[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.