Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Manageable debt is one thing and having a college degree is something to inspire to if you what you want to be requires you to have one. Mechanics and refrigeration what I went to school for required me to have mechanical knowledge, apprenticeship training, and field experience, it's what I enjoy doing, not saying it's the path for everyone, but it was the path for me. Just because you get dirty doesn't mean you don't get paid.
In my opinion the Government needs to let the colleges battle it out in the free market and let them compete for students. It's easy to charge whatever you want when Uncle Sam is the safety net that will bail you out.
We're creating college grads which is a good thing but we're not creating enough jobs to fill the needs of the new graduates.
How come European students finish college with no debt but in the United States the debt load keeps accumulating for higher education. The Europeans have a better educational system then in America. They still have real apprenticeships for those who do not wish to go to college.
Manageable debt is one thing and having a college degree is something to inspire to if you what you want to be requires you to have one. Mechanics and refrigeration what I went to school for required me to have mechanical knowledge, apprenticeship training, and field experience, it's what I enjoy doing, not saying it's the path for everyone, but it was the path for me. Just because you get dirty doesn't mean you don't get paid.
In my opinion the Government needs to let the colleges battle it out in the free market and let them compete for students. It's easy to charge whatever you want when Uncle Sam is the safety net that will bail you out.
We're creating college grads which is a good thing but we're not creating enough jobs to fill the needs of the new graduates.
How come European students finish college with no debt but in the United States the debt load keeps accumulating for higher education. The Europeans have a better educational system then in America. They still have real apprenticeships for those who do not wish to go to college.
Dude, the Republicans just captured both houses of Congress. Politically we don't have a system that is going to guarantee free college for everyone. It won't happen here.
What do you think your paycheck ultimately is? It's the payment of a DEBT that your employer owns you.
You mean owe me, right? Anyway, most of us in the world would be fine without the beast, so don't fool yourself.
Thee only way debt profits is through charging interest and that's not helping the world in the long run at all. It's
just organized extortion to keep certain people at the top who don't deserve to be there in the first place.
I seriously think NYS should have an usury law that anything over, say 15% interest, is illegal. It needs to be enforced on out-of-state lenders and fought to the Supreme Court again.
Its all well and good in theory having a free market for money lending - but we all know the most desperate poor, and often the least knowledgeable, end up paying criminal interest rates. Its a disgrace.
New York already has a usury law banning rates above 16 percent. However, it's not always enforced. Many people who are victims of usury may not even know about the law.
Debt is important for any civilization. People think money lending is evil and useless but everytime a law is made against it, someone has to come in and fill the niche. In the middle ages, money lending was considered sinful for any Christian. Unfortunately debt is required for society to function so someone outside of the system (Jews) had to fill that role.
Sometimes you need money right now in order to build an investment, with the idea being that you'll make enough profits to pay off the debt + interest and have some left over. Without lenders it would be impossible for most people to start businesses and thus we wouldn't have a fraction of the technical progress we enjoy today.
The problem is that human psychology is not designed to handle easily accesible debt such as credit cards. Life is hard and we always think we "need" something which will make our life easier but we cannot afford at the moment so we charge it. We don't need to go to a bank and convince someone to give us a loan, we just swipe the plastic and thats it. Taking on debt has become the path of lease resistance.
Its very easy to see and want the immediate benefits now and ignore the slow but growing and inevitable poverty down the road that comes with using debt for consumption. Add to that the innumeracy of the general public and you have a system that is going to do more harm than good to the majority of people who are not capable of managing their finances correctly.
When it comes to college tuition, its true that the ease of finding student loans only serves to tilt the supply / demand curve and cause tuitions to raise. On the other hand without loans available some people would just simply be unable to get a degree because they don't have any cash.
Perhaps it would have been best if the government stayed out of student loans, requiring people to get more costly private loans. If the tuitions didn't rise so much as a result, people may actually end up better off even paying the higher interest rates. This might also enforce more competition because people would think much more carefully about the tuition costs for each potential college.
Also talking about college, a lot of college programs are a complete scam. The best college arena is math, science, enginnering, law, medicine, etc... That is subjects that actually teach you a skill which you can use immediately in the work force.
The worst degree subjects are the arts. I know some people who spent a fortune to go to prestigous art schools like Pratt. It turns out they really did not learn much at all from the experience, now have huge loan debts, and are not very marketable. They were even telling me something about how Pratt has a claim on all of the work you do while being a student there.
My wife is a painter and none of the best painting schools for her are accredited. So she has to choose between spending less and actually learning useful skills at a good school, or spending a fortune and wasting several years of her life to get a stupid piece of paper at an "accredited" university.
A lot of kids get into the social sciences because they don't know what they want to do. They end up working as a bartender or in retail just like the high school grads who never went to college. Except they are worse off because they just spend a pile of money on tuition and debt.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jerseygal4u
I
As an Rn,i can tell you technical(Associates Degrees) are going the way of the dinosaur.
Nurses must now have a minimum of a Bsn to get hired at hospitals in Nyc and basically all over the Usa.
Even if a nurse had 30 years of experience with am Associates,she WILL NOT get hired over the new Bsn grad nurse.
I think this proves my point. Someone with 30 years of experience with an AS degree will be better than a new person with a BS degree in the same job role every single time. Hard earned experience always trumps academics and theory. Academics who look down on practitioners are some of my least favorite kinds of people on the planet.
Debt is important for any civilization. People think money lending is evil and useless but everytime a law is made against it, someone has to come in and fill the niche. In the middle ages, money lending was considered sinful for any Christian. Unfortunately debt is required for society to function so someone outside of the system (Jews) had to fill that role.
Sometimes you need money right now in order to build an investment, with the idea being that you'll make enough profits to pay off the debt + interest and have some left over. Without lenders it would be impossible for most people to start businesses and thus we wouldn't have a fraction of the technical progress we enjoy today.
The problem is that human psychology is not designed to handle easily accesible debt such as credit cards. Life is hard and we always think we "need" something which will make our life easier but we cannot afford at the moment so we charge it. We don't need to go to a bank and convince someone to give us a loan, we just swipe the plastic and thats it. Taking on debt has become the path of lease resistance.
Its very easy to see and want the immediate benefits now and ignore the slow but growing and inevitable poverty down the road that comes with using debt for consumption. Add to that the innumeracy of the general public and you have a system that is going to do more harm than good to the majority of people who are not capable of managing their finances correctly.
When it comes to college tuition, its true that the ease of finding student loans only serves to tilt the supply / demand curve and cause tuitions to raise. On the other hand without loans available some people would just simply be unable to get a degree because they don't have any cash.
Perhaps it would have been best if the government stayed out of student loans, requiring people to get more costly private loans. If the tuitions didn't rise so much as a result, people may actually end up better off even paying the higher interest rates. This might also enforce more competition because people would think much more carefully about the tuition costs for each potential college.
I don't think the private sector was ever prepared to fully finance education. There's no way for a bank to know if a student will graduate from college or if or when that person will be able to pay them back. So there was a big government market for student loans.
For graduates who pay off their student loans, they have a credit history that can serve as a foundation for them getting a mortgage, an auto loan, credit cards or a business loan. So good things come out of student loan debt too.
There are plenty of people who have reasonably handled credit cards. Major purchases these days are not made in cash anyway, they are mostly made in plastic.
If you have a business and people on the payroll, the last thing they want to hear is I can't pay you this week, so they swipe the visa. I get that, but borrowing from Peter to pay Paul every week is kind of a dumb way to run the world.
A lot of geniuses out here.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
