[jelveh]

I believe the American Taxpayer will have to pay for this either way, the choice is between effectively destroying the lives of those that default or giving them a fighting chance.

> "In an aside, loans made to college kids to get a quality education is not a ridiculous loan on ridiculous terms to people who can't afford them."

I'd like to disagree with you and I believe that a default rate of > 13% (and rising sharply - http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/first-official-three-y...) supports my statement.

[zanny]

It doesn't hurt that (at least for me) the ONLY reason I went to college was for the degree saying CS. I had been programming for years, wrote some WoW addons, and was bored out of my mind for 3 years straight taking lectures on things I could have easily read in textbooks or even off wikipedia. But the number of job opportunities when you have BS of CS on your resume are just orders of magnitude larger.

That is colossally stupid. We need a better way to certify people for things than wasting years and tens of thousands of their dollars on this nonsense.