[rayhendricks]

If student loans were suddenly unavailable then universities would have to rein in out of control costs and Maybe get rid of sports and bs admin staff.

The only reason they change that much is due to the ability of loans.

[black_puppydog]

Same goes for books. Your prices for textbooks over there are hilarious. They're priced purely based on just how much you can milk the students, or rather whoever finances them.

[throwaway_USD]

To add on every year the text is usually reprinted/updated for the purposes of trying to kill the used book market and in many cases my professors were the authors of the required texts.

[peterangular]

Yeah and to a captive market too. College textbook sales is one of the most insane rackets I've ever witnessed... "milking the students" is no exaggeration.

[rayhendricks]

I absolutely agree. The whole “college experience” from overpriced textbooks to overpriced dorms is a huge racket. The covid pandemic might really shake things up though if there’s no school starting in the fall though.

[peterangular]

I've advised a couple of people looking to go to school to take a gap-year to hedge risk of the schools having their stuff together.

If there's anything I've noticed about higher education after working in/with it, its that they're constantly behind the curve in just about everything that's not sports/research related.

I would be very scared of having a second-rate experience due to a college (and professors) not being prepared for this to the point I would sit a year out and crank out gen-eds at home in already established online programs.

Take this all with a grain of salt... Maybe I'm paranoid, but I just don't see schools being ready for this and having a solid experience ready for new students by fall unless they've already practiced remote learning/class programs.

[rayhendricks]

When I was a sophomore in my undergrad degree one of the professors was habitually late. As we were only meeting 2-3 times a week I calculated the dollar value of that lateness as a part of our tuition. People were not happy.

Hopefully at the end of all this we realize that community colleges can teach the majority of a 4yr degree and even have labs already set up.

[ashtonkem]

Both statements can be true: eliminating debt collection would massively curtail the availability of credit, and excessive credit availability practically any motive to curtail costs.

[momokoko]

This is not true based on the amount of money originating lenders get when the sell off bad debt. Generally they receive less than 5%(sometimes less than 1%).

To the original lender, 5% of the defaulted debt generally just covers the cost of writing off the debt and maybe a bit more. It does not move the needle at all for loan availability.

[ashtonkem]

That’s true once you get to the point of selling debt off. More effect would be seen if the ability of creditors to pursue debtors earlier in the process was more severely curtailed.

[larrywright]

Correlation isn’t causation, but the dramatic rise in college costs began when student loans became easy to get.

[x86_64Ubuntu]

They became easy to get because lenders knew their loans were non-dischargeable. That completely changes the risk equation and to act like it doesn't is an exercise in bad-faith.

[vonmoltke]

Federal student loans have been non-dischargeable since the 90s, and this problem has been building since then. Federal student loans also make up over 90% of student loan debt, and since 2010 have been issued solely by the Department of Education. Also, not all private loans are non-dischargeable.

No-dischargeable private loans are such a small portion of the problem that they are effectively irrelevant.

[stale2002]

I mean, I guess. If your argument is "I think it would be a good thing for poor students to never receive loans", then you can take that position.

But intentionally trying to ensure that poor people are never given loans is not usually the arguments that I hear, surrounding student debt.