No it hasn;t ... Sallie Mae is pretty much the only student loan market in town now




See that spike .... that's the rush of air that keeps blowing up that bubble

 

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noone else noticed koneg asked where did the inflation come from.


ell oh ell

A college degree is supposed to be part of the ticket out of poverty - the first step on the road to affluence and success...

Predictably, with the influx of cheap money and continued pressure on the job market away from paying skilled labor what they're really worth, college has become vastly more costly, as more and more (bad) college loans are offered, admissions standards have decreased, degree programs have been watered down and now, the college degree is practically the "baseline" that a high school diploma used to be.

Meanwhile the joke of it is that the debt to potential earnings ratio for college students is continually getting worse not only because debt is on the rise but ALSO because wages are falling - talk about a double whammy. So meanwhile we make the college loans which, for any other loan would be considered "bad" loans (not even considering the interest rates btw) but for the fact that these loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.

So what we create is legions of people who probably should not even be IN college, signing up for who knows how much debt and who knows how worthless of a degree, that will get out of school and be utterly unable to pay off their debt.

This is another contributing factor to the perfect storm of economic clusterfcuk that will effect a whole generation, if not two, on top of this recession... the logical next question is how to stop it and what to do to reverse it.

All the stupid platitudes in the world don't change the fact that college loan debt in inflation adjusted dollars and in terms of debt to potential earnings ratio is at an all time high and on the rise and showing no immediate signs of slowing down.

 

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Abolish the Dept. of Education, all the education mandates and regulations, and Sallie Mae .. allow competing currencies so that people can use money that has good purchasing power

 

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I don't think that will stop the pressure to get a college degree as a baseline though. That pressure is created by a deteriorating job market for non-degreed personnel - of course the joke about that is that having a degree now is becoming less and less of a guarantee of the ability to make a living. Of course that was predictable too, since in a land where everyone has a college degree, it just means that people with degrees will be doing the same jobs (for less money) that the previous generation did with no degree.

How long before we start seeing people talking about how people hiring janitors at $9/hour are justified in requiring a college degree I wonder?

 

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It would reform what a degree is while making it more affordable by forcing those colleges who existed only on the taxpayer's dime to either change and compete or close

 

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And then, just as we see now, businesses will complain that there aren't enough "qualified applicants" for them to fill their positions and that they need to import labor (at 1/3rd the usual wage) from overseas. That's exactly what's happening to the "skilled labor" market in the US. Experienced, competent skilled labor is being laid off because they command too high of a wage and meanwhile businesses are telling the country that not enough skilled labor exists, of course what they really mean is that not enough skilled labor is willing to come work for 1/3rd wages - it's happening to the STEM professions too btw, not just in the blue collar world...

 

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I was a huge advocate of junior college. I have an AA degree. I have stated i graduated from high school with a 1.4. I was mostly an absent stoner. Seething is not too far off, many of the great unwashed go to JC. However, there is nothing like the transition from ugly duck to swan when your enthusiasm lights you up for learning.

Here is the problem: junior colleges are impacted now. It takes a minimum of 3 years to do two years. We need to fix JC's. I would teach at a JC in a heartbeat. It is not my karma to be a formal teacher.

 

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Youre probably going to do better taking calculus at the JC than at UC Berkeley. The class in UC Berkeley will have 150 people in it, the JC class will have 20 people in it. calculus is calculus.. the book will be the same.

the only benefit going to a university over a JC is the parties. the first year of school is probably the most fun.

I didn't want this little gem to go unnoticed

Are you saying that Sallie Mae is a government agency?

 

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