Sen Elizabeth Warren introduces bill to eliminate college loan debt

TIDE-HSV

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My wife ran into a former student who is now a lawyer. He said their law firm looks for graduates with degrees in biology and English. We both thought was an unusual combination.


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Yeah. The English, I understand. The biology, I absolutely don't...
 

DzynKingRTR

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TIDE-HSV

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If I could turn the clock back 40+ years and do it over again, I'd major in A&S Economics, minor in English, then go to law school.

Interesting editorial cartoon today by Scott Stantis:

https://tribunecontentagency.com/article/stantis-scott-color-editorial-cartoon-20190724edstc-a-tif/
My career path was partially accidental, although it looks planned out, in retrospect - CBA, major in accounting, law school then masters of law in taxation from NYU. I was already an accountant when I began college. We did have guys at NYU who had come from an A&S background. Those of us who'd studied accounting felt sorry for them, because they really struggled with the accounting concepts you must understand to master tax law...
 

BamaInCummingGA

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If I had it to do over again I would have become a certified welder or electrician.
Of course, part of the problem with tech schools is that jobs are greatly diminishing unless you're a robot or computer.
 

crimsonaudio

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If I had it to do over again I would have become a certified welder or electrician.
Of course, part of the problem with tech schools is that jobs are greatly diminishing unless you're a robot or computer.
Yah, but it's gonna be a long time before a robot comes out to repair a leak or get your HVAC running again.
 

rgw

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The big problem with technician type jobs is that it always is a "young man's game" at the front lines. You ideal save up some money working under an older guy (and mastering the craft) then become the contractor with some young guys working for you. I'm kinda seeing the signs that cycle is being broken by the sheer cost of doing it on your own so a lot of the opportunities in HVAC and other "skilled laborer jobs" are going to be corporate or franchise oriented. Not good for a longterm career with any sort of growth in agency and easing on an older body.

The Mike Rowe argument is all good and well but there are a lot of blindspots. Regarding sustainability at the individual level, moving to where the skilled labor type is needed throughout your career potentially, and general financial/economic realities.
 

TIDE-HSV

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The big problem with technician type jobs is that it always is a "young man's game" at the front lines. You ideal save up some money working under an older guy (and mastering the craft) then become the contractor with some young guys working for you. I'm kinda seeing the signs that cycle is being broken by the sheer cost of doing it on your own so a lot of the opportunities in HVAC and other "skilled laborer jobs" are going to be corporate or franchise oriented. Not good for a longterm career with any sort of growth in agency and easing on an older body.

The Mike Rowe argument is all good and well but there are a lot of blindspots. Regarding sustainability at the individual level, moving to where the skilled labor type is needed throughout your career potentially, and general financial/economic realities.
Trades vary a great deal in physical demands. And there are other than just the consumer-oriented like plumbing, electrical and HVAC...
 

uafanataum

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Advanced education beyond high school is a voluntary endeavor. You choose that, it is not forcibly thrust on you. There is absolutely no reason this expense should be paid by anyone else other than the person that chooses to go into it and the notion that this should be paid for by the taxpayers is outrageous. One political party knows that a bailout for this will never become law but nonetheless use it to pander for votes from the millennials. They have no shame.
It could be viewed as an investment by taxpayers. If our country did not have a sufficient number of skilled workers then companies may start looking elsewhere. As a matter of fact some companies have already had to do that.
 

rgw

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It ain't just skilled labor. I can't find software developers worth damn yet everyone in my generation was seemingly going into computer science or an information systems related field.

Of course my problem is we just flat-out cannot pay market rate for the skills we need and this ain't the wake of a major recession so the public sector benefits aren't easing the private v. public pay gap. Hell, I can't get anyone at the university to understand that their "good benefits" are only good for people in jobs where quality employer subsidized healthcare doesn't exist. Sure the facilities guys are getting something there but a software dev is getting good benefits from nearly any employer they speak to in the job search process. Furthermore, private sector has things like serious performance bonuses/raises and stock options or revenue sharing. The pension is the one leg up the university has but pensions have a really poor perception amongst people in my generation despite the fact that Alabama's is quite secure.

Can't really fix this problem without paying public sector tech folks more but can't really do that when we consistently undermine our tax revenue base by giving cuts to the rich.
 

Go Bama

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One of the guys in my praise band is a 37 year old electrician with a high school education and he’s debt free. He has a wife, a daughter, a nice home With a shop on two acres, a nice truck, a Camry for his wife, and a vasectomy. All he has to pay for is retirement.
 

TIDE-HSV

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There's a lot of brute memorization in undergrad biology...
You have to have a good memory for just about any field. In terms of memorization, I think it would be more important in the medical fields. The most important factor is the ability to think through complicated situations in a logical fashion. That ability is not as common as you might think. I was a member of the last class at UA which didn't have to take the bar exam. Instead, the winnowing was don in law school. Two thirds of my entering class flunked out...
 

Bodhisattva

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Here's my perspective as a Ph.D-holding college professor in a large public university system...

Why are students going to mediocre schools paying ridiculous tuition/room/board and getting <$40k / year jobs? THIS is the major problem. Unneeded degrees in esoteric stupid subjects that pay nothing and are less than worthless OR high-cost tuition at less than desirable colleges (or even worse, a combo of both).

Couple of ways to mitigate this:

1) Go to a low-cost undergrad: My school's flat-rate tuition is $2000 for 15+ hours. Do that 9X (about what it would take to graduate 4.5 years) and your out of pocket expense is about $20k for tuition. In this market I could make $20K over 4.5 years sitting on my couch and eating Doritos all day.

and/or

2) Actually achieve something in HS so your school is paid for.

The fact that people WHO WERE NOT FORCED TO TAKE OUT A LOAN OTHER THAN BY THEIR OWN DOING want their loan paid back by me is so offensive to my senses that I'm going to stop typing now.
Good post.

Government policymakers are terrible with the concept of incentives. They seem to completely ignore that pillar of sound economics, and thus produce backwards results. Handing out loans (directly or indirectly) encourages people to pursue careers that aren't feasible. Or, just as often it seems, to pursue degrees that have no follow-on careers at all.

Now, if someone wants to major in underwater basket weaving, more power to him. I just don't want to pay for it in any shape or form.

The argument that government intervention is needed to allow poor kids to go to college is dubious. If you're smart you can get scholarships. If you are a minority there's all sorts of free money available. Beyond that, start at a community college where it is super-cheap and/or work your way through school. You should go to college if you have the intelligence and drive to do so, not because you receive misguided incentives from the government to do so. We can see the damage the government plan has caused in massive debt and years of lost productivity. (And is the federal government's involvement here even justified constitutionally? Is this an enumerated power?)

I haven't followed the political platforms that closely yet. I'm still looking for a presidential candidate to advocate for turning off the spigot of stupidity that is federal involvement in student loans? Which candidate(s) have set aside the urge to pander and actually show some applied intelligence on this subject? TIA.
 

Bodhisattva

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My wife ran into a former student who is now a lawyer. He said their law firm looks for graduates with degrees in biology and English. We both thought was an unusual combination.


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When I was in law school and shortly thereafter I met a few lawyers with biology (and other science) backgrounds. They were doing intellectual property work.
 

TIDE-HSV

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When I was in law school and shortly thereafter I met a few lawyers with biology (and other science) backgrounds. They were doing intellectual property work.
Yep, IP law, particularly patent, is the huge exception to the usual backgrounds. Around here, for obvious reasons, there are a lot with engineering backgrounds...
 

rgw

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I have to imagine someone with a hard skill computing software/hardware background could be a very valuable legal resource since the field is wholly reliant on the existence of intellectual property rights.


I considered the law school path at one time but just decided to stay technical.
 

NationalTitles18

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You have to have a good memory for just about any field. In terms of memorization, I think it would be more important in the medical fields. The most important factor is the ability to think through complicated situations in a logical fashion. That ability is not as common as you might think. I was a member of the last class at UA which didn't have to take the bar exam. Instead, the winnowing was don in law school. Two thirds of my entering class flunked out...
It is, but intuition is underappreciated yet at times over-praised. If the intuition is usually good and open to new information it is one of the best assets to have. If the intuition is more a prejudged closed-minded view it can be detrimental to good medicine. Just a random thought.
 

TIDE-HSV

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I have to imagine someone with a hard skill computing software/hardware background could be a very valuable legal resource since the field is wholly reliant on the existence of intellectual property rights.


I considered the law school path at one time but just decided to stay technical.
There are a lot of the sort around here, in fact. However, outside the IP field, attorneys in general and tax attorneys in particular tend to be early adopters and ahead of the general public so far as computer literacy is concerned...
 

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