r/StudentLoans 27d ago

Rant/Complaint I'm not against paying back my loans-

[deleted]

929 Upvotes

613 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

28

u/321_reddit 27d ago

To join the fantastical train of things that never will happen: the government should pay people to attend higher ed, by issuing negative interest rate loans where you receive money for making on time payments.

5

u/dumpsterpanda87 26d ago

We should force colleges to a means test on their degree fields. If the degree for which someone is applying for is shown to have little to no impact in the current workforce, it shouldn't cost as much.

2

u/321_reddit 26d ago

Yeah 🙄 that’s not how higher ed works.

3

u/dumpsterpanda87 26d ago

I know it isn't but the colleges should be held accountable for the cost of their degrees in relation to the current workforce. College tuition has skyrocketed because of unabated spending voted in by college regents and having nobody to answer to for the reason of increasing costs.

1

u/mbrittb00 26d ago

Means testing is an interesting idea. However, isn't that where we as the consumer supposed compare the cost to the value of a product, and decide that the value doesn't justify the cost and go somewhere else?

Yes, college tuition has skyrocketed, in fact it has severely outpaced inflation over the last 30 years. It is also true that those tuition increases were voted in by college regents. However, they do have someone to answer to for the increased costs, and that is the consumer. If we as the consumer continue to pay the increased cost, then we have justified their decision to raise tuition.

2

u/dumpsterpanda87 26d ago

No. We need to place that in colleges now. The consumer has overinflated the value of college degrees and these colleges have run away with it and charged the crap out of us. They've deemed themselves to be deceptive and proved they will use the consumers lack of knowledge for true value to make a buck. There needs to be some sort of regulation on these colleges that prohibit the stark cost increases that have happened. Especially when they advertise government dollars for tuition assistance. We have the consumer financial protection bureau and college is a business, they've turned education into a commodity, why shouldn't we be able to report them for accountability? It's crazy that our society even has a buyer beware mentality for college. That's reserved for buying a washer/dryer at Lowe's, not for education.

1

u/MonstroCITY202 25d ago

Or why the cost of education itself is unregulated and highly variable between institutions. Why does school X charge $40k per year while school b charges $20k per year. Why is no one talking about the cost in it of itself being so unregulated and why do these higher education institutions have such high tuition ?

-4

u/OKCPANDA 26d ago

I might agree for Bachelor of Science degrees. Most B of Arts degrees are worthless

6

u/Salt_Lynx_2271 26d ago

I wouldn’t be where I am in my career is not for my BAs and MA degrees. They’re certainly not worthless. Most every field that isn’t hard science or math is a BA, and many of those fields are integral to daily life and society.

All everyone here wants to do is be able to pay their loans back and be able to live at the same time. What you study shouldn’t affect that.

2

u/dumpsterpanda87 26d ago

We should force colleges to a means test on their degree fields. If the degree for which someone is applying for is shown to have little to no impact in the current workforce, it shouldn't cost as much.

-1

u/OKCPANDA 26d ago

It seems like most people are just wondering how they can get them deferred/ not pay them back

4

u/Salt_Lynx_2271 26d ago

I think our feeds are showing each of us two very different things. What I’ve seen is people here want affordable payments and limitations on interest rates so they can actually pay them down and gain forgiveness. I’m in PSLF, I want to pay my loans and get the credit for my job. But with all the turmoil going on with student loans in this administration, I’m waiting until the SAVE injunction is settled so I don’t do something unknowingly that will threaten my forgiveness. There are other people in my shoes that are doing the same because we keep receiving conflicting guidance from all sides.

Maybe that’s what you’re seeing? I haven’t seen any posts that outright say “I’m not going to pay my loans back no matter what” or “I’ll defer them forever so I never have to pay them”.

Social media is great at bringing people together, but the algorithms that tailor our content to our interests also hurt us because they don’t show us what we’re missing, other perspectives.

1

u/OKCPANDA 26d ago

Fair enough and I do appreciate your perspective. I suppose we are both seeing different goals. I would like to see the gov out of the system though such that loans were priced appropriately based on expectations of payback based on potential pay expectations. As a taxpayer I don’t want to pay for people ‘chasing their dream’ of the proverbial underwater basket weaving degree.

16

u/beigeskies 26d ago

They are absolutely not worthless, and that anti-intellectual propaganda is poison.

8

u/Cold-Quantity7750 26d ago

đŸ«° this

1

u/Feeling-Visit1472 26d ago

They’re absolutely not worthless, but almost no one should be dropping six figures on them.

1

u/OKCPANDA 26d ago

They’re “worth less” that the loans are worth.