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A comment on Warren’s Higher Education Plan: Cancel Student Debt and Eliminate Tuition.

Re:Warren’s Higher Education Plan: Cancel Student Debt and E... by malvosenior on Monday April 22, 2019 @04:14PM (#19722437)
"She would eliminate up to $50,000 in student loan debt for every person with a household income of less than $100,000;"

So she plans to reward the people who made the worst decisions. As someone who made responsible decisions: nope. Just no. I will not support tax dollars going to bail out people who paid upwards of 50k for worthless degrees.

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Re:Warren’s Higher Education Plan: Cancel Student Debt and E... by VectorLock on Monday April 22, 2019 @04:30PM (#19722645)
I don't think its fair to judge the worth of someone's degree simply based on how much they earn.
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Re:Warren’s Higher Education Plan: Cancel Student Debt and E... by tomsthumb on Monday April 22, 2019 @04:34PM (#19722688)
In an economic context, why would it not be fair to judge the economic worth of someone’s degree on the basis of that degree’s ability to influence their earnings?
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Re:Warren’s Higher Education Plan: Cancel Student Debt and E... by SantalBlush on Monday April 22, 2019 @04:44PM (#19722789)
Because there are a litany of counterexamples to the myth that earnings equate to economic value. Teachers, police officers, and social workers immediately come to mind.
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Re:Warren’s Higher Education Plan: Cancel Student Debt and E... by tomsthumb on Monday April 22, 2019 @06:55PM (#19723873)
That sounds like a great argument for subsidizing teacher and social worker education instead of the wholesale forgiveness of student debt which includes people with degrees in poetry and pottery. Poetry and pottery are both valuable to society, but honestly a lot of the people who are good at those things don’t have matching degrees. Also, forgiving loans for pottery degrees competes with our ability to subsidize education for teachers.
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Re:Warren’s Higher Education Plan: Cancel Student Debt and E... by sanxiyn on Monday April 22, 2019 @04:52PM (#19722866)
The obvious solution is to subsidize teacher pay etc, not to subsidize education to be teacher! If teachers are well paid, you wouldn't need to subsidize teacher education.
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Re:Warren’s Higher Education Plan: Cancel Student Debt and E... by dragonwriter on Monday April 22, 2019 @06:30PM (#19723679)
Subsidizing teacher pay is subsidizing education.
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Re:Warren’s Higher Education Plan: Cancel Student Debt and E... by lutorm on Monday April 22, 2019 @04:44PM (#19722794)
Yes but having an educated citizenry pays dividends in a multitude of non-economic contexts.
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Re:Warren’s Higher Education Plan: Cancel Student Debt and E... by dillonmckay on Monday April 22, 2019 @04:56PM (#19722901)
Unfortunately, degree != educated.
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Re:Warren’s Higher Education Plan: Cancel Student Debt and E... by VectorLock on Friday April 26, 2019 @06:10PM (#19762199)
For most intents and purposes, pursuing a degree entails attempts to become educated.
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Re:Warren’s Higher Education Plan: Cancel Student Debt and E... by sanxiyn on Monday April 22, 2019 @04:38PM (#19722733)
Some works of art may have value beyond their auction price, but you probably shouldn't buy them if you can't afford them.
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Re:Warren’s Higher Education Plan: Cancel Student Debt and E... by malvosenior on Monday April 22, 2019 @04:32PM (#19722665)
If I'm expected to pay for it with tax dollars, that's the only possible way to view it. I'm not going to subsidize someone "finding themselves".
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Re:Warren’s Higher Education Plan: Cancel Student Debt and E... by gerbal on Monday April 22, 2019 @04:36PM (#19722720)
No, you subsidize people doing poorly paid but highly educated work in fields like public health work, education, and non-profits. You also subsidize people getting the basic education required for many jobs.
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Re:Warren’s Higher Education Plan: Cancel Student Debt and E... by 0815test on Monday April 22, 2019 @04:40PM (#19722756)
Many jobs do not require the "basic education" that a college degree provides - a HS education is entirely sufficient, and was widely regarded as such even as late as a few decades ago. It's a wasteful credential-chasing arms race, and the more we keep subsidizing it the worse it will get for everyone involved.
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Re:Warren’s Higher Education Plan: Cancel Student Debt and E... by VectorLock on Tuesday April 23, 2019 @10:55AM (#19729223)
Much like welfare and food subsidies in my view its morally unacceptable when you start judging an individual's worthiness rather than their need.
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Re:Warren’s Higher Education Plan: Cancel Student Debt and E... by thebooktocome on Monday April 22, 2019 @04:42PM (#19722774)
https://www.naceweb.org/uploadedfiles/files/2018/publication...

The median first salary for every discipline after undergrad is sub-$100k (fig 7).

I guess you just think college as a whole is worthless.

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Re:Warren’s Higher Education Plan: Cancel Student Debt and E... by jkingsbery on Monday April 22, 2019 @04:57PM (#19722915)
I think one would need to look at salary over the course of the time to pay off a loan, and also the overall distribution of salary and not just median. I'm sure there are many out there with more than $50k in loans, now making $110k per year. I'm sure there are many out there who started off making $80k, now making $100k or more a few years later.
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Re:Warren’s Higher Education Plan: Cancel Student Debt and E... by smileysteve on Monday April 22, 2019 @04:28PM (#19722623)
> I will not support tax dollars going to bail out people who paid upwards of 50k for worthless degrees.

For many for profit college loans or predatory liberal arts colleges, there is a level where this seems like the tax payer paying the banks; otherwise they would have to write the money off as a loss.

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Re:Warren’s Higher Education Plan: Cancel Student Debt and E... by alanbernstein on Monday April 22, 2019 @04:32PM (#19722667)
Do the universities that sold these worthless degrees deserve to be paid upwards of 50k for them?
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Re:Warren’s Higher Education Plan: Cancel Student Debt and E... by gristig on Monday April 22, 2019 @04:45PM (#19722804)
They deserve to be paid whatever people are willing to pay. Just as if people rack up debt in order to go on a "useless", those people should be responsible for repaying their debt.
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Re:Warren’s Higher Education Plan: Cancel Student Debt and E... by AnimalMuppet on Monday April 22, 2019 @06:50PM (#19723838)
> They deserve to be paid whatever people are willing to pay.

Not if the government is doing the paying, they don't. How much am I willing to have the government pay for me? Quite a bit more than I'm willing to pay on my own account.

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Re:Warren’s Higher Education Plan: Cancel Student Debt and E... by pastor_elm on Monday April 22, 2019 @04:36PM (#19722715)
well if you go to a school like NYU or USC and pay 80k a year for tuition and room and board, you're paying more for the lifestyle than the degree.

Arguably it's worth it to some people. At NYU you can get a room right on Union Square or Washington Square Park for instance.

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Re:Warren’s Higher Education Plan: Cancel Student Debt and E... by malvosenior on Monday April 22, 2019 @04:35PM (#19722703)
That was a decision for the people who agreed to pay them 50k to make. They did and now it's on the purchaser, not the people who made informed decisions and didn't get themselves in debt they can't afford.

Put it this way, if you're tight on money and you max out your credit card for a vacation across the world, is it worth it? Obviously not but you can't expect tax payers to bail out poor financial decisions.

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