Walmart to Help Associates Get College Degrees

[sanantone]

But, you have all unintentionally made an argument that goes against your typical views. There has yet to be a private sector solution for the widespread issue of high tuition and growing student loan debt, and we'll likely never see one. There is no incentive for the private sector to help solve this issue in any meaningful way.

I guess I'm not understanding where it's up to the private sector to fix this problem.  This is a problem that cannot be fixed by anyone other than the government getting out of the student loan business, and then schools having to make tuition reasonably priced.  And, students (and their parents) refusing to participate in the madness, by choosing schools they can afford, including CC if they need to.  If every student said "I refuse to take out a loan," colleges would be hurting VERY badly for students, and would HAVE to do something to entice them in - which could ONLY be lower costs.

But with government (and taxpayers) underwriting degrees for people who choose "the college experience" and schools spending ridiculous amounts of money on things nobody needs, there is no way for the private sector to combat the problem.  They just can't.  The more money that is thrown at this problem, the more colleges spend!!

I never said that it was the responsibility of the private sector. I simply said that the private sector is not going to come up with a solution. 

The dramatic rise in tuition is actually correlated with reduced state funding during the recessions. It's not correlated with the availability of federal student loans. There was also correlation with the rising popularity of for-profit colleges and the increase in student loan defaults. If all the for-profit colleges went out of business, that would take care of a large portion of defaults. Community colleges are also responsible for a disproportionate share of defaults even though they're the cheapest schools around. 

On average, for-profit colleges are cheaper than private, nonprofit colleges. CCs are relatively dirt cheap. Now, why would these two types of colleges have the highest student loan default rates. What do they have in common? Well, I can tell you what they have in common. 

They serve many students who are not academically prepared for college. They have high dropout rates, so students don't have degrees to get a job that can cover student loan payments. Their students are more likely to rely on financial aid, not only for tuition and fees, but for living expenses. Their students also tend to have more personal and family issues due the fact that many are minorities and others who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. 

I showed you data before to back up all these points, but it's more politically advantageous to blame the government for everything. The only thing I blame the government for is giving billions of dollars to shady, for-profit colleges that take advantage of the poor, first generation college students, minorities, and disabled veterans. Most of these for-profit colleges wouldn't survive without government money because their students can't afford to pay anything. Unless a for-profit company is a government contractor, then it shouldn't be getting 90% of its revenue from the government.

While I think it's stupid to pay tens of thousands of dollars for the college experience, the bulk of student loan defaults are NOT coming from traditional college students. They are coming from people who commute to CCs and who take night and/or online classes at for-profit colleges.

Of course, there are several countries that are able to provide free or low-cost post-secondary education to their citizens without this financial aid mess. They've made college more affordable with more government involvement. Sometimes, it's cheaper to cut out the middleman. The problem isn't government; the problem is the U.S. government. In its quest not to have "socialism," which is something we already have, it spends more money with worse outcomes. Look at healthcare. Even before Obamacare, the U.S. spent more money on healthcare while simultaneously having a lower percentage of people covered.