Honestly, I think it’s all relative. Sure, you can pay top-dollar for a world-class education that will set you up pretty well for future success. You can also carve out a decent existence by attending a local state university at a fraction of the cost. Far too often, students select secondary education programs without performing any type of cost benefit analysis. I see that as the biggest cause of the student debt crisis in the US.
If you want some hard and fast figures, my undergraduate degree from a local state university was about $30,000 USD. This figure represents four years of tuition, fees, and books. Living expenses (especially in larger cities) obviously add to the cost. I lived with my folks to save on room and board.
The cost of college is a problem, but the bigger one is the fact that there are no jobs that can support the debt once one gets out. Jobs used to be there, but college costs have gone up while the average pay of jobs at graduation (inflation adjusted) has gone down.
while you’re running away, just make sure you remember to look for a country that can defend itself and is unlikely to use its armed forces against its own people.
Ironic comment about armed forces since the US is now using drone strikes against its own citizens without the involvement of the justice system.
The US has a lot of good things going for it, but it has backed itself into an unsustainable position for which there is probably no fix. There’s no reason to fall on the sword if you’re young and upwardly mobile. California where I live, for example, has about 12% of the US population but about 1/3rd of welfare recipients, and despite having among the highest taxes in the country, is bankrupt. The only way that makes sense is if you’re among the people trying to use that to gain power through the political process at the expense of everyone else.
As far as I know, relinquishing citizenship won’t rid you of your existing student loan debt. If you default, your credit is screwed wherever you live.
I just think it’s BS that lenders charge students upwards of 9% interest on these things. What’s the point of government regulation of the industry if we don’t cap this number at something obscenely low. It’s not like costs haven’t risen at a ridiculous clip anyway.
I have no debt of any kind. I just don’t want to fund other peoples’ lifestyles. I think you’re right though, it’s pretty much impossible to wipe out student debt from what I understand. It seems like another example of parasitic finance.
Part of the problem is that the US college system was originally designed to help rich kids become schooled and cultured, so upon graduating, they would be sophisticated and interesting to other rich people. Liberal arts colleges don’t teach vocational skills - back in the 1800s, no one needed to know difficult stuff like computer science. They just needed to talk and look the right way so they can fit in with their parents’ crowd. Now, of course, demographics have changed and college education has become wide spread. However, the university system has not fully adapted to society’s changing needs. The system has become cost inefficient and poorly suited to prepare students for the real world.
As an example, it is extremely inefficient for lawyers in the US to spend 4 years in an undergraduate program before even beginning their 3 years in law school. Not only that, but the graduates must sit for a strenuous bar exam, proving that the US government does not even believe that an accredited law degree proves that someone is qualified to practice law. Of course, this dysfunctional system resulted from adding law school on top of traditional college. This system would be considered wasteful in most other countries - where legal and undergraduate studies are condensed into a single 3 year program. Similarly, medical school in most other countries consists of a single 5 year program, which does not require a whole university degree as a prerequisite.
The solution to rising costs of higher education in the US is not to push money around to fund our expensive system. The solution is to reform education itself to become cost efficient. Lawyers and doctors do not need 4 years of wasted productivity to “find their passion”, nor do colleges require world class athletic facilities or manicured gardens to provide education to their students. When kids leave for college, they look forward to a country club or party experience, rather than serious mental training that will prepare them for their future careers. If we are to control education costs, we must eliminate inefficiencies, rather than sacrifice other economic benefits to provide students with unnecessary services.
Yes, and herein lies the problem. The number of programs and aggressive marketing for post-secondary education has expanded dramatically in the last few decades under the profit motive (so, not only not reforming under your model – which I agree with – but actually expanding the broken model even further).
Law school, for example, now targets way too many students. This is because the programs are very profitable for the universities and for the lenders. So you have this perverse incentive system that encourages bad behavior under the guise of a positive outcome (education). There have been some efforts to make universities more transparent and accountable (forcing them to actually report real job placement statistics, reducing their ability to game the stats, etc.) but mostly the bad behavior has gone unchecked. It’s unsavory when you look at it from a capitalist perspective because it means the schools are actively exploiting current and prospective students.
You might never hear me say this again, but in this case, I think more regulations are the answer. In addition to a fundamental change in the structure of education, as you suggested.
You need a combination of “reforming education itself” and getting the government out of the student loan business altogether. Afterall, we’ve always been inefficient and had lawyers and doctors go to school for many years, but it’s a relatively recent phenomenon to see them graduate with 300k or even 400k of debt.