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Comment by shmerl | Hacker News Reader

The whole system of putting students in debt to get education seems horribly messed up.

It aligns incentives between society and the student. If the student fucks around or majors in something useless, they're on the hook for it.

I'd gladly subsidize more STEM degrees with my taxpayer dollars but I won't give a single dollar towards underwater basket weaving type degrees. Every single humanities class I took in college was utterly useless. Advocates claim you're learning how to read and write competently but I learned that from business school, not sociology and history.

Student are in debt either way. So I don't see how it aligns anything except for those who profit on it.

Because for some students the debt is paid off quickly, so in the long run the lower taxes from the state not paying for everyone's education make that student better off. For other students with useless degrees, the consequences of their actions come home to roost with their debt.

That being said I do think student debt should be dischargeable in bankruptcy. As is the market for education is dysfunctional.

Define "useful" here. Lot's of people with useful education struggle with paying off their debt. There is something pretty crooked in such attitude.

Objectively, from the statistics, that's just not the case. Average undergraduate student loan debt in public California schools was $23,600 in 2019 [1]. That is less than the price of most new cars.

[1]: https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-aler...

From what I've seen, it's not something to be brushed off as "not the case".

You're talking from anecdotes, I'm showing you the objective statistics supplied by the state of California. One is going to give a more complete picture than the other.

Still not a reason to brush it off. It's still crooked.

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