Income Based Repayment plans currently closed

[dtrack22]

but it will lead to a shortage of doctors in the future

lol no it won’t. The only thing limiting the number of physicians in this country is the ACGME. There are far more people interested and willing to pay/borrow to become a doctor than there are residency positions and seats in schools.

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[Boba Foot]

Very little incentive to work at a VA or an under-served population hospital for non-lobster specialities without PSLF.

With grad school loan limit of $100k, most people with decent financial literacy would think twice about taking non-dischargeable private loans to go to med school.

 

[air bud]

lol no it won’t. The only thing limiting the number of physicians in this country is the ACGME. There are far more people interested and willing to pay/borrow to become a doctor than there are residency positions and seats in schools.

For everything else.... There is podiatry school

 

[Hybrocure]

Very little incentive to work at a VA or an under-served population hospital for non-lobster specialities without PSLF.

With grad school loan limit of $100k, most people with decent financial literacy would think twice about taking non-dischargeable private loans to go to med school.

There’s still gonna be 100 apps for a VA position even without PSLF unfortunately

 

[Bluecollarmed]

If they are capping what the government will loan for higher education then there needs to be downward pressure on schools to reduce the cost of attending.

 

[Feli]

If they are capping what the government will loan for higher education then there needs to be downward pressure on schools to reduce the cost of attending.

Yep, if the cap for govt tuition loans was 150k, nearly all professional schools would magically cost 145k petty quick.

Until that's done, there will be rediculous tuitions and many grads looking high and low for ways to get the loans forgiven, discharged, etc.

 

[Boba Foot]

If they are capping what the government will loan for higher education then there needs to be downward pressure on schools to reduce the cost of attending.

Right. When have you ever seen the toothpaste put back in the tube? Big difference between economic theory and reality.

And @Feli thats a $150k loan total. The chances of schools dropping tuition to $145k is about as likely as your diabetic hospital patient not having a big ass bag of chips and 32 oz Coke next to his bed during rounds the day after a TMA. And even if they do, what are you gonna live on? How are you going to pay rent? There's no room for CoL in that amount.

Don't excuse asinine behavior from elected officials.

 

[Feli]

...And @Feli thats a $150k loan total. The chances of schools dropping tuition to $145k is about as lilikelas...

It's a $150k total tuition loan, yeah.. it was well less than that when I went to pod school. (tuition was 20-something thousand in my 2005-09)

The fact that even cheap real estate places like ohio and iowa charge much more now for same pod degree/edu is purely a result of the fact govt will lend more. Tuition (plus avg living) manages to settle right at or above allowed max limits.

...even if they do, what are you gonna live on? How are you going to pay rent? There's no room for CoL in that amount...

COL is more for private or family loans imo.

It's up to students whether they want to live in a penthouse suite or in an efficiency or with roommates or in dorms or at home with mom or a tent in the park during grad school.

 

[Adam Smasher]

So, much as I dislike discussing podiatry on political forums and vice versa, I'm interested enough to comment on the returns to education and the downstream impact on the market for podiatrists and podiatry services.

The consensus on SDN is that the job market for podiatrists is saturated, the ROI isn't there. Well, unfortunately if you want that to change, there's going to be some suffering inflicted on all of us. Meaning we need to reduce the availability of funding. I don't like reneging on the terms of the MPN and that aspect of the proposal would probably not get past a supreme court appeal. Otherwise, if students don't have the borrowing resources, there's less incentive to open unnecessary schools, and the ones that remain open need to figure out how to make the DPM degree a better deal for everyone else, applying downward pressure on tuition. (Suggestion: fire 75% of the useless faculty members and admin who do nothing but make life hell for the students.) From a birds eye view, things could get better, but on a granular level there are going to be plenty of winners and plenty of losers.

Not sure if this means we produce more grads or less grads in the long run (cheaper DPM degree = more grads, but less financing options = fewer grads) but the ones who enter the job market are less indebted, therefore less desperate to do any exploitative job they can find, also have an easier time building capital to hang their shingle if so inclined.

 

[Boba Foot]

Well, unfortunately if you want that to change, there's going to be some suffering inflicted on all of us.

How about just passing legislation capping tuitions, instead of punishing prospective, current, and former students? Capping tuition can be done just as easily as capping student loans and changing the terms on past borrowers. Problem is you have all these Dave Ramsey masochists who want to punish the symptom instead of fixing the overlying illness.

 

[Boba Foot]

COL is more for private or family loans imo.

So still force people into the same loans, just make half of them private, unforgivable, and at a higher interest rate? Make it make sense.

 

[Homo sapien]

So still force people into the same loans, just make half of them private, unforgivable, and at a higher interest rate? Make it make sense.

Apparently people don't have to live during school i guess.

Ain't no way a podiatry tuition is even worth 200k+

 

[Homo sapien]

So, much as I dislike discussing podiatry on political forums and vice versa, I'm interested enough to comment on the returns to education and the downstream impact on the market for podiatrists and podiatry services.

The consensus on SDN is that the job market for podiatrists is saturated, the ROI isn't there. Well, unfortunately if you want that to change, there's going to be some suffering inflicted on all of us. Meaning we need to reduce the availability of funding. I don't like reneging on the terms of the MPN and that aspect of the proposal would probably not get past a supreme court appeal. Otherwise, if students don't have the borrowing resources, there's less incentive to open unnecessary schools, and the ones that remain open need to figure out how to make the DPM degree a better deal for everyone else, applying downward pressure on tuition. (Suggestion: fire 75% of the useless faculty members and admin who do nothing but make life hell for the students.) From a birds eye view, things could get better, but on a granular level there are going to be plenty of winners and plenty of losers.

Not sure if this means we produce more grads or less grads in the long run (cheaper DPM degree = more grads, but less financing options = fewer grads) but the ones who enter the job market are less indebted, therefore less desperate to do any exploitative job they can find, also have an easier time building capital to hang their shingle if so inclined.

I like that second paragraph - so much of the faculty at where I went were useless, decrepit, low skilled, or a combo

 

[air bud]

I like that second paragraph - so much of the faculty at where I went were useless, decrepit, low skilled, or a combo

This is admin/faculty and any academic/medical institution to be fair. Whether it TFP U or Meatball College.

 

[MicroPod]

There were 6 or 7 rockstar faculty at Scholl and the rest were just there either for a paycheck or because they enjoyed making your life miserable.

 

[Adam Smasher]

How about just passing legislation capping tuitions, instead of punishing prospective, current, and former students? Capping tuition can be done just as easily as capping student loans and changing the terms on past borrowers. Problem is you have all these Dave Ramsey masochists who want to punish the symptom instead of fixing the overlying illness.

So that's an interesting counterproposal. I don't believe it could be done just as easily, for the simple fact that capping loans means the government is regulating itself, whereas capping tuitions means the government is regulating private universities. There would be legal battles, but let's say the courts play along.

Also we know the universities would just invent some nonsense fees on top of tuition that are not subject to whatever regulation you have in mind. But let's say they just take it on the chin and don't engage in their usual chicanery.

Whenever you implement a price control, the demand for the commodity will exceed the supply, because the price mechanism is unable to force people to seek alternatives. Hence the gas lines of the 1970s and the bread lines of the Soviet Union. We would then expect something similar with a tuition cap: an increase in the number of students seeking degrees of dubious value to society. I'll leave it to you to guess which degree I'm talking about. However, unlike the bread lines and gas lines, institutions of higher learning would have no difficulty enrolling 60 students per class at $150k tuition vs 30 students per class at $300k tuition--students can watch lectures on zoom. The bread line instead takes the form of the condition of job market for those degree-holders, which might not have space for all those entrants. This then puts us in a vicious spiral, where downward pressure on wages results in reduced ROI for degrees, same student loan crisis.

So while I agree with you that current and former students should not be punished, we shouldn't (and probably can't legally) change the rules of the game midway through, prospective students need to enter into a course of study with a full exposure to the job market forces they will be subject to including the ramifications for taking on the kind of debt that we all take on. If you call that punishing them, then I'm for it.

 

[heybrother]

How about just passing legislation capping tuitions, instead of punishing prospective, current, and former students? Capping tuition can be done just as easily as capping student loans and changing the terms on past borrowers. Problem is you have all these Dave Ramsey masochists who want to punish the symptom instead of fixing the overlying illness.

Your comment about the underlying disease is interesting to me because that's how I would have described the system up to this point that way. We allow people to borrow incredible loan principal values and then offer them payment plans and the possibility of debt forgiveness instead approaching the ballooning tuition. What you are proposing though is true price controls. What the government is proposing is I believe a form of reference pricing. For the purposes of feasibility I would describe reference pricing as superior. Would you want the Trump administration to set a forced tuition cost?

How Common Procedures Became 20 Percent Cheaper for Many Californians (Published 2016)

The state’s public employee retirement system managed to slash prices for things like knee and hip replacements, but the strategy has limits.

www.nytimes.com

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/financially-hobbled-for-life-the-elite-masters-degrees-that-dont-pay-off-11625752773

 

[dtrack22]

Your comment about the underlying disease is interesting to me because that's how I would have described the system up to this point that way. We allow people to borrow incredible loan principal values and then offer them payment plans and the possibility of debt forgiveness instead approaching the ballooning tuition. What you are proposing though is true price controls. What the government is proposing is I believe a form of reference pricing. For the purposes of feasibility I would describe reference pricing as superior. Would you want the Trump administration to set a forced tuition cost?

How Common Procedures Became 20 Percent Cheaper for Many Californians (Published 2016)

The state’s public employee retirement system managed to slash prices for things like knee and hip replacements, but the strategy has limits.

www.nytimes.com

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/financially-hobbled-for-life-the-elite-masters-degrees-that-dont-pay-off-11625752773

nah, tuition caps on private universities (which isn’t legal) is the solution. Even though the only thing that allowed for tuition/attendance costs that far outpaced inflation to happen in the first place was an unlimited supply of nondischargeable debt in the form of gov. backed student loans.

The reality is some people are mad that their tax payer subsidized gravy train could be headed back into the station. I don’t think it will happen, but the irony of getting screwed by the government and then wanting more government as a solution is not lost on me.

 

[Boba Foot]

So that's an interesting counterproposal. I don't believe it could be done just as easily, for the simple fact that capping loans means the government is regulating itself, whereas capping tuitions means the government is regulating private universities. There would be legal battles, but let's say the courts play along.

Also we know the universities would just invent some nonsense fees on top of tuition that are not subject to whatever regulation you have in mind. But let's say they just take it on the chin and don't engage in their usual chicanery.

Whenever you implement a price control, the demand for the commodity will exceed the supply, because the price mechanism is unable to force people to seek alternatives. Hence the gas lines of the 1970s and the bread lines of the Soviet Union. We would then expect something similar with a tuition cap: an increase in the number of students seeking degrees of dubious value to society. I'll leave it to you to guess which degree I'm talking about. However, unlike the bread lines and gas lines, institutions of higher learning would have no difficulty enrolling 60 students per class at $150k tuition vs 30 students per class at $300k tuition--students can watch lectures on zoom. The bread line instead takes the form of the condition of job market for those degree-holders, which might not have space for all those entrants. This then puts us in a vicious spiral, where downward pressure on wages results in reduced ROI for degrees, same student loan crisis.

So while I agree with you that current and former students should not be punished, we shouldn't (and probably can't legally) change the rules of the game midway through, prospective students need to enter into a course of study with a full exposure to the job market forces they will be subject to including the ramifications for taking on the kind of debt that we all take on. If you call that punishing them, then I'm for it.

My brother in toenails, I appreciate the well-thought out analysis but $350k tuition is purely an American problem. No other country has problems with outrageous student debt, nor do they have a problem with college degrees being debased due to an oversupply.

Much like private health insurance, we are being conned into a broken, overpriced system that takes advantage of everyone under some false guise of financial austerity.

 

[Adam Smasher]

Well to be fair, no other country makes you spend 7 years to become a podiatrist either

 

[Hybrocure]

Well to be fair, no other country makes you spend 7 years to become a podiatrist either

But surgery!

 

[Feli]

Well to be fair, no other country makes you spend 7 years to become a podiatrist either

Conf I was at over the weekend, one lecture said that in any given year, 50-60% of podiatry visits sent to Medicare had ICD for nails dx codes with Lxx and Bxx and the like (onycho, ingrown, dystrophy).

Another 10-20% of visits had derm Lxx codes (xerosis, tinea pedis, calluses, wart, whatever).

Those are not estimates. Those are MCR data. (some visits obviously had both nail + derm codes).
So, basically 60-80% of pod encounters for Medicare in any year are for nail and derm diagnoses, based on ICDs that podiatry used.
...yet we spend half our school and vast majority of 3yr residency on that ~10% surgery and 10% ortho/tendon/injury stuff.

[and yeah, ppl can say that's just MCR... but that's the #1 payer for most DPMs. And it's not like BCBS or MCA or others don't have nail/derm pts too]

We really missed the boat on having 2yr basic pod residencies for most... and 4yr surgical residencies for maybe 20-25% of grads (dent model).

 

[Boba Foot]

Well to be fair, no other country makes you spend 7 years to become a podiatrist either

And on top of that, our stupid 7 year journey gets practically no reciprocity internationally, should one decide they want to live and practice elsewhere.