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Comment by twblalock | Hacker News Reader

What happens to the student loan system going forward? You can't declare a jubilee and then keep on giving out loans -- everyone will expect another jubilee and there will be so little confidence in the system you might as well get rid of it.

Unless you have a replacement system to help people pay for college, and it is already operational, destroying the student loan system would guarantee that only rich kids get to go to college.

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I said to make college free: tuition, room, and board, so long as you keep adequate grades. Stop the loan system entirely. Sorry, I must have been unclear.

I presume then the government will pay the cost of your education? What is to stop a university from raising the cost of tuition 10x?

fixed budgets. works fairly well for most european countries like e.g. germany; https://theconversation.com/how-germany-managed-to-abolish-u...

Except when they have to compete for high value professors [0].

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15600275

What's to stop universities in countries where the government picks up the tab already from doing this?

I'm not sure of how universities are funded in other countries. If for example the government says they will provide a fixed amount per student (yearly adjusted for inflation, etc) that might be a good example of price control. Another thing is many university administrative staff are used to paying themselves outrageous salaries and pensions and they just feeds into the rising costs.

The universities are not really independent from the government: the state runs the university, its faculty and employees are civil servants, etc.

Edit: I was thinking about private universities in the US, it’s true that public universities are already controlled by the same govermnents who pays most of their costs.

The same can be said here in the US.

The same thing as public schools, fixed prices per student.

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