Comment by lee_ars | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lee_ars | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> At least for me, it's not that reading bores me - there just isn't enough time and benefit to it, especially for novels and literature. Literary books aren't going in my CV, nor providing any insight into how to write better code. When 1200 people compete for 1 open internship position, can I really afford to waste my time like this?

The disconnect here is that your professors are assigning you work like this because the purpose of a university education is to broaden your horizons, challenge you, and force you to think about _how to think._

The fact that you're treating it like trade school is your problem, not the university's.

> I distinctly remember being penalized for any insight that didn't fit marking criteria back in high school english lit.

Good for you. High school writing has nothing to do with university-level papers.

> Well, most lectures just aren't very helpful. They move slower than if we just read the docs. Some lecturers are also just incompetent with barely any understanding of what they're teaching in the first place...

Your issue, again, is that you're arrogantly assuming you don't have anything to learn from things you personally haven't prioritized. A major role of a university education is to beat that idea out of you by showing you how wrong you are. Pity it isn't sticking.

> ...though this probably wouldn't be as big of a problem in better universities like Ivy Leagues where the author works

What the actual fuck, dude? Ivy League? Right in the second paragraph: "I teach at a regional public university in the US."

I went into this article kind of annoyed at the stereotyping of "these kids today," but way to go reinforcing the article's points. Damn.

The disconnect here is that your professors are assigning you work like this because the purpose of a university education is to broaden your horizons, challenge you, and force you to think about _how to think._

this would be fine if it didn't cost as much as a new car and my career did not depend on it. I can broaden my horizons for free at library

> The fact that you're treating it like trade school is your problem, not the university's.

When (for many people) going to college almost necessarily means accruing 5-figure to 6-figure debt at the infancy of their careers, they sure as shit better have some sort of marketable skill to justify and remedy that debt coming out of it.

I understand the sentiment of higher education being useful for broadening one's horizons, challenging you, teaching you how to think etc; but you should be arguing in the _positive_ for these things to be available to everyone without a paywall.

Federal loans are enough to pay for a state school (especially if you do your general education at a community college). Income based repayment means you’ll never pay more than 10% of your discretionary income for 20 years (income above 1.5x the poverty level for your family size). If you never make more than 1.5x the poverty level, you’ll never pay back a dime.

College is financially attainable for just about anyone.

> Income based repayment means you’ll never pay more than 10% of your discretionary income for 20 years

So a 10% hit to your income for at least 20 years isn't significant? What percentage of someone's student debt works under income based repayment?

> If you never make more than 1.5x the poverty level, you’ll never pay back a dime.

So... your suggestion is to live just above poverty so you won't have to pay student loans?

> Federal loans are enough to pay for a state school (especially if you do your general education at a community college)

Sure, there exists ways to go about getting a degree which doesn't _have_ to have a massive financial burden for decades, but what percentage of degree holders (Or, those who have student loans) took this path? Is this a pragmatically fair expectation for 17/18 year olds to make?

How do you resolve the "while the total average balance (including private loan debt) may be as high as $41,618"[0]

[0]: https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics#:~:te...

>So a 10% hit to your income for at least 20 years isn't significant?

It's not a 10% hit to your income. It's 10% of your income over 1.5x the poverty limit. And it's capped at whatever the payments would be under a 10 year repayment plan.

And it's not at least 20 years, it's at most 20 years. If you make more $80k or so you'll pay less under the standard 10 year plan, so you'll pay that. Which for $40k in deb is something like $450 a month (about 6.75% of your income).

>So... your suggestion is to live just above poverty so you won't have to pay student loans?

That's clearly what I said...of course it's not. The point is that worst case scenario you make under 1.5x the poverty limit you make nothing. If you make a little more than that you pay a 10% tax on the money over that (up to about $60k then it goes down).

>Sure, there exists ways to go about getting a degree which doesn't _have_ to have a massive financial burden for decades, but what percentage of degree holders (Or, those who have student loans) took this path? Is this a pragmatically fair expectation for 17/18 year olds to make?

In 2020 around 6% of students took out private student loans. And private student loans represent only around 7% of all student loan debt, so most of them don't have a massive financial burden because they qualify for income based repayment.

>How do you resolve the "while the total average balance (including private loan debt) may be as high as $41,618"[0]

The vast majority of that is federal, which qualifies for IBR, so isn't a massive burden. Don't take out private loans unless you're going to an Ivy League school, or med school.

I simply don't agree that an IBR loan is a good enough deal to not justify one needing useful and employable skills coming out of higher education.

The utility of a degree, from what I've seen, _does_ end up being better than the accrued debt on average, but the distribution of these cases (I simply imagine) leaves enough people on the margin to be harmful.

If you don’t have family money, you probably need to have a plan for what you’re going to do as a career even if college is free.

My point is that whether they need a marketable skill or not has very little to do with student loans. Provided they go to a state school.

If you borrow $40k to go to a state school, the most you’re going to pay is something like $450 a month for 10 years. Any degree no matter how vocationally useless will allow you to make more than $450 a month extra than you otherwise would have.

There are of course cases where this doesn’t hold, but you’d almost have to try for it not to be worth it. The program is good enough that I think we’ve mostly reached the point of diminishing returns, and there are other things we could spend additional money on with higher ROIs.

Completely false. I went to one of the cheapest accredited colleges around, I received the maximum pell grant, and my federal loans covered about 65% of the tuition. I worked full time through college to cover the remaining tuition and books.

If we're using today’s numbers, max Pell Grant is $7,400 per year. You can borrow $5,500 in federal loans as a freshman, $6,500 as a junior, and $7,500 as junior/senior. So the average is $6,750 (independent students and student's whose parent can't qualify for a plus loan can take out more).

That's $14,150 per year. Let's take one of the highest cost of living states--california. Cal state LA: tuition and mandatory fees: $7,160, books: $1,054.

That's about $6k a year more than you need for tuition and books. Obviously this isn't going to cover all of your living expenses, so you're going to need to work or live with family.

But if you're an independent student, with the larger loan limits, you could get close if you live really cheap.

https://www.newsweek.com/student-loan-repayment-income-drive...

> The Trump administration has gotten rid of applications for income-driven repayment plans from the federal aid website.

The change occurs as the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked income-driven repayment plans in its February ruling. That means former President Joe Biden's SAVE plans and PSLF options are no longer available.

The numbers I quoted are still valid. What changed primarily is that it went back to 20 years. Up from 10.

“ Today, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) reopened the online income-driven repayment (IDR) plan and loan consolidation applications for borrowers. The application was temporarily paused to comply with the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals injunction issued last month, which directed the Department to cease implementation of the Biden Administration’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan and parts of other IDR plans. Because the online application incorporated provisions subject to the injunction, it was necessary to revise the form, making it unavailable to borrowers in the interim. Paper loan consolidation applications were available to borrowers during that time.”

http://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com