Explain It to Me

How to pay for higher ed breaks my head. So many variables. While listening to this podcast, I had two crazy notions.

The Next Four Years: Beyond the student debt debate The Weeds

New America’s Kevin Carey explains loan forgiveness and the deeper problems with American higher education.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-next-four-years-be...

#1 Government underwrites student loans based on projected life time earnings.

Actuaries are smart about this stuff, right? Figure out someone's future earnings to determine their "credit worthiness". Just like buying a house. And the student's collateral is the future labor. So assess how the loan will be used. Just to be sure everyone's committed, pick a fraction that is repaid directly. Say 50%. Then plug in the numbers.

Someone going to community college to get an AA to work as a dental hygienist will need X dollars and likely earn X' over the next Y years. Another person is getting an MD PhD, who will earn 10x the future hygienist. So future doctor is eligible for a proportionally larger loan.

Tweak the incentives to encourage people to choose more needful professions. Like we may need more electricians, nurses, or language teachers for a spell.

Ya, this is how student loans kinda work now, indirectly. I just want to formalize and daylight the calculus.

I also want it to be more explicit that governments are making an investment and expect a reasonable return.

#2 Institutions are cosigners for all student loans.

Fraud has been a huge problem. So if an institution loses it's accreditation or goes kaput, they assume the full value of the loan. It's unconscionable that the students carries all that risk.

I didn’t post the WaPo link because it’s pay-walled. I’m not endorsing the Mercury News article. But the whole “obstruction” debate was really proof of how sideways the media coverage had gone. Obstruction without something else is a pretty bullshit charge: https://reason.com/2019/04/19/in-defense-of-trump-obstructin.... We were promised he was a Russian asset, and when that evaporated we had an excruciating technical debate about Mueller’s assumptions about whether he could indict for obstruction.

As to “White Fragility”—Taibbi’s language is colorful, but that book isn’t mainstream left: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/dehumanizi.... (Podcast version: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-great-awokening/id....) Whereas Kendi’s “How to Be an Anti-Racist” is a book about public policy written in familiar liberal public policy language, “White Fragility” is a bizarre self-help book for white people who read Kendi’s book and didn’t understand it.

Also, while "Hitlerian race theory" is an appropriate description for someone who says white people should "strive to be less white." Picturing someone telling my half-white daughter that makes me think that Taibbi's description is on the nose.