Obama's Student Loan Forgiveness plan.

[aerius]

I think that as things stand everybody needs tertiary education of some kind- unskilled labor and semiskilled labor are no longer viable lifetime career options unless you've got another, larger income. And that's only going to get worse as automation proceeds, I think. As to whether that should be college/university or a trade school, I think that both should be viable options. But that requires changing the overall culture significantly too.

Which leads to the next questions:

1) Who's going to pay for it?

2) How is it going to be paid for?

3) What are we going to do to stop this?

[Broomstick]

Question: Are those who are currently US students today aware that the student loan program has undergone changes over time?

When I was in college I couldn't possibly have graduated with more that $20,000 in loan debt total. They just didn't loan the average student as money as they do nowadays. As it was, I borrowed substantially less than that and was able to pay them all off in 10 years (as required) while earning poverty-line wages or just above that.

Now I hear about [insert non-technical major here] students graduating with $80,000, or $100,000, or even more in debt. And I go WTF happened? I really don't know, but somewhere this all went off the rails and I'd really like to know why.

I suspect it does have something to do with expectations - when I was in college I lived in a 10x10 room (3.3 m square for you metric folks), sometimes even with a roommate (for a few weeks with two roommates in that space) and lived off of ramen noodles, bruised vegetables, and discount hotdogs. I'd hang my laundry up on a line in my room so I wouldn't have to spend money on a dryer. Stuff like that. In other words, I was a poor college student (it was good training for the last four years, for better or worse). Now I hear about some - by my standards - rather palatial dorm rooms and such and I think that maybe that money would have been better spent on the actual education. I guess the notion of the Special Snowflake living a less than middle-class suburban lifestyle for a few years is just unbearable or something. Frankly, I think a couple years of living at poverty level is character building and gives one a broader perspective, but maybe I'm just a bitter old hag or something.

I also think that the discounting by society of alternatives like community colleges (either for two years degrees, two years then on to a larger university, or for four year programs where available) and trade schools is also part of the problem.

I do think the student loan program can be beneficial but there must be limits. I don't think they should be there because of Duchess' view of people, but because the people taking these loans out are, by and large, young and inexperienced. Fully educated adults fuck up often enough, freshmen college students, if anything, need more protections and guidance. People should not be allowed to borrow more than they can be reasonably expected to pay off in 10-15 years. That does mean that medical students are going to be able to borrow more than history majors. You know what? You shouldn't spend as much getting a history degree as getting an MD.

[Broomstick]

My argument is a very simple one... That federally backed loans should not be available to people who are studying degrees which don't socially contribute in a quantifiable sense (I am not saying those degrees don't contribute, just that we can't quantify it).

Why are you against permitting people to borrow money under a program where they have to (outside of death or permanent disability) pay it back? I can certainly understand limits on the amount borrowed, but to entirely eliminate the option to borrow for certain degrees? Why? Because YOU don't personally see the utility? Do you have any other reason for such a systematic exclusion?

This would force people going into the liberal arts to be either rich, or dependent on their parents having saved money for them to go to school, or on local state programmes, scholarships based on academic performance (which would winnow the number of non-contributing people), and similar programmes. Wards of the State would be fully funded in anything they wish to do, because it's an obligation on society to provide for foster children and such.

Great – so rich people and orphans can study the liberal arts, but anyone else is shit out of luck? Do you actually think before posting such drivel, or do you honestly believe the liberal arts should be reserved solely to the wealthiest?

Also – and really, this is yet another example of you making pronouncements on subject you know little or nothing about, which makes you look stupid (and you're not stupid, just narrow-minded and stubborn on occasion) – not everything depends on academics! Once again, you show your bias. There are areas of human endeavor where a portfolio of work (that is, actual accomplishments or product) is far more valuable than whatever grades you got in school. You consistently ignore this, probably because you are for the most part ignorant of such areas of endeavor.

The basic goal here is to deter people who are not going to contribute academically from doing something that will massively saddle them with debt.

First – not everyone contributes “academically”. My sister the MD sure as hell isn't contributing “academically” to anything, as she does no research, but she does definitely contribute to a better society. Your bias is showing again.

Second – one can obtain a “liberal arts degree” (which, if I understand the Zeon Definition properly, is pretty much anything that's not math, science, engineering, or medicine) without going “massively into debt” even if one is not expect to make a large wage. I certainly managed it, as did most of my friends/peers who also went to college when I did. You don't do that by cutting off loans entirely, you do it by limiting the amount that can be borrowed. This still allows students choice, it still allows programs to compete, but because there are limits are borrowing colleges have more incentive to NOT raise tuition to the point students can no longer afford it. That's the way it used to be.

Therefore we should remove the inducement to easy excess, and those truly motivated to pursue their dreams will find funding to do so, and will generally perform well enough in their chosen academic field to be productive academics in grad school in it, which is usually necessary in the liberal arts for someone to be contributive in the field in question.

Only if you define “liberal arts” in a very narrow manner, usually with the idea of being a college professor. Liberal arts majors who stop as the baccalaureate then go into NON-academic fields do contribute to society, either not needing to go to grad school, or not doing so until later in life when they have (one hopes) more resources to pursue additional education.

In short, I believe that humans are innately animalistic, depraved, stupid, Hobbesian creatures who act brutishly without social constraints to force goodness, and who we see today in the Tea Party and numerous other similar organisations dedicated to fucking over and killing lots of people through starvation and poerty all so they can get another car loan for a second Yukon Denali, and that if fully educated, they will just add some more educated sounding words to their frothing rant over browns/queers/blacks/commies/wimmins. You of course believe that humans are in fact basically good creatures who when educated will make rational and just decisions.

Then there are those of us who think the true nature of humanity lies somewhere between those two extremes...

My first professor in a collegiate institution was at a community college and taught history, and he told me that one of his jobs there was to, by his classes, try and help show to people if they should be continuing on to an academic career or if they should look into a job as a roofer, and that there was nothing wrong with being a roofer,

Having recently done some roofing work, I can tell you a LOT wrong with being a roofer!

.... it was just, some people are only fit for that, and need to find it out before they go on to a full university and load up on tens of thousands of dollars worth of debt that fucks them over for life since you can never get student loans forgiven in bankruptcy in the US like you can other kinds of loans.

Or maybe we should steer more people towards trade schools and apprenticeships rather than saying a college degree for everyone... but that will require more than just revamping the student loan program.

[Alphawolf55]

Is there honestly a way to deter students from going to college that shouldn't outside of either barriers of qualification through testing or barriers of price? I just don't see how a society that constantly teaches that college is the best part of your life and you're a loser if you don't go, will suddenly change it's tune. Especially when it comes to the media, that is mostly filled with college graduates, who are going to be bias in the messages they send.

[Broomstick]

I think "barriers of qualification" is better than "barriers of price" - it is entirely reasonable to set minimum standards for admission to a program of higher education, and such criteria can be tailored to the course of study. If you can't qualify your options would be to either acquire the skill and reapply, or choose something else.

[Alphawolf55]

I think "barriers of qualification" is better than "barriers of price" - it is entirely reasonable to set minimum standards for admission to a program of higher education, and such criteria can be tailored to the course of study. If you can't qualify your options would be to either acquire the skill and reapply, or choose something else.

This is what I've been suggesting, why do you have a problem with it again?

[aerius]

Question: Are those who are currently US students today aware that the student loan program has undergone changes over time?

When I was in college I couldn't possibly have graduated with more that $20,000 in loan debt total. They just didn't loan the average student as money as they do nowadays. As it was, I borrowed substantially less than that and was able to pay them all off in 10 years (as required) while earning poverty-line wages or just above that.

Now I hear about [insert non-technical major here] students graduating with $80,000, or $100,000, or even more in debt. And I go WTF happened? I really don't know, but somewhere this all went off the rails and I'd really like to know why.

I'd say a large part of it is that education got financialized and turned into a racket. You now have a situation where almost any student can take out massive college loans which can't be discharged in bankruptcy. Since there's no risk of default, the lenders can and do hand out huge loans to anyone with a pulse, colleges know this so they can jack their fees accordingly which increases the demand for loans, which makes the lenders even happier. Add in some nice PR on & social expectations on how you must go to college or be a failure for life and that goes a long way to getting you guys to where you are now.

In Canada, we don't have that, almost all student loans go through OSAP or whatever it's called in the other provinces, they'll do a full financial assessment on you before handing out the loan. They look at family income & finances, the program you're applying for, which college or university you're applying to, and a bunch of other stuff, then decide if and how much money they'll loan you. They're not known for being generous, and that's a good thing. Because of that our education costs haven't gone stupid, the tuition fees for my university have actually gone up slower than our inflation rate, that's right, it's actually gotten cheaper!

[Broomstick]

I think "barriers of qualification" is better than "barriers of price" - it is entirely reasonable to set minimum standards for admission to a program of higher education, and such criteria can be tailored to the course of study. If you can't qualify your options would be to either acquire the skill and reapply, or choose something else.

This is what I've been suggesting, why do you have a problem with it again?

I don't have a problem with you. I'm agreeing with you, at least in that area. Why do you have a problem with my agreeing with you?

[Alphawolf55]

I think "barriers of qualification" is better than "barriers of price" - it is entirely reasonable to set minimum standards for admission to a program of higher education, and such criteria can be tailored to the course of study. If you can't qualify your options would be to either acquire the skill and reapply, or choose something else.

This is what I've been suggesting, why do you have a problem with it again?

I don't have a problem with you. I'm agreeing with you, at least in that area. Why do you have a problem with my agreeing with you?

I don't have a problem, but you seemed to think strongly against my idea that we should fully fund general educations, but limit degrees and majors towards what the economy can handle. I'm more confused.

I mean what would you say about limiting core studies to Universities to a more community college environment then have students finish up their majors in a university for the final two years?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Broomstick, thank you! Now let's go over what you've got wrong about my argument:

1. I don't think the federal government should get people in debt, period. I furthermore think the grant money should be targeted. That is, people should get a full ride in grants in critical science and engineering fields equivalent to the maximum Stafford loan eligibility at present. Additional grants should be provided equivalent to the Perkins loan eligibility for low-income people in these fields.
2. The existing Pell Grant programme for low-income students should remain unchanged. That will give up to 5,500 USD in grants to needy students. About half of tuition at a State university at current rates. They should be able to get the rest through federal and state work study, state grants, need based scholarships, and performance based scholarships even if they're even somewhat good, or working and going to school at the same time, if they really want to study something out of the science and engineering fields.
3. I am including social and behavioural sciences per this list.
4. My argument is that debt is fucking over an entire generation for no good, and is in fact just making their lives worse. I just want the debt gone, not the liberal arts, and I don't think the government can justify handing money out for free to students who are neither truly needy nor studying a critical subject. I think their parents should have saved money, and if you're not eligible for Pell Grants your parents probably had the ability to save up enough money for you to go to school if they hadn't been mouth-breathing morons.
5. In the ideal world where we had enough money floating around in the federal government to pay for everything, I would support completely free merit-based entry university education. This world is however not ideal, and therefore, any reform of the current system to eliminate the debt trap will require a programme-based exclusion.


6. As an alternative one possibility would be to eliminate student loans for freshmen and sophmores so that if you cannot afford to pay tuition at those levels you must go to a much cheaper community college, where if you cannot afford to pay for tuition either it is guaranteed your tuition will be funded by grants.

[Alphawolf55]

3. I have a slight problem with the solution of "Kids can get jobs!". One it ignores the fact there aren't many jobs at the moment, so to expect students to all be able to get jobs is slightly unrealistic. Two, I think it ignores a major point of school. Americans seem to expect our students to be able to compete with foreign students, we also seem to expect our students to have jobs and go to school at the same time while foreign parents seem to treat school as their main job. I don't think we should expect students to work as a solution to paying tuition especially since it depresses wages.


4. I have a slight problem with this as well. I think it's actually a mistake of our system to look at parent's income a student income 100% of the time. It rarely takes into consideration multiple factors (how many kids the parents have) or whether the parents are willing to pay for school at all. My parents are part of the top 2% and weren't willing to pay for my schooling. In fact I know a lot of families that would be considered comfortably middle class that are refusing to pay for their children's schooling (I slightly blame the libertarian mindset of our state). Should kids suffer for either having families with too many kids or having douchebag parents?

[Broomstick]

I don't have a problem, but you seemed to think strongly against my idea that we should fully fund general educations, but limit degrees and majors towards what the economy can handle. I'm more confused.

You're confused because all too many people take an all-or-nothing approach to these discussions where I do not. I do not agree with everything you say, but I do agree with some parts of it.

I think the government should fund public education up to a point - right now, that point is 12th grade/end of high school. I don't think we fund ALL education. I am open for discussion at to whether or not the current point of full subsidy is appropriate or not, but I'm not comfortable making the statement "all education funded all the way".

I also have reservations about limiting degrees and majors basic on the economy. I can see limiting aid, but not restricting choice. If someone is making enough money to full pay for whatever program they desire more power to them. I used to fly airplanes for a hobby, but taking college courses for ten years (towards a degree or not) probably wouldn't have been any more outrageous a use of my time and money and indeed I've known a few people who seem to make attending college a hobby while earning a comfortable income. I don't see anything wrong with that.

I mean what would you say about limiting core studies to Universities to a more community college environment then have students finish up their majors in a university for the final two years?

I think it's a viable option that should be much more promoted to high school students. In many ways, students spending the initial two years of college at a local/community college getting basics - the sort of math/science/language/history/etc. required for ANY degree (yes, I had to take all of those even for my degree in Fine Arts) then specializing the final two years makes a lot of sense to me. I also think allowing high school students to take courses that at least potentially allow college credit (the advanced placement history and English I took in high school fell into this category, allowing me use them for college credit rather than spend money on those classes in actual college) also is a good thing.

There may be areas of study that require more advanced classes than those available at the community college level - in which case perhaps such students would attend one year at the local college and three at the larger university. However, those areas will probably be the heavy math/sciences fields were most of us seem to agree greater subsidy makes some sense. For most students, however, doing the basic core classes at a smaller, cheaper school makes a lot of sense.

[Alphawolf55]

Actually is there any reason why humanities and liberal arts couldn't be done entirely at Community level? I don't mean like in 2 years, but with the same sort of cost controls community colleges have? I know that the sciences require complex equipment a lot of times, but if we made allowances for better pay for professors are there any actual heavy resources the humanities and liberal arts in general require?

[Broomstick]

Broomstick, thank you! Now let's go over what you've got wrong about my argument:

1. I don't think the federal government should get people in debt, period.

First of all, it's not the Federal government getting people into debt. No one is forced to take a student loan (though admittedly not taking one can present significant obstacles). Certainly, back in my day, bankruptcy due to student loans was unheard of outside of medical school drop-outs. That's because you couldn't borrow the insane amounts handed out these days. As I pointed out, even at minimum wage for several years post-graduation I was able to meet my student loan obligations without going bankrupt. I paid them in full, on time. Permitted loan amounts should be restricted to that sort of sum and repayment schedule, not the insanity of the present.

The problem isn't borrowing, it's unreasonable borrowing. Let's not throw the baby out with the scummy bathwater. Properly managed borrowing can be of great use - it's the badly done version that gets people into trouble.

I furthermore think the grant money should be targeted. That is, people should get a full ride in grants in critical science and engineering fields equivalent to the maximum Stafford loan eligibility at present. Additional grants should be provided equivalent to the Perkins loan eligibility for low-income people in these fields.

I don't have a problem with targeted grants - I do have a problem with how much you want to restrict loans.

2. The existing Pell Grant programme for low-income students should remain unchanged. That will give up to 5,500 USD in grants to needy students. About half of tuition at a State university at current rates.

I agree.

They should be able to get the rest through federal and state work study, state grants, need based scholarships, and performance based scholarships even if they're even somewhat good, or working and going to school at the same time, if they really want to study something out of the science and engineering fields.

As people with college degrees and decades of work experience are having trouble getting employment right now, expecting that the majority of students will be able to work as well as go to school might not be reasonable at this point in time. Under more normal circumstances, yes, that might be OK, but with current unemployment rates that's not reasonable.

3. I am including social and behavioural sciences per this list.

Fair enough, thank you for the clarification. (Not that I entirely agree with your valuation system, but at least I have a clearer idea of what you value.)

4. My argument is that debt is fucking over an entire generation for no good, and is in fact just making their lives worse.

Again, the problem isn't that debt is inherently evil, it's stupid debt that's the problem. The student loan program used to allow millions of people get college degrees in a timely manner without fucking them over. Loans are not the problem. Loans on terms that would make the mafia blush - that's a problem. We need a return to sanity, not an abolishment of a tool that, properly used, benefits millions of individuals and society as a whole.

I just want the debt gone, not the liberal arts, and I don't think the government can justify handing money out for free to students who are neither truly needy nor studying a critical subject.

LOANS are not the government "handing money out for free". That's a GRANT. Loans have to be paid back - which is the potential source of the problem here. Loans on terms that are unreasonable or stupid are not good loans.

I think their parents should have saved money, and if you're not eligible for Pell Grants your parents probably had the ability to save up enough money for you to go to school if they hadn't been mouth-breathing morons.

So people with the misfortune to be born to "mouth-breathing morons" don't deserve to go to school? Why are you holding young adults hostage to the misconduct of their parents? Parents are only obligated to provide for children until the age of 18 - so a 19 year old cut off by his/her parents is shit out of luck? How is that fair or reasonable?

6. As an alternative one possibility would be to eliminate student loans for freshmen and sophmores so that if you cannot afford to pay tuition at those levels you must go to a much cheaper community college, where if you cannot afford to pay for tuition either it is guaranteed your tuition will be funded by grants.

This will still leave capable students with asshole parents out in the cold. Why are you punishing them because their parents are assholes?

[Broomstick]

Actually is there any reason why humanities and liberal arts couldn't be done entirely at Community level? I don't mean like in 2 years, but with the same sort of cost controls community colleges have? I know that the sciences require complex equipment a lot of times, but if we made allowances for better pay for professors are there any actual heavy resources the humanities and liberal arts in general require?

It depends in part how you define such things. There are certain fields that aren't the sciences/engineering that do, in fact, require somewhat expensive facilities. If the liberal arts/humanities are defined to include the performing arts yes, equipment can become expensive for certain things - music programs require instruments, practice facilities, performance facilities. Acting/drama require performance venues, productions, and so forth. The visual arts also have some potentially expensive requirements. This also can apply to trade schools where certain programs might well require expensive equipment and a certain materials budget - you can't learn welding or carpentry entirely out of a book, you have to do some of the tasks a certain number of repetitions in order to properly learn the trade.

If you exclude trade schools and performing arts then, for the most part, yes, humanities/liberal arts probably could be done for lower costs than some other programs of study.

[Alphawolf55]

Then might it be smarter to further distance the humanities and liberal arts from trade schools and hard science? (This is coming from a liberal arts major). I mean it seems doing so could drastically cut tuition.

[Broomstick]

The thing is, some liberal arts should be a requirement with the hard sciences and trade schools as part of basic well-rounding of education. Just as liberal arts students are required to take some math and science. Then again, if we're looking at the idea of the hard science people getting the first two years in at community college then sure, such a split might work.

That leaves the trade schools - but maybe it would be feasible for there to be some sort of mutual agreement between trade schools and community colleges so that trade school folks could get their required academics at the CC.

[Alphawolf55]

I think it might be nice to have most hard science universities be two years. Everyone would go to 2 year community college programs to take care of their core classes then if liberal arts continue for 2 years in the community college level(maybe even 1 year for some degrees) and for more hard sciences finish the last 2 years in a University.

Granted that would probably drive up the average cost of hard science degrees, most likely it's not that it really cost 15,000 dollars to do Liberal Arts education at a university but only 4000 at a community college, more likely they cost similar but the liberal arts education are subsidizing the more expensive majors.

[Simon_Jester]

As to dormitories, I spent my entire college education in dorms that were built around the time you were going to college, if not before, Broomstick. I wouldn't know. You might call them 'palatial,' but if so the problem has little to do with my generation because we didn't exist at the time the facilities were created.

My argument is a very simple one... That federally backed loans should not be available to people who are studying degrees which don't socially contribute in a quantifiable sense (I am not saying those degrees don't contribute, just that we can't quantify it).

Why are you against permitting people to borrow money under a program where they have to (outside of death or permanent disability) pay it back? I can certainly understand limits on the amount borrowed, but to entirely eliminate the option to borrow for certain degrees? Why? Because YOU don't personally see the utility? Do you have any other reason for such a systematic exclusion?

Sounds like "because of the consequences:" there are several hundred billion dollars of student loan debt sloshing around out there, on the backs of students who graduated in the past decade or so. This is not necessarily good for the country, or for the students.

If the students can't pay the money back, it's a big sink of money and we honestly should be asking "was it worth spending X hundred billion dollars to produce all these people with degrees in subjects ranging from electrical engineering down to sports nutrition?" The answer might be "yes," or "no," or "yes to some and no to others." Taking the sample of twenty or so undergrads in the lab section I'm a TA for, some of them are definitely good investments for college and if I were a bank, I'd have no reservations about loaning them money in the expectation that they'd have the ability and responsibility to pay it back. Others, I wouldn't trust with pizza money, let alone a ten thousand dollar loan.

We should be thinking about this.

If some of the students can pay the money back easily enough, while others can't pay the money back without being reduced to debt slaves, then we screwed up. Something's wrong. Maybe tuitions are too high and need to be adjusted. If this means changing student living conditions, so be it. Or we need to have people paying back the loans at pittance-level interest for the next thirty years. Which raises its own problems, since we don't really get the money we loaned out back, and it was supposed to be a loan in the first place.

The point is, you can't just unreflectively hand out hundreds of billions of dollars, present them as loans with interest payments that something that most young American adults can expect to be paying off for the rest of their life, and then keep doing so indefinitely.

Now, thinking about it, you're probably right that Duchess came up with the wrong answer to the problem.* But when I look at what she actually said, I don't think it's motivated by any deep-seated contempt for history or literature or art as such. She genuinely does seem motivated by the desire to avoid passing out mountains of student loans to people who won't be able to pay them back, and who would probably be better served by pursuing a trade education than a marginal-economic-payoff college degree in any case.

That way they can handle laborious tasks such as patching up fools' roofs in horrid weather, while overworked little old ladies can stick to their lasts.

*This does seem to be another of her patented Drastic Policy Solutions, from the desk of a a... hm. I'm honestly not sure there's a word for her political leanings, it's not "fascist" or anything simple like that... [scratches head]

---

I think it might be nice to have most hard science universities be two years. Everyone would go to 2 year community college programs to take care of their core classes then if liberal arts continue for 2 years in the community college level(maybe even 1 year for some degrees) and for more hard sciences finish the last 2 years in a University.

Granted that would probably drive up the average cost of hard science degrees, most likely it's not that it really cost 15,000 dollars to do Liberal Arts education at a university but only 4000 at a community college, more likely they cost similar but the liberal arts education are subsidizing the more expensive majors.

This is a bad idea. It takes four years of fairly rigorous math and science courses to attain basic competence in disciplines like science and engineering. You can't do it in two years, unless you have "pre-science" tracks at the community college. Some already do this, because it's cheaper than four years at a university. But to make it work overall you'd need to raise the quality of community college education, because many of them just don't prepare students for what they'd need to function as physics or engineering students, to take examples I'm more familiar with.

[Alphawolf55]

Are you assuming that the core classes wouldn't have math and science included or are you saying that even taking into account the core, more science and math would be needed. Because at most of the schools I'm familiar with, our cores requirements pretty much take up a year and a half of credits (42 credits) and our electives take up the second half. Our majors take up 2 years of credits (60), so at our school we could easily fill up two years doing nothing that is specific to our major and still be on track.

[Simon_Jester]

It's very hard to do this in science and engineering, because the third and fourth years of the curriculum hinge on material that is definitely college level and which must be taught in the first and second years. Before students can even begin to tackle things like, say, the dynamics of a moving system or the behavior of a piece of machinery under stress and friction and whatnot, they have an entire list of concepts they need to learn that are themselves the topic of whole semesters of instruction.

And those extra semesters also serve as a winnowing stage- to pick out the people who don't have the kind of mindset that would lend itself to completing the program.

Just because it's theoretically possible to take five courses in your major requirements every semester for two years doesn't mean this is a practical way to fill all majors. Indeed, the more rigorous and worthwhile an education is, the less likely it is that you can compress it into two years without negative consequences.

[thejester]

The easy answer is that the federal government only has an obligation to support students who are going to university in things which make a direct contribution to society. If you cannot locate a direct social benefit to a federal assistance programme, it probably shouldn't exist. This of course qualifies a lot of majors--teaching, Social Work, psychology, medicine, pre-law, pharmacy, vet school, nursing, engineering, biology and related subjects, chemistry the same, physics, geology, etc, to name and incomplete list. On the other hand we shouldn't issue aid at all to other degrees because people getting them is ultimately a luxury. We should instead support their developing skilled trades, and use the money saved by doing so to make education for people in fields that essentially give back more to society free. Then the liberal arts will contract back into private universities and smaller departments filled with people who are able to pay for their education out of pocket. This will more or less serve to correct the oversupply of those degrees without any kind of quota system, and the people excluded from them have the choice of studying a supported degree field, or ignoring college and going to a technical school to start on the path of certification in a skilled trade.

Maybe it's different in America but in Australia all of the bolded are in fact liberal arts degrees. Most people who become teachers would either do a BA with a teaching component or a straight BA and then do a Diploma of Education afterwards. You generally do a BA before doing postgraduate law, although in Australia most lawyers get their degrees as undergraduates. The other point of contention is that studying science as an undergraduate is just as pointless as doing a BA, arguably moreso. You need postgraduate qualification to work in the field, and most BS students either use it as a stepping stone to postgrad engineering or medicine or do a Dip Ed as well.

[Broomstick]

As to dormitories, I spent my entire college education in dorms that were built around the time you were going to college, if not before, Broomstick. I wouldn't know. You might call them 'palatial,' but if so the problem has little to do with my generation because we didn't exist at the time the facilities were created.

If there's blame, I don't think it lies with the younger generation(s) in the equation - these would be decisions made by the university planners and, to some degree parents. Sure, at that age I probably would have loved more space, my own room, my own bathroom, my own telephone, my own TV and kitchenette, etc. I don't know what sort of dorm you personally were in.

Just to be clear, I don't have a problem with students having nice accommodations. I question if some of the dorms I've seen go beyond adequate into unnecessary.

My argument is a very simple one... That federally backed loans should not be available to people who are studying degrees which don't socially contribute in a quantifiable sense (I am not saying those degrees don't contribute, just that we can't quantify it).

Why are you against permitting people to borrow money under a program where they have to (outside of death or permanent disability) pay it back? I can certainly understand limits on the amount borrowed, but to entirely eliminate the option to borrow for certain degrees? Why? Because YOU don't personally see the utility? Do you have any other reason for such a systematic exclusion?

Sounds like "because of the consequences:" there are several hundred billion dollars of student loan debt sloshing around out there, on the backs of students who graduated in the past decade or so. This is not necessarily good for the country, or for the students.

No, it's not. There are unquestionably problems with the system. As I said, the payback terms need to be reasonable and there need to be limits on borrowing. It should not be a gateway to debt slavery, but then, no debt should be that.

Taking the sample of twenty or so undergrads in the lab section I'm a TA for, some of them are definitely good investments for college and if I were a bank, I'd have no reservations about loaning them money in the expectation that they'd have the ability and responsibility to pay it back. Others, I wouldn't trust with pizza money, let alone a ten thousand dollar loan.

We should be thinking about this.

Yes, we should. We might need better criteria for who we loan money to, even as students. I don't think we should bar certain majors from borrowing entirely, as the Duchess proposed, but some fields might have lower borrowing caps than others.

Something's wrong. Maybe tuitions are too high and need to be adjusted.

I do think that should be looked at.

If this means changing student living conditions, so be it.

Another thing that needs to be looked at. I know there are plenty of old-style dorms still around, but some of the new ones I've heard about being built in the late 90's and early 00's seem excessive to me. Students should be housed decently - clean, dry, bathroom facilities, etc. - but not lavishly.

Or we need to have people paying back the loans at pittance-level interest for the next thirty years. Which raises its own problems, since we don't really get the money we loaned out back, and it was supposed to be a loan in the first place.

I think 30 years is too long a term. 10, maybe 15. I forget the interest rate on mine (it has been awhile) but banks were doing decently enough on them that they didn't have a problem participating in the program.

The point is, you can't just unreflectively hand out hundreds of billions of dollars, present them as loans with interest payments that something that most young American adults can expect to be paying off for the rest of their life, and then keep doing so indefinitely.

I think we're all agreed on that.

That way they can handle laborious tasks such as patching up fools' roofs in horrid weather, while overworked little old ladies can stick to their lasts.

Oh, that was very nicely done!

*This does seem to be another of her patented Drastic Policy Solutions, from the desk of a a... hm. I'm honestly not sure there's a word for her political leanings, it's not "fascist" or anything simple like that... [scratches head]

Not only does the Duchess tend to view all problems as a nail, she tends to use a hammer like this one:

[Aniron]

This is a bad idea. It takes four years of fairly rigorous math and science courses to attain basic competence in disciplines like science and engineering. You can't do it in two years, unless you have "pre-science" tracks at the community college. Some already do this, because it's cheaper than four years at a university. But to make it work overall you'd need to raise the quality of community college education, because many of them just don't prepare students for what they'd need to function as physics or engineering students, to take examples I'm more familiar with.

What about lowering the amount of humanities courses you take? I don't see why a hard science undergraduate must take 3 literature courses, three histories, multiple arts courses etc. We don't expect people shooting for literature degrees to enroll in three math courses that aren't remedial in nature, do we? If not, why not?

[Count Chocula]

I'd say a large part of it is that education got financialized and turned into a racket. You now have a situation where almost any student can take out massive college loans which can't be discharged in bankruptcy. Since there's no risk of default, the lenders can and do hand out huge loans to anyone with a pulse, colleges know this so they can jack their fees accordingly which increases the demand for loans, which makes the lenders even happier. Add in some nice PR on & social expectations on how you must go to college or be a failure for life and that goes a long way to getting you guys to where you are now.

In Canada, we don't have that, almost all student loans go through OSAP or whatever it's called in the other provinces, they'll do a full financial assessment on you before handing out the loan. They look at family income & finances, the program you're applying for, which college or university you're applying to, and a bunch of other stuff, then decide if and how much money they'll loan you. They're not known for being generous, and that's a good thing. Because of that our education costs haven't gone stupid, the tuition fees for my university have actually gone up slower than our inflation rate, that's right, it's actually gotten cheaper!

Aerius brings up a good point here, and I'll expand on it: why are so many students taking on so much debt just to go to school? Shit, back when I was a whippersnapper graduating in Virginia, I was accepted to UCLA, UCSD, Embry-Riddle, Virginia Tech, University of Virginia, Ohio State, and NYU. I really, really wanted to go to Embry-Riddle for an aeronautical engineering degree and pilot training, but the $15k/year tuition was a fucking killer. Maybe I could have borrowed the money, and I know I could have gotten some Pell grants, but I ran the numbers and figured out that leaving uni in 1989 with a $100,000 cloud over my head (tuition and lodging approx.) would absolutely kill me. I wound up going to Virginia Tech for CompSci, which was subsidized by the taxpayers of the Commonwealth (in-state tuition). It absolutely boggles me that kids going to college for ANY type of degree these days seem to do no cost-benefit analysis or look at the ramifications of taking on so much debt.

On Broomstick's and Simon_Jester's comments about community college: I found much to dislike about California in the 10 years I lived in San Diego, but their community college system was absolutely top notch. California's public university system was actually designed to have most students go to CC before entering the university system. I took two years of calc and matrix algebra, a year of chemistry, and a year of calc-based physics in California's community colleges. Shit, I even took water polo and fencing! The community colleges in CA don't have dormitories or cafeterias or sports teams, but you could get a good education without breaking the bank. Equally important, nobody thought you were a dumbass just because you were going to community college...it was seen as a stepping stone to uni.

Some of the blame for horriffic levels of student debt should be laid at the feet of the kids who borrowed the money.