On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Larry Correia applauds President Trump’s decision to stop providing goverment-backed student loans for courses that don’t provide students who graduate with a viable career path:
Now this sounds like a good policy.
Only they’re not “banning” anyone from majoring in anything. Kids can still major in whatever dumb shit, gender studies, no job having degree, they want, and liberal academics will still make bank ripping off those kids and their parents.
This is just the rest of us tax payers not being on the hook for their good times.
Most regular loans the bank isn’t going to lend you money unless there’s some assurance that they’re not going to get screwed. If you went to your bank with a business plan that said you needed $250k up front so you could make $20 an hour after, they’d laugh at you.
Student loans were the one goofy ass outlier because Uncle Sam said it’s cool to go a quarter million dollars into debt to get a useless degree that qualifies you to get some specific $20 an hour job … except wait, due to all these loans for bullshit degrees the supply of eligible employees far exceeds the demand, so all those $20 an hour jobs are already filled, so now you’re working fast food where your coworkers are teenagers or illegal aliens, only you’re still $250k in debt.
Of course none of what I am saying will make sense to people who majored in the degrees in question because they weren’t required to take any math, econ, or accounting classes.
The headline says social work, art, religious studies, and music will be hardest hit! (teaching aides need a degree? WHY?!?) And now I’m gonna get yelled at by people who think what America really needs is more social workers.
Going off of what I’ve seen from creative writing degrees, MFAs, and the many art and music professionals I know, I’m guessing art and music degrees are mostly a huge waste of time. Just go get a real job to pay the bills and practice your art on the side until you get good at it (says the bestselling novelist who got an accounting degree).
Going deeply into debt for a “religious studies” degree from a university baffles me. Go to church. Read your scriptures. Serve your fellow man. But mostly I’m betting they included this one to try and pull at conservative heart strings because we all know in reality this policy change is going to overwhelming hit liberals.
But, Correia, you barbaric anti-intellectual* with the free taxpayer money faucet shut off this will irreparably harm America’s pretentious snooty sheltered ivory tower scholars of pointless fields who exist in a state of perpetual bossy uselessness in their little university bubble!
Oh no! Anyways.
* for the record, I’m not anti-intellectual. I’m all in favor of scholarly pursuits. I just think much of the education business is a scam, and the people who label themselves “intellectual” usually aren’t.
[…] LARRY CORREIA’S VIEW ON THIS: Trump’s student loan policy change. […]
Pingback by Instapundit » Blog Archive » LARRY CORREIA’S VIEW ON THIS: Trump’s student loan policy change. — October 2, 2026 @ 02:00
If you are paying to learn something you can’t monetize, you are being entertained not learning.
Now, for sure, make the argument that your XYZ degree helped you establish your super fantastic successful career.
However:
(1) If you are in and around 50 years old, note that you paid 40-65% of current tuition (inflation adjusted, assuming an aggressive 3% annual compounding). (2) If you want to argue anecdotally that your degree taught you some skill that translated into your success indirectly, lucky you, because there is $1.5 trillion dollars of uncollaterlized student debt that would be JUNK credit rating if not for the guarantee of the US govt.
Bottom line, as per usual, the things that people scream are so broken are the things that government is most involved in and most responsible for the disaster.
Healthcare (70% of all healthcare spending is the US government spending and 40% of the population).
Housing (Goverment sponsored entities “FNMA” “FHLB” “FHMLC” led DIRECTLY to the housing collapse in 2008)
Education (Government sponsored entity “Sally Mae” owns 1.5trillion of junk bonds and will implode)
Social Security(Unfunded government retirement program that is a ponzi scheme and will implode)
Comment by Timothy Egan — October 2, 2026 @ 03:16
“Going deeply into debt for a “religious studies” degree from a university baffles me. Go to church. Read your scriptures. Serve your fellow man.”
As someone with an ex-daughter in law who came from a very Christian family and earned a religious studies degree from an institution originally founded to train clergy, William and Mary, a religious studies degree is not designed to train religious leaders, it is designed to convince the students that religion is invalid and should be dismissed.
That’s what happened to this previously religious ex-daughter in law and based on conversations with her about her studies at the university, that’s exactly what the course of study was designed to do.
If anyone religious is thinking that a Religious Studies degree will help them to increase their knowledge of and faith in their religion, they should think again (and save their money).
Comment by Sailorcurt — October 2, 2026 @ 08:15
Part of the problem is gatekeeping. Certain professional groups– teachers/social workers etc. have worked with the government to enact requirements for degrees, college certification courses. A way of making it harder to enter the profession and to argue they deserve higher wages.
To be a teacher in California at a state school requires a 4 year degree, than a 2 yr certification program including placements in schools as an unpaid teacher’s aide (which doesn’t count towards a masters). Getting a masters significantly increases pay (great ROI if you do an online course from an accredited school–masters pays for itself in just short of 2 years).
To be a Licensed Clinical Social Worker requires a 4 yr degree (usually in psychology), then a masters program in Social Work, then 3,000 supervised hours with clients and an accreditation/certification test. An LCSW can do not just social work, but everything a licensed therapist can do (group, individual, marriage and family counseling etc.)
We deserve more pay because of the requirements we ourselves insisted the government enact in regulations making it hard, and therefore limiting the number of folks in the field.
Parents really need to teach their kids the concept of Return on Investment (ROI). All three of my kids got their degrees without going into debt. State schools instead of private, leveraged available benefits, worked part time, 2 lived at home given the schools were commuting distance. One worked two years between undergrad and grad school to save up. I’d sat down with them over how a degree fit into a career plan and was the investment worth the benefit and likely pay.
Comment by styrgwillidar — October 2, 2026 @ 11:13
I would like to see classical music degrees exempted, the material is quite complex, theoretical and very extensive.
The advanced performance skills need to be taught by experienced professionals and cannot easily be self taught.
The courses should also have an extra year added to ensure that every musician who is trained this way is also a quality music educator.
Selection for the courses should be strictly on aptitude.
I have three reasons:
1. Classical western music is (and should remain) an integral part of our culture. We need top performers and we also need to ensure that children have a good quality music education — it adds a lot of life quality and hones many other abilities we try to teach in school.
2. Our culture spent hundreds of years refining this musical art to it’s current level and we will lose it if it is not taught formally to the highest levels.
3. Classical music should not be the reserve of the wealthy. The kind of talent required does not occur too often in any generation and we would not find the numbers and if wealth becomes a factor, quality would suffer and schools will continue to struggle to find competent music educators.
Comment by Silke — October 2, 2026 @ 12:08
Silke, I would also like to see classical music thrive, but this is not the way to do it.
You would still have the problem of people spending 4-5 years of time and a couple of hundred thousand dollars on a degree that does not have a financial payoff. It is best that students understand that proposition early.
Maybe that limits the most expensive schools to students who have an independent income source. Maybe that pushes middle-class music students to less expensive options. Some students are going to make different choices when they see the economic reality. What is worse than any of those options is to lure an 18-yr-old into a 4 year, $200,000, low-income life trajectory unaware.
If you want government to invest in the arts, better to subsidize the pay of the performers, so more of them can earn an middle-class income.
Comment by Pete EE — October 2, 2026 @ 15:23
The degree has to be needed by society and the individual, and degrees should produce cultural custodians of their subjects.
Example: There are substantial quality differences between a hobby historian and someone who has a degree in history (provided the degree was taught properly). The reason for that is that a hobbyist usually only does things for fun and tends to skip the many hard & boring parts that define the specialist and maintain the subject for later generations.
A degree does not need to cost 200k either, we used to produce competent people for far less than that, and can do so again.
So, there are two things to sort out: what degrees are useful/core to our culture and society and whether those degrees produce capable graduates and the cost of those degree.
Ps.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh9bUD-hC0A 🙂
Comment by Silke — October 2, 2026 @ 18:41