We’ve recently been thinking about wealth transfers resulting from student loans insured or directly issued by the U.S. government. On initial examination, the situation appears to be one where an implicit transfer of wealth from taxpayers to higher education students takes place.
The transfer results from loans being issued to students at rates below a proper risk-adjusted market interest rate. However, on examining the market more closely, we see that the reality is that taxpayers and students are both being used in a much larger transfer of wealth. The ultimate beneficiary in this government-led cartel is the higher education sector.
A Brief Overview Of Student Lending
In the United States most of the cost of higher education is covered by students and their families, at least ostensibly. Much of the cost is financed through borrowing, and the share of this portion has been rising, particularly since the start of the 2007 recession. As we can see in charts 1 and 2 below, the share of students who borrow and the average balance have both been climbing steadily over the course of the past decade at rates much higher than inflation.
Chart 3 below gives us a simple view of the composition of student debt currently outstanding. The vast majority of these loans have been either insured by or issued directly by the federal government. “Federal” student loans outstanding had topped $1 trillion, 83% of all student debt, and another $200 billion in “private” student loans is also outstanding—these loans are not subsidized by the government. Readers interested in a more detailed overview are referred to here and here.
Federally-insured or issued loans use pre-packaged terms that cover everything from the interest rate charged (historically about 5-7%) to the manner which lenders are required to go about collecting payments. From 1965 to 2010, private lenders made student loans using federal terms in exchange for government insurance covering student defaults and a guaranteed interest rate on the loans.
This program was called Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) and operated in conjunction with SLMA, the GSE better known as Sallie Mae. Sallie Mae began to privatize in 1997 and the process was completed in 2004. The federal government also ran a “public option” loan program called Federal Direct that covered small and high-loss schools not serviced by private-sector lenders.
As a horse-trade to get votes from hard-core leftists in Congress not satisfied by ObamaCare, the “Affordable” Care Act legislation was amended to end FFELP and establish Federal Direct as a monopoly for federally-insured loans. Currently, about 45% of the outstanding federal loans are left over from FFELP with the remainder issued and held by the Federal government.
The FFELP loans will have largely been securitized, with the possible exception of loans which Sallie Mae or Citigroup have in term warehouses. Since no new FFELP loans are being issued, the share of Federal Direct loans is steadily rising.
The private-label student loan market only makes up about 15-20% of currently outstanding student debt, but the “Wild West” qualities of this market make it very interesting. The loans are priced based on credit, so in this case we can actually see a market estimate of the proper risk pricing for these types of loans.
What we see is that these loans are largely priced like personal loans, with rates ranging from 5 – 25%. Many large and reputable banks do have private loan programs, but the high interest rates draws in all sorts of players. One example was the “non-profit” EduCap, which focused on making loans to students from upper-income families that didn’t qualify for financial aid.
The company bumped into unwanted attention when Tom Daschle was criticized for hitching a ride to Bahrain on the non-profit’s corporate jet. The incident was viewed by commentators as ending his chance of being named Secretary of Health by the Obama Administration.
A brief overview of the terms and attributes of the loans will also be helpful. As mentioned, Federal student loans have historically carried 5-6% rates with repayment terms of 20-30 years. The student isn’t required to repay while in school and can “defer” the loan for up to two years due to lack of income.
The actual expected life of the loans is about 10 years. Federal loans for undergraduate students do not include a credit check, but loans for parents and graduate-level students do have a minimal credit screen. Private student loans will have repayment terms from 10-20 years, but have a shorter expected life 5-7 years due to prepayments.
The most important feature of student loans is shared by both types – non-dischargeability in bankruptcy. Thus, even for privately offered loans, bankruptcy laws give strong lender protections. This gives the loan a premium value above a standard yield calculation. The exceptions are that, in the case of Federal loans, loans can be forgiven after working in education, public safety or the military for a specified period.
Also, with income-based repayments, the percentage of income used for student loan payments is capped at 10%. In addition, if you stay poor for 25 years, the loans are forgiven. It can almost be taken for granted, but for the record these programs have been expanded and their terms made more generous under the Obama Administration.
Wealth Transfer Implications Of Interest Subsidies
As mentioned above, on its face, the subsidy appears to be a wealth transfer from taxpayers to students. The amount of the transfer would be the shortfall in interest received from government loans compared to what would be received at market interest rates. Based on what we’ve seen, the spread appears to be in the neighborhood of 8-12%.
At the current level of $1 trillion in outstanding Federal loans, the transfer is approximately $80-120 billion annually. As we can see in Chart 4 below, the outstanding level of Federal student debt has climbed aggressively over the past 10 years so the annual transfer has as well.
Clearly, the subsidization of interest rates means there is a transfer to someone taking place. However, to determine the ultimate beneficiary we must ask ourselves whether these loans would be made at all if borrowers were forced to pay the market rate. This writer believes they would not.
Without sufficient financing available, demand would fall. As a result, tuitions would need to fall or the total number of students able to attend would fall; most likely a combination of the two would occur. Whatever the case, the annual income of the higher education sector would fall.
Chart 5 below gives some indicative ranges on how the $1.2 trillion of currently outstanding student debt would be financed without government support available. Specifically, we are interested in how the 83% currently funded by the government would be handled. It seems reasonable that when faced with higher interest rates students and families would divert cash from other sources to minimize debt incurred.
We make the guess that 10-20% of the debt outstanding would have been covered using cash. Presumably some shift to higher-interest private loans would take place, but as discussed above we believe it is unlikely the entire balance would move. So, depending on one’s assumptions, 30-60% of the $1.2 trillion of student debt outstanding would not be funded.
Thus, without subsidization, $360-720 billion of the currently outstanding debt would never have been accrued. Given this, how should the $80-120 billion transfer related to the interest subsidy be attributed? We believe a transfer to students from taxpayers only applies to the reduction of interest on the loans that would have taken place in the absence of market distortions.
So, the transfer to students only applies to the $130-330 billion of additional borrowing from private lenders that would have taken place without subsidies. That amounts to an annual benefit of $10-40 billion, depending on assumptions about the spread and the level of private loans taken.
As we mentioned though, there are still currently outstanding $360-720 billion of student loans under the Federal loan program that we believe would not exist in a private-lending-only world. We believe the education sector is the end beneficiary of the transfer resulting from the subsidy on that portion of the loans; representing $40-110 billion annually. Thus, taxpayers are providing a lucrative transfer to higher education.
Readers will naturally ask, how can the transfer be going to the educational sector if students are paying interest to the government (even if it is an artificially low rate)? The answer to this lies in the mal-investment taking place as a result of artificially low interest rates on student loans.
Investment Boom In A Box
What we find most interesting about the student debt discussion is what it shows about the relationship between interest rates and investment booms. Like Darwin observing his finches, studying a specialized animal operating in its native environment can tell us a lot about the larger process going on.
What we find most remarkable in this case is that the investment boom is taking place in a totally abstract context. The object of all this investment is “human capital,” the increased expected income streams of millions of young Americans.
As with any other form of capital, an artificial repression of the interest rate causes an increase in the ex ante desired level of human capital. Assuming all else equal, a lower financing rate gives a larger number of people a positive NPV for the cost of higher education. But, as we should all know, all else is most definitely not equal. Two factors that are not fixed will render prior assumptions about the return on higher education to be overstated.
First and foremost, the supply of college-educated people has gone way up. Like any overbuilding of capital in a particular sector, production oversupply leads to cuts in selling prices that reduce return on investment. Secondly, it is far from clear that the education provided at many American universities provides any improvement in employability in the first place – the contrary may in fact sometimes be the case. Indeed, by definition, the marginal borrowers will be those with lower expected return on their education.
Thus, we believe the “Not Funded” portion in the chart above represents malinvestment. To the extent that the return on higher education falls short of the expectations, someone’s expected future path of consumption will have to be lower. That will happen because, for many borrowers, their income streams will not be sufficient to pay back their loans and provide the level of consumption they expected.
It is unlikely that the higher education sector will be asked to give back any of the money it has received. Thus, the nation will need to come to a political agreement allocating the loss of consumption between the borrowers and the taxpayers.
Here is where we see the big benefit received by the higher education sector. Universities have been selling human capital investment services for significantly more than they turn out to be worth ex post. The extent to which excess tuition was paid (anything above the true present value of the investment) represents an unrequited wealth transfer from the students to the education sector.
How Big Is The Higher Education Bubble?
We can begin our tally with the $1.2 trillion of student loans currently outstanding. Of course, the loans currently outstanding don’t represent the total amount of tuition that has been financed over the years. Each year billions of previously-borrowed funds are repaid.
Good numbers regarding repayment rates are hard to come by, but we assumed a straight line amortization over the course of ten years. As we can see in Chart 6 below, just looking back over the past 10 years we estimate an additional $180 – 360 billion has been transferred to higher education.
In total, a back-of-the-envelope calculation that includes current Federal loan balances plus repayments in the past ten years indicates excess investment in human capital by students of between $500 billion and $1 trillion. To the extent that the expected rate of return disappoints, a transfer from students to the higher education sector has occurred.
Thus, we believe the reduction in interest rates for loans funding overpayments (the “Not Funded” category in Charts 5 & 6) should be accrued from the taxpayer to the higher education sector. By subsidizing interest rates, the taxpayer shares some of the cost of overpayment for higher education investment. In effect, the students get a rebate from the taxpayers for part of their exorbitant tuition.
Social And Political Implications
Given the size of the wealth transfer and the fact that there is a very high concentration of borrowers among people in their 20s and early-30s, this issue is bound to have political consequences. First, there will be the allocation of losses from the loans already made. In Chart 7 below, we can see that in federal student loan delinquencies are at a disturbingly high level – over 40% of the borrowers that are actually in repayment.
Many citations of student loan delinquencies erroneously include 46% of borrowers that are either in school or the grace period – these borrowers are not required to make any payments and thus cannot be delinquent. When we exclude these borrowers we get a much higher delinquency rate. Whether to amend bankruptcy law and if so, how much of the balance should be forgiven will become a major issue.
Secondly, there will be a second group of borrowers who do not default but rather pay off their loans over the maximum amortization period. These borrowers will have the opportunity to experience diminished consumption possibilities over a long period of time. Resentment of the inability to discharge loans made for a human capital investment that didn’t pan out will create pressure to further socialize the losses.
Readers assessing the U.S. Federal fiscal situation should be sure to include the taxpayer’s exposure to losses on student loans, including insurance liabilities and directly-held loans. From a monetary policy perspective, further expansion of Federal liabilities and the difficulty of explicitly allocating losses between borrowers and taxpayers both increase the government’s incentive to allocate losses via inflation.
Who’s getting rich from this?
At the end of the day though, who ends up bearing the cost of the human capital investment bubble is not as important as who is benefiting. The real danger of the situation lies in the funding and empowerment of the intellectual elites, the intelligentsia. In any society the intelligentsia reflexively stands against the status quo in order to be relevant.
The leftward bias of the American higher education system has been widely reported and anecdotally this writer has experienced the bias first-hand. True to form, the intelligentsia aligned itself against the established social order. Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy discussed this very issue at length.
First, we must remember that nobody ever made a name in academia advocating for the status quo. According to Schumpeter, to be an academic means to be a perpetual stone thrower at whatever represents “the establishment.” He sums the sentiment up by saying:
The critical attitude, arising no less from the intellectual’s situation as an onlooker – in most cases also as an outsider – than from the fact that his main chance of asserting himself lies in his actual or potential nuisance value…
Who’s afraid of the big bad professors though? It is true that the intelligentsia is not a powerful enough group on its own to effect social change against its capitalist adversary. However, the intellectual elite can operate on a larger scale by co-opting other movements and infusing them with an anti-capitalist orientation.
Labor never craved intellectual leadership but intellectuals invaded labor politics. They had an important contribution to make: they verbalized the movement, supplied theories and slogans for it – class war is an excellent example – made it conscious of itself and in doing so changed its meaning. In solving this task from their own standpoint, they naturally radicalized it, eventually imparting a revolutionary bias to the most bourgeois trade-union practices.
An excellent case-in-point is Senator Elizabeth Warren. Until being elected to the Senate, the Senator was a professor at Harvard. She provides us with two anecdotal examples of the aforementioned issues. Professor Warren taught one class and received an annual salary of $350,000. How is that for investment-driven inflation? Secondly, we point to her campaign for Senate, which was drenched in anti-capitalist rhetoric.
Parts of her campaign-launch speech were taken almost directly from Marx. We encourage readers to read Chapter VII, Section 2 of Marx’s Capital, Volume One. In this section Marx has a hypothetical conversation with a capitalist factory owner. Basically, the derisively delivered message is “you didn’t build that.” Interestingly, President Obama then drew inspiration from Warren in his “You Didn’t Build That” speech.
Just as Schumpeter predicts, capitalist society has tried to buy-off the intelligentsia in an effort to bring a truce. The fatal flaw of this strategy is that the intelligentsia defines itself by its expansion of the higher education sector, which generates an ever growing class of anti-capitalist faculty who spread their message to an ever growing audience. As Schumpeter bluntly states,
One of the most important features of the later stages of capitalist civilization is the vigorous expansion of the educational apparatus and particularly of the facilities for higher education.
A Farewell to ARNs
The topic of student lending is of particular interest to this writer, who cut his teeth on Wall Street securitizing student loans. We must admit that we have mixed feelings about our association with the student loan industry. While in securitization this writer learned a lot and had the opportunity to work with a lot of great people. No doubt, our role was a small one, but we were still involved in a cynical and exploitative process.
Government-led cartels benefiting rent-seeking vested interests are certainly not a new thing under the sun. What makes this whole process so distasteful is the relationship between the exploiters and those being exploited. We aren’t talking about one group of industrialists getting one over on another group of industrialists by using political connections.
In this case, the group being exploited for rent are young people looking to improve their lot in life and the exploiters are the educational professionals entrusted to help their students. Indeed, those most vulnerable to the student debt scam tend to be low-income students who simultaneously have the greatest informational disadvantage and are least likely to rely on parents for funds.
We acknowledge the counter-argument that these students are legally adults and should be able to understand the implications of taking out so much debt. However, we remain unconvinced for a few reasons.
First and foremost is the tremendous social pressure placed on seniors graduating high school to attend college in order to fulfill what has become a middle-class right of passage. The reasoning behind going to college has devolved into, “well that’s just what you do after high school.” Second, there is a massive asymmetry of information and implicit relationship of trust between the student and the school.
Is it ethical for a school to say nothing when a student borrows an amount that can never realistically be paid back based on their preferred career path? We think not. Because the student has placed their trust in a school to help them achieve their life pursuits, the school cannot help but take on a trust-based advisory relationship. Much like a financial adviser, these institutions should be expected to put their clients’ well-being before their own. The practice of loading up students with debt while putting no thought into their post-graduation path is exploitation.
Finally, because of inflated return expectations for college degrees, every authority figure in a young person’s life is in agreement that they should borrow the money because “the interest rates are so low.” Thus, we believe students should be held less accountable for the student loan bubble than the system that is driving it.
The government and the higher education system have built a fine rent-generating machine, complete with a moral authority that makes the system difficult to attack. Like any government scheme to provide rent to a favored group, the people are the ones that pay the price.
The situation is made all the worse by the fact that the group benefiting the most from this arrangement is made up of enemies to global capitalism. In closing, in the event a downfall of global capitalism takes place, please accept in advance our apologies for our time spent as a pawn at the service of the educational-industrial complex.
Nobody’s perfect.
Read More: Title IX, The Education-Industrial Complex, And The Manufactured “War On Women”
“Professor Warren taught one class and received an annual salary of $350,000.”
What a joke. Women LOVE her btw
I had a professor who was total prick, he’d brag about being a prick, he didnt care, he told us he had tenure so they couldnt fire him.
And where is the joke in her salary?
Are you for real?? Can no believe that so much ignorance and stupidity could be packed in one body.
A rich, entitled, white, ivy leauge woman who lied about being of American Indian heritage in order to get a leg up at Harvard who spews marxist cant. The other democrat front runner is a of the same caliber who is riding the coat tails of her husbands past success.
A train wreck awaits.
The educational ‘elite’ always see two problems with everything—white people and capitalism.
The endless consistent drivel is tiresome. They think its about enforcing ‘caring’ amd justice, but what it really becomes is redistributing money and controlling people.
Capitalism is about reciprocity, private property and free consent. The envious hate any vestige of independent activity. This needs to stop.
How different from the USSR are we really? Increasingly, not much besides a little window dressing.
Stop being a victim, it unmans you.
It is true though, the educational elite hate both white people and capitalism and their constant hatred of both is tiresome.
Both the government and the institutions that are dependent on government funding have been hard at work transforming These United States of America into…
http://images.sodahead.com/polls/003525091/2525170011_ussa_answer_4_xlarge.jpeg http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j164/sallypina/Obama-ComradeObamaUSSA-ChangeWeCant.jpg
for decades now, and the seeds of “change” were planted in Higher Education via cultural marxism.
These psuedo-intellectual idiots will destroy this country if they get their own way as they don’t have a fucking clue how money works, or how to manage a shopping budget, much less a capitalist economy, and we all know how the Soviet Union turned out in its decadent phase.
Ultimately, the Feminist/SJW/Leftist borg are culturally, financially & socially self-destructive.
Bush = Obama = Clinton = Reagan
The term “free consent” becomes meaningless when, due to private property, asymmetries of bargaining power appear. In such a situation, the transactions that follow are anything but reciprocal.
How different are we from the USSR, you ask. Well, in the USSR, if you don’t work on terms dictated by the commissar, you get shot. In the USA, if you don’t work on terms dictated by the capitalist, you are free to starve.
“In the USA, if you don’t work on terms dictated by the capitalist, you are free to starve.”
Bad analogy.
Care to name on person who starved in the US because they couldn’t find work? Thought not.
People are free to starve if they choose. I just don’t want to be repsonsible for their bad choices.
If not, that might be because there’s still a shred of a social safety net, no thanks to fanboys of John Galt. That most people choose to let themselves be exploited rather than die given a choice does in no way disprove the exploitation.
The worker who has no other way of making a living than working for the capitalist did not choose his situation. He did not choose to bestow property rights onto the capitalist to the extent that no alternate way of supporting himself remained. Those property rights were asserted by the violent power of the state.
People are free to disobey the commissar and get shot if they choose. I just don’t want to be responsible for their bad choices.
So you admit no one has starved in the US because the couldn’t find work. How many people starved in the USSR in it’s 75 years of existance?
“If not, that might be because there’s still a shred of a social safety net”
Strawman. That “safety net” is misnomer that is older than you are. Have you looked at the US poor lately? That safety net you are alluding too should use reinforced steel cables. The mere definition of poor is a moving goal post and has become meaningless to what actuall poverty is.
“The worker who has no other way of making a living than working for the capitalist did not choose his situation.”
That is a lie. He could choose to work for himself. That is a lot of work though, is it not? You can choose not to work and become a charity case, serve the state or an NGO (or course the last two depend heavily on approriating wealth from capitalists).
“Those property rights were asserted by the violent power of the state.”
The state also uses violence to steal property. It is a fact that the existance of property rights maintains the better use of inventing and producing said assets to the benefit of all. Letting people keep the fruits of their labor is a plus and that is an irrefutible fact. History is littered with the failures of state interventions and complete mismanagment of wealth and assets. There is no accountability hence no correction to failing practices. Those “commissars” and tyranical lovers of state power simply double down on those practices as their main concern is holding power–not helping people.
If you want to continue regurgitating clapped out marxist screeds like some beta academic or an Obama fellator, feel free. Most men know better.
Post-Stalin, pretty much nobody starved in the USSR. The same cannot be said for plenty of capitalist economies, past and present. I was making an overall point about how there are different forms of coercion, in both capitalist and communist systems, you’re grasping at straws by picking at the details of an oversimplified example.
As for your bloviation on how awesome property rights are, you are moving the goalposts. None of that changes the fact that they are asserted with the violent power of the state just as much as the economic order of a communist command economy. Thus, capitalism is not based on consent. No social order ever is.
“The same cannot be said for plenty of capitalist economies, past and present.”
Care to specify those “capitliast economies” and please spare no details. Communist economies however have body counts in the 10s of millions. China, USSR, Cambodia, North Korea…. if you are really interested I can back all that up, but you are not here to learn anything..are you? You really haven’t THOUGHT out anything, but just chanting a mantra you picked up. Hope you payed for it with your own money, but we both know you didn’t
The state has a monolopy on violence. Citizens conceded it to the state when it observes and respects the rights of the invidividuals. When it doesn’t, violent revolution is justificed against the collective state. This is why the 2nd Amendment in the US Bill of Rights exist. The individual, the People, are the state. Not a small subclass of people composing of a tyranical body impoverishing the citizens to secure its own lust for power. Contiually oppressing it’s own citizens for their own “safety” as a justification.
My in-laws were party members in Moscow. I know what your advoacting and its pure bile.
Given that whites were given stolen land from indians, and stolen labour from blacks, for hundreds of years, just for being white. Is it that bad to bring some balance, when whites own 97% of the economy?
If Capitalism is about reciprocity, private property and free consent, you ready to pay the indians and blacks for stealing their land and labour? See this is the problem, people want to pretend we were all honkey doory and private rights but its not true. We never paid indians for their stolen land, we never paid blacks when we stole their property. We didn’t pay for the tulsa massacre or the red summer or the 36 blacks who were ethnically cleansed out of major cities. Where was the japanese rights in ww2?
Some right wingers want to make a fantasy history to justify the fact they inherit tons of assets from their white privilege.
People say whites are bad for stealing land…… That’s how it always was. Read a fuckin history book. Everyone did it. If you weren’t a strong enough “tribe” the next “tribe” would come kill you, fuck your women and take your land. The only reason this doesn’t happen today on a large scale is because of global alliances like NATO and the threat of nuclear bombs.
I am not disputing that this occurs alot in history. But stop trying to pretend we are a capitalist country with private property rights and free consent when it is the precise opposite, we are a communist nation.
Why do they even bother to respond? It’s obvious that true understanding is beyond certain individuals, sadly.
Don’t you have a lecture on Marx to attend, comrade?
A slut walk rally.
read history – find a major culture that did not have flaws. Ghengis Khan had no problem making things better for the Mongols – Persians had no problem, Babylon had no problem, Egypt had no problem, Congo has no problem, Angola has no problem etc
I am not denying injustice occurs in other societies. But the Mongols don’t pretend that its a free society and capitalism and egalitarian and anyone can make it if they try hard enough. They say yes we stole all the land and yes we are unfair.
I know a chicken farmer from mexico who worked a job while going to college, got his degree and is now researching biotechnology in Germany; a six figure paycheck. I am sick and tired of listening to pussy “I can’t do it” cry babies on the internet sucking their thumbs because society and their parents taught them to be whiny faggots.
And yes, I am going to provide for my kind before yours, and I need no justification for doing so. The fact white people are giving more to ne’erdowell dindu nuffins than their own children though taxes and social engineering makes me sick to my stomach. The modern age government intrusion brought on by weak cretins like you that natural selection would have wiped out a long time ago is a gross injustice and a travesty of virtue.
Incorrect.
Yes, one peoples WON the land with superior tech culture and blood and will. You’re continued use of the term “stole” is a tell. If I kick your ass, I didn’t “steal” anything. Do explain what was superior about the AmerIndian peoples that allowed what was “theirs” to be “stolen” thusly?
You hate Nature. You can’t stand what it says about the world. You’re an emotional perpetually damaged child.
Your Marxism shows in your “it just happened” bull shit. No one has ever “built that”, amirite? To include the “natives” (are you dumb enough to believe they were always here?)?
Nature is unfair. There are natural hierarchies and there is effort, ingenuity and struggle. This bit of natural fact is so painful to the deluded, marxist SJW “guilty”, who pine away as the would be “savior” of the “vicitms”. Project much?
Your days are over. It has run its course. You are the problem not the solution.
If whites are so superior why did they create marxism?
Every government program is about transfers from the population at large to specific beneficiaries, generally those in power and their constituents.
This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:
saving that quote
He speaks as if the state does nothing but shuffle around money from some people to others.
sounds about right – reality sucks when you realize it.
Hardly now. There are certain functions of state that even the most minimalistic of small-government libertarians can support. National defence and law enforcement. That’s not changed by the fact that the exercise of those functions opens up potential for cronyism.
The State has failed miserably at providing National Defence and law enforcement. Again here you find the same transfer of wealth.
Has England been successfully invaded lately? Turned into the land of Mad Max? Doesn’t look like it. Which means the state has succeeded, even if possibly at a higher cost than necessary.
Yes its a good idea to keep your standards extremely low. That way you can be easily satisfied.
I have a degree from a fancy college, and a law degree from a fancy law school.
Actual conversation that happened a few weeks ago…
[Hank is out with a ladyfriend, and two of her beta orbiters. A blue haired SJW with a nose ring walks in, reeking of smoke. She’s friends with one of the orbiters. The SJW goes on and on about her masters degree, white privilege, and how smart she is. Hank tries to be nice and sits there playing Angry Birds on his phone]
SJW: “The problem with the world is white males not recognizing their privilege. It’s disgusting.”
[The orbiters nod their head in approval, hanging on her every word. Hank looks annoyed but continues to play with his phone.]
SJW: “Just this week at my work, one of the cooks said the word “faggot.” Can you believe that? I quit my waitressing job. I shouldn’t have to hear that shit!”
Orbiter: “That’s terrible!”
Hank: [looks up from his phone] “Did he say the word directed at you? Did you report him to management?”
SJW: “No, no. But that doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t have to hear that word.”
Hank: “How are you going to eat, and put beer on the table?”
SJW: “I don’t know, probably collect welfare. I’m eligible at this point.”
Hank: “I’m not trying to be uncouth, but don’t you think collecting welfare and waitressing is a bit beneath someone with your academic credentials?”
SJW: “No. Fuck that shit. Corporations are bullshit, and they should be required to pay a living wage. There are no jobs out there, and the ones that exist don’t pay enough for someone with my level of education. I’m not going to work 70 hours a week to make someone else rich.”
Hank: “Why not start a business?”
SJW: “Because fuck consumerism, and fuck capitalism. I will not contribute to a system that marginalizes everyone except white men like you.”
Hank: “Look, I don’t meant to be a dick, but I was up this morning at like 6:30am. I was in my office by 8:30am, and then worked until about 8:30pm. I wrote a bunch of checks to my employees and our vendors. A few weeks ago I wrote the IRS a check for about $30k, which is kind of a lot of money. Do you think people like me should work hard, so people like you don’t have to? Because you don’t like the sound of a word?”
SJW: “You’re a privileged white male. You had everything handed to you.”
Hank: “Babe, I’m a high school dropout. I paid for college thanks to the military. I started my business with like $750 in the bank and I’ll be damned if…”
SJW: “You don’t recognize…”
Hank: “Don’t cut me off. I wasted half the night listening to your silly academic bullshit. Now it’s my turn to talk.”
SJW: “You’re an asshole!”
Hank: “I am an asshole. Just ask the lady sitting next to me. But if you can’t converse like an adult, then you are dismissed from this conversation.”
SJW: “You can’t talk to me like that!”
Hank: “Yes, I absolutely can talk to you like that. I don’t care how you talk to your boyfriend, but I’m not your bitch.”
SJW: “This is harassment! Fuck you! I’m outta here!”
Hank: [looks at beta orbiter, whose head is down] “Aren’t you going to console her? She needs her girlfriends right now.”
I really hope this is true lol. its gold
Hank you are the Hero of the Day!
Seems she is looking for things to be offended at to ensure she’s unemployed. Kinda like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I checked my privilege, couldn’t find it. Under the bed, in the couch and in a Blue-Haired SJW’s pie-hole. Nowhere to be found.
She wants to be a failure so she can mark herself as a victim, because being a victim is what SJWs believe is the most important thing in life and how they define themselves.
Ding dong.
Being a rich white American female with a higher education apparently confers victim status on you, too. Because someone said hello to you on the street.
Yep some guy was manspreading on the subway, it distraught her so bad she missed her college lecture.
I can barely remember a conversation from a day ago. Good job.
Any time i hear the word privilege i replace it with blessed,gifted,lucky,successful,tenacious,fortuitous,persistent! They can have their word. They know hat within the cultural frame it means no having due merit. I Won’t argue the point i just say i guess i was blessed. No social justice warrior is going to cll me out on my religious beliefs and if they do i will tell them that my beliefs are my own and that they shouldn’t push an agenda against them.
But you’re not entitled to your beliefs because they are an anachronism, throw-back, from the stone age, which was full of cave men. My modern ways are much better: bad is good, and good is bad, don’t judge others except for when they are traditional or conservative, be a homosexual if you want to cause that’s perfectly okay, have sex with as many people as you want before and after marriage. See? We can live free from your rules! /s
Yes, I see (and hear) this attitude more and more each day. People (again, mostly women) who are over educated (or dumb as a rock with no skills) complain about how they should receive a livable wage just for showing up to work. It’s a fucking joke.
I’ve worked a couple of jobs (at once), went to school full time and worked full time (same time). At no point did I think “well they should pay a livable wage”. I took the job, knew what is was paying and I lived up to my end of the bargain.
This mentality (mostly women but some young men) is ridiculous. Dumb as rocks or worthless degrees and they think they are better than the job. Life has become to easy in the U.S. and we need something to “right the ship”.
Women (usually entitled white women) think they’ve had it the worst and they should now be rewarded (just because). They are fucking delusional.
Not really related, but this is a good victory for men in college:
https://www.yahoo.com/health/court-ruling-highlights-flaws-in-college-sexual-124255316347.html
So corporations shouldn’t pay a living wage? There is no point of working if you cannot even cover the cost of living! That is fucking corporate welfare. You cannot get mad at welfare for the poor but be happy with welfare for the rich. When a corporation pays below the living wage, then SOMEONE picks up the cost of living (government ie. taxpayers). So fuck corporations downloading their business cost to taxpayers, you pay 15% we pay 45% and you want us to pay your employeees, fuck you, pay your own employees. When I ran my own business I didn’t ask the government to pay my employees, if I couldn’t afford more, I didn’t over hire.
The problem I see today (my take on it) is that people can get by on what they are making – minus the wants versus the needs. I watched my parents go through it with one car, we had one TV and not much of anything else. Americans, today, have been spoiled and many of them think that they deserve to live a certain way out of the gate (just because they are Americans). You don’t need a mobile phone or cable TV…those are luxuries (not needs) but you couldn’t convince many Americans of that fact. They think those items are needs.
Corporations aren’t innocent but they’ve been doing the same shit for years and many other people have made a living. The difference today is the attitude and mindset of the people (the entitlement, the expectation). None of them have really lived through hard times (a Great Depression) but many have an entitled attitude.
i think you hit the nail on the head. what is often considered poor in america would be a comfortable lifestyle in most of the world. an american upper-middle class lifestyle would be considered unattainable luxury. yet upper-middle class americans jump into their giant SUVs and mini coopers on their way to pay $50 to eat out and complain about how tough it is having to live paycheck to paycheck.
O yes, people shouldn’t have cell phones but employers demand you answer their calls within the hour. Horseshit
Agree. This isn’t just prevalent in the States. Some people here in Singapore expect a high salary but don’t want to put in the hard work for it.
When I was a kid, everything in our house was second-hand. My parents slogged for what they have today. Similarly, I paid my dues. Working 7 days a week whilst my peers enjoyed weekends off, staying in the office till 10pm despite starting early at 8am, did them all.
People today think my salary should be handed to them on a silver platter. Over my dead body.
Did you pay a nickel more than you had to for those employees?
Anyway even if you’re right and employers should overpay, it doesn’t just blue-haired SJW quitting her job capriciously and expecting welfare to support her in that.
Might be too much to ask but what business do you run?
You encountered a member of the overeducated but functionally stupid herd.
Great handling skill.
Can someone explain to me how waking up at 6:30am and working a 16 hour day is White Privilege™? Further, what kind of “privilege” is it to constantly be made to feel guilty and publicly shamed because of your race and to always be on your toes in case you get accused of racism? I say its the finger pointers here who are privileged.
The fact you even get the chance to work in a job that offers you 16 hours a day in and of itself a privilege. And the media shames every race.
LMFAO! Those were good ones. I bet next you’re going to tell me how the MSM shames Blacks on a regular basis for being responsible for an astoundingly disproportionate number of the crimes in America? or how the MSM gives the multitude of Black-on-White crimes as much as coverage as the dearth of White-on-Black crimes?
Funny how you are fine with blacks being bad mouthed but angry at whites being bad mouthed. Utter hypocrisy.
“Utter hypocrisy.”
Including yours.
That’s what you got from that? Btw, don’t think I didn’t notice how you “forgot” to provide an example of Blacks being bad-mouthed in the MSM, simply for being Black. I wonder why that is? It couldn’t possibly be because Blacks are pampered and cosseted in the MSM 24/7.
Tu quoque is a logical fallacy, respond to his argument or go cry in the corner about how “it isn’t fair!”.
Your’e a Liar. You provide no scientific evidence for what you say.
They are pampered – and thus apparently inferior – according to your own metric.
Why do you hate the niggas?
What is “white flight”?
Working a job is work, not a privilege. It is an earned contract by a willing employer and employee, and is not Govt handout parasitism (by apparently inferior minorities).
What is the bastard rate for your favored perpetual victim status blacks, again?
List your Marxist evidence for how whites have forced this upon these self-loathing, child and family hating blacks.
Why do you hate crackers? Working a job is a privilege, its not earned because the fact you are hired is a privilege. Its based on having the luck of being born white skinded. Most jobs are gov’t handouts, the gov’t handouts money to the businesses from big agra, industrial, manufacture, boeing, nike, gm, auto, banking and so on to the tunes of trillions a year. Whites are the number one receipeints of these white only handouts.
Whites don’t oppose welfare, they get welfare from the gov’t every time they collect a paycheck from boeing or gm or the aerospace industry where it is entirely gov’t funding or solyndra. White jobs for whites with black gov’t money.
The bastard right is far higher amongst white swedes than any other ethnic group on the planet. And it is the family hating whites crackers who push anti family pedophilia, child rape and homosexual behaviour.
I had deja vu reading this, is it a re-post?
Nice one, Hank!
brilliant. you do deserve your pseudonym.
although, you are a bit nice to her in the beginning.
by the way, why are people ashamed of privilege? be fond of the white dicks that entered your mother’s and grandmother’s and grand grandmother’s vagina.
These women are so stupid that they were honestly convinced to hate their own race. Can you believe that? She’s white, yet she hates whites, for no real reason, other than she was told to, by some burnt out hippie (or gay), who gave her some silly reasons why she should. In any other situation though, hate is very very bad, except for when it comes to her father, grand father, etc., who helped bring about her very existence.
Can you imagine being that dumb? Then again, these are the same people who murder their own children and call it freedom of choice.
You are better man than me Hank. When the conversation starts tilting to progressive mantras, I cut them off after 5 mintues. My time is more valuable than listening to the rehashed talking points.
“I paid for college thanks to the military.”
Same here. I actually work in an operational finance capacity for international companies. I don’t have to many SWJ contacts, but some of my family are union people and they walk on pins-and-needles when I come to visit.
Regaring you blue haired encouter– I have cousin who spent alot of time in academia and finally finished his thesis to get his masters. That was awhile ago, but last I head, he is living in a tar paper shack raising goats. (I’m not making that up.)
Dude, how the fuck could you stay so collected? I would have lost my shit. Have to work on that..
booze
..
Good man, Hank! If I had been there, your next drink would be on me.
Give me a sledgehammer and I’ll tear down her humanities building with my bare hands and put a chemistry/engineering building in its place, which will do more for the world in 1 day than she (and her department) will in the duration of their existence.
Better build it in Indo-china.
Those who’ve concocted this white privilege crap are academics who live in a highly insulated bubble. Now that academia has used guaranteed gov’t backed loans to inflate tuition beyond insane levels, those attending college often come from very well to do, privileged backgrounds as they’re the only ones who can afford it. Thus, I believe that’s where this “white male privilege” stems from. Insulated academics who only interact with bratty, well to do white guys at their institution.
In Maine — where I grew up — you’ve got 3 prestigious liberal art colleges in communities that are now fairly decimated. For example: Bates College in Lewiston. Lewiston is a run down mill town that’s 90% white. Poverty and drug use is through the roof as industry left decades ago. But in middle of town, you’ve got this $65K/ year institution where insanely rich kids from around U.S. descend. I went to a private high school in Lewiston and was there a week ago. I drove past Bates and observed 2 women talking on campus. I envisioned they were discussing some Black Lives Matter, Social Justice Statistic as they’re OBLIVIOUS to the 90% WHITE poverty that’s all around them off campus.
Chris Hedges described academics well. They love to speak of poor but don’t like the smell of the poor. By that he means they love to talk about the poor to back up their BS but don’t actually want to be near them physically.
Are you still friends with any of them? That can cause a lot of fall out.
I’m still dating the one chick. The orbiters tell her that I’m a “dick” and “shouldn’t talk like that.”
Yet I’m the only one getting laid.
She was in university too long. The brainwashing worked very well on her. She can not think for herself. She thinks the way she was programmed to think in school. She can not see anything outside of that little bubble she’s created through her activism. Likely she would make a terrible girlfriend, because she would always be spoiling for a fight, under the guise of “equality” in the relationship. She’s a self-saboteur. Most women are very pathetic. You could tell them their behaviors and opinions are worth less than crap, in an attempt to correct them. They’ll only become defensive, then attack you. It’s so predictable, I probably wouldnt have bothered trying to engage her (bravo that you did though). She’s too far gone, and there is no way back to reality.
It’s easier to be a victim than it is to be productive.
What SJW call white male patriarchy more and more looks like white males are the only adults in the room ,so we by default get the check.
Go into deep debt to get “credentials” for a shit job where I have to take sensitivity training? Naw.
men….avoid college, drop out of high school as soon as possible. if your dreams absolutely demand school….choose new dreams, or at least go with the minimal school route. the longer you are in the system, the more poisoned your mind will get. the whole of school barring the random teacher here or there, is liberal feminist pussy anti-man bullshit.
least of all….don’t go to school expecting to learn or with a critically thinking brain…..you’ll go insane and want to burn the world to the ground like me.
EDIT:
on top of the brainwashing you into being a girl….don’t forget the mountains of debt and please avoid bullshit degrees like music or pottery or english.
College is not worth the money any longer. Until men transform the experience back into a learning institution (and men only, keep women out) then it is a waste of time and money.
Colleges only care about the number of people in the seats and extending your education as long as possible (more customers). That’s it. They could give fuck all if you received a real education (the bar has been lowered).
They should have a short bus that takes kids to school (college) today because it’s filled with retards.
good points however learning about plato, socrates and their work teaches a lot about critical thinking and how it relates to issues today
“good points however learning about plato, socrates and their work teaches a lot about critical thinking and how it relates to issues today”
i agree….however virtually every teacher is going to throw a liberal bullshit slant on these teachings. and unless you are a philosophy major, I only took philosophy for one general education class. so I didn’t see much plato…..however the “All wise Karl Marx” was shoved into every single class.
“If you go to college, study the sciences or engineering, or if those subjects don’t interest you, finance, accounting or economics at an engineering school. You won’t have to deal with the looney left in majors that have tangible results or are money oriented.”
while those subjects may have less left bullshit…..it isnt just the classes, although never underestimate the ablitly of liberals to shoehorn liberal philosophy into every single class.
but it’s the culture, your friends, your environment, talks with teachers outside of class, general education requirements, school newspapers, extracurricular activities, hell I went to college in ultra christian mormon utah and still heard God get bashed 24/7 so if you are religious and that is important to you….you are warned school hates religion with a burning passion, etc…..so really no place is safe.
also there is very little that cannot be taught within a year when you cut out all the fluff and bullshit.
as Driver so elegantly put it:
“They could give fuck all if you received a real education (the bar has been lowered).
They should have a short bus that takes kids to school (college) today because it’s filled with retards.”
this applies to EVERY SINGLE DEGREE. sure engineering has less of it than say “gender studies”…..but still, you go to the devils house, and the devil will infect no matter how hard you try and avoid it. college is simply put, pure evil. its where your soul goes to die and if it happens to be a mans soul, it isnt a quiet death.
with the advent of the prussian school system arriving in the mid to late 1800s in America…..the prussian system is designed not to educate, but to brainwash you into being a good little obedient little solider obeying the state at all costs. k-12 usually does this, but college finishes any remaining hope. its rare that even the most critically thinking man can undo this and see this as bullshit.
it takes a real burning hatred of school to look at and see it as bullshit. all of it is bullshit. every last single fucking class you will take in your years at school, college or otherwise, is total bullshit. beyond reading, basic math, and writing….the whole lot of it soon morphs into bullshit.
with your science degrees and such….its the difference between eating one plate of feces a day versus 4 plates of feces a day…..either way, it stinks, tastes bad, and is unhealthy.
good points i see where you’re coming from, however how does one get a job without a degree because majority of employers require that piece of paper unless you have money and or resources to start your own business which is hard to acquire without a formal education
well you are not altogether wrong, there is a lot of truth to that. i suppose it depends what kind of job you want….though really, make a plan to be in school for as little as possible. tech schools and certificates are great and usually finished within a year….some things like doctors while a needed career….is ripe full of bullshit and filled with junk science like feminism and circumcision and ADHD and so on.
as far as wealth goes…..the biggest investment you can make is in learning how manage finances and not just learning how to manage them but actually doing it….you know when your friend says lets go have fun….you need to know how to say no and having the spine to do so. reading a dave ramsey book is a great start. too many embark on career path starting with college, end up with loads of debt, no guaranteed job which is a problem for nearly every degree these days, and they still spend money with as much restraint as a child.
sites like these encourage clubs to pick up girls and lots of dating…..however one of several things these sites rarely address is that this cost money. a lot of money. one isnt likely to save money while hitting the clubs several times a week. girls cost money…and the longer you keep one around the more they cost and it just compounds with interest. kids are basically that 40 year mortgage plan
not dissing the concept of family….but dating marriage and kids are financially a giant risk with no guaranteed pay off(your kids might end up hating you and your wife might abandon ship)
theres no easy answer….but i suppose my main point is school is largely poison and entering into without a plan, piling up debt, and no guaranteed job is fools deal.
and working some crappy jobs you can get at 18 with the knowledge and ability to manage your money will actually get you to millionaire status. the money is there, the math adds up….just too many people have no clue nor ability to handle money. even millionaires go broke, lottery ticket winners are usually broke inside of 5 years.
honestly had I been taught how to manage money before I hit 18, I’d have saved thousands and thousands of dollars….if I had invested that instead, there’d be a very good chance I’d be but a few years away from millionaire status. the math is there if people manage money especially during the 18-26 age range where expenses are minimal and you may even be rent free living at home.
“…how does one get a job without a degree because majority of employers require that piece of paper…”
You can thank the laws eliminating aptitude testing by employers for that. Now a lot of people have to go into deep personal debt to get the state certificate to prove they can read, write and follow instructions. Some achieve it and others who do not become public school teachers.
You are putting a head trip on yourself, man!
Learn a skill or develop a product that people want. Learn to sell. Make money.
You have no excuse nowadays with technology.
You don’t need to lease a building to sell things. You can have an online store.
You can find the right people via the Internet to network with and help you.
There are inexpensive courses taught by people who actually do what they teach…unlike a college professor.
I’ve replaced college grads in several jobs.
Find out what an employer wants and make it happen.
Well there is your problem; you can’t take a social science without social justice and socialism being shoved down your throats.
really isnt just social science….though truthfully you cant avoid it no matter what degree you get into
I will have to disagree.
If you go to college, study the sciences or engineering, or if those subjects don’t interest you, finance, accounting or economics at an engineering school. You won’t have to deal with the looney left in majors that have tangible results or are money oriented.
The problem with that is even the more useful majors like Computer Science aren’t that useful anymore because the college diploma has lessened in value in the current age. So unless you have 5+ years of field experience with plenty of references and/or taken law/medical school, you’re gonna find yourself in a pretty bad spot.
If you want to make yourself more competitive, you have to be doing co-ops or internships no matter what your major is. Some schools, like Drexel, require this and have 5 year programs as a result.
Many of my engineering friends graduated a semester late due to internships/co-ops.
We will likely see more certifications, or a move to the Japanese system where they utilize IQ tests and then train you for what job they place you into.
I am sick of chemists and physicists being thrown in with the same lot as sociologists and poly science morons. In the chemistry research lab I work in never discusses politics, we are too busy trying to build and characterize new organometallic catalysts.
You guys are right about many things, but stop shitting on the masculine academic disciplines (the hard sciences and engineering) that have given you virtually every fucking luxury you enjoy today.
Pretty much every topic you want to learn about can be self-taught for free on the internet. The only thing is that certain job require state licensure, which is another money-making scam through fees and regulations.
I think there must be some conspiracy between academia, government and media to push people into extended education to increase the income of the academics and to bring the students into bondage. That’s just my opinion though.
there is a conspiracy…look up the prussian school system, its what all western education is based on….before it arrived in America in the 1850s and eventually took over by 1900…..there was no mandatory education yet people were oddly enough smarter….another curious thing is going to college for anymore than 2 years was seen as odd and stupid….and masters degrees were about as rare as bigfoot and seen as useless wastes of time.
Thank you, Kayotic. You may truly be one of the few awake individuals in life.
appreciate the kind words.
Indeed. Say’s Law guarantees it. Supply always creates its own demand — and in this case, the supply is money.
This is also the case with Medicare and Medicaid.
Congrats for getting Say’s Law wrong. If it worked like that, the supply of university-educated postmodern literary critics would have created its own demand, and there’d be no such thing as a worthless degree, and everyone would live happily ever after.
Look it up, Bubba. Then try to explain Medicare, Medicaid, and the contemporaneous explosion of medical costs without it!
Medical costs increase mainly because healthcare is insurance-driven in the US. Providers can charge whatever they want, since the costs are passed on to an entity which is legally liable to pay.
You’re still wrong about Say’s Law. It pertains to the macroeconomy, and asserts that economy-wide overproduction is impossible. Not that a specific sector can’t be overproducing, or will always find demand for its supply.
Gave into a request I’ve been getting for awhile now to watch a Disney Channel show called Girl Meets World (because the claim was that it was so good with life lessons and such I had to see it) a continuation of the old ABC TGIF show, Boy Meets World. Maybe I came in on a bad night/episode, but in this one (Girl meets Mr. Squirrels goes to Washington) Uncle Eric Mathews is picked to run in a senatorial race against an unpopular longtime Senator (show is set in New York, so on first blush I was thinking alright someone has figured out they need to oust all these Bloomberg clones). With the aid of a young activist blogger (really?), Eric manages to soundly thrash the evil old man in a debate (surprisingly his puppet master is a young black man), because the blogger is the grown up incarnation of a young boy he mentored in the original show (really). Proving that Eric puts kids first instead of selling them out to special interests. Yay.
Then we went to the classroom, headed by dad/teacher Corey Mathews who asks his daughter and classmates what issues are meaningful to them, commiserates with them at the fact they aren’t allowed to vote yet (thank God), and reminds them that they can be a force for “good” by getting on their parents’ case about politics.
And what did the angelic, naive, little scamps come up with as important issues: feeding hungry people, providing health care, education, etc, all things that are generally pushed by progressives (red flag ahoy!), and at no time did their teacher ask them “How?” As we all know, the way these things are paid for when politics (i.e.: government) are involved is through redistribution of wealth. Odds are the evil senator was elected on the very platform, then found not only to pay for it he would have to vote for more taxation and take money from the middle class (there aren’t enough 1%-ers to pay all the bills alone, folks), he would also have to pay back the powers-that-be for their “campaign contributions.” If the show had a different answer, why not present it? Unfortunately, all I saw was another kids program designed to program the tykes into life-long, goose-stepping SJWs, hardly the “greatly moral, valuable lesson” show I was told. Unsurprisingly, many of the usual suspect website warriors are already singing the praises of this episode (good cue for me to never fall for watching it again).
How does that tie-in to this article? I think it is no accident that institutionalized education is the main beneficiary financially in student loans, or that said students come out with grand aspirations only to be awakened by reality and then become embittered SJWs, angry that the entitlements they were promised aren’t real. And how convenient that they are immediately given a villain to project it all on, capitalism (as Hank Moody posted his encounter with a blue-hair, corporations are bullshit, translated: her women’s studies degree is unlikely to help her be hired by any sane business). There is intent and design at work here, and while financially the college/university may get the benefit, they serve their purpose as well in both setting up the idealists for failure and preparing them to rail against the enemies of the elite and the would-be powerful.
kids are brought up today in the delusion that their emotions carry any meaning.
frankly, it is more rational to believe in god than to believe in emotions.
A wall street banker telling people about the dangers of student loans…lol that’s funny. Considering your ilk stole trillions of dollars from Americans by way of mortgage-backed securities and various financial instruments. I’m not saying anything you’ve written is false, just pointing out that you are a part of the ultimate capitalist pariah class.
He acknowledges that.
There are still people who play angry birds?
Can’t remember where I read it, but the student loan market is considered the next economic bubble to pop. So far the for profit schools are the first to feel it since their degrees aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on but increasingly the junior and state schools will feel it next.
As to the solution?
The correct solution is the feds to get out of providing student loans.
The feds should get the fuck out of everything.
How about this, the educational institutions must provide the loans??? They incur the risks and have to stand by the economic viability of their product. They will quickly rid themselves of useless degrees, cut operational costs, get rid of the myriad of feel good SJW organizations and focus on education that contributes to the economy of the state. Increase academic standards and admissions.
Currently the incentive is the opposite – maximize enrollment. To do this offer huge amounts easy fluff degrees, dummy down the academics, if students are dropping out, make the classes easier.
I guess the Federal funding for complying with Title IX is more than the tuition a male student pays the university. Why on Earth would they allow kangaroo courts and expel students without due process?
Simple, to turn University’s into hostile environments for men. The bogus “1 in 4” data leading to campus rape hysteria culminating in major legislative campaigns focus ONLY on college campus’.
Here is some real science about sexual assault:
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rsavcaf9513.pdf
that guesswork seems a bit like witchcraft to me. is there any reasoning behind that?
According to some stats, see links below, women are en-curing and having a much harder time paying back student loan debt. Why??? Cause women stay away from STEM and prefer the soft, easy areas of Women s Studies, Psychology and Art. So if physics is your passion, go to university. If it is Art, you are better off getting an apprenticeship.
http://www.aauw.org/2014/07/08/women-and-student-loan-debt/
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/10/07/the-changing-profile-of-student-borrowers/st-2014-10-07-student-debtors-16/
http://onsexandgender.propublica.org/post/81522031388/when-talking-about-the-student-loan-crisis-its
You will also get a kick reading some of the above articles blaming the “Patriarchy” on female student loan debt, playing the victim card.
we definitely need minimum wage. the trashmen and women’s studies girls finally need to become well-respected jobs.
trashman is a respected job in many places – good pay and benefits.
I’m getting a hair cut every two weeks from woman that graduated in criminology.
Commented on that onsexandgender site,I went back to the link about ten minutes after couldn’t even see the Disqus software on there. My comment was great,but that would be hilarious if they blocked me within minutes of commenting.Does that mean I was blocked?? Anyone know?
I am so glad I didn’t waste my time on a degree. I’m at a point in my career where I make over $100K a year, in my mid 30’s, and I don’t have to live on ramen noodles while paying off 20 years worth of student loans to get where I am now. I decided early on in the game that I didn’t need a piece of overpriced paper and chose instead to bust my ass to improve my skills, gradually acquiring the industry experience I needed to move up to better paying positions. I know people with degrees that put them in debt for more than my annual salary who make less than I do, drive beater cars, live in crappy studio apartments, and live paycheck to paycheck because they’re stuck paying a grand a month or more for a piece of paper that basically says “I can parrot what my college professor said”.
Most higher education, especially for worthless degrees in useless “specializations” like women’s studies, anthropology, and liberal arts, is a conplete scam. If you don’t plan on a career in STEM, you probably don’t need a degree for it.
That’s why a women’s study feminist protest scrapper gets so pissed and wants to fight any man who beats them in street debate. They paid damn good money for their degree and hell if anyone is going to prove them wrong with common sense that’s god given and free. Common sense is so free and natural, why anyone can pull it out out of their ass crack, and it’s still strong enough to beat the feminist arguement and illogic point by point.
what do you do for a living if you mind me asking?
I don’t mind it at all. I work on large scale server infratructure for enterprise environments. If you were to put an official job title on it, I would be a Senior Systems Engineer. Mostly in the biomedical/life sciences sector.
I have no formal education and no degree for any of it, though I do hold a number of industry related certifications.
EXPLAIN THIS SHIT:
Stop paying your car loan and the repo guy takes your car if he can find it.
Skip on your mortgage and bank has you served with papers to vacate premisis.
BUT SKIP ON YOUR STUDENT LOAN and U.S. Marshalls come knocking on your door!! Usually TWO OF THEM and wearing trenchcoats of all things. And all for a goddamn STUDENT LOAN. The hype over paying back a student loan is only equalled by the villification and ‘most wanted’ posters that go up for skipping on paying child support ‘blood money’ which is enforced by the most feminist of courts: the family court. So WHAT’S WITH THE GODDAMN FED GESTAPPO pursuing a mere defaulting student??
I remember hearing a story about a guy that never attended school, he read in libraries for free and then get this, he FORGED all his documents and qualifications and then opened a clinic and was actually practicing plastic surgery on women. He made a bundle before he was found out and he only got fined by the state for not having proper licence. But to send the fed bloodhounds after some kid or 20 something person that signed a bad loan deal for a shit degree WTF. Devry or Lincoln Tech doesn’t even send the fed pigs after you. Shit, man.
The student loan division should have been put in charge of finding Osama bin Laden. Would have taken days to get him.
your story highlights the greatest flaw of the education system…..a man who studies at the library is seen as an idiot and cant open any business….a man who has been “educated” can practice his business even if he sucks.
Most companies do underpay their workers relative to productivity though. That isn’t socialist B.S. We have been getting fucked over for decades as productivity has increased while wages have flattened. Why else do you think we have had a credit boom in the last 15-20 years? It is simply masking the lack of real gains in the wage department for most workers.
What is socialist B.S though is the sense of entitlement in thinking that you deserve a high wage straight out of college because you are ‘educated’ without paying your dues.
Almost everyone starts at the bottom, and that is precisely where you belong when starting out. It is both humbling and necessary for growth and development. If you allow envy to take over, you aren’t learning the right lesson.
Yes, this gets to one of my biggest pet peeves with American culture and politics. We have this two dimensional system of thought where everything is either “liked” or not, good or bad, liberal or conservative. And so if you react positively to hearing something, you are automatically in opposition to the other side.
Just because our current out of control system of financing education is insanely out of control doesn’t mean that publicly funded education is a bad thing (most countries do a pretty good job at it). And as you say, just because there are problems with socialism or equality as a philosophy doesn’t mean that people are paid fair wages today.
I read some article today about the top richest multimillion dollar homes around the world. The largest was $1.5 billion dollar Buckingham Palace. A lot of the hundred million dollar ones were American. A lot of them are people you never heard of, that just happened to own or control a certain business that makes auto parts or oil pipelines or something. Now I’m all for people being rewarded based on how hard they work, but it’s just not possible that a billionaire that earns thousands of times what I can earn is working that much harder than I am, or is that much more productive or valuable to society. And yet the rules of society are set up to reward him.
I read a study recently comparing how long one would have to work to earn enough to pay for a studio apartment in minimum wage jobs ie waiter / bartender in some of the largest cities in America. It was an economist I respect, (Peter Drucker, Joseph Schumpeter, etc.) and the results were completely unbelievable, like hundreds of hours a week. I don’t know how people can live like that.
This.
A common frame assumed by the apologists of American capitalism is that everyone’s wealth is a creation of their own work, as if that multi-billionaire built multiple billions of wealth with his bare hands. They pretend as if passive income through capital gains doesn’t exist.
A good starting point to revamping the student loan system is for public and private loan programs to stop funding education for worthless degrees. If there are no real, tangible job prospects for students of a degree program upon graduation, stop wasting money on it. If the average millenial, blue haired SJW wants a degree in women’s studies or anthropology then he or she can pay for it 100% out of their own pocket.
Yeah I really felt like the internet was making a lot of colleges obsolete. We were seeing all kinds of free content available, and you can even get lectures from many top tier classes like Yale, Harvard, MIT, available online for free (ITunes U among many other options).
Then the expansion of student loans happened, and everyone started going to college for free. I’m sorry, but a teenager, especially one raised in today’s instant gratification dumbed down society simply doesn’t understand the nuances of education finance or how that education will end up costing them tens of thousands for decades or more, they simply have the option of going to college for free, and hey, college is fun, and free is good, so they accept it. Can you really blame them?
“doesn’t mean that publicly funded education is a bad thing”
It most certainly is and has been for a century.
The behavioral training labs instituted by the societal managers is anti-human. It is not how children and young people – nor later adults, for that matter – learn and grow.
None of our forefathers were educated in this Prussian schooling way.
It is a lie, with a purpose that the trained socialist of today knows little to nothing about. Because Feelgood.
NY state T/O/Y (who retired in op-ed on pages of WSJ) John Taylor Gatto can show you the history and the deal, as well as the classic Trivium, and Tragedy and Hope dot com covers it in league.. You can read what the controler’s said they wanted and were going to do IN THEIR OWN WORDS. Follow the money. What is the Rockefeller General Education Board? What are Tax Exempt Foundations? What does the Ford and Carnegie foundations do? Who paid for the first Teachers’ pensions? (it wasn’t government).
A study of the NEA itself, in its own words, can suffice (that’s a govt worker Union in which the people who generate the tax revenue are not represented at the table, only the Unionized, pensioned, SJW trained Gubmint worker).
Children and future generations are the key to revolutionary overthrow and management of society – if you think the ruling elite monied families haven’t known this for centuries, you’re only kidding yourself. This is a Public Private Partnership to bring about social control. Period. Only the ignorant are unaware of this blatantly historical fact.
The very reason you don’t like the society you live in is because of the very method and schooling system you are lauding and believe to be moral. Hell, it isn’t even natural. And that’s the very point.
Where do your politicians and Corp owner’s children attend school? Eh?
Privileged – and differently educated – indeed.
The whole comparison of worker wages to worker productivity is fundamentally meaningless. Both labor and capital are factors of production. When wealth is created through production, there is no objective way to determine how much of it was due to the capital and how much of it due to the labor, as both were necessary inputs, and nothing gets done without both being present.
Thus, the socialist who asserts that workers are underpaid is wrong. But so is the free market cultist who asserts that the free market pays everyone as much as their actual contribution to the economy is.
Nor do I know whether there’s anything socialistic in any way about thinking you deserve a high wage straight out of college. There’s plenty of rich elitist brats out there convinced of their superior worth. Much of the time though, their sense of entitlement doesn’t show, since they get their career path laid out before them by daddy’s connections.
“The whole comparison of worker wages to worker productivity is fundamentally meaningless”
Maybe in an abstract sense it is, but I think it might be easier to determine in some industries than others.
Maybe we’re talking about different things. Productivity can be simply measured as “produced wealth”/”workhours put in”. I was rather talking about the actual value of the labor.
What’s a fact in the US is that the ratio of worker productivity to worker pay is way larger now than it used to be. Whether it means workers are underpaid now or were overpaid previously is a subjective political question though, not one of economic fact.
The problems well pre-date the Federal takeover of loan underwriting, higher education costs have been growing at multiples of CIP since subsidized lending started.
It’s Econ 101; what happens when you introduce liquidity (extra borrowing capability) in to a closed system (higher education) without price controls . . . surprise, surprise, you get inflation!
The thing is, all those SJW degrees are worthless. Not only kids get brainwashed by vile propaganda in these classes, they also lose a ton of money in the process and become the slaves of banks at a young age.
This couldn’t be more true. Everyone goes on talking about the housing bubble but no one seems to notice the education bubble we live in. And because no one does, there never will be a drop in costs.
I understand that having a degree and diploma is useful. But considering today’s prices, the cost-benefit factor simply does not add up.
http://www.oppinon.com
Interesting fact: In America you can borrow lots of money as “student loans” and use it for whatever you want (as long as some of it does go to college expenses). I know people who use their student loan money for rent, groceries, etc. Imagine if you just let every rent payment accumulate to be paid off at some time in the future–you’ll never get ahead! Teenagers don’t understand nuances like this, especially when they come out of public school today. They just see “hey I can keep going to school for free” and do it.
Student loans are only a problem because so many people graduate high school without even a basic understanding of finance. They are unable to picture why paying $1000 or $1500 a month for an extended period of time is a “bad thing.”
Excellent fracking piece.
The only debt an individual can’t legally get rid of or even stop interest on through claiming Bankruptcy!! But don’t worry it’s legal for companies to get rid of their debt through Bankruptcy ,even state and federal loans. America it was a nice country for a few decades several decades ago.
Another part of the financial picture to consider is that the cash portion of the graph isn’t entirely finance-free …
Given that many families don’t have free-flowing cash because much of it tends to be locked into property they’re using as residences, this means that some of the cash will come from additional mortgages. The funds represent a wealth transfer from the parents to the students and then to the universities, with interest payments that immediately penalise the parents for this choice.
Although the university might believe at first that all money is equal, in this case some forms of money are more equal than others. Parents understandably will demand their children choose productive degree programmes so they can be self-supporting at the least, perhaps being able to pay off the loans before they’re past their mid-twenties.
This means that by ending certain parts of the mass wealth transfer from students to universities, the remaining cash provided by students results in a more critical attitude toward the enterprise of universities. These students demand programmes that are appropriate to people who want a reasonable return on their investment of time and money.
Essentially, this means fewer vanity degree programmes and fewer easy degree programmes.
If you want to re-engineer the university as something other than a refuge for professional social justice warriors in training, start demanding an end to the transfer of taxpayer wealth into loans that allow these people to make lazy choices.
As an aside: if degree programmes are forced to uplift rather than continue “averaging down”, this means that degree seekers of average or slightly above average intelligence will self-reject certain universities because there will be few easy degree programmes, if in fact there are any at all.
If I were a father with a daughter with average intelligence, pretty looks, a decent attitude, and a big rack o’tits, I’d suggest she get a job as a waitress very close to a university full of “self-funding” male engineering students, rather than try to force her way through the university’s admissions programme. Without this additional financial leverage, there won’t be a place for otherwise marginal students anyway.