The 2020 Presidential Election Primary Thread

[Scott R Nelson]

Seems like they are all pretty much around $10k. I guess my point stands.

Back in the olden days when it was all Boomers going to college, it cost less than $2000 for tuition and books for my complete bachelor degree at the U of U. My parents helped with some of it, but I was a married student for the last two years working part time during the school year and full time in the summers. Nobody went into debt for any of it.

I was fearing that Social Security might fail before I could start collecting, but I made it past that point. I paid into it, so I'm taking my cut. Blame the politicians for spending it instead of investing it or whatever. If it does fail one of these days, I'll still be okay. But I've met a lot of people who will be hurting financially if it fails.

[Uncle Ted]

Back in the olden days when it was all Boomers going to college, it cost less than $2000 for tuition and books for my complete bachelor degree at the U of U. My parents helped with some of it, but I was a married student for the last two years working part time during the school year and full time in the summers. Nobody went into debt for any of it.

I was fearing that Social Security might fail before I could start collecting, but I made it past that point. I paid into it, so I'm taking my cut. Blame the politicians for spending it instead of investing it or whatever. If it does fail one of these days, I'll still be okay. But I've met a lot of people who will be hurting financially if it fails.

If social security fails then that would just prove that we need yet more social programs, right? Let me recommend the following book...



https://www.amazon.com/Why-Socialism.../dp/1521531218

Such great reviews!

[Northwestcoug]

Seems like they are all pretty much around $10k. I guess my point stands.

Oops, I read your post wrong. I read it as Texas tuition was lower than 10K.

Our daughter’s U of O degree ended up costing ~90K. She had a scholarship and a part-time job that helped. Still, without our help she could have ended up with a loan approaching 50K. There’s money and help out there, but I don’t think 50K undergrad debt is way out there anymore.

[Uncle Ted]

Oops, I read your post wrong. I read it as Texas tuition was lower than 10K.

Our daughter’s U of O degree ended up costing ~90K. She had a scholarship and a part-time job that helped. Still, without our help she could have ended up with a loan approaching 50K. There’s money and help out there, but I don’t think 50K undergrad debt is way out there anymore.

$50K!?! I hope she got a degree in engineering or welding.

[Eddie]

Is it really, though? Do we have any hard data for this?

I don't know about hard data - and I'll say that I'm glad I ended up where I am as far as careers are concerned. I've been very blessed with the path I ended upon.

But I definitely made career choices based on what school would cost. I have no idea if my grades or testing would've allowed me to be accepted into another field, so I guess I can't say it was entirely driven by concern about cost. But the truth is that the cost of education weighed heavily in my decision.

[Paperback Writer]

It may be that I have more than a middling understand of economics and finance, but I fail to understand how anyone can rack up over $50k in college debt while getting a four year degree. Someone working part time can easily pay living expenses and instate tuition at most schools is under $10k/year (at least in Texas it’s around there). Add in the opportunity to work full time in the summer and you can easily pay for books, fees and even save a bit for the emergency expense.

Now, if someone decided to go an even more cheap route, community colleges are incredibly cheap and once you have an associates you can transfer to a four year school and knock out a bachelors by paying around $20k in total for tuition. $20k isn’t crippling student loan debt.

It seems that ore often than not the crippling student debt is more the result of poor choices made by the individual than it is a product of the system.

If someone wants to go to private school and pay $40k per year then sure, that can add up quick, but an easy solution is to not go that route unless you will end up in a position to pay it off.

Maybe high schools should have a crash course on college, tuition, and what it means to make adult level decisions once you are an adult.

Here's my experience with 3 kids attending a Texas public university. If you want to go the public university route and your kids are intelligent and good students they hopefully will get accepted to U. Texas or Texas A&M. Costs of those schools are around $20K per year. If they study CS/Engineering, college counselors will recommend that they do not work part time while taking a full Engineering course load. And that is good advice because there is a high probability that they won't remain in the Engineering College very long while they are working and failing their classes. The Community College option is not viable either, at least for Engineering. Few transfer students are accepted into those programs and the GPA expectation is very high (3.5+ for most programs). Even then, they will likely have to take many first and second year engineering courses because those programs tend to be lock step. In summary, $50K in debt is not unheard of and not a result of "poor choices". It's reality.

Oops, I read your post wrong. I read it as Texas tuition was lower than 10K.

Our daughter’s U of O degree ended up costing ~90K. She had a scholarship and a part-time job that helped. Still, without our help she could have ended up with a loan approaching 50K. There’s money and help out there, but I don’t think 50K undergrad debt is way out there anymore.

My kid's experiences are similar.

$50K!?! I hope she got a degree in engineering or welding.

That's the silver lining - CS/Engineering pays. The other silver lining is that my kids are not going into debt for their school. Thanks to 529 plans, we saved early and often and also have dual incomes to help them out.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Here's my experience with 3 kids attending a Texas public university. If you want to go the public university route and your kids are intelligent and good students they hopefully will get accepted to U. Texas or Texas A&M. Costs of those schools are around $20K per year. If they study CS/Engineering, college counselors will recommend that they do not work part time while taking a full Engineering course load. And that is good advice because there is a high probability that they won't remain in the Engineering College very long while they are working and failing their classes. The Community College option is not viable either, at least for Engineering. Few transfer students are accepted into those programs and the GPA expectation is very high (3.5+ for most programs). Even then, they will likely have to take many first and second year engineering courses because those programs tend to be lock step. In summary, $50K in debt is not unheard of and not a result of "poor choices". It's reality.


My kid's experiences are similar.


That's the silver lining - CS/Engineering pays. The other silver lining is that my kids are not going into debt for their school. Thanks to 529 plans, we saved early and often and also have dual incomes to help them out.

You know, there are other ways to get an engineering degree. You act like that is the only possible career path.

[BlueK]

I found this to be an interesting take from a "normal" non-Trumpian Republican. I dabble in Libertarianism, but my other political side is to be a traditional free-market, Constitutional, small government, pro-civil liberties, socially moderate Republican. Most of those values to me seem not welcome in today's GOP anymore. I'm not trying to say that to be provocative, but I think the reality is Trump is really none of those things and is actually hostile to most of them in some way. The trend in the GOP has been going that way for a while and predates Trump for sure. But he's sure taken it and run with it.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/24/opini...rro/index.html

[Moliere]

Here's my experience with 3 kids attending a Texas public university. If you want to go the public university route and your kids are intelligent and good students they hopefully will get accepted to U. Texas or Texas A&M. Costs of those schools are around $20K per year. If they study CS/Engineering, college counselors will recommend that they do not work part time while taking a full Engineering course load. And that is good advice because there is a high probability that they won't remain in the Engineering College very long while they are working and failing their classes. The Community College option is not viable either, at least for Engineering. Few transfer students are accepted into those programs and the GPA expectation is very high (3.5+ for most programs). Even then, they will likely have to take many first and second year engineering courses because those programs tend to be lock step. In summary, $50K in debt is not unheard of and not a result of "poor choices". It's reality.


My kid's experiences are similar.


That's the silver lining - CS/Engineering pays. The other silver lining is that my kids are not going into debt for their school. Thanks to 529 plans, we saved early and often and also have dual incomes to help them out.

Graduating from aTm with an engineering degree is a great example of a time when even over $50k in debt isn’t unmanageable because your future earnings are much higher than if you were an English or history major. A good law school is another similar example.

[Mormon Red Death]

Student loan debt is a pretty complex problem that I don't think a blanket forgiveness program solves. But the primary burden should fall upon university administrators and faculty who have been feasting on financially illiterate students with access to ungodly amounts of credit. For instance, Elizabeth Warren was pulling down half-mil at Harvard Law.

There are some interim steps that could/should be taken prior to just wiping away billions in student debt. A couple things come to mind. Providing exemptions to discharging student loan debt in bankruptcy. Requiring student loan repayment statistics to be considered for universities in proposals for federal research funding. Requiring public universities to provide some level of performance guarantee on federal loans. Setting an eligibility ceiling on university F/A rates. There are a ton of things that can be done to staunch the bleeding, but it may be too complicated a discussion in the age of Trump and AOC.

Or how about the gigantic pile of untaxed endowment money universities are sitting on? You want to relieve debt? Take a one time 50% endowment tax on all universities. That should help

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[Mormon Red Death]

My daughter is looking at a hefty tuition for med school (a bragging post to come later!). It is more than twice as much as the 'expensive' school I was looking at 20 years ago. If she also gets accepted to her in-state school, it will only be ~12,000/year cheaper at 42K a year. Back in my day, U of U tuition was ~7K (I think). Tuition has skyrocketed, and incomes have not.

No question she will be able to pay her loans back. But tuition costs have real-life consequences. She has written off family medicine and peds before day 1 of med school, simply because it will be that much harder to pay off her loans. Yes, there are loan pay-back programs that would help her if she didn't do a specialty. But she's already 'looking forward' to an almost inevitable salary decrease for most docs in the future, which is just another hassle she doesn't want to worry about to try to make a general practice work.

It's always fun when docs complain about being paid.

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[Mormon Red Death]

Do you know what happens when the government forgives students loans? They keep doing it—three times in four years:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/stu...-off-1.4539426

Post secondary education is cheaper in Canada. For comparisons sake, medical school (for Canadian residents) can be as little as $10,000 cdn (or under) a year or as much as $20,000 cdn a year. I have two sons graduating this spring, one with a bachelors degree in bio-medical engineering, the other with a college diploma in Multimedia Design.

Both of them have less than $7000 in school debt because neither have had to take out a loan in the past year. They are both older (returned missionaries), married, living on their own and thus have received grants that paid off their full tuition and fees. They also both work part-time while going to school and in the summers between school years and prior to getting married installed alarm systems for Vivint in Western Canada.

It's a great situation for them, but regardless of how cheap eduction is many students still default on their loans, especially when there is no real penalty for not paying off the loan.

EDIT: One of my two daughter-laws will graduate this spring with a degree in psychology. Her parents are originally from Guatemala. She is a returned missionary and has lived on her own since she was 18. If rent wasn't so high, she would've made money off the grants she has received. My other daughter in-law graduated last year with a college diploma in lab technologies. She has no debt to pay off, and works at the local hospital mostly doing phlebotomy.

10,000 Canadian.. that's like $1000 American

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[YOhio]

Biden is in. Not a bad kickoff video. Almost sounds like a pre-Trump Republican.

[Uncle Ted]

Do you know what happens when the government forgives students loans? They keep doing it—three times in four years:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/stu...-off-1.4539426

Post secondary education is cheaper in Canada. For comparisons sake, medical school (for Canadian residents) can be as little as $10,000 cdn (or under) a year or as much as $20,000 cdn a year. I have two sons graduating this spring, one with a bachelors degree in bio-medical engineering, the other with a college diploma in Multimedia Design.

Both of them have less than $7000 in school debt because neither have had to take out a loan in the past year. They are both older (returned missionaries), married, living on their own and thus have received grants that paid off their full tuition and fees. They also both work part-time while going to school and in the summers between school years and prior to getting married installed alarm systems for Vivint in Western Canada.

It's a great situation for them, but regardless of how cheap eduction is many students still default on their loans, especially when there is no real penalty for not paying off the loan.

EDIT: One of my two daughter-laws will graduate this spring with a degree in psychology. Her parents are originally from Guatemala. She is a returned missionary and has lived on her own since she was 18. If rent wasn't so high, she would've made money off the grants she has received. My other daughter in-law graduated last year with a college diploma in lab technologies. She has no debt to pay off, and works at the local hospital mostly doing phlebotomy.

God bless those Canadians.... there must be a lot of very generous people there to pay all those taxes to fund those social programs.

‘Maxed out’: 48% of Canadians on brink of insolvency, survey says

The number of Canadians who are $200 or less away from financial insolvency every month has climbed to 48 per cent, up from 46 per cent in the previous quarter, in a sign of deteriorating financial stability for many people in the country, according to a new poll.


The survey, conducted by Ipsos for insolvency firm MNP Ltd. and released Monday, also found that 35 per cent of Canadians say an interest rate increase would move them towards bankruptcy, while 54 per cent said they worry about their ability to repay debts.


“Canadians appear to be maxed out with no real plan for paying back what they have borrowed,” said MNP President Grant Bazian in a release. “This raises many alarming questions about how and if consumer debt will be repaid, particularly if conditions deteriorate or interest rates rise.”


The Bank of Canada raised its benchmark lending rate three times last year, taking it to 1.75 per cent in October, but has since held rates steady. The central bank will announce its next interest rate decision Wednesday.

Despite the uncertainty in the economy, many Canadians continue to add to their debt loads. The MNP survey found that about four in 10 respondents said they won’t be able to cover all living and family expenses in the next 12 months without taking on more debt.


“This isn’t simply a matter of people living beyond their means. The reality is that too many households simply cannot make ends meet, however hard they try,” Bazian said.
[...]

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/maxed-ou...?ref=hvper.com

[Uncle Ted]

Biden is in. Not a bad kickoff video. Almost sounds like a pre-Trump Republican.

Yeah, yeah, yeah... we want to hear about the free health care and student loan forgiveness.