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Sounds like the solution might be to ease back on guaranteed student loans and tighten up available credit so it goes to qualified borrowers who are likely to b
by cheald 10y ago
Sounds like the solution might be to ease back on guaranteed student loans and tighten up available credit so it goes to qualified borrowers who are likely to be able to pay back what they borrow, rather than mandating that everyone who wants to goes to college without any consideration for ability to repay what they've borrowed.
But then, that would result in decreasing enrollment rates and hysterics in the headlines about how kids can't afford education, and we can't have that. We've worked ourselves into a corner - by subsidizing education so heavily in pursuit of increased attendance rates, we've driven prices sky-high, and now can't cut those subsidies without hanging some people out to dry.
We'll know that college is truly unaffordable - or at least the college premium reaches the point where it's not worth the cost - when enrollment rates start trending downwards. Until then, it's a giant ball of subsidies and relief programs and reforms and restructurings that work to maintain a system that is empirically affordable, even if it's extremely painful.
- chipotle_coyote 10y agoby subsidizing education so heavily in pursuit of increased attendance rates, we've driven prices sky-high At least for me, the relationship you're implying between subsidies and educational costs needs some explanation. If, say, three-quarters of a college's students are having 25-50% of their fees subsidized, what about those subsidies forces the college to raise their fees disproportionately to their costs?
- cheald 10y agoNothing forces them to; basic economics tells us that their prices will rise to the point that consumers will bear, and that subsidy increases the price that consumers will bear. Recent research (http://www.nber.org/chapters/c13711.pdf http://www.nber.org/chapters/c13711.pdf) bears out subsidy as a cost driver, as well.