a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment
kleinbl00  ·  46 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The average college student today

You're not giving a counterfactual, you're restating debunked arguments. That's my point. You have no valid or cogent argument here because you aren't reliant on facts, you're all about the vibes.

We're here in a pissing match because you said - and keep saying - that "The actual problem isn’t college or student loans." Except time and time again, I've given evidence that the actual problem IS college and IS student loans. Here's what I said two fuckin' months ago:

    ninety two percent of student loan debt is federal. you fills out your FAFSA you gets your check. This is because first the FFEL then the FDLP guarantee these loans, therefore they are the lowest rates available to anyone.

FFEL was in effect from 1965 to 2010, FDLP in effect from 2010 'til now. Simply put, college students from 1965-2010 had a different financial landscape than college students from 1945 to 1965... and college students from 1945-1965 had the GI Bill. They had the GI Bill, of course, because more than half of young men were enlisted between 1941 and 1945 and letting them into the job force with nothing better to do isn't a great idea, and then we had Korea, and then we had Vietnam but for everyone else there's FEDERALLY GUARANTEED STUDENT LOANS so you could either pay Uncle Sam up front or on the back end.

    Businesses decided that it was cheaper to require applicants to have training rather than to train themselves.

You wanna die on the hill that employers just up'n'decided that they felt like requiring a college degree so all of a sudden, everyone went "well shit guess I'm going to Columbia now" rather than recognizing that when a college degree is advantageous and free, everyone goes to college.

There's no grand conspiracy. The Chamber of Commerce didn't have a meeting at the Skull'n'Bones club and say "fuck yeah bachelor's degrees or no typing pool." What happened is the government extended education to everyone at favorable terms and everyone got educated. What happened next is Republicans lost their shit over the idea that college liberals might get a free ride and made it really tough to disburse college debt in bankruptcy, and then a generation later Republicans lost their shit again and made it impossible.

I'm saying all this for a third time in some instances. It's not "especially once student loans were available" it's BECAUSE student loans were not only available it's that they are lucrative as fuck for anyone servicing them. It's nothing like cancer drugs, it's like student loans.