Study: Almost half of borrowers will default on student loans in coming years

#3 could also be solved by not having the government back student loans and allow creditors to decide risk on things like your major, your GPA, or your class attendance record, but that would be insanely politically incorrect. Essentially you're either given an amount that your career will pay for, or you have to choose a major that will pay for an amount that you desire.

Hate to break it to you but Trump ain’t gonna help us unless it makes him rich.

This is already on the way in the 3rd world country where I live.

5.) Make it legal to form a PAC that can take unlimited money from any entity or person globally and spend it on politicians to ensure the cycle of wealthy people doesn’t break.

6.) Watch socialism and communism become more interesting systems of governance again as more people are frustrated.

Try it at one college and watch the college fail. Also watch it save very little money compared to the overall operating budget.

I wonder if it would help college tuition prices if the government were to institute a maximum bureaucrat/administrator to full time professor ratio for federally funded colleges/universities.

most of those majors would have been fine choices 10+ years ago.

We're also bad at predicting what's valuable in the market, and lots of just-so stories aren't true (i.e. not all STEM majors are viable or better than some humanities degrees).

Disney Channel told us we could be anything we wanted when we grew up.

> people are choosing majors that aren't valuable in the market, and are later somehow surprised they are worse off than when they started

It's not "people," it's children.

Children who are told by every single successful adult they trust that they need to go to college and that it doesn't matter what they get the degree in, just that they have one.

There's another big problem: People who choose valuable majors end up with classes that don't matter with professors that don't care, with a university that puts more effort and money into advertising than quality of life.

The fact that you have to spend 4 years to get a bachelors in something is complete BS. Padded time. Universities really don't pander to the 'market', they are their own market and you being prepared for the workforce is an afterthought based upon how much your instructor cares about it.

The only times these becomes exceptions is in Engineering, Law, and Medicine. Things that have dedicated schoolings for them. It's still padded but they have an explicit direction that feeds into a market.

Letting "the market" decide what is and isn't valuable in terms of human knowledge seems dubious at best. We are talking about a system that prioritizes extraction of non-renewable resources to produce dumb shit like bluetooth toothbrushes.

If you think the US government borrows money, look at the total amount and ask: who had that much money to loan? That much money did not exist to be borrowed.

The mortgage numbers on that page are way too small. They must not be including the GSEs.

Nobody should be in that situation. You can make way more than $35,000 a year without even going to college. Doing that after college means that the college degree provided negative value.

One can look up jobs that don't need education past high school at https://www.bls.gov/ooh/ and see that there are 9 occupations with income of $75,000 or more, and numerous additional ones in the $55,000 to $74,999 range.

You could break $35,000 per year easily in the military. An E-1, the lowest rank, can do that if they get the housing allowance and submarine pay. An E-5, which is mid-level enlisted, can do it on base pay alone.

Smokejumpers get about $35,000 per year.

The national average for a truck driver is $43,464 or $75,672 per year, depending on who is counting. Either way, it beats $35,000 by quite a bit. Plumbers are about the same. Lots of trades people are doing way better than $35,000 per year.

So the answer it seems is to hide the worthless degree. For some of the really nonsense degrees, it might be better to let employers think you spent those years in prison. You'd get paid more if you didn't have the degree.

In reverse: unlimited loans are give that cannot be waived in university. This bids up the cost of university and has schools compete on features rather than price.

In general, private university tuition is extremely expensive. There are certainly exceptions to this rule that keep costs reasonable--e.g. for the financially strapped, Stanford has a "student obligation" program[1] as an element of financial aid--but they're not all comparable.

Conversely, I personally think in-state tuition for public research universities of sound rapport are fair. A big issue is when an undergraduate student moves to a different state to study and is charged out-of-state tuition for at least a year before establishing residency; that single-year cost often exceeds what a 4-year student would pay at in-state rates. In some states--like CA--you're pretty much screwed[2] and will pay out-of-state rates comparable to private universities for the effective duration of study.

Then there's private student loans issued by banks at gouging rates. They're super easy to qualify for and super easy to get out of control. Anecdotally, I took one out (12.74%!) during my last semester of undergraduate study which amounted to ~10% of my total student loan obligation in the end before capitalization; it was my only option since I didn't meet full-time student status that semester and didn't qualify for federal aid. This was the first loan I paid off and within 6 months of graduating, yet the interest paid on this single private loan accounted for 15% of the interest paid on the 7 other federal student loans that I paid off over the subsequent 4.5 years! It's crazy to think what that one private student loan would have cost me if I had paid it off over 5 years, let alone a 10-year period that federal student loans are amortized over.

EDIT: > Also, shouldn't the government provide direct financial assistance to low income people being admitted to good colleges without needing them to ever pay back?

Forgot to mention, this takes the form of academic grants[3]. Pell and SMART Grants are fairly common.

[1] https://financialaid.stanford.edu/undergrad/how/student.html

[2] https://www.ucop.edu/residency/residency-requirements.html

[3] https://www2.ed.gov/programs/smart/index.html

I'm in the UK and went through tertiary education (Degree and Masters) at the point where we were switching towards the US model. I never paid for the education itself, but never received any funding to pay for my existence over those years. I was fortunate to have parents who could support me into my mid-twenties. The system has changed since. We've got people racking up debts they're never going to pay off for useless degrees (in UK there's threshold of income before you have to repay, and if you never reach it, it's written off). We've also got companies that used to recruit 'good' graduates (IT/accountancy behemoths) recruiting at school-exit age and offering a career to the good encumbered with debt. My takeaway thought is that tertiary education is no longer worthwhile for the sake of education. We're becoming much more utilitarian. Short term it makes sense, but long-term seems insane to not invest in people.

Maybe, maybe not. You'd then see universities working with employers to get you in the workplace on day one after graduation. Sounds great you say.

But, now you have someone else involved in your career and choices. They'll be mapping out your career for the next 20 years and your education will be tailored to just that employers practices.

Sure you'll be consulted and made to feel part of the process, but there would be a whole set of administration from the university making sure that you sit at a desk and bring in that money. It would be like HR for your life.

What happens when people peacefully revoke their consent to be governed in such a manner?

Or leave the country?

Or simply the economy?

I'm no longer participating in the traditional workforce, choosing instead to meet my needs primarily through decentralized communities founded around giving or trading. I have no wages to garnish. What are they going to do? Jail me? Pretty sure that's no longer considered legal.

Even if I'm wrong, what happens when a large collective of people do this? How will investors respond?