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Comment by rcarrigan87 | Hacker News Reader

Some may have missed it, but the article casually mentions student loan debt as a driver of this change. Personally, I typically only eat out once a week to save money (and it's healthier).

If you peel back the curtain on a lot of ongoing changes in consumer preferences I think you'll find student loans are always a contributing factor to some degree - especially among younger generations.

And yet we aren't doing anything about it. Tariffs, tax cuts, etc. but rarely is it mentioned what a weight student loans are around the US economy's neck...

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Why are so many borrowing money to get a college degree in a field which won't pay off? For that matter, why are we paying for so many to get high school degrees which don't pay off? The driver of a semi truck, or the cashier at a fast food restaurant, doesn't need to spend four years reading Catcher in the Rye and studying algebra.

That's not saying anything bad about those people or those jobs: they are no doubt good people and those jobs are important and valuable. What I am saying is that rather than automatically paying for everyone's college, we might instead ask what the point of education is, and whether everyone needs to spend four more years at school.

As you might guess, I think the answer is 'no,' and I think that the way that high school changed from something optional for a few to something required of all is instructive.

A better result, I think, would be to make government assistance equally applicable to vocational school, and to outright not offer government assistance (loans or scholarships) for certain degrees in fields with low employment prospects.

Wasn't at all suggesting we should make higher ed free. I made mention of the tax cuts because the Trump admin likes to talk about helping the economy but yet they've said/done nothing about student loans which are proving to be a massive impediment to economic growth.

I don't like the idea of the gov't choosing which degrees/majors are worth funding. We've derisked student loans to a point where lenders don't care about your income prospects. If we allowed students loans to be discharged through bankruptcy you would start to see a big shift in how loans are made. The reality is the entire structure of higher ed right now is a sham.

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