I looked and didn't see a thread specifically for freen college tuition, and debt forgiveness for those that have student loans.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/23/18714615/bernie-sanders-free-college-for-all-2020-student-loan-debt

From Bernie's plan

Quote :

"The Vermont senator will unveil the most ambitious higher education plan in the Democratic 2020 presidential primary so far on Monday. The proposal would make two- and four-year public and tribal colleges and universities tuition-free and debt-free, and erase the roughly $1.6 trillion in student loan debt currently owed in the US, paid for by a tax on Wall Street."

Quote :

"The proposal would cost $2.2 trillion over 10 years, which Sanders says would be paid for with his Wall Street tax. He proposed a Wall Street speculation tax in 2016, which would raise small levies on buying and selling stocks, bonds, and derivatives; many experts estimate it could raise hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Sanders’s office cited progressive economist Robert Pollin’s projection that the tax would bring in $2.4 trillion in revenues over 10 years."

Going further, it seems that his plan only covers tuition, and provides some relief for other expenses. But I worry that with his plan, the federal government will negotiate tuition rates with colleges and universities, and much like Medicare, they aren't going to be willing to pay what private individuals pay. Colleges and universities will probably stand to lose a good bit of money, which they will probably offset by raising housing and other costs. This is pure speculation but I don't see it being out of the realm of possibility.

Plus, for all of the folks that have student debt that they're making payments on, how would Bernie's plan pull out tuition from consolidated loans?

It sounds like Warren's plan is similar to Bernie's, except she adds a cap to debt-forgiveness for households making over 250k. Also, her plan is to pluck from the ultra-rich, rather than Wall Street, but I'm sure those are not mutually exclusive.

Thoughts? I switched majors several times and spent too long in college, and I did not spend money as wisely as I should have back then, therefore I still have some college debt. I wouldn't mind having that wiped, but I also don't mind the payments I make on it.

What about the folks that don't want to go to college? I'm sure these plans would include apprenticeships as well, but I don't know if I saw that explicitly called out.

2/17/2020 11:57:47 AM

You are exactly right. NCSU student fees are already several times what they used to be, they were jacked up because the state negotiated to keep tuition from increasing as much as the university wanted it to.

The issue is a lack of competition. Students will pay whatever the tuition is, so Universities are raising tuition fast. If the feds take over paying tuition, Universities will take that money and jack up fees, housing, books, and everything else because they know students will pay it.

This is quite simply a market failure, the causes of which are unclear to me. I know there are barriers to entry in the education industry, but I wouldn't have thought they were this serious. However it came to be, the feds throwing money at colleges isn't going to change the underlying market failure. Hopefully, as you say, federal money will come bound with laws against charging other ways. For example, ban student fees, require the price of books to be rolled into tuition, ban on-campus living requirements, all as a condition of receiving federal tuition dollars.

Of course, they could do all this right now, no need to pay for tuition. Just ban these things and impose tuition caps as a condition of federal student loan dollars. Another option is to just cap federal student loan outlays per semester. If students cannot raise the money to pay ever higher tuition, then colleges will stop raising tuition every year. And this is how you deal with market failures, regulation. You don't tax the poor to give money to the rich.

[Edited on February 17, 2020 at 12:31 PM. Reason : .,.]

2/17/2020 12:29:20 PM

Quote :

"The issue is a lack of competition. Students will pay whatever the tuition is, so Universities are raising tuition fast. If the feds take over paying tuition, Universities will take that money and jack up fees, housing, books, and everything else because they know students will pay it. "

This isn't true. Universities feel a huge amount of market pressure, including public universities. A good school doesn't just want people who can pay (like a typical business), they want the best students. They want students who will go on and do great things, and bring prestige back to the school, and who will contribute the most to society.

This does create an arms race of costs, where student centers and libraries and learning facilities have to have the best technology and architecture and design.

And considering that as the population grows, the number of students needing to be served needs to grow, which means more buildings, tearing down buildings and building bigger buildings, and buying more land, etc., you're always going to see a need for costs to increase.

There's a plateau when the technology matures and prices come down, and there's no need to invest in substantial upgrades, and we're sort of in that zone now where more money is being expended to grow capacity instead of upgrades.



tl;dr colleges have competition, but it's mostly for top students/faculty, costs are driven by the continuing need to accommodate more students as populations grow

2/17/2020 12:50:43 PM

Quote :

"What about the folks that don't want to go to college? I'm sure these plans would include apprenticeships as well, but I don't know if I saw that explicitly called out. "

trade schools are explicitly called out in the very first bulletin point of his website:
https://berniesanders.com/issues/free-college-cancel-debt/

2/17/2020 2:11:34 PM

Quote :

"The federal funding has restrictions: It cannot go to administrators’ salaries, any merit-based financial aid, or non-academic buildings like shiny new football stadiums."

I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt until I got here. Restrictions like these are idiotic. Money is fungible.

It's like people who insist on giving food to panhandling drug addicts, because "If I gave them money, they'd just use it to buy drugs." OK, well, now you've saved them from having to spend any of their money on food, freeing it up for them to spend...on drugs. University leadership is addicted to shiny new buildings, and they're damn sure addicted to salaries. They'll use the Federal money to pay for academics, expand some non-tuition revenue streams - we've already demonstrated that we'll eagerly pay a lot, they've got nothing to fear there - and use that money to buy football stadiums.

---

Buy-in would also be a big issue. The states that are least likely to participate in this program are the states in most dire need of higher education. They're also the states that have the least in the stock market, so it's no skin off their asses. When red states don't join, there's two possible outcomes, neither of which are good. Either their higher education situation gets worse in comparison to the rest of the country, exacerbating regional disparities and deepening a critical divide in this country. On the other hand, maybe they outperform the Sanders-plan schools, drawing in better students with "shiny new buildings" that they can buy without having to bother playing a shell game with their sources of money.

I'm also a little confused about what happens in the relationship between debt relief on the one hand, and states that don't opt in on the other.

---

I'm actually pretty on board with the Wall Street tax (though I am curious why there's a lower rate for derivatives, which, at least to my admittedly shaky understanding of them, are the most speculative). But spending it in this way seems like a colossal waste.

2/18/2020 8:09:59 AM

Is student loan debt forgiveness going to be treated as taxable income to the people that receive it?

2/18/2020 1:58:43 PM

Sanders and warren have said they will be tax free but it's not clear to me if they can do that without a second bill

2/18/2020 5:19:03 PM

I don't know how true it is, but I heard on some political talk show that whatever amount the government offers with federal students loans is about 10K less than what the universities charge. The universities will take every dollar they can get. Government involvement never seems to be a good thing. Our government can't afford to fund all of these things that the left is promoting. In the end no government program is going to make your life better. It is up to you to get an education that will allow you to make a decent wage.

2/18/2020 7:43:56 PM

Stop listening to conservative talk radio

2/18/2020 10:57:41 PM

its not going to happen but if it does? it will certainly be taxed as income.

2/19/2020 6:45:04 AM

Quote :

"Another option is to just cap federal student loan outlays per semester. If students cannot raise the money to pay ever higher tuition, then colleges will stop raising tuition every year."

It doesn't follow that capping federal student loan outlays will stop students raising money to pay higher tuition. They'll find some mechanism to get that money - private loans, parents having to take second mortgages, what have you - and that mechanism will almost certainly be less forgiving than federal student loans.

2/19/2020 8:27:07 AM

Quote :

"In the end no government program is going to make your life better."

I encourage you to listen to the countless oral histories from people from the Greatest/Silent generation about the life-changing Works Progress Administration from both a personal and public engagement perspective.

2/19/2020 9:41:20 AM

I will let my daughter apply as many Ivy-league schools as she wants.



[Edited on February 19, 2020 at 9:54 AM. Reason : And I don't have to worry about her student loan anymore!]

2/19/2020 9:53:43 AM

AIM FOR THE STARS AND YOU MIGHT HIT MARS

2/19/2020 10:57:57 AM

Quote :

"tl;dr colleges have competition, but it's mostly for top students/faculty, costs are driven by the continuing need to accommodate more students as populations grow"

Oh yes, nothing here but inflation. Housing also requires land and construction, but the price of housing has not skyrocketed like tuition has.

2/19/2020 3:52:13 PM

@shoot - I don't think either plan applies to private schools.

2/19/2020 4:05:14 PM

2/19/2020 4:44:41 PM

The fundamental problem is that everyone is convinced that a college education is necessary, and when something is necessary, people will spend whatever they have to in order to get it. The same phenomenon explain why medical care come in second on that inflation comparison - there's a lot of "healthcare" provided in this country because it seems necessary, even though it isn't.

The surest way to rein in costs in both cases would be to convince Jimmy's parents that Jimmy does not need a four year university education to be a well-rounded, well-paid adult, and that Jimmy's 87 year old grandmother probably will not see that much improvement in her existence from a $45,000 medical operation. And we're screwed, because both of these things are impossible to do.

2/20/2020 7:52:31 AM

Quote :

"I don't know how true it is, but I heard on some political talk show that whatever amount the government offers with federal students loans is about 10K less than what the universities charge. The universities will take every dollar they can get. Government involvement never seems to be a good thing. Our government can't afford to fund all of these things that the left is promoting. In the end no government program is going to make your life better. It is up to you to get an education that will allow you to make a decent wage."

lemme introduce you to the NC Constitution:

Quote :

"Sec. 9. Benefits of public institutions of higher education. The General Assembly shall provide that the benefits of The University of North Carolina and other public institutions of higher education, as far as practicable, be extended to the people of the State free of expense."

2/20/2020 8:30:41 AM

^^

Quote :

" And we're screwed, because both of these things are impossible to do."

I don't know. Fox News seems to be having some success convincing their viewers that a college education is not only not necessary, it's an evil liberal indoctrination center.

2/20/2020 9:39:49 AM

Quote :

"The surest way to rein in costs in both cases would be to convince Jimmy's parents that Jimmy does not need a four year university education to be a well-rounded, well-paid adult"

What are the statistics on pay 3/5/10/etc years out from a 4 year degree vs whatever the best alternative is?

2/20/2020 1:14:46 PM

^
https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2017/high-school-graduates-who-work-full-time-had-median-weekly-earnings-of-718-in-second-quarter.htm

Quote :

"Median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers age 25 and older were $909 in the second quarter of 2017. Full-time workers without a high school diploma had median weekly earnings of $515, compared with $718 for high school graduates (no college) and $1,189 for those with a bachelor's degree. Full-time workers with advanced degrees (professional or master's degree and above) had median weekly earnings of $1,451."

Quote :

"The surest way to rein in costs in both cases would be to convince Jimmy's parents that Jimmy does not need a four year university education to be a well-rounded, well-paid adult, and that Jimmy's 87 year old grandmother probably will not see that much improvement in her existence from a $45,000 medical operation. And we're screwed, because both of these things are impossible to do."

Bernie's plan includes trade schools.

2/20/2020 1:18:04 PM

so basically if you want your child to have the highest potential they need a college education, statistically speaking

2/20/2020 1:43:57 PM

aka the meritocracy trap

2/20/2020 4:20:53 PM

So back to this now that Biden's going to be running the show, there's been some talk of student loan debt forgiveness. Here's what I found:

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/student-loans/joe-biden-student-loans

And what it doesn't say is how he's going to pay for it. Bernie's plan would have used Wall St taxes.

But the bigger question is what are the implications going forward. If we level set student debt to $0, then what happens if I immediately go back to school after having my debt forgiven? Will future loans be forgiven? Why even take out a loan?

11/22/2020 6:17:21 PM

He will keep costs down by means testing the shit out of it so that they don't have to actually forgive a large portion of the debt out there. Yeah they are going to forgive some student debt but will leave out everyone who went to a private school (the more expensive type of school) and leave out grad school (the more expensive type of school again).

[Edited on November 22, 2020 at 10:28 PM. Reason : create more anger and resentment]

11/22/2020 10:27:50 PM

Just make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy. That's puts lenders and Universities on the hook for garbage degrees. That creates incentives to better screen students, rein in worthless programs, and limit costs.

11/23/2020 11:14:36 AM

^this

11/23/2020 12:13:01 PM

Calling degrees that don't make lots of money worthless is just another way out culture devalues the arts. We need artists, writers, philosophers, linguists and they shouldn't be limited to rich people.

11/23/2020 12:39:57 PM

At least for me, a 'garbage degree' is a degree from a garbage institution (e.g. for profit degree mills) and not a specific degree.

We need to restore a lot of the government funding that's been cut over the past several decades instead of pushing those expenses onto students in the form of giant loans.

Also need more paths to the middle class so people aren't pursuing degrees just to have a degree.

11/23/2020 12:51:35 PM

^^ And if you're good at those careers you'll presumably find work and be able to afford reasonable educational costs. Bankruptcy risk means a better balance should be struck between supply, demand, utility, etc...

11/24/2020 11:53:02 AM

Quote :

"Just make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy. That's puts lenders and Universities on the hook for garbage degrees. That creates incentives to better screen students, rein in worthless programs, and limit costs."

This. This is literally the answer. We have a court system that is more than capable of figuring out when someone isn't able to pay their obligations and modifying them accordingly. This punishes shitty lenders who took advantage of naive borrowers, adds market pressures to colleges to rein in costs, and allows those who really need help an out while still punishing them a bit, too. I would put a minimum time before borrowers could file for relief, though.

^^^ I dont generally disagree that those fields get shit on, and I'd agree that they have value to our society. But our society and economy have made it abundantly clear that they aren't valued economically at a level that can justify 100k/year of debt to attain a degree in them. It's harsh, but it's true. Part of the solution is as ^^ says where we restore funding to universities, but the main response should be to have lending standards and costs reflect the actual economic utility of the field of study. It should be viewed similarly to a business loan: I'm not going to get $5mill to renovate a bathroom at my factory, but they'd probably give me that to buy new machines to make more widgets.

11/24/2020 9:35:50 PM

How does discharging loans in bankruptcy affect the student? Doesn't that mean they can't do anything with credit for like 7 years?

11/24/2020 10:17:52 PM

^^ Education has value beyond economic return. I don't want to pay for frivolous degrees either, but a purely utilitarian approach to education funding isn't the answer. There's a balance somewhere.

11/25/2020 9:52:36 AM

You can’t do student loan forgiveness without some other plan to prevent the need to do the same thing in a few years. I think ^^^ is basically necessary for student loan forgiveness.

There’s lots of other problems, lenders won’t lend to minorities and kids from poorer families anymore, and that will create new problems, but that’s where we can then maybe do universal college.

11/25/2020 8:02:37 PM

^^ I agree. It does have value beyond economic utility, but lending money for it changes the calculus. If someone can afford 100k/year for a basket weaving degree, I'm all for it. Knock yourself out. Where that changes is when you expect the public either to foot the bill or to backstop your loans. Then, unfortunately, we do have to ask what kind of return on investment we are getting here.

I'd also say that I'm hard pressed to believe that some of these degrees truly cost that much in the first place. There should probably be a differentiation in cost of various degrees as opposed to the current 1 price fits all. A music degree surely cost far less to deliver than a nuclear engineering degree.

11/26/2020 10:05:54 PM

^ mostly agree with that

11/30/2020 12:24:01 AM

Which parts do you disagree with. I don’t know enough about shitty degrees to provide educated opinion. What he said sounds reasonable, to me.

11/30/2020 6:27:59 PM

Cost differentiation based on economic utility limits economically desirable degrees to students who already have the means to afford the degree. To the extent we expect students to pay tuition, I'd much rather see those costs averaged across students than differentiated by degree.

Even better is highly subsidized or universal post-secondary. Hard to be upwardly mobile if you can't afford a degree that makes you upwardly mobile.

12/1/2020 2:20:05 PM

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/12/04/student-loan-payment-freeze-extension/

I am down to about 11k been paying on time since pandemic. Once i get to 10k pretty sure freezing since Biden plan will eliminate 10k in student debt

12/4/2020 8:29:27 PM

Will never get through a McConnell Senate.

12/4/2020 10:50:27 PM

One of many things he can do without the senate if he wants

12/5/2020 12:15:20 AM

I'm not paying my fucking student loans after this shit is over. Teachers get their loans forgiven before everyone else.

12/6/2020 4:25:38 PM

Unless you're teaching with a masters which democrats won't let qualify for forgiveness.

12/6/2020 5:16:04 PM

Earl, I'll gladly let you cut me in line the day they start wiping out our debts. You clearly haven't learned a damn thing, but we're both in the same Biden life raft now, and I'm too damn tired of lecturing people like you who refuse to admit they were ever wrong. It's just going to make for a longer and more annoying boat ride, and we're pulling into the NJ harbor and it smells like garbage.

12/6/2020 6:35:58 PM

I'm not in a life raft and am completely fine paying my loans without anything from the government. I approach these posts from a place of empathy because there are plenty of people who need help and won't get even be considered. Meanwhile, you approach your post from the most condescending bitter point of view possible without actually making any points. How are you so sure they are going to eventually forgive all debt? If you know that just like you know I'm Earl and just like you know I've learned nothing and just like you know I never admitted I was wrong then I've got news for you...

12/6/2020 6:50:06 PM

Quote :

"I approach these posts from a place of empathy because there are plenty of people who need help and won't get even be considered. Meanwhile, you approach your post from the most condescending bitter point of view possible without actually making any points."

LOL!

Bullshit.

By the way, what happened to you in this thread:

https://thewolfweb.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=611245&page=40#16586481

Oh, that's right, I know:



LMFAO!!

12/6/2020 7:21:52 PM

don't steal my shit



[Edited on December 6, 2020 at 9:57 PM. Reason : or this is mine]

12/6/2020 9:54:23 PM

I'm not stealing your shit, bro, I'm merely demonstrating you're full of shit.

12/6/2020 10:50:56 PM

SET 'EM UP, COMRADE

12/7/2020 11:23:43 AM