Thank you, government

They ought to:

1) Start severely limiting the total amount of student loans a person can receive.

2) Stop providing federal student loans to students attending for-profit schools.

3) Base the amount a student can receive on the major that they're taking. Worthless majors, like art history, aren't likely to provide a job able to pay off the loan.
 
It's actually my adviser. He doesn't want his graduate students to have a part-time job, teach, AND work in the lab because he's seen that it takes students a longer amount of time to write their theses. He's one of the best in my field, so I can't really argue.
 
I think that college in general should be much more difficult than it really is

Part of the stories you hear about people with stupid high student amounts happen because the person going to school simply isn't very good at what they are trying to do, and they simply borrowed too much to begin with

Those people should have been weeded out before they get to $150k in student loan debt with a marginal graduate degree and no job prospects
 
A friend of mine is a trend researcher for Corporations across the Globe and he sent me this interesting piece about the current and future education dilemma that youngsters will face in the very near future. Take it for what it's worth when I first read this I LOL'd but the more you read into it, this could very well be the final result within the next decade.

* Average tuition at four-year public colleges in the U.S. clirabed 6.5 percent, or $429, to $7,020 last fall as schools apologetically passed on much of their own financial problems, according to an annual report from the College Board.

At private colleges, tuition rose 4.4 percent, or $1,096, to $26,273.(Huffington Post Oct 2009)

*Since 2004 tuition and fees have risen by up to 20%(Time Magazine)

*Because of a budget in peril, UCLA inflated college costs by 32% in Noveraber of 2009 (AP)

* College tuition has increased by more than three times the rate of inflation for the last 20 years, despite U.S. wages flat-lining since 2000.(Forbes Magazine)

This begs the question: why did prices increase to these obscene levels in the first place?(Hint: for the same reasons the real estate boom happened):

Despite the best intentions, Government intervention distorts free market principles and creates zero incentive for businesses to lower costs or modify services.

The straw man argument typical consists of “Well, if Government didn’t provide loans, no one would be able to afford college”.

Again, I simply fall back to the free market model to demonstrate the fallacy in that claim. For if the government were to exit the student aid market, enrollment would fall through the floor. Students who were unable to attend college in the first place, without Government aid, would not enroll forcing pressure on the Universities to bring down costs to meet demand.

*Many students today must undertake massive debt in order to pay for the cost of their college education. We will continue to see an increase in the amount of debt a student must incur, as colleges continue to inflate their costs and the Government expanRAB its role in the loans market.

*The average student enrolling in college starting in the year 2012, will accumulate debt so massive that he or she will not be able to afford in a lifetime because most of the jobs available will be low wage! Yes, that is correct.

*Despite the increase in the cost of attending college, enrollment will continue to skyrocket in the short-term and then fall of a cliff by 2015.

*Every college in the nation will continue to inflate prices at a significant rate in the coming years as personal revenue falls. Because fewer will be able to afford costs, pressure will be put on the Government to step in to fill the void, which they will CERTAINLY do without any hesitation.

Instead of a liberal arts curriculum, young people nation wide will learn marketable skills such as farming/agriculture, animal raising, craft (Basket Weaving, Sewing), steelwork, construction. Amongst other things. This will be called the Second Industrial Revolution, as America’s future economy will depend heavily on export with the chief export being agricultural gooRAB.

We are going to see a new establishment of trade schools nationwide. These “schools” will specialize in the marketable skill areas mentioned above. Those who choose to diversify their skill portfolio will have the greatest employment opportunity as we see a shift from the (PhD, MS, rabA, BA, etc) to (Intensive Pastoral Farming, Shifting Cultivation, Dairy Farming, Plantation or Tree Farming, Woodcraft and interior construction, etc)

This will not only be an affect of the bursting of the college tuition bubble, but the government debt bubble. The productive capacity of America was replaced over the last five decades. Instead of skilled laborers willing to put in a 40 hour blue collar work week, we have millions of Americans who spend their time shuffling papers and living a life of mediocrity in the corporate world doing whatever they have to just to get their next paycheck. We get paid, for the most part, to provide a service, not a tangible product.This is America Today!
 
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