Is Japan Falling Behind in Science and Technology Innovation?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the challenges of student loan debt in the United States, particularly focusing on the implications of borrowing for higher education, the repayment process, and the socioeconomic factors influencing these issues. Participants explore various aspects of student loans, including the types of loans available, the duration of repayment, and the impact of educational choices on financial outcomes.

Discussion Character

  • Debate/contested
  • Technical explanation
  • Conceptual clarification

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants express concern about the difficulty of repaying student loans, noting that it can take five to ten years to pay off an average loan, depending on the individual's financial situation and job prospects.
  • There is a suggestion that most students do not borrow from banks, as government loans are more common and typically have lower interest rates.
  • Participants discuss the rising costs of higher education in the U.S. and how this has led to increased borrowing, with some questioning why this issue persists despite the U.S. having a large economy.
  • Some participants highlight that choosing a degree with uncertain job prospects can lead to financial struggles, with anecdotal evidence of individuals working in low-paying jobs despite having degrees.
  • There is a debate about the level of government investment in higher education compared to other countries, with differing views on the effectiveness of U.S. educational funding.
  • Concerns are raised about socioeconomic disparities in the U.S., including access to clean water in certain areas, which some participants find surprising and troubling.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants do not reach a consensus on the effectiveness of U.S. higher education funding or the implications of student loan debt. Multiple competing views are presented regarding the sources of student loans, the repayment process, and the socioeconomic conditions affecting education and employment.

Contextual Notes

Some statements rely on personal experiences and anecdotal evidence, which may not represent broader trends. There are also unresolved questions about the definitions and metrics used to discuss educational funding and economic comparisons between countries.

Grands
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I learned form internet that in the US students ask money from banks to study what they want.
My question is, how many student in percentage do this and have debts to pay after university ?
How easy is to pay back the money they asked ?
There are universities that doesn't worth money?

Thanks.
 
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Grands said:
How easy is to pay back the money they asked ?

Heck hard. But if they get a good job/scholarship they might not have trouble in the future with debts.

Grands said:
There are universities that doesn't worth money?
Probably not, unless you get a scholarship.
 
ISamson said:
Heck
What means heck?
 
Point of clarification: most students do not ask banks for loans. Banks are predatory and if you get a student loan from a bank, you are asking for trouble. Most people get their loan from the government (both state and federal) I had loans from PHEAA and FAFSA. They take about five to ten years to pay off if you have an average loan and pay it off aggressively. The government loans have much lower interest and allow you to pay over much longer, but it's always best to pay as early as possible.
 
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This Forbes article has some statistics on student loan debt. It's a big problem in the US. Many students take out loans without understanding how difficult it will be to pay them back later.
 
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newjerseyrunner said:
They take about five to ten years to pay off if you have an average loan and pay it off aggressively.
Almost ten years? Are you 100% sure?
It's a lot of time...

phyzguy said:
It's a big problem in the US
Why there is this problem if US has the greatest economy of the world?

What if a person choose a degree that can't assure a high payed job?
 
Grands said:
Almost ten years? Are you 100% sure?
It's a lot of time...
My wife, a teacher, is 7 years out of college and still has about half her student loans to pay off.
 
Usually how much high is the student loan, considering also the interests ?
 
  • #10
Grands said:
Usually how much high is the student loan, considering also the interests ?
Depends on the school and student need. Some schools cost significantly more than others. Some students get scholarships and request loans to pay for what's left.
 
  • #11
Ok, I noticed some of the schools are very expensive, like Harvard, but there is a range of the loan? Which is the lowest and which the highest ?
 
  • #12
Grands said:
Why there is this problem if US has the greatest economy of the world?

The US has the largest economy in the world. In recent years this has not translated into a better standard of living for most people in the US. Without making any value judgements, I think I can state that the US does much less to subsidize the cost of higher education than most developed countries. And the cost of higher education is rising much faster than peoples' wages. See the graph below from this Wikipedia page. So students are caught in the middle and have turned to borrowing to make up the difference.

U.S._Change_in_real_income_versus_selected_goods_and_services_v1.png
 

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  • #13
Grands said:
Almost ten years? Are you 100% sure?
I graduated when I was 21, and I celebrated paying off my final loan when I was 28. I got a job about 6 months out of school in my field and double payed as much as I could. Ten years in probably on the lower end of average.

Grands said:
Why there is this problem if US has the greatest economy of the world?
Biggest. The problem is that most of the wealth is concentrated in the top less than a percent of the population. We also have parts of the country that live in third world conditions, clean water is hard to come by in certain parts of the country.

Grands said:
What if a person choose a degree that can't assure a high payed job?
They work at Starbucks. Even STEM doesn't assure you a job right away anymore. I was out for six months before I got my first job, and my first job's wage was barely livable.
 
  • #14
phyzguy said:
I think I can state that the US does much less to subsidize the cost of higher education than most developed countries.
I don't think it's true, Italy invest only 4% of the PIL while USA 5% or more, and USA have a greater PIL than Italy.

newjerseyrunner said:
Biggest. The problem is that most of the wealth is concentrated in the top less than a percent of the population. We also have parts of the country that live in third world conditions, clean water is hard to come by in certain parts of the country.
From films USA seems to be such a great country, because there are a lots of cool companies like Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Facebook, Twitter etc...
There is also hollywood, taxes are very low compared to the european one, I saw that in the US an engineer can earn 100.000 dollars per year, which is 3 times bigger than an italian salary, that is around ( 24.000 euros)

newjerseyrunner said:
They work at Starbucks.
Starbucks can't be a solution, I don't think that people who work for Starbucks get more money.

newjerseyrunner said:
Even STEM doesn't assure you a job right away anymore.
It is true?
newjerseyrunner said:
I was out for six months before I got my first job, and my first job's wage was barely livable.
Which major do you have?
 
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  • #15
newjerseyrunner said:
We also have parts of the country that live in third world conditions, clean water is hard to come by in certain parts of the country.
WHAT??!?
In the USA there are people that have no water?
 
  • #16
Grands said:
From films USA seems to be such a great country, because there are a lots of cool companies like Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Facebook, Twitter etc...
But only a handful of people share the profits of those companies and lots of the profits don't get invested back into the community, they get sent to offshore tax havens. The majority of the country has a thriving economy, the middle class is still one of the most well-off in the world. But the difference between the poor and the rich is one of the widest in the world.

Grands said:
There is also hollywood, taxes are very low compared to the european one, I saw that in the US an engineer can earn 100.000 dollars per year, which is 3 times bigger than an italian salary, that is around ( 24.000 euros)
Taxes are low, but that also means a lot less public services. We have to buy our own medical insurance (or have it provided by an insurer.) That costs an additional thousands of dollars every year. We also tend to squander our taxes on big companies. Walmart for example is responsible for several billion dollars of wasted tax money every year. They pay their employees low enough that they qualify for welfare. This takes the financial strain off of the big companies since they're not required to pay their employees livable wages and force the taxpayers to pick up the rest. Massive loopholes also allow companies like Apple and General Electric to pay negative taxes and actually make money off of the government, again at the expense of the middle class.

Grands said:
Starbucks can't be a solution, I don't think that people who work for Starbucks get more money.
They don't. It's a time killer while you search for a real job.

Grands said:
Which major do you have?
General Software engineering.

Grands said:
WHAT??!?
In the USA there are people that have no water?
Yes, it's quite outrageous. When it came to light in the media, there was a lot of outrage. This crisis is still on-going in poorer parts of the city.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisisRemember that we are a gigantic country. We have people in extremely isolated regions. I'm not sure it's possible to have a country with 300 million people without major problems like these. Capitalism requires a lot of these things in order to function. Some people also want to live in isolated areas without infrastructure.
 
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  • #17
Grands said:
I don't think it's true, Italy invest only 4% of the PIL while USA 5% or more, and USA have a greater PIL than Italy.

What are you talking about here? Where did you get those numbers? What is PIL, anyway? When you say the USA invests 5% of PIL in higher education, what do you mean? The US government? The total amount spent on higher education? Or what?
 
  • #18
phyzguy said:
What are you talking about here? Where did you get those numbers? What is PIL, anyway? When you say the USA invests 5% of PIL in higher education, what do you mean? The US government? The total amount spent on higher education? Or what?
Sorry, I wanted to say GDP, in italy we call it PIL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
 
  • #19
  • #20
I get them on internet, you can find that numbers here http://data.uis.unesco.org/?queryid=181, and also in others websites.
Italy invest 4% of GDP while US more then 5%, plus the GDP of the US is 18 times bigger.
 
  • #21
newjerseyrunner said:
We also have parts of the country that live in third world conditions,
Really? Which parts are you talking about?
newjerseyrunner said:
clean water is hard to come by in certain parts of the country.
Which parts of the country, other than Flint, MI, are you talking about? And the problems with the water supply isn't a matter of poverty, but of corrupt/incompetent local government agencies.
 
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  • #22
Mark44 said:
Which parts of the country, other than Flint, MI, are you talking about? And the problems with the water supply isn't a matter of poverty, but of corrupt/incompetent local government agencies.
I'm not sure if it' the same in the US, but here in Canada many First Nations reserves lack access to clean drinkable water, for the exact reason you mention.
 
  • #23
No nation of the world gives free drinkable water to people.
 
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  • #24
Grands said:
No nation of the work dive free drinkable water to people.
Your translation skills need some work. Are you trying to say "No nation of the world gives free drinkable water to people"?
 
  • #25
Mark44 said:
Your translation skills need some work. Are you trying to say "No nation of the world gives free drinkable water to people"?
Yes, sorry, it was the T9 that is not in english and sometimes change words.
I wanted to say that there is no country in this world that gives to the people free drinkable water, everyone have to buy it from shop.
 
  • #26
newjerseyrunner said:
We also have parts of the country that live in third world conditions, clean water is hard to come by in certain parts of the country.
This is vastly overstated.
Even STEM doesn't assure you a job right away anymore. I was out for six months before I got my first job, and my first job's wage was barely livable.
This is slightly overstated as a general condition, though it may result from conditions during our emergence from the Great Recession and is field specific even within STEM. But a large fraction - probably most - are already above the median US salary with their very first job and unemployment rates tend to be lower than the national average.

Non-STEM specific stats for 25-29 year olds: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/pdf/coe_sbc.pdf
 
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  • #27
newjerseyrunner said:
We also have parts of the country that live in third world conditions, clean water is hard to come by in certain parts of the country.

Grands said:
WHAT??!?
In the USA there are people that have no water?

russ_watters said:
This is vastly overstated.

Just to clear things up with actual numbers, according to washwatch.org, 99.2% of people living in the U.S. have access to "at least basic" water (essentially water from a source that's very likely to be clean and sanitary).
 
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  • #28
Drakkith said:
Just to clear things up with actual numbers, according to washwatch.org, 99.2% of people living in the U.S. have access to "at least basic" water (essentially water from a source that's very likely to be clean and sanitary).

So which is the problem?
 
  • #29
Grands said:
Yes, sorry, it was the T9 that is not in english and sometimes change words.
:ok:... that could explain some things.
 
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  • #30
I got a student loan from the government. I spent it all so I loaned money from this website that only gives loans to students :(
 

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