SCOTUS

[All-American]

By the way, the NYT The Daily podcast for Friday was on the affirmative action ruling and it was very good - balanced, thorough, and informative. Highly recommended. I hope the do one on the student loan decision on Monday.

Among other things, I learned that the "they need a leg up to compensate for historical wrongs" is a justification for affirmative action that was rejected by the court years ago. The accepted justification for AA was that it led to diversity on campuses and that factor was so important that it trumped discrimination issues. The majority ruling dissected the problems with that justification. Also, 20 years ago in conjunction with a prior ruling, Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that AA should is a temporary things and should be abandoned in 25 years.

Affirmative action proponents have been talking out of both sides of their mouth for years now. Just as well we stop the whole thing.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Your daughter with a medical school degree will likely be in the top 1% of earners in the USA. She’ll be able to pay off her loans and still enjoy a hellish, high stress an upper middle class lifestyle.

FIFY

[Northwestcoug]

Yowza, that's a lot of money. Can she do something like be a doctor in a rural area for some number of years and "earn" forgiveness?

Cue the smallest violin for doctors bitching about their jobs...

Yes, like Jeff said there are programs that will pay off debt if you work in underserved areas. But this usually just covers subsidized loans through the government. For her, that is around half her loan total. In addition, if someone like her were to work 10 years to get their subsidized loans paid off, she would be finished at a minimum age of 43. Again, not the end of the world, but at that age you are hoping to have already planted some roots in a practice. I know some who have stayed on in rural areas because they loved the environment, but a lot don't.

But yeah, it does help for the right person and the right location.

Your daughter with a medical school degree will likely be in the top 1% of earners in the USA. She’ll be able to pay off her loans and still enjoy an upper middle class lifestyle.

Can you still hear the violin?

On day 1 after her residency/fellowship, she will likely make more than my base salary right now. So yeah, she will be knocking on that 1%. But also on day one she'll need to start saving for her retirement at an accelerated rate just to catch up on the 5-10 years of not paying into a IRA, paying disability insurance, and paying off what will likely be approaching 500K in loans. Practically that means living somewhat austerely for the next few years. Once that loan is paid off then she can hope to buy a shack in the Bay Area (her choice I know).

This would be so much easier with socialized medicine. Cap the tuition and cap physician's salaries so most of them can only achieve the top 2%. I know she wouldn't hesitate taking that trade.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Cool for doctors, but not everyone should or needs to be a doctor. Shouldn't we dislike those programs for giving handouts or rescuing people from debt?

Oh boy. Everything is a whatabout game.

One of these is a corporate incentive and has no burden whatsoever on taxpayers. The other is an incentive that is necessary to provide healthcare to inner city and rural areas that otherwise would not be able to have basic healthcare.

[Jeff Lebowski]

It used to be legal when the program was established.
The histrionics over this, and over wanting to address this get a bit cumbersome. Disagree with it sure, but let's not act like this is scandalous level shit without any merit.

Let's have a less educated society or keep it as the domain of the upper class.

It is indeed without any merit. This is nothing more than buying votes via a massive handout out to young college graduates, most of whom vote for democrats. Not to mention it drives up inflation and makes our student loan program worse, not better. Everything about it reeks.

[Non Sequitur]

Your daughter with a medical school degree will likely be in the top 1% of earners in the USA. She’ll be able to pay off her loans and still enjoy a hellish, high stress lifestyle.

FIFY

Boo, effing hoo. If you don't want a stressful lifestyle, then be a landscaper. I paid off all my student loans, and it never occurred to me that I deserved to be forgiven for commitments I made at the time I accepted those loans, so I don't have a tone of empathy for people wanting to weasel out of their commitments. That said, the high cost of higher education is one of the biggest scams ever. Why are we charging kids hundreds of thousands of dollars to move to locations so they can be close to buildings that they must attend at appointed times to listen to in-person lectures from professors whose jobs rely on the fact that they also live close to the same buildings? How inefficient is that? Given the available technology, it's insane. The real problem with student loans is why are they so high when they don't need to be.

[Bo Diddley]

Boo, effing hoo. If you don't want a stressful lifestyle, then be a landscaper. I paid off all my student loans, and it never occurred to me that I deserved to be forgiven for commitments I made at the time I accepted those loans. That said, the high cost of higher education is one of the biggest scams ever. Why are we charging kids hundreds of thousands of dollars to move to locations so they can be close to buildings that they must attend at appointed times to listen to in-person lectures from professors whose jobs rely on the fact that they also live close to the same buildings? How inefficient is that? Given the available technology, it's insane. The real problem with student loans is why are they so high when they don't need to be.

Bingo.

[Northwestcoug]

FIFY

My daughter just had her first 80 hour week, which included a 24 hour call where she got half an hour sleep. She feels that OB/GYN is a calling, but that week had her questioning her fervor. I told her she has to at least complete her intern year before switching to pathology.

[frank ryan]

It is indeed without any merit. This is nothing more than buying votes via a massive handout out to young college graduates, most of whom vote for democrats. Not to mention it drives up inflation and makes our student loan program worse, not better. Everything about it reeks.

This doesn't just hit young college students. Might as well bring back debtors' prisons (I'm know that's hyperbolic but that's the vibe I'm getting from you). I'm not sure you have interest in considering any other perspectives or viewpoints regarding this stuff, so I'll step out. Carry on with the outrage.

[Jeff Lebowski]

This doesn't just hit young college students. Might as well bring back debtors' prisons (I'm know that's hyperbolic but that's the vibe I'm getting from you). I'm not sure you have interest in considering any other perspectives or viewpoints regarding this stuff, so I'll step out. Carry on with the outrage.

Darn it, Frank. You got me. My real goal is to bring back debtors prisons.

[Jeff Lebowski]

My daughter just had her first 80 hour week, which included a 24 hour call where she got half an hour sleep. She feels that OB/GYN is a calling, but that week had her questioning her fervor. I told her she has to at least complete her intern year before switching to pathology.

I am thinking of making an appointment with my son so I can spend 15 minutes with him. I am not kidding either.

[Pelado]

Darn it, Frank. You got me. My real goal is to bring back debtors prisons.

An executive order we could all get behind.

[Clark Addison]

…Why are we charging kids hundreds of thousands of dollars to move to locations so they can be close to buildings that they must attend at appointed times to listen to in-person lectures from professors whose jobs rely on the fact that they also live close to the same buildings? How inefficient is that?

I am no expert, but I have spent the last few months going on several college tours and orientations. One message that I heard several times at different schools was that one of the biggest learnings of Covid was the value of in-person learning. The virtual classes had nowhere near the value of traditional classes.

Maybe they are saying this out of self-interest but it makes sense to me.

[Moliere]

This might shock people, but you can get a four year degree for less than $50k in tuition, fees and books in Texas. It’s actually quite easy to do. Just lay in state tuition. You can even go much cheaper if you do an associates at a local community college before spending the last two years at a university.

Having gone through this three times with kids, college is marketed as an “experience” more than a way to get an education. Kids want to go to a different place or state, and that costs a lot of money. If kids took the approach of college being an investment rather than an experience then that would solve a number of problems.

[Non Sequitur]

I am no expert, but I have spent the last few months going on several college tours and orientations. One message that I heard several times at different schools was that one of the biggest learnings of Covid was the value of in-person learning. The virtual classes had nowhere near the value of traditional classes.

Maybe they are saying this out of self-interest but it makes sense to me.

I have no doubts there are certain benefits to in-person learning, especially when it comes to post-graduate work, but there are tremendous inefficiencies with the current system. When I went to BYU the internet did not exist. Personal computers were just becoming a thing, but they were mostly just word processors. When I went to BYU you studied in the Harold B. Lee library, because that's where the books were. When you wanted to perform a search, you went to the card catalog and then hunted for books. Back then the model of being in person at a physical location made sense. It was a logistical necessity. That's not the case anymore. It's the reason companies are moving away from provisioning physical servers on their own premises. It's inefficient and not a logistical necessity. It's the reason physical shopping malls are dying. It's inefficient and not a logistical necessity, and it makes more sense to shop online. Higher education will eventually follow suit. It's inevitable.