Allowing people to default on student loans just makes education more expensive for everyone else. There's plenty of people who looked at their job prospects for the degree before going to college and determined some degrees are bad investments. Why should the rest of us have to shoulder the cost of someone else's poor investment choices?
> Allowing people to default on student loans just makes education more expensive for everyone else.
I don't think we really know that. Making these loans non dischargeable has large systemic effects I think that causes all sorts of other costs to increase. It would certainly make getting loans more difficult, but perhaps total cost of education would go down and make more scholarships available?
It does have consequences, but declaring bankruptcy right after college is probably a good idea (on an individual level) right after college if one has sizeable debts and bankruptcy discharges the debts. College grads tend to have little assets under their names to seize and are several years away from needing to use their credit score to get a mortgage.
Loan issuers would simply require a cosigner with sizeable assets to seize. Tada! Now no one from a poor upbringing can be the first person in their family to attend college. You have created a permanent underclass.
You don't have to do anything. But some things might in your best interests. It's on you to figure that out, or someone else will figure it out for you.
If there was an actual market, banks giving loans would do due diligence and provide loans only to majors that would be able to pay back the loan.