Make loans dischargable in bankruptcy after "x" number of years post-graduation. Make the amount you can borrow and the interest rate you pay a function of your major and (after your freshman year) your grades.

The average debt load for a senior graduating from college - according to the Feds - is $26,000/year. That's $6,500/year. Running through the loan schedules (different interest rates for different loan amounts) that works out to a monthly payment over 10 years of $265/month, or $3180/year. That's 9% of your income if you get a job for $35K.

If you're considering borrowing more than that, ask yourself "Why", and what the salary is for the kind of job you're planning to get. And if you got a job in "Women and Religious Studies" from Columbia and borrowed $100,000 to do it - an actual example from the New York Times - then I propose your problem is not high interest rates on loans ....

"If you borrowed $200,000 to get a degree that's only worth $34,000/year, you're too stupid to work for me. Get out."

My 16 year old son is saddened by the idea that even in-state tuition is beyond our means unless we take out loans, so he is going to have to piece together scholarships, CLEP tests, Junior College and living at home to finish his degree at one of the commuter schools around here. Will he get a chance to meet hot college chicks that way? Probably not. Will he graduate with a credential that can get him a job with no debt thereby making him at 22 attractive to hot career chicks? Yes, but that is a much harder sell now than it will be in retrospect 6 years from now.

we need more illegals to drive down that 34,000 to 12,000 and we need to hand them all D-voter registrations cards.

Fighting like a champion for the little guy!

$34k/year is what I started at in my internship, in 1987. Engineering degree has been worth it. PhD now and no student loans ever. My wife has an accounting degree and never had student loans either.

Pick a degree that leads to a job, and pick a school that will educate you for the best price. Even with student loans, you won't have that much to pay back, and you'll have a good job to pay it back.

And in many of these career oriented fields, you will never pay for a graduate degree if you work it right. Your company will pay, or the institution will pay you to teach or do research while you go to school.

Make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy.
Watch how fast tuitions come down.

This is the right answer.

Lots of BANKS make student loans because student loans are FEDERALLY GUARANTEED, not paid for by the Gubmint. The guarantee means that 1) you don't need to go to court to get permission to collect and 2) they aren't dischargeable in BK. That's it.

If you eliminate the "not dischargeable" provision, a large amount of student lending dries up or requires security. This changes the playing field. There is also no reason that federal money loans can't be discharged, except for politics. E.g.
https://www.wellsfargo.com/student/
https://www.citizensbank.com/student-loans/

You would have to move student loans away from the federal government and back to private lenders. The federal government would throw good money after bad funding ______ Studies degrees with immediate bankruptcy after graduation.

My dad told me that if a bank won't fund you, it probably isn't worth doing. Turn the student loans back to banks, make them dischargeable (within limits) and watch the mix of degrees change at universities.

That's silly. Banks are for-profit enterprises. They are not arbiters of the quality of the deal you're trying to work. They are only concerned with *their* success, not yours. No bank funded Thomas Edison, and if you don't think what he did was worth doing, I can't reach you with logic.

Two words: "Pain avoidance" (on the part of the bank).

Simple one-celled organisms implement this self-preservation modus operandi as a matter of fact; it insures continued survival ... and so do banks ...

A rational lender won't need to be arbiters of the deal you get, they just have a strong incentive to pay attention.

Students borrow money for Degree X and reliably pay it back. Students who borrow money for Degree W almost never pay it all back. Banks care about getting paid back, so they'll learn quickly to lend to the former and not to the latter. Once the market has indicated that Degree W students are bad risks, would-be customers quickly learn that going deep into debt for a shiny new Degree W is a risky decision.

Once they're allowed to receive market signals from the real world everyone involved makes more informed decisions. Enlightened self-interest makes the world go 'round.

On the contrary, their sole barometer is the ability to repay. They succeed as long as you pay them pay on time and in full. So their judgement of the quality of the deal is implicit in their decision.

This is not true. There are a lot of great deals they will not back, because the person requesting the loan does not have a 'history' or good credit. But this is in no way an indication of the quality of the deal. It's a judgement on the quality of the person requesting the loan. It doesn't matter how good the deal is if the person requesting the loan has no history of success in other endeavors. It also doesn't matter how bad the deal is if the person is someone such as, say, Donald Trump, who makes the banks a lot of money and costs a lot of other people a lot of money.

"It doesn't matter how good the deal is if the person requesting the loan has no history of success in other endeavors."

Look at that sentence again. Look very closely.

How good a deal can it be if the person requesting the loan has no history of success in other endeavors?

The question now is, why can't p dawg see that self-evident and very 'practical' truth?

Because it isn't true. I don't like to believe lies.

Clueless ...

Sadly, without a degree in ANYTHING, your resume' will go right in the trash. They see a lack of a college degree and wonder why not? Are they too poor? Too dumb? Too lazy? Just plain unlucky? In any event, unless that job involves french fries or a mop, you aren't getting in without being part of the Degree Club.

I have 20 years of experience finding jobs in a highly technical field (about every 5 years on average), and I have no college degree. Perhaps the lack of a degree can be offset by something else, i.e. experience, certifications, strong interview skills, etc.

That will change over time. There are certain jobs that really don't require college degrees, and the degree drives up the price. Coding is one. You can learn to code without college anymore. You don't need all coders to have software engineering degrees, just the ones doing the overall design and managing the project. You can learn to code from the web.

I'd love to see someone try putting their college acceptances on the resume instead of a degree.

heres another good cartoon

http://soopermexican.com/2015/05/08/how-to-explain-the-baltimore-riots-in-one-sentence/#disqus_thread

wow

When I graduated from high school in the 1970's less than 40% of my class matriculated at 2 or 4 year program. Same high school last year? Nearly 80%. Are kids twice as smart? Are the teachers twice as competent? Pfffft.

At least half the college degrees conferred in the last 30 years are worthless chunks of crap that a chimp could have gotten.

For the most part I have no sympathy for kids and parents who couldn't see that and thought any degree was a Wonka golden ticket to high paying employment. But if they have anyone to be mad at, it sure as hell isn't the finance industry on Wall Street. It's a dishonest, amoral, greedy education industry that oversold its capabilities.

"Oversold its capabilities"? Hardly. Most of these young scholars are now loyal Democrat voters. By that measure, the education industry has been wildly successful. Everything else is just collateral damage.

>Most of these young scholars are now loyal Democrat voters.

Like Scott Adams, the guy who writes Dilbert. It's sad to see him on Instapundit. He's as fringe-left as they come.

He was pushing the "79 cents" canard a few months ago for Hillary. If he's now pushing the student debt angle, I'm sure it's to pave the road to "forgiveness." That is, billing the taxpayers.

Actually, Scott Adams has always come across to me as having a libertarian streak.