annie88 said:

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It's really simple.

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LOL very bourgeoise.
Savvy corporations use it as a tool to get out of paying vendors and move on.

Aggie Jurist said:

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It's pretty simple how it should work.

You get a loan. You pay it back.

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Agree, but the loans have gotten out of hand b/c the schools are selling a product with a negative ROI. The schools have some (a lot) of responsibility here. Cut off the supply of money and the market will correct itself.

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Schools have always sold products with negative ROI's - up until the last 20 years, those products were paid for by the student and/or the student's family.

Now they are paid for by the feds...and what will ultimately be the US taxpayer.

It's not hard to reduce the money supply and apply uniform metrics that put a value on the degree based on real world data, which means that those degrees that have the highest probability of the graduate being gainfully employed (engineering, sciences, etc.) are prioritized over liberal arts degrees, and get significantly better interest rates.

The federal government should not be involved in student loans in any way, shape or form, not directly or indirectly, in any manner. And not one penny of federal student loan debt should ever be forgiven or eliminated, it should be repaid 100% even if without interest. There is NO such thing as student loan forgiveness, there is only shifting the repayment burden to the mass general taxpayers.

Student loans should be 100% private, market driven, and dischargeable in personal BK like any other debt.

But the biggest problem is the fedreal govt. giving away $$ for loans to "students' of strip mall universities, beauty schools or for a student to study frog mating habits / transgender drawfs / etc.

The Us are driving up the cost to attend due to supply and demand and too many students being awash in basically free $$ from the govt.

Without federal government student loans:

- The student loan crisis would not exist.
- There would be much less $$ outstanding on student loans
- The cost of tuition would not have raised nearly as much.
- The # of people in college and universities would be lower and more accurate for our society.
- More students at trade schools learning good skills for well paying jobs and careers.
- More young people would be learning the essentials of working, saving $$, risk and reward, and most importantly fulfilling obligations.

Aggie Jurist said:

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Or...get the government out of it completely.

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Well, that isn't going to happen and we all know it. What's happening now is welfare for colleges and their employees. We need to get costs down - and hold colleges accountable for the borrowing that was used to pay them.

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I agree we need to get costs of a 4-year degree down, but we shouldn't neglect to address the role society has played in ballooning college costs and the student debt issue.

When state funding started to dry up, and revenue from tuition monies took a more important role in sustaining institutions, recruitment required presenting an image that was more enticing than simply a first rate education from talented and tenured research faculty. All kinds of amenities, such as top tier fitness centers and recreational facilities/areas, luxurious dining and housing options, and technology rich learning spaces became how you attracted students, and building and maintaining a lot of that fluff drove up costs, far more than faculty salaries, and shifted a lot of the manpower load towards administration, whose salaries often dwarf those of most classroom faculty. Those of you who attended A&M back in the 80s and 90s might recognize the changes I am noting. The way A&M's campus looked when I was an undergrad, and how it looks today are night and day in terms of luxury.

On top of that many industries now list a 4-year degree as a minimum requirement for positions where it's not really necessary to successfully perform the duties associated with those jobs, and other businesses have over the years offloaded the training of future employees to colleges and universities, so that those training costs come on the student's dime rather than their own. If we step back and look at the overall situation, we get a far clearer picture of our changing relationship with higher education over the years, and possibly some insights into how we got here, and what we need to do in order to chart a path out of this mess.

So while college administrators, who grew in number to satisfy the business model pressed upon them surely play a huge role in all of this, but the public's perceptions of what constitutes a "good school" to send their kids to, and our general expectations of what a degree is supposed to do are contributing factors as well.

You right man. A&M and schools the size of A&M are ultra-luxe. No way around that fact.

Universities got more money than they know what to do with, and endowments of half a billion.

Nobody wants to work anyways, so in the words of Hillary, "What difference does it make?"

oldyeller said:

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I agree we need to get costs of a 4-year degree down, but we shouldn't neglect to address the role society has played in ballooning college costs and the student debt issue.

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This is a really good point.

The university doesn't force students to live in new condo with granite countertops, private bathrooms and a lazy river pool. The students want that and the parents will pay for it.

EclipseAg said:

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oldyeller said:

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I agree we need to get costs of a 4-year degree down, but we shouldn't neglect to address the role society has played in ballooning college costs and the student debt issue.

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This is a really good point.

The university doesn't force students to live in new condo with granite countertops, private bathrooms and a lazy river pool. The students want that and the parents will pay for it.

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When was an undergrad, those of us with limited means could live on campus fairly cheaply in one of the four non-AC dorms on campus. The conditions were pretty brutal at the start and near the end of the school year when temps were high, and you could usually spot those from the non-air dorms in Sbisa by the number of red cups on their trays in a desperate attempt to hydrate in the air conditioning, but even then the "fancy" dorms were basically cinder-block rooms with industrial flooring whose "luxury" was enough space to not need to build a loft, and a bathroom that only had to be shared with suite mates, rather than the whole floor/ramp. Now we have modern apartments on campus, and off campus housing is almost all luxury apartment living.