• BassaForte@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    My dad:

    “Student loans shouldn’t be forgiven, they should be paid back! Oh, you still owe $10k in student loans? Well I hope yours is forgiven”

    • Uhrbaan@feddit.ch
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      9 months ago

      America really needs a better schooling system… Here in Switzerland the ETH, (which is rated 10th place of the best schools in the world I think) is only 800.- (about 1-2 week’s worth of salary) per semester, which is nothing compared to what private schools in the US demand, whilst still having quality education. So I believe the biggest issue is the quality difference between state-owned schools and private schools, as private school should be allowed to charge whatever they want, but the state has the responsability to provide quality education to everyone for a decent price.

      • jaschen@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        Nah, they are too busy commercializing their football teams by taking advantage of their students(players) to care about that shit.

    • Smokeydope@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Student loans should be payed back. Hate to say it but yeah you signed on the dotted line and took the banks money knowing full well you would have to pay it back plus interest down the line. Thats just how signing a contract with the bank and taking their money to get what you want now but cant afford, works

      Instead, student loans and hell even credit cards, should be illegal to give to anyone below 21. It should be illegal to even put a 17-18 year old in the position of pressuring them into taking tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt right out of high school, when their brains aren’t even fully developed, and for what is most likely a useless degree they will never apply in the real world. We can’t expect kids to not be dumbasses that make poor financial decisions, so we should hold off those decisions until they can think their options through. Im willing to bet theres a lot of college graduates working minimum wage jobs paying off huge debts right now who wish they could have invested the money better, and probably would have if they weren’t pressured into college as a fucking idiot teenager.

      • DashboTreeFrog@discuss.online
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        9 months ago

        probably would have if they weren’t pressured into college as a fucking idiot teenager.

        I think this is the key problem here. True, you should honor contracts, and there are many other systemic issues around the costs of higher education, but the way student loans work are really messed up and a lot of adults don’t understand what’s in those agreements, much less some “fucking idiot teenager.” But the pressure has been so high for the past several decades about college degrees being necessary, people just think to get the degree first and figure things out later. Heck, I remember sitting through a presentation as a teenager about how going into debt for university is normal.

        The student loan system (and higher education in general) needs to be fixed, but while people try to fix the broken system, why not try to make right the people who were hurt by that system?

        • Smokeydope@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          You made excellent points and after thinking on it again it does make sense. Under my own logic it wouldn’t really be fair to hold kids who don’t know better to a contract they didn’t really understand while pressured through a predatory system and probably should have had legal representation like an attorney present with them before signing.

          Thank you for helping me re-evaluate my ideas on the issue.

          • blandfordforever@lemm.ee
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            9 months ago

            You had it right the first time. People with student loan debt have nobody to blame but themselves. There are very good community college systems that are quite inexpensive. I went to community college and a state university while working the entire time. I graduated with a loan balance of only $10k. Half of the other kids were stupid, lazy communications majors who just fucked off the whole time and now they’re complaining that life isn’t fair. They did this to themselves.

        • PsychedSy@sh.itjust.works
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          9 months ago

          I’m fhr getting rid of the loan bankruptcy protection.

          A friend worked every day for over a year to put his kids through uni. I guess he should’ve just bought a sports car? Homie gave up his mid life crisis years for his girls. A system that punishes people for making the right choice seems fucky.

          • psycho_driver@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            I can tell your friend wasn’t American. Here you might work every day for a year just to not be homeless. You sure as shit aren’t putting your kids through college that way unless you have a job that pays an order of magnitude higher than the mean salary of the nation.

            • PsychedSy@sh.itjust.works
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              9 months ago

              I mean our base pay is good and we have solid overtime policies. I guess I may be mis-using the term uni, but I’m not sure where they were going for classes.

      • kttnpunk@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        As a American who was forced into choosing between military and college at 18 and wasn’t ready for either, I’m inclined to agree -except college should be free and we should tax the rich to pay for that & more. Those who are poor shouldn’t be burdened for trying to change that.

      • porcariasagrada@slrpnk.net
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        9 months ago

        yo! fuck the credit based economic system. the bane of our current late stage capitalistic dystopia.

      • Malfeasant@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        should be illegal to give to anyone below 21.

        When you raise the legal age to do a thing, you just delay the stupid decisions that come with a lack of experience. It doesn’t accomplish anything by itself.