I'd venture that no matter what else an education provides, if it does not enable a graduate to repay their loan, it is non-sustainable. (Whether you want to use "good" or "bad" here is up to you)
Even the phrase "public education" is broad and fuzzy. With a tremendous amount of student loans publicly-financed, with public financing also intricately involved in the public university system via research grants, there's a distinction between secondary education and higher education, but I'm not sure how much the distinction matters for purposes of broadly-based public policy discussions.
What a weirdly backwards way of phrasing it. Why should anyone take out a loan to get an education? Why would a public university charge tuition? My parents did not take out loans to get college degrees (in California, in the 1960s). But their generation got rich and now doesn't want to pay for the next generation to do the same. Should boomers who attended fully subsidized public education now really be let off the hook with their ridiculous claims that they're some kind of Randian superhero who worked their way up "on their own", and it would be "theft" to ask them to pay taxes so the same system they benefited from can continue?
It's certainly not impossible to do so, if people aren't so stingy. I moved out of the U.S. and now live in a country that has free public education. Not just free, but you get paid to attend university, up through a master's degree. (Not paid a lot, but a modest living stipend.) We have a lower unemployment rate than the U.S. does, too. And better transit and less bureaucratic healthcare.
"I'd venture that no matter what else an education provides, if it does not enable a graduate to repay their loan, it is non-sustainable. (Whether you want to use "good" or "bad" here is up to you)"
Your reasoning here doesn't make any sense to me, are you claiming that if a student takes out loans in order to pay for an education in basket weaving. Then fails to earn enough money by applying their acquired expertise in basket weaving to repay that loan. That they educational institution was at fault here?
There are many colleges which will train you in skills that will pay off the entire cost it takes to attend them in under 5 years. In California alone there are 23 campuses of the California State University system, with a median four year tuition of $25,000 for state residents which will train you in a STEM degree which is less than you would pay for a new car. There are community colleges which will do an Associates degree for even less.
But you are absolutely right there is a problem here, it just isn't with the colleges (although there may be grounds for accusing them of collusion).
Come at this from a different angle, how would you like to be able to conscript hundreds, thousands, maybe even a million people into a program where some fraction of everything they earn goes right into your pocket? Sell them a government guaranteed loan that they can't afford to pay back. It was a great scam in the Mortgage business for a while, the banks made billions on it, the tax payers took it in the shorts when the bottom fell out. And why did the bottom fall out? Because those damn suckers could declare bankruptcy and get out of paying the loan! Can you imagine. Well the banks have fixed that loop hole, you can't declare bankruptcy and get out of a student loan, no way no how, you're mine for life.
And guess what, the same people who were fleecing stupid people with bad mortgages are now fleecing people with student loans. In some cases literally, like when I heard from the same Wells Fargo loan officer who used to do mortgages and now wanted to talk to me about getting loans for my college age kids.
Its a problem *for schools" if they are over priced since they need students to survive. Guess what, if they can't justify their costs they go out of business or they get more efficient. As long as there are people willing to provide the same degree for less money, the system will continue to work and anyone who wants to be a doctor, or an engineer, or a lawyer, or a geologist or whatever can get their degree.
I implore you not to let the red herring story of 'students drowning in debt' convince you that college is broken, its not, student lending is broken and students are not be properly informed with respect to what "a degree" means versus what an "employable degree" means. Once we educate them and they start spreading out to the more affordable schools the private schools will have to fight harder for the top talent and will do so with scholarships so that their 'total cost' is the same as if they went to a state school but got their 'marquee' name.
Make students more discerning shoppers and the "problems" you decry go away.
Your reasoning here doesn't make any sense to me, are you claiming that if a student takes out loans in order to pay for an education in basket weaving. Then fails to earn enough money by applying their acquired expertise in basket weaving to repay that loan. That they educational institution was at fault here?
Not at fault, just not sustainable. As in, if the students can't make enough money to pay the school, the school will go out of business. Less drastically, if a student knows they will have to take a job doing something else to pay off the basket-weaving-school loan, they will not pay thousands of dollars to learn something that can't make them that money back.
