I don't know what Ben meant by that, but I will add my two cents: There is definitely some percentage of the student-borrowing population that is making poor choices about where to pursue their education and how to finance it. Does it make sense to take out a lot of loans to go to your dream school when you could go to a state school wit…
I don't know what Ben meant by that, but I will add my two cents: There is definitely some percentage of the student-borrowing population that is making poor choices about where to pursue their education and how to finance it. Does it make sense to take out a lot of loans to go to your dream school when you could go to a state school without loans? Does it make sense to take out $100k in loans to get an degree (an undergraduate degree!) in a field that's not in high demand nor highly compensated? I would define those as frivolous loans - but of course Ben may have meant something entirely different.
A related and hugely problematic issue is the number of students who take out loans but never get their intended degree - this is particularly a problem in community colleges (at least in CA) and some for-profit schools. At least in the cases above, the loan has (presumably) at least some return on investment, although often not enough to come out even, let alone ahead. But in cases where no degree is attained, there is NO return on the funds that were borrowed.
I don't know what Ben meant by that, but I will add my two cents: There is definitely some percentage of the student-borrowing population that is making poor choices about where to pursue their education and how to finance it. Does it make sense to take out a lot of loans to go to your dream school when you could go to a state school without loans? Does it make sense to take out $100k in loans to get an degree (an undergraduate degree!) in a field that's not in high demand nor highly compensated? I would define those as frivolous loans - but of course Ben may have meant something entirely different.
A related and hugely problematic issue is the number of students who take out loans but never get their intended degree - this is particularly a problem in community colleges (at least in CA) and some for-profit schools. At least in the cases above, the loan has (presumably) at least some return on investment, although often not enough to come out even, let alone ahead. But in cases where no degree is attained, there is NO return on the funds that were borrowed.