[dnautics]

how about making academic debt dischargeable without question during bankruptcy - so that the school is 100% on the hook for the balance of the funds if it educates the student poorly and can't get them a job, instead of keeping them in (albeit voluntary) virtual slavery to service their debt?

Yes, interest rates would go up, to cover the risk of defaulters, but then only serious students would go to college.

[jamesaguilar]

Schools would immediately close departments that tend to graduate low-paid folks -- humanities, acting, psychology, history, anthropology, all gone. Not sure if it would be a problem for society because those who actually produce art tend to learn to do it before college and just spend their time in college refining, which they could as easily do in clubs and societies without the BS that goes along with college.

[rdouble]

Based on that criteria, wouldn't universities also have to close math, biology, physics, foreign languages, environmental science, psychology, architecture, civil engineering, etc?

[dnautics]

I'm sure there will be some rich people around who could pay for tuition in general up front, the departments that generate 'students that can get modest jobs' might become smaller. Of course, then the supply of educated mathematicians, biologists, physicists, would get smaller, too, and their pay will go up, and everything will reach a saner equilibrium.

[jamesaguilar]

Math, biology, and civil engineering are all on the high end of graduate pay.

[dnautics]

or in select conservatories.