• vortic@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Yeah, you have this right. If we do undo the bankruptcy laws, though, we do still need to do something to support students who don’t qualify for credit. Otherwise we will be making a university education even more difficult for less privileged people to attain.

    We would probably need to expand grant programs to compensate for the extra barrier.

    • DharmaCurious@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, I’m one of those. If credit checks like that were instituted there is absolutely zero chance I could have enrolled. My bank wouldn’t give me 500 dollars to get my transmission fixed, much less the tens of thousands I need for a bachelor’s. The solution is the nationalization of education. Fuck this nonsense. Public education from K-post doc. Let the rich have their Harvards and whatever, but we need good state schools and a new crop of federal colleges popping up all over rhe country, in addition to community colleges. For free. No questions asked. Do you make absolutely no money whatsoever? Study here. Are you literally Jeff Bezos? Who cares. Study here.

      We also need to get back to the way things were a century ago or more, where students could just decide they wanted to know a thing, and then go learn that thing. No need to declare a major, or even enroll for a degree. Just go learn the things you want to learn. Education should be it’s own reward, even if we also need it for other things. I’m not saying do away with degrees, just make it possible for people to audit classes, or use the resources of their local, public, universities.

    • evatronic@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      You’re absolutely right; only unwinding the bankruptcy stuff is problematic. It’s a temporary measure to stop the spiraling upward costs and make lenders stop lending so much. And yeah, that has an almost immediate impact on people who need lending to go to school. Fixing bankruptcy needs to be married to some solution that makes schooling free for anyone that wants it. There’s plenty of examples out there to model a solution after, it’s not a novel idea.

      In a world where a student can attend a public university for free, or hopefully pass a credit check to get into to Harvard, I’m okay with that. In fact, in such a world, I would love to see that college degrees come with an accreditation from both the institution (“Harvard”) and the lender, demonstrating loan repayment is complete and/or in good standing, to specifically address the case people were so fearful of in the 70s – someone takes out a loan, graduates, and immediately declares bankruptcy, “cheating” their way to a college degree for free.

      In this fantasy world I’ve constructed, by the way, I also want a flying horse, and my dick is like 12 inches long, and I’m shredded but never have to go to the gym and can eat corn dogs all day long.