student loan forgiveness

[coreysMonster]

You know what's not just? Trapping 19 year olds, who have been told their entire lives that they HAVE to go to the best college they possibly can, into a form debt they can't bankrupt their way out of unlike literally every single other form of debt we have in this country, at a level that eclipses mortgage debt held by the majority of people a decade or two prior, purely due to government-supported runaway greed of predatory universities that nobody has done anything about because our country doesn't make laws that benefit the younger generations, ever. That isn't just.
I went to uni in Europe so I don't have student loans to forgive (thanks to socialism), but they can gladly spend my taxes on giving debt relief to real people instead of corporations and the wealthy, for once. People complaining about this need a reality check.

 

[Wiltonauer]

Teachers, guidance counselors, parents, and recruiters blow way too much smoke about how everyone needs to follow their dreams. Everyone must be a doctor, a Nobel-prize winning scientist, President, astronaut, CEO of a Fortune 500 company, etc. Everyone must have a career that nobody can look down on. Everyone must earn a salary that is above average. Everyone must be the boss, because having someone tell you what to do is shameful and runs counter to the American spirit. Get the right education. Land the right job. Be the boss. Make all the money. Fuck all those other losers; they can’t have any, because having something means nothing unless somebody else doesn’t have it.

 

[coreysMonster]

Teachers, guidance counselors, parents, and recruiters blow way too much smoke about how everyone needs to follow their dreams.

It's interesting that you put the blame on that on educators and parents, when it's the politicians, the president, media pundits, industry leaders and CEOs that say the same bullshit. I would argue it's the people on top that started that rhetoric because it benefits the ruling class if everybody thinks they can make it big if they just work a little harder.

 

[Wiltonauer]

It's interesting that you put the blame on that on educators and parents, when it's the politicians, the president, media pundits, industry leaders and CEOs that say the same bullshit. I would argue it's the people on top that started that rhetoric because it benefits the ruling class if everybody thinks they can make it big if they just work a little harder.

Agreed. I guess I named the people I named because they’re the ones I heard it from when I was young. And don’t forget I also blamed recruiters. I probably heard it from the people running the loan rackets, too. “Don’t rule anything out. This is your dream, and no dream is too big. No amount of debt is too much for someone else to carry, if it will line our pockets.” Even as a histrionic, hormone-addled teenager with a big ego, I thought some of the things they were telling us were overly optimistic to the point of being irresponsible. But then, who wants to be the one who told a young person their dream was unrealistic?

 

[TedEH]

Maybe a sort of "devil's advocate" type question but - what exactly is the "correct" route to success if education isn't it? I ask because IMO we're implying that education, on the whole, is a scam just in it's own right - as opposed to saying that the problem is the access to and potential repercussions of that system of access to education. Education is, generally speaking, a good thing - and it's been my experience that if you have the means to access it without destroying yourself financially, your outcomes are still likely to be better than if you hadn't done it. No, you absolutely don't have to "aim for the stars", and of course the attitude of there being no middle ground between failure and world-class is something we shouldn't be sold on, but the education system, job markets, etc. can be criticized without hyperbolically throwing the idea of education under the bus.

 

[MaxOfMetal]

Maybe a sort of "devil's advocate" type question but - what exactly is the "correct" route to success if education isn't it? I ask because IMO we're implying that education, on the whole, is a scam just in it's own right - as opposed to saying that the problem is the access to and potential repercussions of that system of access to education. Education is, generally speaking, a good thing - and it's been my experience that if you have the means to access it without destroying yourself financially, your outcomes are still likely to be better than if you hadn't done it. No, you absolutely don't have to "aim for the stars", and of course the attitude of there being no middle ground between failure and world-class is something we shouldn't be sold on, but the education system, job markets, etc. can be criticized without hyperbolically throwing the idea of education under the bus.

I don't think anyone [lucid] is saying that education, or even just seeking such, is a bad thing.

It's more or less the system we have here in the US, and attitudes towards high educations role in society.

 

[narad]

If I'm to borrow some understanding of the German education system from my friend who constantly praises it to me, in Germany a placement test (Arbitur) effectively tracks people into higher education or more vocational training.

In the US, I guess the closest thing is the SAT, but that only effectively tracks people into good university or bad university. Bad grades and bad standardized test scores should be some reality check that going further up the college education path isn't likely the path to success for that person, and the cost of education vs. the opportunity cost of not working for 4+ years pretty much guarantees it, but there's no societal mechanism in place to confront young people with that reality.

Plus the idea of honest work in the US is all messed up. It's somehow better to go to college and fail (or succeed in getting a degree with no job opportunities) than it is to take on a vocational job like electrician/carpentry/plumbing. I know it's not the average, but the plumbers I know are killling it... would be hard to out-earn them with an in-demand grad degree. But if you told me in high school that my future was to be a plumber, it'd be terribly depressing. Maybe if you told me I'd be a plumber with a ferrari it'd be more palatable. And many of the people I met from undergrad basically started their career search negative 1 ferrari in student debt, with lower paying options than the vocational guys.

 

[MaxOfMetal]

If I'm to borrow some understanding of the German education system from my friend who constantly praises it to me, in Germany a placement test (Arbitur) effectively tracks people into higher education or more vocational training.

In the US, I guess the closest thing is the SAT, but that only effectively tracks people into good university or bad university. Bad grades and bad standardized test scores should be some reality check that going further up the college education path isn't likely the path to success for that person, and the cost of education vs. the opportunity cost of not working for 4+ years pretty much guarantees it, but there's no societal mechanism in place to confront young people with that reality.

That's what the various "shop" classes were for. Steering kids that were academic "under performers" but could work with their hands into the trades.

 

[narad]

That's what the various "shop" classes were for. Steering kids that were academic "under performers" but could work with their hands into the trades.

Yea, not sure what it was like at other schools but really all shop taught me was to be scared of band saws. A lot of the carpenters I met were the sons or nephews of carpenters, etc., and they were roofing in summers for 20/hr. So I would expect some sort of free-ish education for people straight out of high school to learn the the shop skills at a payable level. Like straight out of HS, absolutely no one would be hiring me to do anything with any of the shop tools we had in class, and rightly so.

 

[coreysMonster]

If I'm to borrow some understanding of the German education system from my friend who constantly praises it to me, in Germany a placement test (Arbitur) effectively tracks people into higher education or more vocational training.

Almost: You need an Abitur to go to a university, but there are also things called Hochschulen / Fachhochschulen that grant you a Bachelor/Master degree as well, that you don't need an Abitur for. Instead, you need something called a Fachabitur, which needs less schooling and has lower difficulty standards. The difference is that some things like medicine or law, you can only study at universities, while some things like engineering or computer science, you can study at both - with a general difference being that for instance a mechanical engineer from a university will have had more theoretical, and a mechanical engineer from a Hochschule will have had more hands-on experience (I'm sure there are differences in the humanities as well, but I don't know what they are). I guess you could say Fachhochschulen are a middle-ground between university and trade school, though there is no legal distinction between a degree from a university, or a degree from a Fachhochschule.

 

[Metaldestroyerdennis]

That's what the various "shop" classes were for. Steering kids that were academic "under performers" but could work with their hands into the trades.

I graduated high school in '14 and by then shop had been long defunded and the bandsaws were sitting in theater storage (found them 2013 rusting). There's a class war that's been destroying the middle class, trades, and upward mobility for decades. Remember the "art classes are being cut" commercials from like 2005?

I got into an incredibly selective ranked college and have had (so far) a very lucrative career. Instead of making me conservative it made it more obvious how disadvantaged a lot of people are through no fault of their own. The system is broken and the lower class have been brainwashed by Republican ideologies into wrecking their own opportunities. To me this thread is only evidence of such.

 

[jaxadam]

I don’t know how I feel about free education, just look at what’s been happening with all of these YouTube PhDs running amuck.

 

[Wiltonauer]

If I'm to borrow some understanding of the German education system from my friend who constantly praises it to me, in Germany a placement test (Arbitur) effectively tracks people into higher education or more vocational training.

In the US, I guess the closest thing is the SAT, but that only effectively tracks people into good university or bad university. Bad grades and bad standardized test scores should be some reality check that going further up the college education path isn't likely the path to success for that person, and the cost of education vs. the opportunity cost of not working for 4+ years pretty much guarantees it, but there's no societal mechanism in place to confront young people with that reality.

Plus the idea of honest work in the US is all messed up. It's somehow better to go to college and fail (or succeed in getting a degree with no job opportunities) than it is to take on a vocational job like electrician/carpentry/plumbing. I know it's not the average, but the plumbers I know are killling it... would be hard to out-earn them with an in-demand grad degree. But if you told me in high school that my future was to be a plumber, it'd be terribly depressing. Maybe if you told me I'd be a plumber with a ferrari it'd be more palatable. And many of the people I met from undergrad basically started their career search negative 1 ferrari in student debt, with lower paying options than the vocational guys.

There is a knee-jerk reaction in our culture to think of plumbers as dumb, ineffectual, heavy-set guys with poor hygiene, bent down under your sink with their cracks showing. (We we watch too much TV.) Good plumbers are smart, and they provide something very valuable. Some plumbers become pipefitters and welders, highly valued in the construction industries. They make good money by doing things the rest of us simply can’t do. Try to look down on that, sitcom writers.