Student Loans Might Be Driving Up the Cost of College. So What Do We Do About It? (Might be??)

Slate ^ | 09/08/2015 | Jordan Weissmann

[Axenolith]

The whole reason costs are up so much is because lending institutions face 0 risk on student loans. In a unfettered market if you went to get a loan and are studying engineering the lender could actuarily noodle out you’d be low risk, and give you 10 grand at 4% while the kid who was going to study Renaissance literature or wymens studies is probably going to be reciting “would you like foam on that latte” and get charged 13.5% for half the amount.

As it stands, if you fog a mirror you get the dough and the resultant flood of money drives the higher learning centers to go on wild hiring and class creation sprees to “soak it up”.

Another probably intended consequence of this is that it is essentially a perpetual libtard job creation program, people who otherwise would have to study to push a broom find created educational niches which give them degrees in bullshit subjects with which to make a wealth-creationless existence. One that comes to mind these days is Environmental Studies, a field littered with the academic corpses of geology, physics and chemistry majors who couldn’t hack those.

Since most North American environmental problems have for all intents and purposes been solved, those ES majors have to enter their field looking to find, make up or create more “problems” to solve. I see this often here in CA. They micromanage stormwater and runoff pollutant prevention and monitoring, they want structural concrete tested for NOA (naturally occurring asbestos) and they keep lowering lead standards among other things.