Blame student loans on.....

[engineering]

This is 100% on government.

There are two key factors:
1 federal student loan guarantees
2 inability to discharge student loans in bankruptcy

Without those two factors, this problem wouldn't exist.

Imagine trying to get a loan for a C student with no assets to get a degree in rural sociology or attic Greek. Private lenders would also be looking at things like the ratio of jobs in a given field to the number of students enrolled in degree programs in that field.

This entire problem could be fixed by allowing students to go bankrupt on student debt and kicking back the remaining balance on the lender.
It would simultaneously fix cost, over enrollment and lack of academic rigor.

 

[nooby_mcnoob]

more available and were federally subsidized

This is the common pattern with anything that government gets involved with. Real estate, medicine, education. Completely out of reach without debt.

 

[nooby_mcnoob]

I blame the people who SIGNED FOR THEIR LOANS.

Same as I blame the people who signed for their mortgage payments before the RE bubble burst in 2007

Nobody forced anyone to borrow money for school, housing, cars, etc.

You borrowed the money, you knew the terms of the loan, PAY YOUR FUCKING DEBT!

You sound like an old guy that had the option not to borrow money to go to school. By any chance, is that accurate? What's your age?

 

[engineering]

Just to clarify...
I don't mean that individuals have no responsibility for their actions, but the fact that we have a nationwide problem is 100% government action.

If a city announced that it was going to stop investigating murders, the murder rate can be expected to spike upwards. Individuals may bear specific responsibility for specific murders, but the overall spike is a 100% predictable result of a deliberate policy.

Individuals should be responsible for college debt in the same way they are responsible for all other debts. If we can let people dispose of civil settlements in bankruptcy, the we should do the same for student loans.

 

[Overnight]

...
If a city announced that it was going to stop investigating murders, the murder rate can be expected to spike upwards...

If a city turns a blind eye to murders, then the murder rate drops to zero instantly, because the city is no longer reporting murders. No?

 

[engineering]

If a city turns a blind eye to murders, then the murder rate drops to zero instantly, because the city is no longer reporting murders. No?

No. I said stop investigating. Not stop reporting. Murder is often useful as a crime statistic because it is reported pretty much 100% of the time. Whether a given jurisdiction follows up and catches the guilty parties is much more variable.

 

[VicBee]

Education should be free, from kindergarten to PhD from state universities, which are subsidized by taxpayers. Education is the foundational wealth of a nation, the greatest elevator to success for all who pursue higher education regardless of social status.
America's 20th century post war attraction brain drained the world's nations of their educated, who were key making America great and dominant in most scientific and engineering endeavors. This created at least 2 unfortunate side effects; 1. Other countries expanded their resources educating their workforce who then left for a better life in America. 2. America failed to see the value of having a homegrown highly educated workforce. Corporations and small businesses needed a large labor force and the emphasis was on getting a job out of high school. It's also during that time that education was devalued, as good paying jobs were plentiful and America was the happy go lucky nation, the envy of the world.

The 21st century and advent of computer tech reversed the trend. Nations in Europe and Asia worked hard and succeeded in becoming competitive, wealthier and able to offer a bright future to their educated. Engineers and scientists now had options and many stayed home to further increase their nation's competitive edge. Universities learned from America's education model, who had mastered the art of branding and recognition, and started devoting budgets to marketing and branding for their own nationals to study and work at home, but also to attract paying students from other nations to help pay for these new budgets.
Today, the education business is fiercely competitive globally and governments have stepped in to offer foreign students incentives to study in their countries, from financial subsidies to work visas upon graduation. Universities have set up satellite campuses abroad and partnered with various prestigious universities to further attract paying students.
The dramatic events in America over the last 10 years, the vocal rejection of foreigners and nationalist rhetoric, is further eroding students willingness to study in America and further straining the pay to play model that had stood since the 1950s. Foreign prestigious universities continue to offer far less costly alternatives while US universities are facing impossible challenges attracting the best and brightest while raising fees. Those most affected are American students unable to afford university without going into debt, which has reached crisis levels today. This doesn't exist anywhere else in the world.

 

[nooby_mcnoob]

Education should be free, from kindergarten to PhD from state universities, which are subsidized by taxpayers. Education is the foundational wealth of a nation, the greatest elevator to success for all who pursue higher education regardless of social status.
America's 20th century post war attraction brain drained the world's nations of their educated, who were key making America great and dominant in most scientific and engineering endeavors. This created at least 2 unfortunate side effects; 1. Other countries expanded their resources educating their workforce who then left for a better life in America. 2. America failed to see the value of having a homegrown highly educated workforce. Corporations and small businesses needed a large labor force and the emphasis was on getting a job out of high school. It's also during that time that education was devalued, as good paying jobs were plentiful and America was the happy go lucky nation, the envy of the world.

The 21st century and advent of computer tech reversed the trend. Nations in Europe and Asia worked hard and succeeded in becoming competitive, wealthier and able to offer a bright future to their educated. Engineers and scientists now had options and many stayed home to further increase their nation's competitive edge. Universities learned from America's education model, who had mastered the art of branding and recognition, and started devoting budgets to marketing and branding for their own nationals to study and work at home, but also to attract paying students from other nations to help pay for these new budgets.
Today, the education business is fiercely competitive globally and governments have stepped in to offer foreign students incentives to study in their countries, from financial subsidies to work visas upon graduation. Universities have set up satellite campuses abroad and partnered with various prestigious universities to further attract paying students.
The dramatic events in America over the last 10 years, the vocal rejection of foreigners and nationalist rhetoric, is further eroding students willingness to study in America and further straining the pay to play model that had stood since the 1950s. Foreign prestigious universities continue to offer far less costly alternatives while US universities are facing impossible challenges attracting the best and brightest while raising fees. Those most affected are American students unable to afford university without going into debt, which has reached crisis levels today. This doesn't exist anywhere else in the world.

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

Things should be affordable and the only way that can happen is if the market sets prices. No Federal Reserve of education, or healthcare, or housing needed.

 

[thecoder]

It proves anew:
free markets don't work, only regulated markets with strong watchdogs work.
It's due to the greed... what it causes long term...

 

[engineering]

Education should be free, from kindergarten to PhD from state universities, which are subsidized by taxpayers.

Sorry but: Hahahaha! You've gotta be kidding.

Education only adds to the wealth of a country where people are being trained in something that is:
a) actually useful
b) a field of endeavour that they can and will actually participate in
c) Is taught with necessary academic rigour
d) provides more long term wealth than the time they are giving up to study it

Under you idea, we'd have people getting 4 PhD's in underwater basket-weaving and Sanskrit just so that they never have to work a day in their lives. There would be no incentive to ever reject an applicant or fail a student, because the school has no skin in the game. Not only would you massively waste resources, you would also destroy the value of beneficial programs, by subtracting all rigour and selectivity.

As far as actual facts, the US is a world leader in college education exports. I think the 2019 figure was $44 billion. If you go to a top-tier prestigious school in the US for a useful degree program, you will be surrounded by foreigners.

Your viewpoint on how much the US values a college education is also similarly bizarre. It doesn't match the facts:
https://www.statista.com/statistics...nment-of-college-diploma-or-higher-by-gender/
Look at the first figure and you'll see steadily increasing college achievement, since 1940. There's no sudden inflection point at the "advent of the 21st century".

I do think there is going to a crisis in US college education, but it's purely tied to the rising costs of tuition, which removing all price feedback mechanism between the consumer and provider is NOT going to fix.

If they don't stop with the special treatment for student loans, I predict the creation of new colleges that operate totally outside the current government-education complex.
Hire some people with actually real world experience to teach practical 4 year degree programs at 4 year, non-accredited, private schools, online where possible. The cost of operating outside the system will be so much cheaper, that it would probably cost about the same as the parent's contribution to a "normal" college, without the added crippling debt. At $10K per year and 20 students per teacher, that gives $200k in revenue per teacher. Even if half that is overhead, you should still be able to find people willing to work 9 months a year for $100k.