bilby
Fair dinkum thinkum
- Joined
- Mar 6, 2007
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- Strong Atheist
When I went to university in the UK in the late 1980s, my entire tuition cost, plus a living expenses allowance paid as a cash lump sum three times a year, were granted to any student who was accepted for undergraduate enrolment by a recognised university or polytechnic. The grant was sufficient that few students needed to find any kind of paid work during term time, and could dedicate themselves entirely to theirIt WAS better back in the days when states funded most of the cost of attending a state university.Sounds good to me. It would probably be even better not to bother with loans at all, and just use general revenue to pay for education from the get-go; But at least your strategic bankruptcy proposal is a massive improvement on the current system.Two words: Strategic bankruptcy.It would have been such a better idea to simply make student loan debt dischargeable through bankruptcy. The borrowers get a negative mark on their credit record for making a bad decision, the lenders get a loss for making a bad decision, and future bad decisions are discouraged all around. Instead we have a transference of debt to the government and neither the borrowers nor the lenders suffer any consequences for their decisions.
Not suffering consequences is progressive dogma though.
So while everyone is concentrating on whether or not people are ghouls to the borrowers, the fact is under this arrangement you are either choosing to be a ghoul to borrowers or choosing to be a ghoul to non-borrowers. The question isn't if you are going to be a ghoul, it is who you are going to be a ghoul towards.
If student loans were dischargeable they would cease to exist because most people would complete their education and then declare bankruptcy. People who take student loans almost certainly exit college with negative net worth.
If states stepped up and committed or re-committed to covering at least 65% of the cost of university as they did in the early 70’s that would help tremendously.
As student loans became more available, universities began to raise costs—and states backed away from supporting universities as conservatism rose.
This cost was met by the local education authority in which the student obtained their entry qualifications; So the ratepayers of the city of Leeds paid the University of Portsmouth, and (via myself as intermediary) the publicans and breweries of the southern Hampshire region, for the privilege of hosting my presence.
There was no requirement to ever repay this money; It was expected that the benefits to society of educating its members would easily outweigh these costs.
It was a complicated and long-standing system with medieval roots; But it worked.
Until the Thatcherites decided they were smart enough to replace a system that had evolved over centuries, with one thought up over a couple of boozy lunch meetings by crazy ideologues, who had an irrational fear that people might learn stuff without the intention of using their knowledge to get filthy rich.
I can understand why it was essential to prevent people from trying to improve the human condition, understand the world in which we live, and generally work towards a happier and healthier society, when their selfishly doing this might lead to lower corporate profits; But it still seems...
Wait.
What??
I think we might have been robbed.