[hanibash]

There's no reason for Liberal Arts majors to be paying obscene amounts of tuition, and especially shouldn't be going into debt, for a degree that isn't going to get them hired.

It's just a fact of the broken system. Tuition is justified by the job you get after it. But if you can't get a job in it, the high tuition is completely unjustified.

There have got to be better alternatives to getting a liberal education. Got any ideas?

[ali255]

The core problem is that state and federal funding of colleges has consistently been going down over the last 30 years, and continues to go down. When colleges get less money from government spending colleges either have to cut spending (and in result provide less to students) or increase tuition.

The high tuition causes student debt, so the only way to cut student debt is to decrease tuition.

Their are only three ways to get tuition to decrease.

1. Increase Federal and State funding of colleges. As I mentioned in an earlier response, this is doable. College spending is 3.3% of GDP in the USA. Looking at the economy and country as a whole, that's not huge. Re-arrangement of spending, increased federal and state investment, and optimization of spending could reduce student debt a lot.

2. Get rid of much of Universities. Turn Universities into Trade schools and get rid of many University programs. This is not really the approach I want to see, as I think universities have a lot to offer the world in their current complexity.

3. Find Technological solutions and applications that reduce the cost of education without reducing its quality. This is the Entrepreneur's job.