Something is wrong with people that that they choose to go to schools that cost $100,000 to get degrees in fashion and/or retail management.
If we let borrowers default on loans under certain criteria (say, their annual income was below a certain threshold), then lenders would have to actually vet the students degrees --- and then we might have a sane system where you're denied a student loan if you're going to major in underwater basket weaving, but approved if you major in engineering.
And every month in college having to send your grades to them so they can be sure you're still a good investment.
It makes sense to me but... can you imagine the feelings that would be hurt by this?
Just hook the college results system up to the load provider and let their system keep track of it that way.
This is more or less how the government funding works in Australia, but saying that the costs of higher education are a lot lower.
The first part is mostly true: employers want a college degree. The second part is also true: STEM (with the exception of software development) tends to prefer people with specific degrees. The third part, however, is total bullshit, and it got A LOT of people into a A LOT of debt. The reality is employers are incredibly picky not just over a candidate's degree, but these days they're much less willing to invest in employee training. They want candidates who can show up and do the job on day 1.
My hunch is that lot of the college advice was doled out to students based upon the Baby Boomer's understanding of the world: College degrees are a hot item employers want, and they (usually) don't care what it's in! The employer will train you at your job and you just need the necessary reading, writing, and math skills. This probably was the case in the 1960s, 70s, and early 80s but by the 90s things had changed.
(As an aside- I ended up dropping out of college after 1.5 years and avoided debt. Opportunity knocked and probably saved me from tons of debt).
It's really just common sense, in most industries, having a degree is either looked at as a huge bonus, or a flat-out requirement. As an artist, you would have an extremely hard time finding a client / employer who cares if you even graduated from high school or learned to tie your shoes, as long as they like what's in your portfolio.
That being said, anything remotely related to art is going to be highly competitive, because no one really retires from being an artist, and there lots of people who have 30+ years of experience.
Starting fairly early, we teach students that there are a bunch of hoops they need to jump through in order to get a good job later in life. For an 18 year old, it is easy to see college as just another (and hopefully last) hoop to jump through.
Colleges (and the for-profit schools are exceptionally bad here) show them a rosy outlook for whatever major they are interested in - I guarantee you every person who is up to their eyeballs in debt got shown something saying "x% of graduates from the <insert not very marketable degree> program were employed 6 months after graduation with average salary of $y" based on questionable information, did the math, and thought it was a reasonable choice.
I don't think high school students are given enough information and enough reality to fully understand the ramifications of their college choices.
I absolutely made some bad choices when picking my major in college, but it took me quite a while to really figure that out - thankfully, I at least didn't get a bunch of debt to go along with it.