How America's universities became debt factories

(1) Liberal Arts and Sciences. If you have the money/smarts, can go for a Bachelor's degree at an Ivy League university, maybe also join a fraternity, and, thus, get some more understanding of history, civilization, and people and meet some people likely good to know for a good career/marriage.

The Ivy professors are expected to publish a lot of research and, hopefully, get that research funded. The university may take 60% of the research funding for overhead.

I'm shocked, shocked to find US National politics going on here. Here is your 60%, Sir.

The universities like getting the 60%, e.g., for the white table cloth restaurant or the the President's limo. US politicians like funding education.

Due to WWII with radar, sonar, the Bomb, the US government liked to fund research in the STEM fields and, soon, medicine, agriculture, etc. Due to the research, the profs stay bright, with brains active, but otherwise their research has not much to do with what is in the Bachelor's degree courses.

(2) State Colleges. Could get a Bachelor's degree and also a Teaching Certificate which would enable a career in K-12 teaching that could be good for wives and mothers. Low tuition.

(3) State Universities. Could continue and get a Ph.D. Could use that (A) as a union card for a career in college teaching that did not require research, (B) a career in research, maybe as an Assistant Professor trying to publish enough and build reputation enough to get promoted to tenure, (C) whatever else could use the work for. Can regard (C) as speculative with best results quite good for career, wealth, US national security.

One academic direction: Get a good background in math (probability, statistics), physics, and chemistry, and then do research in some other field, e.g., what is happening on the floor of the Gulf of Maine.

(4) Broadly, children need to grow up, and that can involve lots of inputs and experiences. Then they can go fourth into the great US society, lands, and economy and try to be successful. Some Bachelor's degrees might help.

Bachelor's, ..., Ph.D. as job training -- has not been very popular, respected, or successful in the US.

Broadly one effect for young people in the US economy is the economy might continue to grow and develop with new directions; so, ..., a young person can try to select a direction that is or promises growth, get a first job, and go ahead and grow.

E.g., my education concentrated on math and physics. Early career was in US national security which liked math and physics. Soon there was also a lot of interest in computing, so got into that -- right, quick sort, heap sort, AVL trees, numerical issues in matrix inversion and curve fitting, .... At one point, the US Navy was HIGHLY concerned about the US labor force in computing, especially for work in math and physics, and I got well paid to sit, learn about computing, and do some on some Navy sonar data, the FFT (fast Fourier transform), power spectral estimation, etc. As US computing grew rapidly, so did my career. Now, doing a startup in computing using some original math -- that is, combining what I'd gotten like the novel ingredients for a popular new pizza.

So, if job training, trade school, education with good "ROI" for good careers does not work well DIRECTLY, maybe (A) pick some of the best of what is in the libraries and (B) make what can with it -- yup, it's risky, speculative, etc.

My recommendations:

(A) If you can afford (1), fine. Otherwise, don't spend a lot of money on that Bachelor's ... Ph.D. education. I.e., for the OP here, don't take out student loans, and if go to state schools might not need the loans (might not apply to careers in law or medicine). By the way, for grad school, Master's and Ph.D., I never paid anything and did get paid for doing ugrad math teaching.

(B) For a Ph.D., at some schools, courses are optional, the main point is the dissertation, the definition is "an original contribution to knowledge worth of publication", the main criteria for publication is "new, correct, and significant", a cheap way to get the background for such research is independent study, and might do enough of that on evenings and weekends before going for a Ph.D. E.g., not a lot of need for "student loans".

(C) Get some basics, e.g., in the STEM fields, and then look for opportunities in the US economy.

(D) Meet people, especially the right people: It can be better who you know than what you know.

(E) If you are doing really good work as an employee, then maybe see if can do much the same work but for much more money as an owner.

Loans will only be granted to students who have a track record of high achievement, parents willing to co-sign, and going into majors that make economic sense.

Enrollment will drop, universities will stop offering passion majors, mass layoffs in library science, academia, and college administrations (likely to the tune of 1M+ people).

In the end, students will be told by federal examination which school and major they get to pursue, or whether they get to go to college at all.

That's assuming the government is both effective and efficient in this process.

This is essentially how most consumer economics work.

Not everything can be, or is supposed to be, taught by schools. Your parents should've taught you those things, and if they didn't do that they failed you.

We (as a society) tell kids all the time that their hobby can't be a viable career. Kids are just headstrong and don't want to listen to their parents/other adults telling them unpleasant truths.

Tuition started around 4k/yr, but had worked its way up to 8k/yr by the time I graduated (which I thought was unaffordable).