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Comment by TulliusCicero | Hacker News Reader

Unbankruptable student loans should have a hard cap proportional to the median expected earnings for a given major.

I know that the purpose of college degree isn't just to make a lot of money, but if you can't make a lot of money, you shouldn't be able to take out 100k+ in loans that's legally protected from being removed in bankruptcy.

Of course, the real solution here should just be free public college + clampdowns on cost overruns so that it's practical to fund. Less money on nice dorms and endless administrators and whichever sports lose money. We used to have cheap college, and it's possible to get back there. Find what changed over the decades and cut back.

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I actually think the real solution is that student loans should be dischargeable in bankruptcy. I think it is a much better, easier and fairer fix than just cancelling some student loans.

Since student loans aren't dischargeable, it means that lenders have no incentive to do any due diligence. On the contrary, their incentive is to load students up with as much debt as possible.

Yes, making student loans dischargeable would mean fewer students would get loans, but that's the point. Lenders shouldn't be giving out hundreds of thousands of dollars to students whose career options would then put them in indentured servitude for decades.

Why throwaway? This is a good take.

> Yes, making student loans dischargeable would mean fewer students would get loans

That pretty much defeats the point of the system, to give loans to poor people to give them a chance.

> it means that lenders have no incentive to do any due diligence.

That's hard to do because young students haven't had time to build credit history, you can't extrapolate creditworthiness from SAT/ACT scores without hurting students from poorly-funded education systems, and most importantly by rejecting to offer loans, you are preventing a student from a shot at their dream school which could pull a whole family out of poverty in a decade.

The problem isn't how the loans should be disbursed, managed, repaid, or forgiven. The problem is that the base tuition is so high that students need loans. Loans should be for housing, gym memberships, extra-curriculars. I am absolutely ok with my Federal, state, and local taxes funding actual education, not college stadiums. This would also incentivize schools to reduce costs for the basic education and charge people who can afford to pay for the full "college experience."

But over the years state governments keep cutting funding for colleges and universities and students keep having to take out loans. And since loans are easy to get and cannot be discharged, everyone is incentivized to do anything to get more students who will pay a higher tuition. It is a terrible cycle that I hope either gets obsoleted by virtual education, trade schools, or some miracle.

> Lenders shouldn't be giving out hundreds of thousands of dollars to students whose career options would then put them in indentured servitude for decades.

That was all part of California's master plan for higher education at the end of the 60s. Unfortunately the anti-government folks got Prop 13 passed and put an end to tuition free college and university.

That could work, but without cost/price changes the result of fewer/smaller loans would make it much harder for poorer kids to attend college.

Before federal student loans, corporations and the universities themselves would lend the money. They very often wouldn’t do so until the second year, when the student had demonstrated that they were capable.

Something like that could happen again, even with federal dollars - universities would make the first year cheap, and based upon high school transcripts + SAT / ACT + first year grades, then make a real loan.

> Lenders shouldn't be giving out hundreds of thousands of dollars to students whose career options would then put them in indentured servitude for decades.

That is a terrible metric. There are plenty of objectively important professions that require advanced degrees and don't pay well. Teachers, nurses, and yeah doctors. Take a look at how much residents or general practitioners get paid. Sure you could make millions hawking voodoo to Peter Thiel but we've also got a shortage of GPs in the United States.

Profit is the wrong motive for (public) education. I'm sure you were aiming more at the underwater basketweaving crowd but even art plays an important role in society.

It's not a terrible metric, in fact I think it should really be the only metric when it comes to loans. We're not talking about grants, nor are we talking about the value different professions bring to society.

Those teachers and nurses you are referring to should absolutely not be saddled with loans they will never be able to repay, and the situation now, where many of these people will be making large student loan payments into retirement or near death, is unconscionable.

There are much better ways to support people who want to go into these professions than signing them up, many at the age of 17 or 18, for a lifetime of crushing debt.

What you're suggesting means we should have more grants or just lower costs/prices at schools. Which I mean, yeah, I totally agree with that.

Loans are debt. They have to be paid back. So yeah, of course how much someone will make after school is relevant here. If doctors in the US didn't make bongo bucks, med school costing 250k+ would be absolutely insane (rather than just moderately insane).

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/us-general-practitioner-s...

Glassdoor (ugh) estimates base pay at about $160k annually for a general practitioner. You're not getting rich off of that salary, especially not in a HCOLA.

> Of course, the real solution here should just be free public college + clampdowns on cost overruns so that it's practical to fund. Less money on nice dorms and endless administrators and whichever sports lose money. We used to have cheap college, and it's possible to get back there. Find what changed over the decades and cut back.

Agree in theory, but then we should really be sure that the "clampdowns on cost overruns" will be effective before giving the government carte blanche to spend our tax money on this. The government is not even able to build rail without huge cost overruns and delays. I don't trust it to run universities.

We will go back to cheap college when that is what students and their families choose cheap schools over expensive ones. Hint: They don’t. They won’t.

Community colleges have seen the largest enrollment drops, followed by public 4 year. Private colleges that lower their tuition, counterintuitively, almost always see a drop in applicants the following year.

> Less money on nice dorms and endless administrators

This is a fantasy. Whatever feedback mechanisms existed in our society in the past to keep things from getting out of hand, are gone---whether in academia, medicine, or any part of government.

> Unbankruptable student loans

Ought not to exist. Full stop.

How about hard caps on who get's admitted to any school that accepts government aid.

Reserve 1/2 of the spots to kids from low income families if they can get in, and charge 1/8 of what they charge kids from wealthy families.

If the school has the nerve to charge a wealthy kid $100,000/yr. fine.

The poor kid is charged $20,000. (Financial aid is guaranteed, and automatically discharged in upon graduation. If they don't graduate they will have to pay it back.)

The wealthy parents might be questioning the luxury dorms, luxury amenities, at these fancy colleges, along with the high paid teachers whom don't even teach, but do research.

The administrators would have to figure out how to keep costs down, because the wealthy parents will only pay so much for Biff's, or Becky's, education.

The very small percentage of kids whom daddies don't pay for everything up to 30 years of age will be honestly Means Tested to be included with the lower price poor kids pay.

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