That’d be a lot of poetry majors! But I get your point. People acted with some sense. And if they didn’t, there wasn’t a huge debt to deal with. Thank you.
But just as they didn’t suddenly choose bad careers, the bad policies didn’t show up instantaneously. Or recently. So why didn’t people adjust? Why did college costs go up so fast? My thought is the two are linked. Just as college began to become the standard career path, students demanded better schools. Better schools, not necessarily better education. The thought process you noted for avoiding gluts of poetry majors became less important than other factors. How’s the food? The dorms? Buildings? All very nice things. But tangential. Schools responded by battling to keep up with the joneses, sending costs spiraling. And corresponding bills. Cutbacks in state funding didn’t help. Easy loans were gasoline on the fire.
It took time to get here. It’s going to take time and good policy to unravel the problems. But in the interim, there are steps people can do to mitigate costs and improve employment prospects. The side effect is putting a halt on increasing costs and quite possibly reversing it. Any suggestion that simply puts money towards the problem seems to be just supplying more gasoline. Yeah, debt might be avoided, but that fire is going to get out of control until we end up repeating what California went through: introducing tuition again.
As for fixing policy, I’m pessimistic. I advocate it, I support it. I just don’t think we should wait for it.
That’s my thinking at least. I look forward to your thoughts.
