

Mark Cuban: Here's how to fix America's crippling student debt crisis - ytNumbers
http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-cuban-heres-how-to-fix-the-student-debt-crisis-2015-3

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bko
The focus on private student loan lenders seems odd considering that $1
trillion out of the $1.2 trillion of outstanding student debt is public. I
think a lot of private student loan providers are great. For instance, SoFi
often offers rates lower than that of Sallie Mae, but discriminates on the
school and the major, which seems reasonable. There are other benefits such as
the ability of former students to be able to default on their private debt.

[0] [http://www.consumerfinance.gov/newsroom/student-debt-
swells-...](http://www.consumerfinance.gov/newsroom/student-debt-swells-
federal-loans-now-top-a-trillion/)

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higherpurpose
Completely agree that this is the solution, although I would probably go even
further and kill college loans for good.

I "get it" that this was done with the best of intentions - to help more
students get into college. However, these sort of "guaranteed money from the
government" solutions _always_ end up distorting the market, and it's for the
worse for the students.

Whatever alternative solution exists it shouldn't allow for "virtually
unlimited" sums of money to be requested to help students go to college. But
even if you limit let's say to $10,000 the maximum amount for a student loan
and let's say without any of that, the cost of college would be $100,000, the
student still wouldn't have to pay "only $90,000" in the end. The private
colleges would just end up raising the price to $90,000. And now you've just
made it so the colleges get $10,000 free money from taxpayers. This always
happens with subsidies and such.

What's worse, is that those who get the free money, "get used to it", or in
other words, they become less efficient and more costly, so that when the
government tries to _cancel that subsidy_ , those who got it are outraged
about it and say they would have to cut jobs and whatnot. I assume if the
governments puts a limit on private loans too, the teach union will go
immediately to the streets as well.

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VLM
Note: will only fix the problem going forward. Not looking at the trillion or
so sized existing problem.

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davidgerard
Yes, it's one of those "wait, you should do this other side thing addressing a
tiny part of the problem _first_!!" proposals. Pretty obvious derailment.

