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PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   31288 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023

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Inspired by college loans discussion earlier, I'd like to apply a policy engineering lens:

  • What are the minimal changes necessary to get an epsilon away from the current model of "government guarantees the entire loan amount with no conditions and it's not dischargeable in bankruptcy, with private lenders available" and towards a model that incentivizes better behavior in schools and students?
  • Politically, what gets the nose under the tent most effectively, allowing further reforms?
  • More generally, it seems difficult to implement a series of small reversible reforms to explore a space; what drives that in a government implemented as largely autonomous opaque agencies, and is it itself reformable?

I don't understand why anyone cares. According to the Fed, median student debt is in the low 20K range, which is an amount that people routinely borrow [to buy cars}(https://www.lendingtree.com/auto/debt-statistics/#Averageautoloanamounts). And the larger amounts tend to be for professional degrees that lead to high income. This does not seem to be a crisis.

There are of course exceptions, such as people who borrow tons of money to attend various private schools, including some sketchy trade schools. Any reform should focus on reducing the incidence of that specific phenomenon.

Because our society doesn’t consider a college degree to be a straightforward investment, it considers it the price of entry into the class of people who deserve a comfortable life without having to work particularly hard for it. And part of our society’s definition of a comfortable life is ‘get to spend 18-21 partying and experiencing life in an extended adolescence’ so it’s just wrong to ask them to pay for their semester in France where they gained the kind of familiarity with French culture that apparently doesn’t involve learning the language. Or pay for their nicer than necessary dorms and accommodations and the professional chef running the dining hall.

‘The traditional college experience’ delendum est. You can get a college degree for cheap, or at least affordable, if you don’t have extenuating circumstances- live at home, get as much as possible done through community college, then commute to bumfuck nowhere tech- cowtippingville campus. But 18 year olds choose not to do that, because they’ve been convinced that spending four years in high school but without having to answer to their parents is a necessity.

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