I have a cunning plan!!

OK here's $0.02,  Funding education in general and student loans in particular is a train wreck.  Specifically students graduating with 5-6 figure debt in majors that pay less than minimum wage is, well, it's just wrong.  And here's how we fix it.

Thang 1: Limit the amount of financial aid based on MAJOR?!!?  Yep,  determine statistically what a major is worth and that's what a student can receive/borrow.  Theater majors can receive/borrow up to $15,000; engineering majors up to $70,000.  These figures should  be calculated on what that schools graduates are being paid.  This produces a school quality differential too.  MIT engineers may be able to receive/borrow 10 times as much as Podunk U.

Thang 2:  Adjust the tuition to reflect a courses market value.  Gen Ed courses stay with a flat tuition and are exempt from this system.  They are both too important and too vulnerable to let the major professors mess around with. This leaves roughly 70-80 hours of courses in the major.  OK, now what?

Adjust each course's hourly tuition by it's Market Value!!  Starting theater majors make 15K therefore a theater course tuition is (15K - 5K)/80 or $125/credit hour.  (The 5K is the Gen Ed set aside).  Engineering math is (60K-20K)/80 or $500. (20K is the Gen Ed set aside.)  

A theater degree would cost roughly the same as the entry level salary for, well let's face it, a McDonalds Assistant Manager.  Engineering degrees cost would be tied to the entry level salary.

Thang 3: OK Most schools already do this but: Tie faculty salaries to the major. This is a major sore spot in most faculties.  Brand new shiny finance professors make 2-3 times what 30 year full professors of English make. And brand new shiny profs make more that the prof that was hired two years ago.  Market forces are at work here.  

Thang 4: Develop a Chancellor's/Dean/Whatever slush fund.  My system would change universities into technical schools which must never happen. There are some coursers that are critical to producing a "College Graduate" that would never get funded using my system.  Fanatically guarding the Gen Ed courses will help but more help would be needed.  For example, theater courses outside the Gen Ed umbrella could easily be worth more to the University than to the student.  T'would be a poor school that never put Shakespeare on the stage.  

“And when I am forgotten, as I shall be, and asleep in dull cold marble, where no mention of me must be heard of, say, I taught thee.”