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Comment by bradleyjg | Hacker News Reader

My understanding is that the new income driven repayment rules include parent plus loans via the double consolidation loophole.

https://www.studentloanplanner.com/parent-plus-double-consol...

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When baby boomers were getting these same degrees they mostly led to well-paying middle management careers. There was a transition stretching across Gen X and Millennials where degrees like "social work" steadily lost value as supply of these degrees gradually outpaced demand, and wages slowly stagnated.

Gen Z seems to be much, much more aware of this issue and as a result the number of STEM majors in colleges have exploded. Although it does also seem like the rigor has gone down acutely.

I'm getting my second bachelors in Computer Science now, my first was in Chemical Engineering 12 years earlier. The amount of rampant cheating and seeming inability for the schools to "fail" a student is completely foreign to me compared to my first degree, which took me 8 years to achieve across three schools, so I definitely got a somewhat decent sample of school cultures.

> There was a transition stretching across Gen X and Millennials where degrees like "social work" steadily lost value as supply of these degrees gradually outpaced demand, and wages slowly stagnated.

Isn’t the US in the middle of multiple drug crises (opioids, meth) and a mental health crisis?

My father worked in addictions counseling and basically it pays nothing, is rampant with corruption, power tripping and general toxicity. So while the US does have these problems, unless you find it to be your calling to help folks like my father did in the second half of his career, the majority of competent people will steer well clear of these types of fields. It leaves a particular set of people behind, abusers and people who will be abused. My father is a good man and generally fell into that second category so as soon as he hit retirement age he got out.

unfortunately demand isnt driven by the crisis, its driven by the states' willingness to pay

I guess when I say "lost value" I meant in terms of the degree recipient being able to capture the value they can provide.

I agree there's a lot of value which could be provided -- but someone still needs to employ those talented individuals and provide them with the infrastructure necessary to facilitate them doing "their job".

this is true, and in theory will only drive up the cost of college, as there will be continued demand as the repayment will be dissociated from the amount of the original loan

IMO the better solution would be some limited forgiveness for current borrowers, then shoring up/restoring funding for state/public universities, undercutting pricing at privates

If we are going to have federal loans at all, they should be capped at something like the 70th percentile public school tuition. If schools want to charge more than that they can lend to students or parents themselves.

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