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Billionaire pays off Morehouse graduating class’s student debt

BillBrasky said:
And who benefits when the financial institutions cash in? Joe Schmo investors, or the benevolent billionaires who own and control those "businesses"?

Come on man.
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Yes, if you made a billion dollars by committing fraud you are an asshole.
 
Think of those parents who scrapped and saved so their kids could finish with no debt.


I mean, still they did a good and significant thing, but if they’d known someone would wipe away the debt!



Also, c’mon Wake alum...up next!



Seriously, we need to figure out a better way forward.
 
Schools have been given a license to make bad debts without penalty. For them, it is printing money.
Stop excluding student debt from bankruptcy.
No more free money via student loans. School's will have to make fewer, smaller, smarter loans to students likely to be able to pay them off. Student loan interest rates will rise to reflect the risk.
Bye-bye six figure loans to art history, and other unemployable majors.
Student pool shrinks (demand decreases). Prices fall to meet demand.
Loans moderate to reasonable levels.

Simple econ 101, which ironically, is taught in college.

The downside to this is fewer people would be able to attend college, especially the poor, marginal student.
When do you give him the bad news - before attending college, or after racking up six figure debt in an unemployable major from a low end school?
How many other kids get caught in the net trying to give one kid a chance at college? Is that worth it? Because that is where we are now.
 
Lol at "unemployable majors".

Ten years out, liberal arts grads are on average more employed and making more money than professional and pre-professional program graduates. At 50, it's even more pronounced. I bet they're more satisfied with their careers too.
 
One of my kiddies is 'bout to declare his major as...philosophy!

I think that's great.
 
Does liberal art grad include all the people that get additional degrees making the first degree pointless paper, like congrats on the philosophy degree, I mean future lawyer.
 
Sure, if you're a cynic. I think most people would agree that the training they received in their philosophy courses ultimately prepared them for success in law school.
 
wakephan09 said:
Sure, if you're a cynic. I think most people would agree that the training they received in their philosophy courses ultimately prepared them for success in law school.
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We definitely need more accountants who read and think critically on a third grade level.
 
Also, that logic assumes that philosophy majors are only training to be philosophers and art history majors only to be art historians.
 
wakephan09 said:
Also, that logic assumes that philosophy majors are only training to be philosophers and art history majors only to be art historians.
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It’s hard to argue with adults who have made their mind up, are objectively wrong, and who are not interested in reframing their perspectives to match actual data.

Whatamount, 2&2, DeacMan, and TAB are probably the worst offenders on here, but I’m sure there are others lurking in the shadows.
 
wakephan09 said:
Sure, if you're a cynic. I think most people would agree that the training they received in their philosophy courses ultimately prepared them for success in law school.
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Learning how to think, identify and approach or solve problems, effectively argue/understand a perspective, use language more precisely/effectively, etc...plenty of occupational endeavors benefit from these skills.
 
ConnorEl said:
Learning how to think, identify and approach or solve problems, effectively argue/understand a perspective, use language more precisely/effectively, etc...plenty of occupational endeavors benefit from these skills.
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It's true and increasingly, the hard sciences are sending their students over to the social sciences and humanities for some seasoning prior to and during professional schools.
 
ConnorEl said:
Learning how to think, identify and approach or solve problems, effectively argue/understand a perspective, use language more precisely/effectively, etc...plenty of occupational endeavors benefit from these skills.
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Hard science degrees can provide this as well.

Are you guys seriously saying that a four-year undergraduate psychology degree from UNC-G isn't a complete fucking waste of time?

Even if a student actually wants to study psychology, there are myriad better places to do it than UNC-G. Of the 14,000 full-time students there (a little less than 3k incoming freshmen), how many are going to earn a non-STEM degree that is worth it? Those that aren't getting a ticket punch to grad school (which is another can of worms).

https://ire.uncg.edu/reports/preliminary-fall-data/Campus_Profile_201708.pdf
 
Well, I was briefly talking about philosophy, not psychology.

But any undergraduate degree can be useful. Especially if from a reputable place and if you do well. Indicating you are able to show up, do your tasks well, be responsible, able to learn, cooperate/collaborate with others, etc.
 
awaken said:
Schools have been given a license to make bad debts without penalty. For them, it is printing money.
Stop excluding student debt from bankruptcy.
No more free money via student loans. School's will have to make fewer, smaller, smarter loans to students likely to be able to pay them off. Student loan interest rates will rise to reflect the risk.
Bye-bye six figure loans to art history, and other unemployable majors.
Student pool shrinks (demand decreases). Prices fall to meet demand.
Loans moderate to reasonable levels.

Simple econ 101, which ironically, is taught in college.

The downside to this is fewer people would be able to attend college, especially the poor, marginal student.
When do you give him the bad news - before attending college, or after racking up six figure debt in an unemployable major from a low end school?
How many other kids get caught in the net trying to give one kid a chance at college? Is that worth it? Because that is where we are now.
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Even without the comment on un-employable majors, this is all basically true. The easy money for loans combined with societal expectations that everyone go to college created a huge pool of students with money to pay tuition. This created the mad scramble by schools to compete for those students and many chose to do by building country-club campuses and creating lots of programs requiring more and more administration - all driving up costs. The old standard stereotype of the starving college student living in a crappy dorm room heating ramen noodles on a hot plate just doesn't seem to exist anymore.
 
scooter84 said:
Even without the comment on un-employable majors, this is all basically true. The easy money for loans combined with societal expectations that everyone go to college created a huge pool of students with money to pay tuition. This created the mad scramble by schools to compete for those students and many chose to do by building country-club campuses and creating lots of programs requiring more and more administration - all driving up costs. The old standard stereotype of the starving college student living in a crappy dorm room heating ramen noodles on a hot plate just doesn't seem to exist anymore.
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Again, this is a weird folk theory without any evidence when there actually is a ton of evidence that contradicts your account. For one, students are absolutely still starving. Many are homeless, too. Maybe not at Wake, but in the "modal" residential campus there are a lot of students who are struggling to get by.

Second, I think that you have the causal order backwards. Loans have existed for a really long time. They existed before universities were expensive, as they were getting progressively more expensive and as they have exceeded expectations for what reasonable expense for a college education should be.

Simple Econ 101, but there are a lot of markets in higher educations and loans play different roles in each. I think that you can trace actual cause of the loan crisis to the rise of "for profit" education. The proliferation of and ease of access to student loan credit definitely has allowed more legitimate brick and mortar -style universities to jack up prices, but they have been doing that for a long time regardless of the loan landscape.

I feel like y'all are also giving the financial sector and their political lackeys (Joe Biden!) a pass...
 
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Grabs Turds Bare said:
Hard science degrees can provide this as well.

Are you guys seriously saying that a four-year undergraduate psychology degree from UNC-G isn't a complete fucking waste of time?

Even if a student actually wants to study psychology, there are myriad better places to do it than UNC-G. Of the 14,000 full-time students there (a little less than 3k incoming freshmen), how many are going to earn a non-STEM degree that is worth it? Those that aren't getting a ticket punch to grad school (which is another can of worms).

https://ire.uncg.edu/reports/preliminary-fall-data/Campus_Profile_201708.pdf
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I agree that psychology is junk science and nobody should waste their time with it (just skip that mess and go straight to neuroscience, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, etc.), but I think that there are plenty of useful skills that you can get out of a humanities and social science degree. As long as you have to go to grad school anyway to make any money in basically any field (thanks, Boomers!), you might as well learn how to think while you're in college.
 
Outside of technical majors (engineering, etc.) philosophy majors are (or used to be) among the highest scorers on the LSAT. It’s a skill set that transfers well to law school.
 
Strickland33 said:
Again, this is a weird folk theory without any evidence when there is a ton of evidence that contradict these accounts. For one, students are absolutely still starving. Many are homeless, too. Maybe not at Wake, but in the "modal" residential campus there are a lot of students who are struggling to get by.

Second, I think that you have the causal order backwards. Loans have existed for a really long time. They existed before universities were expensive, as they were getting progressively more expensive and as they have exceeded expectations for what reasonable expense for a college education should be.

Simple Econ 101, but there are a lot of markets in higher educations and loans play different roles in each. I think that you can trace actual cause of the loan crisis to the rise of "for profit" education. The proliferation of and ease of access to student loan credit definitely has allowed more legitimate brick and mortar -style universities to jack up prices, but they have been doing that for a long time regardless of the loan landscape.

I feel like y'all are also giving the financial sector and their political lackeys (Joe Biden!) a pass...
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Most of my evidence is anecdotal, I agree, but I disagree with your assessment. My point about the starving college student is related to the country-club nature of campuses now. In the 'old days' dorms were spartan and campuses were focused on educating students. Now dorms are luxurious and campuses are covered with fancy student centers, and rec centers and world-class work-out rooms, pools, and on and on. you must know that this is true. I went through the process of touring schools with my kids over the past 10 years or so and was amazed at what I saw on campus after campus. None of it essential to the mission of the school but intended to attract more students.

The glut of students clamoring for space on campuses has many causes - including the population bubble as the children of baby-boomers reached college age, the aforementioned societal changes that created the expectation that everyone go to college, etc. - but, the easy access to student loans was definitely a factor.
 
Grabs Turds Bare said:
Hard science degrees can provide this as well.

Are you guys seriously saying that a four-year undergraduate psychology degree from UNC-G isn't a complete fucking waste of time?

Even if a student actually wants to study psychology, there are myriad better places to do it than UNC-G. Of the 14,000 full-time students there (a little less than 3k incoming freshmen), how many are going to earn a non-STEM degree that is worth it? Those that aren't getting a ticket punch to grad school (which is another can of worms).

https://ire.uncg.edu/reports/preliminary-fall-data/Campus_Profile_201708.pdf
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This, I know a bunch of kids that went to a directional school that were sold a false bill of goods and got into a ton of debt.

It's great psychology majors produce a bunch of unethical rich lawyers out of Wake. Out of most schools it results in broke kids in debt.
 
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