Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

> When students can file for bankruptcy

Agree with everything you say, except for this.

Allowing student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy will result in millions of students pulling that lever as soon as they graduate. They, of course, get to keep their degrees and use them to make money their entire lives.

If you file for bankruptcy and, for example, want to keep your car (which has a loan), you have to reaffirm that debt and continue paying. Same with your home, etc.

Student loans provide you with a valuable life-long asset. Allowing discharge simply isn't right and is economically destructive. How about I BK, discharge my mortgage and keep my house forever? Same thing.

I agree 100%, government has to get the hell out of the student loan business. Universities and students need to be forced into a situation where risk is assessed and loans are issued --or not-- accordingly. The university has to have risk. And students have to be held to their commitments.

The other problem the current system causes is what I call "course padding". Most degrees in the US have a year (or slightly more) of coursework unrelated to the field of study. In the case of STEM degrees, students spend a year or more on non-STEM courses.

This is detrimental on many fronts.

First, the time to graduation rate for undergrad is 33% longer than it would be without this irrelevant coursework. No employer cares about this stuff for STEM degrees. Some might differ wit this. OK. Let the free market decide then. If Google wants engineers who have taken three semesters of Underwater Basket Weaving History, the free market will drive students to take those courses as enhancements to the required curriculum. They should NOT be conditions for graduation at all.

This would reduce a typical engineering degree from four years to three.

Second, these non-major courses add 33% to the cost of a typical STEM degree. Whatever a year costs at a school (including housing, etc.), that's what they add to the student loan. That could mean $30K to $70K. This is horrific, unnecessary and counterproductive. If the student wants to take these courses because they add value and become additive to their career, they can make that decision --not be forced by government into it.

If government wasn't in this business, bullshit degrees and bullshit unnecessary courses would cost a ton less and some would completely evaporate from our universities. A few weeks ago I was watching a show where this guy helps people deal with debt. This poor fellow had over $250K in student debt for a degree that might not even make him $50K a year. The only way that happens is in a distorted market, one that is distorted by government in favor of what usually ends-up being political agendas disguised as good intentions.

The other element of this equation is our failures in K-12 education. Again, government (and union) meddling has caused much of this.

Our 18 year old's graduate high school devoid of marketable skills. They are useless to most businesses without training and, generalizing, are ignorant about most things that matter as they transition into adulthood.

For example, they have no understanding of money and finances and no skills to help them make sound decisions. So, someone throws a $200K loan at them for a degree on Basket Weaving and they take the ride, not understanding they are going to make just above minimum wage and have signed-on to financial hell for the rest of their lives.

That is a failure in pre-college education. And a serious one at that.

Not everyone has to go to college. Our K-12 path fails that population as well. The average US high school graduate requires training to stack boxes on shelves and make coffee. That sure sounds like a formula for societal success, doesn't it?

At the end of the day, the problem might very well be that education, in the US, has become a political punching bag. One could come-up with dozens of scenarios to understand why we seem to insist on destroying our nation by not doing a good job educating our kids. All of them would seem insane to even suggest. And yet, here we are, it's 2023 and our kids rank below third-world-nation levels almost across the board.

This is insane. What are we doing?

Tuition at my states flagship, UIUC, is now 20k a year. Combine book costs and other misc and youre looking at 100k of debt before even accounting for room and board.

Tuition and fees in California's CSU system are still only about $8k per year. The CSU system provides a very good education, in some ways better than the more prestigious UC system because there tends to be more opportunities for direct contact with instructors. In the sciences, there are often more research opportunities and spaces for undergraduate students in labs. It's a real bargain, and you can save even more money by doing your first two years at a community college.

According to that chart, by "well above inflation" you mean "100% above inflation".

Your use of generalizations seems radically inconsistent.

It doesn't need to be contagious to create a crisis, just correlated, e.g. if there is a big macroeconomic shock that makes many students unable to pay their loans all at once.