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> loaners of student loans should start making provisions now But it's vastly more difficult (i.e., nearly impossible) to discharge student loan debt. Even if

> loaners of student loans should start making provisions now But it's vastly more difficult (i.e., nearly impossible) to discharge student loan debt. Even if it takes years and years, most students will be required to pay back what they borrowed. I don't think we need to be worried about the bubble popping, but rather the secondary effects that the weight of student loans will cause. For example, companies have a natural advantage negotiating with graduates carrying debt who need a job more urgently than those who have no debt. > I suggest a radically different form of funding education. I'm slightly less radical, but along the same lines -- fund institutions, not students. Making students into consumers forces schools to compete on features & amenities (things students care about) rather than focusing on providing quality education at low cost. Public colleges don't need to be country clubs to provide an education.

Kenji 10y ago
Yeah, you're right. If the student was the customer, everyone would get perfect grades and uni would be an amusement park. The student should not be considered the customer. That reminds me of a first year lecture of discrete mathematics that I took. The professor is pretty renowned and does a good job, but he's also incredibly strict and demanding, especially when it comes to exercises and exams. I still know pretty much all of the stuff we learned there and it's come in handy year after year i.e. in crypto and graph theory. Anyway, we could write anonymous feedbacks for this professor and some students really hated him. He read some of them to us and they contained things like "you are an a * * * ole" etc. I understand the frustration with him, it was one of the toughest courses, and it did cause suffering, but it was also a learning experience and the students left the course with newly acquired knowledge and skills. I'm pretty sure many people who were mad with him were even more mad with themselves and likely dropped out, because among the ones who passed, only few people hated him.

Kenji 10y ago

Yeah, you're right. If the student was the customer, everyone would get perfect grades and uni would be an amusement park. The student should not be considered the customer. That reminds me of a first year lecture of discrete mathematics that I took. The professor is pretty renowned and does a good job, but he's also incredibly strict and demanding, especially when it comes to exercises and exams. I still know pretty much all of the stuff we learned there and it's come in handy year after year i.e. in crypto and graph theory. Anyway, we could write anonymous feedbacks for this professor and some students really hated him. He read some of them to us and they contained things like "you are an a * * * ole" etc. I understand the frustration with him, it was one of the toughest courses, and it did cause suffering, but it was also a learning experience and the students left the course with newly acquired knowledge and skills. I'm pretty sure many people who were mad with him were even more mad with themselves and likely dropped out, because among the ones who passed, only few people hated him.