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Re:White House Might Put Colleges on the Hook for Student Loans by ams6110 on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @04:29PM (#19372667)
There are young people who should not be in college. They either don't have the aptitude, or they weren't serious in high school and aren't prepared. We should not be guaranteeing loans for these kids, nor making them at all in most cases.

A young person with no income but good academics and a plan to study something with good employment prospects would still be a good candidate for at least some amount of credit.

Another side effect would be that with a drop in people going to college, employers would be forced to drop the "college degree required" from the vast number of jobs that really do not require a college education of any kind.

Re:White House Might Put Colleges on the Hook for Student Loans by twblalock on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @04:43PM (#19372808)
> A young person with no income but good academics and a plan to study something with good employment prospects would still be a good candidate for at least some amount of credit.

That's not what would happen. What would happen is that rich kids would get to go to college no matter how prepared they were or what major they chose, and poor kids who prepared well and chose useful majors would not be able to afford it.

Re:White House Might Put Colleges on the Hook for Student Loans by ams6110 on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @04:51PM (#19372884)
Poor kids used to be able to work in the summer and maybe part-time during the school year to pay for college, until easy loans inflated the cost so much that became impossible
Re:White House Might Put Colleges on the Hook for Student Loans by twblalock on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @05:41PM (#19373349)
Loans did not create the affordability crisis. Decreased government funding for higher education did that.

Look at any first-world country that has kept college education affordable and you will see that they are essentially propping it up as a social welfare program, capping tuition, and giving universities tons of money. No country has kept college education affordable through any other method.

That's also the way it used to work at state universities in the United States, and that's why kids were able to work summer jobs to cover tuition.

If you take away the loans without also significantly increasing funding for higher education, college will not become affordable again.