I look forward to Bernie advancing into the sights of attackers.

[TexasTowelie]

46. I agree with you in part, but I think that it also places a burden on loan originators

and turns them into scapegoats.

I was fortunate to attend an expensive private liberal arts university entirely on scholarships without any student loans because I was near the top of my class in high school and ranked in the top 1% on every standardized exam in mathematics. When I arrived at college I immediately declared as a math major, but didn't have a clue what my minor would be. The natural inclination would have been to take computer science as a minor, but the math/computer science department was combined and students had to obtain a minor outside of the department to gain additional job skills. After my first year, I decided to double major with chemistry as my other field of study. However, by the middle of my junior year I had burnt out on college and dropped chemistry down to a minor instead. After I graduated, I was unable to find employment so I returned to a less prestigious state school to begin work on a teacher certification before I found work and withdrew at the Thanksgiving break. When I was an undergrad my GPA was slightly over a 3.0, but as a post-grad student I had a 4.0 GPA. I made the additional effort because I was paying my own way along with the fact that my course load was much simpler.

Most students enter college undecided as to their majors. I do believe that people have educational "spurts" when they are able to acquire knowledge more easily and other "spurts" when it is more difficult. There are numerous factors that serve as motivation for students to learn and financial responsibility is one of them. Otherwise, one of my friends who barely slipped by with slightly over a 2.0 GPA in his first year and withdrew from college for a year when he became a father wouldn't have returned back to school and go on to become a radiologist. It would have been very easy for the people that financed his education to give up on him based upon his initial lack of success as a college student. I certainly do not want to deny someone the opportunity to obtain an education based solely upon the fact that they entered college as an undecided.

I believe that most of the responsibility for success does belong to the student. I also believe that the academic counselors for those students do have the responsibility to ask the students what they intend to do after college to pay their debts and become successful. Let's face it, there are some students who do not belong in college and they should pursue vocational education instead. And as you have noted, nobody should be in a vocational program if there aren't any jobs available upon completion of those programs. However, it is the responsibility of the student to make that determination rather than falling for the scams of the unscrupulous or laying blame on the entities providing student loans. Those are some of the toughest lessons from the school of hard knocks.