Americans, how would you feel about making student loans completely illegal?

Loans aren't the problem. Insane loan debt is a symptom of an unsustainable higher education system.

You can learn a lot on your own, but many careers require a formal education (medicine, law, engineering, etc.). By itself, banning student loans within our current system merely makes it harder for poorer people to attain those careers.

Loans that can't be discharged are the problem. Tuition went out the roof when universities discovered this gold mine.
- But on the other hand, if loans were subject to bankruptcy, most poor people would never be approved to get them.
Student loans seem to be a massive part of the problem of out of control tuition increases. The National Bureau of Economic Research published this study in 2016 that showed that changes to the Federal Student Loan Program accounted for the majority of the 106% increase in tuition between 1987 and 2010. Whether that's some right-wing scheme to divert attention from reduction of states' funding of public universities I haven't looked into, but it seems to me that it's at least a significant factor on its face.
On the flip side, consider this. If few can afford university, then the universities will have a reduced income and they'll be forced to adapt by shrinking and lowering tuition rates. Cheaper institutions will end up with a competitive advantage. This could ironically make degrees more affordable.
- Your logic completes ignores costs of business. Property taxes. Utilities. Staffing. Those must still be covered
- You are saddling the horse from behind.
  Yea, the education must get cheaper. A lot. But the lever to do that is a cost adjustment for the education, not artificially lowering demand by discriminating against the poor even more.
- This only works if the product isn't in demand. Degrees are in high demand - jobs require them, better jobs require multiple and higher prestige degrees. That isn't going to change.
  Instead those rich enough would still get a degree, but middle and lower classes would be cut out. In the end it would create a wider gap between the classes.
- A. That would only be true in a culture where employers don't think you need a degree for basic jobs. From what I've seen, the US isn't like that.
  B. Even if people are practically able to turn down uni, all the universities will most likely agree to keep prices high, similar to what landlords do. If all of them keep their prices high, then all of them get more money.
- It cost 70k to get my degree. Any idea how much tuition would have had to be for someone living out of a trailer to be able to afford it? If your answer was zero dollars you are correct.

So education for the wealthy only? Bugger off.

No. I predict we would revert to the status quo of 20-100 years ago, with very affordable state-run schools providing excellent education, and high price private schools catering to the rich. Cheap schools got expensive because we allowed the for-profit student loan industry to run wild.
Assuming nothing is done to curb the recent capitalist tendencies of universities to inflate tuition then yeah it would be mostly restricted to the wealthy. It might be possible that market forces would coerce them to become cheaper again in order to not end up getting shut down from lack of funding from lower enrollment though.
- It's also possible that lack of access to higher education would cause SOME kind of populist uprising, which people then hope would lead sweeping economic and social reforms.
  But I'm increasingly pessimistic that populist uprisings in America would lead anywhere other than Christian fascism.

I think student loans are a symptom of the problem. But not the problem itself. The problem is that college is so incredibly unaffordable for many American students. If higher education wasn't so absurdly expensive, many students could take out fewer loans.

The loans are not just a symptom. Is probably the main cause of current college prices. Prices would not be so high if students would not be given money to pay them.
- They are the cause for the high tuition. I don't have it on me, but I saw a graph showing that when Biden made Student Loans impossible to forgive via Bankruptcy, the prices for tuition positively skyrocketed.
That seems valid. I think at least part of the problem is culture. Millennials were taught that college is a necessary stepping stone to a superior job, which it was in previous generations, but not so much nowadays.

Given the other massive catastrophic defects in the fabric of our society, making student loans illegal makes about as much sense as outlawing flat tires. The law you'll probably write isn't going to punish the people who need to be punished, and it won't help the people you're trying to help.

I'm from a country with free university education and we also have student loans available.

Here's something that works for us: forget about private universities, invest in federal or state owned collages so that they can compete with the private ones.

Do a scholarship program where students can get free entry into these universities if their grades are high enough in high school, or make it dependent on an entry exam. Those that don't get in have a paid option that's still partially funded by the state or federal government.

Student loans will still be useful, not for tuition but for families who can't afford to send their kids to study in the cities where the universities are located.

The sad part about relying on scholarships is that disadvantaged kids are much less likely to have excellent grades. These people need school more than anyone else. The system works backwards.
- That's a fair point, where I live we have a point system for entry and you get the majority of your points through your grades. You also get points if you're economically disadvantaged and some other factors like certain disabilities, if I remember correctly.
  It seems from the outside that a systematic change would indeed be a good idea, not something that would just help the poor but address the root cause of why people become poor in the first place.
- Exactly this. I grew up poor and didn't have a quiet place to study. My grades suffered greatly as a result, and a number of other reasons. I needed education for upward mobility.
  After struggling to get an education, finally in my 30s I eas able to get out of poverty.

Ah yes, let's make getting an accredited degree something only the wealthy can afford, that'll do well for the working class you betcha.

Class mobility is stagnant enough, I truly cannot see any upside to this for the vast majority of people.

Shoulda been illegal/actually regulate, in the first place. Removing restrictions on raising tuition was also another lame move.

This is a horrible idea.

Ban, no. Cap, maybe. Completely overhaul, yes.

Any school that receives any public funds should make school completely free to all students with a permanent address in that constituency. If my tax money is going to a school, I shouldn't have to pay tuition for my kids to go there.
Students who graduate and are not offered (or are laid off or fired without cause from) a job that provides them sufficient pay and benefits to get them to 300% of the local poverty level should be forgiven each month's payment for as long as they are in that state. Not deferred or paused, forgiven.
Anyone who graduates and takes a job with a federal, state, or local governmental entity or nonprofit organization should likewise have their student loan payment forgiven for every month they are employed.
Anyone who takes a K12 teaching position after graduation should have their student loans forgiven at a rate of one year's worth of payments per month of teaching.
Student loan forgiveness should be taxed at 0% in every state and nationally.
Student loans should be capped at a total value that would limit repayment to 10 years, while allowing a student to maintain an income after repayment of 300% of the poverty line during that time. After reaching the cap, if the student is more than 50% complete with their degree, they should be permitted to complete that degree.
Students who do not graduate, or who change their major partially through the program, should be able to apply the value of tuition already paid, adjusted for inflation, toward eventually returning to school; or pass that credit on to a child or other family member.

This is just off-the-cuff; I haven't thought about the implications of all of these. But I think it would help significantly.

Generally oppose.

We would need massive structural changes in education and funding before banning student debt; you'd need to make university free, and give students a living stipend while they were there, as loans usually cover living expenses as well. I can't see that happening in the current political climate. So if we simply outlawed educational loans, the effect would be that millions of people would no longer have access to higher education at all.

The idea that you can learn things on the internet ignores the fact that the internet is rife with misinformation--i.e., bullshit and outright lies--and it allowed people to get into thought bubbles, which higher education fights against pretty effectively.

I want to add:
Most books have never been digitized. Most information that you would learn in college is still in books and not on the Internet. You can't replace access to information (and reading that information) in college with lack of access to information (and thus not reading that information) online.
In addition, the Internet doesn't give you access to passionate subject-matter experts who are necessary guides to help us travel down the path of acquiring the knowledge that they have. Sure, there's recordings of MOOC lectures, but they become outdated and you can't ask them questions or have them help you by giving useful assignments and answer your questions and give you constructive criticism.
If higher education is going to work we would do better to pay those experts (the poor teachers) a fair living wage so that they can focus on the quality of their teaching and not be desperately trying to survive and navigate departmental politics while hoping that bureaucratic administrators don't cut the library budget (again) while dumping money into a new football field (why is sports part of college anyway? Why can't there be a separate and unrelated sports-academy system for the sports people so that it's impossible to misappropriate from academic budgets in favor of sports?).
- Totally agree.
  In addition, the Internet doesn’t give you access to passionate subject-matter expert
  You can find them on Discord servers, message boards, and YouTube channels. But knowing who is actually an SME, and who has a great line of believable bullshit, is quite challenging. In a university system, you have a group of peers that are making that determination.

I hate capitalist economics, but the ease of obtaining student loans is one of the reasons for the high price of college tuition.

If student loans didn't exist, then most people would not be paying outrageous tuitions. Colleges will be forced to accomodate.

Canada recently stopped charging interest on their student loans, that goes a long way to affordability. The other thing though is just plain cost of education. It can be cheaper to get a 4-year degree from a Canadian University than take one year of a comparable program in the US.
- And yet as a Canadian I know a lot of people who did not persue higher education because it's too expensive to do so. Only the rich can afford a "good" education.
The ease of student loans would not exist without government backing. In a pure capitalism, this wouldn't be a problem.
- There's no such thing as capitalism without a state. It cannot exist.

Completely nonsensical and screws everyone involved.

Student loans are supposed to be an investment the government takes in its population. If it works properly then the money that the government spent on the students tuition is both paid back monetarily by the student as well as societally because now you have an educated citizen providing ever increasing tax revenue. If you make student loans illegal you not only make it impossible for students to educate themselves beyond public school you destroy the entire post secondary school industry now that so few can afford to educate themselves.

What needs to happen is cutting out all the middleman bullshit and just making post secondary education free with your taxes, at least a couple years worth. If someone wants to be a doctor or a lawyer or someone who needs to have more than a couple years worth then sure that can be on their dime. Otherwise those first 4 years are just unnecessarily saddling people with mountains of debt that there is no guarantee they can pay back after they are done

I feel the same way about that as I do about making ALL education - K through 16 (or tech/vocational) FREE.

I am all for it. We have way too many stupid people shoving their voices in matters that don't concern them. Educated would be better.

That's not at all what OP proposed though. They want to keep tuition as is, just eliminate loans.
- Where does it say that?
  Imagine if they made student loans illegal, with current tuition prices in America there literally arent enough people wealthy enough to afford to keep the schools full.
  The schools would either have to close, or find a way to make attending them affordable. As it is they can charge an arm and a leg, convince people to take loans, its all someone elses problem in 10 years and the "someone else" isnt the school.
- Not exactly. I'm saying that banning loans would lower the price of education, either through cost cutting by universities or by a new education system taking its place.
- Right, but I don't like that idea in the least. Loans - gone. Need for loans - gone. Education available for all - reduction of trumpistic stupidity - I am in favor of intelligent humans opposed to the ongoing increase in stupid ones.

What issue are you looking to solve? You state that you believe people are able to seek out, and attain their education independently through resources like the internet. So why would it matter if there are alternatives that cost money which one can pay, and receive loans for?

It matters because American culture currently prefers everyone to have a college degree as opposed to any other type of education. Loans exist to allow the poor to "keep up with the Joneses" for a few years and then yoke them into debt for the rest of their lives. If this avenue was cut off then the attitude of the public would change to allow other means of education.
- It matters because American culture currently prefers everyone to have a college degree as opposed to any other type of education. [...] If this avenue was cut off then the attitude of the public would change to allow other means of education.
  I completely agree that our favoring of, or requiring of post-secondary degrees for employement is an important cultural issue. I don't agree, however, that the solution is to make the provision of loans illegal -- illegalization is rarely anything else than a band-aid on top of a gaping wound. An argument could be made that the government provision of student loans should be stopped (in countries where that occurs e.g. Canada), but I don't think the solution is to simply make all student loans illegal.
  and then yoke them into debt for the rest of their lives.
  Hm, that is an assumption. There's a few issues with that statement. The total cost of one's loans are directly related to the cost of the post-secondary institution that they decide to attend. There is little reason to go to a very expensive institution. I do understand that some employers are elitist in that they won't hire anybody outside of an ivy league school, but I would wager that that issue is not very prevalent -- the free market should take up the slack. Furthermore, one's ability to get out of such debt is related to the income that they expect from employment after attaining their degree, as well as their level of monetary responsibility, and savviness. If one decides to blindly go into student debt for studies that will offer little in return, that is one's own risk to take. You must also not forget that there is no requirement that one must do white-collar work. Trades do not require such degrees, and are just as well-paying, if not better.

In my country loans are interest free. This makes them easy to pay off with destroying your life. You can also pause payments with no issue.

with destroying your life
(͡•_ ͡• )
- Sounds like he means work
Loans can’t be free in a capitalist society. No one would offer them.
- I presume that anywhere where interest-free loans are offered, they are offered by that country's government. Canada, for example, as of April 1st 2023, offers federal student loans interest-free. Depending on the province, some may not have interest on provincial loans, as well.

You may know everything, but no degree no luck?

Why not think a but further? Money for people that need it, free universities? Like... in the EU?

Better solution would be a cap on tuition imo.

But even no interest loans or at the very least let them be discharged in bankruptcy would be better than what we have.

It's not the tuition, it's the funding being cut by the states that's the problem (for public universities). States used to fund universities significantly more than they do now.
- It's not the tuition? The same tuition that has risen 70% in the last 20 years? The same tuition that colleges know they can charge any amount cuz the government will give out loans regardless. That's not the issue?
  I'm not saying colleges aren't getting less state funding but I just don't see colleges lowering tuition if they got more state funding. They'd keep charging more cuz they know they can.

Health insurance first please.

In the short term, only the children of the wealthy could continue into higher education. Anyone else who had dreams of doing anything that required higher ed, including professions that are already in short supply like doctors, nurses, and pharmacists, would be SOL. I can see how "starve the beast" makes an appealing, easy to understand fix for the issues in higher education, but I think the cost to people is too high to do it like that.

There would definitely be a shock to society in the short term.
Pharmacist market is saturated...
Where are you getting this info?

Why make it illegal? Why not offer only federal loans?

How about:

20 year loan, 4.125% fixed rate 30 year loan, 4.375% fixed rate

No early repayment penalties and maybe interest returned incentives for full repayment return before term at certain benchmarks.

The average debt for a 4-year Bachelor's degree is $34,700. At the end of 20 years the total repayment amount would be $36,131.375, 30 years would be $36,218.125.

Looks good to me.

Why not make it free? At the end of the education cycle the student will get a job and start paying taxes. Isn't that what society needs? Having educated people to do various jobs. Why putting that behind a crazy paywall?
- I’d be in favor of that too. My point was to highlight that it’s not the loans themselves that are the problem.
- Sorry, I wasn’t clear. Those aren’t APRs, they are the fixed loan rates. Whatever amount is borrowed is repaid plus 4.125% or 4.375% interest depending on the term selected.
  It’s like a reverse bond. The government has established that those rates are a fair return on money they “borrow” from citizens in bonds, it seems fair to give the same terms in the other direction.

The loans in my country aren't too bad.

It's not a normal loan, it doesn't appear on my credit checks.

It's provided by the government and has low interest.

You only pay it back once you earn over a certain amount and they take a single digit percentage of your wages.

It's more like a graduate tax as paying it off doesn't matter, short of not wanting it taken from your wages.

I earn around double the national average and pay around 100 a month. Which isn't a huge amount. Basically a decent meal out + drinks a month.

Yeah. "Internet education" 🤓

(EDIT: You can hire me for the job. I'm right on top of 'mount stupid' in the Dunning-Kruger effect. I'm an expert in shitposting and a self-taught know-it-all when it gets to know what american politics gets wrong. I'd even volunteer some strong oppinions on gun laws.)

That's the wrong question. Just nationalize higher education and subsidize or make it free, at least to the point the we're producing enough engineers, medical doctors, scientists, artists, and etcetera every year.

Yeah, I would be 100% on board with living in a society that says "go as far as you can". If people doing the teaching say that a person is able to benefit and they have room, I want that person to learn.
A more educated society is a benefit to everyone, not just the person who's getting the education.

I wouldn't say outlawing loans solves anything. Capping interest rates, sure - probably even at a pretty modest figure. Making repayment reasonably flexible is also a good idea. But the underlying problem is that the tuitions themselves are insane, leading to insanity when trying to pay it all off, no matter how it's financed. Subsidies or grants or loans (or specifically messing with any of them) seem like workarounds for the insane and largely arbitrary/"greedflated" price tag.

As a Norwegian, I paid maybe a couple hundred USD per year in pure fees - all my student loan practically went to rent (cheap at the time) and groceries (admittedly less cheap in Norway). Was it an Ivy League whatever-the-fuck education? No, it stank - but I got out into the world with a paper that said I could do work. And in geekier lines of work, even that might not have been strictly necessary, assuming you know the craft.

Chicken and egg. The tuitions have been able to reach the insane heights due to the ready availability of these loans.
It was a lot harder to get loans thirty years ago. Almost on par with the criteria for any other personal loan. A four year CompSci degree that could be had for under $25K, in total, opened the door to a $45K to $60K entry level position for a typical graduate.
Availability of loans broke wide open, under the guise of providing opportunity, and now the same degree costs 5-10x with yet the typical entry level salary remains more or less the same, give or take a few inflation points.

Not without destroying Citizen United legal premise first which I am also in favor of doing.

Right now spending money == free speech

Then giving loans is free speech, too. That is the the tackle.

Let's just make state owned universities and community/junior college funded by a tax on employers that require college degrees for their jobs with free tuition and free required learning materials. The issue isn't the loans or the cost, it's that corporations are lumping those costs on the employees and the corporations are reaping the benefits of an educated workforce without appropriately compensating their employees for their knowledge.

University study for useful degrees that benefit society should be free and paid for by society. It used to be the case in my country until they decided to take a leaf out of America's book and screw everyone over.

So for example, something like an art degree should be paid (with no interest imo) however most STEM degrees should be free. Same with nursing and similar degrees too.

It's ok if these free degrees come with strings attached, such as having to work and apply your skills in the country for X years as a minimum.

What you describe is to some extent existing in multiple countries. Basically the degrees in industries that lack specialists get more free slots whereas the others get less. As a student you can still start studying for a fee, if you don't match the requirements (usually it is based on grades) but you can get to a free slot later on if your grades are good enough.
Education is generally beneficial for society.
I'm not sure how you can argue that an art degree should be paid for out of pocket when memes are rampant across the internet. Are memes somehow subtracting from society?? Really?
- Meme making is a degree level activity now? God damn...
Art can bring joy to life. Joy brings productivity. See the issue with what you’ve stated?
- Feel free to do an art degree on your own dime then.
  Art will still be made and exist without degrees in it being necessary. However, doctors for example cannot.

Go for it.

It would definitely force colleges to bring down prices to a reasonable level.

I think it's a great idea. It'll be really good for society when most of your population are finally highly educated and have their own PhDs in internet research!

I also look forward to the day where you Americans beg Cuba for a humanitarian dispatch of doctors to treat your plague and leprosy epidemics.

I think universities would be forced to compete on price to survive, so I’m all for it.

TFW Americans have an orphan crushing machine and have a full debate on the color of the machine's knobs. 😨

You could also just not take out college loans.

In the early 2000s I did community College and then got my bachlors. 6 years and no debt.

Consider that maybe people shouldn't be taking 50k in debt right out of highschool for a degree they aren't sure they really want in a field that's already over saturated. I feel for the kids who were young and dumb and goaded into signing on the dotted line but ultimately it was their choice to take on debt and they reap what they sow.

Just like the PPP loans right? Pay it back if you took it out.
Oh wait that absolutely didn't happen.

In general, I'm opposed to the idea. College professors don't work for free, and colleges have to pay them. Like it or not, we live in a capitalist society, and everyone needs to be paid. You could raise taxes and fund college publicly, but then you're just passing off the cost of a college education to the taxpayers.

What does need to happen is a tighter regulation of tuition fees. A student should be able to take out a student loan, work a minimum wage job to pay for rent and personal expenses, and be able to pay off their student loan within a few years of graduation. The problem right now is that even if a college student manages to get a job in their field immediately after school, they're stuck paying student loans for a decade or more. 50 years ago, you could work a job flipping burgers, pay for school, and be firmly on your feet a few years after you get your degree. I went to college about 20 years ago, and tuition fees have just about doubled since then. The cost of higher education has far outpaced the average income of a college student.

Nobody should get a free ride; students should pay for school, but they shouldn't be in crippling debt afterwards. There needs to be legislation that forces the cost of education to fit with the minimum wage.

Nobody should get a free ride
Why?
- If you send someone to school for free, somebody is still paying for it. Use childhood education for example; property owners pay for schools with their property taxes, regardless of whether or not they have children in school.
  People should pay for themselves, but the cost of education needs to be reasonable enough that they can.
In general, I'm opposed to the idea. College professors don't work for free, and colleges have to pay them.
Professors don't make up near as much of the bill as the administrators and coaches that pull down 7-figure salaries. There's almost as much bloat in the US University system as in US Healthcare. The answer to both is the same: they should ideally be free. Failing that, it should be illegal for either to be profitable businesses.
I think the answer to this is to make more community colleges offer four year degrees. They are mainly funded through property taxes just like grade school and the professors get paid just fine. $300 per class is a reasonable fee for students.
Why have tuition fees doubled? Where is that money going?