2 thoughts on “The Student-Loan Problem”

1. Students really need to be responsible for the debt they incur obtaining expensive, non-remunerative degrees. Future students should be given quantitative estimates of the impact their debt will have on future income levels and lifestyles. (It would help if parents were more proactive, too, but what 18 year old listens to their parents?)

   If you want to give the universities a hair cut – a good idea, I think – a better way would be to make government-backed loans only available for institutions with tuition less than a certain amount. Expensive schools would need to trim budgets and prices to qualify.

   1. All the players should be responsible for their actions. Colleges and lending institutions that victimize students should face the same sort of life altering consequences that students do.

      We have lenders that do zero vetting of students ability to repay and colleges that pump out degrees that are not used by their graduates in the workplace. We need reform to hold colleges and lenders to account and the problem of student debt will take care of itself. The root cause of this isn’t students.

      I think that in addition to putting colleges and lenders on the hook for students that can’t repay their loans, the problem institutions should be punished by restricting their access to the market until they improve their conduct. Lenders that make bad loans shouldn’t get access and colleges that have a lot of drop outs, graduates employed outside their field of study, and graduates whose loan payments are over a certain % of income should have restricted access to the financial market.

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