Reply to Instead of student loan forgiveness, why can’t we have this?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There needs to be a quality metric.  The government should only give student loans to students at schools where the student loan default rate is below a certain threshold.  This would immediately knock out most for-profit schools and incentivize all schools to get their grads into good paying jobs with strong academic programs and career support.  [b]To meet this threshold, schools may choose to cut or reduce the size of programs where grads can't make a living wage, i.e., majors that aren't a good investment.  They may also bulk up and market majors with good career options.[/b]

Loss of for profit programs will disproportionately impact low income and minority students, so this should be coupled with more aid for community colleges or other public schools.[/quote]

I see comments like this constantly on DCUM and it's weird to me because a person with an English degree can do everything from spend a fruitless decade "writing a novel" while working odd jobs, to becoming a teacher with a steady income and benefits, to becoming a consultant or going to law school and making a very high income.

There are also a lot of people who get pushed into "marketable" majors like engineering or business and do poorly because it doesn't suit them, get bad grades, and struggle to find jobs upon graduation.

At a liberal arts college, the goal is to turn out students who can do a broad variety of professional work, and who all have a baseline skill level in reading, writing, math/statistics, and logic, and a broad exposure to history, the sciences, politics/government, and the arts. With that education you can do lots and lots of things, whether you majored in Ethnic Studies or Accounting.

The push to make liberal arts colleges more like pre-professional school is weird. That's what pre-professional schools are for! But lots of jobs do not require specialized education -- they require smart, capable, literate people who can learn the specifics of that job fairly quickly. I.e. liberal arts graduates.[/quote]
English majors from good schools get jobs and can usually manage their loans with income based repayment.  Those folks won't be targeted here.  This is about students who take out loans and can't make a living wage.  Would you really willingly sign up for a program if you knew there was a 25% chance that you'd end up burdened by loan debt that cannot be cleared by bankruptcy, unable to get a job with a living wage, and with ruined credit so you can't ever buy a house?  Guess what?  Today schools don't disclose this info.  Yet grads in this situation admit they would have been better off not attending the program altogether.  [/quote]

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