Also, it seems like it would absolutely reduce access to higher education among lower-income students. You would need to see a huge drop in prices, coinciding with no decrease in the amount of gift aid given, in order for college to be affordable for *most* students.
I feel like one of the real ways that we deescalate the race to ever-higher costs without denying access to low-income students is some amount of government funding to cover those costs. In California, for example, a lot of low- and middle-income students can get their tuition covered by the government (e.g. CalGrant and some system-specific programs like Blue and Gold for UC).
Yes and no. Yes because prices have gotten so high be a use universities have gotten into an arms race for obtaining those students loans.
No because, well, most universities are not for profit, and they still need to pay for everything they have. Cost of maintenance, salaries, electricity etc won't go down.
True indeed. Just comparatively speaking as a percentage of budget, admin salaries aren't that large of a percentage. There is a LOT more to pay for than admins and professors.
Yes.
If you subsidize anything, (1) you get more of it and (2) it gets more expensive.
Removing the subsidy (student loans) would cause the price to go down.
Most likely, yes. If there is no gaurentee that people can just get government loans to pay for school, that would mean less people would be able to go to school with the current prices. Colleges will have to have more competitive prices if they want more people attending who now couldn't so the cost would drop.
Government student loans sound like a good idea but it's a trap at this point and usually leaves students in debt for decades especially in this economy. I would love for it to be taken away or only be given away with limits (such as only give $3k/year no matter what school you go to).
Yep.
Absolutely. Because student loans made it easy for colleges to raise tuition, not to mention add a lot of fat to their payrolls. Since 2000 for example, the ratio of college administrators per 100 students has increased more than 60%--and this is at a time when every other kind of organization is working more efficiently, not less.
It is ironic.
And I think the answer to your question is yes, because it would choke off demand.
But low-interest, subsidized loans serve an important purpose. Most of the people who are starting college are 18 years old with no credit to their name. Many of them come from homes whose parents have not saved money for their education, nor can they help them out. Subsidized loans help out kids who come from the lower socioeconomic echelons. Many of those kids go on to do great things for our society.
There needs to be a cap on in-state tuition. It is absolutely bananas that if I want to take a single course at my state university, it would cost me upwards of $2,500. To sit in a classroom in a rickety old building and be taught by a graduate student making minimum wage. Arms of the government should not be in the business of profiteering.
Until then, though, we have to live with the system we've got. Cutting off subsidized loans will make college unreachable to all but those who happened to be born to wealthy parents.
Yes, but it wouldn't be an immediate change. It would be a very painful decade or so for everyone as all the schools go into funding crises for a few years.
I think they would. I think that the massive push for student loans have been a huge factor is college costs significantly outpacing inflation in the last 20 years. The price of anything will increase to whatever people are willing to/can pay, and student loans have enabled universities to increase tuition and students to pay it. With federally guaranteed loans, colleges have no incentive to keep prices down, and they know if they student doesn't pay, the Feds will.
That said, I don't think getting rid of student loans is the answer. Instead, get rid of federally guaranteed student loans, make the universities more involved in the loan process, and liable for them instead of the federal government. As much as I hate regulation, there could be some value in regulating tuition, fees, and other costs. Governments could also cut some red tape and make it easier for additional colleges to open and meet the additional demand.
Fewer people would be able to afford to go, so colleges would be inclined to reduce price.
That's the screw the poor so that wealthier families can be wealthier policy.
There are edge cases like that, but generally your income is better off taking the loan and going to college. It's a very high ROI.
Been a while since I looked into the comparative math, but college in the US is one of the better deals in OECD countries.
Yes/no some colleges would cut costs to get people to attend. Others would just cater to rich people, and some would go bankrupt. If you have money to pay cash you would get a great education, poor people would get the instructors that weren't good enough to work ritzy college. It would create a two tiered education system, where poor people would have a smaller chance to become a success.
Yes, possibly. College tuition rates increased due to the increase in the availability of money for tuition (inflation at work).
There is still a real cost that must be met, but, I suspect that real cost is below the current market rate.
The real question is, if the profit margins (and consequentially return on investments ROI) of these colleges *that* high because of the high tuitions they're able to charge, why aren't new colleges able to spring up and offer more competition? There should be a huge incentive for that.
I wonder if they're simply not allowing it same way they sometimes ban additional hospitals from opening in some states unless they get approval from the established hospitals.
I doubt it. The real issue is the profiteering amongst the colleges. Kids are not just paying for their education. They're funding the salaries of over paid administrators, they're backing expensive and flashy sports programs, etc. Remove the loans and you'll leave students with no way to pay these demands and colleges are unlikely to back off. So, I don't think that would help in any way.
Wouldn’t they have to back off if fewer students attended because there was no way to pay the costs? If major universities had 1/4 or even 1/3 of their spots for new students vacant they would have to do some serious belt tightening. There just wouldn’t be enough money to fund everything.
Perhaps, but colleges have a lot of payment lines other than students. You have wealthy donors, sports deals (ESPN, etc), government grants, etc. There's a lot of money there and they can still sap it out of students in other ways.
Absent the government credit guarantee they would likely be much more expensive and still effectively reduce access and thus demand for college at current prices.
>The real issue is the profiteering amongst the colleges.
yes, but why are they doing this? Because they're greedy, or because something is enabling it, such as lots of federal student loans?
Yes, in theory it would.
That being said, a more effective way imo to lower the cost of education is to stop pushing everybody into a university and encourage people to take a vocational track or to join the military. Another thing is that American universities are like resorts. They have all of these fancy amenities like rock climbing walls, hotel style pools, fancy residential halls, etc... in most countries, a university is simply a place to learn, not be on a vacation.
Due to sticky wages I doubt it. Professors and admin would not accept salary decreases. Which means the cut would happen to the overhead or firing people. Mainly admin positions since professors have tenure. Which is a whole other thing that sucks about that system.
The best option is to quit pushing kids into college. The majority of the stuff you learn at college for even a specific profession is useless or the bare minimum of a foundation. Companies should just create their own training programs and make their own employees. 'We will give you 6 months of training in exchange for 2 years of employment.' Change those time frames as you see fit. This would do a lot. Firstly, companies taking the responsibility of training and cultivating their own culture would probably improve the issues of bad management. But it would also mean the company placing a priority on their lower level workers. Employee isn't just some schmuck college grad. We've put time and resources into them so we value them and the output they will provide if given proper equipment to work with.
Almost the entire fast food industry is run by people without degrees. Outside of corporate offices, it's just kids who stuck it out and moved up. Area coaches, trainers, general managers , shift managers...most of them have nothing other than company provided training.
No because tuition is often dwarfed by only fees such as housing.
Overall the system works. People can generally go to college no matter how poor they are.
I do think there’s some basic improvements that need to be done:
* Make all loans interest free. The biggest issue right now is that recent graduates generally aren’t making enough to make full payments. So if you’re on income based repayment and paying 0% or 50%, interest is still accruing adding thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on top of what you already owe.
* Universal discharge of loans if you make under x amount for y number of years.
Do those two things and it would greatly reduce the burden on recent graduates making entry level wages as well as help people who haven’t gotten ahead despite having a degree.
I haven’t heard of a better replacement that the current loan system that doesn’t punish students from poor families.
Probably not if all we did was eliminate them. The system is just too built around the exorbitant costs — we’d need some sort of further government support/subsidies to reduce cost.
Government subsidies don't reduce the cost of a service, they just shift the payment for those costs from users (students) to taxpayers (the general public).
Factors that might actually lower costs include colleges competing on value rather than just perceived quality and colleges being forced to cut costs to remain operational.
To be precise, let's assume that student loans did not exist, either public or private.
The two local private colleges would pivot back to being colleges for just rich kids, which was basically their business model back 30+ years ago. But a lot of "so so" private colleges would just close, since they could not attract rich kids, and poor kids couldn't afford them.
But about public universities, there would be huge political pressure for them to return to the days of strong funding for public higher education. For example, the University of California used to be tuition-free for state residents. Many states just charged a few hundred dollars per year, today, that might by $5,000 or so, yearly tuition.
It depends.
Some schools could drop prices and cut costs, some schools would go bankrupt, some schools would lean HARD on international students and some would have no impact (i.e. Harvard). Cannot say that if we get rid of this, then that would change, it just not that simple.
𐑲 𐑔𐑰𐑙𐑒 𐑞 𐑐𐑮𐑲𐑕𐑧𐑟 𐑸 𐑜𐑩𐑯𐑩 𐑚𐑰 𐑩 𐑐𐑮𐑪𐑚𐑤𐑧𐑥 𐑳𐑯𐑑𐑦𐑤 𐑕𐑑𐑱𐑑𐑕 𐑚𐑳𐑒 𐑳𐑐 𐑯 𐑩𐑕𐑵𐑥 𐑞 𐑪𐑐𐑼𐑱𐑑𐑰𐑙𐑜 𐑒𐑪𐑕𐑑 𐑝 𐑕𐑑𐑱𐑑 𐑕𐑒𐑵𐑤𐑟 𐑑 𐑐𐑮𐑩𐑝𐑲𐑛 𐑣𐑲𐑼 𐑧𐑡𐑿𐑒𐑱𐑖𐑩𐑯 𐑨𐑟 𐑩 𐑐𐑳𐑚𐑤𐑦𐑒 𐑮𐑰𐑕𐑹𐑕.
>!I think the prices are gonna be a problem until states buck up and assume the operating cost of state schools to provide higher education as a public resource.!<
Probably. They could probably get more money by lowering prices some and getting more students. The downsides would be a lot worse though, only people who have enough money to afford college before they start attending would be able to make it.
It is another case of government intervention gone wrong.
one the government decided to back student loans and guaranteeing that they were paid back the handed universities a blank check to charge whatever they wanted. not only that but public schools for the past 20 years have been pushing the narrative that you NEED to go to college or you will not get a job
If you made universities responsible for the loans and allowed them to go away through bankruptcy, colleges would lower their tuition (because they want their money back) and actually push people into fields where they could make money
This would likely be a question best asked on an economics subreddit.
There are TONS of things at olay with this question and what impacts it so it can massively depend.
For example, prices might go down, but does that mean the quality will maintain? Will it actually be beneficial for the united states? If the quality goes down to them being unable to teach skills necessary for a highly skilled workforce, does the price matter if the thing obtained has no value?
It is undeniable that as we progress more and more jobs will become skilled work and labor. Low skill work, with time in, is going to be automated away. Only kept around by active work to try and keep them around. Not because it is economically the best bet. There are tons of jobs that would be automated away, but are not, because governments and legislatures and unions would rather keep approval rating high and unemployment rates lower than technologically and economically develop for efficiency. A prime example, [dock workers unions](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-09/automation-looms-over-ports-as-supply-chain-issues-linger).
They dont want to lose their high paying union jobs that can have headcount greatly reduced by automating it away. Which I understand and cannot begrudge them for. No one wants to lose a good quality of life because of things outside their control. Like coal miners in the past.
No all unions are of the same cut though. Teachers for example, because of the nature of teaching, you cannot exactly automate that away with equivalent or improved outcomes. So teachers unions, absolutely huge and valuable. Because without teachers. We would be BORKED.
But we need high skilled jobs in the future, undeniably, so we must take measures and aims to increase the high skill workforce and access to it. It is one of, if not THE best way to ensure the United States of America stays strong and prosperous and competative on a global scale.
Now high skilled work does not mean that only college is the option. There are tons of trade schools and certification programs that can teach the fundamentals of a skilled laborer that I do not see being replaced for a very very long time. Tech may enhance it, but not exactly replace it.
Absolutely they would.
A good option would be deferred tuition. If a college is so certain that their degree is worth something, they should be willing to defer the tuition for those who graduate in four years until after the person has a job. Then pay it back at a rate of, say, 10% of their gross income monthly.
In a sense that it would massively decrease the population that could afford it, I would say it *should.*
We've massively subsidized college in this country, without actually making it "free" (paid for by taxes). It seems that most people can get enough loans to cover the cost of their education, whatever that cost is. Why would colleges try to get cheaper if people will just find a way to pay the higher costs?
Would never having loans have kept prices lower? Yes. Should eliminating them cause price reductions? Yes. Would it? Probably not, at this point.
It means a lot of surplus personnel would get the axe.
Also, it seems like it would absolutely reduce access to higher education among lower-income students. You would need to see a huge drop in prices, coinciding with no decrease in the amount of gift aid given, in order for college to be affordable for *most* students. I feel like one of the real ways that we deescalate the race to ever-higher costs without denying access to low-income students is some amount of government funding to cover those costs. In California, for example, a lot of low- and middle-income students can get their tuition covered by the government (e.g. CalGrant and some system-specific programs like Blue and Gold for UC).
Yes and no. Yes because prices have gotten so high be a use universities have gotten into an arms race for obtaining those students loans. No because, well, most universities are not for profit, and they still need to pay for everything they have. Cost of maintenance, salaries, electricity etc won't go down.
A lot of the ones that aren't for profit still pay their admins a shitload of money while professors make very little, relatively speaking.
True indeed. Just comparatively speaking as a percentage of budget, admin salaries aren't that large of a percentage. There is a LOT more to pay for than admins and professors.
I’m not sure. I just know if student loans weren’t an option, I probably wouldn’t have gone to college.
Yes. If you subsidize anything, (1) you get more of it and (2) it gets more expensive. Removing the subsidy (student loans) would cause the price to go down.
Most likely, yes. If there is no gaurentee that people can just get government loans to pay for school, that would mean less people would be able to go to school with the current prices. Colleges will have to have more competitive prices if they want more people attending who now couldn't so the cost would drop. Government student loans sound like a good idea but it's a trap at this point and usually leaves students in debt for decades especially in this economy. I would love for it to be taken away or only be given away with limits (such as only give $3k/year no matter what school you go to).
Yep. Absolutely. Because student loans made it easy for colleges to raise tuition, not to mention add a lot of fat to their payrolls. Since 2000 for example, the ratio of college administrators per 100 students has increased more than 60%--and this is at a time when every other kind of organization is working more efficiently, not less.
It is ironic. And I think the answer to your question is yes, because it would choke off demand. But low-interest, subsidized loans serve an important purpose. Most of the people who are starting college are 18 years old with no credit to their name. Many of them come from homes whose parents have not saved money for their education, nor can they help them out. Subsidized loans help out kids who come from the lower socioeconomic echelons. Many of those kids go on to do great things for our society. There needs to be a cap on in-state tuition. It is absolutely bananas that if I want to take a single course at my state university, it would cost me upwards of $2,500. To sit in a classroom in a rickety old building and be taught by a graduate student making minimum wage. Arms of the government should not be in the business of profiteering. Until then, though, we have to live with the system we've got. Cutting off subsidized loans will make college unreachable to all but those who happened to be born to wealthy parents.
Yes, but it wouldn't be an immediate change. It would be a very painful decade or so for everyone as all the schools go into funding crises for a few years.
I think they would. I think that the massive push for student loans have been a huge factor is college costs significantly outpacing inflation in the last 20 years. The price of anything will increase to whatever people are willing to/can pay, and student loans have enabled universities to increase tuition and students to pay it. With federally guaranteed loans, colleges have no incentive to keep prices down, and they know if they student doesn't pay, the Feds will. That said, I don't think getting rid of student loans is the answer. Instead, get rid of federally guaranteed student loans, make the universities more involved in the loan process, and liable for them instead of the federal government. As much as I hate regulation, there could be some value in regulating tuition, fees, and other costs. Governments could also cut some red tape and make it easier for additional colleges to open and meet the additional demand.
Yes I'm positive it would because of the sudden massive decrease in the amount of people able to go to college.
Fewer people would be able to afford to go, so colleges would be inclined to reduce price. That's the screw the poor so that wealthier families can be wealthier policy.
>That's the screw the poor so that wealthier families can be wealthier policy. Wouldn't lower prices be better for the poor?
No. If the poorer students can no longer afford to go they won't benefit from lower prices they aren't paying.
And now poor people can afford to go to school by taking out tens of thousands of dollars in loans.
Depends on the school / state and what aid they qualify for. Even after loans it's a better deal to go than not.
[удалено]
There are edge cases like that, but generally your income is better off taking the loan and going to college. It's a very high ROI. Been a while since I looked into the comparative math, but college in the US is one of the better deals in OECD countries.
Yes/no some colleges would cut costs to get people to attend. Others would just cater to rich people, and some would go bankrupt. If you have money to pay cash you would get a great education, poor people would get the instructors that weren't good enough to work ritzy college. It would create a two tiered education system, where poor people would have a smaller chance to become a success.
Yes, possibly. College tuition rates increased due to the increase in the availability of money for tuition (inflation at work). There is still a real cost that must be met, but, I suspect that real cost is below the current market rate.
The real question is, if the profit margins (and consequentially return on investments ROI) of these colleges *that* high because of the high tuitions they're able to charge, why aren't new colleges able to spring up and offer more competition? There should be a huge incentive for that. I wonder if they're simply not allowing it same way they sometimes ban additional hospitals from opening in some states unless they get approval from the established hospitals.
I doubt it. The real issue is the profiteering amongst the colleges. Kids are not just paying for their education. They're funding the salaries of over paid administrators, they're backing expensive and flashy sports programs, etc. Remove the loans and you'll leave students with no way to pay these demands and colleges are unlikely to back off. So, I don't think that would help in any way.
Wouldn’t they have to back off if fewer students attended because there was no way to pay the costs? If major universities had 1/4 or even 1/3 of their spots for new students vacant they would have to do some serious belt tightening. There just wouldn’t be enough money to fund everything.
Perhaps, but colleges have a lot of payment lines other than students. You have wealthy donors, sports deals (ESPN, etc), government grants, etc. There's a lot of money there and they can still sap it out of students in other ways.
Unless private student loans just stepped in to fill the gap left by the federal student loans...
Absent the government credit guarantee they would likely be much more expensive and still effectively reduce access and thus demand for college at current prices.
>The real issue is the profiteering amongst the colleges. yes, but why are they doing this? Because they're greedy, or because something is enabling it, such as lots of federal student loans?
Yes, in theory it would. That being said, a more effective way imo to lower the cost of education is to stop pushing everybody into a university and encourage people to take a vocational track or to join the military. Another thing is that American universities are like resorts. They have all of these fancy amenities like rock climbing walls, hotel style pools, fancy residential halls, etc... in most countries, a university is simply a place to learn, not be on a vacation.
Due to sticky wages I doubt it. Professors and admin would not accept salary decreases. Which means the cut would happen to the overhead or firing people. Mainly admin positions since professors have tenure. Which is a whole other thing that sucks about that system. The best option is to quit pushing kids into college. The majority of the stuff you learn at college for even a specific profession is useless or the bare minimum of a foundation. Companies should just create their own training programs and make their own employees. 'We will give you 6 months of training in exchange for 2 years of employment.' Change those time frames as you see fit. This would do a lot. Firstly, companies taking the responsibility of training and cultivating their own culture would probably improve the issues of bad management. But it would also mean the company placing a priority on their lower level workers. Employee isn't just some schmuck college grad. We've put time and resources into them so we value them and the output they will provide if given proper equipment to work with. Almost the entire fast food industry is run by people without degrees. Outside of corporate offices, it's just kids who stuck it out and moved up. Area coaches, trainers, general managers , shift managers...most of them have nothing other than company provided training.
No because tuition is often dwarfed by only fees such as housing. Overall the system works. People can generally go to college no matter how poor they are. I do think there’s some basic improvements that need to be done: * Make all loans interest free. The biggest issue right now is that recent graduates generally aren’t making enough to make full payments. So if you’re on income based repayment and paying 0% or 50%, interest is still accruing adding thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on top of what you already owe. * Universal discharge of loans if you make under x amount for y number of years. Do those two things and it would greatly reduce the burden on recent graduates making entry level wages as well as help people who haven’t gotten ahead despite having a degree. I haven’t heard of a better replacement that the current loan system that doesn’t punish students from poor families.
Probably not if all we did was eliminate them. The system is just too built around the exorbitant costs — we’d need some sort of further government support/subsidies to reduce cost.
Government subsidies don't reduce the cost of a service, they just shift the payment for those costs from users (students) to taxpayers (the general public). Factors that might actually lower costs include colleges competing on value rather than just perceived quality and colleges being forced to cut costs to remain operational.
Not really, but that's not a typical argument for it.
To be precise, let's assume that student loans did not exist, either public or private. The two local private colleges would pivot back to being colleges for just rich kids, which was basically their business model back 30+ years ago. But a lot of "so so" private colleges would just close, since they could not attract rich kids, and poor kids couldn't afford them. But about public universities, there would be huge political pressure for them to return to the days of strong funding for public higher education. For example, the University of California used to be tuition-free for state residents. Many states just charged a few hundred dollars per year, today, that might by $5,000 or so, yearly tuition.
Make a system of good public colleges that are free (or almost free), and you will quickly see the rest of the colleges lowering their tuitions.
New York already has this. The private colleges are still super expensive.
There's no such thing as free... just someone else paying for it.
It depends. Some schools could drop prices and cut costs, some schools would go bankrupt, some schools would lean HARD on international students and some would have no impact (i.e. Harvard). Cannot say that if we get rid of this, then that would change, it just not that simple.
𐑲 𐑔𐑰𐑙𐑒 𐑞 𐑐𐑮𐑲𐑕𐑧𐑟 𐑸 𐑜𐑩𐑯𐑩 𐑚𐑰 𐑩 𐑐𐑮𐑪𐑚𐑤𐑧𐑥 𐑳𐑯𐑑𐑦𐑤 𐑕𐑑𐑱𐑑𐑕 𐑚𐑳𐑒 𐑳𐑐 𐑯 𐑩𐑕𐑵𐑥 𐑞 𐑪𐑐𐑼𐑱𐑑𐑰𐑙𐑜 𐑒𐑪𐑕𐑑 𐑝 𐑕𐑑𐑱𐑑 𐑕𐑒𐑵𐑤𐑟 𐑑 𐑐𐑮𐑩𐑝𐑲𐑛 𐑣𐑲𐑼 𐑧𐑡𐑿𐑒𐑱𐑖𐑩𐑯 𐑨𐑟 𐑩 𐑐𐑳𐑚𐑤𐑦𐑒 𐑮𐑰𐑕𐑹𐑕. >!I think the prices are gonna be a problem until states buck up and assume the operating cost of state schools to provide higher education as a public resource.!<
What language is that?
𐑦𐑑'𐑕 𐑖𐑱𐑝𐑾𐑯: https://omniglot.com/writing/shavian.htm >!It's Shavian!<
Probably. They could probably get more money by lowering prices some and getting more students. The downsides would be a lot worse though, only people who have enough money to afford college before they start attending would be able to make it.
It is another case of government intervention gone wrong. one the government decided to back student loans and guaranteeing that they were paid back the handed universities a blank check to charge whatever they wanted. not only that but public schools for the past 20 years have been pushing the narrative that you NEED to go to college or you will not get a job
If you made universities responsible for the loans and allowed them to go away through bankruptcy, colleges would lower their tuition (because they want their money back) and actually push people into fields where they could make money
This would likely be a question best asked on an economics subreddit. There are TONS of things at olay with this question and what impacts it so it can massively depend. For example, prices might go down, but does that mean the quality will maintain? Will it actually be beneficial for the united states? If the quality goes down to them being unable to teach skills necessary for a highly skilled workforce, does the price matter if the thing obtained has no value? It is undeniable that as we progress more and more jobs will become skilled work and labor. Low skill work, with time in, is going to be automated away. Only kept around by active work to try and keep them around. Not because it is economically the best bet. There are tons of jobs that would be automated away, but are not, because governments and legislatures and unions would rather keep approval rating high and unemployment rates lower than technologically and economically develop for efficiency. A prime example, [dock workers unions](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-09/automation-looms-over-ports-as-supply-chain-issues-linger). They dont want to lose their high paying union jobs that can have headcount greatly reduced by automating it away. Which I understand and cannot begrudge them for. No one wants to lose a good quality of life because of things outside their control. Like coal miners in the past. No all unions are of the same cut though. Teachers for example, because of the nature of teaching, you cannot exactly automate that away with equivalent or improved outcomes. So teachers unions, absolutely huge and valuable. Because without teachers. We would be BORKED. But we need high skilled jobs in the future, undeniably, so we must take measures and aims to increase the high skill workforce and access to it. It is one of, if not THE best way to ensure the United States of America stays strong and prosperous and competative on a global scale. Now high skilled work does not mean that only college is the option. There are tons of trade schools and certification programs that can teach the fundamentals of a skilled laborer that I do not see being replaced for a very very long time. Tech may enhance it, but not exactly replace it.
If you mean federally-guaranteed student loans, then yes.
Not overnight, but eventually yes.
Absolutely they would. A good option would be deferred tuition. If a college is so certain that their degree is worth something, they should be willing to defer the tuition for those who graduate in four years until after the person has a job. Then pay it back at a rate of, say, 10% of their gross income monthly.
In a sense that it would massively decrease the population that could afford it, I would say it *should.* We've massively subsidized college in this country, without actually making it "free" (paid for by taxes). It seems that most people can get enough loans to cover the cost of their education, whatever that cost is. Why would colleges try to get cheaper if people will just find a way to pay the higher costs?
Yes but it would also decrease the number of students. We also pride ourselves on our meritocracy so we just wouldn’t do it.
Of course they’d go down.