Hapgood

There’s a great article in The Atlantic on student debt, and it’s well worth a read. But it makes what I believe is a common mistake on student loan debt. Check out this paragraph…  When teenagers are forced to take out loans in order to pay for their education — the median graduate leaves school $12,800… Continue reading

Part of the thing I like about this is it shows that it’s really not very hard. Start with this: what are the actual figures? What was actually counted? Do the figures even make sense? You, too, can take the three minutes it takes before re-pinning or re-sharing the latest piece of idiocy… Continue reading

From here: The amount of student loans taken out last year crossed the $100 billion mark for the first time and total loans outstanding will exceed $1 trillion for the first time this year. Americans now owe more on student loans than on credit cards, reports the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the U.S. Department… Continue reading

(Ha, you thought I was going with the Brooks movie or Sierra Madre, right?) Because this seems as good a place as any to note it, I think one person who doesn’t get credit enough on learning badges is Roger Schank. When I went to work for his company in 2000, he’d already been talking… Continue reading

I found this surprising (emphasis mine): The average outstanding student loan balance per borrower is $23,300. Again, there is substantial heterogeneity in balances of individual borrowers. The median balance of $12,800 is roughly half the average level, which indicates that a small fraction of people have balances significantly higher than the median. About one-quarter of… Continue reading

The new Chronicle College Completion Site may be met with groans from people who think the wrong metrics have been chosen or that necessary detail has been omitted, but I think it’s wonderful. Sure, I’m not sure that cost per degree should be the central figure in the debate. I think cost per degree probably does… Continue reading

Regular readers will know I geek out about this stuff — the way different metrics within an industry can give radically different pictures of what is going on.  And so, with the recent focus on completion and attainment rates, it’s helpful to note that one does not imply the other. Here’s Arthur Hauptman on the subject: In… Continue reading

I was looking at an older NY Times article about student debt, and noted this paragraph: The report found that student debt loads vary substantially from state to state: New Hampshire students topped the list, owing an average of $31,048, while Utah’s students averaged half that. Students borrow more in the Northeast and Midwest, where… Continue reading

What follows is an example COMPARABLE analysis of the beginning of an article. You’ll notice that although the comparison in the article is really just a comparison between last year’s debt and this year’s debt it is sort of a structured examination of the number used and its implications. The COMPARABLE framework is the framework… Continue reading

Today I came across this on the web: why is everyone quitting gluten now? There are a number of very valid reasons for the growing number of people having to pass on the pizza. The short form: gluten is a poison (see below). We tolerate it, and tolerate it, like cigarettes in the lungs. And… Continue reading