College Debt

 College costs and the resulting debt are a curious conundrum. Yglesias has one of his contrarian takes that sheds some light in some areas but leaves others obscured. 

He notes, rightly, that US universities are the finest in the world, and there is probably a strong correlation between how much they cost and how good they are. He also has some sympathy for the generation that graduated from college or graduate schools in the heart of the Great Recession. Their debts were higher to begin with and they landed in a low wages work environment.

One insight he puts well is that colleges become "better" by getting better Freshmen. How do you get better Freshmen? As someone who is going through this experience with our own children, you usually do it by offering cool stuff around the margins. You improve the "student life experience" much of which is tangential to actual learning. (What he leaves out is that if you are in a school with really strong students, your college experience will be better. Learning extends beyond the classroom.) He also takes on "administrative bloat" as being as much about perception as reality. Are DEI offices "bloat"? In some people's eyes, yes. In others, it's mission critical. 

I'm sympathetic to getting rid of the predatory nature of student loans. In no particular order:

- Student loans for graduates who go into public service for a number of years should be paid off in full.
- Student loans should have essentially no interest. College graduates are good for economic productivity, and subsidizing their interest would be a public good.
- Community college should be aggressively subsidized to teach immediate job skills. As close as we can get to free community college, the better. (Also, you're not going to a community college for the sports teams or the wellness center. You're going to get a two year degree that will make you an internet systems administrator.
- Some debt forgiveness is understandable, but simply giving a bunch of money to English majors who minored in beer pong is going to risk a serious backlash. And likely a deserved one. 

How do you attack student debt without creating a massive moral hazard? If my college is free, and I will likely get a degree regardless of how hard I work, why should I work hard? We like to joke that "Bs and Cs get degrees" but they absolutely do. Debts are debts. They are supposed to be repaid. But they be able to be repaid. 

There's a solution here that must extend beyond a "jubilee" for the perpetual student who's racked up $250,000 in debt getting a BA, MA and PhD in Comparative Literature. It won't make the WATB on Twitter happy, but that has to be OK. Good policy should be good policy.