That's too disruptive, and there's too high a chance of unintended consequences. Instead of that what you'll see is a 'we'll kill this multi-billion dollar industry over the course of the next 30 years'
With all due respect, fuck that. We do disruptive stuff with unintended consequences for millions of people as a matter of policy all the time, and the idea that it'll disrupt some finance goons' ponzi scheme does not bother me
> We do disruptive stuff with unintended consequences for millions of people as a matter of policy all the time
We should be way more willing to straight up kill multi-billion dollar industries. Without that willingness, most modern problems are impossible for governments to solve, and such industries and even their potential competitors are incentivised mostly to exacerbate the problem. I love a good market as much as anyone but there really are problems markets will never solve
Multi-billion dollar industries represent jobs, stocks, and campaign contributions. The US government is not designed to beat those forces. It's the same reason we'll never see universal healthcare unfortunately.
Same reason we have TurboTax instead of a government website to type our taxable income numbers into.
But…the whole point is that it is NOT a market. If student debt is dischargeable and the government guarantee is removed or dramatically reduced, pretty much all problems are “solved”. Universities will have to start focusing on ROI. Universities that provide a poor ROI will shut down. Universities will need to reduce costs for traditional coursework, cut courses with poor returns, add courses with higher returns. Th…
> Universities will have to start focusing on ROI. In Europe, they have a simpler system. Education is paid for from taxes. If a student does well, they pay for it via taxes. If they don't, then they aren't crippled by debt. The problem with the ROI approach is it still places too much burden on the student, and, well, life happens. Say you major in comp sci (or some other high-paying field) but shortly after graduat…
In the USA, the government also pays for education. That’s part of the problem, in fact. Since the loan to the college is always paid for by the government, the college is effectively handed a blank check. Said check, now filled in with an arbitrarily high amount, is handed to the student as a bill to pay back to the government. The same is done in your system, in fact, except that the entire country suffers that burden, regardless of if that degree actually amounts to any meaningful contribution.
But…the whole point is that it is NOT a market. If student debt is dischargeable and the government guarantee is removed or dramatically reduced, pretty much all problems are “solved”. Universities will have to start focusing on ROI. Universities that provide a poor ROI will shut down. Universities will need to reduce costs for traditional coursework, cut courses with poor returns, add courses with higher returns. Th…
> Universities will have to start focusing on ROI. In Europe, they have a simpler system. Education is paid for from taxes. If a student does well, they pay for it via taxes. If they don't, then they aren't crippled by debt. The problem with the ROI approach is it still places too much burden on the student, and, well, life happens. Say you major in comp sci (or some other high-paying field) but shortly after graduat…
I would imagine in Europe they select more carefully the students whom will go to College. Here in the US we've told students that everyone must go to College. We now have too many people in College and many of them aren't going to be successful once they are in. It's not sustainable. In many of our public universities, the graduation rate is well below 50%
> Make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy again.
I would like to see the author back this up with more considerations.
Bankruptcy disappears from all credit reports after seven years. The average age of first time home buyers is 35.
So if a new grad’s credit is trashed from the age of 23-30, it makes no difference to them - they are not planning on using credit for anything substantial anyways.
What is going to stop every single student from declaring bankruptcy immediately after graduation?
I think it's really sad that we so reflexively consider universities vocational training that criticism of universities so often includes "offering degrees that won't get you a job" Actually academia predates the push to gate jobs behind undergraduate degrees, and trying to repurpose these institutions that mainly exist to train and employ researchers to be fully general vocational schools has been a disaster in ever…
And then on other side universities started as vocational schools for clergy. Who then also had time on the side to do at least some research or muse about things.
1) Move most good careers that do not require a college degree out of the country for the benefit of shareholders 2) Tell everyone born between 1980 and 1995 that they'll be unable to compete in the global marketplace if they don't get at least some post-high school education, and imply that the mere presence of a degree will help instead of having a specific type of degree 3) Have next-to-zero standards for public f…
I don't like this type of comment because it's makes it seem like that this was all planned like this on purpose (by some cabal of evil schemers, I suppose?), but without the need to provide any evidence that that's indeed how it went, because nothing of the kind of is explicitly claimed.
Things can go wrong without people scheming to do evil. It's not helpful to twist "these and these circumstances combined to produce a bad outcome" into a plan description unless you bring at least some evidence that it was, in fact, planned to go like that.
“We” decided that cheap college was too socialist and his people cooked up a scheme to make it more expensive and push the underclass and PoC into the GI bill. “You people” only get an education once you survive the military. But it made things worse for the middle class as well, as almost every5ing from Reaganomics has, and things have only snowballed from there.
> Make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy again. I would like to see the author back this up with more considerations. Bankruptcy disappears from all credit reports after seven years. The average age of first time home buyers is 35. So if a new grad’s credit is trashed from the age of 23-30, it makes no difference to them - they are not planning on using credit for anything substantial anyways. What is going t…
> What is going to stop every single student from declaring bankruptcy immediately after graduation?
The long and arduous process of going through bankruptcy proceedings. Have you or do you know someone who has gone through that? It's not fun nor is it a guaranteed ticket out of your debt.
1) Move most good careers that do not require a college degree out of the country for the benefit of shareholders 2) Tell everyone born between 1980 and 1995 that they'll be unable to compete in the global marketplace if they don't get at least some post-high school education, and imply that the mere presence of a degree will help instead of having a specific type of degree 3) Have next-to-zero standards for public f…