Agreed.
If I understand correctly, government (taxpayer) guaranteed loans are enabling schools to charge more given the likelihood of approved loans.
I’d like to see the following:
1. Gov’t Loans amount indexed to career realities. 5 elements: what you plan to study, what you plan to do as a career, job market demand, geographic demand for the job (if applicable), and what your target job would pay. It would be career reality test on the loans. To the point, you’re not getting a $100K loan to study gender studies with a minor in Latvian poetry only to find that there’s little call for that expertise in BFE Nebraska.
2. Gov’t Loans given a preference and/or discounted rate by tuition cost. Create an incentive for schools to drive down tuition rates. Example: University A will cost $75K vs. University B at $50K. It could reduce the level of risk, and could enable smaller schools to grow.
3. Provide an incentive for early repayment of a Gov’t loan. A TBD discount for eliminating the debt early.
4. Gov’t Loans can be eliminated in bankruptcy, or negotiated in settlement. I know of persons that have suffered through financial and medical disasters and decades later still have a interest accruing loan that does not go away.
The other factor driving this is the continued importation of labor from overseas on work visas.
There was a famous incident at a company here in town where their local engineers, who were all in hock $30-75K to get their Bachelors Degrees, ended up sitting in cubes next to guys who came on H1B who got their Masters Degrees paid for in full by the government in their home country.
Reportedly fistfights broke out over this.