders the government needs to keep lending. If some students are helped, that's at best a side effect.

So then... The correct way to do this would be to say legally the people who borrowed from you owe you nothing now.

Debt gets erased, lenders get nothing. Everybody wins except the irresponsible lenders.

I'm fine with this. But uhh, feels like people would complain about gov't overstepping it's bounds or picking winners/losers...

Except the lenders do get something. A massive tax write off.

"The Producers" aside, not paying taxes on money you gave away but didn't get back is not exactly a compelling business case.

Alright, you give me 70k. I can give you back 70k, or you can take the tax write-off for the loss... which one would you rather have?

And if the answer is that you'd rather have the tax write-off I would love to take out a personal loan from you. And I don't imagine you'll be in the lending business for very long.

> Prior to student loans you more or less had to fund it yourself,

Or become a citizen of a country that is not hostile to its population.

In many countries you can get decent education for free.

As it should be. Because educated population that is drowning in debt is probably going to lead to better outcomes in the future.

You can have poor parents, not be particularly bright, work hard to get your education and start your life with no debt at all.

While it is a fair comment , just how realistic is it for a n 18 year old to drop their birth citizenship and pick the citizenship of another country?

You don't need to drop your citizenship. The US has so so many international students and every college student in the US can point to one that they know.

People in developing countries like Vietnam study German in high school so that they can study in a German university for extremely cheap.

"Emigration for thee but not for me"

Meanwhile the smart ones who got stuck with college loans and worthless degrees figured out it's better to teach English abroad for 6x a local's salary and substantially less hours.

The only language (other than English) taught in my local school district is Spanish. How do you expect US students to learn a language to emigrate somewhere else?

Online courses? You can find language learning correspondents too, like pen pals but with video chat.

Plus most US universities have resources for students whose first language is not English, probably most countries have something similar. Picking it up by immersion is hard but it’s supposed to be the best way to learn

How do you expect Vietnamese students to learn? They have a dramatically lower GDP and their focus is on English education (although it's not great).

Textbooks and parents pressuring kids to focus on their education can do it. There's also a million free online resources for learning a language in English, not so many for people who speak a less infernationally-utilized language.

> Or become a citizen of a country that is not hostile to its population.

The U.S. spends 1% of GDP on public support for tertiary education: https://www.oecd.org/els/soc/PF1_2_Public_expenditure_educat... (page 2, panel B). That's right in the middle of the G7: less than Canada, France, and Germany, but more than the U.K., Japan, and Italy.

What's extraordinary about the U.S. is how expensive tertiary education is overall: 2.5% of GDP, the highest in the world. American universities spend a lot more money per student on administrators, student services, facilities, etc.

This isn't really true, because up until relatively recently most university funding came from the state and not tuition. The decline in state support led to higher tuition costs; federal student loans turned it into a bonanza, but the steep price tags are more because tuition was never the main revenue driver for universities.

When did the funding from state dry up? In the 60's the cost of univerity was like ~$1500 which is ~$11,000 today, yet today people are in debt for up to 100's of 1000's. The higher education act was introduced in the 60's, and its been downhill from there.

>yet today people are in debt for up to 100's of 1000's

That's extremely atypical. AFAIK the average student debt at graduation is around $35k.

People still get private student loans. In fact, private student loans pick off the best credit risk (Harvard MBA, Yale Law, etc) and offer rates lower than the government rate. So you could still finance your education through loans, just not any education

> you pay $250,000 to become a chef/cook - that is insane.

Seems like those sorts of situations are well into the territory of "if you owe the bank $1,000,000,000 then the bank has a problem"

Nope, guaranteed by the government and not dischargable in bankruptcy!

I think "the bank with a problem" is the government, in this case.

Exactly, in a market where the government doesn't guarantee these loans, students would have to negotiate loans with banks who would be very invested in the ability to pay back the loan after graduation. A cook (in this example) would be very unlikely to pay back a $250,000 loan, and no bank would fund that.

> That is ONLY possible with federal funding, no private lender would fund that.

Isn't this about private loans? Seems like it according to the title and the non-paywalled portion of the article.

"for profit college" =/= "private lender"

Although government is interfering with these loans by taking away much of the risk. Green lighting no bankruptcy.

250k for life long wage garnishments could be a good deal.

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