You absolutely should start selling paper degrees if your 'students' can actually get jobs with them, as the person in the article was able to.

I don't think people really understand what they're saying when they say that people shouldn't have to pay back these loans. The loans are going to get repayed, it's just a question of who. You can't take it out of the defunct college, those people, and that money, are gone. Basically you're saying that taxpayers should foot the bill. You want to pay the government back out of your own pocket? Because that's what this means.

If paying money out of my own pocket means I've helped people who were _scammed_ into crushing debt while holding a near worthless degree that they've spent prime years of their life working for; time that they cannot get back.... then yes, I don't mind paying for that. I wish more people cared about society as a whole instead of jumping straight to the argument "If they don't pay, then the taxpayers will and that's you!!!" that supposedly shuts down all discussion.

And anyways, we shouldn't even be debating this. University should be free, period. And yes, I know "free" = "we" = "our pockets". That's perfectly fine. Or we should start funding plane tickets and visas to send low income people to these countries[1] for study; requiring them to maintain a quality GPA or something. The world would be a better place for all of us if the "haves" weren't so adverse to paying for the "have-nots".

1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/10/29...

What about the people who were just scammed a little? The people who just don't want to have to look hard to find a job after they graduate and so just want to call their degree worthless and get their loan canceled? Because as soon as you draw the line, people are going to challenge where it lies. It's really dangerous to allow someone to externalize all of the consequences of a particular bad decision.

Altruism's great and all, but you need to think very hard about what it means to provide a benefit to everyone. It's not just the people who were legitimately scammed.

I'm very confident that the laziness-factor accounts for less than 25% of the people out there when it comes to student-debt. Afterall, they had the discipline to go to school and get that degree. But like I said, this debate shouldn't even be happening. College & University should just be free to everyone. No line needs to be drawn in that situation.

Confident, eh? You're going to still be that confident once it becomes known that all you have to do to get the government to give you $X0,000 is to say your education was worthless?

Since we're talking hypothetical here; we're never going to convince each other. We can just skip this debate and make College/University free for everyone.