Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is taking steps to redress the Obama administration travesty of a student loan program, but these can only be interim steps and by themselves are entirely insufficient.
Unfortunately, the student loan programs are entirely dysfunctional and want complete revamping. My high-level suggestions:
- student loan discharge only via bankruptcy, no special treatment of these loans
- let schools and students write their own loan agreements, including interest rates and payback provisions, without Government interference
- hold those schools and students to those agreements
- if Government guarantees any student loans, do so IAW the following:
- interest rates charged must be commensurate with the employability and median first-five-year pay of the major being pursued; higher rates for lower employability and median pay. Higher risk loans should pay higher rates
- in the event of bankruptcy discharge of a loan, the school floating the loan must completely reimburse the government, NLT the following fiscal quarter, for the taxpayer loss from the bankruptcy discharge.