> I feel in this case, waiting for college is too late and the improvements should be done at the grade school level. Only a fraction of the population goes to college and as such even if the education from college was perfected, it would only apply to that fraction of the population.
25% or so of the population or so attends at least one semester of college. If I recollect the statistics right. Which is.... pretty dang good.
You're not wrong in that k-12 education needs to improve. That said, people have been moaning about k-12 education for the last 200 years in the US, and, well, I'm not personally particularly keen about hunting with that dog. In part because k-12 is considered a guaranteed education, so you ipso facto have to consider policies with address the entirety of the bell curve of the population, and the stakeholders are peculiarly passionate (their kids!). College has the profound advantage in that there's some flavor of choice in it, so you can wind up executing on certain rule changes without the enormous knife fight involved in k-12 politics.
I'm not disagreeing. But I think if we spec out the political fight between "federally mandate a substantial change in learning social sciences, history, civics, & philosophy across the US by Congress" (the required subjects for a competent civic education) and "free college for all", my money is that free college for all, with a free pony too, will happen decades before the other.
> I saw numerous people who took 5+ years doing so because they prioritized fun over education. Taking minimum course loads, partying instead of studying, etc.
I didn't see that, much. There was some. Very very small proportion in my experience. I went to state schools in Idaho, mostly around the engineering departments. Business departments or frats maaaaay have had different student populations.
I recognize your concern though. That is why I think > 6 years should be a fairly hard cutoff for government supported college. 5 years was pretty common for people who switched majors or had a rough semester. 6 years was rare.
> What do you think of a shorter term solution of allowing student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy?
I'm in favor of that!