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Part of the issue is that there is no mechanism to discourage universities from doing this. With the state underwriting student debt without limit, and universi

• secabeen 5y ago
  One key thing to recognize is that terminal masters programs like this are different from the bachelor's degrees and the PhD programs. They are generally smaller, and are very much run as cash cows for the departments.
  • clcaev 5y ago
    Moreover, they will accept almost anyone regardless of how well they are prepared. It's not often a faculty decision, as it would be for a PhD.
• steveBK123 5y ago
  Right this is why I like the idea (that will never happen) of having schools being on the hook to backstop some % of federal loans on their degrees. May quickly change how many kids they allow to get $300K in debt for useless degrees.
  • xapata 5y ago
    How many kids are currently induced into that situation per year?
    • Spooky23 5y ago
      Many. I can think of a dozen people who got schnookered into 3+2 business/mba programs. They graduated with $150k in the hole (this was in 2000) and ended up in retail banking or working for the government in some civil service job that required 15 accounting credits. The classic example of this phenomenon is art majors, who are basically unemployable in a “job” outside of teaching, and those job openings are usually cyclical.
      • xapata 5y ago
        Many means many things. It could be a few hundred annually and someone might still call that "many." I'm dubious that many art majors wind up $300k in debt. Undergrad doesn't cost that much.
        • Spooky23 5y ago
          If your parents are wealthy enough to not qualify for need based aid, but not enough to be rich, your $50k tuition + $30k NYC living situation adds up quick.
          • xapata 5y ago
            Ok, so we've got $320k debt for NYU grads. They're at around 6.5k students graduating each year. I don't know what portion have "useless" majors paid entirely by debt. Let's say half. That's probably one of the worst offenders, but let's imagine there are around 10 more schools in a similar situation. Ok, 30k students out of around 4 million students graduating college each year in the US ... that's a tad less than 1%. More than I thought, and enough to call "many", but perhaps still an acceptable level.
  • lhorie 5y ago
    There's programming bootcamps that basically take a fraction of the graduate's income for a few years instead of charging tuition. But since they optimize for quick employability, and not necessarily a more depth/breadth oriented curriculum as is common in traditional higher education, they have relatively superficial curriculums and thus they don't have the greatest of reputations among companies looking for brainpower rather than fad cookie cutters. Incentives are hard.
    • zdragnar 5y ago
      I worked for a company that hired a few from these. We weren't expecting them to know everything, but to have the drive, determination and perhaps a bit of natural skill in understanding programming. They were easily the best junior developers we had hired, and all have done quite well in their careers. Perhaps we just got lucky?
      • Notanothertoo 5y ago
        I've worked with one, hired right before I joined, I became lead 6 months later. He would ask for help and then when I gave him things to do or lookup he would just fail, and would subtly try and get others to do it for him. Total mooch. Multiple meetings and attempts about it. Couldn't fire him. Had him on a plan immediately after being lead. It was so bad at one point I had his desk moved to be next to mine and I had to tell him he can talk to me but stop interrupting other seniors. Eventually that became work in whatever you want so long as you don't need anyone. He sat there for 3 months and did nothing before he was finally payed off. Parent company transfered him to his own department essentially and then "restructured" it. He had a mech engineer background, two years out of engineering school went to code camp. Ceo was an idiot and payed him 90k starting which was a lot more than one of the other seniors who was an self taught English grad. He worked his ass of an was performing as a senior. Ceo stiffed him on the raise, he didn't know any better until he found out code campers salary and was gone in two weeks. My director left shortly after and so did I. They haven't kept a lead for more than 6 months since, that was 3 years ago... Sorry I digress.
      • camjohnson26 5y ago
  • joe_the_user 5y ago
    What about loan companies, who definitely issued the loans, being on the hook? It's a lot simpler and it follows the chain of moral responsibility. Note: All it takes is changing the law back to the way it was before - debts forgiven in an ordinary bankruptcy.
    • zdragnar 5y ago
      Student loans would evaporate. Full time students have no income or collateral, since the degree and knowledge and skills cant be taken away and sold to recover losses. All this would do is ensure that higher education is utterly inaccessible for anyone not rich enough to pay cash.
      • joe_the_user 5y ago
        Student loans would evaporate. Good! Let education be paid for by grants and the student own income, most grants. Plus force the universities to make their tuition cost effective. Edit: However many years ago, public universities charged a fairly nominal tuition and survived for many doing that (financed by their respective US states). These public universities today have massively expanded their costs, primarily based on capital spending and follow the model of private universities.
        • bpodgursky 5y ago
          Every student would with good cause declare bankruptcy immediately upon graduation, because they have debt and no assets and no job. I get where you're coming from, but this is not a workable solution.
          • lazide 5y ago
            It didn’t happen that way until many, many years after student loans started to be a thing. Some enterprising law students figuring out they could get a loan to learn how to get out of the loan - and end up with a very valuable degree out of it that could not be repossessed - and by the time they needed good credit, it would be off their records. It took awhile for word to get out, and then they banned getting out of student loans. So blame the lawyer (students) I guess?
  • ineedasername 5y ago
    BestBuy isn't on the hook if I buy $20k of stuff on my credit card and can't pay it back. The bank that gave me the card is on the hook. We don't blame BestBuy for having prices that are too high, or not educating shoppers that their quantum dot TV's will be obsolete and valueless in a few years. The main problem is that not only is the government subsidizing the loan, but they're never dischargeable in bankruptcy. The banks are the ones that truly have no skin in the game. Universities at least need to be able to point to graduation rates and successful graduates of their programs, the quality of their internship opportunities and career services department. Not that they're worth $250k/student, but the universities at least have some vague reputational stake in this that will impact their ability to recruit more students. For a little while when someone google's the quality of Columbia's program they may see these posts. The more these issues come out, the bigger the impact on schools. Banks on the other hand? They won't lose money, business, reputation, prospective employees... Nothing.
  • marcusverus 5y ago
    How about students pay for college with a state-brokered income share agreement? As in, for every year of university, a student pledges to pay that university .25% of their annual income, for life. The government could easily facilitate this via the income tax process. This would eliminate the issue of student loan debt, and finally put the incentives of our universities in line with the students they're supposed to serve. I imagine we'd see a lot fewer frivolous degrees once it was in the universities interest to actually equip their students for financial success. The way things are, I doubt these institutions care. They get paid either way!
• joe_the_user 5y ago
  Part of the issue is that there is no mechanism to discourage universities from doing this. It's very specifically the loan companies that do this and the universities just sell their stuff. But stopping would be good, yes. Best disincentive: Debt forgiveness. Forgive those "unforgivable" and people will think twice about ever doing this again.
  • KoftaBob 5y ago
    The vast majority of student loans are originated and backed by the federal government, for most cases there is no "loan company". It's the federal government that these students owe the money to.
    • Retric 5y ago
      Not at these ultra expensive universities. Federal loans cap at high but vaguely reasonable annual limits, to get 200+k of debt from a 4 year degree takes massive loans from private companies. https://lendedu.com/blog/federal-student-loan-limits/ https://lendedu.com/blog/federal-student-loan-limits/ However, the federal limit is still sky high $31,000 for dependent undergraduate students. A loan cap of say 20k/year would dramatically change what goes on at these private collages.
      • mannerheim 5y ago
        Grad PLUS loans can be as much as tuition. > The loan limits for Grad PLUS and Parent PLUS Loans also differ from Stafford Loans. There is no annual limit as a set dollar amount, but students or parents may not borrow more than the total cost of attendance, less any other financial aid received.
        • Retric 5y ago
          These aren’t available to undergraduates. Such programs can really screw people over financially, but more often it’s a question of lost earnings and interest on initial loans rather than graduate tuition on it’s own.
• WalterBright 5y ago
  > They can’t possibly know better C'mon. Google "starting salaries for [my major]"
  • steveBK123 5y ago
    Right, if STEM kids could figure this out in the late 90s on dial-up and pay by the minute internet, then 2020s kids with iPhones in their pocket can check this in seconds in between classes and TikToks.
    • airstrike 5y ago
      You're discounting the impact of aggressive marketing for these programs in the 2020s vs. virtually zero back in the 1990s.
      • gedy 5y ago
        As well as there being less non degree career options that pay decently, causing many young folks to feel "a degree" is only option.
  • lumost 5y ago
    Let's look at the top result for google for "film and media studies major salary". - Job Growth (8% writers & authors, 12% producers and directors, 5% advertising and promotions managers) - Average Salary ($73k writers and authors, 89k producers, 133k advertising and promotion managers) Sounds pretty good right? the part that's missing is that the placement rate of "Film and Media majors" into these fields.
    • steveBK123 5y ago
      Right, the more important stat is if/what the school publishes for - % employed at graduation and average salary. My school had this online in the 90s, though I suspect many hide this now.
    • WalterBright 5y ago
• kryogen1c 5y ago
  > Part of the issue is that there is no mechanism to discourage universities from doing this certainly not a root cause, but am enabling cause is whem student debt changed to not be dischargeable in bankruptcy. there is literally no longer a way to get rid of it. seems like an obvious false dichotomy. perhaps we look at how much tuition "should" cost (god knows what that means) and make some percentage dischargeable. ~50%?
  • clcaev 5y ago
    ... and make the issuing university be on the hook for the other 50% that defaults
• khawkins 5y ago
  Tie the ability for a student to take out a loan to go to a particular school to the ability for its graduated students to pay back said loans. Put simply, incoming Colombia film students can only borrow money Colombia film graduates have paid back. Schools that have always graduated successful people with valuable degrees will prosper, and schools which prey upon idealistic young people will quickly find themselves only able to entertain rich dumb kids. It's an indirect solution which will fix future and past wrongs, without giving any University the right to sue. It doesn't impose any unreasonable burden on institutions, other than the most reasonable one, that they're giving young people educations that actually have value.
• gameman144 5y ago
  > They can’t possibly know better. This seems to be kicking the can down the road a little. College applicants and students absolutely should bear some responsibility in making sure that their programs, degrees, and desired careers are actually feasible and practical in the long-term. Where you're spot-on, though, is that they don't bear all the responsibility. The big problem, it seems, is that there's no safety-valve for those students who didn't (whether through their own fault or not) get the memo about programs being worthless. In those cases, making other stakeholders (schools, the state) have some skin in the game seems like it'd make the problem solve itself. Like you said, if the students are the only ones incentivized to have universities give a good education, we're going to have a bad time.
• dd36 5y ago
  Allowing easy bankruptcy would clean it up very fast. That’s how it was prior to 2005.