[013a]

Student Debt is a weird one. The purpose of all debt is to act as an investment to increase net productivity for the borrower at a rate higher than the interest rate.

When phrased like that, you realize there is literally no debt an individual could possibly take out which offers a higher return on investment than student debt. For example, lets say you take out $60k @ 4% and plan to pay it off over 20 years. You'd pay $27k in interest. But if that enables you to upgrade from a $40k/year job to a $70k/year job, you've literally paid for the interest in the first year.

The reason it gets complicated is because not everyone invests their student debt as well as they could. So not everyone sees a rate of return like that. Lets say we solve that by allowing student debt to be subject to default; sounds like an interesting idea because banks would make smarter investments. That means investing in students who take traditionally high-earning degrees (STEM?) and students who have a good academic history.

Uh oh. Now this doesn't sound so good. We'd probably see discrimination against lower income students because they statistically show poorer academic success in high school, discrimination against poorer performing schools, centralization of students into high performing schools causing wait lists and overcrowding, discrimination against liberal arts and low-performing degrees, the list goes on. This probably isn't a better world we've created.

The big things schools need to fix is overwhelming growth in administrative costs. I don't think that problem is in student debt itself and as a concept, but where the problem actually lies doesn't have an easy answer.