Student Loans Redux
Why are you getting a degree ending in "studies," when there is very little job market for your education, and you are starting your working life with $250,000 in debt?
As I’ve said previously, the top 20% of our public high school graduates nation-wide, should receive full tuition at a state college or university. 20% of those bachelor’s grads, should have free funding for a master’s degree, and 20% of those with master’s degrees would be funded for doctorate degrees. 20% of those doctoral graduates, would be funded for post-doctoral programs. It’s the old 20%-80% Pareto Principle. Give or take a few here and there, and the Pareto Principle seems to work out that way, no matter what. When you have 30% of the population with college degrees, in an economy that only needs 20%, you are going to have problems. You are going to have a lot of pissed off college graduates, working at Starbucks.
Separate from that however, would be those going into professional degree programs. I’ll let the experts figure out how many applicants are accepted into eight-year pre-law to JD, or pre-med to MD or DO, programs. Same with those going into RN and LPN programs for nurses. The fact is, we Boomers are getting old, and getting old means more medical and dental professionals keeping us alive, well past our sell by date. We also need lawyers to prepare our wills and trusts, and CPAs to prepare our tax returns.
There would still be private colleges and universities. The student loan industrial complex, will go berserk, but we should end all federally-guaranteed student loans. Make the private colleges and universities provide their own financing, loans, and scholarships from their endowments. You would see those schools only lending money to those majoring in degrees, where the recipient has the good potential of getting a good job. Those schools will want you to be able to pay back the loan. If you want to major in Revolutionary Underwater Basket Weaving Studies, you are going to have to find a way to pay for it yourself. No worries. There will always be rich people who will pay for their trustafarians to get degrees in Elizabethan Poetry, so they can continue to be trustafarians. Those tenured professors teaching them will continue to have jobs. In fact, some of those trustafarians will be come the professors teaching the trustafarians. Isn’t life just grand?