Why should she accept personal responsibility if GM and the banks don't accept personal responsibility for their bad decisions? The government bailed out huge corporations, doesn't she deserve a bailout as well?
Time was that college was a place where you learned stuff, like how to be a productive member of society. Returning vets from WWII qualified for the GI Bill, and not all of those guys really should have been in college. But if you get a free chance to make a better life for yourself, take it! The problem of course was that colleges only had so many slots in useful majors, and in this case demand created supply. Let's create some new (less useful) majors because we have all these kids that want to go to school now. Then as returning vets got their degrees and entered the workforce, we went back to a normal nobody wanted to sign up for these useless majors. But we had professors with tenure and a departmental bureaucracy. So they lobbied to have their crap classes added to curriculum for the normal majors so students could be "well rounded".. and they would have students to teach and be able to keep their jobs. Now, we have these departments that feed themselves, creating Masters and Doctorate level degrees in crap because somebody has to teach the next generation of students.
From what I remember college is where I learned to party and socialize. Sure high school helped but college was where it came to a fine point. It would be cheaper perhaps for these kids to go to the pub. Nah then we'd be a pig---Ireland, HA!!!!
Depends upon whether she can pay her own way or not. She's "entitled" only to what she earns for herself or can pay for herself... nothing more. No sloughing your obligations onto someone else just because you're a dumbass and a Democrat voter.. Education loans should be like borrowing from a loan shark.... consider carefully, as there may be significant consequences.
Responsibility is a two-way street in which everyone is involved. At the bank or financing company, they are supposed to have an experienced and sophisticated group of underwriters. There is supposed to be an application process and every step along the way of that process there should be people scrutinizing the lendees. Back in the old days, I remember taking out a car loan and one of the underwriters called to question me about the things I put on the application. I remember sending them over some income verification...that was just for a car loan. Today, people are lent money without question or documentation for most anything. The people giving out the loans are supposed to be the most knowledgable about the process and, therefore, they have a greater responsibility then the people getting the loans. Of course, the people getting the loans should take some personal responsibility, but the burden of responsibility is on the people giving out the money because they are the more sophisticated party in the deal. If the banks had sensible underwriting standards, like they did back in the ole days where underwriters questioned what they saw, then we may not be in this mess today... Before money is put in the hands of another person, there should be a human being looking at the application...there should be full documentation...there should be someone on the telephone questioning the person. Right now, there is nothing like that and money is given out blindly to those who obviously are not qualified.
This level of student indebtness would not be happening without government-supported student loans. Remove the backstop, loan availability goes to very low levels. The loan providers are as guilty as everybody else in this, for the same reason as banks with FDIC backstops bear responsibility in the banking mess.