Concerns That New Department of Education Earnings Test Could Undermine Arts, Public Service Degree Programs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How is this substantively different from the Biden proposal?

I thought the biden proposal was a full disclosure sort of approach and the trump approach is to deny the funding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Public policy is not a Rorschach test ! ( For the maga people, a Rorschach test is a psychological test where the patient looks at an ink blot and tells the provider what they see. ) The only way out of this dystopian hell hole of idiocracy brought to us but angry losers and tech incels, is to look at data and facts and use logic.

Why has no one responded to how many 18 year olds are applying for student loans to enter expensive graduate programs in art, theater, and dance? How many 22+ year olds? How many people have taken federal loans for those programs and defaulted?

I wonder why there is no data. Why is there no budgetary impact data?

Could it be that the administration has zero capability or interest to solve real problems? Could it be that they just want to flare up culture wars while redirecting budgetary resources to grifters? Enquiring minds want to know!

What are you on about? This current proposal isn’t a new invention. It’s merely the latest iteration of multiple previous proposals.

The loan amounts could be 100k. They could be 30k. Maybe you could write a check right now for 30k but most people can’t. This problem wasn’t invented in the last year. It’s a long discussed issue. I’m sure your kids’ 529s are nice and plump. Good for you. Seriously. But that’s not a lot of people’s reality.

You can’t be for or against something without understanding what it is and who it will impact. You need the data, especially with the current cast of idiots in charge to decide.

I would wager that the default rate for people taking on federal student loans for art, theater and dance graduate programs is far lower than the default rate for federal student loans at for profit universities in so called financially viable programs.

A lot of for profit universities would fail this viability test. And they should get shut down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Simplified, the proposed regulation states that federal loans would not be available if a degree holder earns less than an average HS graduate in their state.

According to AI, an average HS graduate in DC initially earns 39k year, a little over minimum wage.

If a specific college degree can’t guarantee that a graduate will make more than a minimum wage and requires to take loans to pay for it, then it is our civic duty to deny those loans. If colleges are truly in this for the betterment of society, they can discount non profitable degrees, offer merit aid, maybe even provide their own loans and see how it works out. Otherwise government needs to step in and prevent what is basically a predatory practice. 18 year olds don’t even have their cortex matured, the part responsible for making decisions and regulating emotions.

Also, how’s what government is proposing different from what a credit lender does? You want 100k loan to start a business, you better show that you can survive and at least do as well as other businesses in that space.

No, it is not our "civic duty" to deny those loans to young Americans trying to get an education, and no college degree is able to "guarantee" that a graduate will make more than minimum wage within a timeframe-there's a lot of factors that schools can't predict related to economic health, trends in hiring, and the ability of a specific student to use their degree to become gainfully employed. You're buying an education, not a toaster.

And what hypocrisy to demand that American students who need loan must show that they can survive and repay. The USA funds $40 bn in loans to Argentina to prop up a failing currency and hundreds of billions in military aid to Israel--it just shows that Republican priorities are to use taxpayer dollars for preferred allies, and not to invest in American students.

Not MAGA.
Not a Republican.

I don't know if this is the right tactic but I agree with the strategy. We cannot keep burdening students with loans they cannot repay. I don't think that the argument that we should allow them to burden themselves because we also pay for bombs to destroy Iran is not super convincing. You can argue for free tuition at public university but that's a different argument.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is crazy. We had an awesome student loan program with almost zero defaults. We should not have changed a thing.

Excuse me? You're being sarcastic right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Professors. administrators and other support staff are criminally underpaid at colleges like UVA, Va Tech, UConn, UMass, Delaware, etc. We need more tax-payer backed loans to flow through students to support our near-pauper professors, deans, provosts, etc.

More sarcasm?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is going to cause a lot of anger. Once coal miners & assembly line workers notice a decline in the quality of their musical theater, they will be LIVID!

What about teachers? Social workers? You are trying to be funny, but you are coming across as just dumb.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is crazy. We had an awesome student loan program with almost zero defaults. We should not have changed a thing.

I am not sure if you are sarcastic or truly not aware. Here is a pretty good article from the Motley Fool (funny name, serious topics) - https://www.fool.com/research/student-loan-debt-statistics/?msockid=107a8323f45165f2061e9783f5f96456
Here is another one - https://thecollegeinvestor.com/39673/does-the-government-profit-off-of-student-loans/

Can you think of any business that can sustain up to 20% loss each time they sell something? I can agree with government breaking even on the loans, but losing money every year requires action. Best not to provide loans to customers who are at a high risk of not paying back in the first place.

The government isn't a business! It's a mechanism for society to maintain and advance itself. Education should be free, because why would we want to live in an uneducated society? Arts education should be free, because why would we want to live in a society where few people make art because most people can't afford to do it? What kind of life do we want for ourselves?

Most societies with free education have significant limits on who can take advantage of that education using merit based filters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Social workers should not be burdened with $200,000 in college loans.

Who would choose to attend a masters program in social work for that much?? MSW is a two-year degree. I just looked **very** briefly at GMU website and for in-state VA residents it looks like the tuition is roughly $20k a year. There's an online option. Of course you have to add living expenses, but you're still nowhere close to $200k.

Eewwww. GMU?

I want you to lend me money to get my masters in social work at Wash U.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a scientist but I don't think that every student should major in science/technology.

Maybe the solution is not to discontinue these majors but rather to value and pay public servants, educators, and others more appropriately.

Even during the Great Depression, our federal government recognized the value of humanities and arts, and found ways to support them.

Nobody had during the great depression had a college degree that was paid for with government backed loans.

If this is the literacy level of a college graduate, then I'm favor of cutting funding for it.

Get rid of the first "had"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Professors. administrators and other support staff are criminally underpaid at colleges like UVA, Va Tech, UConn, UMass, Delaware, etc. We need more tax-payer backed loans to flow through students to support our near-pauper professors, deans, provosts, etc.

Fine, but as we raise the pay of the important people, let’s also abolish the enormous number of positions in which a smarmy college bureaucrat sits in a plush office all day wondering what sort of committee he can establish to make people think he’s actually doing something. And abolishing that position means we can also say farewell to his grouchy menopausal watchdog who answers his phone when she’s in the mood.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Professors. administrators and other support staff are criminally underpaid at colleges like UVA, Va Tech, UConn, UMass, Delaware, etc. We need more tax-payer backed loans to flow through students to support our near-pauper professors, deans, provosts, etc.

More sarcasm?

It sounds like sarcasm, but my spouse is a tenure track STEM professor making $63k after a PhD and two postdocs. Yes, industry would pay more, obviously almost anything would.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Professors. administrators and other support staff are criminally underpaid at colleges like UVA, Va Tech, UConn, UMass, Delaware, etc. We need more tax-payer backed loans to flow through students to support our near-pauper professors, deans, provosts, etc.

Fine, but as we raise the pay of the important people, let’s also abolish the enormous number of positions in which a smarmy college bureaucrat sits in a plush office all day wondering what sort of committee he can establish to make people think he’s actually doing something. And abolishing that position means we can also say farewell to his grouchy menopausal watchdog who answers his phone when she’s in the mood.

Noticed this on admin bloat at MIT

https://x.com/vickycyang/status/2061877472895934867?s=61

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Public policy is not a Rorschach test ! ( For the maga people, a Rorschach test is a psychological test where the patient looks at an ink blot and tells the provider what they see. ) The only way out of this dystopian hell hole of idiocracy brought to us but angry losers and tech incels, is to look at data and facts and use logic.

Why has no one responded to how many 18 year olds are applying for student loans to enter expensive graduate programs in art, theater, and dance? How many 22+ year olds? How many people have taken federal loans for those programs and defaulted?

I wonder why there is no data. Why is there no budgetary impact data?

Could it be that the administration has zero capability or interest to solve real problems? Could it be that they just want to flare up culture wars while redirecting budgetary resources to grifters? Enquiring minds want to know!

What are you on about? This current proposal isn’t a new invention. It’s merely the latest iteration of multiple previous proposals.

The loan amounts could be 100k. They could be 30k. Maybe you could write a check right now for 30k but most people can’t. This problem wasn’t invented in the last year. It’s a long discussed issue. I’m sure your kids’ 529s are nice and plump. Good for you. Seriously. But that’s not a lot of people’s reality.

You can’t be for or against something without understanding what it is and who it will impact. You need the data, especially with the current cast of idiots in charge to decide.

I would wager that the default rate for people taking on federal student loans for art, theater and dance graduate programs is far lower than the default rate for federal student loans at for profit universities in so called financially viable programs.

A lot of for profit universities would fail this viability test. And they should get shut down.

Amen.