> How do you figure what degree is useless?

If it has no positive bearing on your employment prospects then, for the purposes of producing a livelihood, it's useless.

> I mean, an art degree can easily lead to retail management. A business management degree often leads to the same sort of job. In some companies, you can earn these jobs working, but you are more likely to reach that management position at 30 instead of 23. These jobs don't pay all that much, true. But it is better than nothing and hey, if you went to college, you'll likely be a few years ahead of the peers that didn't. Theoretically, this will be a bonus.

Spending tens of thousands of dollars for something that's "better than nothing" is lunacy. Might as well just give the money directly to those people so they can use it as a down payment for a house.

> A teacher might not earn enough to cover their loan, especially if the person has an early childhood education (pre-school) degree as those jobs tend to be just slightly more than minimum wage. Yet few would argue that these are useless degrees.

Most teacher's degrees are useless. I'm not suggesting we eliminate training or education entirely but a preschool or elementary school teacher does not need to spend four years at university to teach children ABCs or 123s.

> Some degrees become useless over time when a field is phased out, and others produce a few too many degrees when the field changes, rendering a few useless. Lawyers have experienced this - and not only that, but those lawyers that decide to do community work and be a criminal lawyer (especially a public defender) might not be able to afford his or her loans.

And it naturally sorts itself out over time. It happens to people without degrees as well. There were plenty of horse carriage drivers that had to find alternative work.

> This is the problem with writing degrees off as useless due to earnings. Lots of professions will fall into that category, even if I get the feeling they are talking about things like art degrees - which some folks would argue are necessary. The only real way to avoid this is to make sure the student loans are affordable even in the worst situations.

I'm not against people pursuing their dreams. I'm against them doing it with my tax dollars. If a future barista wants to spend four years partying at a liberal arts school studying underwater basket weaving then let her find her own sugar daddy to pay for it.

> Make college not cost as much.

Stop handing out boat loads of cash via student loans and college prices will plummet immediately.

> Use alternative ways to provide education other than loans. Taxes are a good start for funding since overall, college degrees are good for the college at large.

Or starve the beast and let it fix itself in the private sector.

Honestly the only government involvement I'd be on board with is on the supply side, primarily through nominally priced community colleges. At least there the outlays are fixed (i.e. fixed local budget), there's no money flowing to shady private sectors, there's no conflict of interest in juicing the price higher as it's coming out of the same pocket. I suggest nominal pricing over free as there needs to be some skin in the game for students as well though I'd want it to be low enough that a min wage job should cover it.

This approach also has the pleasant side effect of forcing private institutions to compete against nearly-free community colleges. Without Federal loans juicing their prices, they'd be forced to come down as well.