Two Conservative Ideas for Fixing Student Loans

National Review ^ | 07/23/2019 | Robert Verbruggen

[Vigilanteman]

Exactly. The best choice is partial bailout in exchange for divestiture. Every other political alternative is far worse.

[G Larry]

Don't allow loans to cover living expenses.

Don't allow tuition increases after the 1st year.

Don't authorize loans for a field of study that doesn't have an average Return on Investment over 10 years, assuming 25% of salary is applied.

Cut college admin staff in half.

[Phlyer]

My suggestion (in another response) was that the number of people allowed to enter a program would be limited to 1.5x the number of professional-field job offers to the most recent graduating class. No government estimates would be involved.

My class graduated about 20 Aerospace Engineers, and the average number of professional job offers was a bit more than three. Thus, 60-90 students could enter the Aerospace Engineering program in the University I attended. That allows for attrition in the fields that are challenging enough to be of real value.

The one issue there is the lag of approximately four years between when one class graduates and the entering class is competing for professional jobs. That's not really all that long, and if there is a real national need for more graduates in a particular field, then additional help (e.g. tutoring) for those who might drop out can increase the successful graduation rate.

The bottom line is that the economy, in the form of professional job offers, determines the number of 'slots' for incoming students, not some government estimate.

[shanover]

My answer is f-you,pay your f-ing loan! This is pure insanity!

[Jonty30]

In my world, the textbook companies would make use of resources like YouTube to put up videos to explain their textbooks that you can watch as often as you want and the creation of chat forums that you can join to discuss the textbooks.

[numberonepal]

No thanks. The colleges should be letting people enroll for free since they are government subsidized. Don’t even get me started on their endowments.

[Brian Griffin]

The English use an income share model. Theirs is defective because the government has to eat loans that don’t get paid off.

[Brian Griffin]

Some people like the idea of colleges co-signing loans.

[D Rider]

Agreed. How about endentured servitude until the debt is paid?

[Brian Griffin]

“Everyone is entitled to nearly twice as much money as the typical four-year student borrows today”

Sounds like its making the problem individually bigger, or more widespread.

“and no one ever loses more than 5 percent of his income repaying it”

How much will the government lose?

[bagman]

You’re making this suggestion because the Federal government is so good at making predictions and estimates?

[Brian Griffin]

“Limit the number of degrees in any field to a government estimate of the number of jobs that will require said degree.”

The CEOs will say half the domestic graduates are incompetent and that they’ll need to import foreigners to fill half the better paying jobs.

[Brian Griffin]

Any idea that has the federal government losing money subsidizing stuff isn’t conservative.

[sparklite2]

Limit the number of degrees in any field to a government estimate of the number of jobs that will require said degree

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This was exactly Hillary’s plan for government taking over health care.

[TennesseeProfessor]

The most important change is to allow student loan debt to be cleared in bankrupcy in exactly the same way car loans, home loans, personal loans, business loans, any other kind of loan are.

This means the banks and universities actually risk default. Which means they will start to ask the same questions every other loan asks — “How can we [the bank] be sure you will pay it back?”. This in turn will cause parents, colleges, and banks to ask hard questions about whether the degree is worth it and perhaps that cheaper school down the road would be the better option.

[Brian Griffin]

“the most aggressive proposal. Senator Josh Hawley has introduced a bill requiring colleges to pay off half the loans of students who default.”

If default is missing a payment (or several), lots of students will find a way to default.

Co-signing by colleges and students would keep both on the hook and discourage financial gaming.

Co-signing by colleges is simple to implement.

[antidemoncrat]

It seems to me that a lot of kids think if they can only get a degree from a big name school they will graduate into a $100,000+ job regardless of their actual abilities.

[BRL]

The first 50 % of debt repayment comes from university Endowment funds. The second 50 % comes after all universities allow placement tests for all basic subjects. The university degree is reduced to 2 years and only available to those who can place out of the first two years through independent study or community college. Only the last two year’s is eligible to be “free” there are so many reforms that could be made on the cost side and shockingly (s/) there is not one sentence of discussion about this when the student loan “crises” is discussed

[KC_Conspirator]

And how exactly does this helps poor, under privileged, and middle class people who made good decisions?

[Brian Griffin]

“you owe 1 percent of your earnings for the next 25 years”

I think I paid off my loans from 1975-1979 in about five years.