An idea I had concerning Student Loans

One problem is, as long as you are still in school, you can defer paying them back so people end up with a masters degree or even a doctorate in some silly subject where everyone in the field actually making a living at it would fit into a city bus. (Except other college professors teaching it) My daughter's FIL is a retired college professor and he told me, most liberal arts degrees only prepare you to be a college prof. There is so much vertical integration there that most professors went to kindergarten at 4 or 5 and never left school after that. We wonder why kids get out of college without a clue of what the real world is all about. Who was going to tell them?

Most small businesses fail too.

TV sets are a bad example. A little 20" set would cost over $200 in

Frank wrote: Grad school was paid for with a teaching

I know I left out the earlier part of Frank's paragraph. I just wanted to mention that departments are staffing the majority of their teaching position with graduate teaching assistantships. For a large department, maybe 2/3 of the courses are taught that way. That translates into there not being very many real academic positions available to students who do earn a terminal degree (like a PhD). Having witnessed it firsthand, it's really disrespectful. It's mostly about the $$$.... I guess this is a separate, but admittedly widespread problem (think Walmart).

Okay, then forget about using the endowment. Just make the institutions liable for the federal loan default under certain circumstances and let the institutions determine how they are going to pay on their own. Let us not worry about where they are going to source the money from.

Okay. Gotcha.

You could just take away the federal money and suggest it to them as an idea. If they take the federal money then they have to be liable for the outcome. I'm not a lawyer, but I felt like being a politician this morning. %-) Elect me and I'll do my best to "make it happen"! : )

I was pretty surprised to see an HVAC-related school on the list of schools with the highest default rates (in the article that was shared in an earlier). I supposed that a degree in HVAC set one up pretty well.

Parents should consider that, instead of automatically

Your FIL was definitely right. But "What the real world is all about" seems to change every ten years or so (but admittedly, the trend has been the same). Look how globalization and the reduction in manufacturing have changed things. For instance, look at Flint, MI. It's like a ghost town. And Detroit is a shadow of it's former self (didn't they declare "insolvency" a few years ago?). That's part of what the new "real world" is all about.

I didn't see the particular article, but likely that is one of the scam outfits that does exist solely for the federal loan provided tuition and doesn't do a lick of good in actually teaching the trade so most are unqualified when they finish.

The HVAC program at the local CC does quite well by the student--there are employers waiting for everybody we graduate -- but we don't graduate them unless they qualify to do so.

Great idea. Good thinking. It could work just like the GI bill after WW2. The Feds took in 7 times as much as they paid to educate returning soldiers from those people's additional tax payments over their lifetimes. It was a terrific investment, with great ROI.

Plenty has in fact dropped, most obviously stuff from china.

That very arguable given the very low unemployment rate.

Its much more due to the huge numbers of illegals.

GIs who served our country earned the education. But we were discussing a bunch of entitled, special, helicopter-parented kids. Try to keep up, lefty.

I imagine a "degree" in HVAC is not as valuable as experience in HVAC and if this was mostly classroom work, it might be pretty useless.

It was also during an exploding economy when the US was the only country with a decent manufacturing base that didn't get bombed back to the 18th century. They also had a cadre of well disciplined students who went through the depression and a world was war. That is nothing like our current crop of snowflakes who think the world can't wait to pay them to update their facebook page on the clock..

Yup, swap out the bulging capacitor and add some gas to the leaky condenser and pocket a quick $500.

That's complete and utter bullshit.

It is also a pretty good career too. You can make more than a lot of degree holders. I know a couple of guys into 6 figures.

That is interesting. My assistantship had me teaching labs which was mostly just babysitting. Courses were taught by professors but my last year, when I had a fellowship, they wanted me to teach undergrad organic chemistry but I turned them down because it meant no extra money.

This was a private school but thinking back at U of Del. there were graduate students teaching more courses.