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Comment by reverend_gonzo | Hacker News Reader

The problem is a little bit more than people are paying too much for a worthless degree. It's that they are being given a loan that is backed by the US Government to get that worthless degree.

If the government removes the backing and allows the free market to give loans and set interest rates, suddenly you'll see that the lowest rates will be for STEM degrees, and those who want to study music theory, art therapy, English literature, are going to get loans for school.

However, that defeats the entire narrative of "everybody should go to school and everybody should learn whatever they want."

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If you remove the government backing you'll see more of a divide on the socioeconomics of who gets to go to college and who is too risky to lend to.

Anyone can go to college, given they meet the academic admission requirements, and are willing to work (extending it past 4 years).

Probably some, but really how much? A doctor is a doctor and makes a lot of money. A social worker, no matter the skin color, does not.

Right... but what about a potential doctor vs. a potential social worker? A poor student that tries to become a doctor is far riskier than a rich student trying to be a doctor. I believe that's the issue here...

Completely agree

(except maybe on music theory, bit more technical of a degree that most people realize)

Doesn't matter how technical it is, it's still pretty worthless.

I would rather employ someone who has a music degree and learned web dev in their free time than the majority of shitty comp sci programs or an mba

As far as postmodern literature departments, sure they are worthless, and maybe counter productive

I'm a CS Major, but saying a degree is "worthless" is pretty narrow-minded, no? I'd argue (at least anecdotally) that most people getting into these "worthless" degrees know they won't make a ton of money - but for them, money isn't something they particularly care about.

There's more ways to define success than in terms of money.

Several of the best mathematicians I've met had degrees in music theory; there's a surprising practicality to it in modern CS as the concepts translate well to machine learning.

This may very well be true, but I'd rather make an argument against this idea by pointing out that the relative worth of a field of study is not related to whether or not majoring in it will get Facebook to pay you $200k out of college to help them build out their marketing panopticon. It's disturbing how many people on HN don't seem to get that (not necessarily you, but other commenters in this thread are exemplifying this). It's good to have people who study art and music and philosophy and design because those fields enrich the human experience, and because the world would be a worse place without them.

At HN, “worthless” == “Can’t score a $100k salaried job out of college with it”

If the govt did that, many many people won’t go to college, which is a terrible problem given the way we are set up.

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