The Education Bubble Has Burst

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Hmmmm, maybe I should toss Robble over for you, Jenn.


I bet you like it rough up your shitter, too, just like he does.
 
No, Chief, I only use one account here, unlike, say, your bro Miles.

I don't need to hide behind alts.


And Karen was a girl . . . until she wasn't.


So, just in case . . . and yes, I still want to push your shit in.


Found that Perfect Cactus yet, Lil Pudd'n????


You would be amazed out how soon you will have to get out of the air conditioned truck to give me my next assignment.


Actually, I'm much more of the out-in-the-shit-and-work-with-you kind of stimulus provider. I never had no use for the truck-sitters, so i never wanted to be seen as one.
 
I have run across a handful of kids studying to be biologists that think there is a world of demand out there, yet somehow, they cannot even manage to find intern positions...


;) ;)
 
I am studying to be water-proof. Today's stimulus is outside, which is where the rain is, too.


I haven't been rained out in ages.
 
I have run across a handful of kids studying to be biologists that think there is a world of demand out there, yet somehow, they cannot even manage to find intern positions...


;) ;)


The unemployment rate for people with biology degrees is extremely low. It's a field that gives a ton of career options and provides a foundation for a huge array of advanced degrees.
 
The unemployment rate for people with biology degrees is extremely low. It's a field that gives a ton of career options and provides a foundation for a huge array of advanced degrees.

Interestingly, the degree with the highest percentage of unemployment is Architecture, with a 13.9% unemployment rate.

Edited to add: Want to see a list of unemployment rates by college majors AND have a good laugh at AJ's expense? Click Here
 
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Easy Credit Is Inflating a Massive Student-Loan Bubble
Steven Greenhut|Jun. 21, 2013 12:00 pm

Americans are still talking about the recently deflated housing bubble, but there’s a new bubble in town. It’s the student loan bubble and when this one pops, it might dwarf the wreckage we’ve witnessed in the real-estate markets.

In the latest news, the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors warned that soaring student-loan debt has “parallels to the housing crisis,” according to a May report in Bloomberg. As with housing, free-flowing cash will lead to widespread default. Of course, it’s easier to repossess a tract house than to take back a potentially worthless degree.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke dismissed these concerns by saying that most of the money in the student-loan sector is federal money, which just means taxpayers – rather than lending institutions – will take the initial hit. But the board of governors makes a salient point as student loan debt soars to $1 trillion and exceeds the nation’s level of credit-card debt.

“The bankers said student lending shares features of the housing crisis including ‘significant growth of subsidized lending in pursuit of a social good,’ in this case higher education instead of expanded home ownership,” according to that Bloomberg report. “The lending has put upward pressure on tuition, just as the mortgage lending boom led to rising home prices, they said, calling both examples of a ‘lack of underwriting discipline.’”

For my entire life, I’ve heard policy makers insist that there is insufficient funding for education and that getting a college degree is the pathway to a better life. But as the bankers noted, the sea of student-loan money artificially boosts the cost of tuition, which creates a new cycle of indebtedness by students. Higher tuition makes “pay-as-you-go” a less-likely option.

Lax student loans make it easier for colleges to spend money poorly. If the federal government provides a loan to virtually anyone who applies for one, then university administrations can spend foolishly. There’s so much money, why not hike salaries and pensions for professors? Why not offer programs and majors that are of questionable intellectual or economic merit?

I know people with six-figure loan debt, multiple degrees and few job prospects. There were few lending standards – hey, it’s only government money – so they racked up loan after loan. Others use loans to gain useful degrees with lucrative job potential, but these graduates come out of school with a crushing load of debt that will take decades to repay.

In 2012, Congress debated a controversy surrounding for-profit colleges, which receive about a quarter of the total federal Title IV student aid programs. The impetus was the latest iteration of the GI bill for active military and veterans, who often choose for-profit education programs.

“These colleges use high-pressure sales tactics to ensnare veterans, promising them a high-quality education and a ‘guaranteed job,’ and urging them to sign up on the spot,” according to Jerome Kohlberg, in an opinion piece in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “They lock themselves into long-term commitments, turn over their GI education benefits and sign up for student loans to cover the difference.”

The alleged abuses at some for-profit colleges have reminded some critics of abuses by the subprime mortgage industry. But these problems are almost solely the result of easy access to government dollars. Indeed, public universities do the same thing – lure students into long-term debt commitments based on a free flow of federal dollars, even if they don’t use the high-pressure tactics used by some recruiters in the private educational business. For-profit and non-profit universities rely heavily on government tuition subsidies.

Many government employees, by the way, receive automatic pay boosts when they receive additional education, so this government-funded system ratchets up government spending throughout the entire taxpayer-funded system.
http://reason.com/archives/2013/06/21/easy-credit-is-inflating-a-massive-stude
 


We basically have full employment for people with college degrees right now. Unemployment is moderate to moderately high for unskilled and semi-skilled workers.

Your solution: fewer college-educated people and more semi and unskilled people. It's the exact opposite of what the economy needs and is the essence of counterproductive stupidity... but since you're educationally paranoid you'll continue to attack higher education.
 
Heading for the student debt cliff
(OP-ED)
College graduates are defaulting on their loans in record numbers. The $1.1 trillion in debt is consigning jobless borrowers to an underclass and rivals the housing bubble.
Adam B. Wolf
June 22, 2013

...

The borrowers of this other $1.1-trillion debt are far more likely to default on their obligations: students, particularly those who went to for-profit colleges. The global consequences could be — and likely will be — staggering.

More than 38 million Americans have student loans outstanding. To put this in perspective, 38 million is the combined population of New York and Florida. And this collective debt is on par with the entire GDP of Mexico.

After a for-profit culinary college in California settled a lawsuit brought by former students, I was hired by a fund created through the settlement to provide assistance to those who took out loans to attend the school. The job has put me on the front lines of the student debt crisis.

The students who enrolled at the culinary school were hoping to become the next Tom Colicchio, and they routinely took out $40,000 loans to finance their educations.

The federal government issued some of the loans to the students, but those covered only a portion of the school's tuition and costs. Sallie Mae, the now-private lender, made up the difference, dispensing loans to students like Halloween candy. But there was a catch: Whereas the federal government's loans had interest rates of about 6%, the interest rates on the private loans often hovered between 13% and 18%.

The financial consequences of financing a culinary education with credit card interest rates are devastating — and predictable. The school's graduates who find work in their field typically earn about $9 per hour. And those are the lucky ones who are employed.

But repaying a $20,000 loan at 6% interest and an additional $20,000 loan at 15% interest is simply unsustainable for someone who earns an hourly wage of $9. The take-home pay does not come close to covering interest payments, and paring down the principal is not an option. Obviously, repayment is even less feasible for the unemployed.

Under the terms of the private loans, the missed interest payments are added back to the principal. Loan balances balloon. More payments are missed. The $40,000 loans quickly pass six figures.
 
Comparing student loan defaults to the collapse of the real estate market is how shall we say--astoundingly stupid.
 
Comparing student loan defaults to the collapse of the real estate market is how shall we say--astoundingly stupid.

Not recognizing the economic bubble created by fiat money and the positive interference of government is just the sort of quick and shallow thinking that I have come to expect from guys like you and Phrodo...
 
Not recognizing the economic bubble created by fiat money and the positive interference of government is just the sort of quick and shallow thinking that I have come to expect from guys like you and Phrodo...

If you're trying to point out the pitfalls of fiat currencies, then use a better example. Because this one is 'quick and shallow.'

:rolleyes:
 
From another perspective, the consumers of the services rendered by America's colleges and universities are the employers and post-graduate schools who hire and enroll the recent recipients of bachelor's degrees. They, presumably, know and are unhappy about those services, the low quality of which Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa documented in Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (2011). Their study, which tracked more than 2,300 students at a variety of four-year colleges, found that 45% "did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning" during the first two years of college, and 36% did not do so over four years. "How much are students actually learning in contemporary higher education?" they ask. Not all that much, it appears. For many undergraduates, "drifting through college without a clear sense of purpose is readily apparent." The employers of recent graduates whose competencies include dismantling systems of oppression, but not writing coherent paragraphs, are unlikely to be our higher educational system's biggest fans.

And yet, none of these deficiencies seems to matter. Ever increasing numbers of Americans go to college. According to the Department of Education, the proportion of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 enrolled in post-secondary education (including two- and four-year colleges as well as trade schools) increased from 35% in 2000 to 41% in 2010. The growth in the ranks of "non-traditional" students, those 25 and over, was even faster.

What's more, while colleges are teaching students less and less they are charging them more and more. Adjusted for inflation, the cost of tuition plus room and board at a 4-year public college or university was 46% higher in 2010 than in 2000, and 84% higher than in 1990. Those costs at private institutions have grown more slowly—2010 levels were 18% higher than in 2000 and 49% higher than in 1990—but from a much higher starting point. A private school still costs twice as much as a public one.

As has been well documented and widely decried, rising college costs have caused growing, and often shocking, student debt. Authors Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus reported in The Atlantic in 2011 that the $1 trillion owed on student loans exceeds the total balances due on all Americans' credit cards. Two-thirds of undergraduates borrow to pay for their education, and the average amount they owed two years ago was $27,650. When, however, "personal circumstances go wrong, as can happen in a recession, interest, late payment penalties, and other charges can bring the tab up to $100,000." On the theory that mortgage lenders can repossess homes, which retain some market value, but college lenders cannot recoup any part of their bad debts by repossessing diplomas, student loans are not dischargeable in bankruptcy. To fall far behind in repaying them means, as one official tells Hacker and Dreifus, "You will be hounded for life." Lenders will "garnish your wages. They will intercept your tax refunds," and can revoke professional licenses and garnish Social Security checks.

Many young people who start college conclude they aren't cut out for it, academically or socially; or can't sustain the financial obligations; or find the advent of adult responsibilities, such as rearing children, makes studying impossible. They quit, and then end up with the worst of both worlds: debt but no diploma. A Department of Education study tracked a representative sample of students who in 2003 began working toward either a technical certificate or a two-year or four-year college degree. After six academic years, 49% had earned some kind of credential, 15% were still pursuing one, and 36% had left post-secondary schooling without any degree or certificate. Debts incurred by the third group, as well as by those in the second group who will never finish school, are no more dischargeable than degree recipients' liabilities. One professor recently wrote, "I used to say that in academia one at least did very little harm. Now I feel like a pimp for loan sharks."



http://www.realclearpolitics.com/ar...er_education_hustle_118926.html#ixzz2X8ZYmMNj
 
No, you err in your loyalty to your political bias.


Any discussion of education that does not promote is an attack on the liberal polity.

Any dissension from Liberalism, is of course, shallow displaying am unusual lack of nuanced thinking.
 
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