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To: SeekAndFind
Nope. The best and most conservative way to fix the high tuition problem and student loan problem (which make each other worse) is:

1) Don't help people with the dumb decisions they made in the past, including running up a bunch of student loan debt that apparently either didn't help them get a high enough income to pay it off, or didn't teach them the financial responsibility required to pay it off. Helping people after they make bad decisions like that only encourages future bad decisions and prevents them from learning life lessons to mature.

2) Get the federal government out of the college/university business. If different states want to do it, that's between the states and their constituents. But the federal government's massive money infusion into higher education is what has made tuition balloon like it has. The two things government "helps" us with most are college and healthcare -- which by no coincidence are the two things with the highest inflation rates.

End result: the only people in the future who go to college will be people who'll either pay for it out of pocket or have a creditor who's not as forgiving as the government, certainly not one that allows such low pre-payments during the early years. That'll make sure that the only people who go to college are the ones who'll actually get their money's worth out of it, in part by bring college tuition and books down. (If tuition doesn't actually go down, it'll at least quit going up for a while until normal inflation catches up.)

3 posted on 07/23/2019 10:10:59 AM PDT by Tell It Right (1st Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
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To: Tell It Right; Nifster
End result: the only people in the future who go to college will be people who'll either pay for it out of pocket or have a creditor who's not as forgiving as the government,

There are parts of your proposal that I can agree with, but the basic issue is the concept that all college degrees are equally 'valid' - whether as a path to success or as recipients of federal loan guarantees/grants/etc.

I think there is a social/economic value to some degrees (and therefore a justification for subsidy whether by state of federal), but others are money down a rathole no matter how they are paid for.

My proposal would be to tell colleges and universities that the maximum number of students allowed to enter a degree program is 1.5x the number of job offers the previous graduating class received. This includes only professional job offers in a related field. So, a degree in Physics that gets job offers in an engineering field is fine, but a degree in basket weaving that gets job offers of the 'Do you want fries with that?' variety does not.

If they were not allowed to let students into the basket-weaving program (or at least not many), then the associated professors/classrooms/administrators would be shown to be useless and would either be reduced (along with associated costs - thereby reducing overall tuition costs) or the college would quickly go bankrupt.

On the other hand, if they allow and even subsidize (to a limited extent) students in the so-called "STEM" programs, then we'd have qualified people to work in our economy. Ultimately, the economic value they generate would more than repay the cost of their (limited) subsidy.

Conversely, having graduates with useless degrees get their knees broken (or whatever your not-forgiving creditors do) doesn't add any value to society.

Students with rich parents who want to pay for basket-weaving degrees can do so, but only in totally private, totally not taxpayer subsidized colleges.
16 posted on 07/23/2019 10:27:11 AM PDT by Phlyer
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