Tom McClellan calls for college appraisals before approving massive debt loads, pushes audits linking tuition to graduate paychecks…

by

Student loans should be like mortgages. You cannot get a loan for $1.5 million to buy a house that is only worth $400k. A college degree is an asset, which should be able to be valued.

There should be an “appraisal” of the specific university and academic major before loan approval, and perhaps with annual reviews for continuation of additional loan amounts. Schools should have to show auditable “comps”, citing the average salaries of recent graduates of that specific college’s program and specific major, to justify the price tag of the program of study. This would have the side benefit of incentivizing colleges to make sure that their grads find good employment.

And I would insist that the salary comps be for grads who are actually working in that field, not for philosophy majors who then go to work for their dad’s hedge fund. Consideration should be given also to how many grads can find a job in the field associated with their major. A gender studies major who cannot find a job and is working as a barista should count as big minus points in this algorithm.

If graduates of a specific major at a certain college don’t make very much working in that field after graduation, then the college would be compelled by market forces to reduce the price tag, in order for students to qualify for loans to pursue that “asset”. If this means that fruitless areas of study get closed off from the student loan market, then that would be a good outcome. Those who want to be art history majors and hieroglyphics linguists can find other ways to fund themselves.