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I mean I’m not going to expect an 18 year old to make perfect decisions, but at the same time, I don’t think it’s asking too much for the rest of the family to come alongside this college student and insist that they come up with something approaching a real, thought out business plan for post college life and how college generally and the specific degree they want to get has a reasonable ROÍ and is something that given their actual talents and skills is a realistic plan.
I will however blame the government, because they created the mess with making college loans nondischargable at bankruptcy. I kinda get the argument that since you can’t exactly repossess an education and students generally don’t have many assets upon graduation that a lot of people might take the degree, declare bankruptcy and run. However, by doing that, it heavily incentivized loan grantors and schools to give loans and admissions spots to people who any fool could tell them wouldn’t be paying off the loan. Some because they’re simply not capable of learning high level skills offered by a rigorous job-training degree. Some because they’re completely unserious about the entire process and will spend more time chasing members of the opposite sex than studying. Still others because they’re studying things that are quite frankly useless fluff that no employer needs skilled labor to do. If loans were discharged at bankruptcy, it wouldn’t be a problem at all. Schools wouldn’t be wasting space on kids who are so far behind that they’re taking basic algebra and basic writing courses. Those seats won’t pay off, better to give it to a worthy kid who will be able to pay after he gets hired. Loan officers won’t give approvals to people who want to study useless stuff because French literature majors work at Starbucks and everybody knows it.
That’s a healthier equilibrium, sure. It’s just got a lot of points of divergence.
Ultimately, it’s teenagers or maybe their parents taking on unwise debt. But there are numerous forces telling them it’s totally worth it. Even their own families, generalizing from “back in my day” when you could work summers and get out debt free.
I don’t think useless degrees disappear if the parents wise up. I think companies are still going to push them as a discriminator and to keep up on the signaling treadmill. And I know lenders will still push them, because they don’t care if the kids succeed as long as they pay off their debt first.
The most effective way to do this is probably to pull back on the lenders. They are clearing a market which shouldn’t be clearing. This will cut supply, forcing more families to recognize that the debt wouldn’t be worth it.
I think parents have mostly wised up and push their kids to do two years at the local community college, transfer to a nearby four year, keep the debt minimal, and major in a practical degree.
This is all good advice unless you can get into Harvard or have a full ride somewhere. But, 18 year olds are legal adults who have teenager priorities.
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I actually think they would dry up as it becomes obvious that they simply don’t pay. As it becomes obvious just how much debt you’ll take on — basically people are buying a houseful of debt for a degree — eventually those markets will change when it becomes more clear that some programs have very low post-grad employment rates and still owe a lifetime of debt.
And I’m not sure that employers are still taking “any old degree from any university.” They’ve likely been burned often enough on vanity degree holders with huge egos and little knowledge or work ethic to speak of. These types of things employers are sensitive to simply because bad hires make them less competitive in business. If you’ve got ten bad people on a team of fifty, they’re not only not performing themselves, but often slow down everything around them as other, productive people, need to fix their mistakes or deal with their drama.
I do see a potential market for College Level learning apps, or paid zoom courses, or even just guided readings where people with interest in a subject can pay $50 to study it with a phd guiding things. Especially in literature or history or the like where there’s no field trips or labs, you can probably get much the same level of interaction as you’d get in a classroom but at pretty low fractions of the cost. Books and video and the internet are cheap. Zoom allows for the creation of virtual classrooms. Apps allow for basic self testing and feedback.
If YouTube has taught me anything, this does already exist, you can subscribe to watch digital classes from experts. I think it's CuriosityStream and Skillshare that offer this.
Online courses for people "with interest in the subject' can only satisfy interest in the subject; they're no good as signals to employers.
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