The Looming U.S. Giant - Page 8

On December 13 2012 16:39 kafkaesque wrote:
I'm not too familiar with student loans in the US, on what amount to they cap out?

10k? 20k? 50k? And what's the average debt you're in once you finished?

I know it's capped at 10k € in Germany and it's usually not a problem to pay back, since you have five years after graduating until the re-payment has to begin.

On December 14 2012 00:06 micronesia wrote:
You can get pretty much unlimited student loans, unlike almost any other type of loan which requires credit worthiness, collateral, etc. The reason why is because there's no way for a college student to become credit worthy by 18, but we still need people getting college degrees, and don't want a caste system. It's kind of a no-in situation, though.

edit: By the way, I agree that you can save a lot of money by attending a local community college but there are two drawbacks:

1) Less prestige meaning harder to get a good job down the road
2) You miss that freshman year on campus experience which can be an important part of a person's life

One of my friends by the way got his undergrad pretty much for free on academic merit, then financed a masters from Carnegie Mellon U entirely on loans, and owes a LOT of money now... he immediately got a six figure job upon graduating and won't have any trouble paying it back.... this is the system we have right now.

On December 14 2012 00:22 FabledIntegral wrote:


1) is irrelevant with guaranteed transfer programs to a 4-year university.
2) is a terrible argument. They don't get an awesome experience...? I've never been to Hawaii.... should that be covered?? If you can't afford it, you can't afford it. The purpose of covering people's education isn't so they can have a good time, it's so they can get a quality education.

On December 14 2012 01:01 Stratos_speAr wrote:


It isn't irrelevant because any guaranteed transfers are transfers to places that give you little to no competitive edge aside from actually having the degree (and in some cases, employers will think, "Why did he get a degree from such an easy school when so many other applicants went to better schools?")

On December 14 2012 00:27 micronesia wrote:

I was pointing out drawbacks, not arguments for why you should have to pay for me to go to college, or anything like that. No need to be so argumentative. They are both indeed drawbacks.

Transferring to a school is not as good as being there, as it messes up the progression of your program in many cases, and gives you less seniority for lots of other things they offer such as, for example, being a resident assistant, which can save you lots of money.

Furthermore you miss out on the experience I referred to in #2. Again, you shouldn't be calling it an 'argument' as it was just an advantage of going to a four year 'away' school off the bat, not an argument.

On December 14 2012 05:59 FabledIntegral wrote:


What? Some of the best public schools in the nation are guaranteed transfer schools (TAG - Transfer Admission Guaranteed).

Just in California, UCSD (ranked 8th in the nation), UCD (also tied for 8th in the nation), UCSB (10th in the nation), UCI (12th in the nation), UCSC (32nd in the nation), UCR (46th in the nation) all participate.

Univeristy of Virginia, ranked 3rd in the nation, has TAG.
Georgia Institute of Technology, ranked 7th in the nation, has TAG.
University of Wisconsin - Madison, ranked 10th in the nation, has TAG.

Before I manually check anymore for your blatant disregard for fact checking, that means out of the top 12 univerisities in the nation, 7 of them have guaranteed transfer programs. Please don't tell me you're limited. And that's not to mention beyond the most prestigious univeristies, the general state schools all have them as well. Not to mention these are only the schools with guanteed transfer programs - nothing is preventing you from applying to other premier schools like UC Berekely (#1) or UCLA (#2) that have ~26-29% transfer acceptance rates.




Drawbacks in the sense that you "don''t get a fun experience" is wholly irrelevant to this topic. Just like I'm not bringing up it's a drawback I didn't ever go to Cancun for Spring Break and get the "experience" during college. The discussion is revolving around opportunities and alternatives available to students/prospective students and their ability to finance education.

Transferring to a school has negligible disadvantages, I can't even believe you brought up RA as an example, which makes up an insanely minute proportion of the population that it becomes negligble. Also, most schools give transfer students seniority over existing students for class selection. Beyond that, there really aren't almost any distinguishable differences I'm aware of.

On December 14 2012 05:59 FabledIntegral wrote:



Drawbacks in the sense that you "don''t get a fun experience" is wholly irrelevant to this topic. Just like I'm not bringing up it's a drawback I didn't ever go to Cancun for Spring Break and get the "experience" during college. The discussion is revolving around opportunities and alternatives available to students/prospective students and their ability to finance education.

Transferring to a school has negligible disadvantages, I can't even believe you brought up RA as an example, which makes up an insanely minute proportion of the population that it becomes negligble. Also, most schools give transfer students seniority over existing students for class selection. Beyond that, there really aren't almost any distinguishable differences I'm aware of.

On December 14 2012 06:22 chenchen wrote:


All of the schools you named with "TAG" are complete crap except maybe UVA in terms of employment opportunity, rigorous curriculum, and graduate admissions opportunity compared to schools that are actually good.

Berkeley and UCLA are decent, but admissions for community college transfers is far from guaranteed and transfer students start at such awful positions that it is almost impossible though not entirely unlikely to match the academic rigour of the schedules of students admitted directly from high school.

While name dropping these "top universities," you fail to consider the fact that top private universities and liberal arts colleges in the US are much more competitive, much more selective, oftentimes much more rigorous despite accusations of grade inflation, and provide much more opportunities in post-undergrad life. UCSD and UCD aren't "top 12," . . .they wouldn't even be top 50 if you consider "good" private universities like the eight ivies, MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Chicago, Duke, Northwestern, Hopkins, WashU, Hopkins, Vanderbilt, Rice, Georgetown, NYU, Carnegie Mellon, and the hordes of good liberal arts colleges that provide excellent undergrad education . . . .

So no, going to community college is not a very good path into good universities.
I guess it can be a decent path into decent universities, but good universities draw undergrads overwhelmingly exclusively from high schools.

On December 14 2012 07:40 micronesia wrote:
Why do you care so much that it is irrelevant, if you truly believe it is? That sounds like a job for moderation... it's not like I was trying to discredit your arguments with that.

Regardless, I don't find it irrelevant. Going away to a good school has many advantages over staying with your parents and going to a local community college, regardless of whether or not you transfer. These advantages are only available to the wealthy if we don't allow significant borrowing of money. I'm not saying opportunities are going to be equal in every respect for rich vs poor people, just that we shouldn't gloss over some of these differences specifically with regard to going away to a good school when the topic of conversation involves entitlement to this type of college experience.

Whether or not you got to live in a freshman dorm and do freshman things is determined by if you go away to college or not. Whether or not you got the spring break experience at Cancun is not determined by whether you went to college or not, so I have no idea why you chose this example.

You consider the disadvantages negligible. I think most people in this discussion will disagree with you on this. I don't think it's wrong if someone chooses to take your suggested route if they aren't wealthy, but I also don't think it's wrong for some to be motivated to take the route many Americans do by going away to college immediately, even though it required borrowing.

What's wrong with bringing up being an RA as an example? It's an example of another disadvantage of taking the transfer route instead of the good route. The number of students it affects is far from negligible. Obviously if that was the only drawback to transferring it wouldn't be significant, but it was just an example. I also haven't heard of this before about how transfers get priority for registration; they usually get the same priority as other people with the same standing. However, if your major requires a 5 course sequence and you only plan to spend junior and senior year on campus, you are going to be a super senior for half a semester. Often there are ways to work around this, but it is much less troublesome to simply start at the same school you will finish at if you can.... then you can have your whole course career planned from the getgo if you want.

On December 14 2012 10:13 WeeKeong wrote:
no one talked about the bubble, everyone is just discussing about college.

So here it goes,

The housing bubble burst because of this.
1. A single person could purchase many houses on loan.
2. The person only purchases the house because he feels that the price will go up in the future (Speculation) Whether the person would pay the loan back is COMPLETELY dependent on the price of houses in the future.
3. These loans were packaged and traded many times over with much deceit and immorality.

On the other hand
1. Most people only pay for one college education.
2. Whether these people pay their debts back does not depend on the price of college in the future.
3. These loans are not being packaged into time bombs based on whether the people can pay it back.

Since the demand is not based on speculation, there is no college education bubble. Every person who goes to college feels that this education has a higher value than the student loan he will incur in the future. Whether it is true, it is debatable, but the fact is that the demand is genuine.

Regardless, even though there is no bubble, there is still a cause for concern. The reason why people believe that there is a bubble is probably because the demand and price is increasing.

Why is the demand increasing?
Ask your president who wants every single person to go to college and incur a huge debt.

Why is the price increasing?
When the government makes it easier to get larger student loans, it would make sense for colleges to increase their prices as well. This would cause the public who feels that college should be accessible for everyone to appeal to the government to increase student loans. (eg. Occupy Wallstreet) This would once again lead to colleges increasing their prices in order to increase profits. This cycle continues.

If governments do not provide student loans, colleges would not dream of setting such high prices as they would not get many students and hence their profit would be low. College would be much cheaper, but much more inaccessible. This would be fine.... If the public feels that college is not for everyone. However, most of the public supports the president when he says that every single person should go to college.

On December 14 2012 10:19 FabledIntegral wrote:
The point is that a system exists to allow those who do not come from a background of wealth to get a quality education without incurring unreasonable amounts of debt. The reason I'm saying the "freshman experience" is irrelevant because the only argument that comes from that is that the wealthy get to have a more enjoyable experience than the poor. If the only financially sound route for the poor is to go through community college, then they "miss out" because they don't have the money. This is true, but irrelevant to the point that a system still exists in place for them to propel themselves upward socioeconomically.

At the same time, I'm not sure how attending a 4-year off the bat makes you more motivated than someone attending community college then transfers with TAG. Like, at all.

RA is a terrible example because you're saying "oh if you transfer, you are ineligible for a specific job on campus that has 80 openings." The number of RAs to none RAs is such a disproportionate number that it rounds to zero. It's little different than a hypothetical situation where "if you transfer, you are ineligible to work at the food cafeteria on campus." I mean, of course the RA position is better than a cafeteria position with better overall compensation when factoring rent, it's such an insanely negligible factor in terms of over relevance to "ability to graduate with a degree without outrageous debt." It's not like being an RA is something that any nontransfer student can to do mitigate their debt as there is such limited positions. 99.99% of nontransfer students also do not become RAs.

On December 14 2012 11:14 micronesia wrote:

The 'experience' is not just for entertainment; it is a learning experience. Not all learning occurs in classes. Keep in mind I'm not arguing there is an inherent entitlement... just that you are missing out.

I think you underestimate how many people become RA's if you are saying 99.99% of nontransfer students do not become RA's. There is an RA or two for every hallway in every residence hall.

Even so, it's not sufficient to stand alone... it's just one example of many. I still do think that transferring is a viable option for many students, by the way.... I'm not trying to say it's bad advice.

On December 15 2012 06:26 FabledIntegral wrote:


The supposed "learning experience" about being a freshman still doesn't really hold weight to the original subject though. Which is ability to go through college without incurring extremely large amounts of debt due to the system.

You're right - 99.99% was a terrible number to use. I should have used something like 98-99%.

On December 15 2012 08:31 micronesia wrote:

Yea you are right; it is more about motivators for warning to go to college than ability to. Cursorily related, but not pivotal by any means.

On December 15 2012 10:58 FabledIntegral wrote:


Well exactly, motivators for wanting to go. But wants are not needs, as mentioned. Part of the "I would have liked to go to Cancun for Spring Break" was mentioned because that's a want, and it is "part of the college experience" you mentioned.