Why have special rules for student loans at all? If a degree is not very important anymore then it should be just free choice. Banks will step in to provide private loans on whatever terms they feel like. They'll be bankruptable. The banks can make their own judgements about the borrower's ability to repay it - eg. higher interest rates for useless degrees or low grades.

I thought the whole business of government helping with student loans is to enable poor people to get a degree when that was vital to getting rich. But that's not really needed anymore. You can often make more money with a trade certificate than a degree.

> Banks will step in to provide private loans on whatever terms they feel like. They'll be bankruptable. The banks can make their own judgements about the borrower's ability to repay it

Banking industry does not have a concept of a college loan. A loan is either secured (mortgage, auto, HELOC) or unsecured (personal, credit card). Without government participation all college loans are treated as unsecured, which means that everybody will get roughly the same offer as they do today on personal loans. High interest rate, payments must start immediately, bad credit requires a co-signer (time to talk to Mom and Dad).

Banking sector interest in unsecured private loans to people with bad credit (which describes most 18-year-olds) is so close to zero that LendingClub pretty much owns the sector.

I think the degree should be security for the loan. You can discharge your degree in bankruptcy, but you also lose the degree. Your resume legally has to show a blank spot that you cannot explain as anything other than wasting your time. (or possibly working part time if you had a job).

Want a new degree, your credits won't transfer so you start over as a freshman. (if you can get in - school is competitive and the bankruptcy is sitting there on your record)

A very significant portion of college entrants do not receive a degree.

https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40

"The 6-year graduation rate was 58 percent at public institutions, 65 percent at private nonprofit institutions, and 27 percent at private for-profit institutions."

And they'll all offer coding bootcamps, for max ROI, and nothing else. Future doctors can be imported.

How is that worse than producing an overabundance of literature majors that have very little ROI?

It means the education system is design to pump out workers rather than thinkers. Taking this to the logical conclusion, why teach science, history or sport in high schools? Low ROI. Stuff that!

Why not make the coding bootcamp start at kindergarten. And why not let parents pay for such schools so they can choose the best ROI for their kid.

Well, why not?

If those "thinkers" were really contributing something valuable, that will show up in ROI. If you don't agree with that measure, how do you propose to eliminate completely useless classes and make space for better alternatives? Do you just assume that any classes that are part of the status quo must be valuable?

Value for society != Roi

There are so many examples of this I don't know where to begin. Ok I'll start: Fracking.

Externalities are a small, specific issue and we have ways of dealing with them. Again, how do you propose to measure this "value for society"?

Externialities. Like climate change? Yep we've got that under complete control.

Another good example of chasing the mighty fractionally reserved greenback:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14495950

So do you have a proposed improvement? I think taking schooling time away from history and sport and putting it towards coding would make us more, not less, likely to solve climate change.

The latter point is actually good, but it is not just about coding bootcamp. Many great athletes were also discovered very early, musicians etc.

Generally it is about playing to the strengths. Customized education.

>The real answer is to cut what's funded by the government

Guaranteed downvotes

No worries, I'll upvote it. ;)

I think he/she is right-ish about the supply-demand calculus on this; looking at history, overextended credit/margins often lead to nasty bubbles because of the distortion effects.