[bradlys]

If you're saying that someone who is below a certain income cannot get a loan - how are they going to go to college? Pull-up them bootstraps and find some more money under the couch cushions? You do know that scholarships are not like a dime-a-dozen, right? It's not like every university waives tuition at middle class incomes.

If you want to limit the cost of college then doing it by putting caps on how much a university can charge could be a more straight forward option than hoping costs come down by limiting loans to those who can't afford the cash option. (e.g. If a university wants state funding then they need to cap their student costs) Even then - loans would still need to happen for people who can't afford much more than their basic housing expenses (if even that - think about kids who get kicked out at 18).

You're speaking in a lot of "if market forces behave the way we all think they should thanks to basic econ like supply and demand" but that's not how things always work in the real world.

Considering ~50% families don't have any retirement savings and don't have an emergency fund, do you really their kids are gonna be able to afford all the expense things associated with college? (Remember - these people just got out of high school! They have likely never had a job and have no money at all)

[skewart]

Do you think colleges wouldn't change if they were going to receive far far fewer applicants at their current sticker prices? I don't mean that to come across as snarky. I'm genuinely curious because your comment seems to be based on an assumption that colleges would not make changes to their operations or tuition if they suddenly had a hard time filling their freshman class.

[bradlys]

I think of it as being similar to healthcare. People need education to get jobs in the current economy. (In the same way they need healthcare to stay alive) You might make it so expensive they can't pay it back in any reasonable amount of time but if the choice is job vs no job - people gonna take it. If you remove the ability to even get an education (or healthcare) by saying you can only get it with cash then you're just screwing people over.

Regardless if job requirements change (they only will for a subset that no one cares about and no one is trying to get), you're going to screw people over. The lag time between no-loans and job-requirements dropping is going to be too long. There will be a lot of people who fall into the cracks and will be stuck with the lowest tier jobs because they couldn't afford a cash-only education until it was much less expensive.

Regardless of this - I feel like this is the wrong approach to debate lower costs vs no loans vs whatever-where-a-student-pays-in-the-end. I think 4 year college should be free (no tuition, books paid, stipend or special housing, etc.) given how the world works. I went to college for free due to CH 35 of the VA and it was really the only reason I was able to do it and fully commit to it. I have no problem with having a more educated populace - regardless of what they study. I did study something that came with very gainful employment but that wasn't obvious in the beginning of my studies. I think 4 year college would be less necessary if we had better education from the start - but we're never going to get there in this country.

[selectodude]

It depends entirely on the school. Harvard could pretty reasonably jack up their tuition well over $100,000/yr without any real resistance or fall in applications. We wouldn't get cheaper colleges, we'd merely watch as all the 2nd and 3rd tier schools shut down.