Well that would be awesome if the cost of college came down, but it didn't. So basically student loans simply went up. Nothing countered it. If your situation was the case, I'd agree with you completely.

I'm just saying these are two different fights, and the interest rate is basically increasing from a fantastic rate to a reasonable one. Overall tuition costs is the more important battle.

Heavily subsidized student loans are the reason tuition is so high to begin with. Universities know they can charge whatever they want and students/families will pay. It's a horrible market distortion and in not too long this bubble will violently burst. Feel sorry for your friends who decided to go into academia.

Also, prediction: there will be universal student loan forgiveness in the next ten years. Before you know it Millennials will be thirty-somethings who find it impossible to start a family or start saving for retirement when they're in debt bondage from that unused Anthropology degree. Politically, the pressure will be too much for our elected representatives to ignore. I don't even have undergrad debt and will only need about a year's equivalent for law school, but even I'm ready to pull the lever for somebody who will take this millstone off our economy.

Here's an idea: go to a college you can afford.

If people stop paying out the ass for college, they'll be forced to lower tuition.

But no college is really affordable any more, that's the point. If you want to go to a prestigious private of flagship state school you'll either need loans or good parents who saved from literally month of your conception. Telling people to settle for a not-as-good-school just because of cost is unrealistic and, frankly, pretty elitist. What they need to do is get a degree that makes them employable. A women's studies degree from Northwestern is still a women's studies degree.

It's not elitist. Plenty of prestigious private schools offer need-based and performance-based scholarships. Plus, they're private schools. If you can't pay for them, oh well. Go somewhere else.

There are many very good and reasonably priced public schools. There are very, very few degrees in which expensive private schools make more economic sense than a cheap public school.

Sure scholarships exist, but how many free rides are there really? What do you do for the kid with no savings and only partial scholarships? Loans.

The problem isn't that student loans exist. They're necessary and, if done right, a great investment in one's future. The problem is they're too easy to get and too many people go to college and then goof off and get worthless degrees while they're there. That's good if you run a construction company that builds these 5-star resort freshman dorms, but not so good for students once they graduate or our economy at large.

I agree that loans are given out too freely and for degrees that simply won't allow students to pay them back.

What we need is more investment in public schools that can deliver the same quality of education at a fraction of the cost.

Well, we need better public schools. "More investment" usually just means throwing more money at the problem, which they have plenty of. It's just that a lot gets sucked up by things like teachers' pensions and other things totally unrelated to what goes on the classroom. But that's a whole other thread in itself.

Sure, "investment" doesn't have to mean money. I agree there's lots of things that could be done that wouldn't cost more.

Yeah, teachers don't deserve to get paid!

You're a moron.

It's unreasonable abge. My school has hiked tuition 4% a year for the last 3 years and will continue to do so for the next 3 years. There's a reason for the government to have the ability to intervene in markets. This is a distortion that won't go away, so there should be intervention.

Invictus, if I gave a damn about being called a moron, I'd have shut up a long time ago.

@gold

Are you talking about a private or public school?

private. I had a hefty scholarship going in, but now it costs about 5,000 more a year than it did my freshman year.

I so not understand your system of Education in the USA
well enough, but as a general principle I support Governments investing in
high quality, effective, free to use Education services.
Where there are fees for tertiary Education, I think that they should be kept as low
as possible.
Tertiary Education needs to be accessible to any person who can meet the entry
standards, there should not be a "financial" barrier to students.
Where there are "elitist" tertiary institutions, then their fees are the way they keep their
student body from the elite, I could accept that, PROVIDED there are plenty of Government supported Tertiary Institutions that offer high quality degree & post graduate educational opportunities either free or at very low cost.

It's reasonably simple economics, a nation that has the "smartest possible workforce"
tends to have the "most productive workforce" and a strong economy as a result

Singapore is a classic example of how a nation can lift itself up with free public
education-- in the 1950's their Literacy rate was below 10% -- a "benevolent dictator"
looked at his nation's situation, Singapore has no great mineral wealth like Australia,
or millions of acres of productive land for agriculture,
it has two basic assets, it's people and a huge well situated natural harbour

So the one of the reforms that dictator forced through was free compulsory education
for all children & he invested in education in a massive way
Now Singapore has a Literacy rate well above 90%, the majority of students
complete "High School" and then go on to Tertiary Education.
Look at the results, a wealthy nation, with a well educated people,
that has also transformed into a stable democracy.

I heard a statistic about California, in a documentary about California's budget
problems etc, as a result of the "tough on Law & Order" policies
-3 strikes & your gone stuff, the prison population has boomed, totally inadequate
resourcing of rehabilitation services means a high rate of recidivism,
and California was approaching or had reached the point where the "taxpayers"
were spending more on prisons etc than spending on Tertiary Education.
there are disturbing potential consequences to your economy when you get yourself in
that situation.

Is it worth it? Do you think the education is worth the price?

That was meant for gold, btw

For the price I pay? Probably. If I had to pay full price? Hell no.

Here's another problem:

I don't think a person's salary is an accurate measure of their contribution to society. A mediocre engineer can easily make twice as much as a fantastic teacher. I'm not sure we should try to force people in to jobs based solely on how well they pay.

Whoever said a salary was an accurate measure of a person's contribution to society?

That's a silly notion.

A salary is simply a reflection of what someone is willing to pay you for what you do, generally based upon a supply and demand curve.

Giving out loans based on the ability to pay them back would disproportionately benefit people who went into STEM fields...

Well, and business, I suppose.

LSU's tuition has gone up 40% in 3 years. Incidentally, we have a program that pays all tuition for in-state students (who comprise the vast majority of LSU's student body) called TOPS, and student loans are backed by the government.

These are related, folks. Higher ed costs have grown at unsustainable rates because of government subsidization. There's no incentive for cost control. Government intervention *is the source* of the distortion. Central planners are always losing today's game to try to play yesterday's.

Back to the OP a bit, the concept is interesting. I'm not really sure how I feel about it. Would the education system in Oregon actually stay out of the red with that?

If high tuition costs really were a result of government paying for student loans, why has tuition only gone up so much in the last three years? If anything, for public universities, tuition has increased because government subsidization has *decreased*. What you're seeing is the real cost of college education, not the subsidized cost.

How is it so hard to see, 2ndWhiteLine? The universities know that no matter how high they jack up tuition students will still be able to borrow enough money from the government to cover it. What would hold them back in that scenario? Why would the trustees lower or freeze tuition when they can just raise it without repercussions and get more stuff for the university? Like another gym or higher salaries for them or more funds for the Cisgender Native American Wommin's Studies Center? Maybe even a supercomputer and more free tutors, if there's any left over.


"What you're seeing is the real cost of college education, not the subsidized cost."

What you're seeing are the new, raised costs that exist because of subsidization. High-rise luxury dorms and other college baubles exist because of a slush of grants and spiked tuition. This can only happen because of the distortions caused by the government-created higher education bubble.

And tuition hasn't just gone up so much in the last three years. It's been rocketing ahead of inflation for decades. Eventually the whole rotten edifice will come crashing down, and hundreds of colleges and universities will have to close. Not places like Yale or, say, the University of Michigan, but lots of little liberal arts colleges and satellite campuses of big state schools.

@PE ... part of the plan covers that exact concern. That's the reason they didn't take it seriously at first.