Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ A Sweeping Plan to Fix Everything Still Wrong With Student Debt

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

Kevin Carey offers a mostly reasonable approach to addressing the student loan crisis in the Unites States. His proposal breaks down to three major parts: a system of focused grants for colleges and public universities in exchange for $0 tuition rates, and two mechanisms to require institutions b subject to a "gainful employment test" at the undergraduate and graduate levels. These latter criteria are well-meaning: to push back at scams. Students "were victimized by... a lawless environment in which individual universities, some among the most prestigious in the world, deliberately choose to rip them off." Universities, says Carey, should also share the risk and "be liable for 50 percent of the cost to the taxpayer of any graduate school loan that goes into default." I want to push back against the 'employability' criterion - not only is employability notoriously hard to predict, it's not wrong for people, including those from lower demographics, to learn philosophy or boat building. What's wrong is a system that charges such huge fees for people to acquire such an education.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Apr 23, 2024 11:12 a.m.

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