4 ms·

I’m sympathetic to the instinct that created the student loan system: it is nice to try and give people a chance, but fully funded public colleges were apparent

I’m sympathetic to the instinct that created the student loan system: it is nice to try and give people a chance, but fully funded public colleges were apparently a non-starter, so a compromise was struck. But, it turns out giving late-teenagers and young adults loans that can’t be discharged through the normal bankruptcy procedure, and then having every adult in their life tell them that they need to go to college to have the middle-class lifestyle their parents enjoyed, creates wildly a poisonous incentive structure. Capitalism works pretty good, but it is reliant on people on both sides of the deal making rational decisions. There’s nobody doing due diligence on the loan issuer side. Why should they? They are offering these unique risk-free loans. Most people don’t want to go through bankruptcy. It just exists as a looming specter to disincentivize bad investments. Let people discharge their loans through bankruptcy, and we’ll see the market work. College prices will go down when students can’t get ill-considered loans. I can’t promise this is the full fix but we should at least give the free market a try.

bee_rider 2y ago
Another way of looking at it is: universities should be priced such that middle class parents can pay for their kids to go. People who can’t afford to go should not be the default case. They should be the exception, handled through exceptional means like a combination of need and talent based scholarships. We’ve created a problem where all of the control flow is via exceptions. We want our administrative systems to be lean and efficient, C not Python.
KevinMS 2y ago
> But, it turns out giving late-teenagers and young adults loans that can’t be discharged through the normal bankruptcy procedure, and then having every adult in their life tell them that they need to go to college to have the middle-class lifestyle their parents enjoyed, creates wildly a poisonous incentive structure. The real problem is college degrees that cant pay for themselves.

bee_rider 2y ago

Another way of looking at it is: universities should be priced such that middle class parents can pay for their kids to go. People who can’t afford to go should not be the default case. They should be the exception, handled through exceptional means like a combination of need and talent based scholarships. We’ve created a problem where all of the control flow is via exceptions. We want our administrative systems to be lean and efficient, C not Python.

KevinMS 2y ago

> But, it turns out giving late-teenagers and young adults loans that can’t be discharged through the normal bankruptcy procedure, and then having every adult in their life tell them that they need to go to college to have the middle-class lifestyle their parents enjoyed, creates wildly a poisonous incentive structure. The real problem is college degrees that cant pay for themselves.