Linda McMahon Orders the Department of Education to Begin Collecting Payments for Overdue Student Loans, Garnishing Paychecks If That's What It Takes

President Trump's education boss Linda McMahon has defended the administration's decision to resume student loan debt collections -- insisting that greedy colleges have "profited massively" from Biden-era forgiveness measures.
The Department of Education announced Monday it would start recouping federal student repayments again from May 5 from the roughly 5.3 million borrowers who are currently in default on their loans.
Mb
"Colleges and universities call themselves nonprofits, but for years they have profited massively off the federal subsidy of loans, hiking tuition and piling up multibillion-dollar endowments while students graduate six figures in the red," McMahon wrote.
"A widely cited 2015 study found that for every dollar of increased federal caps on subsidized loans, colleges raised tuition by 60 cents," she continued.
"Many of the degree-granting programs that qualify for student loans are worthless on the job market, but colleges continue to accept students to these programs and encourage them to borrow to pay for them.
"Accountability is a two-way street. As we push to hold student borrowers to account, we will also push colleges to be responsible and transparent."
McMahon insisted the administration wasn't enforcing the collections to be "unkind" -- as she blasted former President Joe Biden for dangling "the carrot of loan forgiveness in front of young voters" during his successful 2020 election campaign.

...
"On May 5, we will begin the process of moving roughly 1.8 million borrowers into repayment plans and restart collections of loans in default. Borrowers who don't make payments on time will see their credit scores go down, and in some cases, their wages automatically garnished.
"Why? Not because we want to be unkind to student borrowers. Borrowing money and failing to pay it back isn't a victimless offense. Debt doesn't go away; it gets transferred to others. If borrowers don't pay their debts to the government, taxpayers do," McMahon added.

I do feel bad for people who were swindled by the bill of goods that the Regime sold them.

But there's no way in hell we're paying trillions so that indifferent students, who really should just have begun working out of high school, can pursue meaningless degrees in fantasy fields.

Below, a lot of parasites are outraged and baffled at the concept that they might actually be forced to repay loans they took out. The first very gay gentlemen seems to believe it's somehow a contradiction for Trump to shut down the Department of Education, while also demanding that people who took out DoEd-guaranteed loans should have to pay them back.

This is just more proof that we are sending people to college who plainly will not benefit from college. And college has been dumbed-down in order to accommodate these Scholars.

In the beginning of that clip, a gay dude actually argues in favor of making people who took out loans pay them back. Plot twist! He says that he worked as a teacher in the worst schools teaching the worst kids for ten years to take advantage of a government program of partial loan forgiveness for teachers willing to work punishment details. He suggests these whiners sign up for the program and spend the ten years he did paying down his loans with sweat-equity.

Posted by: Ace at 03:23 PM

Comments

(Jump to bottom of comments)

1 First!

Posted by: Michael the Texan at April 23, 2025 03:23 PM (ReTq+)

2 I nooded.

Posted by: eleven at April 23, 2025 03:25 PM (0HaGk)

3 Congress could fix this by only giving student loans to people in degree programs that have a identifiable worker shortage by the BLS.

Posted by: MAGA_Ken at April 23, 2025 03:25 PM (Vh9CX)

4 Guarantee everyone here this will be halted by the courts before the end of the month and the first dollar is garnished.

Posted by: Mister Scott (Formerly GWS) at April 23, 2025 03:25 PM (e5NfL)

5 They got a five-year interest-free holiday from having to repay these loans.

If they had any sense, they would have used that five years to accumulate enough money to repay the loans, but I'm sure they all assumed that the loans would be completely forgiven eventually, so why bother?

Posted by: The ARC of History! at April 23, 2025 03:25 PM (xTIDn)

6 THE TRUMP SCHOOL OF BIDNESS IS IN SESSION, KIDZ!!!

Posted by: Tex Lovera at April 23, 2025 03:25 PM (wtvvX)

7 Pay it back, suckers!

Posted by: Zeera at April 23, 2025 03:26 PM (0tp9l)

8 I wish they could discharge them via BK

I don't honestly care if it screws up the US we're already beyond the rubicon debt-wise

Posted by: Black Orchid at April 23, 2025 03:26 PM (Pv3Rg)

9 Guarantee everyone here this will be halted by the courts before the end of the month and the first dollar is garnished.
Posted by: Mister Scott (Formerly GWS) at April 23, 2025 03:25 PM (e5NfL)

I assume the injunction comes later today.

Posted by: BurtTC at April 23, 2025 03:26 PM (dGCAG)

10 Congress could fix this by only giving student loans to people in degree programs that have a identifiable worker shortage by the BLS.

Easier fix: make the colleges cosign the loans.

Posted by: The ARC of History! at April 23, 2025 03:26 PM (xTIDn)

11 Why does this evil biological woman hate Transgenders and children of color ??????

Posted by: Alotta Fagina at April 23, 2025 03:26 PM (Lcdqc)

12 I'll teach hot young coeds to hate men for one- third the cost of your Ivy League schools.

Posted by: Stateless.. 19% - mental state clawing up from 10%, shit happened, clawing back next week at April 23, 2025 03:27 PM (jvJvP)

13 From the Top Rope!

Posted by: garrett at April 23, 2025 03:27 PM (F30Ty)

14 I don't feel bad in the slightest.

These scumbags with their loans are the most privileged, coddled, entitled, INSUFFERABLE leftists. I have literally not seen a SINGLE PERSON whining about their loans that I actually felt sorry for, and you know that if the left could find one they would have already been out propagandizing them.

I'm open to things like no more loans for soft nonsense degrees, or to force universities to co-sign the loans, but that doesn't matter for those with current loans.

You took out a LOAN. Pay it back. Period. End of story.

If that loan didn't translate into an education with job opportunities worth the loan, then that's your freaking problem.

Posted by: DudeAbiding at April 23, 2025 03:28 PM (lCHt6)

15 About damn time.

Posted by: Geoff Shotts at April 23, 2025 03:28 PM (13ivK)

16 5 They got a five-year interest-free holiday from having to repay these loans.

If they had any sense, they would have used that five years to accumulate enough money to repay the loans, but I'm sure they all assumed that the loans would be completely forgiven eventually, so why bother?

Posted by: The ARC of History! at April 23, 2025 03:25 PM (xTIDn)

One of the added bonuses of Trump beating Joementia was seeing these illiterate "graduates" getting their dreams of debt forgiveness utterly shattered on election night.

YOU PAY NOW.

Posted by: Tex Lovera at April 23, 2025 03:28 PM (wtvvX)

17 How do I get my student loan to enroll into classes for Advanced Scotch Studies?

Posted by: Diogenes at April 23, 2025 03:28 PM (W/lyH)

18
"Sweat Equity"

Sweat Equity - ho ho ho

"Sweat.... Equity"

{tears open envelope, blows}

"What kind of equity would you find in the fat folds of your latest DEI hire?"

Posted by: Carnac the Magnificent at April 23, 2025 03:28 PM (hxILi)

19 Get the government out of the loan business, PERIOD.

Mark those loans up and give them to the banks.

Posted by: Dr Pork Chops & Bacons at April 23, 2025 03:29 PM (g8Ew8)

20 Make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy.

Collapse the whole corrupt system.

Posted by: brak at April 23, 2025 03:29 PM (jGJov)

21 8 I wish they could discharge them via BK

I don't honestly care if it screws up the US we're already beyond the rubicon debt-wise

Posted by: Black Orchid at April 23, 2025 03:26 PM (Pv3Rg)

Umm, NO. I served to get free college. Then, I paid off my spouse's $93K debt. Now, my kids chose state school at home so they wouldn't be in debt.

I'm not paying some Harvard Gender studies kid $280K b/c she made bad choices...not after all I've paid.

You take on the debt, you pay it. Only way I'll see otherwise is if you want to garnish the colleges for the education the adults can't pay back...

Posted by: Nova Local at April 23, 2025 03:29 PM (tOcjL)

22 How many of these people took that 5 years to stash away a bunch of cash to repay their loans in the VERY Unlikely Event that Joe Biden lied?

Posted by: garrett at April 23, 2025 03:30 PM (F30Ty)

23 8 I wish they could discharge them via BK

I don't honestly care if it screws up the US we're already beyond the rubicon debt-wise
Posted by: Black Orchid at April 23, 2025 03:26 PM (Pv3Rg)

Yeah, seriously.

Everyone else gets a bailout. Cruise ship industry, banks, small businesses during COVID, military industrial complex. Everyone associated with DC gets rich from stealing from the taxpayers.

But, no, lets focus on going after the Gender Studies major who makes $19 an hour at Starbucks, and force her to pay back the $120,000 the government lent her for a useless degree. A debt that is, as you say, not dischargable.

That's a good way to set up the next generation for success -- make sure they have such a huge debt load at 22 years old that they'll never be able to get ahead or buy a house or anything else.

And to sweeten the pot, let's import central americans do to the book collar jobs, offshore the manufacturing jobs, and import indians and chinese to do the white collar jobs.

Definitely a recipe for a healthy society.

Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 03:30 PM (uCjyK)

24 What do you mean I have to pay back my student loan of $200,000 for my degree in Ancient Gay Leaders of Croatia from Harvard ????

I do not have a job because my degree is worthless, and I weigh over 300 lbs. from eating twinkies all day and have to carry a bucket with me at all times !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted by: Lequisha Fatass at April 23, 2025 03:30 PM (Lcdqc)

25 >> I wish they could discharge them via BK

They took them out knowing they couldn't, though, so that's on them.

They got swindled, but that's no reason for me to pay for their mistakes. I honestly cannot imagine the mindset of not paying back money you borrowed.

Posted by: Disinterested FDA Director at April 23, 2025 03:30 PM (/dDa4)

26 book = blue

Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 03:30 PM (uCjyK)

27 Pre-Covid, the New York Times ran an article about a young women who was six figures in student loan debt.

Her father wanted her to go to a state school, but her mom thought that her daughter should have the Full New York Single Experience (as mom had), so she insisted that the daughter go to pricy NYU, where the daughter majored in literature or something equally unremunerative.

And we're supposed to pay that debt off for her?

Bill mom.

Posted by: The ARC of History! at April 23, 2025 03:30 PM (xTIDn)

28 My immodest proposal: any university getting Federal aid must assume liability for student loans. Otherwise pay for those loans out of your endowments (or States maybe).

(My more modest proposal is just Swift's. Get the Tabasco.)

Posted by: gKWVE at April 23, 2025 03:31 PM (gKWVE)

29 RACIST !!!!!!!

Posted by: Buster Hymand at April 23, 2025 03:31 PM (Lcdqc)

30 Hooray!!!

Some of us worked manual labor over the summer to pay for an education and secured that education in a time frame dictated by the money earned.

That, alone, was a better education than anything I learned sitting in a classroom.

Posted by: Orson at April 23, 2025 03:31 PM (dIske)

31 Oh, NO! They're taking out of my paycheck. But my Escalde, I can't make the payments.

Posted by: Braenyard - some Absent Friends are more equal than others _ at April 23, 2025 03:32 PM (eY5jv)

32 The universities who sold these degrees should be investigated for fraud and forced to bear some of the cost of the loans. I think Glenn Reynolds has been advocating for that for years.

Posted by: Disinterested FDA Director at April 23, 2025 03:32 PM (/dDa4)

33 Pack em off to the camps.

Posted by: Boss Moss at April 23, 2025 03:32 PM (h9KKO)

34 While I agree every one should pay back their loans, just like other debts, to get a student loan discharged in bankruptcy requires huge work and is close to impossible. If you can garnish wages for the loans, it should be dischargeable or able to be included in a chapter 13 repayment plan like other debts.

That said there are a number of income driven repayment plans for student loans, too, so people should be at least attempting to pay them back.

Posted by: Piper at April 23, 2025 03:32 PM (pZEOD)

35 >>Her father wanted her to go to a state school, but her mom thought that her daughter should have the Full New York Single Experience (as mom had), so she insisted that the daughter go to pricy NYU

I got into NYU, Columbia and Princeton.

I went to the U of AZ.

It cost 1 year of the tuition at those other institutions for me to attend AZ.

Posted by: garrett at April 23, 2025 03:32 PM (F30Ty)

36 Let's do the same for defaulted SBA business loans and VA/FHA home loans. Make them ineligible for discharge in bankruptcy, like the student loans.

I don't see why a college student should be held to a higher moral standard than a 45-year-old trying to get rich quick by flipping houses on the basis of a cable TV show.

Nor do I see why a restaurant owner should be able to walk away, even though something like 80% of restaurants fail within the first five years.

Collateral doesn't enter into it with SBA loans. Auctioning a failed restaurant could MAYBE fetch 50% on the kitchen equipment, if you're lucking. Decor, advertising, employee salaries...all of those are a dead loss. I'd be surprised if the net recovery averaged more than 10-15%.

Houses can generally be sold for something, but typically if one house is underwater many other houses in the same area are underwater. The government is going to take a severe haircut, no matter how you slice it.

Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at April 23, 2025 03:32 PM (W5ArC)

37 But, no, lets focus on going after the Gender Studies major who makes $19 an hour at Starbucks, and force her to pay back the $120,000 the government lent her for a useless degree. A debt that is, as you say, not dischargable.

That's a good way to set up the next generation for success -- make sure they have such a huge debt load at 22 years old that they'll never be able to get ahead or buy a house or anything else.

And to sweeten the pot, let's import central americans do to the book collar jobs, offshore the manufacturing jobs, and import indians and chinese to do the white collar jobs.

Definitely a recipe for a healthy society.
Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 03:30 PM (uCjyK)

So.....how much do you owe, Harry?

Posted by: Dr Pork Chops & Bacons at April 23, 2025 03:32 PM (g8Ew8)

38 They got swindled, but that's no reason for me to pay for their mistakes. I honestly cannot imagine the mindset of not paying back money you borrowed.

logically, I agree

but I think letting them file for BK at this point is possibly the least worst option.

it will still hurt them but gives them an out

I wish it would hurt the colleges more but meh

the govt chose to take over the loans, which I hate, so, so so so SO much. the govt should get hurt. (and I guess the govt is sort of me but lately ... I'm not sure)

Posted by: Black Orchid at April 23, 2025 03:32 PM (Pv3Rg)

39 Republican's fold in 3...2...1

Posted by: Maj. Healey at April 23, 2025 03:32 PM (/U5Yz)

40 I earned a Bachelor's and three Master's degrees with a total out of pocket expense of about $1200.00.
It can be done.
Pay up slackers.

Posted by: Diogenes at April 23, 2025 03:33 PM (W/lyH)

41 Definitely a recipe for a healthy society.

You need to work harder. You should have taken a summer job during college. Stop drinking those expensive coffees and paying for all those streaming services!

Posted by: Boomers at April 23, 2025 03:33 PM (jGJov)

42 the roughly 5.3 million borrowers who are currently in default on their loans.
......

Democrat loafers.

Posted by: wth at April 23, 2025 03:33 PM (v0R5T)

43 They took them out knowing they couldn't, though, so that's on them.

They got swindled, but that's no reason for me to pay for their mistakes. I honestly cannot imagine the mindset of not paying back money you borrowed.
Posted by: Disinterested FDA Director at April 23, 2025 03:30 PM (/dDa4)

You're giving them far too much credit.

They were 17 or 18 year old kids who signed the form the nice lady at the college told them to sign so that they could go to college. Just like everyone in society told them to do.

Their teachers, guidance counselors, parent(s), college admission people, every message in the media and TV -- go to college, no matter the cost, or you'll end up a loser. And you don't want to be a loser.

Besides, college graduates make a million dollars more in their lifetime than people who only have a high school degree, so it's a wise financial decision. (at least that was what they told us when I was in high school).

Do you think these 17 or 18 year olds really read the fine print, and really looked in to whether or not these loans were dischargeable in BK?

Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 03:33 PM (uCjyK)

44 Easier fix: make the colleges cosign the loans.

Retroactively. Take a close look at promises and implications, and make the colleges liable for that.

Having a little work done on the old place, Jeff? Fraud is a felony.

Posted by: Stephen Price Blair at April 23, 2025 03:34 PM (EXyHK)

45 Wait for a judge to tule against this

Posted by: Skip at April 23, 2025 03:34 PM (sEViE)

46 >> Everyone else gets a bailout. Cruise ship industry, banks, small businesses during COVID, military industrial complex. Everyone associated with DC gets rich from stealing from the taxpayers.

I'm against all of that, too. In fact, I support clawbacks.

What am I supposed to do, pay for some jackasses miseducation? Yeah, they're screwed for a bit until they pay off the debt. Not my problem.

Posted by: Disinterested FDA Director at April 23, 2025 03:34 PM (/dDa4)

47 BK? Burger King?

Posted by: Boss Moss at April 23, 2025 03:34 PM (h9KKO)

48 Her father wanted her to go to a state school, but her mom thought that her daughter should have the Full New York Single Experience (as mom had), so she insisted that the daughter go to pricy NYU, where the daughter majored in literature or something equally unremunerative.

And we're supposed to pay that debt off for her?

Bill mom.
_____

I'm sure a handsome successful man, with a well endowed bank account, will be more than happy to marry this young fertile cultured woman and pay off her debt in exchange for a housefull of children.

Posted by: Chuck Martel at April 23, 2025 03:34 PM (Dv3i1)

49 >> The first very gay gentlemen seems to believe it's somehow a contradiction for Trump to shut down the Department of Education, while also demanding that people who took out DoEd-guaranteed loans should have to pay them back.

You'd think he would be more excited about being in arrears?

Posted by: garrett at April 23, 2025 03:35 PM (F30Ty)

50 I'm going to start a business that sells maguffins to young people just starting out and lobby the government to hand out loans to my customers which goes directly to me while I use my business to brainwash the young people and my employees do nothing but agitate for more government while handing over those loans directly to me and when the kids can't/won't pay the loans back I'm not on the hook, the government is. I'm also going to set it up as a tax exempt entity.

Sounds like a million dollar idea to me suckers.

Posted by: CaliGirl at April 23, 2025 03:35 PM (mxvzO)

51 10 Congress could fix this by only giving student loans to people in degree programs that have a identifiable worker shortage by the BLS.

Easier fix: make the colleges cosign the loans.
Posted by: The ARC of History! at April 23, 2025 03:26 PM (xTIDn)

——-

That’ll work too.

Posted by: MAGA_Ken at April 23, 2025 03:35 PM (Vh9CX)

52
but I think letting them file for BK at this point is possibly the least worst option.

it will still hurt them but gives them an out

I wish it would hurt the colleges more but meh

the govt chose to take over the loans, which I hate, so, so so so SO much. the govt should get hurt. (and I guess the govt is sort of me but lately ... I'm not sure)

Posted by: Black Orchid at April 23, 2025 03:32 PM (Pv3Rg)

Just b/c you file bankruptcy does NOT mean you get a loan discharged. Bankruptcy is supposed to determine how much you can pay - you don't get off scot-free.

These folks want full discharge for free...hell, no. You can pay back a ton and then eat 6 years of ruined credit. I might be okay with that option...

Posted by: Nova Local at April 23, 2025 03:35 PM (tOcjL)

53 I honestly cannot imagine the mindset of not paying back money you borrowed.

Posted by: Disinterested FDA Director at April 23, 2025 03:30 PM (/dDa4)

------------

"That's only because you identify with the oppressor and not the oppressed, h8r!"

Posted by: ShainS --Waking Up Early is White Supremacy at April 23, 2025 03:35 PM (U9Z5z)

54 Obama and the Dems created this crap when the nationalized the student loans in 2009. Since then the cost of college has skyrocketed and courses have gotten more useless. The Ed bureaucracy has gotten more powerful and more leftist. Rinse , repeat.
Get rid of the Ed Department, privatize student loans and go from there

Posted by: Smell the Glove at April 23, 2025 03:35 PM (6TePA)

55 Two Fairfax County police officer shot during a traffic stop.

"A suspect is in custody."

What they DON'T say is often more valuable than what they DO say.

Posted by: Washington Nearsider, still gloating at April 23, 2025 03:36 PM (oSeBJ)

56 Yet one more grift:

Almost every single "public service" job that allows you to avoid paying back your student loans is essentially a left-wing agitator position.

Don't want to pay back your law school debts? Just spend a few years doing public service law where you defend a$$hole renters for free when their landlord withholds their security deposit after they did $5,000 damages to their apartment.

There are some legit jobs. Doing a medical specialty in a rural area - yes. You took lower pay and may have lived a few years in a place less desirable (to you).

Posted by: Pillage Idiot at April 23, 2025 03:36 PM (HlyYF)

57 You can pay back a ton and then eat 6 years of ruined credit. I might be okay with that option...

Mitch McConnell, Joe Biden, and George W Bush said we need to protect the banks from that terrible possibility.

Posted by: brak at April 23, 2025 03:36 PM (jGJov)

58 IT'S FUNNY BECAUSE TRUMP WAS TAKEN TO COURT AND SUED FOR "OVERESTIMATING" THE VALUE OF HIS PROPERTY YEARS AFTER SECURING A LOAN.

Posted by: BEN ROETHLISBERGER at April 23, 2025 03:36 PM (RFhjS)

59 > to get a student loan discharged in bankruptcy requires huge work and is close to impossible.

Yes. It's more like indentured servitude than a loan. Both the government and the colleges should feel guilt for conning kids just out of high school into this, but we both know just how much of a conscience the government and universities have.

Now, I don't think the borrowers should get off scot-free, Biden-style. Make them take the serious credit hit associated with filing bankruptcy, the same as any other gummint loan.

Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at April 23, 2025 03:36 PM (W5ArC)

60 Those avocado's ain't gonna pick themselves effing slackers.

Posted by: Maj. Healey at April 23, 2025 03:36 PM (/U5Yz)

61 An interesting site. You have to drill down quite a ways to get all info:

Student Loan Debt by Major
https://shorturl.at/5udJP

Posted by: Mike Hammer, etc., etc. at April 23, 2025 03:36 PM (XeU6L)

62 So.....how much do you owe, Harry?
Posted by: Dr Pork Chops & Bacons at April 23, 2025 03:32 PM (g8Ew

Nowhere near as much as most of my peers. I went to state schools and am fortunate enough to be in a career that allows me to make enough money where I've been paying my loans down, even when they were in forbearance.

But it is not uncommon for lawyers my age to be in $200k+ in debt. Doctors are in an even worse position.

But it is still a massive financial pain in the balls. Unfortunately, I wasn't lucky enough to be born to rich parents or be born in 1954, when you could pay tuition for college with your newspaper route money or whatever it is the Boomers like to say.

Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 03:37 PM (uCjyK)

63 Friend of mine who's wife has something close to $300k in student debt. She's on some IDR plan where they just take a calculation from your tax return and you just pay that minimum. Balance is immaterial. After 25 years, totally forgiven.

So bottom line, she'll get like $200k in student loans forgiven. And she's a high paid attorney. So the janitor cleaning her office will pay for it.

This is the Progressive dream.

Posted by: Leupold at April 23, 2025 03:37 PM (4pwAx)

64 Those AI apps aren't going to program themselves, you know. Wait...

Posted by: Mike Hammer, etc., etc. at April 23, 2025 03:37 PM (XeU6L)

65 The left:

"College age kids are too stupid to understand the deep complexities of paying back student loans and should not be held responsible"
Also the left:

"My three year old secretly wants to be a girl and should be on hormone therapy and have bits snipped off because he likes Barbie"

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at April 23, 2025 03:38 PM (2VST1)

66 Having a little work done on the old place, Jeff? Fraud is a felony.
Posted by: Stephen Price Blair at April 23, 2025 03:34 PM

"A girl's gotta have standards..."

Posted by: RedMindBlueState at April 23, 2025 03:38 PM (LCT5p)

67 Student loans for stupid people are just like winning the lottery for stupid people.

In both cases you treat it as "found money" and celebrate far beyond your means - and end up bankrupt after a few years.

Posted by: Pillage Idiot at April 23, 2025 03:38 PM (HlyYF)

68 Instead of womyns studies, why cant they teach them to code?

Posted by: Boss Moss at April 23, 2025 03:38 PM (h9KKO)

69 Yeah. I got student loans. Even before I declared a Major in a STEM. But, seriously. You cannot lend $20,000 or more to a Senior for her last year of "Women's Grievance Studies."

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 03:38 PM (ZmEVT)

70 29 RACIST !!!!!!!
Posted by: Buster Hymand
--------

There must be a clip with all the pink ppl. crying.
I want to see that one.

Posted by: Braenyard - some Absent Friends are more equal than others _ at April 23, 2025 03:38 PM (eY5jv)

71
the govt chose to take over the loans, which I hate, so, so so so SO much. the govt should get hurt. (and I guess the govt is sort of me but lately ... I'm not sure)

Posted by: Black Orchid

=====

There's certainly an option to force govt employee pension funds, as part of their portfolio, to make student loans

Posted by: 2009Refugee at April 23, 2025 03:39 PM (WfeZa)

72 I'm sure a handsome successful man, with a well endowed bank account, will be more than happy to marry this young fertile cultured woman and pay off her debt in exchange for a housefull of children.
Posted by: Chuck Martel at April 23, 2025 03:34 PM (Dv3i1)

So she can divorce him in ten years and walk away with half his shit and take the kids.

Posted by: Not if he wants to keep his well-endowed bank account at April 23, 2025 03:39 PM (TbWk/)

73 Two Fairfax County police officer shot during a traffic stop.

"A suspect is in custody."

What they DON'T say is often more valuable than what they DO say.
Posted by: Washington Nearsider, still gloating at April 23, 2025 03:36 PM (oSeBJ)
***

Under Biden, a mass shooting is considered anything with three or more victims. So this begs the question, if the perp had shot a third cop, would it be a mass shooting, or page 7 news?

Posted by: Diogenes at April 23, 2025 03:39 PM (W/lyH)

74
Collateral doesn't enter into it with SBA loans. Auctioning a failed restaurant could MAYBE fetch 50% on the kitchen equipment, if you're lucking. Decor, advertising, employee salaries...all of those are a dead loss. I'd be surprised if the net recovery averaged more than 10-15
——
Before you can discharge an SBA loan, they take your personal property, too, not just business property. Your house goes. You do have to have collateral for an 7aSBA loan, and you have to have solid credit. SBA loans are not handed out like candy which is why I really want to see the data on the underage loans from DOGE. We had to provide 3 years of bank records, tax records and a full income / asset statement. Maybe my lender just played by the rules and others don’t, but my SBA loan was not fun to get and required so much work. Also, while you can get a loan for up to 25 years, it is generally 10 years.

Posted by: Piper at April 23, 2025 03:39 PM (pZEOD)

75 68 Instead of womyns studies, why cant they teach them to code?
Posted by: Boss Moss

Or a good sandwich.

Posted by: Maj. Healey at April 23, 2025 03:39 PM (/U5Yz)

76 There are some legit jobs. Doing a medical specialty in a rural area - yes. You took lower pay and may have lived a few years in a place less desirable (to you).
Posted by: Pillage Idiot at April 23, 2025 03:36 PM (HlyYF)

Doesn't that just serve to push down wages and make taxpayers make up the difference? If a job is worth doing, the market will generally pay a reasonable wage. And if it's necessary for the government to provide the service, then they can just pay a competitive wage instead of using student loan forgiveness gimmickry.

Posted by: Disinterested FDA Director at April 23, 2025 03:39 PM (/dDa4)

77 Ha-ha! I paid off all of my debt, fuck these deadbeats!

Posted by: Rev Wishbone at April 23, 2025 03:39 PM (fY84s)

78 I'm ok with discharging through student loans bankruptcy. Plenty of kids and parents were both stupid and sold on worthless degrees. Having student loans for my STEM degrees was the only way I was going to pay for college and grad school. It helped, but I also had a little bit of common sense to know I need degrees that would give me a chance for employment. Unfortunately, kids today are still studying stupid stuff. A kid who graduated with my kids, is studying political science? How does that lead to getting work?

Posted by: Ganowicz Commie Exterminators, Ltd. at April 23, 2025 03:39 PM (pZ64F)

79 I worked my ass off to pay my way through school. I resent anyone who thinks I should, through my taxes, pay for their school experience.

No. Not even a little bit.

Garnish their barista pay.

Learn to manufacture.

Posted by: nurse ratched at April 23, 2025 03:39 PM (SQHBz)

80 I met a gentleman in Charleston who descended from an indentured servant originally from Scotland. It took his ancestor 17 year to pay down the debt, and when he did, he formed and led the first carpenter's union in America.

Neither debt nor servitude is a death sentence. They may not build character, but they can reveal it.

Posted by: Field Marshal Zhukov at April 23, 2025 03:40 PM (wBaIH)

81 "Instead of womyns studies, why cant they teach them to code?"

What really pisses me off? Too many universities limit the number a students allowed into STEM majors.

WTF?

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 03:40 PM (ZmEVT)

82 "My three year old secretly wants to be a girl and should be on hormone therapy and have bits snipped off because he likes Barbie"
Posted by: Christopher R Taylor
---

Take away the doll and get him a dog.

Posted by: Braenyard - some Absent Friends are more equal than others _ at April 23, 2025 03:40 PM (eY5jv)

83 Unfortunately, I wasn't lucky enough to be born to rich parents or be born in 1954, when you could pay tuition for college with your newspaper route money or whatever it is the Boomers like to say.

well certainly it was not that easy but before the huge "everyone should go to college" boom of the 70s, you could actually work a job in the summer and part time while going to school and pay your own way through. It was expensive and a serious burden, but doable.

This was back before colleges though that their campus had to look like the Versailles palace and the administrative staff didn't outnumber the professors.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at April 23, 2025 03:40 PM (2VST1)

84 I'm against all of that, too. In fact, I support clawbacks.

What am I supposed to do, pay for some jackasses miseducation? Yeah, they're screwed for a bit until they pay off the debt. Not my problem.
Posted by: Disinterested FDA Director at April 23, 2025 03:34 PM (/dDa4)

Well it is all of our problems. As I've pointed out many times.

I don't know what you expect someone to do when they barely make enough money to pay rent and owe $1200 a month in student loan payments at 8% interest on a $100k principle. A debt that is not dischargeable in bankruptcy, by the way.

So we just write off a couple of generations of kids and say "welp, let's pack it up. Looks like America is over. Everyone will rent apartments from Blackrock for the rest of their lives. Or not, who cares?"

Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 03:40 PM (uCjyK)

85 I'm sure a handsome successful man, with a well endowed bank account, will be more than happy to marry this young fertile cultured woman and pay off her debt in exchange for a housefull of children.
Posted by: Chuck Martel at April 23, 2025 03:34 PM (Dv3i1)

Daddy! What's a Pre-nup?

Posted by: Fertile Cultured Woman at April 23, 2025 03:41 PM (W/lyH)

86 the roughly 5.3 million borrowers who are currently in default on their loans.
.....

You know how they can get out of these loans?
FLEE THE COUNTRY. I hear Ukraine is nice this time of year.

Posted by: wth at April 23, 2025 03:41 PM (v0R5T)

87 he worked as a teacher in the worst schools teaching the worst kids for ten years to take advantage of a government program of partial loan forgiveness for teachers willing to work punishment details. He suggests these whiners sign up for the program and spend the ten years he did paying down his loans with sweat-equity.
__________

There's an even better version of this for med school. Hospitals can recruit docs to "medically underserved" areas by paying back med school loans if the doc stays a minimum of like three or four years. So the loan is paid rather than forgiven, and there are at least some market forces in action.

Posted by: Biff Pocoroba at April 23, 2025 03:41 PM (UBKzV)

88 WTF? I thought the purpose of govt was to give free shit to all the deadbeats.

This a threat to democracy

Posted by: Ripley at April 23, 2025 03:41 PM (GUOwU)

89 Student loans were made non-dischargeable in 2005. I used to hear stories of successful doctors and lawyers bragging about not paying back their student loans.

I think those wankers pissed off a lot of people resulting in the current law.

Posted by: mr tmz at April 23, 2025 03:41 PM (rJ48h)

90 Why is it again that it is ok to let an 18 year old with no income or assets take a $250K loan?

If it was for anything outside of college everyone would acknowledge this was insane.

Posted by: 18-1 at April 23, 2025 03:41 PM (t0Rmr)

91 I honestly cannot imagine the mindset of not paying back money you borrowed.

yeah well you were raised with morals and a code of honor, and not to think you are a special cloud princess unique Chosen One who will Save Us All.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at April 23, 2025 03:41 PM (2VST1)

92 82 "My three year old secretly wants to be a girl and should be on hormone therapy and have bits snipped off because he likes Barbie"
Posted by: Christopher R Taylor
---

Take away the doll and get him a dog.

Posted by: Braenyard - some Absent Friends are more equal than others

and a BB gun.

Posted by: Maj. Healey at April 23, 2025 03:41 PM (/U5Yz)

93 the whole thing was another loop in the endless USAID-like trough: the only thing the Grievance Studies degrees prepped the loan recipients for was useless jobs in government welfare programs like "education", "nonprofits", and NGOs.

Old woman living on her social security advice for these babes: stop getting your nails and eyelashes done, and do your own hair. No new ink. You'll find that payment every month.

Posted by: barbarausa at April 23, 2025 03:41 PM (enw9G)

94 Student loans should not be dischargeable under bankruptcy, because if they were, no reasonable lender would EVER make a student loan.

They are a loan with no collateral and no income stream to make up for any defaults.

Democrats in the federal government are the only people stupid enough to approve those loan terms.

Posted by: Pillage Idiot at April 23, 2025 03:41 PM (HlyYF)

95 Make universities co-sign student loans. THEN they'll think twice about accepting shitty students, and offering bogus majors.

Ninety-percent of university/college students have no business being there.

Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at April 23, 2025 03:41 PM (YqDXo)

96
***ENFUEGO!!!***

Posted by: The Dude that always shouts Enfuego at April 23, 2025 03:42 PM (hrOf9)

97 "Instead of womyns studies, why cant they teach them to code?"

What really pisses me off? Too many universities limit the number a students allowed into STEM majors.

WTF?
Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 03:40 PM (ZmEVT)

We have enough incompetent programmers as it is. I don't want these idiots learning to "code".

Posted by: Disinterested FDA Director at April 23, 2025 03:42 PM (/dDa4)

98 I proposed "allowing bankruptcy but requiring the bankruptee to file 'single no dependents' for the seven years following the bankruptcy and garnish any IRS tax refund during that period."

Posted by: Kindltot at April 23, 2025 03:42 PM (D7oie)

99 >>I don't know what you expect someone to do when they barely make enough money to pay rent and owe $1200 a month in student loan payments at 8% interest on a $100k principle. A debt that is not dischargeable in bankruptcy, by the way

Sure. Let's just give everyone a Platinum Card while we are at it.

It's ALL of our problem or some shit.

Posted by: garrett at April 23, 2025 03:42 PM (F30Ty)

100 I know a guy that had all of his Medical School debt discharged by working 2 years on a Reservation. 1980. $50k / year salary.

Hard lilfe.

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 03:42 PM (ZmEVT)

101 to get a student loan discharged in bankruptcy requires huge work and is close to impossible.

Yes. It's more like indentured servitude than a loan. Both the government and the colleges should feel guilt for conning kids just out of high school into this, but we both know just how much of a conscience the government and universities have.

Now, I don't think the borrowers should get off scot-free, Biden-style. Make them take the serious credit hit associated with filing bankruptcy, the same as any other gummint loan.

Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at April 23, 2025 03:36 PM

Hold up one second, every single one of these adults were told exactly how much money they would have to repay and the time they would have to repay it in, every single one of them decided to sign the papers knowing how much they would owe to pay off their loan.

Plus they were given a five year no interest accrued hiatus period where they could have been making payments to the principle and 5.4 million of them chose not to do so. This in no way resembles indentured servitude.

Posted by: Mister Scott (Formerly GWS) at April 23, 2025 03:42 PM (e5NfL)

102 I paid back every penny 9% interest rate and couldn't deduct the interest like these troglodytes can.

Posted by: San Franpsycho at April 23, 2025 03:42 PM (RIvkX)

103 I'm ok with discharging through student loans bankruptcy.
Posted by: Ganowicz Commie Exterminators

===

This is what Biden was attempting to do with loan forgiveness.

Student loans are basically a federal program, so allowing bankruptcy would basically be "free" college tuition.

Hell no.

And there was an era where student loans could be discharged through bankruptcy, doctors would complete medical school (while they were still broke), then declare bankruptcy.

Get the feds and taxpayer out of student loans and this problem solves itself.

Posted by: Leupold at April 23, 2025 03:42 PM (4pwAx)

104 I worked my ass off to pay my way through school. I resent anyone who thinks I should, through my taxes, pay for their school experience.

No. Not even a little bit.

Garnish their barista pay.

Learn to manufacture.
Posted by: nurse ratched at April 23, 2025 03:39 PM (SQHBz)

This!!!

Posted by: Diogenes at April 23, 2025 03:43 PM (W/lyH)

105 you know,they won't garnishee your check if you make payments. Looks like they don't understand that.

Posted by: Notsothoreau at April 23, 2025 03:43 PM (cvWHI)

106 And another thing - this loan money doesn't come out of nowhere

Every dollar in loans comes out of some taxpayer's paycheck. So why do you have to pay the loans back Ms Gender Studies? Because otherwise you are stealing money from the people that didn't waste 4+ years in college on a degree that didn't make them more employable...

Posted by: 18-1 at April 23, 2025 03:43 PM (t0Rmr)

107 >>Student loans should not be dischargeable under bankruptcy, because if they were, no reasonable lender would EVER make a student loan.

Das Redlining!

Posted by: garrett at April 23, 2025 03:43 PM (F30Ty)

108 Under Biden, a mass shooting is considered anything with three or more victims. So this begs the question, if the perp had shot a third cop, would it be a mass shooting, or page 7 news?

Posted by: Diogenes at April 23, 2025 03:39 PM (W/lyH)

I think the definition is four or more, counting the shooter.

But if Biden really adjust it down, than had the cops shot this dumb dumb, it would be a mass shooting and would be added to the total that leftists shove in our faces.

Posted by: Washington Nearsider, still gloating at April 23, 2025 03:43 PM (oSeBJ)

109 At least let the student take the effing Comp Sci course.

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 03:43 PM (ZmEVT)

110 Doesn't that just serve to push down wages and make taxpayers make up the difference? If a job is worth doing, the market will generally pay a reasonable wage. And if it's necessary for the government to provide the service, then they can just pay a competitive wage instead of using student loan forgiveness gimmickry.
Posted by: Disinterested FDA Director
------------

Hello? The problem of medical care leaving smaller, rural areas without medical care has not gone unreported for the last decade or so.

Posted by: Braenyard - some Absent Friends are more equal than others _ at April 23, 2025 03:43 PM (eY5jv)

111 Just read the Tennessee House voted to remove residential property taxes statewide.

I'm only paying 10% of what I paid for my previous home up North.

Posted by: Tonypete at April 23, 2025 03:43 PM (vKNmo)

112 Nobody holds a gun to your head to sign the papers.

Posted by: Mr Aspirin Factory, red heifer owner at April 23, 2025 03:43 PM (asR6R)

113 18 year olds can't drink or smoke or vape. They can sign loans and be drafted as sacrifices to Moloch though.

Posted by: Boss Moss at April 23, 2025 03:44 PM (h9KKO)

114 I saw a video that claimed Starbucks will pay your student loans if you are working there full time.

Is that not true? or is there a limit in how much they will pay?

Posted by: 18-1 at April 23, 2025 03:44 PM (t0Rmr)

115 Providing medical care in rural areas is also a pathway to citizenship.

Posted by: Braenyard - some Absent Friends are more equal than others _ at April 23, 2025 03:44 PM (eY5jv)

116 that didn't waste 4+ years in college on a degree that didn't make them more employable...
Posted by: 18-1

And less enjoyable

Posted by: Bruce at April 23, 2025 03:44 PM (zMtlb)

117
Well it is all of our problems. As I've pointed out many times.

I don't know what you expect someone to do when they barely make enough money to pay rent and owe $1200 a month in student loan payments at 8% interest on a $100k principle. A debt that is not dischargeable in bankruptcy, by the way.

So we just write off a couple of generations of kids and say "welp, let's pack it up. Looks like America is over. Everyone will rent apartments from Blackrock for the rest of their lives. Or not, who cares?"

Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 03:40 PM (uCjyK)

Take roommates. Work 2 jobs. Get married and have the spouse's income pay off the loan (been there, done that - imagine $2500+/month payments for 4 years TWO DECADES AGO...aka, my whole Air Force salary, for my spouse's ed - doable, but sucky)...I always said I could have bought a house for what I paid for his professional degree. And I did not get one b/c we didn't need two...it's my "I'll audit for free when I'm a senior citizen plan"...

Posted by: Nova Local at April 23, 2025 03:44 PM (tOcjL)

118 My guess is many will find some way to get out of forced payments. Many never expected to pay them kn the first place.

Posted by: Skip at April 23, 2025 03:44 PM (sEViE)

119 I don't know what you expect someone to do when they barely make enough money to pay rent and owe $1200 a month in student loan payments at 8% interest on a $100k principle. A debt that is not dischargeable in bankruptcy, by the way
====

They signed the fvcking paper.

Posted by: San Franpsycho at April 23, 2025 03:44 PM (RIvkX)

120 Remember: This is all from another of the long stream of "fuck America" acts brought to you by W.

It was the bankruptcy reform he and Congress passed that:
1) removed student loans from bankruptcy
2) made it harder to claim bankruptcy on other debt

Obama just put the cherry on that shit sundae whipped up by W when he moved student loans into the dept. of ed.

Fuck the banksters and the universities-- make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy again.

Posted by: People's Hippo Voice at April 23, 2025 03:44 PM (+3+7z)

121 he worked as a teacher in the worst schools teaching the worst kids for ten years
________

So basically he was a prison guard.

Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at April 23, 2025 03:44 PM (YqDXo)

122 I taught Network Engineering to Adults in Denver, very successfully, for a few years... Company went under.

So... out lookin for jobs, ran into an ex Student of mine, who was now a supervisor at a State IT Dept... (yeah, in a Bar)...

They had openings, and I'd put in for a couple of positions... but my Resume never made it past HR, because no Four Year Degree... even though 20 years of Military Electronics Experience, and 8 years of Civilian Experience, INCLUDING Teaching the Boss, Network Engineering.

The Degree mill is also forced by HR idiots, who don't know what a job actually entails, and so puts on un needed requirements.

Posted by: Romeo13 at April 23, 2025 03:44 PM (QAkQ3)

123 Just b/c you file bankruptcy does NOT mean you get a loan discharged. Bankruptcy is supposed to determine how much you can pay - you don't get off scot-free.

These folks want full discharge for free...hell, no. You can pay back a ton and then eat 6 years of ruined credit. I might be okay with that option...
Posted by: Nova Local at April

Chapter 7 is complete discharge. Chapter 13 is a repayment plan. It depends on your income if you qualify for a 7 or 13.

Posted by: Piper at April 23, 2025 03:44 PM (pZEOD)

124 Yes. It's more like indentured servitude than a loan. Both the government and the colleges should feel guilt for conning kids just out of high school into this, but we both know just how much of a conscience the government and universities have.

Now, I don't think the borrowers should get off scot-free, Biden-style. Make them take the serious credit hit associated with filing bankruptcy, the same as any other gummint loan.
Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at April 23, 2025 03:36 PM (W5ArC)

That's kind of where I'm at. The government, universities, and lenders are all acting in bad faith and inducing students to take out these loans under false pretenses. However the taxpayer shouldn't get twice-fucked (having already subsidized colleges through taxpayer money in the form of grants and so forth) because of this racket. Make it dischargable in bankruptcy and the problem will largely become self-correcting.

Posted by: Don't reward the fraudsters at April 23, 2025 03:44 PM (TbWk/)

125 Neither debt nor servitude is a death sentence. They may not build character, but they can reveal it.

Yeah it sucks but you can get out from under it. I honestly and strongly believe that indentured servitude is a great system we need to return.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at April 23, 2025 03:44 PM (2VST1)

126 How much Calculus or Physics did I need in Computer Science? Zero.

How much logic?

100%

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 03:44 PM (ZmEVT)

127 Linda McMahon Orders the Department of Education to Begin Collecting Payments for Overdue Student Loans, Garnishing Paychecks If That's What It Takes

Warning Linda:
When it comes to PHD's in Ethnic Studies, Women's Studies and Sexuality Studies, you can't squeeze blood out of a rock.

Posted by: I KNOW MY PIGS at April 23, 2025 03:45 PM (OxX9V)

128 90 Why is it again that it is ok to let an 18 year old with no income or assets take a $250K loan?

If it was for anything outside of college everyone would acknowledge this was insane.
Posted by: 18-1 at April 23, 2025 03:41 PM (t0Rmr)

Exactly. No sane company would ever lend that kind of money to an 18 year old kid. Especially with no collateral.

And if they did, and the kid predictably had no means to pay the money back, the kid at least would have the option to negotiate some kind of relief. And if not, he would file for BK.

None of those options exist here.

Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 03:45 PM (uCjyK)

129 Someone has made absolute bank on these "loans". Whatever happens to them now doesn't really matter, the deed is done. Bet your fannie mae it has come straight out of the working stiff's ass.

Posted by: ... at April 23, 2025 03:45 PM (hxILi)

130 104 I worked my ass off to pay my way through school. I resent anyone who thinks I should, through my taxes, pay for their school experience.

No. Not even a little bit.

Garnish their barista pay.

Learn to manufacture.
Posted by: nurse ratched at April 23, 2025 03:39 PM (SQHBz)

This!!!
Posted by: Diogenes at April 23, 2025 03:43 PM (W/lyH)

I think there is a generational disconnect here. Unless you are doing community college, no one is working their way through school anymore. With today's price tags, it's not even an option.

Posted by: bear with asymmetrical balls at April 23, 2025 03:45 PM (V9cMX)

131
The Degree mill is also forced by HR idiots, who don't know what a job actually entails, and so puts on un needed requirements.
Posted by: Romeo13 at April

This is garbage and you cannot require a 4 year degree unless there is a true nexus between the job and the education requirement.

Posted by: Piper at April 23, 2025 03:45 PM (pZEOD)

132 I paid for my undergrad with the GI bill.

Well, that's not technically true. I used my GI bill money to pay for rent/groceries, and worked to pay tuition, but money's fungible, so...

Posted by: Washington Nearsider, still gloating at April 23, 2025 03:45 PM (oSeBJ)

133 believe it's somehow a contradiction for Trump to shut down the Department of Education, while

I know some senior AWFLs, like superannuated.

One was REEEing about DoE being ended. I asked her what year she graduated high school. She answered: 1960. I asked if she got a good education. She said, Yes, better than a college grad today!
Me: How did that happen if the Dept. of Education didn't exist back then?

Posted by: kallisto at April 23, 2025 03:45 PM (dCxaZ)

134 Harry you make good points but they don't care. They got theirs. It's the younger generation's fault for being lazy, greedy, whatever.

Posted by: brak at April 23, 2025 03:46 PM (7YdgR)

135 >>>I'm only paying 10% of what I paid for my previous home up North.
Posted by: Tonypete
----------

Resistance to rape is still a thing in some parts of the country. 👍

Posted by: Braenyard - some Absent Friends are more equal than others _ at April 23, 2025 03:46 PM (eY5jv)

136 Fuck the banksters and the universities-- make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy again.

Posted by: People's Hippo Voice at April 23, 2025 03:44 PM (+3+7z)
____________

This, and make universities co-sign the loans, or start up their own affiliated finance companies (a la GMAC).

Bye-bye "studies" departments! Also social "science" departments!

Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at April 23, 2025 03:46 PM (YqDXo)

137 >>>WTF? I thought the purpose of govt was to give free shit to all the deadbeats.

This a threat to democracy

Posted by: Ripley

>That would be threat to our Sacred Democracy.

Posted by: Rev Wishbone at April 23, 2025 03:46 PM (fY84s)

138 Repugnance

Posted by: Braenyard - some Absent Friends are more equal than others _ at April 23, 2025 03:46 PM (eY5jv)

139 Take away the doll and get him a dog.

Posted by: Braenyard - some Absent Friends are more equal than others _ at April 23, 2025 03:40 PM (eY5jv)

Why do you hate dogs?

Posted by: BurtTC at April 23, 2025 03:46 PM (dGCAG)

140 As a side note we have to end the notion that teaching requires even an bachelors.

Perhaps for Special Ed, but a "teaching degree" should be no more then 2 years. One year in whatever you want to teach and one on year on how to teach and that is generous - corporate America assumes if you know something you can teach your coworkers and they are mostly right.

Posted by: 18-1 at April 23, 2025 03:46 PM (t0Rmr)

141 Sure. Let's just give everyone a Platinum Card while we are at it.

It's ALL of our problem or some shit.
Posted by: garrett at April 23, 2025 03:42 PM (F30Ty)

Some of us would like to live in a functional society, not a society where half the people living there are debt slaves.

We all agree that the "company stores" and "share cropping agreements" etc. etc. were usurious and morally repugnant, no?

How is this situation any different?

Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 03:46 PM (uCjyK)

142 > So bottom line, she'll get like $200k in student loans forgiven. And she's a high paid attorney

This didn't pass the smell test for me. I just checked, and the current IBR payment is 15% of your "discretionary income", which the difference between your salary and the federal poverty level currently $15,650/year.

150% of that is $23,475. Median wage for an attorney is $151,160. $151,160 - 23,475 = $127,685. 15% of that is $19,152.75

Assuming she's an average paid attorney (not a "highly paid" one), she's going to be forking out nearly $20,000 per year.

Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at April 23, 2025 03:46 PM (W5ArC)

143 One more time, *sad sigh* college is NOT a glorified, super expensive trade school. The purpose of a college education is not supposed to be to get a job. Its supposed to be education that helps you be a better citizen, leader, and thinker. Its supposed to take all the things you memorized and all the things you learned in previous education and learn to use them to make new things, think new thoughts, and build a new future, understand the world better.

You CAN get a job from this but jobs like Engineering, Medicine, Law, etc should be divorced into something more like trade schools: you want to be one of these guys? Go to Law school, go to Medical school.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at April 23, 2025 03:47 PM (2VST1)

144 I went to Local State University in the late 80s early 90s and paid the tuition bill each quarter with my own money. I did kind of run out in the latter part of my 4.5 year journey to a bachelor's degree, borrowed $1800 from my Dad and paid it off by the end of the same year.

But colleges were way more affordable then and commuting saved money. I was well aware that each class cost my own money and I tried not to miss a single one, even after the occassional free time at Block 5 to go to the bar and get a pitcher of swill for $5 and trying to stay awake and take notes in Block 7 class.

Colleges got way out hand competing with others with improved dorms and rec centers, followed by exponential growth in administration. Something needs to happen to make colleges serious institutions again.

Posted by: Chuck Martel at April 23, 2025 03:47 PM (Dv3i1)

145 I don't know what you expect someone to do when they barely make enough money to pay rent and owe $1200 a month in student loan payments at 8% interest on a $100k principle. A debt that is not dischargeable in bankruptcy, by the way.

So we just write off a couple of generations of kids and say "welp, let's pack it up. Looks like America is over. Everyone will rent apartments from Blackrock for the rest of their lives. Or not, who cares?"

Posted by: Harry Paratestes
===

Make sure other generations see this example and don't also do it?

Most of these student loans are just people that can pay them off, but don't want to. Because they eventually think a Democrat will forgive them and they think it's their entitlement.

Average student loan balance is $38k. You can knock that out with some discipline, that's like an average new car purchase.

My health insurance for my family for just one year is like $24k.

Posted by: Leupold at April 23, 2025 03:47 PM (4pwAx)

146 Do you think these 17 or 18 year olds really read the fine print, and really looked in to whether or not these loans were dischargeable in BK?
Posted by: Harry Paratestes

Now do sex change operations.

Posted by: nurse ratched at April 23, 2025 03:47 PM (7hR46)

147 I think there is a generational disconnect here. Unless you are doing community college, no one is working their way through school anymore. With today's price tags, it's not even an option.
Posted by: bear with asymmetrical balls at April 23, 2025 03:45 PM (V9cMX)

Yep. Unless you've got a good chunk of scholarship covering your tuition etc that just isn't going to happen.

Posted by: Things have changed and not for the better at April 23, 2025 03:48 PM (TbWk/)

148 This is garbage and you cannot require a 4 year degree unless there is a true nexus between the job and the education requirement.

Posted by: Piper at April 23, 2025 03:45 PM (pZEOD)
_____________

I marvel at people who say that they never use anything they learned in college. WTF did you go, then?

Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at April 23, 2025 03:48 PM (YqDXo)

149 >> Well it is all of our problems. As I've pointed out many times.

Not really. Not if I'm not forced to pay for it.

>> So we just write off a couple of generations of kids and say "welp, let's pack it up. Looks like America is over. Everyone will rent apartments from Blackrock for the rest of their lives. Or not, who cares?"

You act like these people are starving to death. They've been coddled for far too long. So what if they have to work shitty jobs for the rest of their lives? There are tens of millions of people who have to do that every day, many of whom never even got the chance to go to college.

Suck it up. Some will work harder or figure out a way to prosper in spite of the loans. Necessity is the mother of invention.

Posted by: Disinterested FDA Director at April 23, 2025 03:48 PM (/dDa4)

150 Lots of smart folks have advanced theories on how to fix this. I think the top suggestions are
1. get the feral government out of the process. or
2. make the university a co-signee on every loan, and be on the hook if student fails to repay.

Then 3. allow companies to use skill testing in hiring so that they do not turn to 'did they get through a college program?' as a rough substitute.

It would probably be good for the country if the current university system collapsed, they are hot-houses for cultivating future commies, and do precious little educating in areas that will help the attendee earn a living.

Posted by: PaleRider at April 23, 2025 03:48 PM (bP/i4)

151 Really big question also... why is College so damn expensive? $100K? are these classes taught no Nobel Prize winners???

No, they are primarily taught by Graduate Teaching Assistants...

Posted by: Romeo13 at April 23, 2025 03:48 PM (QAkQ3)

152 Okay, so as a newly hired Software Engineer I am in the computer lab and the big-wigs from corporate come through and the this really old guy comes up and starts chatting with me. Eventually I ask him "Why do you hire only college grads?"

"We have a much higher rate of success with them."

My eldest son eventually got his bachelor's degree. Check that box.

GS-14.

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 03:48 PM (ZmEVT)

153 Do you think they will be able to use the "It's too hard to read this" excuse with any other legal document they sign?

Posted by: Notsothoreau at April 23, 2025 03:49 PM (cvWHI)

154 134 Harry you make good points but they don't care. They got theirs. It's the younger generation's fault for being lazy, greedy, whatever.
Posted by: brak at April 23, 2025 03:46 PM (7YdgR)

I know. It is frustrating to keep repeating the same points to people who clearly think we're still living in 1992, but I think it's worth repeating.

Maybe someone will say "hey, maybe this guy in the gray box whose nic is a juvenile joke about hairy balls has a bit of a point, and it's not just whiny liberals with nose rings who find this entire student loan fiasco to be a huge problem"

Probably not, but... I hold out hope.

Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 03:49 PM (uCjyK)

155 Eliminate the student loan program. Obama amped this up to destabilize and degenerate higher learning institutions.
Make the universities return to a proper management / teacher ratio.

Posted by: Braenyard - some Absent Friends are more equal than others _ at April 23, 2025 03:49 PM (eY5jv)

156 Make universities cosign for federal student loans their students take out.

Could this be abused somehow? Probably. But the current system is already also being abused by the universities, so I don't really give a fuck.

Posted by: joe, living dangerously at April 23, 2025 03:49 PM (B9Prs)

157 Have you been swindled by overpaying for a useless education from some Big College or State University? Were you forced to take out a student loan you will never be able to repay and have had to move back in with your egg or sperm donor while working at StarChucks? If so call me! I want to get you some money!

1-800-MONEY4U

Call today!

Posted by: Alexander Shunnarah, Billboard King at April 23, 2025 03:49 PM (+8MS3)

158 >>Some of us would like to live in a functional society, not a society where half the people living there are debt slaves.

You want the entire range of Humanity to be equally responsible?

Never going to happen.
Life is a game of decisions and consequences. You made the choices that put you where you are at every single moment in time.
You are responsible.
You.
Not everyone else.

Posted by: garrett at April 23, 2025 03:49 PM (F30Ty)

159 How is this situation any different?

Well the structure of higher education needs to be reorganized, and the cost needs to be severely reduced. This isn't an issue about debt or hardship, its an issue of mismanagement and corruption. Yes, its neat to have new marble buildings every year and fifteen sub-deans in every department but its also ripping off students.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at April 23, 2025 03:49 PM (2VST1)

160 Do colleges even have work study programs anymore? Got me through the college years , along with some heavy jobs I had in the summers and during winter break. Good way to teach a work ethic

Posted by: Smell the Glove at April 23, 2025 03:50 PM (6TePA)

161 Chapter 7 is complete discharge. Chapter 13 is a repayment plan. It depends on your income if you qualify for a 7 or 13.
Posted by: Piper at April 23, 2025 03:44 PM (pZEOD)

I don't know how things are now, but in 2018 everyone was filing CPT 13 because there was no additional charge. File for chapter 13 then have the trustee and judge change it to a 7.

Remember when the economy was taking a downswing in 2018-19? No one does, for some reason.

Posted by: Kindltot at April 23, 2025 03:50 PM (D7oie)

162 RFK Jr. Considers Pulling Coronavirus Vaccine from Official Childhood Vaccine Schedule

He's considering?

Posted by: Maj. Healey at April 23, 2025 03:50 PM (/U5Yz)

163 The Degree mill is also forced by HR idiots, who don't know what a job actually entails, and so puts on un needed requirements.
Posted by: Romeo13 at April

This is garbage and you cannot require a 4 year degree unless there is a true nexus between the job and the education requirement.
Posted by: Piper at April 23, 2025 03:45 PM (pZEOD)

I've written job descriptions for openings, and had to argue that a 2 year degree plus experience was acceptable. This is in a field where self-taught people can easily do the work, with some mentoring, but it wasn't easy to get that through to HR.

Posted by: Hour of the Wolf at April 23, 2025 03:50 PM (VNX3d)

164 134 Harry you make good points but they don't care. They got theirs. It's the younger generation's fault for being lazy, greedy, whatever.

Posted by: brak at April 23, 2025 03:46 PM (7YdgR)

No, my kids are in college NOW. They will be pissed as hell if others get loans paid off b/c they chose their school based on what they could pay. Mine could have gone higher league level (as National Merit Commended Scholars), but chose what made financial sense.

And it is hurting the one looking for jobs now not having that "it" college...but not so much she needs to panic about getting a job b/c she doesn't have loans to pay...

Posted by: Nova Local at April 23, 2025 03:50 PM (tOcjL)

165 Really big question also... why is College so damn expensive? $100K? are these classes taught no Nobel Prize winners???

1) too many administrators/bureaucrats. Professors make a decent salary but not unreasonably so

2) The colleges are often in expensive big blue shitties raising the costs of everything

Posted by: 18-1 at April 23, 2025 03:51 PM (t0Rmr)

166 Now do sex change operations.
Posted by: nurse ratched at April 23, 2025 03:47 PM (7hR46)

I agree with you 100% on that as well.

Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 03:51 PM (uCjyK)

167 No loans for non-STEM degrees.

Posted by: Maj. Healey at April 23, 2025 03:51 PM (/U5Yz)

168 Colleges got way out hand competing with others with improved dorms and rec centers, followed by exponential growth in administration. Something needs to happen to make colleges serious institutions again.

Posted by: Chuck Martel at April 23, 2025 03:47 PM (Dv3i1)
____________

Capping overhead on Federal grants at 15% is going to put "paid" to all that. That's how universities afford rec centers and administrators in battalion strength.

Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at April 23, 2025 03:51 PM (YqDXo)

169 You are too stupid for a real job.

I predict this to be the most repeated statement of the decade.

Posted by: Dreamingrobot at April 23, 2025 03:52 PM (jFSP3)

170 One of my older brothers gave me great advice back in the day.

"Education is good. Experience is great. The combination is dynamite."

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 03:52 PM (ZmEVT)

171 I saved money so I could send my kids to college and I paid for it. My kids didn't qualify for any grants all they had was scholarships they earned and I don't think I should have to pay for kids that went to a college they couldn't afford and make up for their poor ROI.

Posted by: CaliGirl at April 23, 2025 03:52 PM (mxvzO)

172 Some of us would like to live in a functional society, not a society where half the people living there are debt slaves.

We all agree that the "company stores" and "share cropping agreements" etc. etc. were usurious and morally repugnant, no?

How is this situation any different?
Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 03:46 PM (uCjyK)
=====

You are referring to the same zombies the left refers when complaining about voter ID. "But they caaaaaaan't get an ID."

"But they caaaan't be responsible for their own choices!"

Posted by: San Franpsycho at April 23, 2025 03:52 PM (RIvkX)

173 Lot of straw men getting torched in here today.

Posted by: Conditions change? Who knew. at April 23, 2025 03:52 PM (TbWk/)

174 I suspect that people are talking past each other here. I see two threads of thought:

1) College costs too much and is ruining young peoples' future! We cannot expect a new generation to function saddled with this vast debt!

2) If you sign up for something you should be responsible for paying it back, not force everyone else in the nation to do so for you.

This isn't about generational differences or spite toward young people are greed or anything. Its just two different and true ideas being expressed.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at April 23, 2025 03:52 PM (2VST1)

175 Joke will be the hundreds of thousands spent on unless degrees unless the Marxists get hold of the government again. We are seeing Cultural Marxist Commissars getting the boot.

Posted by: Skip at April 23, 2025 03:52 PM (sEViE)

176 No, my kids are in college NOW. They will be pissed as hell if others get loans paid off b/c they chose their school based on what they could pay. Mine could have gone higher league level (as National Merit Commended Scholars), but chose what made financial sense.

And it is hurting the one looking for jobs now not having that "it" college...but not so much she needs to panic about getting a job b/c she doesn't have loans to pay...
Posted by: Nova Local at April 23, 2025 03:50 PM (tOcjL)

And it's great and commendable that you were able to help your children pay for college.

But what about people who can't?

If the argument is college should only be for the children of the affluent, I find that to be less offensive than "college is for everyone, and we'll make most of them debt slaves for life."

Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 03:52 PM (uCjyK)

177 No loans for non-STEM degrees.

Posted by: Maj. Healey at April 23, 2025 03:51 PM (/U5Yz)
______________

That will be the result of putting universities on the hook for student loans that don't perform.

Need the proviso that if you start out as a STEM major, but change to something else, the loan blows up.

Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at April 23, 2025 03:53 PM (YqDXo)

178 Work-study initiatives.

Posted by: runner at April 23, 2025 03:53 PM (g47mK)

179 How to make clouds shinier (willowed):

244 I think all you have to do is let certain aerosols back in the exhaust plume at the factories. That will make the clouds shinier and cool the Earth. This was something Sean Twomey, may he Rest In Peace, from the Atmospheric Science Dept. at the University of Arizona worked out in the 1980s. After he retired, he used to go from conference to conference arguing against the Global Warming Hypothesis. They didn’t listen. Instead they used his aerosol work explain away the lack of predicted warming. “It’s the aerosols!” they said. By now we’ve cleaned the aerosols out of the emissions, but we still don’t have the predicted warming. We never will. The hypothesis failed decades ago. But we can’t give up all this government graft, er, grants! So now climate change! As if the climate was ever unchanging. If anything the climate is getting better: ask archeologists about the various climatic optima that occurred when the climate was warmer than today

Posted by: NemoMeImpuneLacessit at April 23, 2025 03:53 PM (g/Chl)

180 Banks will give a $100,000 to an 18 year old to "go to college."
But they won't give $100,000 to a 26 year old master plumber to start a plumbing business.

Because of bankruptcy laws.

End that and we end all of the bullshit "studies" degrees.

PS:
Remember--you've been paying the salaries of 90% of all these bullshit degrees since they're all education or NGO employees.

Posted by: People's Hippo Voice at April 23, 2025 03:53 PM (+3+7z)

181 Really big question also... why is College so damn expensive? $100K? are these classes taught no Nobel Prize winners???

1) too many administrators/bureaucrats. Professors make a decent salary but not unreasonably so

2) The colleges are often in expensive big blue shitties raising the costs of everything
Posted by: 18-1

And, most importantly -

3) Their exorbitant tuitions are guaranteed to be paid by kids borrowing their lives away! The schools absorb no risk.

Posted by: Tonypete at April 23, 2025 03:53 PM (vKNmo)

182 or be born in 1954, when you could pay tuition for college with your newspaper route money or whatever it is the Boomers like to say.

Born a decade later, but it was still barely possible, although you would have had to have had either a much larger route or be a much better saver than I was.

Posted by: Stephen Price Blair at April 23, 2025 03:54 PM (EXyHK)

183 I've written job descriptions for openings, and had to argue that a 2 year degree plus experience was acceptable. This is in a field where self-taught people can easily do the work, with some mentoring, but it wasn't easy to get that through to HR.
Posted by: Hour of the Wolf

You had garbage HR and worse employment attorneys. Or this happened more than 15 years ago before employers had the pants sued off them for arbitrary job requirements.

Sadly, bad HR is bad HR, and it’s out there for sure.

Posted by: Piper at April 23, 2025 03:54 PM (pZEOD)

184 Harry you make good points but they don't care. They got theirs. It's the younger generation's fault for being lazy, greedy, whatever.
Posted by: brak at April 23, 2025 03:46 PM (7YdgR)

I know. It is frustrating to keep repeating the same points to people who clearly think we're still living in 1992, but I think it's worth repeating.

Maybe someone will say "hey, maybe this guy in the gray box whose nic is a juvenile joke about hairy balls has a bit of a point, and it's not just whiny liberals with nose rings who find this entire student loan fiasco to be a huge problem"

Probably not, but... I hold out hope.
Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 03:49 PM (uCjyK)

All you're really doing though, is describing one aspect of the problem. Yes, "kids" took out loans they couldn't pay back, and old curmudgeons respond with "well back in my day..."

It's an op. Like every other op. The rich and powerful set up a system that is designed to fail, and designed to get ordinary people to turn on each other.

Divide and conquer. It's an Us v. Them world, the problem is, most people are quite blind to who "Them" is.

Posted by: BurtTC at April 23, 2025 03:54 PM (dGCAG)

185 Really big question also... why is College so damn expensive? $100K? are these classes taught no Nobel Prize winners???

In addition to what 18-1 said:

3) because the government throws billions at them in grants and loans for students so they spend like crazy
4) because every college has to look like its a mad monarch's secret garden with massive towering marble structures and incredible sculpture and landscaping
5) because there's no competition to drive the cost cutting.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at April 23, 2025 03:54 PM (2VST1)

186 > I think there is a generational disconnect here. Unless you are doing community college, no one is working their way through school anymore.

Correct.

When I started college (mumble) years ago, tuition was $240/semester at my "poor people" state university for 12 credits or more (i.e., $20/credit... less, if you wanted to carry a higher load).

Now it's over $300 *per credit*.

I had a typical college-student minimum wage job making $2.30/hour, so I could pay for a credit in about 7 hours of work.

Current minimum wage is $7.25/hour. You'd have to work for 41 hours to pay for that same credit, nearly 6 times longer.

Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at April 23, 2025 03:54 PM (W5ArC)

187 *shines bright light into high-school senior's eyes

Sign ze papers!
Ze papers!!!!

Posted by: Monocled Admissions Officer with a long scar across his cheek, wearing a full-length black leather c at April 23, 2025 03:54 PM (w9Wax)

188 One more time, *sad sigh* college is NOT a glorified, super expensive trade school. The purpose of a college education is not supposed to be to get a job. Its supposed to be education that helps you be a better citizen, leader, and thinker. Its supposed to take all the things you memorized and all the things you learned in previous education and learn to use them to make new things, think new thoughts, and build a new future, understand the world better.

You CAN get a job from this but jobs like Engineering, Medicine, Law, etc should be divorced into something more like trade schools: you want to be one of these guys? Go to Law school, go to Medical school.
Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at April 23, 2025 03:47 PM (2VST1)

It sounds like we don't need college at all, then. At the very least it's a luxury good.

Posted by: Disinterested FDA Director at April 23, 2025 03:54 PM (/dDa4)

189 "No loans for non-STEM degrees."

For Junior and Senior years.

There are other non-STEM disciplines that are of value. Business. History, English. But you better be at the top of your class.

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 03:55 PM (ZmEVT)

190
He ought to pull the corona virus vaccine off the market.

Posted by: Braenyard - some Absent Friends are more equal than others _ at April 23, 2025 03:55 PM (eY5jv)

191 There's nothing wrong with my corona.

Posted by: Braenyard - some Absent Friends are more equal than others _ at April 23, 2025 03:55 PM (eY5jv)

192 You took out the loan.

Some were co-signed.

You KNEW you had to pay it back with the earnings you would receive after graduation.

Be it ditch digging or as a USAID hire.

Again. You KNEW this.

It's hard work.

BTW. You KNEW this.

Posted by: Steve_in_SoCal at April 23, 2025 03:55 PM (FxH7T)

193 >>Current minimum wage is $7.25/hour. You'd have to work for 41 hours to pay for that same credit, nearly 6 times longer.

McDonalds here starts at 17.95/hr.

Posted by: garrett at April 23, 2025 03:55 PM (F30Ty)

194 176 No, my kids are in college NOW. They will be pissed as hell if others get loans paid off b/c they chose their school based on what they could pay. Mine could have gone higher league level (as National Merit Commended Scholars), but chose what made financial sense.

And it is hurting the one looking for jobs now not having that "it" college...but not so much she needs to panic about getting a job b/c she doesn't have loans to pay...
Posted by: Nova Local at April 23, 2025 03:50 PM (tOcjL)

And it's great and commendable that you were able to help your children pay for college.

But what about people who can't?

If the argument is college should only be for the children of the affluent, I find that to be less offensive than "college is for everyone, and we'll make most of them debt slaves for life."

Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 03:52 PM (uCjyK)

No, my kids went state school living at home and got some scholarships b/c it's not a "great" school. They literally paid out less than what Catholic high school would cost me per year. THAT's what they got. Their degrees cost less than a new normal car. That's making a good financial call.

Posted by: Nova Local at April 23, 2025 03:56 PM (tOcjL)

195 You are referring to the same zombies the left refers when complaining about voter ID. "But they caaaaaaan't get an ID."

"But they caaaan't be responsible for their own choices!"
Posted by: San Franpsycho at April 23, 2025 03:52 PM (RIvkX)

No, I'm not. I'm referring to every day normal kids who grew up in the middle class and tried to do what they thought was the right thing and make something of themselves.

And instead, they get mocked for going to college in the first place and told that it is all their fault because at 18 years old, they weren't smart enough to realize that college was a scam.

I look at people's financial data all the time as part of my job. Your doctor, your lawyer, your accountant, etc. etc. etc. all likely have a shit ton of debt that's a huge burden on their lives.

But fine, they make decent money and will likely pay it off before it's time to take out more loans to send their kids to college.

But you know who will have a much harder time paying it off? Everyone else who didn't end up becoming a lawyer or doctor.

Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 03:56 PM (uCjyK)

196 Education is fucking dumb because the Left runs it.

Posted by: ... at April 23, 2025 03:56 PM (hxILi)

197 This is garbage and you cannot require a 4 year degree unless there is a true nexus between the job and the education requirement.
Posted by: Piper at April 23, 2025 03:45 PM (pZEOD)

It is not unusual, the Oregon Department of Human Services requires that all Child Welfare Caseworkers (all levels) have at the minimum a BA though equivalent job or educational experience might have worked.

I qualified with my Spanish degree, but I never applied and refused any offer to be hired to one of the positions.

Posted by: Kindltot at April 23, 2025 03:56 PM (D7oie)

198 Really big question also... why is College so damn expensive? $100K? are these classes taught no Nobel Prize winners???

----------

Because DogEater federalized/nationalized the post-secondary student loan business (1) doling out loans to any grifter for any reason and amount; and (2) the colleges recognized a racket when they saw one (inducing pulling out of their CRT/DEI/Victim Aggrievement asses literally hundreds of worthless areas of "study" and "degrees").

Posted by: ShainS --Waking Up Early is White Supremacy at April 23, 2025 03:56 PM (f3noK)

199 Really big question also... why is College so damn expensive? $100K? are these classes taught no Nobel Prize winners???
______________

Nobel Laureates generally do not teach undergraduate courses. (Although some choose to do so.)

Also, it's a fallacy to think pimply freshmen would benefit from instruction by a Nobel Laureate, who may or may not be any good at teaching.

Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at April 23, 2025 03:57 PM (YqDXo)

200 One of my older brothers gave me great advice back in the day.

"Education is good. Experience is great. The combination is dynamite."
Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 03:52 PM (ZmEVT)

That's why when I go to the whorehouse, I look for the old gal with no teeth.

Posted by: BurtTC at April 23, 2025 03:57 PM (dGCAG)

201 >>I look at people's financial data all the time as part of my job. Your doctor, your lawyer, your accountant, etc. etc. etc. all likely have a shit ton of debt that's a huge burden on their lives.

Now do their $90k Imported Sedan.

Posted by: garrett at April 23, 2025 03:57 PM (F30Ty)

202 It sounds like we don't need college at all, then. At the very least it's a luxury good.

It IS a luxury good. Its not worthless, but its not critical for the general functioning of the nation. Its necessary for a future, for innovation, for thought and culture and progress, but its not needed to keep the lights on.

The idea of "everyone should go to college" must end. Its something special for the best and brightest and future leaders to be in, to become even better and brighter. But the entire system has to be gutted and rebuilt back the way it used to be when places like Princeton Harvard produced men who built America and the future we now enjoy and live in.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at April 23, 2025 03:57 PM (2VST1)

203 Another ramification of the student loan fiasco: the cost of textbooks.

There is

Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at April 23, 2025 03:57 PM (YqDXo)

204 I've written job descriptions for openings, and had to argue that a 2 year degree plus experience was acceptable. This is in a field where self-taught people can easily do the work, with some mentoring, but it wasn't easy to get that through to HR.
Posted by: Hour of the Wolf

You had garbage HR and worse employment attorneys. Or this happened more than 15 years ago before employers had the pants sued off them for arbitrary job requirements.

Sadly, bad HR is bad HR, and it’s out there for sure.
Posted by: Piper at April 23, 2025 03:54 PM (pZEOD)

It was only a few years ago, but it was hard to convince them that a 4 year degree wasn't required. It was one of the few departments in the company that expected 4 year degrees, so I caught them by surprise.

Since I was self-taught in that field, I knew it could be done.

Posted by: Hour of the Wolf at April 23, 2025 03:57 PM (VNX3d)

205 > 180 Banks will give a $100,000 to an 18 year old to "go to college."
But they won't give $100,000 to a 26 year old master plumber to start a plumbing business.

"Banks" don't enter into it. Obama nationalized the student loans over a decade ago, meaning that the banksters got paid in full, and the burden got shifted to the taxpayers.

That plumber can certainly get an SBA loan, which is the same thing... except he's allowed to discharge it in bankruptcy if he goes belly-up.

Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at April 23, 2025 03:57 PM (W5ArC)

206 Another part of the problem is that the K-12 education that society pays for so we can have a functional society down the road has become so badly broken. If getting your HS diploma meant you know as much math, history, english and civics as it did 40-50 years ago, then people who aren't wanting to become a doctor, lawyer, engineer would have no need to be spending 2-4 years and thousands of dollars to get a degree. They could get a decent job at 18 right out of HS. In some fields they still do apprenticeships, but I don't think that is offered if you want to be an accountant.

Posted by: PaleRider at April 23, 2025 03:58 PM (bP/i4)

207 All you're really doing though, is describing one aspect of the problem. Yes, "kids" took out loans they couldn't pay back, and old curmudgeons respond with "well back in my day..."

It's an op. Like every other op. The rich and powerful set up a system that is designed to fail, and designed to get ordinary people to turn on each other.

Divide and conquer. It's an Us v. Them world, the problem is, most people are quite blind to who "Them" is.
Posted by: BurtTC at April 23, 2025 03:54 PM (dGCAG)

I agree, this was all by design.

I think it's helpful for people to see the other side of the equation, and its not helpful for them to gloat about how they graduated college with no debt due to hard work, grit, and the fact that college cost about 10% (inflation adjusted) of what it costs now.

Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 03:58 PM (uCjyK)

208 Totally OT

Black Stabber from Frisco. The stabbing happened in Frisco, TX which is in Collin County, not Dallas County. Collin County is a lot richer and historically more conservative than Dallas County.

Probably the best way to know what's really going on is info from that area.

Posted by: Braenyard - some Absent Friends are more equal than others _ at April 23, 2025 03:59 PM (eY5jv)

209 2) If you sign up for something you should be responsible for paying it back, not force everyone else in the nation to do so for you.

This isn't about generational differences or spite toward young people are greed or anything. Its just two different and true ideas being expressed.
Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at April 23, 2025 03:52 PM (2VST1)

The problem with Idea #2, is that people are trying to sell it in a welfare state, post-TARP, where pretty much all debts other than intentional tort damage awards are dischargeable, which makes it just sound more like "fuck you, that's why."

I don't favor debt relief for student loans. But I don't think people who oppose it understand how unpersuasive a lot of their explanations are.

Posted by: bear with asymmetrical balls at April 23, 2025 03:59 PM (V9cMX)

210 I am at the age that a lot of people I know have kids going to college.

Plenty of them are still going to expensive schools and getting worthless degrees that have no use

Posted by: Hatari somewhere on Ventura Highway at April 23, 2025 03:59 PM (NtVYv)

211 Let's say they do cancel student loan debt. Typically, debt forgiveness results in taxable income. $100,000 in debt turns into "income" for the IRS. Now they owe taxes on that. Shoots these idiots into pretty much the highest tax bracket immediately. They will have to pay the taxes on that by April 15th... extension is only for filing, you still have to pay what is owed by 4/15. If they can't, BOOM, penalties and interest start accruing. Then maybe jail. [Rubs hands together] maybe we do cancel student loan debt?

Posted by: mishdog at April 23, 2025 03:59 PM (m0jmC)

212 Christopher R Taylor, my dad was such an idealist. Went to Berkeley in the 1930s. Didn't graduate. Was a bit of an efftard all his life. The Liberal Arts education was for its own sake.

Yeah. That is if you are born a gentleman and don't actually have to work for a living.

I went to UCSD looking at it as "high-tech trade school." Okay, I graduated from Revelle College, so I must be a Renaissance Man.

21st century universities are high-tech trade schools.

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 03:59 PM (ZmEVT)

213 > BTW. You KNEW this.
Posted by: Steve_in_SoCal at April 23, 2025 03:55 PM (FxH7T)

So did VA/FHA home buyers. So did SBA borrowers.

And?

Why do they get to file bankruptcy?

Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at April 23, 2025 03:59 PM (W5ArC)

214 Oops.

There is ZERO need for new math textbooks, for example. Math courses teach math that has been known for at least a century.

This is also true - to a lesser extent - for undergraduate courses in physics and chemistry. Graduate courses often don't have textbooks.

Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at April 23, 2025 03:59 PM (YqDXo)

215 How is this situation any different?
Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 03:46 PM (uCjyK)

only garbage people sharecrop or have to shop at the company store. We are talking about cultured people who went to college like me! How dare they let our class down like common spendthrifts.

Posted by: Kindltot at April 23, 2025 03:59 PM (D7oie)

216 Someone has made absolute bank on these "loans". Whatever happens to them now doesn't really matter, the deed is done. Bet your fannie mae it has come straight out of the working stiff's ass.
Posted by: ... at

Yes. The admin group at colleges

Posted by: Steve_in_SoCal at April 23, 2025 03:59 PM (FxH7T)

217
If the argument is college should only be for the children of the affluent, I find that to be less offensive than "college is for everyone, and we'll make most of them debt slaves for life."
Posted by: Harry Paratestes

For the record, I think your points are extremely valid and while those with underwater basket weaving degrees are ridiculous, there is so much more to this than people paying debts. School is way more expensive, good jobs are far more difficult to get, when you are registering for school you get inundated with messaging about doing what you love, and frankly, some schools advertise job placement stats that are padded at best. Schools aren’t super upfront about loans and repayment, plus interest on these loans are variable. It’s a lot and if this was just so darn easy, we would have a few people with this problem, not the numbers that exist now.

Posted by: Piper at April 23, 2025 03:59 PM (pZEOD)

218 I think there is a generational disconnect here. Unless you are doing community college, no one is working their way through school anymore.
===

Then let's address that. Harvard has enough in their endowment to give free tuition for like 100 years.

Why has tuition skyrocketed?

Even if you did student loan forgiveness, what does that solve for the person that's entering college as a freshman next year?

Loan forgiveness/bankruptcy is like thinking amnesty solves illegal immigration.

Posted by: Leupold at April 23, 2025 04:00 PM (4pwAx)

219 > Now they owe taxes on that.

Nah, any such forgiveness would almost certainly be prevented from being taxable income.

Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at April 23, 2025 04:00 PM (W5ArC)

220 Jeb! got a degree in Latin American Affairs.

Posted by: Boss Moss at April 23, 2025 04:00 PM (h9KKO)

221 Really big question also... why is College so damn expensive? $100K? are these classes taught no Nobel Prize winners???

No. Think Office Space. The ratio of administrators to instructors even in private colleges today is insane.

A lot of the money probably really does go the way of fraud, but a lot goes to administration, and a lot goes to treating very expensive construction as if it were disposable and redoing it regularly.

Posted by: Stephen Price Blair at April 23, 2025 04:00 PM (EXyHK)

222 Some of us would like to live in a functional society, not a society where half the people living there are debt slaves.
I would like to live in a society where there are no libs.
I would like to have judges that follow the Constitution not make up their own version.
But I will not get that.

Posted by: MAC V SOG at April 23, 2025 04:01 PM (P4Pk9)

223 I agree, this was all by design.

I think it's helpful for people to see the other side of the equation, and its not helpful for them to gloat about how they graduated college with no debt due to hard work, grit, and the fact that college cost about 10% (inflation adjusted) of what it costs now.
Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 03:58 PM (uCjyK)

Not unlike every other social ill in this country. Race, drugs, the gay stuff... all of it, they wanted us at each other's throats.

And here we are.

Posted by: BurtTC at April 23, 2025 04:01 PM (dGCAG)

224 Not sure that remarking one worked his way through college is gloating. However, complaining that one must pay a debt agreed to is whining.

Posted by: Braenyard - some Absent Friends are more equal than others _ at April 23, 2025 04:02 PM (eY5jv)

225 I do wonder how many of those yowling the most about "I paid off my student loans, so should everyone else!" know how much student loan you can rack up now for the same degree they got?

All this about bs studies degrees should also note at a full-freight STEM degree is going to cost just as much.

So, it's not just idiots rolling out of college with $100k in debt--it's nearly everyone now.

Posted by: People's Hippo Voice at April 23, 2025 04:02 PM (+3+7z)

226 There is ZERO need for new math textbooks, for example. Math courses teach math that has been known for at least a century.

This is also true - to a lesser extent - for undergraduate courses in physics and chemistry. Graduate courses often don't have textbooks.
Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at April 23, 2025 03:59 PM (YqDXo)
---
Most textbooks, particularly in upper-level STEM courses aren't even written with the student in mind. They are written BY academics FOR academics. I hated my upper-level physics courses for that reason.

There was no attempt to explain the concepts and formulas in language that a newbie could understand.

Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at April 23, 2025 04:02 PM (7fElN)

227 >> And instead, they get mocked for going to college in the first place and told that it is all their fault because at 18 years old, they weren't smart enough to realize that college was a scam.

Funny, when I was 18 I got mocked for telling everyone college was a scam. Everyone told me I had to go, was making a huge mistake by dropping out, etc.

I told them I wasn't going to take on about $10k /year in debt for a degree that was being handed to complete morons. I saw the quality of the people going to college. I told everyone that the mindset of "Everyone needs to go to college" will just devalue a degree to worthlessness. It's just basic economics.

So I worked my ass off while they partied. And now, everyone pretty much agrees with me that college is a scam, etc. I'm glad I was vindicated, but I'm not paying for their four years of getting drunk. Screw them.

I'd rather fight a civil war than pay their loans.

Posted by: Disinterested FDA Director at April 23, 2025 04:02 PM (/dDa4)

228 First problem is these are the same jerks that called us names and sneer at working in manufacturing. Second problem is that many of us saw the cost of college and decided to do something else. I went to community college, got a crappy paying job and it took decades to pay off the $6k I owed. No one shed a tear for how hard that was for me. I would be okay with discharging in bankruptcy as most of these people would be Chapter13 and have to pay part of it off. But that's it. No freebies.

Posted by: Notsothoreau at April 23, 2025 04:02 PM (cvWHI)

229
Most of these student loans are little more than end runs into Universal Basic Income so that the students can spend 7-8 years living in dorms smoking dope while doing butt stuff with a new herd of doe-eyed young freshman coeds coming in every school year.

Posted by: IllTemperedCur at April 23, 2025 04:03 PM (y9nCu)

230 I’m thinking of the Holocene climactic optimum that occurred roughly 9,500 to 5,500 years before the present. This was a time of the invention and spread of agriculture, pottery, settled towns and villages, and many other cultural innovations fostered by a warmer climate. Warmer is better (and greener, too)!

Posted by: NemoMeImpuneLacessit at April 23, 2025 04:03 PM (g/Chl)

231 In addition to what 18-1 said:

3) because the government throws billions at them in grants and loans for students so they spend like crazy
4) because every college has to look like its a mad monarch's secret garden with massive towering marble structures and incredible sculpture and landscaping
5) because there's no competition to drive the cost cutting.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at April 23, 2025 03:54 PM (2VST1)

--------------

6) also, as VDH pointed out a year or two ago -- the faculty and staff at Stanford University exceeds the number of students.

Posted by: ShainS --Waking Up Early is White Supremacy at April 23, 2025 04:03 PM (Rng/A)

232 Didn't Trump U get sued for supposedly marketing something which had no real world value?

Seems to me there's precedent for students to sue Universities.

Posted by: blake - semi lurker in marginal standing (tT6L1) at April 23, 2025 04:03 PM (tT6L1)

233 I went to UCSD looking at it as "high-tech trade school." Okay, I graduated from Revelle College, so I must be a Renaissance Man.

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 03:59 PM (ZmEVT)
________________

Me too. I loved the curriculum as it was then (no idea about now). Two years of humanities (history, literature, philosophy all gemisched), a foreign language requirement, a math requirement, a physical science requirement. It was great!

Years later arts dons were pontificating about books any educated person needed to have read. I'd read every one of them, and enjoyed doing so. I added the Feynmann Lectures of Physics, which of course none of them had read.

Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at April 23, 2025 04:03 PM (YqDXo)

234 So we just write off a couple of generations of kids and say "welp, let's pack it up. Looks like America is over. Everyone will rent apartments from Blackrock for the rest of their lives. Or not, who cares?"
Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 03:40 PM (uCjyK)

Or they could learn to weld, fix plumbing, build a house (even cabinet making), work on engines, operate heavy machinery, etc. Those skills are where the money is right now. But I guess that's the kind of work "Americans" don't want to do.

Posted by: Dr Pork Chops & Bacons at April 23, 2025 04:03 PM (g8Ew8)

235 I have no moral obligation to pay back loans that I was tricked into by adults and a system pretending to be looking out for my best interest while doing everything else but.

I am 35. I was reading this blog when I was 20 and in college. I have never made enough money to be required to make payments on my loans. If that changes today, I wont shed any tears. I also wont shed any tears when the pendulum swings back the other way in another term or two and the "janitors" have to pay back my loans.

I guess I should add that I have ever intention of paying them back on my own before I die, but that is because I will succeed regardless of all of the poison both democrats and republicans filled my mind with. No one who has ever claimed to be looking out for me in the realm of politics has ever given me what I needed to succeed. I have had to take that all for myself.

Posted by: Jojo at April 23, 2025 04:03 PM (jNdjL)

236 Christopher R Taylor, my dad was such an idealist. Went to Berkeley in the 1930s. Didn't graduate. Was a bit of an efftard all his life. The Liberal Arts education was for its own sake.

Its not idealism, that's the entire POINT of Liberal Arts Education. I didn't make this up, and neither did your dad. That was the system for centuries up until around 1950, that was the way college worked. It was designed for special people to become even more special, and there were ways for poor people to get in and make it happen, if they demonstrated the natural ability and gifts that made it worth while.

This is not a new idea, its just been so stomped on and trampled and destroyed for nearly a century now that people think its shocking and weird.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at April 23, 2025 04:03 PM (2VST1)

237 That plumber can certainly get an SBA loan, which is the same thing... except he's allowed to discharge it in bankruptcy if he goes belly-up.
Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia
The SBA does not lend money directly. It’s a guarantee. But your point is valid.

Posted by: Piper at April 23, 2025 04:04 PM (pZEOD)

238 while doing butt stuff with a new herd of doe-eyed young freshman coeds coming in every school year.
Posted by: IllTemperedCur at April 23, 2025 04:03 PM (y9nCu)

Go on

Posted by: Leo Dicraprio at April 23, 2025 04:04 PM (NtVYv)

239 BTW, that $10k /year degree I turned down about 20 years ago is now $14k /year. Meanwhile minimum wage has more than doubled. And even McD's pays more than minimum wage.

Cope and seethe, debties.

Posted by: Disinterested FDA Director at April 23, 2025 04:04 PM (/dDa4)

240 Eliminate the student loan program. Obama amped this up to destabilize and degenerate higher learning institutions.
Make the universities return to a proper management / teacher ratio.
Posted by: Braenyard - some Absent Friends are more equal than others _ at April 23, 2025 03:49 PM (eY5jv)

He did it to protect the universities, like he pushed obamacare to protect the insurance companies

Posted by: Kindltot at April 23, 2025 04:04 PM (D7oie)

241 The problem with Idea #2, is that people are trying to sell it in a welfare state, post-TARP, where pretty much all debts other than intentional tort damage awards are dischargeable, which makes it just sound more like "fuck you, that's why."

I don't favor debt relief for student loans. But I don't think people who oppose it understand how unpersuasive a lot of their explanations are.
Posted by: bear with asymmetrical balls at April 23, 2025 03:59 PM (V9cMX)

Well put. After we bailed out the banks with TARP or the car manufacturers or the all-important Cruise Line industry during COVID, and everyone with a tax ID got PPP loans that they were never going to repay, and every illegal who walks across the border gets 3 meals a day, a cell phone and a roof over their head (plus free medical care)....

Well, let's just say the arguments against fixing this problem sound a bit less convincing.

Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 04:04 PM (uCjyK)

242 Probably 15-20 years ago I spoke with a young woman, music major, that was convinced college should be free. Music majors (and others) make society so much better for others, so they should get the free ride.

Yes, that is how communism works, in La La Land.

Posted by: illiniwek at April 23, 2025 04:05 PM (Cus5s)

243 Most textbooks, particularly in upper-level STEM courses aren't even written with the student in mind. They are written BY academics FOR academics. I hated my upper-level physics courses for that reason.

There was no attempt to explain the concepts and formulas in language that a newbie could understand.
Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at April 23, 2025 04:02 PM (7fElN)
---------------

Write a textbook for the class one teaches. Make the textbook required for the course one teaches. Profit!

Posted by: blake - semi lurker in marginal standing (tT6L1) at April 23, 2025 04:05 PM (tT6L1)

244 That plumber can certainly get an SBA loan, which is the same thing... except he's allowed to discharge it in bankruptcy if he goes belly-up.
Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia
===

I had a friend that got an SBA loan. Was a successful business owner nearly his entire career, but the industry he was in had a major upheaval close to his retirement.

They garnished the remaining amount of his SBA loan from his Social Security.

Posted by: Leupold at April 23, 2025 04:05 PM (4pwAx)

245 6) also, as VDH pointed out a year or two ago -- the faculty and staff at Stanford University exceeds the number of students.

Yeah that was one of 18-1's points. But here's the worse part: its not just Stanford. Its not just colleges. Look up your local high school's faculty. Count how many administrators, counselors, secretaries, assistants, and so on are in the staff, vs teachers. Its the same there, too.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at April 23, 2025 04:05 PM (2VST1)

246 LOL. When I graduated, (197

I owed less that $3,000. The payment was not nothing but it was not horrible.

For years I read stories of Democrat politicians that defaulted on their loans. LOL WTF?

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 04:05 PM (ZmEVT)

247 >>>No. Think Office Space. The ratio of administrators to instructors even in private colleges today is insane.

A lot of the money probably really does go the way of fraud, but a lot goes to administration, and a lot goes to treating very expensive construction as if it were disposable and redoing it regularly.
Posted by: Stephen Price Blair
----------------

Is not the absurd administrator/instructor ratio fraud?
What about that new athletic stadium for the football team?

Posted by: Braenyard - some Absent Friends are more equal than others _ at April 23, 2025 04:05 PM (eY5jv)

248 Most of these student loans are little more than end runs into Universal Basic Income so that the students can spend 7-8 years living in dorms smoking dope while doing butt stuff with a new herd of doe-eyed young freshman coeds coming in every school year.
Posted by: IllTemperedCur at April 23, 2025 04:03 PM (y9nCu)

Remember this gem from 15 years ago? Butt chugging isn't gay - Some Frat Bros attorney.

Posted by: mishdog at April 23, 2025 04:05 PM (m0jmC)

249 > McDonalds here starts at 17.95/hr.
Posted by: garrett at April 23, 2025 03:55 PM (F30Ty)

And I'll bet the local university charges more than the $300/credit hour of my "poor people" university, too.

The public R1 where I did my graduate degree is now charging $800/credit hour.

Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at April 23, 2025 04:05 PM (W5ArC)

250 There was a time when the best financial aid package in town was the GI Bill you got after serving 2 years to earn it. Note the "earn it" part.

Posted by: Caesar North of the Rubicon at April 23, 2025 04:06 PM (r5tfK)

251 > They garnished the remaining amount of his SBA loan from his Social Security.
Posted by: Leupold at April 23, 2025 04:05 PM (4pwAx)

Did he file bankruptcy?

Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at April 23, 2025 04:06 PM (W5ArC)

252 Or they could learn to weld, fix plumbing, build a house (even cabinet making), work on engines, operate heavy machinery, etc. Those skills are where the money is right now. But I guess that's the kind of work "Americans" don't want to do.

Posted by: Dr Pork Chops & Bacons at April 23, 2025 04:03 PM (g8Ew

Shit, man, people make $50 /hour mowing lawns around here. This is a poor, rural area.

Posted by: Disinterested FDA Director at April 23, 2025 04:06 PM (/dDa4)

253 Most textbooks, particularly in upper-level STEM courses aren't even written with the student in mind. They are written BY academics FOR academics. I hated my upper-level physics courses for that reason.

There was no attempt to explain the concepts and formulas in language that a newbie could understand.

Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at April 23, 2025 04:02 PM (7fElN)
_____________

Pure intellectual pretension. I wrote a post here on the HQ about just this problem. Math textbooks tend to be especially bad about this in their pursuit of "rigor."

Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at April 23, 2025 04:06 PM (YqDXo)

254 But now I can’t buy a $8 cup of Sugar water, err I mean coffee every morning. Trump is a monster.
- Millenials

Posted by: Its Go Time Donald at April 23, 2025 04:06 PM (DKKgv)

255 Write a textbook for the class one teaches. Make the textbook required for the course one teaches. Profit!

To be honest, I generally found these courses better taught. There weren’t that many. It’s hard work to write a textbook, even a bad one! Or it used to be, anyway. Nowadays I suppose you tell an AI to write your textbook for you and force the students to buy that.

Posted by: Stephen Price Blair at April 23, 2025 04:07 PM (EXyHK)

256 The "conservatives" advocating student loan forgiveness or bankruptcy (which is the same thing), what happens after loan forgiveness?

Do universities then just magically lower their tuition?

You would just have to make college "free" for this to work long term.

Everyone forever gets free college.

Posted by: Leupold at April 23, 2025 04:07 PM (4pwAx)

257 Check out your local elementary school.

I was recalling mine. No parking lot. The teachers parked on the street. One principal, 2 clerks, 1 nurse, 1 janitor, 1 custodian.

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 04:07 PM (ZmEVT)

258 I was recalling mine. No parking lot. The teachers parked on the street. One principal, 2 clerks, 1 nurse, 1 janitor, 1 custodian.

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 04:07 PM (ZmEVT)
--------------

And the teachers all drove older cars.

Posted by: blake - semi lurker in marginal standing (tT6L1) at April 23, 2025 04:08 PM (tT6L1)

259 They garnished the remaining amount of his SBA loan from his Social Security.
Posted by: Leupold at April 23, 2025 04:05 PM (4pwAx)

Did he file bankruptcy?

Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia

==

yes, and he had a bk lawyer.

even got a fake divorce in order to shield wife from the debts owed.

Posted by: Leupold at April 23, 2025 04:08 PM (4pwAx)

260 > I added the Feynmann Lectures of Physics, which of course none of them had read.
Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at April 23, 2025 04:03 PM (YqDXo)

You mentioned earlier that just because someone is a Nobel Laureate doesn't necessarily make him good at teaching.

Feynman was the exception that proves the rule.

I wish I'd had the Feyman lectures as a text in undergrad. As it was, I had to check them out much later in life, on my own.

Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at April 23, 2025 04:08 PM (W5ArC)

261 Oh, I forgot the cafeteria staff. 2 or 3 .

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 04:08 PM (ZmEVT)

262 It actually has surprised me how much Cultural Marxist Seminaries are raking off taxpayers yet getting students to pay out their noses.

Posted by: Skip at April 23, 2025 04:08 PM (sEViE)

263 Pure intellectual pretension. I wrote a post here on the HQ about just this problem. Math textbooks tend to be especially bad about this in their pursuit of "rigor."
Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at April 23, 2025 04:06 PM (YqDXo)

It's almost as if the Textbook Industrial Complex is all about getting rich, and not about educating students.

Posted by: BurtTC at April 23, 2025 04:09 PM (dGCAG)

264 Well put. After we bailed out the banks with TARP or the car manufacturers or the all-important Cruise Line industry during COVID, and everyone with a tax ID got PPP loans that they were never going to repay, and every illegal who walks across the border gets 3 meals a day, a cell phone and a roof over their head (plus free medical care)....

Well, let's just say the arguments against fixing this problem sound a bit less convincing.
Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 04:04 PM (uCjyK)

Let's keep doing all of those thing and never fix any problems! Free money canon! 🥳

Honestly, I have a lot of gold, so print away.

Posted by: Disinterested FDA Director at April 23, 2025 04:09 PM (/dDa4)

265 Any degree received is revoked if you default on your loan.

Posted by: Darth_Randall at April 23, 2025 04:10 PM (f1kZG)

266 > yes, and he had a bk lawyer.

even got a fake divorce in order to shield wife from the debts owed.
Posted by: Leupold at April 23, 2025 04:08 PM (4pwAx)

"In general, a determination of non-dischargeability under § 523(a)(2)(B) requires proof that the Plaintiff (SBA 7(a) Lender, CDC or the SBA) loaned money after it reasonably relied upon false financial documents concerning the SBA debtor and/or an insider, provided to it by the SBA debtor either directly or indirectly, and that the SBA debtor intended to deceive the Plaintiff when doing so."

Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at April 23, 2025 04:10 PM (W5ArC)

267
Posted by: Dr Pork Chops & Bacons at April 23, 2025 04:03 PM (g8Ew

They COULD, except most of those kinds of jobs are being done by illegals and/or being offshored to the extent they can be.

And let's take your plumber example -- okay, so I'm a 25 year old kid making $50k a year with $100k in debt.

I'm supposed to quit my job and take out more loans to go to trade school. My loans can go in to forbearance at that time, but unless Mommy and Daddy let me crash in my childhood bedroom, I'm also going to need to take out loans for living expenses.

Okay, so I'm now 26 and have graduated with more debt and my plumbing degree. Now I have to beg and plead and hope to find someone to hire me as an apprentice.

Again, I'm making slightly more than minimum wage at this point, and my loans are no longer in forbearance. My entire paycheck is going to service these loans, and Mommy and Daddy are getting pretty sick of me living there.

Finally, after 1.5 years, I graduate and find a job making... what? $60k a year? Am I really ahead here?

Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 04:10 PM (uCjyK)

268 Write a textbook for the class one teaches. Make the textbook required for the course one teaches. Profit!
Posted by: blake - semi lurker in marginal standing (tT6L1) at April 23, 2025 04:05 PM (tT6L1)
---
Yep. That happens too. Although I will admit that one textbook written by the prof who taught the course has been an extremely valuable resource ever since. I have it sitting on my shelf in my office because it's a handy reference guide.

Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at April 23, 2025 04:11 PM (7fElN)

269 He's considering?
Posted by: Maj. Healey at April 23, 2025 03:50 PM (/U5Yz)

hey, serious question, can the Secretary of Health and Human Services be impeached? I wonder how many people Bobby Kennedy Jr has pissed off in the last 30 years, think they might be in Congress holding in some lightly concealed resentment?

Nah, maybe Bobby should just Leroy Jenkins it, the children will understand. those that are still alive.

Posted by: Kindltot at April 23, 2025 04:11 PM (D7oie)

270 Pure intellectual pretension. I wrote a post here on the HQ about just this problem. Math textbooks tend to be especially bad about this in their pursuit of "rigor."
Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at April 23, 2025 04:06 PM (YqDXo)

It's almost as if the Textbook Industrial Complex is all about getting rich, and not about educating students.
Posted by: BurtTC at April 23, 2025 04:09 PM (dGCAG)

Was always fun being required to buy a $150 textbook that the professor wrote, then have them issue new edition at the end of the year that just added a new preface or some bullshit, rendering the resale value of your book as used a pittance.

Posted by: Greedy bastards at April 23, 2025 04:11 PM (TbWk/)

271 Any degree received is revoked if you default on your loan.
Posted by: Darth_Randall at April 23, 2025 04:10 PM (f1kZG)

I'm guessing a goodly portion of those defaulters are not graduates.

Posted by: BurtTC at April 23, 2025 04:11 PM (dGCAG)

272 Upper level physics are written for those who survived the introductory courses. That winnowing usually means you can teach at a higher level and expect most students to be able to keep up. I agree that the concepts are poorly explained, however, since physicists themselves don’t understand them! Feynman said you’ll never understand quantum mechanics so stop trying and just do the calculations. I confess I don’t think I really understood qm until after I got out of grad school and encountered Cramer’s Transactional Interpretation.

Posted by: NemoMeImpuneLacessit at April 23, 2025 04:12 PM (g/Chl)

273 Oh, I forgot the cafeteria staff. 2 or 3 .
Posted by: no one of any consequence
__________

Pizza day! Those 70s pizza rectangles were great.

Posted by: Biff Pocoroba at April 23, 2025 04:12 PM (UBKzV)

274 Jeb! got a degree in Latin American Affairs.
Posted by: Boss Moss
.....

Then he married a Mexican midget.

Posted by: wth at April 23, 2025 04:12 PM (v0R5T)

275 "And the teachers all drove older cars."

Mr. Lopez did. Most of the women were married. Mrs Snyder had a husband and a very nice house on the bay.

Miss Qualiato. She was fresh out of college. Her family was not poor and she was married within few years.

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 04:12 PM (ZmEVT)

276 Would you rather owe DOGE or Fat Tony?

Posted by: DaveA at April 23, 2025 04:12 PM (FhXTo)

277 > Was always fun being required to buy a $150 textbook that the professor wrote,

You'd be surprised at how little of that $150 the professor actually gets.

Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at April 23, 2025 04:12 PM (W5ArC)

278 "In general, a determination of non-dischargeability under § 523(a)(2)(B) requires proof that the Plaintiff (SBA 7(a) Lender, CDC or the SBA) loaned money after it reasonably relied upon false financial documents concerning the SBA debtor and/or an insider, provided to it by the SBA debtor either directly or indirectly, and that the SBA debtor intended to deceive the Plaintiff when doing so."
Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia
==

No idea of the details, he was never charged with any sort of fraud to my knowledge. He had an legitimate, successful business.

He said even his lawyer was surprised it happened.

Frankly, I'm glad they garnished it.

Posted by: Leupold at April 23, 2025 04:12 PM (4pwAx)

279 LOL. When I graduated, (1978 I owed less that $3,000. The payment was not nothing but it was not horrible.
________________

When I attended UCSD tuition was (IIRC) $250/quarter. UC then was fulfilling its intended purpose: to provide quality education at low cost to California residents.

That, of course, is long gone now. UC only grudgingly takes the kids of California taxpayers (no $$$ there), preferring to take in foreign students ($$$$$$$$$$) and DEI types with IQs ~ room temperature (0 $).

Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at April 23, 2025 04:12 PM (YqDXo)

280 this is just a whole mess

1 - too many kids are going to college
2 - colleges have way, way WAY too much staff
3 - Obama ruined everything
4 - Biden somehow made it even worse

the colleges are screwed too btw loads are going to go under, and soon. that part I'll enjoy. it will basically force fewer kids to go, and hopefully the idea that you have to go will end. Griggs wasn't on my list but also THAT

I have three in college right now and it's painful. one about to graduate and start working, thank God. it's been a lot of insanity just getting here. be happy when they're all done with it.

Posted by: Black Orchid at April 23, 2025 04:13 PM (Pv3Rg)

281 Let's keep doing all of those thing and never fix any problems! Free money canon! 🥳

Honestly, I have a lot of gold, so print away.
Posted by: Disinterested FDA Director at April 23, 2025 04:09 PM (/dDa4)

And that's why I'm against it.

But trying to insist that student loan debtors - uniquely of all debtors - must be principled in a world without principles is, well, unconvincing.

Posted by: bear with asymmetrical balls at April 23, 2025 04:13 PM (V9cMX)

282 Hello? The problem of medical care leaving smaller, rural areas without medical care has not gone unreported for the last decade or so.
Posted by: Braenyard - some Absent Friends are more equal than others _ at April 23, 2025 03:43 PM (eY5jv)

So we need Federal subsidies? How about just full socialized medicine, comrade?

Those people can drive or move. I say that as someone who lives 30 minutes from the nearest medical facility in a poor, rural area.

Posted by: Disinterested FDA Director at April 23, 2025 04:13 PM (/dDa4)

283 I worked private student loan fraud for many years. The stories I could tell you. Most depressing job I ever had.

Posted by: Tuna at April 23, 2025 04:13 PM (lJ0H4)

284 Check out your local elementary school.

I was recalling mine. No parking lot. The teachers parked on the street. One principal, 2 clerks, 1 nurse, 1 janitor, 1 custodian.

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 04:07 PM (ZmEVT)

Pretty much that way in my time in school too.

Posted by: Dr Pork Chops & Bacons at April 23, 2025 04:13 PM (g8Ew8)

285 Big Richard Feynman here.

Posted by: Mike Hammer, etc., etc. at April 23, 2025 04:14 PM (XeU6L)

286 Was always fun being required to buy a $150 textbook that the professor wrote, then have them issue new edition at the end of the year that just added a new preface or some bullshit, rendering the resale value of your book as used a pittance.
Posted by: Greedy bastards at April 23, 2025 04:11 PM (TbWk/)

Yep, search online for a used copy before the semester... they only have the 14th edition, the perfesser demands you get the 15th edition.

Thanks, perfesser, guess I'll eat next year. Maybe.

Posted by: BurtTC at April 23, 2025 04:14 PM (dGCAG)

287 Was always fun being required to buy a $150 textbook that the professor wrote,

You'd be surprised at how little of that $150 the professor actually gets.

Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at April 23, 2025 04:12 PM (W5ArC)
___________

Yep. There's no need for four-color textbooks, replete with marginal bon mots about the first black female astronaut to take a shit in space. Gotta be relevant, doncha know?

Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at April 23, 2025 04:14 PM (YqDXo)

288 No one is above the debt repayment law.

Posted by: Gref at April 23, 2025 04:15 PM (aBgBM)

289 I didn't go to college, I make $10000000000 working from home 2 hours a week.

Machines For Sale !

Posted by: Hatari somewhere on Ventura Highway at April 23, 2025 04:15 PM (NtVYv)

290 Pure intellectual pretension. I wrote a post here on the HQ about just this problem. Math textbooks tend to be especially bad about this in their pursuit of "rigor."
Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at April 23, 2025 04:06 PM (YqDXo)
---
Math professors (and physics professors) are very difficult to convince to change their pedagogy, because they will claim "rigor."

However, in 99% of cases (on my campus), they are NOT teaching the next generation of mathematicians/physicists, but engineers, who need to solve problems from an engineering perspective and NOT from a mathematician's perspective.

Engineers even get their own sections of math/physics, but they are still taught by mathematicians/physicists, rather than by engineers who can better identify when and how that knowledge will be used.

Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at April 23, 2025 04:15 PM (7fElN)

291 If you just got the feds out of the student loan business, most of this would take care of itself.

Tuition has gone up like triple the inflation rate because "ability to pay" has become unlimited thanks to Obama.

If your customer can just print money, of course you can jack up tuition to whatever you want.

Posted by: Leupold at April 23, 2025 04:15 PM (4pwAx)

292 Was always fun being required to buy a $150 textbook that the professor wrote,

You'd be surprised at how little of that $150 the professor actually gets.

Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at April 23, 2025 04:12 PM (W5ArC)

Maybe, maybe not. Doesnt make it less of a racket.

Posted by: Universities and academic publishers are fraudsters at April 23, 2025 04:15 PM (TbWk/)

293 Mrs Scheidel in school had a golden firebird just like Rockford. She was a hot hippie chick.

Pizza day! Those 70s pizza rectangles were great.

Tasting History with Max Miller remade that recipe! You can too:

https://youtu.be/40MvjFaTVzE

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at April 23, 2025 04:15 PM (2VST1)

294 How come nobody ever wants to forgive trade school debt?

Posted by: Its Go Time Donald at April 23, 2025 04:15 PM (DKKgv)

295 >
No idea of the details, he was never charged with any sort of fraud to my knowledge. He had an legitimate, successful business.

He said even his lawyer was surprised it happened.

Frankly, I'm glad they garnished it.
Posted by: Leupold at April 23, 2025 04:12 PM (4pwAx)

I'm thinking that there's gotta be more to the story.

The "fake divorce" thing makes me suspect that your friend isn't totally averse to "coloring outside the lines".

Heh.

Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at April 23, 2025 04:15 PM (W5ArC)

296 Garnishing paychecks?! Paying back loans??!!

We must eliminate the Dept of Education!

Posted by: Libs at April 23, 2025 04:16 PM (4Nep/)

297 Yep, search online for a used copy before the semester... they only have the 14th edition, the perfesser demands you get the 15th edition.
_______________

If I were still teaching I'd use an ancient textbook (e.g., from the 70s or 80s) that would be available for a song.

Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at April 23, 2025 04:16 PM (YqDXo)

298 I was recalling mine. No parking lot. The teachers parked on the street. One principal, 2 clerks, 1 nurse, 1 janitor, 1 custodian.

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 04:07 PM (ZmEVT)

Pretty much that way in my time in school too.
Posted by: Dr Pork Chops & Bacons
------

85 students, 1st thru 12th grade, in one building. In 1968, six seniors, 4 girls, 2 boys.

Posted by: Mike Hammer, etc., etc. at April 23, 2025 04:16 PM (XeU6L)

299 Deplorable Jay Guevara,

We lived in the Golden Age of California.

Back then, UC denied me Davis but HAD to take me in San Diego because I met the requirement and lived there.

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 04:16 PM (ZmEVT)

300 But they need the college experience!!!!!!!!

Posted by: Chemist at April 23, 2025 04:16 PM (HJMJw)

301 I can't even type as fast as that Harry Balls guy. He just put out a small novella in this thread.

Posted by: Max Power at April 23, 2025 04:16 PM (q177U)

302 252 Or they could learn to weld, fix plumbing, build a house (even cabinet making), work on engines, operate heavy machinery, etc. Those skills are where the money is right now. But I guess that's the kind of work "Americans" don't want to do.

Posted by: Dr Pork Chops & Bacons
----------------

And they start making a paycheck the day they go to work vs paying $300 a credit hour. The negative is lack of exposure to money discipline and knowledge of how to make that money work for them.

Posted by: Braenyard - some Absent Friends are more equal than others _ at April 23, 2025 04:16 PM (eY5jv)

303 > 294 How come nobody ever wants to forgive trade school debt?
Posted by: Its Go Time Donald at April 23, 2025 04:15 PM (DKKgv)

In fact, student loans for quite a few predatory "trade schools" have been completely discharged.

Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at April 23, 2025 04:17 PM (W5ArC)

304 You'd be surprised at how little of that $150 the professor actually gets.

Yeah he doesn't get 150 from the book, its more like 30, but still. Its a scam.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at April 23, 2025 04:17 PM (2VST1)

305 301 I can't even type as fast as that Harry Balls guy. He just put out a small novella in this thread.
Posted by: Max Power at April 23, 2025 04:16 PM (q177U)

Thank you. 87 WPM at 97% accuracy when I last tested 10 or so years ago. (cracks knuckles).

Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 04:17 PM (uCjyK)

306 I don't understand why some subjects even have text books. My wife studied math and economics in Russia 20 years ago. They did not have textbooks for math. It was all lecture. The professor would hand out a sheet at the end of class that had all the math problems on it for homework.

Posted by: mishdog at April 23, 2025 04:18 PM (m0jmC)

307 63 Friend of mine who's wife has something close to $300k in student debt. She's on some IDR plan where they just take a calculation from your tax return and you just pay that minimum. Balance is immaterial. After 25 years, totally forgiven.

So bottom line, she'll get like $200k in student loans forgiven. And she's a high paid attorney. So the janitor cleaning her office will pay for it.

This is the Progressive dream.
Posted by: Leupold at April 23, 2025 03:37 PM (4pwAx)

If your friend's wife is a "high paid attorney" still paying the minimum on her student loans she's either not that well-paid or the payment levels on that IDR plan are way out of whack.

Posted by: Octochicken at April 23, 2025 04:18 PM (oCS0o)

308 274 Jeb! got a degree in Latin American Affairs.
Posted by: Boss Moss
.....

Then he married a Mexican midget.
-------------
She must have a flat head.

Posted by: Pudinhead at April 23, 2025 04:18 PM (pZ64F)

309 It's amusing seeing the different opinions on this subject here. I don't have any skin in this game (other than being a tax payer) since I used the GI bill to finish my degree, but I do want to remind those who demand that these loans be repaid: This is just going to lead to more defaults on other debts a person has if wages are garnished or some other mechanism is used. It's obvious many of you old farts have no idea how it is these days for young people just from what you've been posting on this subject and related subjects, or just lack basic empathy. Demanding the creation of more debt slaves (which your demands will lead to) so you can morally preen about your superiority is not a good thing.

Posted by: Farquad at April 23, 2025 04:18 PM (bwvMs)

310 I'd rather fight a civil war than pay their loans.
Posted by: Disinterested FDA Director at April 23, 2025 04:02 PM (/dDa4)

too late! you already are, Suckah!

Posted by: Kindltot at April 23, 2025 04:18 PM (D7oie)

311 294 How come nobody ever wants to forgive trade school debt?
Posted by: Its Go Time Donald at April 23, 2025 04:15 PM (DKKgv)

Because, as near as I can tell, trade school works.

Posted by: bear with asymmetrical balls at April 23, 2025 04:18 PM (V9cMX)

312 Oh yes, UC relies on "out of state" tuition.

Spreadsheets.

Trump's cancellation of Chinese student visas will hit UC hard, but USC harder.

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 04:19 PM (ZmEVT)

313 The "fake divorce" thing makes me suspect that your friend isn't totally averse to "coloring outside the lines".

Heh.
Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia
==

I'm not saying he's pure as driven snow, but it wasn't say a "fake business". He had done really well for decades.

I don't blame him for getting a divorce, he remarried late in life and not really fair for his wife who had her own business to be punished and lose everything.

Bottom line, they can go after SBA loans.

Posted by: Leupold at April 23, 2025 04:19 PM (4pwAx)

314 Gunmen Execute 26 Tourists In Indian-Controlled Kashmir

Posted by: SMOD at April 23, 2025 04:19 PM (RHGPo)

315 306 I don't understand why some subjects even have text books. My wife studied math and economics in Russia 20 years ago. They did not have textbooks for math. It was all lecture. The professor would hand out a sheet at the end of class that had all the math problems on it for homework.
Posted by: mishdog at April 23, 2025 04:18 PM (m0jmC)

Because the Textbook Industrial Complex has to get paid.

Interestingly, you can buy the same books they sell here from India for like 10% of the price.

But what the textbook companies are now doing is convincing professors to do all their quizzes / tests online through the textbook's software. And to get access to that software, you need to buy the book with a unique code on it.

So if you want to pass the class, you need to pay the $200 for the book.

It's a great racket.

Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 04:19 PM (uCjyK)

316 Maybe the best thing to do, as others suggested, is to allow student debt to be discharged through bankruptcy. That would be punitive enough through credit scores, but would enable them to live off their own wages.

THEN you showcase the destructiveness of the existing system, demonize the administrative bloat in colleges, and put student loans back into the hands of banks. Accountability must be restored, and we need to save some of these young idiots from themselves.

Posted by: Miley, okravangelist at April 23, 2025 04:19 PM (w6EFb)

317 Engineers even get their own sections of math/physics, but they are still taught by mathematicians/physicists, rather than by engineers who can better identify when and how that knowledge will be used.
Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel
---

A standard observation among my engineering student peers, 'Those who can, do, those who can't, teach'.

Best professors were adjuncts out of industry. One of my best was a Lockheed engineer.

Posted by: Mike Hammer, etc., etc. at April 23, 2025 04:20 PM (XeU6L)

318 Things are so good-- what's a conservative to complain about?

I'm starting to get how Jonah Goldberg and Bill Kristol must feel.

Posted by: Jack Squat Bupkis at April 23, 2025 04:20 PM (GD2xa)

319 > Maybe, maybe not. Doesnt make it less of a racket.
Posted by: Universities and academic publishers are fraudsters at April 23, 2025 04:15 PM (TbWk/)

Trust me, unless your textbook is one of the rare ones that gets adopted nationwide for large freshman classes, you're not going to get a significant ROI on writing textbooks.

Maybe nowadays when you can publish it yourself.

The one I worked on back in ancient times paid me around $1.50/copy (on a $75 book).

Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at April 23, 2025 04:20 PM (W5ArC)

320 The left is fueling a cascade of hatred for Legacy America.

I would not be surprised with a very large attack on the White House from Trans, AntiFa, BLM, and the CIA / FBI doing drone and comms support.

Posted by: NaCly Dog at April 23, 2025 04:20 PM (u82oZ)

321 Math professors (and physics professors) are very difficult to convince to change their pedagogy, because they will claim "rigor."

However, in 99% of cases (on my campus), they are NOT teaching the next generation of mathematicians/physicists, but engineers, who need to solve problems from an engineering perspective and NOT from a mathematician's perspective.
__________________

I think it's generally true that "rigor" is not needed. Teach the concepts, and how to use them, and then later (if necessary) make them "rigorous."

Reading the history of math makes clear that most math was invented to solve a problem, and only later was cleaned up to become rigorous. My favorite story: no less a mathematician that Fred Gauss thought that the series (-1)^n would converge.

Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at April 23, 2025 04:21 PM (YqDXo)

322 85 students, 1st thru 12th grade, in one building. In 1968, six seniors, 4 girls, 2 boys.
Posted by: Mike Hammer, etc., etc. at April 23, 2025 04:16 PM (XeU6L)

I was writing about an elementary with 450 students.

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 04:21 PM (ZmEVT)

323 And they start making a paycheck the day they go to work vs paying $300 a credit hour. The negative is lack of exposure to money discipline and knowledge of how to make that money work for them.
-------------
Yeah, that $70k pickup truck is a blinking light on self restraint.

Posted by: Pudinhead at April 23, 2025 04:21 PM (pZ64F)

324 Looking at the comments brings back an old movie quote: "He chose.....poorly".

Posted by: Dr Pork Chops & Bacons at April 23, 2025 04:21 PM (g8Ew8)

325 US International Trade Court Denies Companies' Bid To Block Trump's Tariffs

... the plaintiffs said Trump’s sweeping tariffs would harm their ‘reputation and goodwill to customers’ because they would need to raise prices

Posted by: SMOD at April 23, 2025 04:21 PM (RHGPo)

326 I think that all that work by Mike Rowe is working, more and more young people are going into to trades. They graduate with a valuable skill, a ready job, no huge debt, and a promising future.

We just gotta convince those dumb thots that a plumber can make as much as a lawyer, but with less stress.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at April 23, 2025 04:21 PM (2VST1)

327 > Because, as near as I can tell, trade school works.
Posted by: bear with asymmetrical balls at April 23, 2025 04:18 PM (V9cMX)

Oh, there are a WHOLE BUNCH of useless "trade schools" out there that exist solely to suck up student loan money.

Posted by: Rodrigo Borgia at April 23, 2025 04:21 PM (W5ArC)

328 If your friend's wife is a "high paid attorney" still paying the minimum on her student loans she's either not that well-paid or the payment levels on that IDR plan are way out of whack.
Posted by: Octochicken
===

Thats just it, even with a relatively higher salary, the terms come out to her getting like $200k in loan forgiveness.

Say it's $500 a month she legally owes, and she has like 10 years left until forgiveness. Then the remaining balance goes away.

It's a backdoor loan amnesty.

Posted by: Leupold at April 23, 2025 04:21 PM (4pwAx)

329 It's obvious many of you old farts…
Posted by: Farquad

As a reminder, we are all 29.

Posted by: Piper at April 23, 2025 04:22 PM (pZEOD)

330 Rigor is important in math. Just look at Euler chasing his own tail with divergent sums because he wasn’t being rigorous. However as a physicist (retired) I confess we do a lot of theory that’s often not rigorous but still works. Look at the difficulties getting rigorous results in quantum electrodynamics! And the best results often involve intuitive leaps that are definitely non-rigorous. So I come out firmly on both sides! Is a cow a sphere?Yes, in some approximations a cow is a sphere!

Posted by: NemoMeImpuneLacessit at April 23, 2025 04:22 PM (g/Chl)

331
Those people can drive or move. I say that as someone who lives 30 minutes from the nearest medical facility in a poor, rural area.
Posted by: Disinterested FDA Director
------------

If so, federal/state incentive is the only reason that facility has a doctor.

Posted by: Braenyard - some Absent Friends are more equal than others _ at April 23, 2025 04:22 PM (eY5jv)

332 He's the type of guy who would put a mickey in a girl's drink but ends up picking another victim.

Posted by: Dreamingrobot at April 23, 2025 04:22 PM (jFSP3)

333 If any of you have ever watched Goodfellas, I think this is the part where we start to say to these grifting imbecile children:: FU Pay me.

Posted by: Key West Reader at April 23, 2025 04:23 PM (NKIAw)

334 The Ivy League colleges are now much like the Swiss finishing schools were for the daughters of the rich. At those schools the girls were taught manners, the fine art of hosting dinner parties and running a home of a CEO or a company director. The Ivies don't even teach that, they instruct the students in how to condescend to the rest of the world, how to offend everyone else.

Posted by: Decaf at April 23, 2025 04:23 PM (unUNN)

335 "I'm starting to get how Jonah Goldberg and Bill Kristol must feel."

Not me. I find myself quite joyful.

Yes. We won the culture war. The apostate, heretic Anti-pope is dead. Trump is POTUS. Hegseth, and the rest are kicking ass.

Seriously, these are the best of times.

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 04:23 PM (ZmEVT)

336 Math professors (and physics professors) are very difficult to convince to change their pedagogy, because they will claim "rigor."

However, in 99% of cases (on my campus), they are NOT teaching the next generation of mathematicians/physicists, but engineers, who need to solve problems from an engineering perspective and NOT from a mathematician's perspective.
__________________

Shoot .. when I was in high school, they taught the fundamentals of mathematical proofs in the 10th grade Geometry course .. now no proofs.

Posted by: SMOD at April 23, 2025 04:23 PM (RHGPo)

337 But what the textbook companies are now doing is convincing professors to do all their quizzes / tests online through the textbook's software.

Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 04:19 PM (uCjyK)
_______________

That's outrageous. I wrote my own tests throughout my career.

Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at April 23, 2025 04:24 PM (YqDXo)

338 If your friend's wife is a "high paid attorney" still paying the minimum on her student loans she's either not that well-paid or the payment levels on that IDR plan are way out of whack.
Posted by: Octochicken at April 23, 2025 04:18 PM (oCS0o)

One of my good friends / former co-workers has $350k in student loan debts. He makes $180k + bonuses a year as a lawyer. He's around 40, so that's with 15ish years experience. Obviously when he graduated law school he made much less money.

He's been on an income based repayment plan since he graduated. The principal has only gone up in that time.

He and his wife will never buy a house, and frankly at this point, I doubt they'll ever have kids. They rent an apartment and share a 10 year old Subaru (granted, they live in Brooklyn, so you don't really NEED a car)

She's also a lawyer with student loan debts, presumably makes around the same amount of money.

I think that story is true of way more "high-paid" professionals than most people realize.

Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 04:24 PM (uCjyK)

339 Thank you. 87 WPM at 97% accuracy when I last tested 10 or so years ago. (cracks knuckles).

Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 04:17 PM (uCjyK)

Pathetic.

Posted by: Mavis Beacon, typing genius at April 23, 2025 04:24 PM (/dDa4)

340 Babylon Bee, Paper of Record:

White House Tells Americans To Reply ‘STOP’ If They No Longer Wish To Receive Hegseth’s Texts About Upcoming Military Strikes

Posted by: Hour of the Wolf at April 23, 2025 04:24 PM (VNX3d)

341 We just gotta convince those dumb thots that a plumber can make as much as a lawyer, but with less stress.
Posted by: Christopher R Taylor
___

Plus: plumber's crack, amirite ladies?!

Posted by: Chuck Martel at April 23, 2025 04:24 PM (Dv3i1)

342 That's outrageous. I wrote my own tests throughout my career.
Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at April 23, 2025 04:24 PM (YqDXo)

Yep.

Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 04:24 PM (uCjyK)

343 Worked with an idiot who was all about Biden paying his student loans. When I told him, "I paid mine, and now you want me to pay yours too? How is that fair?" he was gobsmacked. These idiots believe in free money. They should move to Sweden if they think others paying for their shit is a good idea. See that tax bill and wonder why you work at all.

Posted by: tcn in AK at April 23, 2025 04:24 PM (a4NoL)

344 335 Seriously, these are the best of times.

Posted by: no one of any consequence

... most people can never see the best of times until the worst of times show up to replace them

Posted by: SMOD at April 23, 2025 04:24 PM (RHGPo)

345 Interestingly, you can buy the same books they sell here from India for like 10% of the price.

But what the textbook companies are now doing is convincing professors to do all their quizzes / tests online through the textbook's software. And to get access to that software, you need to buy the book with a unique code on it.

So if you want to pass the class, you need to pay the $200 for the book.

It's a great racket.
Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 04:19 PM (uCjyK)
---
That's not quite true. Textbook companies have adopted a digital rental model, which gives students access to the textbooks digitally for a limited period of time, for less cost than a printed textbook. They often offer a "printable version" for a nominal fee (much less than $200). One company gives students access to all course materials for multiple courses per semester for a flat fee. Unfortunately, it's rarely the case students use textbooks from just one company, so they end up paying for multiple services, but it's still much, much less than what I paid when I was in college. The downside is they don't get to keep all the resources when the course is over.

Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at April 23, 2025 04:25 PM (7fElN)

346 >>>The left is fueling a cascade of hatred for Legacy America.

I think we all sense something is coming this summer. How big will it go? Will it fizzle out or is this The Big One?

Posted by: Max Power at April 23, 2025 04:25 PM (q177U)

347 LOL. The older I get, the more spherical I become.

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 04:25 PM (ZmEVT)

348 Plus: plumber's crack, amirite ladies?!
Posted by: Chuck Martel at April 23, 2025 04:24 PM (Dv3i1)

OOOH baby, plug my leak.

Posted by: tcn in AK at April 23, 2025 04:25 PM (a4NoL)

349 NOOD SCOTUS (Ugly Photo!)

Posted by: Hour of the Wolf at April 23, 2025 04:25 PM (VNX3d)

350 326 I think that all that work by Mike Rowe is working, more and more young people are going into to trades. They graduate with a valuable skill, a ready job, no huge debt, and a promising future.

We just gotta convince those dumb thots that a plumber can make as much as a lawyer, but with less stress.
Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at April 23, 2025 04:21 PM (2VST1)

My brother in law, a master plumber with his own business, makes more than me, a lawyer, and has for a very long time, including back when I was in private practice. I was born an asshole. So lawyer was a natural fit for me. But if you are bright and hardworking, you can have a better life financially as a plumber than most lawyers (not the super successful ones, but they're not as prevalent as commonly believed).

Posted by: bear with asymmetrical balls at April 23, 2025 04:25 PM (V9cMX)

351 NOOD - The Supremes.

Posted by: NALNAMSAM at April 23, 2025 04:25 PM (4a0nD)

352 I lived over thirty minutes from the nearest medical facility and the town/it wasn't big enough to qualify as a hospital. But it did have a doctor on duty. He was there because it was a pathway to citizenship. Stitched me up pretty good too.

Posted by: Braenyard - some Absent Friends are more equal than others _ at April 23, 2025 04:26 PM (eY5jv)

353 Shoot .. when I was in high school, they taught the fundamentals of mathematical proofs in the 10th grade Geometry course .. now no proofs.

Posted by: SMOD at April 23, 2025 04:23 PM (RHGPo)
_______________

Geometry is a little different, I would say.

If I were teaching now I'd rely heavily on Khan Academy and essentially use my lectures as a Baedeker's guide to the subject.

Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at April 23, 2025 04:26 PM (YqDXo)

354 The downside is they don't get to keep all the resources when the course is over.
Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at April 23, 2025 04:25 PM (7fElN)

2/3 of the text books I bought were crap anyway. Sold 'em to the used book store.

Posted by: tcn in AK at April 23, 2025 04:26 PM (a4NoL)

355 I would not be surprised with a very large attack on the White House from Trans, AntiFa, BLM, and the CIA / FBI doing drone and comms support.
____

I thought Ratcliffe and Patel were going to put a stop to these types of traitorous shenanigans?

Posted by: Chuck Martel at April 23, 2025 04:26 PM (Dv3i1)

356 I don't understand why some subjects even have text books. My wife studied math and economics in Russia 20 years ago. They did not have textbooks for math. It was all lecture. The professor would hand out a sheet at the end of class that had all the math problems on it for homework.
Posted by: mishdog at April 23, 2025 04:18 PM (m0jmC)

You shut your dirty whore mouth.
- McGraw Hill

Posted by: Its Go Time Donald at April 23, 2025 04:26 PM (DKKgv)

357 If so, federal/state incentive is the only reason that facility has a doctor.
Posted by: Braenyard - some Absent Friends are more equal than others _ at April 23, 2025 04:22 PM (eY5jv)

I mean, it's got a fair number of medical facilities. It's not like a single doctor, but I live far outside the town.

Regardless, either people pay the market rate for services or they don't get them. Trying to obscure what things actually cost by running taxpayer money through the D.C. laundromat is why we're in this mess.

Posted by: Disinterested FDA Director at April 23, 2025 04:27 PM (/dDa4)

358 I think that story is true of way more "high-paid" professionals than most people realize.

It sounds like a lot of high-paid professionals need to listen to Dave Ramsey. Nearly half a million a year is a lot of money even for an expensive location if you’re economizing as they are. Where does their money go?

Posted by: Stephen Price Blair at April 23, 2025 04:27 PM (EXyHK)

359 But what the textbook companies are now doing is convincing professors to do all their quizzes / tests online through the textbook's software. And to get access to that software, you need to buy the book with a unique code on it.

So if you want to pass the class, you need to pay the $200 for the book.

It's a great racket.
Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 04:19 PM (uCjyK)

Oh one of the fun things they're doing now is you don't even get a book, you have to pay the $150 or $200 or more for a limited online license to the materials which expires at the end of the semester. So you don't even get something you could prop a door or trim your card table with.

Posted by: Even scammier at April 23, 2025 04:27 PM (TbWk/)

360 Toward the end, (of my undergraduate studies) I would go to the library and get the reference textbook and read it.

I didn't want to spend the money to own it after already owning textbooks never to be opened again.

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 04:28 PM (ZmEVT)

361 Democrat loafers.
Posted by: wth at April 23, 2025 03:33 PM (v0R5T)

-----------------

Every single one, and on top of that they are the keffiyehs wearing protesters who are on the same wavelength as Hamas.

If they were not Dems they would have a job and be paying back the loan.

Posted by: Decaf at April 23, 2025 04:28 PM (unUNN)

362 We lived in the Golden Age of California.

Back then, UC denied me Davis but HAD to take me in San Diego because I met the requirement and lived there.

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 04:16 PM (ZmEVT)

The greatest public university on earth.

I got in to UC Berkeley, as an out-of-state student, by a program called "Admission By Examination Alone." SAT plus three achievement tests.

Once they realized who they had admitted they canceled the program.

Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo at April 23, 2025 04:28 PM (mWSu4)

363 Question: Can a poor student go to a University library and get access to the textbook?

I was that poor student and I am grateful for access.

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 04:29 PM (ZmEVT)

364 I graduated 3rd from the bottom of my HS class of 68 students back in '86. But since my 6 siblings were all honor roll students, it's was believed I was "not applying myself". And despite being having my application denied by all three state universities, my dad and the HS principal really believed I needed a college education and enrolled me in a community college. How do you think that turned out.

Posted by: Turn 2 at April 23, 2025 04:30 PM (/TgW4)

365 Nobody holds a gun to your head to sign the papers.
Posted by: Mr Aspirin Factory, red heifer owner at April 23, 2025 03:43 PM (asR6R)

I can't speak to many other experiences, but in my case, there's wasn't any real discussion about how loan repayment worked until the week before graduation, and that's when the documents got signed, 100 of my classmates at a time.

Posted by: Methos at April 23, 2025 04:31 PM (Dnobf)

366 Do you think these 17 or 18 year olds really read the fine print, and really looked in to whether or not these loans were dischargeable in BK?
Posted by: Harry Paratestes at April 23, 2025 03:33 PM (uCjyK)

---------------

Where were their parents? Why didn't they say something? So now the parents can help them out.

Posted by: Decaf at April 23, 2025 04:31 PM (unUNN)

367 Once they realized who they had admitted they canceled the program.
Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo at

You sure? If you read Andrew Klavan's "The Great Good Thing," he writes about being a bad student in HS and getting into Berkeley. WTF? Was out of state tuition the ticket?

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 04:32 PM (ZmEVT)

368 "How do you think that turned out."

Regression to the mean.

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 04:33 PM (ZmEVT)

369 WTF? Was out of state tuition the ticket?

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 04:32 PM (ZmEVT)

Maybe they brought the program back. And Klavan is way older than I am!

And I understood the system. I got CA residency damned quickly. I had no desire to pay out-of-state tuition.

Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo at April 23, 2025 04:34 PM (mWSu4)

370 Nood Montgomery county hijinks

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 04:35 PM (ZmEVT)

371 CA residency took 1 year. Exactly one year.

Posted by: no one of any consequence at April 23, 2025 04:36 PM (ZmEVT)

372 As to the quality of the Feynman lectures, yes they were very good, and I would recommend the bound editions to a dedicated student. But as was pointed out to me by a colleague in my department the number of freshmen in Feynman’s class kept dropping over the term, but the number in attendance never went down. The graduate students filled in the empty seats to “sit in,” and finally understand how that concept works! These were Caltech undergrads mind you, they would probably be at the top of the class at any Cow College you care to name. But they still had trouble keeping up with Feynman.

Posted by: NemoMeImpuneLacessit at April 23, 2025 04:38 PM (g/Chl)

373 well certainly it was not that easy but before the huge "everyone should go to college" boom of the 70s, you could actually work a job in the summer and part time while going to school and pay your own way through. It was expensive and a serious burden, but doable.

----------------

Those jobs are now given to the millions of illegals because they work for even less than you.

Posted by: Decaf at April 23, 2025 04:40 PM (unUNN)

374 If there is threat of bankruptcy, feds should just forgive the debt which then becomes taxable and get something back.

IRS (.gov)
https://www.irs.gov › taxtopics
Sep 26, 2024 — In general, if your debt is canceled, forgiven, or discharged for less than the amount owed, the amount of the canceled debt is taxable.

Put the IRS on their asses

Posted by: Barney Rubble at April 23, 2025 04:42 PM (qOA4b)

375 Reminder that "everyone should go to college" is a side effect of a SCOTUS decision that it's racist to use any proxy other than a college degree for "is a functioning adult who can hold down a job".

Posted by: Ian S. at April 23, 2025 04:46 PM (2ocoG)

376 In general, if your debt is canceled, forgiven, or discharged for less than the amount owed, the amount of the canceled debt is taxable.
-
Bankruptcy doesn't put money in your pocket, so that doesn't make it any more possible for the government's loan to be repaid.

I get that people here really like the idea of sticking it to people they largely don't like, but that doesn't make the plan workable.

Posted by: Methos at April 23, 2025 04:51 PM (Dnobf)

377 blackconservativeperspective

He's an easy watch!

Posted by: m at April 23, 2025 05:14 PM (CQE5S)

378 Have a class-action lawsuit against the colleges and universities that jacked up the tuition for do-nothing degrees. Get assistance from one of those 'eeeeevil' millionaires who pays for the lawyers so it is pro-bono. Don't make our taxpayers bail out the student loans - make the colleges eat the loss. Go after that sweetheart cutout that prevented discharge of student loans, make the colleges responsible for it.

If it bankrupts the so-called higher-learning institutions, have another one swoop in, buy it up, decontaminate it, then repurpose the buildings. Maybe as a new college. Or a trade school, with Mike Rowe providing advice.

Posted by: Another Anon at April 23, 2025 06:15 PM (4h45B)

379 Wait a second....that first guy from the clip was gay?

Posted by: SMEDLEY BUTLER at April 23, 2025 06:41 PM (xJzol)

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