Student loans could help avert U.S. airline pilot shortage: union head

Acrofox said:
If you play the game of higher education, you're capitulating to a broken system and contributing materially to the problem. You're putting self-interested pragmatism over wide-scale ideological rationality on the promise of possible individual long-term gains, and by doing so you're fostering the growth of abuse inherent (and easily observed) in such a system.

You're playing the lottery on borrowed money.

This is the axe corporatism holds over your neck. This is the reason that people capitulate to economic slavery. People dig holes that society instructs them to build, climb in, and keep digging, with the promise of eventual extrication. This allows the massive and increasing separation and segregation between strata in a classful society, and it fosters a pit of discontent.

You are giving your money to the rich, and the flow of money to the rich passes through a check valve.

Bernie 2016. ;p

-Fox
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If you dig long, and hard, and keep on digging, eventually you'll get to China and no longer be in a hole! See? The system works!?... :(
 
Acrofox said:
(Lots of interesting stuff)
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Fox, I think a lot of what you've written here is pretty thought-provoking. There's one thing I'm unclear on, though: are you suggesting that the only morally correct course of action regarding the current state of affairs is to refuse to attend college no matter what the circumstances (no tuition charged, interest in an experimental field that's only really possible to learn about in a big college, etc)?

And, a bit more directly on topic: if there truly is a pilot shortage, encouraging cash-strapped beginners to take out large loans may not be the answer - at least, not unless there's a large pay hike across the board at entry-level jobs. And that seems unlikely. So...
 
I couldn't NOT attend college.

Otherwise I'd have been just yet another "economically disadvantaged" minority kid from a small town in California with big dreams and no pedigree.

I hate having to say that but that's honestly the way I feel.

My folks taught me if you're going to get into a fist fight to break into a profession, you'd better bring a forward air controller and an orbiting A-10 and be armed to the hilt.
 
Derg said:
My folks taught me if you're going to get into a fist fight to break into a profession, you'd better bring a forward air controller and an orbiting A-10 and be armed to the hilt.
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That was my job with relation to having your back in college......ironically. Especially when you liked to speak your mind to the locals on the weekend :)
 
MikeD said:
That was my job with relation to having your back in college......ironically. Especially when you liked to speak your mind to the locals on the weekend :)
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Thanks bro!

"Hey! Let's go down to The Bird Cage and rattle the locals"

"Nope"
 
More money thrown at a problem does not result in lower costs. Look at education, housing, medicine. In all three cases the government stepped in to make things "more accessible" but in the process succeeded in driving up costs. It's simple economics. Things have gotten so silly with colleges that they compete for student loan money by providing water parks and indoor recreation areas, things that do little to enhance education.
 
Nothing new here. Pimps can't find anymore prostitutes. Calling out the traffickers.

Welcome to America! Sex, lies, and debt. "Three strikes and you're out."

Or is that "three stripes and you're out."
 
KLB said:
A lot of the pressures to attend college comes from parents. Part of the American "dream" is for ones child to do better/have it better than they have it. Most parents think that a college education is the pathway to achieving that. It's been past down from generation to generation.

Out of all of my friends from college, I'm one of the few who's actually applying the education I received towards my career. My college roommate, a geology major, is a security guard at a mall. Another one of my buddies, a computer science major, got his girlfriend pregnant after graduating and couldn't find work. He ended up enlisting in the army. He now runs his father's janitorial cleaning service. And then there's another friend of mine, a graphic design major, who is currently picking up additional education in ministry. He never seemed like the type that he was very religious. But pastors make a decent living I guess...
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Which is why the goal of college should be to become educated, not to get vocational training. Being educated is a goal in itself. If you learn how to think and learn, you can be taught most any job.

We also need an educated populace for our government to work. So all these people who just go through college to get the paper and don't actually become educated are hurting themselves and society. That's how you end up with Donald Trump leading in the early election.
 
Derg said:
I couldn't NOT attend college.

Otherwise I'd have been just yet another "economically disadvantaged" minority kid from a small town in California with big dreams and no pedigree.

I hate having to say that but that's honestly the way I feel.

My folks taught me if you're going to get into a fist fight to break into a profession, you'd better bring a forward air controller and an orbiting A-10 and be armed to the hilt.
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Yep. My parents were the same way.
PhilosopherPilot said:
Which is why the goal of college should be to become educated, not to get vocational training. Being educated is a goal in itself. If you learn how to think and learn, you can be taught most any job.

We also need an educated populace for our government to work. So all these people who just go through college to get the paper and don't actually become educated are hurting themselves and society. That's how you end up with Donald Trump leading in the early election.
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I wouldn't say that they aren't educated leaving college. The buddy mentioned above with the computer science degree graduated summa cum laud. The jobs just weren't there in his field.

We have been told since we were young that a college education is an investment. And then we get to the end of the rainbow and there is no pot of gold. There is only debt.

I have another friend from high school who was also a pretty intelligent guy (a darn near virtuoso musician also) that recognized that college wasn't exactly the way he wanted to go. He decided to get an associates degree in welding and machining from a junior college. He now works for the city and does gigs on the side. He's likely making more than most college graduates with bachelor's degrees.
 
"neither a borrower nor a lender be"

Massive, wholesale indebtedness is the linchpin of the modern system of repression. It's basically the replacement for feudalism. And if you think the opportunities for indebtedness are going to diminish, you're mad as a drunk dog. Babies will be signing promissory notes for post-natal care before too long.
 
KLB said:
So you were the muscle? :)
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When Doug is telling me "them's odds are good!!" after I'm telling him that the 8 angry rednecks he and I are currently facing is only becoming worse because of his insistance on poking the bear more, then someone has had a bit too much to drink. It then becomes mental math on how much damage we can collectively do to cover ourselves as I hustle his ass outta there.
 
Derg said:
I couldn't NOT attend college.

Otherwise I'd have been just yet another "economically disadvantaged" minority kid from a small town in California with big dreams and no pedigree.
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Yes, this. I don't think you and I have identical backgrounds, but they are similar enough for attending college to have been be the clear path forward for me, too. (Quite aside from the fact that I wanted to gain knowledge for its own sake and was aware of the short- and long-term consequences of that, per @PhilosopherPilot above.)
 
I worked, a lot, so that I could survive and try not to take student loans out, I wasn't successful, but it could be worse.

If tuition had remained where it was when I started school I would have been golden but instead everything increased by 400 percent in the time I was there... It's almost like they said "hey, these crooked textbook companies are making a fortune! We should screw over our students this bad"

Oh well, here I am.
 
MikeD said:
When Doug is telling me "them's odds are good!!" after I'm telling him that the 8 angry rednecks he and I are currently facing is only becoming worse because of his insistance on poking the bear more, then someone has had a bit too much to drink. It then becomes mental math on how much damage we can collectively do to cover ourselves as I hustle his ass outta there.
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That sounds like one of those stories that makes your stomach hurt from laughing so hard.
 
Ruck said:
There's one thing I'm unclear on, though: are you suggesting that the only morally correct course of action regarding the current state of affairs is to refuse to attend college no matter what the circumstances (no tuition charged, interest in an experimental field that's only really possible to learn about in a big college, etc)?
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No, and I wouldn't ever suggest that there was an absolute morality.

From there, the road gets twisty.

-Fox
 
Murdoughnut said:
Against my explicit advice, a former student of mine took out loans in excess of $200k to pursue her dream of being a vet at a Caribbean vet school that charges quite a bit more because none of their students could get in anywhere else. Now she's on Facebook complaining about crippling student loans and what the government needs to do to forgive them.

Each day I get a bit closer to quitting the Internet.
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Heh. My best friend is a vet. He's considering a teaching position down there. But he graduated from vet school at Texas A&M. :)
 
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