FYI we (Holberton) have a minimum threshold: if you don't find a job or if it under 40k you don't pay us back because we failed at either training you or selecting you as a student.
> Any reasonably intelligent and dedicated student can go to university and come out the other end with a well-paying job.
That's a pretty restrictive filter. Currently you have to be at least two of smart, goal-directed, and curious to make it through the university system with a decent education and good job prosepcts. Many other students make it through with good job prospects but no real education because they were able to bull their way through an in-demand major program. But a lot of them slip through the cracks and end up with neither job nor education.
I agree. Ideally, tuition would be extremely subsidized and higher ed wouldn't constitute an enormous financial gamble. But in the current US system, the restrictive filter really is in the students' best interest.
It's not self-serving to tell someone "really, no, you shouldn't take out a big loan to pay for this because you're probably unprepared and will fail".
On the contrary, taking literally every student who can get a federal student loan -- regardless of your faith in their ability to get something meaningful out of the degree -- is extremely selfish!
Interestingly enough, that's around the same number I came up with as a minimum wage for students with big loans to pay back a University. People would tell me that $15 an hour or so for IT work like we get out here was decent pay for new people. I said a lot of these people have Bachelor's degrees with minimum payments of $2,000 a month. Lowest cost-of-living out here (poor people life) + that payment = you need at least $40,000 a year just to scrape by. People just don't get how the traditional model of education plus companies not paying people anything puts such a financial burden on graduates that they're damn-near better off taking a no-degree approach.
IMO this is primarily where many universities are failing, which is an enormous disservice to their students.
Any reasonably intelligent and dedicated student can go to university and come out the other end with a well-paying job.