What Everyone's Getting Wrong About Student Loans

[dead0man]

We have got to stop relying on debt for everything in this country. This is why everything is so damn expansive.

1. Cut or reduce the student loan program
2. Expand and increase the pell grant
3. Let people discharge their loans through bankruptcy.
4. Make Colleges responsible for outcomes - Colleges get paid up front before any education is delivered. What happens afterwards, they don't care, they already got paid. The incentives would be much different, if colleges didn't get a portion until after graduation and forfeited a portion of the tuition if someone fails to graduate.
5. Make colleges financially liable for offering a degree at a cost that exceeds the incomes for that profession.

wouldn't #4 cause a college degree to be worth less and less (than it already is)?  We've seen what's happened to public schools when they were encouraged to graduate a higher percentage of kids.  Who cares if they can't read, know nothing of civics and can't add two double digit numbers together, they've got that HS diploma!

Financially encouraging colleges to graduate students will lead to a bunch of college graduates that are dumber than even today's college graduates.

[dead0man]

At one point or another, you have to reduce the supply to increase the value and in a meritocracy, money shouldn't be something that determines what you can or cannot do. The way this is solved is that college admissions needs to be competitiv,. The California Public college standards are a great place to start. No one should be able to get into any college unless they got 70%tile in grades in High School and no one should be able to go into a flagship (or private equivalent) unless they get in the 85th%tile in High School grades.

People who are struggling in High School should be given the option of vocational school. People who didn't quite make the cut to get into college should have to go to trade school or junior college(provided they also learn a trade in junior college beyond completing University Studies and the lower classman core of their major).

you are 100% correct, unfortunately, this is America, and meritocracy is viewed as racism.