> From an individual perspective, people should not be willingly going into large debt for poor or relatively uncertain financial prospects.
I don't disagree, but I want to highlight some factors that (IMO) at least partially absolve people who do take that route:
* We do a really pitiful job of teaching financial literacy in the US, especially below the undergraduate level. I suspect that many people see 30K debt after college and think that they can subtract that directly from their salary over a course of years, without factoring in taxes, interest above the principal, etc.
* At a societal level, we avoid crushing peoples' dreams: we all know that we can't each be this century's defining investigative journalist, art critic, &c., and yet we (socially) also understand that we can't get those successes unless lots of people strive towards those goals. Maybe this points to a fundamental error in how we value labor, but that's probably an even harder problem to solve for Americans than restructuring college tuition.
I don't disagree, but I want to highlight some factors that (IMO) at least partially absolve people who do take that route:
* We do a really pitiful job of teaching financial literacy in the US, especially below the undergraduate level. I suspect that many people see 30K debt after college and think that they can subtract that directly from their salary over a course of years, without factoring in taxes, interest above the principal, etc.
* At a societal level, we avoid crushing peoples' dreams: we all know that we can't each be this century's defining investigative journalist, art critic, &c., and yet we (socially) also understand that we can't get those successes unless lots of people strive towards those goals. Maybe this points to a fundamental error in how we value labor, but that's probably an even harder problem to solve for Americans than restructuring college tuition.