professional college students accrue massive debts (1 Viewer)

[cosmo kramer]

why the fuck do we have to pay for these bludging goat fuckers

As the total cost of the university loans scheme balloons to more than $20 billion, the most expensive university student has racked up an astonishing $384,957 debt - enough to buy an inner-city apartment or fund more than six undergraduate degrees in medicine or dentistry.
Confidential documents obtained under Freedom of Information reveal other "professional" students have accrued debts of $264,677, $183,437, $178,332, $177,332 and $175,805. Twenty students have each racked up debts of $161,162 or more, leading to claims they are clogging up campuses and have no intention of repaying taxpayers.
Education experts want the Gillard Government to "cap" the size of university loans to stop students from going from one degree to another.

The average debt under the Higher Education Loan Program, introduced in 1989, is $13,288, with male students averaging $14,316 and female students $12,597, according to data from the Tax Office.
But the system has also been costly for taxpayers, with $4 billion "written off" while a further $400 million to $500 million is listed as "doubtful".
Former Prime Minister John Howard introduced a seven-year "cap" on how long an individual could study through the HELP scheme, which allows students to defer paying for study until they are earning $45,000 a year.
But the Gillard Government, undertaking an inquiry into the costs of university study, plans to abolish the seven-year cap from next year.
It is understood some students have been at university for more than 15 years taking advantage of the scheme.
Education experts last night called on the Government to tighten up the loans scheme to prevent debt blow-outs.
"It's not the responsibility of taxpayers to underwrite the lifestyle of professional students who want to spend the bulk of their adult life swanning around university campus," the Institute of Public Affairs' Tony Barry said.
Coalition spokesman Brett Mason said: "With hundreds of millions of dollars at risk of non-payment, the Government should be doing more to ensure taxpayers are not being taken for a ride and that as much of the outstanding debt as possible is recovered"

i wish the education uber alles crowd would go fuck themselves

 

[murphyad]

Wankers.

This mass of unpaid debt exposes the downside of our supposedly 'world's best practice' HECS/HELP regime. In my mind a superior system would involve regular banks making student loans, with government removed altogether. These student loans would be made on the basis of whatever credit history the student has, with fixed terms and punitive interest rates in the case of non-payment. This system would then permit for the forcible repayment of loans through repossession, declaration of bankruptcy etc. Obviously this is a very skeletal suggestion for an alternative model but perhaps it could work.

 

[cosmo kramer]

murphy; explain to me how HECS works please i have no experience with it

also what also interests me is this: how low do college standards go in this country

like what unis accept the lowest grades/test scores and how retarded can college students reasonably get

in orange an hour and a half from dubbo theres a charles sturt college which seems to be filled with dropkicks

 

[murphyad]

murphy; explain to me how HECS works please i have no experience with it

HECS is for students whose educations are subsidised by the government (a.k.a. Cth Supported Places). It allows the student to defer their own contributions (roughly 1/3-1/2 of total) until they make forty-something thousand dollars a year, at which time they are automatically deducted from the student's salary at a few percent per year. HELP is basically just student loans for people ineligible for HECS (internationals/older full-fee paying students) with low or zero percent interest rates. As far as HELP repayments go, I'm not sure of the specifics as I've never needed one, but apparently you can dodge payments by leaving the country, creative accounting etc. Together, HECS and HELP comprise the student finance system.

also what also interests me is this: how low do college standards go in this country

like what unis accept the lowest grades/test scores and how retarded can college students reasonably get

in orange an hour and a half from dubbo theres a charles sturt college which seems to be filled with dropkicks

A business degree at Newcastle University has an ATAR cutoff of about 52 which is the lowest for any degree in the state. Arts is 50-something as well I'm pretty sure. Unsurprisingly you get some serious dumb fucks coming to class (or rather, skipping all their classes because they are so fucking dumb), but due to the unis themselves being 2nd/3rd tier the students somehow graduate and thus devalue the qualification for the rest of us.

 

[Bored Of Fail 2]

HECS is for students whose educations are subsidised by the government (a.k.a. Cth Supported Places). It allows the student to defer their own contributions (roughly 1/3-1/2 of total) until they make forty-something thousand dollars a year, at which time they are automatically deducted from the student's salary at a few percent per year. HELP is basically just student loans for people ineligible for HECS (internationals/older full-fee paying students) with low or zero percent interest rates. As far as HELP repayments go, I'm not sure of the specifics as I've never needed one, but apparently you can dodge payments by leaving the country, creative accounting etc. Together, HECS and HELP comprise the student finance system.



A business degree at Newcastle University has an ATAR cutoff of about 52 which is the lowest for any degree in the state. Arts is 50-something as well I'm pretty sure. Unsurprisingly you get some serious dumb fucks coming to class (or rather, skipping all their classes because they are so fucking dumb), but due to the unis themselves being 2nd/3rd tier the students somehow graduate and thus devalue the qualification for the rest of us.

to be honest arts degrees are not worth that much in the first place

 

[cosmo kramer]

better to have an arts degree than no arts degree tho

this is prob not because there is something intrinsically valuable to what is taught in an arts degree but that the arts degree itself indicates to an employer that the person who has it is not that retarded/lazy (though this indication is obviously becoming murkier and murkier) so said person is more likely to get a decent job and earn more

he doesnt earn more because he applies his mad knowledge about chief nunganunga from the fuckin tribe up north brah to his job answering telephones or whatever the fuck jobs arts majors even get

 

[Bored Of Fail 2]

90% of all arts students are just doing it to further delay getting a job and doing some work.

I will bet you that the majority of those people with huge HECS debts do arts or law , or some other easy as degree. They just want to go to uni their whole life, not turn up to lectures and continue to fail and be on centrelinks payroll

 

[cosmo kramer]

yeah a good lot of college students are just partiers who just want to fuck around and avoid getting a job as long as humanely possible

that is def. true i have had my experiences with a lot like that