Posts Made By: James Brown

Originally Posted by James Lacey

Many people think it is fair to provide student debt relief.

1. The cost of school is already out of reach, and worries about student debt relief causing further tuition inflation seem to be overstated.
2. The current debt relief will not affect encouraging studies in fields without jobs. It's not like people who get debt forgiven now will suddenly decide to get more debt in many unlucrative studies.
3. The days of putting yourself through school are over. Everyone will need help, whether it's student loans, a trust fund, or wealthy parents.
4. When you cancel student debt, it's transformative, allows those people to do things that would otherwise be impossible, and helps boost the economy.
5. Even trade school is expensive, and a significant percentage of former students with debt went to trade school.

Hi James,

These are surely reasonable points from the current student's perspective.   But is the proposed student debt relief a one time thing?   

I seriously doubt it, no matter what Biden might say.  Look at the graph below.  Student loan debt has increased dramatically over the past decade.   What in these relief programs is going to slow new debt growth?  Huge sums of ready student loan money have driven the cost of tuition up.   That is a predictable supply and demand calculation.   

If the federal government wants to pass laws providing for college cost reimbursement, then Congress ought to work on those laws.  Hopefully there are some rules in any proposed laws, like means testing and perhaps mandatory counseling regarding the marketability of the degree.  

On the other hand, if the forgiveness plan "mark II" ultimately passes Constitutional muster, the next generation of students will expect, actually they will demand, the same treatment.  An endless charade of "loans" followed by forgiveness from this point forward is offensive to everyone who appreciates some basic level of integrity, and I hardly think the effect on tuition inflation will be negligible.     

I am not opposed to some relief for the tiny fraction of students who were actually defrauded by bogus universities.   But a blanket $10k or $20k forgiveness program fixes nothing and will ultimately make the student loan problem worse.    

https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics

Jim

Originally Posted by James Lacey

Some would argue that the largest cause of the higher cost of education is the cuts in public funding. One of the reasons my education at a premier public university was so cheap back in the early 80s is that it was still heavily subsidized by taxpayer dollars. Some would say there is little difference between that and student debt relief today. Of course, college enrollment is at an all-time high, and the cost of running a college or university has sky-rocketed, but the end of state funding is significant too.

I'd send your brief back for revisions James.   Arguing in the third person dilutes your point!    (just kiddin, sorta, 3rd person is a big no in my world, at least for the next 5 months and 25 days!)

Nit picking aside, I get your point, and if the state and local legislatures subsidize education, then that is a better use of public funds than others, in my opinion. Also planned and managed subsidies are a far better route to affordable education than vague "loan and forgive" programs that are entirely unpredictable.  The universities are not blameless.  Time to plug my alma matter, which has been led by an inspired president for over a decade.  How many premier schools can say this:

"Tuition will remain frozen at Purdue’s West Lafayette campus for the 11th and 12th consecutive years, keeping base undergraduate tuition and fees for Indiana residents under $10,000 per year. The total cost of attending Purdue continues to be less today than in 2012, with tuition held flat and lower room and board rates. By 2024-25, 10 graduating classes will have never experienced a tuition increase during their time at Purdue.

Meanwhile, more students than ever are seeking a Purdue degree: More than 72,600 applied for undergraduate admission for fall 2023, and more employers than ever are seeking out Purdue graduates. In fall 2022, total enrollment reached a record 50,884 and marked the university’s eighth straight record high."

https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2023/Q2/trustees-sign-off-on-2024-budget-11th-and-12th-years-of-frozen-tuition-for-purdue-west-lafayette.html#:~:text=Tuition%20will%20remain%20frozen%20at,residents%20under%20%2410%2C000%20per%20year.

Purdue was run by Mitch Daniels during most of this period.  Daniels is a Republican former state governor and the kind of R we all need.   Sadly he chose not to run for president maybe 10 years ago, when his wife said "no way" to the DC nonsense.   

Jim

Originally Posted by James Brown

I'd send your brief back for revisions James.   Arguing in the third person dilutes your point!    (just kiddin, sorta, 3rd person is a big no in my world, at least for the next 5 months and 25 days!)

Nit picking aside, I get your point, and if the state and local legislatures subsidize education, then that is a better use of public funds than others, in my opinion. Also planned and managed subsidies are a far better route to affordable education than vague "loan and forgive" programs that are entirely unpredictable.  The universities are not blameless.  Time to plug my alma matter, which has been led by an inspired president for over a decade.  How many premier schools can say this:

"Tuition will remain frozen at Purdue’s West Lafayette campus for the 11th and 12th consecutive years, keeping base undergraduate tuition and fees for Indiana residents under $10,000 per year. The total cost of attending Purdue continues to be less today than in 2012, with tuition held flat and lower room and board rates. By 2024-25, 10 graduating classes will have never experienced a tuition increase during their time at Purdue.

Meanwhile, more students than ever are seeking a Purdue degree: More than 72,600 applied for undergraduate admission for fall 2023, and more employers than ever are seeking out Purdue graduates. In fall 2022, total enrollment reached a record 50,884 and marked the university’s eighth straight record high."

https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2023/Q2/trustees-sign-off-on-2024-budget-11th-and-12th-years-of-frozen-tuition-for-purdue-west-lafayette.html#:~:text=Tuition%20will%20remain%20frozen%20at,residents%20under%20%2410%2C000%20per%20year.

Purdue was run by Mitch Daniels during most of this period.  Daniels is a Republican former state governor and the kind of R we all need.   Sadly he chose not to run for president maybe 10 years ago, when his wife said "no way" to the DC nonsense.   

Jim

I have a man crush on Mitch Daniels, not afraid to say it.  As of 2020 and still going to be true 5 years later:

Most of the attention centers on that all-important number, 9,992. Not only is that the dollar amount an in-state student will pay Purdue for tuition and fees next year; it is also the amount such a student paid Purdue when Daniels became university president, in 2013. The university has also reduced the price of food services and textbooks. An undergraduate degree from Purdue, in other words, is less expensive today than it was when Daniels arrived.

Only when seen against the inflationary helix of American higher education can the singularity of this achievement be fully appreciated. The college-affordability crisis has become a staple of academic chin pulls, news stories, congressional hearings, and popular books written in tones of alarm and commiseration. From 2007 to 2017, the average annual cost of a degree at a four-year public university like Purdue rose from about $15,000 to more than $19,000—a jump of 28 percent after taking inflation into account. Only health care rivals higher education as an economic sector so consumed by irrational inefficiencies and runaway prices.

Read: Why is college in America so expensive?

The consequences are plain. Students and their parents have acquired debt totaling more than $1.5 trillion, more than all credit-card debt held in the U.S., and sufficiently large, according to the Federal Reserve, to be a drag on the economy. Roughly 70 percent of college students take out loans to finance their education. The average undergraduate leaves school more than $25,000 in debt.

At Purdue, by contrast, nearly 60 percent of undergrads leave school without any debt at all.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/04/mitch-daniels-purdue/606772/

Originally Posted by James Lacey

I don't always argue in the 3rd person, but when he does, I do.

Excellent post!

I know that ya'll want to talk climate change, but seriously, no love for Purdue and the cost/affordability measures the president and board of trustees have accomplished there?  (This thread did start out on the student loan issue after all!)  I totally get it, the Purdue experience is not contentious, and thus not fun for our playground.  Still, I want one more word.  Purdue's 13 year tuition freeze while delivering top-shelf education services is one of literally thousands of examples of problem solving through competence and will power.  What we all need in governance is more competence and will power and less divisive rhetoric.   

Jim

Originally Posted by James Lacey

The Earth has experienced 5 mass extinctions and 4 of them were triggered in part by a major disruption in the carbon cycle. Most scientists realize we are currently living in the 6th.

Was #5 the K/T asteroid event?   I don't doubt that we are living in the 6th, but I'd guess that maybe it started 10,000 years ago? - a mere eye blink in time?   I've read that humans were instrumental in the mega-fauna extinctions in the Americas.   (So was dramatic climate change after the ice ages.)   You've recommended books on these topics before, after I mentioned "1491" but I have not followed up yet.   

Been reading fiction recently.   I'm halfway through "Klara and the Sun" by Kazuo Ishiguro, which is exquisite.   Jim

Originally Posted by Richard Davis

Tbe Michigan Meathead wrote this:   " did your reading comprehension pick up the word "how" in the sentence that you bolded ?"

Well let me explain to you since you truly are as dumb as they come.

First let me ask you if you read the article?  

I know you didn't because had you read it, you would understand that there wasn't anywhere in that article that explained the causes of the warming.

So there was no explanation indicating that the warming is man caused.

Therefore we need to then go back to Marissa's statement, so that I can educate you about the context of the word "How" that Marissa used in his sentence.

He stated this:  I doubt it will mean anything to Richie, but this gives some idea of how the planet is warming.

The context of the words "of how" in the sentence above in which Marissa used them, was not to indicate the causes of the warming, because nowhere in his linked article did it discuss the causes, it simply stated that there were some days of warming.  

Here's a clue for you and a way to understand grammar and context of grammar.

Simply replace the 2 words "of how" with "that" and perhaps then you will get it.

I'll do it for you:  "I doubt it will mean anything to Richie, but this gives some idea that the planet is warming".

Maybe you were the one who left his cocaine at the White House over the weekend?  

Wow, that's a lot of words for some semantic niggling!

I'm curious - we all seem to agree that the planet is warming.   Are you sufficiently well versed in the research to discuss the causes?  I don't mean to imply that I am.    

Originally Posted by Rod Kaufman

The way I see it, the Purdue experience, as noble and as righteous as it is, is unfortunately an outlier and one that was or perhaps still is potentially available to only a tiny fraction of the population. While it might serve as a role model, it has not, unfortunately, been inculcated into the educational system in the USA. Therefore, other means of relief need to be considered. You don't like the Biden approach and I don't like the GOP approach which I've already covered in another thread. I suspect the student population favors the former over the latter. There's not much left for a middle ground here, now is there?

Well, I certainly hope the bolded part is wrong.   We have so many problems that can not be fixed without hard work and compromise.   I get it that compromise is not in favor in Washington, and not in favor among the vocal and influential political bases.   That has to change before progress on a lot of issues can be made.   

Originally Posted by Richard Davis

I know that all the leftists here for awhile were angry that I didn't post photos of myself... well here you go.

These are the types of things I build. This is MY use of Zebrawood in Audiophile Loudspeakers, which I am now marketing.  

I decided to make removeable wood grilles just for a unique style.  

Nice!  Thanks for posting.  Jim

Originally Posted by Richard Davis

BTW, since you seem to be dying to see a photo of myself.  

Here is the only shot you will get because I just took it 5 seconds ago.   

I no longer have my white Goatee.  Shaved it a couple of weeks back.  


LOL!!