Reply to Canceling $10k of student loan debt is stupid.

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Reply to "Canceling $10k of student loan debt is stupid."

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I see it as part of a larger trend toward coddling grown adults so they don't have to be responsible adults making good on their obligations. It's along the same line as people shouting "cancel rent!" I mean, come on. It's time to grow up all the way.[/quote]

I mean, in the nostalgic past to which you are referring, most people did not go to college and if they did, loans were not available to them at all. You could actually work your way through a public college in 4 years with a relatively low paying job (waiting tables, retail, etc.).

I do actually think that young people today are immature and expect things to be easy. But ask yourself why that is true. Is it something inherent to this generation? No, it's how they were raised. We've created a culture where kids feel entitled to an education, but also feel pressured to get one. Where we have replaced expectations of independence (supporting yourself and your family) at a relatively young age with an amorphous expectation of "success" (impressive degrees, owning a home) at a relatively young age. The expectations for young people today are often shallow and nonsensical, but they are being pushed not by peers but by THEIR PARENTS. You think kids get expensive graduate degrees because their friends are doing it? No, they do it because their families have expectations of a certain kind of success and class status, and graduate school has been presented as a way to get there.

This is a mess of our own making. The idea that young people independently decided to start going to college and graduate school in bigger numbers, decided on their own to take out loans (which didn't used to even be available like this!), and are now struggling with the consequences of their own choices is silly -- this is a Boomer problem and it needs Boomers to help solve it. Yup, that might mean some loan forgiveness. The whole situation is dumb but it wasn't created by 18 yo kids making bad choices. It was created by their parents.[/quote]

If we want social mobility, then kids should feel entitled to higher education. Independence at 18 usually means a crappy minimum wage job with no future prospects. This isn't 1960 where you can leave high school, join at local factory and have a great union job until you are ready to retire with a nice pension   [/quote]

Exactly -- this is the attitude of most Boomer and Gen X parents I know. [b]But a college education now costs somewhere between 80-300k[/b] (and that 80k is increasingly hard to find). Some parents obviously save for this but many, many don't, or can't afford to do it for all of their kids. Schools offer less aid than they used to, especially as a percentage of actual costs, which go up every year.

Our society (and our parents) tell kids that they MUST get a college education to even have a chance at a middle class lifestyle for themselves and their kids. But that education is expensive and loans are presented as the de facto method for paying for it. This is what we've done for 40 years -- tell young people that anything less than a college degree is a failure, and then charge them increasing amounts for that degree while freely lending them money to pay for it. And now people act like the student loan crisis emerged because greedy 18 yo kids wanted "fancy" college degrees in art history and didn't think it through? No. We created this system and now it's blowing up in our faces, and our kids are the ones (literally) paying for it.[/quote]

[b]They don't have to. [/b]"For Virginia community colleges, the average tuition is approximately $3,736 per year for in-state students". That's about $15k for four years. [/quote]

Yeah but then they are going to say "every child has a right to attend their dream school". It's just never ending BS. [/quote]

Well, we are under no obligation to pay for other kid's BS dreams. Social services always provide for a baseline - individuals can choose to improve upon that, but on their own dime. [/quote]

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