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Comment by AnimalMuppet | Hacker News Reader

That used to be called a "liberal education", which meant an education that was appropriate for free men, as opposed to slaves, who would be trained in a trade.

Today, that corresponds to pursuing knowledge if you don't need the money. If you do, pursue something that pays. (Pursue as much knowledge as you can work in around the edges, but the main focus has to be on something that pays.)

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Ok, so are you saying that there should be no student loans on humanities degrees? Because that's the logical conclusion of what you're saying here.

Would it make sense for the government to make a list of fields where they do back up student loans (which would probably be mostly STEM fields)?

Perhaps the loan requirements should be more stringent on fields that are unlikely to support repayment for people that aren’t in a financial position to repay them? Not very different to lending in other areas of life.

Or remove the non-dischargeability and the govt backing at the same time, and let interest rates and lending requirements fall where they may.

I'm talking about students, not institutions or rules. I'm saying that if you're a student, and you need to work for a living, pick your major with some wisdom, no matter how much you want to "seek knowledge".

My position is "Student, protect yourself." I take no position on whether the rules ought to change to protect students. (Perhaps they should, because 18-year-olds probably will get carried away with the romance of "pursuing knowledge" and ignore the way the real world works...)

There can always be a private loan market for student loans. Government guaranteed student loans basically happen out of goodwill. The assumption is that it will be a net benefit and therefore everyone should be given the opportunity. However this didn't turn out to be true. If the government keeps funding loans that will never be paid back then it won't be able to fund the loans that can be paid back. I don't really see why limiting certain degrees is seen as pure evil. In Germany some university degrees only accept a limited amount of participants. People with higher grades will be prioritized. This restriction however doesn't apply to the STEM degrees (not an exhaustive list) because they never get enough students. Therefore even if someone is poor and suffers from low intelligence, they are not barred from a degree that leads to a prosperous career.

The description of the STEM/MINT situation in German universities is far too generalized. You have quite a few STEM/MINT universities and programs which require a numerus clausus, its just up to the university to set the NC. Many classical STEM/MINT programs dont have a problem with having a few hundred students each year instead of a few dozen since alot of those will fail in the first years where students just have to learn the basics of the field. Those courses are generally easy to teach and require little interaction with individual students. In the most prestigious technical universities having 70 to 90% of the students fail specific exams is nothing special. And studends are barred from the program after failing the 3rd try. You are also not completely barred with to low of an average entry grade from school, you will just have to wait longer to start your degree. That part is the case for every university and every program, STEM/MINT isnt a special case here.

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