re: Why massive student loan debt is a good thing

Except price inflation affects more than just puppetry. The same tuition for puppetry exists for engineering, accounting, biology, chemistry, etc. Granted they have a better shot at paying it off, but that rising tide floats all boats.

Also Dartmouth has an endowment fund big enough to pay for most puppetry majors anyway.

Youre better off picking on a school like Tulane that charges $50k/year for their puppetry major.

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I'm not actually pointing to The Puppet Arts as being the downfall of American universities.

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Well because the degree that did that was Underwater Basket Weaving.

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while allowing in tons of mediocre-stupid people into college

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Yup.

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i went and gave a talk at my HS about this very topic (not going to college and not needing it to be successful, most degrees are shite investments, etc) and I was subsequently roasted by all the faculty afterwards. I made fun of my classmates (2 in particular that received degrees in Psych and Linguistic Anthropology and are working as substitute teachers and trucker dispatchers, respectively

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Man you're lucky. I offered to go speak to my old HS baseball team about options besides college for those who wanted to go other routes.

I made it about 5 minutes before the coach cut me off with a line about college being the best option above all else.

It was bullshite. But I got multiple phone calls afterwards from kids that basically asked me if it was true they could go apprentice for 5 years and make $30/hr before they hit 25.

No one is educating high school students about the "other options"

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And not everyone wanted to go to college until people said everyone should go to college. Even with government backed loans, if we didn't create a generation of people who thought that only stupid people didn't go to college, then we probably wouldn't see the problems we see today. Watch some old TV, men who went to college were often mocked as soft.

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I agree that we have a generation that pushed everyone to college with the misguided idea that it was the degree and not the ability to acquire said degree that was actually valuable.

That said, demand can fluctuate with a constant supply. The market can regulate itself and reach a natural equilibrium. We don't have that right now.

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i went and gave a talk at my HS about this very topic (not going to college and not needing it to be successful, most degrees are shite investments, etc) and I was subsequently roasted by all the faculty afterwards

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that would be funny if that happened to me. my irl reputation may prevent that, but most teachers may not know who i am these days...hm

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Man you're lucky. I offered to go speak to my old HS baseball team about options besides college for those who wanted to go other routes.

I made it about 5 minutes before the coach cut me off with a line about college being the best option above all else.

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Bingo.

Brainwashing. Control of information. It sucks, but this is why you almost can't blame the kids completely. You can blame the guy who goes and buys a TV with his loan, but it's tough to blame the person who has a job, is trying to study their passion, gets a loan, and struggles because of all the overhead. Did they make a bad decision? Sure. But from a low-information kid, being asked to make a decision about the next 25 years of their life with very little perspective who goes to their elders for help and they get that in response. There you go.

Our cultural is just as culpable.

I disagree. You cut the funding and all of your other reasons fall by the wayside.

The other problem is that most kids look for pretty buildings, nice dorms, and dont care about what that costs to upkeep.

I went to an instate school, lived at home, paid cash for tuition and worked 3 12 hour shifts a week, then graduated with two stem degrees and minimal debt. This was in May 2010.

Most kids I know in college have zero desire to do any of that.

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I disagree. You cut the funding and all of your other reasons fall by the wayside.

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I don't disagree, but it isn't enough. Defunding college just as fast as you funded it is going to create some issues.

Colleges massively expanded their footprints over the last 25 years. You're going to have decommissioning and reuse issues with building, among employee issues, and a host of shrinking problems.

The price of college will not fall as fast, as part of the result of the above, and you'll create class war issues again with college right away.

Additionally, you're going to have to work through the already existing population of graduates, for the next 20 years, so that will take a long time to clear out. Additionally, business will have to spin up training and re-investment in employees quickly.

Cutting loans now is feasible, but it would result in a lot of cracked eggs.

I would suggest:
1) A significant shift in the "American Dream" idea and push and focus on individuals, talent, and fostering community. Play up blue collar/vocational labor and market ANY job as a good job. Not just a white collar one. We have to change the conversation first. We have to say that a college degree is not an automatic path to success. And it has to be said loudly.

The key is encouraging people to find value in ANY labor, and making sure people know we value that. You can't raise kids that think college=smart, not college=stupid.

2) Defunding federal student loans

3) Businesses have to give up on college as training and they have to do it quickly. Prove that you hire the person, not the degree, and focus on employee investment across the board.