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I see no bad news here. Far too many people are going to college who have no business in that environment.
Trade schools.
On The Job training.
Correspondence schools, reading societies, hobby clubs for anyone who enjoys learning. Young, old, white, black, whatever. If you are curious, contact a group that is also interested.
No colleges.
The former is too high and the later is too low.
My son (mid-20s) said he is the only one of his friends who isn’t burdened by heavy student debt. My daughter’s friend is in her last year of medical school - and looking at $500-600,000 in student loan debt.
I would suggest students go into the trades. I had to call a plumbing service for an emergency - had to call three before I found one that would come out, the rest were booked solid for a month.
A key issue is that many college degrees have no value in the job market.
There are some jobs and careers for which you do need a college education in those fields, such as accounting, nursing, or various science fields.
And if you’re going to be a doctor or a lawyer, you need to go to medical school or law school respectively.
And there are degrees such as degrees in Black studies, or women’s studies, which do not lead to jobs and career paths.
Borrowing money for some of these degrees is a very bad financial decision, because those degrees will not enable you to get better paying jobs and careers to pay back those loans.
Here’s an idea that might work, try lowering the cost and improving the product.
I know it is a novel and radical idea but it just might work.
Do away with student loans, they are nothing more then 20th century version of indenture servants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servitude
Any time you have a third party payer involved cost of the product will go up.
If you want to keep student loans make two changes, the person taking out the loan must be over 21 and second make the college the guarantor of the loan. If not paid back it is the college’s loss.
18 year olds are ignorant of the world and in my opinion should not be allowed to enter any contract until they are 21.
The colleges have no incentive to guide the student with the loan, succeed or fail the colleges get their money. They need a little skin in the game (and if so I am sure any degree with the word “study” in it would not be financed by student loans.
Anyone who doesn’t see that college isn’t really educating people needs to get a real education. Its pretty obvious that a degree is far from what it used to be.
The world needs ditchdiggers, too.
Not only can someone earn a good living in the trades, they may also be able to form a small business for that work.
I attended college in the early to mid 90s... back then those in college fell into two broad groups... A set of folks who actually were there to learn, often paying for it themselves, or through academic scholarships or their parents money etc... and those that were there just because college was what you did next after high school. The latter group, was almost ALWAYS on mommy and daddy’d dime... were there to party, etc, and honestly dumbed down the entire institution and were at best a distraction for those actually there to learn.
Every fall the new freshmen would show up, and it was pretty clear quickly which of these two large groups someone fit into. A large number of the latter group would fritter their semester away, and then toward the end when Mommy and Daddy got their kids first semester grades would try to hunker down... some did so successfully, others flunked or dropped out leaving mommy and daddy with a big boatload of cash spent with nothing to show for it.
That was nearly 30 years ago now... There were always left wing nutters on campus, pushing ever commie pinko nonsense.. and share of professors as well. Humanities were full of these folks... while the actual sciences tended to be far more real world focused.
Today, I wouldn’t even recognize my college if I were to visit. Other than the fact the kids are the same age.. the pursuit of academics, seems to be all but an afterthought in most COLLEGE GRADUATES I interact with. Their emotional maturity is closer to 12 than 22, no not all, but far far more of them, than I would expect.
We were all young and foolish at one point, I’m not talking about that, I’m talking just inability to function at anything approaching a functional adult level.
NO its not all, but the folks who would have FLUSHED OUT, without question 30 years ago, somehow are now getting degrees...
If the degree is in a STEM discipline, good. Otherwise, worthless.
2-year tech degree in autobody repair is plenty. Banks may crumble and that cushy “personal banker” job may vanish...but there will always be car wrecks.
not really a problem, plenty of STEM applicants available in sweat-shop style coding/engineering companies from overseas to fill the demand, and are always on sale!
BTTT