Not that simple, it seems to me. And lots of devils in lots of details. One would at least have to take into account both the presence and degree of fraud in the presentation. Harvard offers a fine arts degree specializing in Medieval religious painting. Whose fault - is there a fault? - if the degree doesn't "work." And then there's Trump U., and others like Trump U.

If you were arguing that financing education ought to be radically changed, or even education itself radically changed, and offered some notions thereof, that might be something to bite into.

Taking those course offerings off the table completely would be bad. But not offering loans to people who are unlikely to be able to pay them back is just basic lending sense.

Much of the world outside the US educates on a British model, with levels exams. Perhaps the desire to undertake a course of study could be tested in terms of aptitude, financing terms in part dependent on those.

There is a significant difference between those persons who take courses solely because they delight in learning and those persons who take courses because they wish to be well-qualified/credentialed in order to be able to earn a good living. Both persons should be "educated" well in advance by the particular institution of higher learning to which they apply as to which courses being offered would facilitate which goal. Also, the former persons should always be required to pay the full cost of their education out of their own resources and not be able to qualify for loans. Whereas, the latter persons should be able to qualify for loans that they can pay back with relative ease because of their guaranteed future earnings.

Both persons should be "educated" well in advance by the particular institution of higher learning to which they apply as to which courses being offered would facilitate which goal. — charles ferraro

Agreed, and with advisers, this usually happens - whether or not efficiently with respect to your ideas a matter of question, at least, and certainly in most cases something to be done a lot better than it is.

Also, the former persons should always be required to pay the full cost of their education out of their own resources and not be able to qualify for loans. Whereas, the latter persons should be able to qualify for loans that they can pay back with relative ease because of their guaranteed future earnings. — charles ferraro

And this a value judgment many if not most would not share. In the US, for example, we live today in a country of stunningly and dangerously ignorant people. Because their education failed them in withdrawing the requirements for courses that would make of them "educated persons." Lots of technical proficiency to be sure, but half of them thought, and think, Trump a great president and a great man. That's not politics of red v. blue, rather it is ignorance in practice, called stupidity.

Yet how does an individual gain economic return from learning how to tell the good from the bad man? He doesn't, but the community - the nation - needs him to do just that, and needs to subsidize that for its own benefit and survival.

But truly lots of ways to do it.

The question of good faith lending, admissions, and awarding degrees is complex.

High school advisors should themselves be aware, and help students be aware that universities look out for their own interests first. Admission, even awarding scholarships, doesn't mean that a useful or remunerative degree and satisfying career is in the offing. Universities require solid enrollment figures for income first, and as a general justification or their raison d'être.

Education costs have been rising for a good 40 years, so it should not come as a surprise that degrees cost money.

Whether a degree was worth the money may not be obvious for several years (or more) after graduation. I have a bachelors degree in English and a graduate degree in educational psychology. The English degree had much less immediate job-getting value than the graduate degree, even though the BA was worth much more in terms of learning. In the longer run, the English major (and general education) was worth it many times over in personal value. (I graduated in 1968)

The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts what fields have expanding, stable, and declining job numbers. Honest advising should steer students who will need to earn their way in the world away from majors which lead to few jobs. As much as one might like dance, French poetry, or art there just aren't many jobs in those areas. If one is independently wealthy, majoring in underwater basket weaving (an old cliche from my student days) is as good a choice as any.

Credit and debt education must occur In high school. I think a lot of student borrows have a very poor understanding of just how difficult discharging a $30,000 loan can be, especially when they want to take on more debt for a car and a home. Never mind a $50,000 loan, or more.

College was affordable when I was a student (1960s) because the state subsidized education, making fees quite affordable even for students who were kind of poor. One could get a work-study job on campus which would go a long ways towards paying for fees, for instance. The states withdrew from higher education subsidy under increasing demands for tax reduction. The burden of cost was shifted from the collective to individual families.

I elected a "work before school" model. Graduate High school (terrible education and I cared not at all). I chose to get trade certification (red sealed Journeyman), and proceeded to fund my way through an additional diploma, a degree, and other specialized training. Along the way I developed an addiction for further education and now I take programs for funsies. All in I have invested, roughly, $250,000.00 (Canadian) in my education and will likely just keep throwing money at it as I amuse myself with knowledge. Starting in the trades was the best move I ever made (thanks Dad for suggesting it) as while everyone else in my college courses were making minimum wage I was pulling in three times that. Made a huge difference and allowed me to save more money as I don't have to pay for tradesmen for repairs. I would recommend to anyone to get the trade first, then "higher" education, whatever that is supposed to be now.

Perfect time to remind everyone that Joe Biden was directly responsible for ensuring that students remain trapped in debt and promoting the birth of a predatory, life-destroying industry.

"In 1978, Biden supported the Middle Income Student Assistance Act, which eliminated income restrictions on federal loans to expand eligibility to all students. Biden helped write a separate bill that year blocking students from seeking bankruptcy protections on those loans after graduation. (The income restrictions on federal loans were reinstated in 1981.) Then he went on to vote to create the Parent Loan for Undergraduate Students, or PLUS, program in 1980 and the Auxiliary Loans to Assist Students, or ALAS, program in 1981, which extended loan eligibility to students with no parental financial support. ...Years later, as a senator from Delaware, Biden was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the disastrous 2005 bankruptcy bill that made it nearly impossible for borrowers to reduce their student loan debt."

https://theintercept.com/2020/01/07/joe-biden-student-loans/

The plague is not (only) student loan debt. The plague is rats like Joe Biden who ensure the persistence of such recurrent plagues. May that old man drop dead in writhing pain.

As for the OP: the possibility of higher education simply should not be pegged to your economic status, at all. The university is not - should not be - some vocational institute preparing people to 'contribute' to 'the economy'. It is a place of higher learning, a space where education and research can be pursued to the complete indifference of market demands. The 'solution' is not to 'cease offering' majors that are not 'job ready': it is either to make higher education entirely free, or peg fees to income-contingent loans which enable millions to access universities who would otherwise be totally unable to.

Also fuck Joe Biden, just as a reminder.

In the US, we fully fund all education through high school without regard to the direct economic value of the subject. You are required to take world history with the full understanding you'll not need any of that knowledge when you eventually become employed. There is no principled distinction between high school and college. It's just an arbitrary distinction drawn for arbitrary reasons. My point being that there is no reason to limit college education to utility if we've already conceded education shouldn't be limited by utility in K to 12. If 17 year olds can benefit from English Literature, so can 20 year olds.

The only justification for the government to pay for 12 years of education and not 16 is because it costs more for 16 and the government believes 12 years of education is good enough for society. That prevailing justification is likely outdated.

I'd submit that society suffers terribly from an undereducated public, and it's a true tragedy for someone to be deprived of his full intellectual development. To limit one's education deprives him of his full personhood.

And so it's a matter of money and priority. We fund roads without flinching, but not higher education, but really there's nothing conservative about limiting public education to 12 years and liberal about funding 16 years. It's just a matter of how many lanes you want on the highway and how many grades you want in the school.

The only justification for the government to pay for 12 years of education and not 16 is because it costs more for 16 and the government believes 12 years of education is good enough for society. That prevailing justification is likely outdated.

I'd submit that society suffers terribly from an undereducated public, and it's a true tragedy for someone to be deprived of his full intellectual development. To limit one's education deprives him of his full personhood.

And so it's a matter of money and priority. We fund roads without flinching, but not higher education, but really there's nothing conservative about limiting public education to 12 years and liberal about funding 16 years. It's just a matter of how many lanes you want on the highway and how many grades you want in the school. — Hanover

Agree, agree, agree.

The challenge, it seems to me, is to educate to need. People of the future are simply going to have to deal routinely and easily with concepts we regard as difficult at best. The trick will be to figure out how to teach the difficult by making it easy. Undergraduate mathematics in elementary school? If not demonstrably impossible, then why not? Mature understanding can come with maturity, but why not functionality now? This means a radical re-understanding of education in all aspects, last done in small partiality in the late 19th century. And for that, a radical re-expression for new pedantic purpose of most subject matter.

So an exaggeratedly expensive education about "cloud, cuckoo land" which is, for the most part, economically worthless will, nevertheless, provide me with an invaluable form of "social salvation" because it will sanctify me so that, henceforth, I will absolutely be able to tell the "good" from the "bad" man.

So the ivory tower, elitist yodas who practice a totalitarian form of Kancel Kulture are going to enlighten me about what I should have already learned how to do within the context of the nuclear family and my Judeo-Christian religious upbringing.

These social gnostics will reveal to me (for a hefty price of course) that secret, mystical knowledge about society that will transform me into a dogmatic, elitist, closed-minded, intolerant warrior who looks down upon the struggling riff-raff with an arrogant demeanor because, unlike them, I really know who's "good" or "bad."

History teaches us, over and over again, to beware precisely those totalitarian leaders and "PROFESSORS" who know absolutely how to distinguish the "good" from the "bad" man!!!!!!!

To each his own, but you sell short the education that made it possible for you to even write your post. Meanwhile, as you are ignorant (as are we all), and in ignorance practice your ignorance, which is called stupidity, keep you hands off all such things that require knowledge that you abjure to operate. And it would appear you're barely fit for a shovel.

History teaches us, over and over again, to beware precisely those totalitarian leaders and "PROFESSORS" who know absolutely how to distinguish the "good" from the "bad" man!!!!!!! — charles ferraro

You drone on about how formal education that provides no economic utility is of no value and then explain how it really is nothing more than is a liberal indoctrination process, but then you take a sudden left turn from all this right handed thinking and start explaining how important it is we be aware of such things as history.

How do I make money learning history, and why all of a sudden do you argue the virtues of a well rounded education, as if now you think knowledge generally is necessary for good citizenship?

And it would appear you can barely write intelligibly.

Being aware of the lessons of history does not depend upon, or require, first being indoctrinated by the extreme leftists, or the extreme rightists. My common sense and history itself tells me that all totalitarians, be they of the extreme left or of the extreme right, stink to high heaven. They all try to put the rights of the state above the rights of the individual. Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, is their mantra. Somehow, when they gain social control, they all end up putting those who they characterize as "stupid ignoramuses" or "inferior beings" into concentration camps, or into gulags, for one "enlightened" theoretical reason, or another. Literally millions of innocent souls suffered this horrible fate, or were physically destroyed because they refused to conform to statist demands. And somewhere in the world today, this is still occurring. We do not need an expensive liberal arts education to know this. And we certainly do not need to pay through the nose for the kind of "education" that seeks in any way to deny, or downplay it.

Literally millions of innocent souls suffered this horrible fate, or were physically destroyed because they refused to conform to statist demands. — charles ferraro

You're really going to need to establish a meaningful link between government schools and concentration camps and gulags. At this point, I have no idea what you're talking about. Sometimes destruction comes to a group based upon genetics and sometimes lack of allegiance to the dictator, but none of that has anything to do with schooling. I'd also point out that every state in the nation has government run high schools and universities, with every single university offering liberal arts degrees in the most obscure of fields. The question therefore isn't whether we ought pay for these degrees from the public funds. It's how much we wish to pay. Since the debate is how much, not whether, no one truly believes liberal arts degrees are the first step toward the gas chambers. I seriously doubt you even think that, but it does make for a good rant. Or not.