“Intergenerational social mobility” is not social science BS. That is basic English. You’re not dumb. Don’t act like it to score points. If you want me to treat you like a dumb rube, I can do it. I’d rather treat you like well educated person trying to have a productive discussion of the facts.
Higher education is increasingly important and increasingly unaffordable. Blaming students for a social crisis they didn’t create is just ridiculous.
You're right, I'm not dumb. But sometimes I feel like I am, or maybe crazy, because I just can't understand where people are coming from with their ideas.
I can figure out what 'intergenerational social mobility" means - I guess it essentially means the ability of children to progress beyond the socio-economic status of their parents?
I guess your sentence is trying to convey the concept that the baby boomer generation has made higher education unaffordable while that same education is the key to that mobility. I was confused by your phrasing and by saying the unaffordable education was one of the 'last' such methods - are you saying there used to be other methods of social mobility that are no longer available?
I just have a hard time getting behind the idea that people should be completely absolved of responsibility for debts they voluntarily took on - unless, of course, there was some kind of fraud or other special factors. I think that, for the discerning student, there are lots of affordable education opportunities. For low income people education is generally available for free or at very low cost - so we are really only talking about kids from a middle class background.
I feel sorry for the person who took out $200k in loans to go to Charlotte law - but I'm not sure what to do about it. Charlotte had some bad practices in giving fake stats for job placements and bar passage rates and the like - I think those kids should have known better, they took out the loans voluntarily, but they were also misled. In that case, the company that owned Charlotte law should be responsible, if anyone. I don't know if that is possible. I don't know what ever happened to that company, but, if they went bankrupt, for instance, and can't be held responsible, that doesn't seem fair when the kids with the loans can't avoid the loans by going bankrupt, huh?
On a macro level, what would happen if students could avoid their loans through bankruptcy? I'm assuming that would create greater risk for the entities granting the loans and would drive up interest rates and make the loans harder to obtain? Making the loans harder to get might not be a bad thing? That was the problem with the real estate crisis, right - loans were too easy to get, with no regard for the ability to repay? Would it be possible to include that kind of calculus into the student loan process - likelihood to be able to repay? The analysis would have to include job prospects, potential salary, etc, according to course of study, right?
I'm rambling ... but I agree change is needed in the system but disagree that having the rest of the country pay for the problem through taxes is the solution. Warren's plan is a little more reasonable than Bernie's since the relief is limited to lower-income people and the relief is partial. But in general I'll never understand the constant fascination with taking more money from the "rich".
What if taxed all the university endowments? They're the ones benefiting from these kids getting all these loans... I haven't really thought that through but it just occurred to me.
