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I would say that its very bad in outlook across all academic majors, even computer science (China/India anyone?). Law students are getting shafted as they borrowed 150k to attend law school and now have to compete with 100k law grads every year. Computer science students and their physics brethren aren’t fairing well either.

I fully expect our commie-in-chief to implement some kind of “bailout” for these loans if the trend continues.

There is really no excuse for a school like NYU to be charging $200,000 for a bachelor’s degree in women’s studies or art history. It’s even more inexcusable for NYU to be letting people borrow to finance that overpriced degree.

If student loan debt is made dischargeable in bankruptcy, there will no longer an incentive for lenders and schools to put students so deep in debt that they’ll never be able to pay it back. If student debt were put on the same plane as other consumer debt, i.e. dischargeable in bankruptcy, lenders would be a lot more careful, and that in turn would put appropriate pressure on the colleges to bring their costs in line with the value of the education.

/flame-retardant suit on

RE: There is really no excuse for a school like NYU to be charging $200,000 for a bachelor’s degree in women’s studies or art history. It’s even more inexcusable for NYU to be letting people borrow to finance that overpriced degree.

Well, as I see it, the DEMAND side exists, therefore the SUPPLY side provides. NYU would not bother hiring teachers to teach these flak courses if students did not bother to enroll, BUT THEY DO.

Which means that NYU finds it WORTH offering these courses.

These students must be really STUPID or must have really rich parents.

Actually, in many regions of the U.S., companies practically fight over computer science graduates.

What is off-shored is mostly low-level coding. Indian companies that handle a lot of off-shoring have actually opened centers in the U.S. to get good higher-level technical skills, the kind you get from a true computer science degree (not so much from management information systems or training programs aimed at particular languages and certifications). Indians who come to the U.S. to study computer science usually find jobs here, not back in India. (One I know just started here at $60K, so these aren’t green-card sweatshop jobs.)

Alas, most of the public who think they know about computing (even many programmers) don’t even know what computer science is. Employers are much more clued in about this.

If student debt were put on the same plane as other consumer debt, i.e. dischargeable in bankruptcy, lenders would be a lot more careful, and that in turn would put appropriate pressure on the colleges to bring their costs in line with the value of the education.

That's a very intelligent comment.