https://archive.md/fjnf1

The only solution to fixing the student loan crisis is the one no one wants to hear – end federally backed student loans, and make the loans dischargeable in bankruptcy. The economic brunt of a bad loan needs to be felt by the issuing bank, not be distributed among taxpayers.

When lenders get more stringent about handing out hundreds of thousands of dollars to teenagers, colleges will automatically have to scale back fees in order to get people to apply. No more 5-star hotel rates for shoebox dorms and cafeteria food. No more multi-million dollar pay packages for administrators and sports coaches. No more textbooks which cost $300 per class and need to be "refreshed" every year to prevent reuse. Prioritize lending for degrees which have a higher earning potential and so a higher chance of paying back. Favor students with a better academic record. Enforce a minimum GPA in order to keep getting funded. Issuing loans is a business, so treat it like a business rather than a social service with privatized gains and public losses.

Conversely, the worst thing you can do for the problem is forgive existing loans. What do you then do when universities jack up tuition even more and students run up a tab of another trillion dollars over the next decade and refuse to pay, knowing that the government will bail them out anyways?

At least while I was applying to college, NYU was notorious for offering very generous first year scholarships, and being very stingy with 4 year scholarships, which led to students believing it was more affordable than it actually was.

I anticipate there will be a lot of comments about how these folks should not have gone to an expensive private uni, could have made choices to avoid debt, the burden is on the borrower and it is their responsibility, etc - all true and valid points.

However, the US is approaching a situation where the student loan problem will be an "everyone" problem, not just a borrower - I believe a ~$1.6 Trillion debt burden is a significant enough drag on the economy to be felt by everyone, and will be more painful not only for borrowers who can not pay but also non-borrowers who are indirectly affected.

The money that could have been used to pay for housing, services, etc, will instead go to student loans. If I was a local business owner, I would think about that. If you are homeowner, imagine what the price of you home could be if buyers did not have student loans.

I hope people realize this soon.

As an NYU CS grad, can confirm it is egregious. If I had to do it over I would have gone to a different university, the education at NYU was not unlike other much less expensive universities in fact I had a lot of doubts about quality save some select professors. The only reason I'm fine with my loans is because I'm a very well comped SWE.

I don't personally have a lot of sympathy for people who do a liberal arts degree at NYU though. At least I knew I'd be able to pay this all back with some high degree of certainty.

The top two majors at NYU, by percentage, probably don't end in a high average salary after graduation.

  Visual and Performing Arts 17%
  Social Sciences 14%

No surprise then.

I never understood why the government role in higher education is fixated on the financing.

Pay cash for school, live modestly - no bailout.

Get a loan for school, use cash for immodest lifestyle - free money!

If college loans are a problem, then the cost of college is the real problem. Let's not use government to selectively reward individuals based on how they paid rather than the price they paid.

I oppose any student loan reform or student loan bailouts for this reason. Do not believe the magician's misdirection, focus on the real issue.

you can get a masters in public health at a school that doesn't cost 80k a year in one of the most expensive cities in the world you know

I'm getting real tired of hearing these sob stories about not being able to pay for rent and food and being saddled with a lifetime of debt because you make very poor decisions

I went to a state school rather than an expensive private school, went into a well paying career and paid off my student loans in 3 years.

I'm sorry these students chose a different path, but there's no way the rest of us should take care of their terrible decisions. If you want to mandate some super low interest rate, then I'm fine with that, but just having the government pay off their loans is extremely offensive.

If these people got into NYU in the first place then they're almost certainly from more well off families. They don't need the help.

Maybe part of the issue here is more about financial incompetence causing these bad decisions in the first place.

Teaching a kid how to be wise with their money is unbelievably valuable. Just teaching kids how to spend and save their money can point them in the right direction when making a huge financial decision for college.

I had the experience of managing, saving, and earning my own money as a kid, and when the time came to go to college, I had the choice between a more expensive school and my local state school. I chose my local state school, got basically the same education, and was able to pay off my debt in a year after graduating. I'm at a good spot professionally so it didn't end up mattering if I went to the more expensive school.

The WSJ article doesn't talk about differences in student-loan balances between men and women. It mentions one income source (egg harvesting) used by women students to reduce their amount of borrowing, but doesn't comment on other income sources, largely used by women, that have been discussed elsewhere (e.g., see the https://nyunews.com/2018/02/18/02-20-daddy-features/ article). Data points such as "borrowed a median $74,000" might not be a good characterization of the experience of women at NYU. For the women borrowing much less than 74k, did their college career include traditional employment-based income sources that required skill sets learned at NYU, traditional employment-based income sources that didn't require anything learned at NYU, or other income sources that potentially have long-term effects on physical and mental health?

We should end student loans as they exist today. Too easy to get, and the interest rate is usurious given they can never be discharged in bankruptcy. If we as a society want college to be more attainable, we should build more of them and subsidize the tuition so kids can afford to pay for it with private loans of a reasonable size, or through working part time while in school.

For so many reasons, we cannot do loan forgiveness. This is not a one-time problem with a one-time solution. It would present a huge moral hazard to do it once with a naive expectation it wouldn't need to be done again in a few years. Plus, it amounts to a giveaway to people who are by definition elite, which is political suicide. I get that the people paying student loans feel like it is a crushing debt they can never seem to escape, but college graduates earn significantly more, on average, so they are the least deserving of a handout.

It's a popular trend here, and in other places, to dismiss the value of higher education - e.g., 'it's all the same'.[0] (I hear it often from people who already have such educations and expect their children to have them too!)

But if we use our educations, we know that popular trends are an exceedingly poor means of understanding the world - it's hard to think of more dangerous, less reliable signals. Popular trends are astrology, witchcraft, conspiracy theories, lynchings, etc.

Thinking about it just a little, probably anyone serious would much rather learn personally from the world's leading experts in the field, with every resource (labs, research libraries, etc.), and among brilliant, hardworking, serious classmates. Or would you be happy learning from just any person, with uneven resources and among people of questionable talent and motivation? In our industry, you want to learn software development from Google Fellows or the local front end shop? If the latter seems sufficient, or if you just want to hang out and take some classes like high school, I agree: Don't waste money on a top school (unless you do it cynically, just for the status and connections). If you're serious, I don't see how there is any question.

I do agree that there's a bit of a mismatch - many people see college as High School Part II, just with harder classes and more personal independence - and colleges seem to cater to that. Not enough students conceive of what college really is, which is understandable given their high school backgrounds and lack of experience in the world: K-12 is all they know and they are experts in it with deeply engrained perspectives and habits after 13 years. The colleges need to help them see that it's a different world, and far wider and greater possibilties. Optimally, IMHO, college should wait for about 5-10 years of real world experience; how can you study the world without ever having experienced it? But as with anything, we have to work with imperfect institutions, systems, and people.

[0] And that fits the general trend of degrading anything that stands in the way of elite power.

I graduated NYU last year. I posted in reddit one of the top posts on NYU's page something like "how to make nyu cheap." All said and done I ended with roughly 60k in debt, which isn't bad since I work in finance. That said, I know someone who went to NYU to become a teacher and ended with 280k in debt. At this point a lot of people I know are "debtmaxxing" and banking on USD hyperinflation. For myself, I suspect that student loans will be forgiven before 2030, so I just pay the absolute minimum.

This is something that students and parents should take into account when they're trying to figure out what school students should go to.

In other words, stop going to NYU. It's a bad investment of time or money.

Without paywall:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/nyu-college-graduate-parent-stu...