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Comment by Racing0461 | Hacker News Reader

nah, we just need the government to not back student loans and allow it to be discharged in bankruptcy. the system will sort it out from there.

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> we just need the government to not back student loans and allow it to be discharged in bankruptcy

Honestly, start with the latter. See what happens. Maybe include a first-loss provision for schools with an endowment.

Be careful. You may end up with universities where only millionaires take classes. The universities would like this because of money and the millionaires would like it because the proles would keep out of well paid careers. We would be back to how education and science worked a few hundred years ago.

As in health care I don’t think there is a market solution. Government needs to mandate lower prices for them.

Demographics vary by institution. Some shakedown the poor by packing 600 students to a lecture hall.

The Stanford's get unlimited free laundry.

Government isn't going to get involved here because most are private, for-profit masquerading as nonprofits while fattening up their endowments.

If they are for-profit, at a minimum they should lose any special tax status.

This is what really gets me about loan forgiveness.

I'd be in favor if it was only for people who pursue certain degrees that we need. But going to party schools? Going for the cliche "underwater basket weaving" degree? The money being funneled into building a new pool and rock climbing wall for one of the dorms?

No, no, and no!

How is this going to solve anything? Unless the school itself has skin in the loan, currently the only impact of bankruptcy discharge would be on private loan operators (who would probably go under) or on taxpayers who would absorb the loan losses. The schools are getting paid their tuition from the loans immediately, they won't even notice.

Presumably the idea is that guaranteed student debt is what enables US tuition levels. The schools will already have been paid, but the next generation of students won't be able to get loans for tens of thousands of dollars -- the lenders will have gone under and nobody else will want to be in that business, so universities will have to lower prices.

I think that's the idea. It sounds rather painful to me? But the status quo is also very weird?

> taxpayers who would absorb the loan losses

that's no different than what we have no. we don't need everyone going to college especially to major in history of tampons type degrees.

the end goal is for loan companies to decline people who won't be able to repay their loans given the expected value of their degrees. (Your future earning potential is the collatoral for your loan).

For people that want to "expand their horizons", they can go watch khanacademy on youtube.

Your mentality is why so much of the world is set back centuries from the USA.

That's the old Brit way of thinking, and we sent that packing over a century ago.

I'd thank you to not return us to the 'good old days.'

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