Oh, I agree. In fact, in tech, where I work, it is still possible to get in without a college degree but you have to do a lot of finangling and have a record of work to convince people you know what you’re doing.
While I have a Master’s degree, I don’t have an engineering or science degree. My education is all in the Humanities and I’m a doctoral dropout. I managed to get into tech in the 90s on the basis of skills, hobby, and general nerdness. That’s still possible if company policies don’t block you. That isn’t true for all industries though. Google, infamously, used to refuse to interview people (except for people they chased after) without a college degree.
I remember hearing that a degree in the UK was worth 400K GBP in lifetime earnings (this was 15-20 years ago when I went to uni).
Two things about that - if it’s a differentiator, maybe, but not when govt policy is to massively increase the amount of people going into higher education - all that does is force people into higher degrees as a differentiator. You can’t even be a chartered engineer in the UK without a Masters now, despite the many, many talented engineers who don’t have degrees.
And if it’s really worth that much more money, then surely the increase in tax revenue will cover the cost of the education?
I just missed the introduction of fees in the UK, and got out without debt because of ludicrously generous parents, but we’re still paying my wife’s student loans in the US back 15 years after she graduated…
Not sure how this relates to my post. I was certainly not poo-pooing the plight of today’s students; I just don’t think Siegel’s (context-less) tale has much value for today…other than adding a line to his C.V. and reminding us all that he’s still way cool. I mean, the guy walked away from, what – maybe a couple-three grand in loans? Seems like he’s complaining about having to walk 1/2 mile to school, downhill both ways.
While there’s some truth in your remark, I think it accounts for only a small share of today’s insane college inflation. (I work with a couple of unis in Michigan; none of their admins are taking treasure baths. Competition for top students is fierce; faculty wages keep climbing; facilities and plant costs constantly increase; state and federal contributions constantly fall; accreditation bodies want to make every department their bitch; demand oustripping supply; etc.)
TL; DR: Defaulting on your student loan is easy and fun. In order to nullify the negative consequences, merely totally upend the financial, education, taxation, and employment systems. It’s as simple as that.
If it was unclear: when you excuse the predations of lenders as the fault of the borrower for accepting the loan, you sound like you’ve been victimized in a context where you feel the need to excuse your victimizer.
The only way that could be “foul” is if you regard victims as somehow inherently foul, or regard the suggestion that you are a victim as foul.
So either my meaning was not well conveyed, or you’re wrong.
Great then, we’re on the same page now: when you excuse the predations of lenders as the fault of the borrower for accepting the loan, you sound like you’ve been victimized in a context where you feel the need to excuse your victimizer.
To elaborate, by presuming that one can “not play” or “not take out a loan,” you are technically correct (this is exactly what the lenders will tell you), but functionally irrelevant. You may as well tell people that the solution is prayer or unicorn farts. In the context of reality, people often see no choice but to take these loans. In that context, defaulting on them is occasionally a reasonable reaction - one is not morally obligated to play along with a corrupt system. Quite the opposite, in fact - one can stop doing what it wants you to do the moment it stops being useful to you to do what it wants you to do.
Yes. Which begs the question of why the New York Times chose to publish his writing, rather than a piece from one of dozens of equally articulate young people, who could speak in the first person about today’s loan burdens.
Siegel is – in and of himself – irrelevant. The editors’ decision to use his story as an exemplar of what a defaulting student looks like… is very damned relevant.
It is conniving clickbait disguised as journalism. They should take the heat for this piece, more than the reliably idiotic Siegel. He’s a garden-variety leech; they are very well remunerated courtiers. They do us more damage over the long haul.
Protip: when discussing what are ultimately political differences, refrain from comparing those you argue against to abusers or abuse victims. Assault, sexual or otherwise, isn’t very much like taking out a student loan, sorry.
But the language of apologetics has a regrettably limited vocabulary regardless of the context of the horrific power dynamic: “It’s not the (person who did the bad thing)'s fault, it’s the fault of (the person who the bad thing was done to)” applies to a lot of different “bad things.” It’s a recurrent theme in American political language. It’s the Protestant Ethic.
In this case, it applies to you blaming the people who take out rapacious loans rather than the people who create, market, and profit from these rapacious loans.
You mean the ridiculous idea that somehow these companies forced people into taking loans? Not really. That argument is about as well thought out as as your lovely molestation metaphor.
If you imagine that everyone who takes out a rapacious loan is simply lazy your moralizing is thick with ignorance. In reality, many people actually can’t be bothered exploring other options, or can’t see other options. A cursory examination of poverty shows this. https://youtu.be/u6_scuce5TA , for instance. Spare time and energy are resources that are inequally distributed.
Educate yourself, and then get back to me.
Unless you can’t be bothered exploring other options, and you just want to take someone else’s argument and call it justified.
