Hmmm. I like The Street's take on this. To me, for profit colleges (and not just "the bad ones") are a scourge on the US. As a grad student, I took on a side job teaching at one in these parts called Davenport University. I never felt good about it, but I was poor. I was living with no roommates on a grad student stipend. (As Brecht said, "Erst kommt das fressen, dann kommt die Moral.) So I went to the Darkside for extra cash. They paid me $2800 per class, which is decent pay for the amount of hours I put in. Anyway, I taught physics or math, depending on the term. The math was algebra. Basic algebra. And I had to dumb it way down to get pretty much anyone to pass. The physics was ostensibly algebra based physics, a reasonable course for college if you're a non-science major. However, the book they made me use was a book that is used by many 9th grade high school students around the country (Conceptual Physics by Hewitt). I taught what was given me until the first test I administered, at which point I realized that zero (being literal right now) of my students would pass if I taught them 9th grade physics. It was a sad realization, as I didn't really know anything about for profit ed until that time. They take these people's creditworthiness and self worth along with our money and laugh their way to the bank. And the punchline of the joke is that student debt can't be discharged in bankruptcy. If Ford sells me a defective car that I paid $40,000 for, I can sue them. If they sell a hundred thousand defective cars, the federal government can sue them. Somehow, a defective education affects only the mark, and not the grifter.
http://abovethelaw.com/2012/02/twelve-more-law-schools-slapped-with-class-action-lawsuits-over-employment-data/ I think it's funny that the first diploma mills to get the shaft were law schools. 
How bad is this? Plus, aren't you only granted the stipend because you're a research or teaching assistant? I'm probably just going to take out some loans just to be able to live a decent life while I'm in grad school.I was living with no roommates on a grad student stipend.
Few things make me as angry as this. Oh, you went a non-profit for a degree that means it's hard as hell to get a job because many markets are hard to break into and can't afford to live above the poverty line? Fuck you, no way out of this one. Same deal with for-profit, those might be even worse considering just how much exploitation is going on. I wasn't aware that Davenport was for-profit and and according to a quick google search/wikipedia it says it's a private non-profit? The step Obama is taking is likely a good one, but it doesn't change the fact that my generation is still completely screwed immediately out of college unless you lived at home with a job for two years or by some miracle got a full-ride.And the punchline of the joke is that student debt can't be discharged in bankruptcy. If Ford sells me a defective car that I paid $40,000 for, I can sue them. If they sell a hundred thousand defective cars, the federal government can sue them. Somehow, a defective education affects only the mark, and not the grifter.
That doesn't change the fact that many of those people will be leaving with a lot of debt. Will they be able to pay it off? Sure. But it will still be much higher than previous generations have had to deal with for many of those students. Also, I'm having trouble finding how many people study IT in particular, but the total number of Computer and information sciences bachelor's degrees awarded in 2011-2012 was 47,384, or 2.65%. A small fraction, no doubt. I'm aware that not everybody can "get lucky" or base their profession off the pay grade, but I do think college should be much cheaper than it is now or that loan forgiveness shouldn't be completely out of the realm of possibility.
There are other good careers rather than IT. I agree that college should be cheaper. I also think that, rather than loan forgiveness, people should be able to decide to pay a "college tax" on their earnings (5%?) while the debt they have remains static, with zero interest, and can be paid off to lose the tax. Forgiveness could cause issues depending on how it is done, as can ending the ability to get loans. There needs to be some sort of system that stops ballooning prices at least.
That's silly. Facts are real regardless of whether the person speaking them has experienced them firsthand or merely learned them. And anecdotes should not be taken wholesale as shining examples of how things really are for the general population or sub-population being discussed. If you heard that certain job fields were not hiring would you refuse to believe it until you heard it from someone who applied for those sorts of jobs? Would you take the time to peruse his/her resume or hear his job history to try and determine if he/she was actually qualified for the positions they applied for after listening to their despair narrative or would you simply trust them, because they had experienced it firsthand? Would articles about how those fields are not hiring be dismissed as "not coming from sufferers"? Sure, first-hand experience can provide a perspective, and even a valuable one in the right circumstances. But it's not the only way to acquire information and facts, or to justify them. Sometimes anecdotes are completely off-base. I got hired two months after stopping college, with no degree, making over 30k a year, in a field in which I had no experience and which was not related to my degree, at the age of 20, in the freaking summer of 2010, in the United States. For reference, the unemployment rate across the nation was 9.5% that summer. Does my experience (while certainly not a 'despair narrative') corroborate with any facts of the job market at the time for the standard American? No, not at all. Likewise, one person's "despair narrative" may be completely skewed from the norm, or skewed by their perspective. Moreover, I don't feel the need to shore up my belief that some things are awful/worthy of despair by waving around my personal experience of them, nor should I.