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Comment by haltingproblem | Hacker News Reader

I want to weep at the list of programs in the article:

- Journalism

- Fine Arts in Film, Theater and Media Studies

- Speech pathology

A masters degree can run 300k at these top institutions. We have laws against usury, lemon laws, price gouging, ponzi schemes, securities regulations.....etc. How can a society justify allowing young folks spending 300k of money they don't have to get a degree in fine arts?

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It's fine we let them spend whatever they want. What's not fine is that when it is clear they aren't able to pay it off, we don't let a bankruptcy court discharge the debt like all other unsecured debt.

Let lenders take risk, and when that risk clearly goes bust... wipe it out.

> Let lenders take risk

This. Universities should be required to eat a certain percentage of any loan that defaults, so that they always have skin in the game. A similar rule could have prevented the subprime mortgage crisis. Sure, let lenders sell house loans to higher risk customers, but make lenders themselves responsible for some portion of any bad loan, and don't let them use shell companies or bankruptcy-in-name-only shenanigans to escape their responsibility, either.

Split the risk 50/50 between lenders and the university. Then every young adult can declare bankruptcy right after graduating and have a fresh clean start with no debt.

That may sound like an easy fix, but easing the ability to discharge student loans in bankruptcy court would necessarily require higher interest rates on new loans (sans increased subsidization of student loans). That may be a palatable tradeoff, but I suspect most students would prefer cheap borrowing.

What’s to stop broke university students from immediately declaring bankruptcy upon graduation? They don’t have any assets to forfeit which typically stop others from gaming the system.

Because people are well aware of what they are buying.

Doing a $300K Masters Degree in 'Fine Arts' at Colombia is straight up a Rich Kids Thing. And that's it.

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