Quote:
Originally Posted by CalledDownLight
the point is that the current standards can be met by a large number of people who rationally choose to not go to college, but would rationally attend if free. Also, there are a dearth of jobs available to people graduating with lots of degrees and thus it makes no sense for even the current number of people to graduate in those fields. In some fields, such as engineering, we could almost certainly handle a lot more graduates, but don't have enough capable and interested people.
If there are a significant number of people graduating from college and then never finding jobs then yeah, we need to do something. That "something" should be better educating prospective students on the actual job prospects they will be facing after graduation. Schools in general do a poor job of this, and some schools (like any given t4 law school) actively mislead students in order to increase enrollment numbers.
The solution is not to arbitrarily make it harder to go to college, though.
Your original point was just a silly strawman. If someone wants to go bum around for four years in college rather than going to work, they can (and do, in some cases) do that now. Anyone who can sign their name can get a student loan. That doesn't mean they're going to be able to sit on their asses for 4 years and not go to class. I know, because I tried that myself one semester. I found myself on academic probation shortly thereafter with the promise of being kicked out of school entirely if my grades did not improve. What you're describing simply does not exist in any meaningful way and giving students relief from the ridiculous tuition burden (followed by a lifetime of soul-crushing non-dischargeable debt) won't suddenly make it start happening.
Last edited by Namath12; 12-28-2015 at 01:08 PM.