Well if you get an American Literature degree from Harvard it is not an inferior product, it is a top notch degree in that field. Just that the earning potential in that field is shit as you are only good for teaching or being a failed writer. So you get the degree but cannot do shit with it. This is a failure at the student and parent level. People have to take responsibility and not blame the university entirely, they don't walk you in at gunpoint and say "Take this Sports and American Culture major!" Our parents cmae out of college and had jobs a lot easier than now so they are not educated in pushing their children to say "Hey if you like English Lit, then minor in it but your major better be something you can bank on or go to a JUCO for 1/100th the price." The only way to teach this lesson is to allow students to be burdened by their debt but give them breathing room so that they can work to pay it off. I don't feel sorry for an English Lit major who is waitressing, you could fucking temp and earn more money and tough shit if you don't like it, no one gives a shit if you can break down Great Expectations. They will work their asses to pay it off but they will and when their kids go to college and tell them they want to major in Film Studies, the ass kicking will be so swift.
I can live with interest forgiveness so long as the schools themselves return a significant portion of what they received. I just cannot get past letting the universities off the hook completely. They need skin in this restructuring as well.
Agreed. Since they are mostly private I think the process is to require schools/endowments to foot a larger ppercentage of the financial aid packages. since endowments are donated funds, the schools can charge minimal interest to cover costs and earn a small return to refund but will make sure they are pushing out employable douchefucks. They might make an incentive to have Office of Career Services give a yearly speech on employability so that students still have time to take a business or other life skill class.
Oh gawd, what a picture. If I were married to one of them, hopefully I could get a note from my doctor saying that I am not healthy enough to have sex.
There are two issues here. One, I agree that you might get a decent education in a field with low earnings prospects. There is a lot of blame to spread around for that. The universities offer degrees that have zero value, like the various gender and racial resentment majors. Many students don't belong in university in the first place and as a result are attracted to low stress majors. Some are not motivated by money and are genuinely interested in a subject area. Whatever, but I can't get too upset about any of them not being able to pay off loans. The more serious problem however is the general level of inflation in university costs, which has both greatly exceeded that in the economy in general and which has been almost totally driven by government sponsored loans. The theory behind borrowing money to attend college is that it is an investment. See the above paragraph for why that is not always true. Just forgiving loans or interest without addressing these issues is madness and creates a giant moral hazard.
One could make a credible argument about how some of the proposed cures are worse than the disease. So, let's see now. There is a problem with students have a marginal sense of responsibility or awareness of what their obligations are or how they can be met when they take out the loans. Does not matter to the institutions though because they get their gravy anyway. So giving students "free tuition" money by making college free is going to help that or make it worse? What is their cost or skin in the game there if they decide to sign up for a degree in Inter-Racial Basketweaving and drop out in two years to work at Starbucks in the town where the new girlfriend lives? CHA-CHING!!!! the institution still gets paid and the cost has to be absorbed somewhere.
No self respecting woman would want to be involved with your dumb ass. The irony of this thread is seeing uneducated morons like you comment on the value of education when in fact you are a walking, talking example of failure in the American education system.
It seems to be a natural progression of the dumbing down of America for people to get online and question the value of higher education. So we have this echo chamber of bs with people who have no idea why college education has value. In the course of a lifetime, 4 years of school is neither excessive nor a waste in most cases.