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Computers aren't just doing hard math problems and showing us cat videos. Increasingly, they judge our character. Maybe we should be grateful.
A company in Palo Alto, Calif., called Upstart has over the last 15 months lent $135 million to people with mostly negligible credit ratings. Typically, they are recent graduates without mortgages, car payments or credit card settlements.
Those are among the things that normally earn a good or bad credit score, but these people haven't been in the working world that long. So Upstart looks at their SAT scores, what colleges they attended, their majors and their grade-point averages. As much as job prospects, the company is assessing personality.
The idea, validated by data, is that people who did things like double-checking the homework or studying extra in case there was a pop quiz are thorough and likely to honor their debts.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/using-algorithms-to-determine-character/
[Other Companies Involved With Similar Programs]: ZestFinance , Workday
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Monday July 27 2015, @11:28PM
A few things. First, I'm in total agreement that GP should feel ashamed about what they've done. GP received an education in exchange for a loan that must be repaid. Those were the terms and conditions; they must be honored unless GP can point out if they were lied to or coerced. I don't think either of those is the case, not in a strict sense anyway.
That being said, I'm not seeing an innocent party here. I think all the actors and factors involved from student loan sharks, skyrocketing tuition, an education arms race, the transformation of institutions of higher learning into vocational schools, degrees becoming participation trophies, destruction of primary and secondary education, stagnation of real wages, etc—and finally GP's poor choice to participate in this system—are indicitive of a broken system.
Don't get me wrong. Bad on GP. The larger problem is that the systematic dysfunction will blow up in our faces sooner or later. The only “out” I see is if 300 million people wake up tomorrow and realize that, for example, if you hold a degree but can't perform basic algebra, the degree isn't even worth the paper it's printed on. (No exaggeration here. I've seen it myself. When I see this phenomenon, I often wish there were some kind of process I could use to not only revoke the person's degree but revoke their high school diploma. I'm not even talking about “millennials” here or the inevitabilities of advanced age.)
How long until one needs to hold a master's degree or doctorate to work a minimum wage job? Where does the arms race go from there? Baristas who are doctorates in 5 or 10 subject areas and just starting out in the world at age 35 and 6 figures of debt? It sounds absurd, but that's where we're headed. There's always the Flynn effect, but I find it hard to believe these future baristas will all be genuine polymaths.
We keep hearing about how actual trades like HVAC, plumbing, and construction are in increasing demand. Why not push kids into those trades? Furnaces break down, pipes leak, and buildings need to get built. Plus, as a homeowner, practical handyman/woman skills are invaluable. But nope, everyone has this insane belief in the almighty degree as the only acceptable gateway into a career. Well, one reason not to depends on how soon one thinks those jobs will be automated. I've thought about going back to driving big truck many times myself, but the writing's on the wall wrt automated trucks. Better to stay in a field where I might wind up as one of those ephemeral “robot technicians” we're all supposed to retrain as in 10–20 years.
If I were a teenager in the USA today, I'd seriously be looking at studying abroad. Germany would be my first choice. I might still do that if one doesn't have to be a recent high school graduate to get the free ride (although through the years I've gone from almost fluent to the point I don't know how I'd survive until it came back to me). Is free higher education sustainable or a good idea, or is it simply fuel for the education arms race? Then again, Germany has a quite sensible approach imho to schooling: they recognize that higher education is not for everyone. Not everyone will make a good nuclear physicist or robot technician, but perhaps that person would make a good plumber or construction worker. We'll have to watch to find out.
Another possibility that's been put forth is that instead of paying universities up front with a loan, perhaps enter into an arrangement where the university gets x% of your income for the first 10 years of your career. Under that arrangement, however, I'd expect even being accepted into a program for something like teacher or biologist or physicist would require passing an insanely high bar. They'd probably hand out finance degrees like hotcakes. So, perhaps this isn't a much better model for funding higher education.
The only real solution that would ever see the light of day in the USA would be to outlaw student loans. However, that has perils of its own. It would turn university budgets on their heads. In the long run it might work out, but expect at least a decade of chaos to trim the bureaucracy. I don't know if I could rightly predict how it would play out exactly short of universities becoming ghost towns for a while. I can see an uptick in scholarships available for the truly talented potential student, but generational wealth may end up rearing its ugly head. Anybody who wants to take a stab at this scenario, post away! Don't be shy!
My point is the student loan system is inherently unsustainable. It's a tragedy of the commons and also the logical conclusion of a system that encourages young people who simply don't have the life experience to make a rational choice to go into tens of thousands of dollars of debt in exchange for a promise that the university has no way to deliver.
Go on about personal responsibility all you want and I'll pretty much agree, but you can't get blood out of a turnip. Ideology, meet reality.
(One final comment is that in the long run, while I'm not entirely sure I exactly believe in the religion of the Singularity, and I'm not exactly sure the next act in the history of humanity isn't another dark age, barring collapse or self-destruction, the vast majority of us will be freeloaders whether we like it or not—or dead.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @12:08AM
GP here. I moved to a country in the developing world where at a full-time job I make about $800 a month. That's a middle-class life here, and with this money I am supposed to support my wife and children. The lowest that the student loan authority was willing to lower my monthly payments to was $500/month, in spite of repeated pleading that I wished to honor my obligations, but I could only do so with the means I had. No, sorry, I'm not going to feel ashamed. Would you choose a gigantic, impersonal bank over your family in such a case?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday July 28 2015, @10:55AM
I would differ with you here. What moral obligation is there when children in the United States have college and student loans marketed to them from an early age? In my case, they started in earnest in the 4th Grade, and that was 30 years ago. I recall distinctly them throwing sops to "getting scholarships to pay for college!!" only to find that when it came time to apply for those scholarships for matriculating at a university that charged $30K/yr that 90% of them were for minorities or special classifications which did not apply to me, and that 100% of them were for, say, $1000. So, let one high school graduate be incredibly awesome and win 30 of those $1K scholarships to pay for *one* year of college? Anyway college and student loans were universally, relentlessly marketed to me with the understanding that a college degree from a respected university was the key to a successful future!
Fast forward a few decades, and come to find out that, surprise, surprise, holding degrees, even advanced ones from one of the top 10 universities in the world, doesn't count for shit. So, well tough luck we're not going to uphold our part of the social contract that if you work & study hard and get good, solid degrees from respected colleges that you'll have career success! But hey pay up, bitch!
I say let the banks and student loan companies and the colleges burn.
This is excellent advice and I highly recommend any Soylentil with kids who will someday go to college to remember it. I know it's my plan A for my own kids, who are 4 & 6 years old now. College in America is already ridiculously expensive, and it will only get exponentially worse by the time they're in high school if the whole Ponzi scheme that it is doesn't collapse before then. Germany lets foreign students go to college for free. As such I'm teaching my kids the German I learned as an exchange student there in high school; they're gonna need it.
Plan B is to teach them how to get a college-like education by finding stuff online, building portfolios of work they have done, and teaching them how to network through apprenticeships and internships. In the end, it's about what you can do and who you know, not about some stupid expensive piece of paper.
Washington DC delenda est.