Just stop guaranteeing them, let students default on them. All these guaranteed loans that can't be discharged allows academic institutions to ratchet up the price. Let them calculate risk and price them accordingly.
1) I'm going to, absent some massive political shift, vote for Democrats for the rest of my life anyway. So, they don't really have to play for my vote.
2) Playing around with boring stuff like tweaking market forces around by changing how loans work is sufficiently indirect that blame can probably be dodged.
3) We're all aware that the current system is pretty bad, a new solution that at least purports to be an attempt at something better can be sold to me pretty easily.
3a) Keep in mind that, at least in the STEM departments, the instructors are there for essentially irrational reasons -- they could make much more money in industry. At least some of the motivation is to produce interesting science and help students, paycheck be damned. Changes that hurt the last while helping the first two will probably be accepted with only minimal grumbling as long as they aren't too painful.
Then suddenly we have a society that does not appreciate art or dance or whatever other subjects were dropped.
This is the slippery slope - creditors get to decide what others know and learn and pay attention to. Knowledge is no longer widely available - the experts (professors) might still teach at a college, but will be forced to either pivot or leave when the university slashes their programs. They could teach privately or for free, but I am guessing the number of students who they would normally teach drops significantly.
Once there are too few people in the arts, demand will incentivize more people to get into that field.
Moreover, don't we currently have a problem where we don't have enough students going into STEM?
Isn't that the case already? Aren't most university students looking to increase their career prospects? Wasn't that the whole point of telling generations of kids to go to college, so that they'll get better jobs?
It's no change. That was already the premise of underwriting non-dischargeable loans.
> Then suddenly we have a society that does not appreciate art or dance or whatever other subjects were dropped.
Again, no change. If they were valued enough to support an expensive college degree, career prospects would be less dim.
The assumption that you need a college degree in art to appreciate art is kinda ... out there.
If this is the goal, then the far simpler solution is for the government to explicitly budget a set number of grants for the most promising students in those fields to study specific subjects that supposedly have social value but low economic returns.
It certainly doesn't make sense to subsidize loans for hundreds of marginal students to study "business administration" or "hospitality" at a tier four regional college to get one brilliant dance major at Carnegie Mellon.
Far more efficient for the government to say "we have 800 fully funded dance scholarships, 4000 art history scholarships, 2000 classics scholarships, etc. We're going to assign these scholarships to the most promising graduating high school students in these fields. And the scholarships will only be paid for top-tier universities that have demonstrated consistent excellence in these areas."
That would by far subsidize a much higher level of cultural discourse at a tiny fraction of the cost of the current student loan system.
In any case, if there is a specific need for specific research, I'm sure the gov can figure out a way to incentivize particular useful tracks which the market ignores. Grants programs, etc.
I want both, but I have a hard time disapproving of more focus on training students, as they are the true customers of universities.
Have people really interested in teaching rather than research teach the 100/200-level courses. The scientists next door can teach seniors and juniors, and show up for guest lectures.
Good, there is nothing wrong with all that. Degrees should exist so people find jobs in the real world. Research can be funded by the government itself. Absolutely no need for government backed student loans in either cases. People who want to go to private universities can get a regular bank loan, that's how it works in the rest of the world. The US system is unique and predatory.