More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren't Making Payments - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/more-than-40-of-student-borrowers-arent-making-payments-1459971348?mod=e2fb <comment><USER2> A big takeaway from this article (for me) is that people are surprised that 17 year old kids don't understand what they're doing when they take out that college loan. Shock and astonishment despite there being little to no preparation for this kind of financial understanding previously in their education. That surprise and shock shocks and surprises me.

Honestly it kind of reminds me of the whole Yelp minimum wage thing. Person knowingly takes a minimum wage job in the most expensive city in the world and is surprised a year later when that wasn't very much money and they're struggling. The simplest cost of living calculations would have said "moving to that city and taking that job is a really bad idea."

This isn't to say that there aren't things that need to change. Education reform is necessary as well as a living wage, but I'd also argue that basic financial literacy is _also_ a requirement for being an adult and should be treated as such.

<comment><USER3> A big problem is that at age 17, all of the adults are saying go to college & take out these loans. Guidance councilors, teachers, parents. The most compliant high schoolers will just do what they are told without thinking about it further.

I imagine this will start changing. When I was a kid, that group of adults had the benefit of cheap degrees. Today, now that group of adults is us and we did not go to school cheap (personally I don't fall in to that category out of personal choice, but most of my friends do.)

<comment><USER4> > A big problem is that at age 17, all of the adults are saying go to college > & take out these loans. Guidance councilors, teachers, parents. The most > compliant high schoolers will just do what they are told without thinking > about it further.

> I imagine this will start changing. When I was a kid, that group of adults > had the benefit of cheap degrees. Today, now that group of adults is us and > we did not go to school cheap (personally I don't fall in to that category > out of personal choice, but most of my friends do.)

This rings true for me. The main reason I even went to college was because I bought the story that "if you do well in school and get a college degree, you'll get a good job and be set up for success in life."

Yeah. That didn't quite work out as planned. I enjoyed school and the things I learned from my degree were cool, but I use literally 0% of it on the job now, and it doesn't even help get me interviews very often, because it doesn't have the magic letters "CS" in it. Thirty years ago, a bachelor's degree might have been a ticket to a decent professional job, but those days are long past.

I'm not sure what I would have done as an alternative plan, but I'm sure it would have been a hell of a lot cheaper. Not starting out behind a very expensive 8-ball could have possibly helped me a lot.

<comment><USER5> Non-college grad here (well, AA from a community college, but that doesn't really count). I get the impression that that some kids did really challenging programs or went to prestigious schools and that paid off really well, but a lot of kids bought into the "college = success" mantra. Every authority figure they knew was telling them that this was the only way to be successful and the schools were jacking up tuition to pay for more and more amenities. Indoor kayaking! Rock climbing walls! Extend your adolescence for four years and you'll magically be successful and pay it all off!

This is really a shocking dereliction of duty on the part of teachers and guidance counselors. It was just easy to go along with conventional wisdom and not apply any critical thinking and they ended up really screwing a lot of kids over.

All that said, I wish someone would have shown me the value of a really high- end education and helped me attain one.

<comment><USER4> > I get the impression that that some kids did really challenging programs or > went to prestigious schools and that paid off really well, but a lot of kids > bought into the "college = success" mantra.

Challenging programs have relatively little to do with it. It's almost 100% about the prestigious schools and the networks that come along with them: the old "it's not what you know; it's who you know," deal.

> All that said, I wish someone would have shown me the value of a really > high-end education and helped me attain one.

Education is always valuable. It's schooling that's not always worthwhile.

<comment><USER6> I went to a prestigious school and studied physics - place was ranked best in the world for the subject at the time.

The degree is worthless. The wretched right-wing connections are even more worthless.

<comment><USER7> Are you working in physics or a related field? It seems odd that you would associate the political beliefs of what is surely only a portion of your collegiate network with the science degree you got.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > The Education Department has assembled a "behavioral sciences unit" to study > the psychology of borrowers and why they don't repay.

Ha! There is a bit of a hypocrisy there -- if big banks / companies piss away money and choose to strategically default then (and some even get bail-outs), it is just business. If people do it for whatever reason, well clearly the are immoral, deficient somehow, their psychology needs to be studied by a special committee.

> Some borrowers aren't repaying even when they can.

Yap, makes sense. They see banks get bailouts, why shouldn't they get bailouts. Now maybe they shouldn't have been allowed to borrow to start with. But maybe so shouldn't have banks and insurance companies been allowed to leverage to unsustainable levels.

> The singular goal of our student loan program is to help all students get a > degree that sets them up for success

One a separate note, that needs to be reviewed and re-evaluated. There are deeper issues here. Simply handing out billions of dollars for degrees like Masters in Basket Weaving from Phoenix University cannot possibly be seen as solution to anything (except well, handing out tax payer money to Phoenix University...)

<comment><USER9> The TARP bailout was not money just handed out to banks. It was loans to banking and other industries which was repaid in full overall. And in fact it was the auto industry which failed to repay the loan, not the banking industry.

I'm not a fan of the financial sector but let's keep the facts straight here

<comment><USER10> It was backstopping shitty loans with the full faith & credit of the gov't. Note that the person who _received_ the shitty loan still got foreclosed on and lost their equity. The persons responsible, who made the loan, don't have to take a loss.

<comment><USER11> What sort of belief should I start from to be able to decide that people taking a loan they can't afford bear no responsibility? I imagine it's the same sort of thinking that leads to calling a property they never actually paid for theirs but I am not sure and when I am not sure, I ask.

<comment><USER10> They both bear responsibility, but only one party got the bailout.

<comment><USER12> I hear what you're saying, but bankruptcy is most certainly a bailout relative to debtors prison.

<comment><USER13> That's an interesting perspective, but the U.S.A. does not have debtors' prison. Only bad loans that are not repaid.

<comment><USER14> _the U.S.A. does not have debtors ' prison_

While true in theory, this may not be true in practice. There are several loopholes, one main one being that failure to pay fees and penalties assessed by the justice system itself can be a criminal offense. In some states a significant percentage (as high as 20%) of current prisoners are being held for failing to pay these LFO's (Legal Financial Obligations).

Here are a couple ACLU reports about the practice:

      In for a Penny:
      The Rise of America's New Debtors' Prisons

[https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/InForAPenny_web.pdf](https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/InForAPenny_web.pdf)

      Modern Day Debtors Prisons:
      The Ways Court-Imposed Debts Punish
      People for Being Poor

[https://aclu- wa.org/sites/default/files/attachments/Modern%2...](https://aclu- wa.org/sites/default/files/attachments/Modern%20Day%20Debtor's%20Prison%20Final%20\(3\).pdf)

<comment><USER7> > _failure to pay fees and penalties assessed by the justice system itself can > be a criminal offense_

Which doesn't have much of anything to do with the real estate market, right?

<comment><USER14> Correct. I hoped from context that it was clear that I was responding only to the line that I quoted (which said that the US "does not have debtors' prison") and not to the main thrust of the argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My wife is one of these borrowers. She has a master's degree in teaching. It cost her over $100k to get and she can't find job that would pay her enough that she'd be required to pay anything back. I've seen her loan repayment docs and her minimum payment due is $0 every month. While I think her decision to get a masters in education was a bad one (before we were married) I laugh at an institution that would loan her money for a field that doesn't pay, ask her to pay at least $0 a month and then complain that the loans are not being paid back. I just paid Navient the outstanding $18 they've been bounding her for and plan on paying them nothing again until my houses are paid off.

<comment><USER16> Don't teachers usually have loan forgiveness programs after X-years? I think a lot of government associated jobs offer a perk like this.

I'm not sure if this is state specific or not though.

<comment><USER17> They are conditional with having employment in the first place as well as if the government entity they are under has approval for such forgiveness. My wife doesn't qualify under most programs and given the glut of newer grads or veterans (she's been beaten out by veterans for 10 positions with 100+ applications referred - none of which were non-veterans according to the hiring committee we managed to find out) she's competing against that can accept the $12 / hr wages I basically have to pay the residual myself instead. That's marriage for you.

<comment><USER18> We all bare our burdens... you should be so lucky that your burden loves you.

<comment><USER19> Heh .. my wife also had a mountain of student loan debt. We saved like hell and deferred major purchases (specifically, no house). We're about to payoff the last of her loans and really happy about it. The challenging things are: (a) we were talking about getting a new car. Even though a car loan is nothing like a student loan (interest rate is much lower) and we do need to change our car, we're super queasy about getting back in the red , and (b) we're in our late 30s and property is unaffordable where we live. We're not keen to take a 600K mortgage (for a starter home) so will wait it out. We're both well-paid professionals but even then one person's loan made a big dent in our financial security. Also, the fact that we didn't own property before the real-estate boom/bubble, means we'll likely be financially stunted for life. Cest La Vie.

<comment><USER17> I bought a place in 2007 after the start-up I was at exited. That was a very expensive lesson that you didn't have to learn at least. I can't think of an actually positive outcome to this lesson fundamentally that I couldn't have just learned with some Youtube videos. The emotional scarring is what's worse than the financial scars. We can always make some more money when we've got some time in life left, but life experiences are something nobody takes away from you no matter how much you want them to go away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> We have set students up to fail.

On the one hand, we tell them that everyone has to go to college and that more education is better. Regardless of whether more education has any financial return. Is that the only metric? Absolutely not, but there is a point at which education is a luxury.[1] My entire high school education was focused on how to get into the "best" college.

On the other hand, in order to get that education, they have to take out significant loans. At 17 or 18, they have little to no understanding of—let alone, ironically, education—about personal finance.

So financially uninformed take on large amounts of debt with no gauge of whether that is a positive investment. Sound familiar? We did the same thing to uninformed mortgage buyers until they started to default in 2007.

[1]: I say this having majored in Philosophy. It was a luxury that, coincidentally, is immensely valuable. At the time, however, I didn't know that, I was just interested.

<comment><USER21> > My entire high school education was focused on how to get into the "best" > college.

and? The alternative is closing doors.

<comment><USER20> > The alternative is closing doors.

No, it isn't. That assumes college exclusively opens doors, which is not always the case. Many Americans are leaving college with more debt than they are able to pay off. Crippling debt is not a door everyone knows they are opening, nor what that actually means or _feels_ like.

Furthermore, the "best" college by rankings does not translate to the best college for that individual. The "data" around college rankings and binary maxims like "go to college" hide the nebulous benefits and individual circumstances.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There's a simple solution, the Feds should cutoff loans for schools that don't get their students jobs. The government are the only ones that are able to accurately calculate which schools are completely worthless. In fact they should take it one step further and advertise to the whole world what percentage of students get jobs in their studied field and the average starting salary. That would finally put some market pressure on schools to do their damn job and teach useful skills.

<comment><USER23> Must the value of an education be purely the salary you can get afterwards? The true roots of liberal arts (which used to include everything from astronomy to mathematics to botany) lie in creating a well-rounded, educated, sophisticated person. We can't all study STEM, and we as a society shouldn't demand that.

<comment><USER24> Not everyone wants or needs to get a well-rounded liberal arts education. The problem is that undergraduate degrees are more and more a prerequisite for getting any job, so there's pressure to make it easy for poorer people to earn a degree. Towards that end we have loans, grants, scholarships, subsidized city colleges and state universities...

<comment><USER25> I am afraid you are wrong there. It's a myth that the reason we have public funding of higher education is to help people get nice jobs.

We have public funding of higher education because a better educated populace is a better democracy and a better public.

It's an intrinsic value.

See also: [http://www.salon.com/2014/06/08/colleges_are_full_of_it_behi...](http://www.salon.com/2014/06/08/colleges_are_full_of_it_behind_the_three_decade_scheme_to_raise_tuition_bankrupt_generations_and_hypnotize_the_media/)

<comment><USER26> If that were the case, why can't you get federal aid as a non-degree seeking student? Do I need credentials to contribute to a better democracy?

<comment><USER25> I can only imagine that limiting loans and aid to the pursuit of an accredited degree makes the difference between financing a lifestyle and financing something that is guaranteed worthwhile (if we believe accreditation).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It would be interesting to explore what kind of short positions are possible. The majority of student debt is federal, so you would probably be looking at the big private issuers like Nelnet and Sallie Mae/Navient ([https://www.navient.com/about/investors/debtasset/](https://www.navient.com/about/investors/debtasset/)).

I don't know if there is much of a CDO/CDS market anymore for student-loan debt because subsidies ended some years ago. Lending standards have probably tightened as a result, but it's possible that there are some student-loan backed securities out there with a high probability of default.

I've thought about shorting Navient/Sallie Mae directly, but their ties to the federal government make me think that they could possibly benefit from a government bail-out or takeover if it came to it.

There's also the possibility of taking a short position on the for-profit education industry. Institutions (or rather Companies) like DeVry and University of Phoenix probably have some of the highest debt and default rates. If they lose federal funding, their future is grim.

</comment><comment><USER28> _The Education Department has assembled a "behavioral sciences unit" to study the psychology of borrowers and why they don't repay._

 _"We obviously have not cracked that nut but we want to keep working on it," said Ted Mitchell, the Education Department's undersecretary. He said many defaulted borrowers dropped out of school and are underemployed._

This is surreal. Could they be any more patronizing?

<comment><USER29> "behaviour sciences" sounds like they're looking at nudge-like approach to see if they can make more people repay, rather than just being clueless about the fact that unemployed people have no money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> In New Zealand the Government has started to arrest defaulters at the border[1]. This may not work as well for US as I am not sure of the percentage who travel outside the country versus NZ.

[1] [http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...](http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11616227)

<comment><USER31> Wow, modern-day debtor's prisons making a comeback. Welcome to the Middle Ages.

<comment><USER32> Most our tax dollars go to pay down the interest on our countries debt and you go to prison if you don't pay your taxes. Crazy Days

<comment><USER33> Absolutely false, interest payments make up only 6% of Federal spending.

[https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal- bud...](https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal- budget-101/spending/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Not surprising. Lots of kids are holding out hoping that someone will get elected and wave a wand to magically erase the money they borrowed.

<comment><USER35> I think it's more complicated than that. It's a huge, broken system. 17-year- olds can't fully grasp the burden of their debt when they take it on, and they've been told all their lives that they need to go to college to be successful.

You've got a great potion for disaster here: 1) You can't be denied an education loan. 2) Education loans can't be wiped out in bankruptcy because 3) You can't repossess an education. 4) Because of the above factors, there's little incentive for colleges to keep cost of attendance low.

I have no idea what the solution should be, but this problem can't continue indefinitely. It's a more complicated issue than just, "Millennials are just looking for handouts and don't want to pay their debts."

<comment><AUTHOR> > 2) Education loans can't be wiped out in bankruptcy because

One can opt in for an unsecured personal loan, which are wiped out in bankruptcy, but those come at higher rates to compensate for the risk. The reason for low(er) rates on student loans is their legislatively mandated low rates of default.

<comment><USER26> And 5-6 figure unsecured personal loans are available to 18 year olds with no assets or credit history?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. Most creditors would be aghast at 100% LTVs that student loans seek, so it would have to be a combo of a significant down payment, parents' HELOC (or other secured credit facility) and finally unsecured credit card debt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> If graduates had the option to discharge their student loan debt in bankruptcy in exchange for revoking their degree, I wonder how many would end up taking that option.

<comment><USER37> How do you 'revoke' a degree?

<comment><USER36> The scenario that I proposed was entirely hypothetical, but I image that they are revoked in the same way that any credential is revoked: if asked to verify that an individual holds it, indicate instead that they don't.

I mean, this has happened a number of times to doctorate degree holders when it was later discovered that they falsified research for their dissertation.

<comment><USER37> Yeah, but publishing a statement that announces that you're a cheat, and that your education is a sham, _actually_ damages your reputation and your career. Cutting up some paper so you can be debt free would just show that you're not a complete nit.

Even if you actually needed that paper to prove that you are in fact qualified, an entire industry would appear overnight dedicated to providing certified copies. The free market ultimately decides what credentials to trust.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Sorry, but when there is no testing to determine if they borrowers can even complete the course of study they have chosen why should we expect any other result? If you wanted the best example of why college education should not be free this is it. I am all for community style colleges that could be free or heavily discounted but the idea that people can simply choose ask for their degree be paid for without first demonstrating that it is course with a worthwhile career the country needs, they are capable of completing it, and they are also capable of holding a job, doesn't work for me.

It isn't a right. When you become an adult you make choices, choices that come with responsibility to your self and others. This does not include demanding others support your flight of fancy, let alone one that may never pay out or benefit anyone other than the person taking the money

<comment><USER39> Isn't the idea of the college admissions process (ideally) to determine whether "they can even complete the course of study"?

Also, couldn't we set the number of (free) admissions to certain areas of study based on the national need for those professions?

<comment><USER40> Ideally, yes; practically, no.

The point of admissions has become to determine that admitting a given student will do one of three things: Benefit the school through future press from stand-outs, alumni donations, and better GPA, SAT, and ACT stats in the various rankings (all leading to more enrollment in the future), benefit the school by paying to attend and not really affecting rankings, or whether they can pay and not really hurt ranks that badly.

And the number of free admissions to most areas of undergraduate study is 0. Full-ride scholarships are usually athletic, not scholastic, but most partial scholarships are based on test scores and apply regardless of the course of study.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> To everyone complaining about the paywall, try hitting the "web" link at the top of this page (to the left of the story comments link)

<comment><USER42> That doesn't work for me - it hasn't in a long long time.

<comment><USER43> Worked fine incognito for me.

<comment><USER42> I tried incognito - still did not work.

They don't like my IP :(

Even stories linked from Google News homepage don't work for me - I wanted to complain to google about why they even include them. But I guess it's just me.

<comment><USER44> It's not just you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The student loan system lies in the special place that brings in the worst of private and government sectors.

General loans work pretty well out there: Loan costs are aligned with loan risks, because nobody wants to loan money to those that can't pay. But student loans are guaranteed by the government, so for all intents and purposes, anyone can get a loan, whether they'll be able to pay it or not. At the same time, it never goes away, and it's given to people who probably still live with their parent. They bear a bigger risk than I do with my mortgage, but they might get tens of thousands of dollars in debt without deciding on a major first!

What really makes this pernicious is that, since everyone gets access to the loans, in practice, this means college can be far more expensive than it'd be otherwise: Without all the loans, most colleges would have to be cheaper. Same thing if colleges also bear the risk of non-payment. And it's not as if this money is being spent enriching teachers: It's mostly administration and facilities.

So now we have a system where everything is very expensive, and most students get huge loans that they can't afford, and where ultimately, the taxpayer will end up having to foot the bill: The only winners here are the universities themselves.

Just think of what this is doing to medical schools and law schools: They know that even the poorest student will be able to max out on their loans! So dropouts, and in the case of law school, graduates that went to the wrong school end up in a worse situation than they would have been 30 years ago.

The country must choose: Either stop giving money to private colleges, and just focus on good, cheap, no loans, public universities, or let people pay for their own college with no guaranteed loans: Less people will even go to college, but those that do will afford it, because colleges would have to adapt to lower budgets.

Guaranteed loans to pay for expensive, private universities? This just makes sure that millennials will end up worse off than their parents for the first time since the industrial revolution.

<comment><USER46> Well there is a way that combines best of both - look at UK.

Basically you have a similar deal like the US, so everyone is guaranteed a loan no matter which university they are going to, but at the same time, the government has limited how much universities can charge per year. So it doesn't matter if you go study at Oxford or a some tiny university no one heard about. The maximum you have to pay is 10k a year. And you don't have to pay anything back unless you make more than a certain amount per year after graduating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I made a comment to this effect as a reply, but I don't understand why the government charges so much interest on these loans (and then only lets you deduct a small portion of it from your taxable income in some cases).

Let's assume you actually do end up bettering your life by taking out student loans and getting a degree. Although it seems almost memetic these days that you'll sink 100k into a school and wind up flipping burgers, in my situation it was actually the opposite. I was a cook for a catering business making very little money such that my federal tax burden was virtually nonexistent. After finishing school I make quite a bit more money, but I'm paying very high student loan payments (not complaining really, I was aware this would be the case) and the interest on my student loans is higher than on my mortgage! These are federal loans as well, not private.

By providing me a loan the government has essentially won! They've turned a tax burden into a source of revenue. My lifetime earning potential is much, much higher than when I did not have a degree and was working as a cook. Why are some of these interests rates as high as 6%? It seems insane!

</comment><comment><USER48> As someone who has been paying upwards of 20% or more of my monthly take home pay to student loans, I am surprised the figure of delinquent payers isn't higher. I count myself one of the lucky ones(CS degree, gainfully employed...) and I have college friends making close to minimum wage, with more students loans than I and struggling to make payments.

Who thought a $25,000/year(and rising) public university education was a good idea ?

</comment><comment><USER49> "About 1 in 6 borrowers, or 3.6 million, were in default on $56 billion in student debt"

I thought "default" is technically impossible with respect to student loans, your solvency matters not, you're obligated to pay it off even if takes your entire life (and/or life's earnings)?

This problem would get fixed very quickly if students were allowed to actually default on the loan and stop paying it, at which point it becomes a loss to the lender, like it is with any other loan. Then these loans wouldn't be handed out like candy to people who are not mature enough to understand what it takes to pay off $100K and thereby ruining their lives.

<comment><USER50> Default just means to not pay back what you promised when you promised. You are confusing this with the fact that, except in relatively rare circumstances, one cannot shed the debt in bankruptcy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Thats how its supposed to work, in the UK at least. Student Loans are like a distributed tax that only gets paid by the grads who earn enough to repay.

edit: Also, in the UK, once you do earn enough, payment is automatic via deductions from payslips.

<comment><USER52> That's a terrible system, IMO. Why should we be rewarding B-Ark people while at the same time punishing people who get degrees in Engineering and Medicine? I can understand the logic for tax-supported universities (not necessarily agree, but understand), but this just seems... intellectually dysgenic.

<comment><USER51> Because perhaps there's a view that its worth something to society for people to study things that dont necessarily lead to a high salary?

<comment><USER52> I can't think of anything that would be as valuable to society as engineering or medicine, say, and still wouldn't land you a remunerative position.

Anyway, that's an argument for taxpayer-supported universities, not for universities paid for by the students who choose to learn skills other people will find useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Full text if you don't want to deal with google/paywall workarounds:

More than 40% of Americans who borrowed from the government's main student- loan program aren't making payments or are behind on more than $200 billion owed, raising worries that millions of them may never repay.

The new figures represent the fallout of a decadelong borrowing boom as record numbers of students enrolled in trade schools, universities and graduate schools.

While most have since left school and entered the labor force, 43% of the roughly 22 million Americans with federal student loans weren't making payments as of Jan. 1, according to a quarterly snapshot of the Education Department's $1.2 trillion student-loan portfolio.

About 1 in 6 borrowers, or 3.6 million, were in default on $56 billion in student debt, meaning they had gone at least a year without making a payment. Three million more owing roughly $66 billion were at least a month behind.

Meantime, another three million owing almost $110 billion were in "forbearance" or "deferment," meaning they had received permission to temporarily halt payments due to a financial emergency, such as unemployment.

The figures exclude borrowers still in school and those with government- guaranteed private loans.

The picture has improved slightly from a year earlier, when the nonpayment rate was 46%, but that progress largely reflected a surge in Americans entering a program for distressed borrowers to lower their payments. Enrollment in those plans, which slash monthly bills by tying them to a small percentage of borrowers' incomes, jumped 48% over the year to 4.6 million borrowers as of Jan. 1.

The Obama administration—worried about taxpayer costs and the prospect of consumers damaging their credit by defaulting—has stepped up efforts to reach borrowers and offer options to enroll in the income-based repayment plans. In some cases, the government is garnishing wages and tax refunds of borrowers who refuse to pay.

But officials acknowledge that a large pool of borrowers have essentially fallen off the radar. Loan servicers—companies the government hires to collect debt—say they can't reach such defaulted borrowers despite hundreds of attempts through phone calls, text messages and emails. The Education Department has assembled a "behavioral sciences unit" to study the psychology of borrowers and why they don't repay.

"We obviously have not cracked that nut but we want to keep working on it," said Ted Mitchell, the Education Department's undersecretary. He said many defaulted borrowers dropped out of school and are underemployed.

Carlo Salerno, an economist who studies higher education and has consulted for the private student-lending industry, noted that the government imposes virtually no credit checks on borrowers, requires no cosigners and doesn't screen people for their preparedness for college-level course work.

"On what planet does a financing vehicle with those kinds of terms and those kinds of performance metrics make sense," he said.

Some borrowers aren't repaying even when they can. Research from Navient Corp., which services loans for the government, shows that borrowers prioritize other bills—such as car loans, mortgages and heating bills—over student debt. A borrower who fails to pay down an auto loan might have her car repossessed; with student loans, there is no such threat.

Kristopher Mathews, 38 years old, is in deferment on about $11,900 in federal student loans. During the recession he earned a certificate at a Michigan- based for-profit college that teaches media arts, but he wasn't able to find the well-paying job in radio that he hoped for.

Mr. Mathews now works as a logistical analyst for a U.S. auto company, making $46,000 annually. He says he devotes his income to caring for his family—he and his fiancée have three children—and then paying off two credit cards and a car loan. "With all the other necessities in life I just don't have" funds to pay the student debt, Mr. Mathews said.

Once his deferment expires, he isn't sure if he will feel obliged to pay down his loan. "They promised me everything," he said of his for-profit college. "And I honestly have nothing to show for it except a piece of paper that doesn't really do me any good."

Most borrowers who have defaulted owe relatively little—a median $8,900, according to the Education Department.

Advocacy groups, some members of Congress and the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have faulted loan servicers for not doing enough to reach troubled borrowers to offer repayment options. But the picture is more complicated.

Navient, which also services private loans, says it attempts to reach each borrower on average 230 to 300 times—through letters, emails, calls and text messages—in the year leading up to his or her default. Ninety percent of those borrowers, which include federal borrowers as well as those who hold private loans, never respond and more than half never made a single payment before they defaulted, the company says.

The administration maintains that the student-loan program, as a whole, will generate a profit over the long term, but the risk is rising that the revenue won't meet the administration's projections.

Even many borrowers who are current on their loans are paying very little. More than a third of borrowers on an income-based repayment plan had monthly payments of zero because their incomes were so low, according to a Navient survey last year.

The Education Department, through private debt-collection agencies, garnished $176 million in Americans' wages in the final three months of last year for student debt, federal data show.

The administration's pursuit of troubled borrowers is drawing criticism from student advocates and their allies in Congress. Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Consumer Law Center sued the Education Department, accusing it of blocking public access to data on the agency's debt-collection efforts. The groups suggested that the companies collecting debt for the department might be discriminating against black and Hispanic borrowers.

Dorie Nolt, a spokeswoman for Education Secretary John B. King Jr., said the agency is reviewing the groups' public-information requests.

"The singular goal of our student loan program is to help all students get a degree that sets them up for success, and we take the treatment of our borrowers—particularly historically underserved students—very seriously," Ms. Nolt said in an email.

<comment><USER54> Great comment. Most people I know with this problem are just not able to get hired. Businesses reject them as underqualified or overqualified for every job unless offered minimal wage. Unfortunately, minimum wage doesnt pay cost of living plus minimum $1000-2000 loan payment.

So, I blame several parties in event loan was for kind of degree that should've paid off. The market for doing everything possible not utilize talent properly. Colleges and high schools that oversell the value of and overcharge for degrees. As Im for universal college, I'm less worried about credit checks so much as blaming government or lenders for allowing majors with low likelihood of repaying. The minimum payments are pretty ridiculous, too, with a progressive scheme making more sense.

So, many factors involved. Yet, there's no shortage of college-educated, enthusiastic, hard-working people aiming for all kinds of jobs. Just little willingness to hire them for a fair wage or at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> A serious problem with student debt that is not talked about enough is the inflated cost of classes, schoolbooks, and the pile on of all of these extra classes that university forces you to take and pay for, that are there only to pay graduate students. It's crazy how many pointless labs you are forced to take now, classes that have never had labs before. I think we need to dramatically reduce the number of classes that students are required to take to get a degree.

</comment><comment><USER56> This is a problem that only this generation, and maybe part of the one after it will need to face. The answer is simple, and we're on the cusp of getting there.

Like any other industry, education needs to be unbundled. The idea that you need to live in a dorm, in a psuedo-society, for four years, taking a broad set of courses is dated and helps nobody but those offering that experience. I predict in a generation we'll have the people making hiring decisions more and more jaded about the value of these educations and less likely to keep perpetuating the myth that you need a degree from a school to do a job. Instead, we'll see more and more certification programs, or micro-degrees, specializing in subjects that matter to the student.

I believe it to already be happening - I don't look at education except as an afterthought when reviewing resumes. I don't have a degree, and I'm doing well in my field. The types of jobs where I've ever been discriminated for not having a degree I don't think I would have enjoyed anyway. Working at a 5000 person company that cares more about your score on an HR system than what you could really offer them? No thanks.

<comment><USER57> Micro-degree are already a student... they're called an associates..

Nurses used to really only need an associates, however some hospitals are now requiring RNs to obtain a bachelor of science in nursing.. Getting a tad ridiculous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Can somebody compare this (let's call it a Student Loan Bubble) to the Subprime Mortgage Bubble? I'm trying to get a sense of how big the problem is by comparing it to the last bubble we just experienced.

<comment><USER59> You can get a sense of the scale for the subprime/Alt-A market here: [http://bp3.blogger.com/_pMscxxELHEg/RxzD0s_7EYI/AAAAAAAABB4/...](http://bp3.blogger.com/_pMscxxELHEg/RxzD0s_7EYI/AAAAAAAABB4/ljDSXZhMG3o/s1600/IMFresets.jpg)

That graph shows you the size of the actual loans, but there was also a sizeable amount of money tied up in derivatives of those loans, which multiplied the effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> We have 47 million on food stamps, that's about 15% of the whole population. 47% does not pay a penny for tax, now even for those who are luck to have college educations that 40% of the borrowers are not paying back, I'm just wondering, where will the money come from to fill up the holes?

Adding on the military expense etc, the country is so totally financially broken. How sad.

<comment><USER14> _47% does not pay a penny for tax_

That's not actually true. The (mostly) correct version is that 40-some percent of the adult US population does not pay federal income tax. The number of "working age Americans" who actually pay no net federal taxes is actually less than 5%: [http://zfacts.com/47-percent](http://zfacts.com/47-percent)

When you factor in state taxes the number drops even farther. Include sales taxes, and it's probably zero. Saying that "almost half don't pay federal income tax" is still striking, but should be kept in context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> My impression as someone who went to a large public state school for undergrad, and an expensive private for grad...

Most undergrads (more than 50% less than 80%) spend 4 years doing enough to get by, and do a lot of socializing. This is cheap at in state publics, expensive otherwise. The people who get in-demand majors are fine no matter what. Those with other majors who really apply themselves need grad school and more debt to break out.

An English major at Yale or an in state school is fine. The Yale student will manage no matter what. The in state person got off cheap. Everyone else he an expensive lesson in literature.

Despite that, life in most fields is much tougher without he degree.

The guidance counselors are partially wrong in suggesting loans for overpriced schools. They are also wrong for suggesting soft majors at mediocre schools.

</comment><comment><USER62> For a really interesting take on student debt, read commentary by the financial historian, Russell Napier, such as this: [http://moneyweek.com/russell-napier-give-everybody-in- china-...](http://moneyweek.com/russell-napier-give-everybody-in-china-a- credit-card/) He believes that deflation is coming (along with a recession) and the solution to deflation will not be monetary stimulus (negative interest rates or bond-buying), but rather political. First on his expected list of measures is a write-off of student debt in the US, to help reflate the economy :)

</comment><comment><USER55> I wonder if there is any school that shows students how much money they are expected to earn after graduation for their selected major, compared to the amount of debt they will have. I work with several people who have large amounts of student debt, but when I ask about their studies at college, the average income for their degrees pale in comparison to any salary they might ever earn that will help them conquer that debt. I think students should be made aware of a cost benefit analysis for their chosen majors.

<comment><USER63> [http://www.payscale.com/college-roi](http://www.payscale.com/college-roi)

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> That is a sad state of affairs, though I must say I have seen worse numbers back in India. Last time I talked with them, I was told that I was one of the 3 active accounts out of 20 granted ones that was repaying the loan.

That's 17 out of 20 in default - a massive 85%. Some of them were actually not in a situation where they could pay back the loan. Others didn't want to. This was the situation at that single bank branch. Don't want to imagine how large the total default amount must be.

<comment><USER36> I'm curious, how does the cost of higher education in India compare to the U.S.?

<comment><USER64> Highly varies by the program and university. When I started my graduation program in 2013, higher education from good universities in India would have had a fees of around 20k to 30K USD, or even more.

Of course, graduating from a good university here meant a lot more fees.

Unfortunately, and it is something that I really hate is that, the education loan system in India can really use an update - at least in terms of the loan amount that is offered to prospective students. As the bankers told me, there is a limit of roughly 25K USD that can be allowed for education within India. For those who want to get the loan for international programs, the limit is roughly 33K USD.

Now, for local education, that is a decent amount, though might not be sufficient in many cases. For international education, it is NOT sufficient. This restriction applies to government banks and they usually follow it.

Private banks have made a lucrative business out of this, and offer much larger loans to students at nasty, and often floating, interest rates (17% or so would be average.)

That becomes a hell of a loan to pay back even if you are earning in USD and returning in INR.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> it's these 'for profit college' they have to go. i suspect most are total trash. also - with all these coding bootcamps popping up nowdays, im not sure if people are able to get govt student loans for these or what but it sounds like trouble. ppl are desperate to jump on the coding gold rush and the great salaries and job market. ppl are going to get fucked over big time.

first time i saw this[0] all kinds of warning bells went off. im sure there is a way forward so that people can learn and share the value created from software development job market but i think we should move fwd carefully. ppl will definitely get fd over.

but yea most of those 'for-profit' colleges are totally shady.

do they have everest college in the US? perfect example of this kind of bs. in canada they got shut down, but not before screwing over tons of people out of their money for years[1].

[0]: [http://www.inc.com/maria-aspan/max-levchin-affirm-better- stu...](http://www.inc.com/maria-aspan/max-levchin-affirm-better-student- loan.html)

[1]: [http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/everest-college-closure- no-s...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/everest-college-closure-no-surprise- to-some-who-call-it-a-scam-1.2969513)

<comment><USER66> At least the coding bootcamps are subject to market pressures that keep tuition (and subject matter) within the realm of economic reality. The fact that guaranteed subsidized loans are not available for them is probably of massive benefit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I this comes out of the flawed meme of private enterprise efficient/gov't inefficient. Thought it's true in some areas, in the area of funding education in society, it's terrible.

The loans push money to unsophisticated buyers (kids and their parents), who use it to make a huge amorphous transaction which is only performed once in their lives and plays out over years. There's insufficient buyer information to provide price discrimination for the asset being purchased - so it's just inflating college prices.

On the other hand, if we took the same amount of money and goverments directly funded public schools - there's a lot of attention over time and many transactions that can be administered by a gov't department to provide funding discrimination and control over the quality of what is provided. (BTW this is how many low cost public schools were funded in the boomer generation... at least in California)

Edit: BTW, Does any reader here know of any interesting economic theory on how to predict if a market will act efficiently? I'm imagining there must be some way to model the structure of a given market with information, quality and quantity of transactions between nodes representing persons/companies/institutions in a market.

<comment><AUTHOR> That strategy seems to work for Year 1, but what happens when (a) universities expand to cover this newly created demand, thus requiring larger budgets, (b) people enroll only to find out that the classes they are interested in are full?

To quote [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/05/the- upwa...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/05/the-upwardly- mobile-barista/389513/)

"When it comes to college, the central challenge for most Americans in the 21st century is not going; it's finishing. Thirty-five million Americans now have some college experience but no degree. More Americans than live in Texas, in other words, have spent enough time at college to glimpse the promised land—but not enough to reap the financial bounty. Some are worse off than if they'd never enrolled at all, carrying tens of thousands of dollars in debt, not to mention the scar tissue of regret and self-doubt.

President Obama's recent proposal to have the federal government and states pay for two years of community college is elegantly simple, and would surely prompt more students to enroll. But community college is already close to free for most low-income students, and still only 4 percent of all community- college students earn a two-year degree in two years. (Yes, 4 percent.) Money is just part of the problem."

<comment><USER68> Community colleges are, in many places, already straining at their capacity. I know a large number of people that I graduated high school with who got sort of bait-and-switched by the local community colleges - they enrolled in a program, then it turned out that there weren't enough slots in that program, so the community college said, "Here, take your core classes this semester, we'll fit you in next time." Then next semester, the classes they needed to take the previous time aren't offered, so they do more useless "core" classes.

Maybe the second year they get into _some_ of their original program courses, but now they are slated for at least a third year, because they can't take their 2nd year fall courses (in their 2nd year), before they take the 1st year fall and spring courses they got squeezed out of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I also noticed while doing taxes that if I borrow money, I'm going to pay interest on that money I borrow. One of the incentives to this self investment is that I can deduct the interest that I pay.

However, apparently, if your salary is above a certain threshold, you don't qualify for education deductions and credits.

It's a first world problem, I know, but I just found out and it kind of sucked.

<comment><USER70> The same thing happened to me. I think they phase you out of the student loan interest deduction after you pass $65,000 taxable income. I'm actually going to increase my 401k contribution to try to retain more of that deduction.

<comment><USER47> I did not know this. I guess I will be doing the same or starting an IRA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Around the world many institutions use factoring. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factoring_(finance)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factoring_\(finance\))

This converts receivables into cash by selling them a third party at a discount. This doesn't prevent the educational institutions from getting their cash.

Not sure how it works in the US.

<comment><USER72> The Department of Education sold my loan to a private company within a year or so of graduation. No rate change or anything, I just started logging in on a different web site to pay. Same thing with my wife and with many people I know.

<comment><USER73> This is terrifying. Did you get registered mail at least? Did the old web site tell you where to go?

If you don't believe the notice you are given, you fail to pay. If you do believe whatever notice you get, you are vulnerable to fraud.

<comment><USER74> My mortgage has been sold at least 4 times since I got it about 3 years ago. Each time, I get a letter from the old company _and_ the new company. Hopefully, that's what happened here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Here is an interesting comment on reddit in response to someone asking how they could profit from a mass student loan default scenario:

 _You bring up a really interesting point, my buddies and I have been mulling this over.

Three important distinctions between student loans and mortgages:

Mortgages are backed by an underlying asset (the house) for which there is a liquid market and transparent price discovery, so it's easy to determine when the borrower's position is insolvent (i.e.; loan balance > home value; negative equity)

For many student loans, the Federal government assumes the risk of default; also, Sallie Mae dominates the secondary market, and shorting them entails political risk (you're betting against a bailout)

While painful, defaulting on a mortgage is a realistic option for borrowers: declare bankruptcy, give up the house keys to the bank, have shitty credit for 7 years, and you're out from under it; by contrast, student loans survive bankruptcy (and the principal keeps growing)

Student loans are far more insidious precisely because it is difficult for the market to take a natural short position and put downward pressure on prices. What would a bubble 'pop' look like? For housing, the slow-down/decline in home prices simultaneously bankrupted hundreds of thousands of over-leveraged owners.

It's hard to imagine a scenario where a significant portion of student loan borrowers simultaneously stop paying, and even if they did the loan owner can chase them through bankruptcy and garnish their wages. That looks like a recipe for a long, slow, toxic drag on the economy._

[https://www.reddit.com/r/finance/comments/3y39x2/just_saw_th...](https://www.reddit.com/r/finance/comments/3y39x2/just_saw_the_big_short_what_if_someone_shorted/)

</comment><comment><USER75> This is a bad situation that's going to get worth. Student aid is great and all but I see a lot of people with useless degrees. If someone can expect to make $35k/year after graduation they shouldn't be able to borrow $200k to get there, it just doesn't make sense.

</comment><comment><USER76> I wonder if there is investment vehicle I can short to make some profit if these loans do actually go bad?

<comment><USER77> Not really.

Shamelessly copying a comment by /u/MasterCookSwag on reddit:

THIS is the major piece everyone misses. Mortgages were such a disaster because banks held the debt securities thinking they were safe assets and they weren't. This caused a chain reaction of devaluation of balance sheet assets and paper losses which resulted in the collapse of some major institutions. It then caused credit to dry up so businesses couldn't borrow and a crisis of confidence in the fundamentals of the economy.

Student debt won't do any of these things because the underlying structure is not even remotely similar. What student debt will do is represent a long term suck on the taxpayer both directly(through payments) and indirectly(through defaults). This will result in a drag on GDP. There is no way to short this and there won't be a collapse. That doesn't make it not a bad thing.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4cj937/e...](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4cj937/eli5_if_the_student_loan_bubble_is_so_certain_to/d1j3wwa)

<comment><USER78> This isn't a strong argument to me. Student debt might not be collateralized the same way mortgages are (i.e. there's no house to repossess), but student debt is still an asset on a bank's book. If anything, student debt default seems to me more troublesome, as defaulted debt without collateral is more damaging to a balance sheet than debt with collateral.

<comment><USER14> I think you are missing that the many (most?) student loans in the US are either made by the government (post-2010 direct loans) or are guaranteed by the government (pre-2010 guaranteed loans):

[http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/types-federal- student...](http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/types-federal-student- loans.html)

If the student defaults on a direct loan, the government is the one not being paid. If the student defaults on a guaranteed loan, the government pays the loan holder. Everyone wins! Except the for the credit blemished student and the US taxpayer, that is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> I have several reactions to this report.

First of all, I think it demonstrates that American university tuition is way too high. So much of that money goes toward things like sports teams, climbing walls, emotional support dogs, and other things that just don't have to be a part of the college experience. American universities have an unbelievable amount of staff that isn't about education or research.

The thing is, there's little incentive for universities to cut back, because no matter what they charge, they have willing customers. And those customers aren't paying the bills -- not at the time of purchase, and perhaps never at all (as this article states).

Secondly, the notion of work -- not work-study programs, but real work -- should probably become more prominent among US students. In Israel, where I now live, most students work at part-time jobs, and juggle both work and school. It's not ideal, especially since many of them also have families, but it does help to keep debts relatively low.

Thirdly, I think that it's too easy to take out loans. I took out loans for my undergraduate degree, and was fortunate to pay them back within a few years of graduating. I then took out loans for my PhD, and while I've been managing to pay them back faster than expected, no one ever asked me at the time, "Are you sure you'll be able to pay these back?" A bit of discussion at the time of taking out loans, and looking at options, or even giving financial counseling, might have helped me or others to take out less.

Finally, the notion that you cannot ever get rid of your government-sponsored tuition loans is crazy. I'm not saying that people should declare bankruptcy at the drop of a hat, or that there shouldn't be consequences. But people have issues, and excluding student loans from bankruptcy -- which is intended to give people a new start -- seems extremely unfair to the people who need this tool most of all.

No wonder people are just not paying their loans back; if declaring bankruptcy isn't an option, and they can't pay, then they'll just not pay.

<comment><USER80> > So much of that money goes toward things like sports teams, climbing walls, > emotional support dogs, and other things that just don't have to be a part > of the college experience.

Just to nit-pick (I agree with everything else), but athletic department finances are usually separate from the rest of the university, at least in D1 sports. And, having a good football or basketball team will increase applications and enrollment (e.g. see the 2nd sentence in [http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2005/02/appli...](http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2005/02/applications.html)). I think the thought is that if a university doesn't have these amenities, their enrollment will decrease and be lost to those that do. It is a vicious cycle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> __FYI Student loans are federally guaranteed. __The original lender does not loose money. If default occurs, the _tax-payer_ pays them off. The debt is then sold by the government to credit collectors at a discount, who can seek the entire principle, plus interest, plus steep fees. So the typical defaulted student loan, if ever paid back, procures two to three times the original cost of school. Consequently, the student has no credit, so it is basically impossible for them to fully function in our highly debt-oriented society. This includes not being able to go back to school to finish their education if it not yet complete.

Meanwhile $200 billion is the cost of two-months in Iraq.

</comment><comment><USER82> Wondering if it would help at all if the parents saved up enough for each kid to fully fund their private college, and then when the kid hits high school tell them - when you graduate, you'll get $50k/yr towards your college. If you go to a private school it will cover it, but not leave much. If you go to a good public school, the extra $20k/yr is yours. If you get a full ride scholarship, the $50k/yr is all yours. Would that work? I'm assuming for some it would.

<comment><USER83> >> If you get a full ride scholarship, the $50k/yr is all yours. Would that work? I'm assuming for some it would.

Bitter personal experience taught me using extrinsic motivation destroys intrinsic motivation.

The kid will get that scholarship to pocket the $50k/yr. But then the kid won't be motivated to do much more than that afterwards. Now all he or she's thinking is how fast they can spend the $50k.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Everyone in my generation is split, those who went to college and now are paying off ridiculous debt, those who have rich parents, and those who are trying to make it on their own. College does give you a step up, but its really screwed a lot of people. Those of us who just want to learn but don't want to be saddled with debt have to make due outside of our 'institutions' of learning, which is too expensive to consider when you already have an OK job.

</comment><comment><USER85> Unable to read due to a pay wall. Anyways, I wonder if there is a breakdown somewhere of the amount of debt and by schools. It be interesting to look at.

<comment><USER86> I just used the 'web' button below the link and the WSJ article was the first result without a paywall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> We're headed toward a financial crisis. Borrowers not being able to pay loans.. Awfully sounds like the mortgage crisis.

<comment><USER88> /EDIT/

Would love to know why I was downvoted for pointing out what seem to be very real differences in the circumstances and asking for some backup in the form of data as to why this will lead to the disaster that the parent stated without supporting facts.

\-----

I'm not sure they are equatable.

\- Don't pay your mortgage, lose your house. This partly caused some of the panic that made a lot of people try to sell when they couldn't make payments. Don't pay your student loans...give back your knowledge? If I recall correctly declaring bankruptcy won't get rid of these loans, but it isn't like people are on the streets.

\- A big factor in the mortgage crisis was how these bad loans were packaged into all number of convoluted and intentionally misleading securities products, and then dumped on the public markets where they became a large part of the portfolios of Main St. and Wall St. investors. Are there similar securities products around college loans, and is there data that suggests that repayment issues with them could have anywhere near the same impact?

I'm genuinely curious for some data on this. It ultimately looks like the ones left holding the bag would be the government (not good, but they have more flexibility in how they deal with things that doesn't necessarily tank the economy) and other loan institutions/banks. I don't think anyone will shed a tear if the banks get hurt as long as it doesn't cripple the economy, which again, it doesn't sound like it would.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> The predatory education system basically did the following: \- Find the most gullible segment of human population

\- Lend them money with false advertising and without making sure they understand what a loan means

And now they want them to repay? Humans are not rational actors, certainly most aren't. No 18 year old knows the repercussions of a six-figure debt.

</comment><comment><USER90> It will be interesting to see if this creates economic migrants. When I was traveling to China regularly, I met a few Americans fleeing debt. They didn't have much to lose if it turned out to be a bad idea. The plan was typically to teach English in a 2nd tier city where visa enforcement might be lax.

</comment><comment><USER91> Some universities have, and this surprised me, a ratio of student to employee 1:1 On top of that you have the upkeep, all the program costs facilities costs are insane. This is not sustainable. It simply cannot work when many people haven't seen a legitimate increase in their wages for years.

</comment><comment><USER92> 1\. College is useful for education. 2\. College is useful for meeting people. 3\. Most of the time and money spent attending college is used to meet people, and very little on education.

Let's just admit those three facts, and then we can start to have sane policy discussions.

</comment><comment><USER66> And people still say there's no higher education loan bubble.

I suppose it's the same logic that argues the U.S. Federal government can never become insolvent (as it's the world's reserve currency and can simply print money to pay off it's debts).

</comment><comment><USER93> Read this, been through this and thought about this .. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11444810](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11444810) What do you guys think ?

</comment><comment><USER94> Cue this recent hit from Baton Rouge: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqbXQa05Z6c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqbXQa05Z6c)

</comment><comment><USER95> Taking out massive loans to study, so that you can work, so that you can repay the massive loans over 20-30 years. Sounds like indentured servitude.

</comment><comment><USER96> Lots are talking about the tech bubble but I feel this is a much bigger bubble.

<comment><USER97> It certainly seems likely to break many of the private-but-not-elite schools as more students choose state schools. Many seem to cost just as much, if not more, then the ivies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I posted this deeper in the comments, but since it's so directly relevant to the topic at hand:

[http://www.salon.com/2014/06/08/colleges_are_full_of_it_behi...](http://www.salon.com/2014/06/08/colleges_are_full_of_it_behind_the_three_decade_scheme_to_raise_tuition_bankrupt_generations_and_hypnotize_the_media/)

This Salon article says:

"Tuition is up 1,200 percent in 30 years. Here's why you're unemployed, crushed by debt -- and no one is helping:

"Reading back over journalistic accounts of the tuition spiral from the '80s and '90s, you get the impression that all concerned felt it was a wee bit uncouth to dig too deeply into a university's pricing practices or suspect the sachems of higher learning who presided over them of anything inappropriate. These were the journalists's beloved alma maters, after all: surely they had our best interests at heart. …

"And so, beginning in the '80s, university administrators, their words dutifully transcribed by journalists, blamed utility bills for soaring tuition. They blamed libraries, which made a certain amount of sense until libraries went dramatically out of fashion in the Internet age—and yet still tuition prices went up.

"They blamed professors, of course, since professors are the most visible part of a university and because it's easy to hate professors … until the outside world figured out that universities were actually using graduate students and adjuncts to teach their courses and yet still tuition prices were mounting at an insane clip.

"Administrators also blamed tuition inflation on onerous government regulations … On society … on declining student population …

"Unlike tenured faculty, university administrations actually have grown by 369 percent since the mid-1970s. … But blaming administrators proved difficult for journalists, perhaps because administrators were the very people journalists had been going to for explanations in their tuition-outrage stories. Could their sources actually be the culprits? No way. And so, less than a year after the Inquirer's series appeared, USA Today ran its own big tuition-shock tale in which the blame was pinned on all the familiar blame-objects: Professors, student demands, technology, gummint regulation. A 1997 cover story in Time magazine—'How Colleges Are Gouging U,' the illustration shouted—barely mentioned administrators at all.

"What were journalists to do after ringing the alarm bells for so many years without effect? Well, there was one easy answer to this frustrating situation: To discover that there wasn't really any problem in the first place. That the tuition spiral was entirely reasonable, even if no one could actually explain it. How so? Well, if you examine what has come to be called the 'college wage premium'—the difference between what is earned by college grads and high school grads—it becomes clear that someone who finishes four years at a university will eventually earn far more than they spent to go there, even at the crazy tuition prices of recent decades. Today this is a universal way of considering the situation, always leading us to conclude that going to college is 'worth it'; that it is a 'bargain'; that it 'pays off.' But it only seemed to enter journalists' consciousness in the 1990s, as on the occasion when Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board, explained matters thusly to the Los Angeles Times in 1999:

"He said there has been too much focus on the cost of college and too little on the lifetime returns for four years of investment. Because a college graduate today earns about twice as much as a worker with only a high school diploma, he said, 'a college education is worth about $1 million over a lifetime.'

"The mind reels when confronted with this kind of smugness. One wonders: Is there some identifiable aspect of a college education that yields that million dollar prize—exposure to advanced literary theory, for example? Is there a way to isolate that particular 24-carat nugget and leave the dross behind—all the plush dorm carpeting and the many layers of assistant deans? My guess, though, is that Caperton's statement meant exactly the opposite of this—that there was no need to inquire any further about the tuition outrage. What it implied, by extension, was that since we now know the final value of a college degree (one million dollars!), the colleges can simply keep raising tuition prices and student indebtedness until they have extracted that amount from their graduates—and only after they have hit that figure will we have cause to complain."

</comment><comment><USER98> I suspect the same will happen to all the p2p lending startups soon

</comment><comment><USER99> This headline is misleading. 40% of borrowers "aren't making payments _or are behind_ ". Those are two entirely different categories.

</comment><comment><USER78> so how do I make money from this?

</comment><comment><USER100> Debt is the new currency.

</comment><comment><USER101> At least part of the problem, in my opinion, is that youth receive basically zero "financial education" in high school.

My girlfriend is 21 years old and just a couple of years out of high school. I can only recall being taught the basics myself: how to make a budget, balance a checkbook, etc. She apparently did not even receive that.

I'm much older than her (37) and, while I'm certainly not "rich" by any means, I'm financially stable and everything I own is completely paid for (ironically, my only remaining debt is my student loans).

She has only recently became interested in the basics of financial matters, such as her credit report and credit score, how loans and credit cards work, etc. Initially, I was amazed at her lack of knowledge in this area. It's not that she's dumb or stupid, she was just never taught _anything_ about finances. She is, fortunately, relatively mature for her age and manages her money well. She has worked since she was first able to and has maintained steady employment and, for some reason, lately acquired an interest in her credit score and increasing it (although it's actually pretty decent for her age).

So we've recently started working on her credit history which, of course, was completely non-existent until she took out a small loan from her credit union for a cheap, used vehicle (with her father as a co-signer) about a year ago. She shops at Victoria's Secret often, so we got her a store credit card from there with a small ($500) credit limit to help her started. I've explained how credit utilization, payment history, etc. factors into her score, so she'll put her purchases (always < $100 for a statement period) on her card and then pay it off in full every month and I've been looking around recently for a good "starter" credit card for her to get. I've considered adding her as an authorized user to one of my high-limit Amex cards (to give her utilization, payment history, and average age of accounts a little boost) but I've read recently that nowadays those accounts don't get reported to an AU's credit report (although AmEx does ask for SSN and DOB when adding an AU so maybe they still do).

She completed a vocational program in high school and is already a licensed cosmetologist; we've talked a bit about whether she'll go to college or not (she's already somewhat "behind", in that she didn't go straight to college after high school) but not how it will be funded if she does. If or when that time comes, I'm glad that I'll be around to help her come up with a plan that won't require her to spend the next 20 years paying for it. I can easily see how a typical 18-year-old about to go off to college just blindly signs up for student loans without any true understanding of just what they're committing to financially and without any idea of how long after they complete their education that it will continue to them.

TL;DR: I got kinda sidetracked there for a minute but my point was that today's high school students receive nearly zero financial education or guidance before heading off to college. I am not surprised at all by the facts and figures detailed in this article.

</comment><comment><USER102> Does google get you around the paywall?

<comment><USER103> Googling the article and clicking in from there does get you over the paywall

</comment></comment><comment><USER104> Blendle link:

[https://blendle.com/i/wsj-com/more-than-40-of-student- borrow...](https://blendle.com/i/wsj-com/more-than-40-of-student-borrowers- aren-t-making-payments/bnl- wsj-20160406-SB11182712333752343323104581645301231942680)

<comment><USER105> Queue Xzibit meme "I heard you like paywalls so we put a paywall in front of your paywall"

</comment></comment><comment><USER106> We really need to educate students potentially starting college that they shouldn't major in something that pretty much has no chance of ever paying it back. This applies to most liberal arts programs.

A college education is a major investment. It's sad that culturally, our financial education is this poor.

I majored in a science and had all of my debts paid off within 5 years. I have friends that majored in things like history and still haven't paid their debts off after 10 years.

The popular thing to to is blame society, the university, or even high school teachers for recommending someone go to college. But, students need to take personal responsibility for taking out a loan and being unable to pay it back.

When this happens, we will have less students making foolish decisions.

<comment><USER107> Education on the individual level just doesn't work. People are too dumb. (I had the pleasure of rereading this recently: [http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/07/stupider-than-you- real...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/07/stupider-than-you- realize.html)) Those that aren't too dumb lack personal responsibility, which is a separate problem I fully agree is pretty big, so more education might fix that, but that's sort of something you can't learn from a book, and arguably the game of chicken at teaching responsibility by making it illegal to discharge student loans in bankruptcy has just made things worse.

The solutions I think have the best shot are those that involve authoritarian decrees one way or another (that is, going full free-market or going full nationalized colleges), but that requires a government with an actual interest in governing.

<comment><USER106> "Education on the individual level just doesn't work. People are too dumb."

Honestly, If this is the case, drugs should never be fully legalized. People just can't handle the responsibility. Will addiction be the fault of the company that sold it to you?

"and arguably the game of chicken at teaching responsibility by making it illegal to discharge student loans in bankruptcy has just made things worse."

It hasn't really made things worse. If it wasn't illegal to discharge loans, students would know full well that they most likely would never have to pay it back and just declare bankruptcy when they graduated. That would be a much worse situation for our economy. On top of this, banks would never even take on these loans knowing full well that they would probably never get their money back.

The student debt problem has been bad for at least a decade. Students continue to knowingly put themselves in this position and then cry afoul when they can't pay the debt back. Lack of knowledge is no longer an excuse. Anybody with half a brain and an Internet connection can clearly see the risks (and nearly everyone now is connected to the Internet 24/7 through their phone).

I see it more as a millennial problem: the culture is to no longer take responsibilities for your own actions and blame others for all of your failures.

"full nationalized colleges"

I can't see this working out with the current climate, unless it completely ruins the intent of a university.

Fully national colleges aren't based on money any longer, they are based on making the grade. IE: if you can't pass the entrance exams, you won't get into school (as seen in pretty much any country with nationalized universities).

The system we have setup now was a response to people complaining that not everyone has a chance to go to school (back in the 50s, college was a luxury only the wealthy could afford). Now that pretty much everyone does have a chance, there are further complaints that some people made an irresponsible decision. You can't force someone to major in something that will make the ma decent living.

When I was in college, I met many people that really had no business being there (didn't care, didn't put the effort in, or just couldn't handle any of the subjects). With the dumbing down of the SATs and many other measures to make it easier to get into school not based on academics, it seems we are well on our way to ruining our institutions. The ultimate form of anti- intellectualism.

<comment><USER108> You don't even know what you're talking about. Just about every sentence you wrote has some misconception in it.

> Honestly, If this is the case, drugs should never be fully legalized. People > just can't handle the responsibility. Will addiction be the fault of the > company that sold it to you?

Clearly people can't handle that responsibility. That's why we have alcoholic and tobacco quitting programs and taxation to fund those programs along with education and educational advertising. It's done wonders to get people to quit.

> It hasn't really made things worse. If it wasn't illegal to discharge loans, > students would know full well that they most likely would never have to pay > it back and just declare bankruptcy when they graduated. That would be a > much worse situation for our economy. On top of this, banks would never even > take on these loans knowing full well that they would probably never get > their money back.

Why is that? It never hurt the economy before. Banks stop giving out loans to uneducated idiots with no care in the world and no intention or ability to be able to pay it back? Banks not giving out loans for schools that couldn't even teach a monkey to do tricks? Oh the horror!

> The student debt problem has been bad for at least a decade. Students > continue to knowingly put themselves in this position and then cry afoul > when they can't pay the debt back. Lack of knowledge is no longer an excuse. > Anybody with half a brain and an Internet connection can clearly see the > risks (and nearly everyone now is connected to the Internet 24/7 through > their phone).

A decade? You mean the exact amount of time all student (federally or otherwise) loans have been unforgivable? It's precisely why colleges no longer care to educate, and instead scam kids of every dime they have. In every angle, they get scammed, from student apartments (in my town, a shocking 2x the normal cost of a single bedroom apartment), to book stores, where you can't buy your books online with your own loan until after classes start, unless you buy them from the book store at 3 times the Amazon cost, to the classes themselves. These, by the way, are young kids who have no experience, and are told by the grownups who educate them that this is some kind of great deal for them. If course they keep getting scammed, it's a fresh batch every year!

> I see it more as a millennial problem: the culture is to no longer take > responsibilities for your own actions and blame others for all of your > failures.

It's too bad it's the 40+ year olds that have done all this scamming on their younger generation.

> I can't see this working out with the current climate, unless it completely > ruins the intent of a university.

Yes, the conservative christian climate.

> When I was in college, I met many people that really had no business being > there (didn't care, didn't put the effort in, or just couldn't handle any of > the subjects). With the dumbing down of the SATs and many other measures to > make it easier to get into school not based on academics, it seems we are > well on our way to ruining our institutions. The ultimate form of anti- > intellectualism.

This is entirely caused by the student loan situation and all the parents/teachers stressing their kids to go.

What have I told my son? that student loans are a real form of slavery, and to not take them for any reason. Either pay your own way or don't bother going. If you do go, you'll probably get ripped off unless you go for an engineering, lawyer, or doctor degree.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Silk – Interactive Generative Art - <AUTHOR> http://weavesilk.com/ <comment><USER2> It's great, but it'd be even greater if it had a gallery where you could browse through people's drawings!

<comment><USER3> A variation on that I've run across, which imo works better on mobile, is to keep a gallery, but instead of displaying it directly as a gallery, have a button in the app where you can load a random creation from the gallery "live" into the app, and then use it as a starting point to edit. An app some friends of mine made, Sketch-a-Bit, uses that in a way that I think works pretty well: <http://sketchabit.adamsmith.as/>

<comment><USER4> The idea's very much to the lines I've been thinking, and something like this will likely make its way into a future update.

And thank you for the link! Very cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4797236>

<comment><USER6> Yea, and it seems the old URLs of the drawings aren't working anymore :(.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Drawing the most artistic vaginas on the web

</comment><comment><USER8> That's incredible. I used to do a lot of work with Apophysis and I think I've been reinspired to start up again.

What's more incredible is that it runs on my rather outdated machine. I'm so used to these Javascript-HTML5 canvas projects to cause my computer to eat dirt, but this was as smooth as I could possibly have expected.

<comment><USER4> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> That probably gave me the most instant "wow" feeling any web page has ever given me. That's _really_ impressive!

</comment><comment><USER10> As someone who is just fascinated by symmetry, I could play with this forever.

<comment><USER11> _As someone who is just fascinated by symmetry_

Do you know Jane Siberry's charming song about it?

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkpg0tlcAZw>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> nice drawing effect but the copyright claims are pretty dangerous: they claim any art created with it must have a creative commons attribution license. this is total BS.

<comment><USER5> They should probably make this more obvious but other than that, I fail to see how it is total BS. If you don't like their licensing terms, don't use the product...

<comment><USER13> It's not like stuff made with the GCC has to be GPL. I'm not even sure they can enforce this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I really like this trend of mobile apps with a fully functional experience on the web. Adrift for iOS is nice example of using this approach for a trial/teaser experience. It's worth checking out the fully playable demo on the game's site at <http://www.playadrift.com/>, and the base app is free if you want to compare/contrast that to the mobile device experience. Beautifully done, IMO.

</comment><comment><USER15> The output leaves something to be desired: only 1375x918.

I imagine it could be a popular tool to generate custom desktop/device backgrounds, but the low resolution combined with incorrect aspect ratio (not 16:9, 16:10, or even 4:3) makes it unappealing for that use.

(Edit: actually based entirely off how big your window is, see child comments)

<comment><USER4> Hi itafroma,

If you go fullscreen (there's an icon for it right under New), you can export a background that's exactly the right size for your browser.

Right now the output is exactly the same size as the input, but it's a good idea to let people download cropped or scaled versions.

~ the silk creator

<comment><USER15> Ah, yeah, I just figured that out after trying to piece together why it was such a weird dimension. Standard sizes would definitely be helpful, especially since doesn't seem to take into account retina/HiDPI displays. MacBook Pro set to "Best for retina" produces a 1440x900 image.

<comment><USER4> Hmm... What browser are you using? I'm on a Retina Macbook, and just successfully saved a Retina-quality image using Chrome.

<comment><USER15> Safari 6.0.3.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Pretty awesome:)

Can't save the Thumbnail in Chrome 27.0.1448.0 dev-m though. It only allows me to copy the image and paste it somewhere (which is enough) but I thought I'd mention it in case it's a bug in Silk and not in Chrome Dev.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm thinking an API where you supply random seed nr, image size and optionally color and are returned an image. Useful for avatar creation :)

</comment><comment><USER18> Loved the site when I first came across it a few months ago, but I'm really into the new interface and color mixer. Nice job!

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if perhaps the universe was designed using an app such as this?

</comment><comment><USER20> No Google+ '+1'? :(

</comment><comment><USER21> The music just beautiful, boost my productivity :)

<comment><USER4> Thanks! It was composed for the app by Mat Jarvis, of <http://microscopics.co.uk>. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Dies on chrome for me, ouch!

<comment><USER4> Silk creator here – what version of Chrome? I haven't had a single browser crash for me during testing and development (with testing in the latest Chrome/Safari/Firefox), but I'd like to look into it.

(Edit: Also, a tip for Hacker Newsians – you can double-click the ? in the corner to hide the big app advertisement in the corner.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Cool app!

</comment><comment><USER24> crashed on chrome (latest) but cool!</comment>


The king of smokers - <AUTHOR> http://www.thomas-morris.uk/the-king-of-smokers/ <comment><USER2> > To quiet nervous rest; to soothe a ruffled temper; to favour calm and > partial thought; to steady and clear (not to cloud) a confused, overworked > brain; to counteract the effects of physical exhaustion—these are just the > things which tobacco does

Sure, tobacco is pretty bad for you in general, but all of these things are pretty much true. Do people not believe that tobacco has positive psychoactive effects or something? Kinda weird to see this put in a sarcastic light.

<comment><USER3> What they said in that day is true today. But, it is not tobacco per-se that provides the benefit. It is easy to get carried away with tobacco (with pipes, tongue bite, with cigs...addition), so it is important to respect yourself and what the substance is to gain its benefits (taste mostly for me.)

Pipe smoking should be done slowly, methodically and with full consideration of what tobacco is. The last thing I need is turning something pleasurable and calming into an addition.

In the end, tobacco is probably bad, but so is the air in most major cities in the world. :P

<comment><USER4> But the air in cities you need to breath. You don't need to breath the pipe. Minimizing risks and all...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One thing to note is that the purported health effects of smoking are almost all mental or neurological in function rather than physical. I imagine that before the modern era, where one could argue that mental disorder was far more uncommon, having tobacco to "modulate" mood and nerves would be seen as a legitimate boon to the user and society in general - especially when a person is liable to die from other physical illness than cancer (which takes a long time to develop). With reduced amount of mental illness a society can start to concentrate on the long term effects - people are more likely to get to the long term.

<comment><USER6> > One thing to note is that the purported health effects of smoking are almost > all mental or neurological in function rather than physical

How is "mental or neurological" not physical?

<comment><USER5> I meant to infer that it was a primarily psychological benefit.

<comment><USER6> well yes, derived to a large extent from altering the body chemistry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A dear friend of mine quit smoking, cold-turkey, and she went completely berserk for 3 months, with dangerous mood swings and outbursts of violence. She had previously suffered a mild depression, which now emerged as some kind of dark nightmare of rage and guilt and hatred and also self-hatred.

This is what struck me: of all the SSRIs she'd had ever tried, none had ever worked as well as tobacco. Tobacco moderated her depression and mood swings more effectively than any modern drug that her doctors had prescribed for her.

So I when I read this passage, what strikes me is how much truth there is still in this, even in the year 2016:

"its virtues rarely get a hearing, and yet the latter are many and great. To quiet nervous rest; to soothe a ruffled temper; to favour calm and partial thought; to steady and clear (not to cloud) a confused, overworked brain; "

<comment><USER8> Tobacco contains MAOIs. This is why many smokers don't find vaping to give the same buzz. Also MAOIs are prescribed as anti-depressants.

<comment><USER7> Thank you for explaining why tobacco has such a powerful effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The "clever calculator" mentioned in the post is perhaps a bit less clever than suggested.

500,000 quarts of beer, spread evenly over an 80-year drinking career, still amounts to 34 pints per day. However great his appetites, I'm a bit skeptical of that number.

<comment><USER10> There must be an order of magnitude error there, possibly an extra zero in the printed number.

The smoking of four tons looks feasible, for sixty years at about 180g/day (enough tobacco for 9 packs of cigarettes, but used in pipes ).

<comment><USER9> An extra zero seems plausible. 3 to 5 pints of (likely weak) beer daily isn't out of the question.

<comment><USER11> I thought also that back in the olden days beer was preferable to water because it wasn't contaminated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Thanks partly to the anti-smoking campaign, I was expecting to see an article on the cooking equipment, not cigarette smokers.

</comment><comment><USER13> > _[tobacco 's] virtues rarely get a hearing, and yet the latter are many and > great. To quiet nervous rest; to soothe a ruffled temper; to favour calm and > partial thought; to steady and clear (not to cloud) a confused, overworked > brain; to counteract the effects of physical exhaustion_

Taking this at face value, I wonder what impact such a drug could have on the productivity of a workforce, especially programmers.

I also wonder what has replaced it as the fraction of the smoking population declined over the last four or five decades.

<comment><USER14> Note that the listed "virtues" are, in large part, descriptions of the relief of nervousness, irritability, and lack of focus resulting from _nicotine cravings_ in nicotine addicts.

Addicts to _many_ drugs experience similar relief when they consume the drug to which they are addicted.

<comment><USER2> Have you ever smoked tobacco? This isn't really true. Tobacco really does have psychoactive effects even before you are addicted. Yes, all things considered, tobacco is basically evil and should be replaced with something else, but it's not like people are just making shit up about how good it feels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does smoking (or smelling like smoke) keep mosquitoes away? I'm wondering if some second-order effect, like malaria prevention, led doctors back then to think that smoking was healthy.

<comment><USER16> No, it doesn't. Back when I smoked I would blow smoke at them and they would just duck and find a different direction to attack.

<comment><USER17> Works better when you blow the direct draw and not post inhale absorption. Still, its a waste and just drives them crazy so doubles the annoyance.

I don't think the nicotine in a drag is high enough to do much. From what I remember, much higher concentrations were or are used in ant killer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> At least died happy :)

</comment><comment><USER19> What was his cause of death?!

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady I wonder how much the current 'marijuana is good for you' attitude resembles the 'smoking is good for you' attitude in the past?

NB: I think all drugs should be legalised so this isn't an anti-drugs post.

<comment><USER20> Don't most of the people espousing that attitude acknowledge that the smoking part has negative consequences? Hence vaping and edibles and such?

<comment> k-mcgrady I actually expanded upon my comment to cover that and it didn't post. Smoking it we can all agree isn't good for our lungs. However I wonder about the long term mental impact on regular users. The only ones I've known (and we're talking a couple of people so not a big sample) regularly lose focus and zone out when I talked to them (and they were sober). We look at cigarettes and alcohol as indulgences. We know they cause damage so we make a choice to accept that or enjoy them occasionally. Marijuana talk tends to be focussed around health benefits still and at one time this was the same for alcohol and cigarettes. For example we don't look at daily marijuana users the same way we would alcohol users.

<comment><USER21> I've had the same observation, that the people I know who smoke pot always seem to have that typical dunceness about them. But then I've wondered if the cause and effect is reversed -- maybe it is people who already have these cognitive attributes are more likely to be predisposed to smoking pot?

<comment><USER22> _> that the people I know who smoke pot..._

You should re-phrase this as: "the people I know who publicly advertise the fact that they smoke pot".

In my experience, there are a lot of marijuana users who are otherwise extremely normal people (and even sometimes on the exceptional end of normal). But given the legal status of marijuana, an ambitious middle-aged professional with a young family who also smokes a couple times a month is unlikely to publicly advertise the fact.

Because you (presumably) don't smoke, those people are extremely unlikely to confide in you about this particular subject.

<comment><USER21> Yes, that is what I really meant. My experience is from watching my significant other's kids and their friends (all in their early twenties by now, but were teens when they started). So the age could have something to do with it too. And every once in awhile I run across someone who does mention occasional pot usage, but they seem normal. In those cases their use is infrequent. In the case of the teenagers / early 20's mentioned above, I think a big part of it is heavy usage while their brains were still developing. It seems that usage during those critical years can put a "pause" button on development, so once they got off pot they were 25-year-olds that behaved in many ways like a 15-year-old.

A good counter example is someone I know who didn't start until around age 25, only indulges occasionally (so it isn't an addiction), and has very high cognitive ability (currently making 6 figures in the financial industry).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> smoking is the most deadly thing that ever happened in humanity</comment>