There’s something obvious going on that is unfortunately opaque to almost everyone making decisions about higher Ed:
The average college student is 26, with kids, a full time job and often a single parent.
Something very different has happened in our society in the last 50 years - it is not possible to get a “live-able wage” for most without a college degree.
Credentialism has seen every profession require a college degree for a job, even when there’s no underlying basis for it.
It’s become a shortcut for limiting the number of candidates a company needs to consider.
So a degree is required to live, a loan is required to get a degree, and the cost of the degree & the loan are rising while wages are net negative.
Student loans were, from the start, designed by corporate financial architects who became the owners of the loans. They made fortunes on the interest payments.
The reason we brokered this deal politically is social progressives wanted education for all and fiscal conservatives wanted recipients to “pay for it”.
It looked like that would work in the 70s, but today both the borrower and the lender are paying more for the loan structure than the goods cost to deliver.
It’s a special kind of insanity in human history - we are the first civilization to intentionally burden our best and brightest at the start of their lives with debt, then servicing the debt to the point the interest will outrun the principal.
DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education
https://www.amazon.com/DIY-Edupunks-Edupreneurs-Transformati...
There’s something obvious going on that is unfortunately opaque to almost everyone making decisions about higher Ed:
The average college student is 26, with kids, a full time job and often a single parent.
Something very different has happened in our society in the last 50 years - it is not possible to get a “live-able wage” for most without a college degree.
Credentialism has seen every profession require a college degree for a job, even when there’s no underlying basis for it.
It’s become a shortcut for limiting the number of candidates a company needs to consider.
So a degree is required to live, a loan is required to get a degree, and the cost of the degree & the loan are rising while wages are net negative.
Student loans were, from the start, designed by corporate financial architects who became the owners of the loans. They made fortunes on the interest payments.
The reason we brokered this deal politically is social progressives wanted education for all and fiscal conservatives wanted recipients to “pay for it”.
It looked like that would work in the 70s, but today both the borrower and the lender are paying more for the loan structure than the goods cost to deliver.
It’s a special kind of insanity in human history - we are the first civilization to intentionally burden our best and brightest at the start of their lives with debt, then servicing the debt to the point the interest will outrun the principal.
Student loan forgiveness is our only way out.