Some older Americans say millennials’ student debt is their own fault

You are 100% correct.

The commercialization of education by both conservative and liberal private and public colleges in the last 25 years has been scandalous.

 

90 percent of the schools are very liberal

 

. . . which means nothing, if liberal and conservative schools alike have been commercializing education.

 

And back when they were kids you could buy a house, a car, and still pay for school on barely above min wag salary.

Now that can barely feed and rent an apartment for 1.

I dated a Vetrinarian for a while. She had a 6 figure salary. She could still barely make ends meet, and didnt live any extravagant lifestyle. She calculated that she wouldnt be able to pay off her loans in her life time.

 

He DID mention charity.

 

Why?

 

Yes. How about we make vocational (those that lead directly to secure full time work) courses free, and recreational courses full-fee paying up front, so drop outs forfeit the entirety.

 

That makes no sense. Veterinarians in small animal urban medicine (rural and large animal vets are paid less) earn the most, and they earn a LOT. She should have been able to pay down her student debt within a few years. Maybe she left home and therefore had to pay rent/utilities/groceries etc? In which case, the loan wasn't the problem .. her poor choices were.

 

Um, it's accepted because it's a classic example of the common good -- you have an interest in having an educated workforce, even if you don't have kids of your own. It helps everyone, particularly in a global economy.

Slippery slopes are a fallacy. We can decide to pay for an associate's degree without being required to pay for a BA. We can decide to pay for a BA without being required to pay for an MA.

Besides, I wasn't using it as an argument of why we should pay for college. I was using it as an example of something similar to what is being proposed -- government funding of education -- that we already do, and asking why you demand answers from one group but not the other.

*Shrug.* Sure. I dislike being dependent.

It helps, of course, that my household income is in the top 15% of the country.

It helps that my parents were upper-middle-class and gave me out-of-school enrichment opportunities that most people didn't get.

It helps that I got an excellent education in the PUBLIC schools.

It helps that the Army paid for my college, leaving me with no debt.

It helps that my parents were planning on paying for college, and when they didn't have to, decided to give me the tuition money as a lump sum graduation present. Plus enough money to buy a car. So I started my professional career with no debt, a new car and a nice nest egg.

So mostly, I'm cognizant of how lucky I was at birth, and how much help I've gotten along the way, and how many barriers I didn't have to climb over.

I said my grandkids’ generation, not just my grandkids. Because I recognize that we’re all in this together.

 

Since the point of a college education is more than just learning technical skills, I think that’s a very short-sighted idea.

 

If you can spend years of your life on non-vocational 'education', it means you're very very rich. Even if such courses were free, most of us don't have 3 or 4 years during which we can stop earning money AND spend our time and resources on education.

For the 90%+ of us who are not wealthy, university must be regarded wholely and solely as a path to employment. It's far too big a resource commitment to treat it any other way.

Personally, I find it outrageous that the same people who claim to care about the working classes, are the ones promoting such overtly ivory towerist ideas.

 

I would guess it in someway it has to do with federal government intervention in the university system. Jimmy Carter created the Department of Education in 1979. At that time, American students were the best in the word. Every other country was sucking our tailpipe. With the helpful guidance of the federal government, our students have now dropped to 19th in the world. It is probably time to expand the Department of Education so that we can reach 30th or 40th..... nothing is impossible with enough federal funding.

This week across the nation, students skipped school (at the behest of radical leftist teachers) to protest global climate change.... because that is how you become a productive citizen... protesting..... your tax dollars at work.

 

When I was college age you could work at a grocery store and graduate from college while paying your own rent and supporting yourself. Now crappy state universities that were almost free to the students are bilking the students and their parents. My wife graduated from UCLA with a nursing degree in 1978 and didn’t borrow a cent. She went on to get her masters while working as an RN without incurring any debt too. These Universities should be subsidized by the government like primary and high schools like they used to be. Simple as that.

 

And the question is why does a "higher education" cost exponentially more now even factoring in inflation? What "more" education are they getting in world history or math or engineering or teaching. Even with the advances in science how does that justify the price increase to study it? Heck we have computers to do calculations and database operations which should LOWER cost. We need someone to research that.

 

I'm a WW2 history buff. I didn't need to go to college to study it. And now ESPECIALLY with the internet one can self study LOTS of subjects. My state offers a free two year program in industrial automation partnering with local industry especially auto manufacturing to train people to work in automation. You can be earning six figures starting out. And people won't apply.

 

If you want to study something that is not going to earn you a living because it is something you like and enjoy then do so on your own dime and don't expect others to pay for it

 

To be sure as near as I can tell the federal Department of education does little more than provide another layer of bureaucracy through which to filter money Before it gets to the classroom.

 

Damn right. It’s been rigged so that only rich brats can even get into a good State University. These entities were built and funded by taxpayer money and are now being used as a perk for rich pricks. Maybe if we spent all the money we pissed away in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and other worthless turdhunts along with the tons of prisons for the idiotic drug wars on Building publically funded colleges and Universities, all kids who wanted to go to college wouldn’t be indebted to the bank swindlers for most of their adult life.

 

I find WW1 far more fascinating, but you're quite correct. You don't need to go to college to learn these things.

 

Well instead of living an $100,000 life style live an $80,000 life style for five years that's $100,000 you could apply to your student loans. I didn't start out living the standard of living I did ten years later.

 

Did you see the recent film They Shall Not Grow Old? Great film and a historical treasure chest. And The Lost Battalion based on the true story. I've been a wargamer since the backyard sandbox games using dice and tables and string and miniatures I painted and mounted through computer grand strategy games and "what ifs".

 

Well if we don't spend money on the primary function of the national government, national security and defense, then there is no reason to spend money on anything else, we won't exist.

 

Life is so hard.

 

Haven't even heard of it.

I am most interested in the human element, so I love the letters home from guys in the trenches.
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/letters-first-world-war-1915/

I have the basic overview of the war, but the whole idea of fighting in the air with biplanes and machine guns that might shoot your prop off and there aren't any parachutes, or some guy in the trenches writing to his wife before being whistled over the top is where the real interest for me lies.

 

Then They Shall Not Grow Old is THE I repeat THE movie for you. It is based on letters and interview with the soldiers and a remarkable use of original photographs and film that has been restored. Some of it they use lip readers to read the lips of the soldiers in the films so you hear what they are actually saying. Yes a must see for you.




The Lost Battalion is a study of command and control and it's failings and leadership in the field to overcome that and the human endeavor in the greatest of human conflict, head to head war.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0287535/