My parents are low middle class. We didn’t qualify for any financial aid and they were tasked with trying to find a way to send both my sister and I to college which they couldn’t afford.
So what did we do? Take out a bunch of loans. Good thing I got a decent job that can pay for them. Too bad for my sister who had a masters and is making $35k as a teacher in Tennessee which is barely more than minimum wage.
And those loans should be forgiven. Is this your position on anything becoming easier over time? "We shouldn't have ramps, my grandpa had to push grandma's wheelchair up the steps"?
Are you saying that under current law the loans should be forgiven, or that we should have laws under which those loans are forgiven?
I believe it's possible to have loans forgiven if you work in certain industries (like public school teaching) for enough years, but it's not a few years — more like a decade or two.
If you think someone who gets a masters shouldn't have to pay back their loans, I'd counter that such a policy would be a wealth transfer from taxpayers to universities. Masters degrees are almost always a negative ROI endeavor, once opportunity cost is factored in. We shouldn't be subsidizing them even further, which will lead people to get even more of them, given how little they add to future earnings.
IIRC PSLF originally required not ten years of elapsed time but rather 120 sequential on-time payments in full under a qualifying repayment plan, where "on-time" was determined by the loan servicer. And you had to keep working beyond that time until the application was approved (most were rejected) and processed (probably as quickly as government departments usually operate.)
Loan servicers had every incentive to thwart this by declaring payments late or incomplete, steering borrowers into forbearance or non-qualifying repayment plans, etc.
As you can imagine, fewer than 1% of applicants successfully had their loans discharged.
They've been trying to fix things since the pandemic for people who consolidate to a federal direct loan.
So you got a good paying job and had supportive parents. I don’t get why you’re complaining, at least you had parents. What is this program costing you?
I agree it should cost less, but I don't understand why everyone seems to think the government (taxpayers) should be paying these tuitions. The problem is that tuition is ridiculous.
No, that's not clear. I'm sure the state (and other) universities would say that tuition already funds "actual operations". What guidelines do bureaucrats inflict on universities to ensure there are no fake operations sucking up funds? Can you point me to the specific state funding proposals you're talking about?
State bureaucrats will rush and charter gazillion piss poor grade universities to “meet increased demand” - what difference that would make?
Problem is with American University itself, its overbloated mandate, abysmal efficiency, and dysfunctional bureacracy that has very little to do with actual education and its outcomes
> Problem is with American University itself, its overbloated mandate, abysmal efficiency, and dysfunctional bureacracy that has very little to do with actual education and its outcomes
was it always like this though?
from what i've heard it didn't always used to be like that....
Nor compare the quality of average public school with average private school?
The difference is day and night, especially in academics.
Public schools became sort of free daycare. I fear public universities will become something like that plus job program for bureacrats unemployable anywhere else (just like with any state government)
It’s always depressing when we talk about the latest developments in minimum wage and how a day one burger flipper at an In and Out in California is making just as much as someone with 6 years of schooling and responsibility for teaching the next generation.
Oh and that’s not even considering how much of her own $$$ is needed to successfully supply a classroom and how barely any is tax deductible.
Her experiences almost single handedly altered my political viewpoints and who I vote for.
I honestly don't know. I'm in California and "let's not make our teachers minimum wage slaves" wasnt on any candidate's platform from what I researched. Let alone on any of the viable candidates. If no one represents my ideals, what can I do?
California is the state most likely to be able to fix it, simply get a proposition passed that says:
> No administrator of any education system may be paid more than twice the lowest-paid teacher, no matter how many hours that teacher worked during the school year. A teacher is anyone who is responsible or in charge of children or students. Political salaries are deemed administrative of the educational system that is under the purview of that elected body.
My parents are low middle class. We didn’t qualify for any financial aid and they were tasked with trying to find a way to send both my sister and I to college which they couldn’t afford.
So what did we do? Take out a bunch of loans. Good thing I got a decent job that can pay for them. Too bad for my sister who had a masters and is making $35k as a teacher in Tennessee which is barely more than minimum wage.