U.S. Student Debt in ‘Serious Delinquency’ Tops $166B

i predict we’re going to have to bail these people out. once a critical mass of americans do something idiotic, it becomes politically expedient to bail them out and blame the companies for greed. this is a direct response of the government providing unlimited loans to anyone

If you add up the total cost of all education institutions in the US, multiply by 4 years, then build a payment structure based on that number, there is simply not enough income left over in the corhort of new grads (first 10 years out of school) to pay the debt service.

The problem has nothing to do with liberal art majors, or irresponsible borrowing.

The problem is entirely driven by an excessive cost structure of both public and private institutions.

People like the founder of Lambda School understand the problem and will be the solution.

Education is important. Access to education is important. But our current system of giving out student loans with no regard to if the student will ever have a realistic ability to repay borders on predatory.

If we can't do anything to solve that portion of the problem, we should at least restrict the mandatory fees that are tacked on for non instructional purposes. No student should have to pay for decades to prop up with school's sports ambitions. For every Alabama that makes a profit off of sports, there are dozens of Georgia States that impose ridiculous mandatory fees on students to balance the budget of the athletics department.

Athletics are easy to pick on because they're the most visible but most schools have a whole list of these non instructional fees that students must pay, in most cases, go into debt to pay or be denied access to education.

After removing the mandatory fees, also limit how much of the tuition can be used for non instructional purposes. Every institution has overhead that must exist to keep things operational but there must be a limit to how much or we're once again either denying access to education or condemning students to an overwhelming debt burden.

Instruction of course isn't the only mission of most universities. Research is important. Extension is important. There are many worthwhile activities universities engage in that should continue but not at the expense of access to instruction.

edit: spacing

the only way i’d support that is if the government gets out of the loan game and if we get rid of the provisions that prevent people from filing bankruptcy on the loans.

There is so much waste in universities: bloated admin/it staff , libraries filled with journals/magazines that no one reads, tenure system that doesn't allow you to downsize departments that have no students. Tuition can be reduced, however there is no incentive to do it since students can easily get loans.