Probably about half of the student loans went for degrees that had very low pay potential.
The colleges knew this but were only too happy to grab the cash.
Claw back the delinquent loans from the colleges.
Oh I don’t disagree with you at all that colleges should be on the hook for taking young naive students, filling their heads with mush, loading them up with debt and then sending them out into the market place where their default on their loans was inevitable.
Go after university endowments.
[...half of the student loans went for degrees that had very low pay potential.]
Also, much of the money is spent on things unrelated to education such as living expenses, car notes, and cell/internet bills. Did these “students” even have passing grades or finish a degree? Mostly we have been paying kids to party and experience the “college” lifestyle.
From what I can remember from my college days & more recently listening to my daughter’s generation. (The percentages I am using take with a grain of salt they are based on anecdotal evidence.) Probably 75% of the people taking out student loans did so to get low ROI degrees essentially “hobby” degrees. Of that number probably half actually finished and eventually half of that number that finished paid off their loans.
At the root of much of the problem is schools and parents do a poor job preparing their kids to think about what comes after high school. Career counseling at my WV high school was a joke. Listening to my daughter and her friends the career counseling at the “ultra-sophisticated-high-cost-per-student” Fairfax County high school wasn’t any better.
Given all that the common refrain for what comes after high school is - “Dunno! I guess I’ll go to college.” Then there’s the post-graduate college one -”Dunno! I guess I’ll go to law school!”
here, here!!