College Tuition Debts

I have a proposal to make, and I welcome your comments.

The current system of college tuition debts is both unacceptable and systemically unjust. Here’s how it works:

1. Banks make loans to 18-22+ college students without risk since students cannot default on the loans. I’m for folks not going default, but risk-free loans are brainless actions.

2. Students at 18, or even 22, often — this is quite accurate — do not realize the significance for quality of life that a 20K annual loan will mean for them once they graduate.

3. Parents and students and colleges need to develop a new level of integrity on these issues, but I have to contend that I think the parents are the most significant player in this triad of providing significant information.

4. But I have a big beef with the banks and it leads to this proposal:

To acquire a loan, a student must declare a major. Students can of course change majors.

My proposal means this: Banks must examine, say, what a given major will make over the first ten years after graduation. These things are not hard to determine. On the basis of what that given major earns after graduation the bank can responsibly determine how much to loan that students. A pre-law student, then, can acquire a bigger loan than a social work major. It’s not all that hard to determine how much an Education major makes in the first ten years and so determine how much debt an Education major can accrue and reasonably pay off.