(Replying to PARENT post)

We really need to educate students potentially starting college that they shouldn't major in something that pretty much has no chance of ever paying it back. This applies to most liberal arts programs.

A college education is a major investment. It's sad that culturally, our financial education is this poor.

I majored in a science and had all of my debts paid off within 5 years. I have friends that majored in things like history and still haven't paid their debts off after 10 years.

The popular thing to to is blame society, the university, or even high school teachers for recommending someone go to college. But, students need to take personal responsibility for taking out a loan and being unable to pay it back.

When this happens, we will have less students making foolish decisions.

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(Replying to PARENT post)

Education on the individual level just doesn't work. People are too dumb. (I had the pleasure of rereading this recently: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/07/stupider-than-you-real...) Those that aren't too dumb lack personal responsibility, which is a separate problem I fully agree is pretty big, so more education might fix that, but that's sort of something you can't learn from a book, and arguably the game of chicken at teaching responsibility by making it illegal to discharge student loans in bankruptcy has just made things worse.

The solutions I think have the best shot are those that involve authoritarian decrees one way or another (that is, going full free-market or going full nationalized colleges), but that requires a government with an actual interest in governing.

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(Replying to PARENT post)

I majored in history at UNC and paid off my $26,000 in student loans with my first commission check from my first sales job.

One's major and even one's skills are not an accurate predictor of ability to pay back loans. It is entirely a question of persuading other people to pay you lots of money quickly, and the requisite amount of luck it takes to find such a person quickly.

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(Replying to PARENT post)

No, we need to change the structure of education. There's zero reason to spend 4 years taking general ed courses at the same cost to pursue a history degree as you would spent pursuing a science degree. Stop focusing on the lettered degrees which are supposed to prove "overall knowledge" and then a specialty, and let people take courses a la carte when it comes to professional preparation.

We need people to be knowledgeable in things like history, the arts, languages, even archaeology - things that pay almost nothing as careers. It's very easy to sit on a high horse with a well paying job in a STEM field and say things like you're saying. Actively discouraging people from pursuing study is not the answer. Changing the program and the institutionalization of education is. We need to stop worrying about how to pay for a program and start worrying about why the program is what it is.

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