Looking at student loan debt it appears that it was unsuccessful

Prevent other people from scamming students out of money.

Right but it'd be worse if you had the student loan debt AND don't get a degree (or at least a reputable one) because it's a scam.

I mean, is a university education not a sort of scam? They are giving people degrees that cost far too much to justify the kind of job you'll get coming out.

> I mean, is a university education not a sort of scam?

Whether or not "college education" in general is "a scam" can be debated for sure.

But we aren't talking about "college education" - imagine paying for "college education" but it's a scam so you end up with less money and no education.

I think komali2 was saying that's what happens right now — you end up with less than no money and no meaningful education.

It might be - especially in the US, where you have to pay for it (or go into debt); but it could be worse, and likely worse scams were run in the past until they were stamped out by regulation.

Study something that will get you a good job, if that’s what you’re interested in.

You need a happy medium here. You don't want to allow scammers of course, but also don't want to overly protect the incumbents so no one else can disrupt the space.

The happy medium is the have enforcement mechanisms of the tends of thousands of existing regulations that would put a scam business out of existence if a DA choose to.

The fact of the matter is that to protect people... you need to have a system where ordinary people can complain, and companies get taken to task.

99% of preventative/reporting regulation is just cronyism.

We may wish regulations were for a different reason, but this is certainly their most common use case.

Except, it doesn't, because if you're scamming people out of huge sums of money you don't give a shit if you're registered with the regulators.

You do if you want the scam to keep going. See Corinthian Colleges, for example. (Or Trump University's recent settlement, for a more recent example.)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corinthian_Colleges

Have you ever heard of a company called Wells Fargo?

Couldn't that be dealt with in a private court?

Sure:

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/04/10/politics/trump-university...