[alakep]

You should owe the money to the school. Will align incentives. If graduates don’t make enough to pay back the debt then the school could become insolvent. As it should.

[sooheon]

Schools don't need to be burdened with credit management, nor do they have the capability. When you take out a loan for a business, you don't take out loans directly from each of your suppliers and employees, you go to a bank who should know a thing or two about credit risk.

You should just owe money to banks -- and banks should be allowed to fail.

Right now, the only people on the hook are the taxpayers who bail the banks out.

[drewcoo]

> Schools don't need to be burdened with credit management, nor do they have the capability.

Universities, with their huge endowments and large staffs to manage investments, have already become financial institutions.

[jamil7]

Wouldn’t this just incentivise universities to be job training centres?

[Sparkyte]

Another fix is taxing companies more proportionate to the fire/layoff sizes. Laying off employees to raise bottom line profits also denies the Government from collecting taxable income which most people can't tax evade like larger businesses do.

It also ensures SS is contributed toward because the longer there are pauses in the contribution of SS the harder it is to establish a sustainable in system. The rich folk have always been trying to remove the SS system because they don't want to pay more taxes. We pay taxes to support the infrastructure that can keep wealthy comfortable. Reason things cost so much was because of greed and a lack of common sense dressed up as sympathy. Certainly makes the number climb in terms of profits but if the profit's value is dilluted then do the numbers really mean anything?

[Ekaros]

Would that actually be a bad thing? I see no reason why higher education should not be job training too. World is even more complex place so increased training for some jobs has reached level were university level is needed.

Also, if we talk purely about research, shouldn't that actually be a trained job? Trained things would be far away from your average factory job, but are still trained so graduate students can do their job.

[MrPatan]

Yes.

And if the university thinks underwater basket weaving is really important and should definitely be studied, they should fund it themselves, not the taxpayer, to align incentives. "It's important if I don't have to pay for it" gives me some information.

[iancmceachern]

Agreed. Also places like Harvard can put their money where there mouth is and fund people's education from their endowment. They have enough to pay for all Harvard students tuition indefinitely.

[throwawayfuture]

Or we could start to prioritize funding education over the military.

[Temporary_31337]

Alignment of incentives is fine. But if the school goes insolvent on older debt someone else will take over repayment and current students will suffer even if new curriculum is better

[mock-possum]

you should owe the money to the federal government. far more stable persistent lender, infinitely more able to absorb risk, and makes it a very straightforward proposition to forgive student debt.

[Mistletoe]

This is brilliant.