College Rules! But Student Loans are a Hot Mess!

Summary

Optimist Economy - Episode Summary: "College Rules! But Student Loans are a Hot Mess!"

Release Date: June 3, 2025

In this compelling episode of Optimist Economy, hosts Kathryn Anne Edwards and Robin Rauzi delve deep into the complexities of the U.S. student loan system. They explore the historical context, current challenges, and potential reforms aimed at alleviating the burdens faced by millions of Americans. The conversation is both informative and engaging, blending economic analysis with personal anecdotes and humor.

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1. Introduction and Community Engagement [00:00 - 02:14]

The episode kicks off with Kathryn and Robin sharing humorous banter about podcast terminology and expressing gratitude to their supporters. Kathryn recounts a standout review that humorously references her congressional testimony, highlighting the podcast's growing community of engaged listeners.

Notable Quote:

Kathryn [01:37]: "And they're making fun of me. That's how we know we're building a community of optimists. Because just because you're optimist does not mean you're not sarcastic or angry."

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2. Retrospective Corrections (Retcons) [02:16 - 07:40]

Before diving into the main topic, the hosts address previous discussions on fertility and childcare policies, clarifying inaccuracies regarding the Trump administration's stance. They emphasize the importance of accurate policy characterization and acknowledge external feedback pointing out potential traps in their earlier analyses.

Notable Quote:

Robin [03:24]: "I think we'll know soon because they're going to roll out a policy or an executive order or some sort of report and it's supposed to come soon."

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3. Navigating Student Loans: Definitions and Distinctions [07:50 - 14:01]

Robin introduces the episode's focus on student loans, distinguishing between student loans and student debt. They discuss the evolving landscape, including loan forgiveness initiatives and the complexities arising from the suspension and reinstatement of payment collections post-pandemic.

Notable Quote:

Robin [08:03]: "Just seems it has changed so much. And there's been... a big, tangled mess."

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4. The Broken Student Loan System [14:01 - 19:16]

Kathryn outlines two primary issues: the inherent flaws in the current student loan system and the public's frustration with loan forgiveness debates. She criticizes the federal government's approach, highlighting the hypocrisy in enforcing loan repayments while neglecting tax evasion enforcement.

Notable Quote:

Kathryn [10:30]: "It's a very coldly cruel, I don't care. You owe money, I take it from student borrowers..."

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5. Comparisons to Other Debt Systems [19:16 - 25:00]

The discussion shifts to comparing student loans with other forms of debt, particularly mortgages. Kathryn emphasizes the lack of quality controls and oversight in the student loan process, contrasting it with the regulated mortgage market. She argues that the government has failed to manage student loans effectively, leading to inflated tuition costs and exploitative practices by educational institutions.

Notable Quote:

Kathryn [23:29]: "So one thing to point out to the federal government would be that you switched who benefited from your largess from being students and to being institutions..."

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6. Proposed Reforms and Solutions [25:00 - 43:34]

Kathryn and Robin explore various proposals to reform the student loan system:

• Regulatory Oversight: Implementing stricter regulations on how universities utilize federal loan funds to prevent tuition inflation and ensure transparency.

• Income Share Agreements (ISAs): Discussing Milton Friedman's proposal where students pay a percentage of their income post-graduation instead of fixed loan repayments. They debate the feasibility and potential pitfalls of ISAs, including the risk of predatory practices by private institutions.

• Redesigning the Loan System: Kathryn advocates for a complete overhaul of the student loan framework, suggesting that any transition to a new system should include provisions for those adversely affected by the current setup.

Notable Quote:

Kathryn [37:10]: "If you go to college, whether it's a community college... the government benefits from that because they benefit from you having higher human capital..."

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7. The Importance of Higher Education in the U.S. [43:27 - 51:34]

The hosts reflect on the unique aspects of the American higher education system, such as its flexibility and the ability for students to explore diverse academic interests without early specialization—a contrast to more rigid systems in other countries. They discuss how this freedom contributes to innovation and personal growth but also complicates the loan repayment landscape.

Notable Quote:

Kathryn [38:22]: "We have so much freedom over what our higher ed is structured like... the freedom to follow what I loved and what I fell in love with."

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8. Specialized Solutions for Different Educational Paths [51:34 - 53:19]

Kathryn emphasizes the need for tailored solutions based on the type of education pursued. She advocates for making programs like medical school free to address critical shortages in healthcare professionals, arguing that such targeted approaches can mitigate specific systemic issues without overhauling the entire system.

Notable Quote:

Kathryn [50:49]: "They come out with half a million dollars in debt... They need to make $700,000 a year because, like, look at my debt payments."

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9. Conclusion and Future Directions [53:19 - End]

Wrapping up the discussion on student loans, Kathryn and Robin humorously bond over their hypothetical reforms, projecting optimism toward potential changes. They transition to lighter topics, such as "executive orders" from listeners and celebrating cultural icons like Dolly Parton, reinforcing the show's positive outlook despite addressing serious economic issues.

Notable Quote:

Kathryn [53:19]: "All right, that's it. That is yet another thing we fixed here on Optimist Economy."

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Key Takeaways

• Systemic Flaws: The current U.S. student loan system is plagued by lack of regulation, leading to inflated tuition costs and unequal benefits.

• Government Responsibility: There's a pressing need for the federal government to take more active roles in regulating and restructuring student loan policies.

• Innovative Solutions: Proposals like Income Share Agreements and targeted loan forgiveness for specific programs (e.g., medical school) offer potential pathways for reform.

• Preserving Educational Freedom: While seeking reforms, it's crucial to maintain the flexibility and diversity that make American higher education unique and beneficial.

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This episode of Optimist Economy provides a nuanced examination of student loans, blending economic theory with real-world implications. Kathryn and Robin offer insights into possible reforms while maintaining an optimistic stance on improving the economic landscape for future generations.

Transcript

[Robin]

Andy says that it's dropped. Episodes get dropped.

[Katherine]

Oh, episodes are dropped. Episodes are dropped. God, I thought that was just like.

[Robin]

I think that. I think that sounds like podcast jargon.

[Katherine]

I. I thought that that's something that only musicians did with singles With.

[Robin]

With mics. No. Okay.

[Katherine]

Oh, yeah, that too.

[Robin]

Yeah.

[Katherine]

God, we're criminally nerdy. Robin. Hello, and welcome to Optimist Economy. I'm.

[Robin]

I'm Robin.

[Katherine]

On this show, we believe the US Economy can be better, and we talk about how to get there one problem and solution at a time.

[Robin]

Hey, at the top of the show, I think it would be great for us to thank the people who have made contributions to our show through Buy Me a Coffee or by becoming a paid Substack member and getting our newsletter. It's really been great and encouraging, and we're so glad to have your support.

[Katherine]

Absolutely buoyed by it. And also need to thank the people who have written reviews for us wherever they get their podcast. And I need to shout out one person in particular who wrote a truly Chef's Kiss. Perfect, outstanding review for us that just asked, is it true Katherine testified in front of Congress? This was such. This is such a good burn. I, like, had to check that my siblings didn't post it under some kind of alternative identity because I was like, oh, man, whoever this person is, like, kudos to you, sir.

[Robin]

That was amazingly done. You'll all be happy to know that I posted a link to Katherine's testimony on YouTube on optimisteconomy.com. so if you don't believe me, if you don't believe her, it's there.

[Katherine]

Maybe it's not in our best interest to encourage sassy and sarcastic reviews, but I, like, I straight up lulled. Like, I just. I saw it, and I just, like, I lost it.

[Robin]

Excellent. Excellent.

[Katherine]

Very much appreciated it. I was like, man, people are listening.

[Robin]

That's a good one.

[Katherine]

And they're making fun of me. That's how we know we're building a community of optimists. Because just because you're optimist does not mean you're not sarcastic or angry.

[Robin]

True that.

[Katherine]

Okay, so retcon.

[Robin]

Yeah, retcon.

[Katherine]

I have a short retcon, which is that in the episode where we talked about fertility, and then even afterwards in the childcare episode, it's tricky to characterize the policy coming out of the Trump administration, because as I learned recently, technically, there is none. So most of the reporting on the policies, like the maternity medal, the Fulbright scholarship, using money that is currently going to childcare and putting it towards subsidizing stay at home moms. All of those are things that are being funded, floated and pitched to the administration, but do not technically represent current administration policy. So you know someone. Well, a couple people pointed this out. One of them pointed out of like, I don't think you characterize this correctly. And the other listener pointed out that this is kind of their strategy of really baiting people into getting mad about something that they have plausible deniability over. And they were like, it's a trap. And you fell right into it.

[Robin]

I think we'll know soon because they're going to roll out a policy or an executive order or some sort of report and it's supposed to come soon.

[Katherine]

But yeah, it's a good note though that there is like obfuscation and deniability. And I mean journalists are, I mean, not that they don't know this, but they are manipulated in the kind of press process of what gets attention and when news is released and it's hard to stay on top of that.

[Robin]

Yeah, I have a couple of retcons. First, I was in Spokane recently and I realized that I had said that you could get childcare there for $700 a month. And then I actually talked to the executive director of that child care center and she said not for full time care. Full time care at that high quality early education center in Downtown Spokane is 2000 and up a month for full time care. Okay, so don't everybody move to Spokane looking for cheap childcare.

[Katherine]

I also feel a lot less bitter.

[Robin]

Oh man, good.

[Katherine]

It's so hard though, because this is the thing about paying so much for childcare is that it's, you know, you don't have another option. But it's so hard not to feel stupid. Like, wait, was there actually a miracle place that was cheap and good and better and I just never found it. And it's amazing how much parents are able to internalize this terrible private for sale market as their fault. Yeah, and politicians will do that for you. We don't need to do it on their behalf. So it's not your fault. Even if it turns out you were overpaying for care, that's still not your fault. It's always going to be the public policy fault that they haven't done something about it already. Okay, terms and conditions, Terms and conditions. What did you look up this week?

[Robin]

Well, I looked up Knightian uncertainty, which just made me realize. I know, don't ask. Just made me realize that economists just name terms after themselves. Like Nydian uncertainty is named after some guy named Knight, but it's basically the unknown unknowns. Right. It's like the difference between known risks and the unknown unknowns, which believe. I don't know why you guys. There are a lot of. I think.

[Katherine]

Oh, we economists love it. Of economists in the 1960s. This guy Knight was, like, wildly influential. Like, he was either, like their advisor or they just. They loved him. And the mentor, like, he was just, like the coolest guy, and everybody loved him. And so you have this big, like, Nydian influence. You could just call it uncertainty or uncertainty with no probability attached to it. Or you could call it 90.

[Robin]

90 and uncertainty. Exactly. That was exactly my takeaway. And I'm not an economist.

[Katherine]

Not an economist. Why you gotta name stuff after yourselves? Yeah, they all do. We best put names on stuff. Yeah, I could give you like, two dozen examples of like. So this is named after another guy. Although I don't know. If someone was like, there's a Rousey in principle. Like, wouldn't you want to flex and assign something? Rousey.

[Robin]

I wondered if he had named it that. Or if in sort of honor of somebody who explained something which sound like an astronomer discovering a planet and naming it after him or herself, which, like.

[Katherine]

Okay, what about your mom? Come on.

[Robin]

Yeah.

[Katherine]

Okay, so those are our terms and conditions. I didn't. I did look up something, but it's also an economic term that's dreadfully boring. So how about this? I'm going to subtweet my term and condition, which dates back to a conversation that started before we started recording that I learned the difference between lie and lay today.

[Robin]

Are you ready to use it correctly?

[Katherine]

I'm not. You told it to me, but that doesn't mean that I understand what it is or want to use it. I think this goes back to my W legacy, that if I use something incorrectly, I'm happy to learn it, but I'm not happy to use it.

[Robin]

So I don't. It's the epitome of your discomfort. Come on.

[Katherine]

Everybody I went to high school with knows exactly what you're talking about. Yes, it is the epitome of my nervousness. Robin's really helpful with things like you don't talk. Good grammar for our listeners.

[Robin]

The difference between lie and lay. Lie is present tense, lay is past tense. We're talking about reclining, as in, I am going to lie down on the bed. That's the use here.

[Katherine]

It's the equivalent of sit and sat. Actually, that.

[Robin]

The equivalent of sit and sat. I think is the easiest way for me to.

[Katherine]

And it's I and I and think about it.

[Robin]

It's I and I and I.

[Katherine]

You're right. Okay. All right.

[Robin]

Lie is the present tense. Lay is the past tense. Sit is the present tense. Sat is the past tense. All right, so today we're doing a pitch session. Today, right?

[Katherine]

We are doing a pitch session. I am pitching you about student loans.

[Robin]

Student loans. So I have to tell you, like, I'm a little confused about the entire status of student loans, you and every.

[Katherine]

Borrower in this country, because, yeah, it.

[Robin]

Just seems it has changed so much. And there's been. I mean, there's. There's two things. I think there's student loans and there's student debt. And there's been, like, moments of peak concern about the levels of student debt, but that also just became really wrapped up in, like, loan forgiveness. And that there was a period of time where just payments were suspended during the pandemic, and they just started collecting payments or insisting that people make payments again recently. And the repayment part is really a big, tangled mess. But that's. Is that what you want? That's not what you want to talk about?

[Katherine]

I mean, I want to. I wanted to talk about two things that were actually not that. So.

[Robin]

Okay.

[Katherine]

This is not meant to sound callous to people who are struggling under the weight of student debt. In some ways, it's a different policy question, because I think there's two things I want to talk about, but one of them is I think this past five years has been in some ways, evidence of just how broken and messed up our student loan system is and how angry people feel about it on both people who have been through the process, and then also people. How much. How angry people are about student loan forgiveness and how unfair they think it is that I think what I want to talk about is like, blue sky. Like, our current system of student loans is not successful, so we need to go into the future. And the reasons for not success are so varied. I mean, there are economists who will tell you student loans are one reason why college tuition is skyrocketing.

[Robin]

Oh, yeah.

[Katherine]

And that.

[Robin]

I mean, that. That. Yeah, that it's essentially an unlimited pot of money that we're letting parents and. And students draw on, and it's just driving up the cost.

[Katherine]

Our student loan system, the way that it is, has a lot of casualties and a consequences, and I think that you could spend a lot of time talking about the casualties and consequences, but I think we should talk about how to solve it. This is optimist economy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Better, better, better. So the first thing, I think this is almost like a, maybe like a public service announcement, but I wrote a column on student loans going into collection and I pointed out that it's an incredibly two faced move by the federal government because the larger pot of money in terms of who owes the federal government money is absolutely people who cheat on their taxes.

[Robin]

There's way more of them.

[Katherine]

Yeah, there's more of them.

[Robin]

And they owe more.

[Katherine]

They owe a lot more. So it's like $600 billion a year in uncollected taxes. And we know how to get that money back. It's through IRS funding and broader auditing and, and that enforcement money is being cut as we're sending student loan borrowers into debt collection, which by the end of the summer should mean garnished wages if they have a job. So it's a very like, coldly cruel, I don't care. You owe money, I take it for student borrowers and a. Well, we wouldn't want to interfere in people's lives if they're cheating the federal government and learning they can get away with it. And so I pointed out that this was deeply hypocritical. And nowhere in the column do I say we should forgive student loans. All I say is that this is not fair. It's not effective, it's not the right target.

[Robin]

The concern is actual revenue.

[Katherine]

Yeah. It doesn't have an economic or an efficiency justification and it's not fair. So it's just mean. I never say forgive student loans. And the vitriol I got back for this column was incredible. Not even saying that student loans should be forgiven. Just talking about student loans using the.

[Robin]

Two words together, student and loan. It's triggering. It's triggering for people.

[Katherine]

Triggering. And I think that there's an aspect here where this is like, these are the new. This is not going to sound the way that I mean it to, but like, fuck it, it's a podcast. It's not like we're recording. There's so many ways in which student loan borrowers who can't pay back their debts are like the new welfare queens. They're absolutely hated. They're mythologized as like lazy kids who like, didn't finish their degree in French literature, who don't understand personal finance. It's entirely their fault. It's entirely their choices. And they are hated. Part of that is that they became politicized because Biden championed them.

[Robin]

Yeah. You know, you try to help people and they become a political target.

[Katherine]

Yeah, I think it's friendly fire. Right.

[Robin]

Like, happens to all sorts of people.

[Katherine]

Student loan borrowers who are hated by deeply conservative people. Because Biden was trying to help you. You are in incredible company. But I do think that there's also a, a different strand there of like, it's not my fault. Fault as a taxpayer to pay for the things that you can't do. And it is ultimately about, like, your human failure and your personal failure that becomes my taxpayer problem. All that stuff is there.

[Robin]

Maybe I'm just oversimplifying, but it also seems like there's kind of a, you know, an anti elitist thing too. And I think that this cuts both ways. Right. It's like you borrowed money to go to college and then you didn't get a job that you could pay it back. Well, like, you wasted your education or conversely, I didn't go to college. And you got all this money from the government to go to college and you're not paying it back. Like, there's like misunderstanding and distrust to go around.

[Katherine]

Yeah. And I. And there's less of this idea of like, wow, if you went to college and then you couldn't pay it back, I wonder if something horrible has happened either in the economy or in your personal life that would make it hard for you to succeed. And maybe there is an aspect to which not being able to earn a lot of money is out of an individual person's control. And people don't see that part. They just see the personal responsibility. So the personal responsibility on student loans, it's there. So all that said, do I actually want to forgive student loans?

[Robin]

Well, go ahead, tell me what you think.

[Katherine]

I actually think we just should redesign the whole system top to bottom. And if there is a forgiveness of student loans, it's basically buying ourself out of the prior current system. So, like, whatever we have now, it has to end. You can't transition to something new without ending what you had, ending what you have. And somehow ending what we have has to include something for people who like, hey, this system actually sucks. This was not the right way to do it. We never thought about it that much on the front end. And so we need to do something better. And that might mean acknowledging that some people are given a really bad turn. So I think in the context of building a new policy system, there is something that has to be done for people who are having a hard time with their loans. And it's not a blanket forgiveness, but I do think something has to be Done to transition out of this current system. Like, you can't punish people for 30 years when the government has moved on to an entirely new student loan system that like, obviates people like you existing, but you get punished for it for three decades. Oh, my God. They're garnishing Social Security benefits, which means there are poor bastards out there who have not paid off their loans as they're collecting Social Security, which either means they're 67, they're disabled, or they're disabled. And I was like, oh, Christ, that is really tough. And also, a lot of those people, the amount that they owe is larger than they borrowed.

[Robin]

Yeah. And they've even probably paid back the amount that they borrowed, but they haven't.

[Katherine]

Paid back the interest. Yeah.

[Robin]

We should also point out that student loans are not dischargeable in bankruptcy.

[Katherine]

No.

[Robin]

Which is unlike almost or any kind of debt. Right.

[Katherine]

What else isn't dischargeable? This is a good retcon. What debt is not dischargeable in a bankruptcy? There's only a few types. There's only a few types of loans that will garnish your wages, too. It's like taxes. And student loans will garnish your wages. Taxes, student loans, child support, alimony. Maybe not even alimony.

[Robin]

And that was just the idea being, I guess students would be young, they could just not pay. They could go into bankruptcy almost immediately. If they would get their loans discharged, then they would just be back on track to their regular.

[Katherine]

You know what? That's just what's amazing.

[Robin]

As if that was happening.

[Katherine]

As if that was happening. But like, also, what a remarkably deep dive into a potential. Potential negative incentive effect of such a shitty design system. We have thought about no part of this. Well, except for the slim possibility that.

[Robin]

Somebody'S going to declare bankruptcy on purpose.

[Katherine]

The bankruptcy court, in order to get out of student loans and effectively lock themselves out of their ability to borrow for a decade in exchange for not paying back their student loans. And that is the possibility we plan the system around like, my God. All right, so blue sky.

[Robin]

Yeah.

[Katherine]

Everything you know about student loans, what you paid, what someone else paid, like what your friend paid, Whatever, put it aside. Just put it all aside.

[Robin]

Okay.

[Katherine]

There are two questions we have to ask when designing a blue sky system or taking a blue sky approach to how the government helps with the tuition fee and cost of living that is required to go to experience higher education. One, does the government benefit from your investment in higher education? And two, does the government bear any fault for the lack of individual return to higher education investments? So you go to college, is that good from the government's perspective, like you go to college and you don't make that much money, is the government, you.

[Robin]

Don'T get the big bump that you were.

[Katherine]

Yeah, you don't get the college bump. Is the government at all responsible for that?

[Robin]

Right.

[Katherine]

If the answer to both of those questions are yes, which I think they are, then you have to kind of rethink the system and change the financing, the co financing of higher education in order to reflect that the government has more skin in the game both ways than they recognize through the current system.

[Robin]

Because the current system paces essentially all the risk on the student borrower. You know, if you don't make enough money, it's your problem and if you don't, I mean, I guess there's income dependent repayment.

[Katherine]

Yeah. But it like when you go to college, whether it's a community college, a for profit trade school, a two year school, a four year school, you get a postgraduate degree of any type, the government benefits from that because they benefit from you having higher human capital, you earning on average more money, you being a higher taxpayer. Like they benefit from you in so many ways. Not just the things that you learn and how that's applied via productivity or via innovation and creativity in the economy, but they see it back through higher tax dollars like the governor government. There is a reason why they are in this game in the first place.

[Robin]

Right, but they the reason why states built universities in the first place.

[Katherine]

Yeah, but they don't take the same approach to that investment not working. It's like, well that's all an individual failure in the way that they manage the market, the way that they maybe don't regulate colleges, that they're writing a blank tuition check to via student loans. They're like, oh well, none of that's our fault. That's all an 18 year old kid's fault. This is to me is the argument of like, look, the government benefits and they were part of the problem. Like they benefit from it winning and they're partly to blame from it losing. So like this is why we both need to have them there but do better than the current system.

[Robin]

Okay, are you going to try to spell out what your system looks like?

[Katherine]

I think this is my like the, if I'm trying to make like a persuasive case, the first part is like, all right, answer to these two questions. They're both yes, like the government needs to be involved in student loans. So this is why do you.

[Robin]

Okay, so answer the second part of that then more. Which is why. Why do you think the federal government has some responsibility if people aren't able to? I mean, the government is in it because they want the benefits. Why do you think they have some responsibility? And what do you think that responsibility is if those benefits don't follow?

[Katherine]

So this is great. Lead in to what I think is the second part, which is kind of like the diagnosis of the current system of like, let's do a. What do they call it when they do like a meeting? It's always used in the military. Like we were doing a meeting and we're going to a hot wash. Yes, let's do a hot term. This is a Robin term. Let's do a hot wash of the current higher ed cost in student loan state of the world. And in our hot wash, we are going to look at the federal government's behavior and look to see if maybe they made some mistakes along the way.

[Robin]

Okay. So for our listeners, a hot, a hot wash is like an after action report. Right. So after something's done, after something happens, it comes from the military. It means like while the gun is still hot, you clean it before it gets all gritty.

[Katherine]

That's where it comes from.

[Robin]

Yeah, it's a military term, but it got adopted into government. And it's, it's kind of, you know, it's sort of government jargon.

[Katherine]

I just imagine that 75% of meetings at the Pentagon have hot wash in the subject line.

[Robin]

I love it. Yeah, yeah.

[Katherine]

So the hot. The hot. So I think the answer is the.

[Robin]

Hot wash on the hot wash. Like, I don't think you can hot wash the student loan program. That's 10 years old, I guess, is what I'm saying.

[Katherine]

Yeah. Okay. Damn it. It's almost like this is your professional job to be a real stickler about word use. So.

[Robin]

But I do love the word so.

[Katherine]

All right, well, your heart's torn here, Robin. Do I get to use it or not? All right, maybe not hot wash, but.

[Robin]

Spiritual hot wash. We're going to reflect.

[Katherine]

So if you were to point to the federal government and say, listen, this is your fault, there would be a couple things that you would point to if you were making a case against the federal government. So the first, I think point you would make is that the federal government has backed away from investments in higher education. Not necessarily backed away, but like changed the composition. So a truly formative moment for the U.S. economy and for higher education in particular is the GI Bill.

[Robin]

Sure.

[Katherine]

Which after World War II helped veterans go to college. At free or near free rates. And if you read histories of the GI Bill, one thing they'll tell you is they didn't necessarily let black people use it. And the second thing they'll tell you is that the enrollment, like the number of people who took advantage of the GI Bill was 10 times what they thought it would be like. They thought this would be a small benefit, that maybe some people who were inclined for college would go. It was seen as like a relatively elite institution. It was not something that they expected. You know, I think it was 8 million people took it up and that was like blew away what they thought was going to happen. So the government got in in a big way in the GI Bill. And this occurs kind of to kickstart an era in which the federal and state governments invested heavily in college. And they did this through financially supporting public institutes of higher learning. They built the US Community college system, which no other country has a community college system like we do. And a lot of them are very jealous of it. But we made these massive capital costs. They were trying to like they couldn't build campuses fast enough and then they just pulled back and supporting, you know, higher education.

[Robin]

This is kind of money that was going specifically to pay people's tuition.

[Katherine]

It was both like they supported. Yeah, they supported capital investments. They, you know, they had grants and they, that investments shifted over time to instead of directly supporting institution of higher education, they would give students loans. And then certain schools through things like the NIH and the NSF and the Department of Energy and so on, would get research grants.

[Robin]

And that was all post GI Bill.

[Katherine]

Yeah.

[Robin]

Okay.

[Katherine]

So one thing to point out to the federal government would be that you switched who benefited from your largess from being students and to being institutions to being institutions. And then the second part of that would be. And you put absolutely no strings on that money.

[Robin]

Well, grants have strings on them.

[Katherine]

Grants, specific grants have string on them for the people who receive them. Yes. But there is almost no oversight on schools who have gotten. You know, the current student loan portfolio for the US is $1.6 trillion. That money did not come with any type of quality control. Any type of student outcomes from your school have to look like X, Y or Z or you have to hit these benchmarks. It didn't have come with any restrictions on how they spend tuition money and it didn't come with any restrictions on how much they charge. So like we're going to write you a check via this 18 year old kid and you can spend it on whatever you want. You can spend however much of it you want. And we're not going to do really anything to assess the quality of education you're providing or the outcomes of students afterwards. And so I think you could make a case like this was a mistake. You gave universities way too much freedom in how they spent this money. They have more freedom over how they spend your student loan money via tuition collected than they spend on endowments. So like, someone gives money to the school, they tell the school exactly how they can use it.

[Robin]

Right.

[Katherine]

Not so for tuition, even if it comes from student loans. So they, you know, you gave schools a blank check. And a lot of economists have argued that the almost limitless portfolio of federal student loans has gone to schools that in ways that allowed them to accelerate tuition increases. And I think even among that set of economists, there is a group that would argue, and they use that to both keep their tuition inflated as well as spend it on things like amenities as opposed to.

[Robin]

To bolster their competition with other schools. Right.

[Katherine]

Yeah. In some ways, schools are like one of the most vicious sellers that you have ever come across because they don't have transparent pricing. Right. They have posted tuition and then they'll say no one pays sticker. And they use the total break between what you could possibly pay and what you actually pay. Which of course they don't tell you what you will actually pay until after you.

[Robin]

Until you're admitted.

[Katherine]

Yeah. Admitted or enrolled. So you don't even know. Like you couldn't comparison shop schools because you don't know how much they cost. So in theory, the federal government is like, look, like we don't need to take a firm hand with universities because they have to compete for students, but they're not. Students are not in a fair fight here because universities use so much obfuscation around tuition in order to basically curate their student set. And they use discounts to tuition and like special scholarships in order to get exactly who they want. They don't tell you what you're going to get. So you can't comparison shop. You couldn't say like, no.

[Robin]

And then you have to accept by. I mean, this is not true necessarily if you're going to community college or if you're going to. But if you're going to an elite college, you have a deadline, you have to make a decision and you may not have all the information you need before you have to buy.

[Katherine]

Yeah. So you're this borrower, AKA student, doesn't have all the information and the school has no limits on what they can do. And the federal government in the meantime, is the one bankrolling it. So I think that for me, the argument of, like, is the federal government to blame? Is like, yeah, man, because you didn't.

[Robin]

Regulate any of this.

[Katherine]

You didn't regulate any of this, and you. And you chose not to. Even as student debt started to get really high and we started to have really alarming reports that debt was starting to jeopardize the return to a college education, you still haven't acted. And universities haven't felt any type of firm hand from a true policy sense other than what the Trump administration is doing is just punitive. It has nothing to do with the student loan portfolio. It's completely different. I think I'm talking about real policy, actual policy.

[Robin]

Well, did you read, I mean, have you read the Republican plan to redo the student loan situation? I mean, it actually is making a couple of the same points you do about basically not writing so many blank checks and trying to cap the amount of, you know, and I don't know if these are good ideas or bad ideas. Right. Like, cap the total amount of money that students at an undergraduate level can borrow. Cap the amount of money their parents can borrow because parents are also getting into trouble with these loans. Also benchmarking the kind of value, but specifically the value of certain types of degrees, which seems very difficult to me. You know, so it's like those philosophy majors who become lawyers, they make a lot of money. Those philosophy majors who become freelance philosophers. Maybe not.

[Katherine]

Yeah.

[Robin]

But anyway, like, some of the ideas seem a little. A little mushy to me, but they're trying to get universities to have skin in the game. Right?

[Katherine]

Yeah. And I think.

[Robin]

Which is different.

[Katherine]

Which is different. Of course, they're like, blame them. And I'm like, no, blame government or hold on, blame both. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Robin]

I mean, which, yeah, again, plenty of blame to go around here, but, yeah, their idea is that. And again, I don't know if this will wind up in any bill or not, but that universities whose students have high rates of default would get punished.

[Katherine]

Yes. And that's, I mean, in some ways, you've seen them do this after the fact when they go after for profit schools that are very predatory. And so I think, like, Kamala Harris is. Her big win as attorney general was Corinthian College. These are basically places that were like, oh, the federal government's writing blank checks to anyone who goes to college. Well, we're now a college and we're going to charge whatever we want for, like, what is basically a garbage education. And think about it, that took lawsuits to stop and then it took another act of Congress to say, well, if we've closed a school for being predatory and exploitative, we have to have a separate piece of legislation to say, and people who owe money from those schools get to have their loans forgiven. So clearly the government understands on some.

[Robin]

Level they were giving loans for people buying junker cars. You know.

[Katherine]

Yeah. And they could do a better job.

[Robin]

And calling it a Cadillac.

[Katherine]

I mean, consider the difference between, you know, getting a student loan versus buying a house. I mean, the government is heavily involved in the mortgage market. You can, you can get an actual loan that is guaranteed by the government. The fha, the VA and the USDA loans, those are guaranteed by the government. But then if you get a conventional loan that is conforming, it gets bought by Fannie and Freddie, the government backed enterprises. So really quick, for people who aren't familiar in the mortgage market, when you go to a lender, a mortgage lender, you want to buy a house, you have to go to someone and they say whether or not you're credit worthy, how much you can borrow, what kind of rate you would get, and so on. Those mortgage lenders are essentially doing the dirty work on your ability to borrow and the house as an investment. So not only do they dig through your personal finances, your tax returns and so on to say that you would be basically good for the money that you're being lent, they also go and check the house and they get the house appraised. And so if it came back that like you're buying a house that's $100,000 overvalued in their mind, I mean, they won't give you a loan for it. So there's lots of vetting of the market to make sure that the amount being borrowed is roughly matched to the qualifications of the borrower and the worthiness of the investment. And the government is like absolutely behind all of this. It's got its fingers in the till. It's like there's so many quality controls. None of that happens for your student loans, right?

[Robin]

Yeah.

[Katherine]

So this for me is the real argument of like, yeah, look, hate student borrowers for being bad at job. I get it, you're better than them. But like the government has absolutely messed up here and we need to do better. And I don't know how we move past where we are now without recognizing that there are casualties to the government's true dereliction of duty and how they treat higher education institutions and how higher Education institutions treat their students. So I think that to me is like the key argument of like, okay, and if you get there, then there's just like so much on the table of what we could do and how to reform higher ed financing is. It's like a wild ride of difference. So yeah, there is there. I think one proposal is to basically keep the system we have now, but add a lot more restrictions on universities. That would be kind of what Republicans are floating, which I think is like at a minimum do that. But another one is to basically make the student loan market a lot closer to the mortgage market, where you have like longer terms, lower rates, like a government backstopping for the resale markets and like kind of a, an appraiser who would basically put some for profit schools out of business and put a cap on things. Now that's one. And then the other one is to go with the either incredibly libertarian or incredibly big government approach of income sharing agreements. Have you heard of these?

[Robin]

Yeah, I have.

[Katherine]

What's the eye roll? The. Ugh.

[Robin]

Well, I think because they were floated is this idea that they, especially for people looking at technology jobs, right. That was the really popular use of it was that you would get a loan to go get an education and then either private enterprise or sometimes companies were themselves paying for it and that they would just basically garnish your wages to get their money back. Am I?

[Katherine]

Yeah. So it was a, it's a Milton Friedman proposal.

[Robin]

Is it really?

[Katherine]

Actually, yeah, it goes back to him. And the idea is you don't pay tuition and in exchange you pay a portion of your income, whatever your income is, for a fixed amount of time.

[Robin]

So like 10% of your income for 20 years or whatever.

[Katherine]

Well, that would be incredible. I think they're more like 5% for seven years or something like that. But like if you lose, that would be better. Yeah, but like if you lose your job, if you end up working as like a corporate attorney, like they just like, however successful you are, they just get like basically a cut of it.

[Robin]

Oh, so if you lose your job and you're making zero income, you don't have to make any payments, you don't have to make it up later. The clock is still ticking on your.

[Katherine]

The clock is still ticking. So it's just that all of, all the money you make for seven years, they get a, they get a cut.

[Robin]

I just feel like the private market was trying to do this and it didn't work out.

[Katherine]

Yeah, well, I mean the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was like, it's A loan and we need to regulate it. And they were like, it's not a loan, it's a financial agreement that doesn't involve debt. And they're like, are you kidding me?

[Robin]

Right.

[Katherine]

And a lot of, of a lot of, a lot of ISAs in like the way that they have been to the extent that we have income sharing agreements today, they have really come out of the private sector. There's companies involved. It's, it's a lot of private schools, some public ones are starting to get into it. But it's, it's all coming from the schools or corporations.

[Robin]

Right.

[Katherine]

Or some type of financial backers and.

[Robin]

They'Re all trying to make money on it. Like yeah, it's not, they're goodness that they're harder or trying to get.

[Katherine]

Or some of them would tell you that they have a hard time recruiting students because they're afraid of student loans. And so they're trying to come up with an alternative financing that can help students because or students have bad credit and then they don't get to go to college. So it affects a lot of places that started to show up first were things like trade schools where you weren't coming out for a four year degree, your mom and dad weren't half bankrolling you or that wasn't really an option. These were like people who were independently living or who couldn't borrow, who, who wanted to get some type of post secondary degree. Yeah. And I think in that world you had people who were like truly heroic doing amazing things with this program to make post secondary education great. And then you know, you've got an unregulated financial market. So you also had shysters.

[Robin]

Yeah.

[Katherine]

And exploiters. And I think that the basic idea is you make universities have, have a skin in the game. Right. Where their fate rests with yours. And if you graduate school, their fate.

[Robin]

Yours is the students.

[Katherine]

Yeah. Like you the student. If you don't do well, your school doesn't do well. And so then they have to make sure you do well. And a lot of the arguments people make against this is that it would like lead to like no more humanities.

[Robin]

Right.

[Katherine]

You know, students would be really pressed into becoming engineers or going in stem. And I think it's a, it's, to me it's a valid point because for all of its faults and failings, the US higher education system is awesome and it's so American. Like you could not get a degree that you get in the United States anywhere else in the world because we have so much freedom over how Our higher ed is structured like where you go, what you study, what's in the degree. Did you take a language?

[Robin]

What was the class? What the. Yeah, I mean what the requirements are to graduate.

[Katherine]

Like I remember the first time I talked to a student from South America who told me like, oh yeah, yeah, well you pick lawyer and you only take law classes for five years. And I was like, oh my God, drive me into the back of a truck, this sounds terrible. Or, or, or you know, you have places like Germany, right. Incredible. Apprenticeship and like middle skills blue collar training programs. And this is true in a lot of European countries. You basically have to decide if you're going to College by like 13.

[Robin]

Yeah.

[Katherine]

Because you either go to the college.

[Robin]

High school, college prep high school or pre trade high school.

[Katherine]

Yeah. You either go to the trade high school or the prep high school and they're not the same and you can't switch. And if you change your mind, too bad.

[Robin]

I know unlike, you know, the United States, we had vocation, we had vocational education in the little town I grew up in. And a lot of people did it and they'd done very well for themselves and you know, start working right out of school. But if they decided after 10 years, you know, as running a hair salon that they don't want to do that anymore, you can still go back to college in the United States.

[Katherine]

Yeah, but you don't, like, if you go to a trade high school in other countries, it's not clear you ever, you never get to go. So the US has a ton of freedom, including over what you study and like take it from someone who was basically a humanities major and now has a PhD in STEM. Like, you don't have to be a freshman STEM. It doesn't matter that I, like, when did I take a math class and when like I had the freedom to follow what I loved and what I fell in love with to, you know, whatever education conclusion I wanted. And I didn't have to decide to be an economist at 13 and I wouldn't have been one.

[Robin]

No. All people would do is what their parents did.

[Katherine]

Yeah.

[Robin]

Because it's all, you know.

[Katherine]

Cause it's all, you know, and I like the number of careers I abandoned before and during college and then honestly the first two years after, I mean it's just like, like seven different careers, some of them a lot bigger timeline than others. But like man, did I was, I did, I walk away from a lot. And then like here I am with a PhD and I run my own business. Like I'm A successful person. It's because I had so much choice and freedom to find out what I wanted to do and not the opposite. So a lot of the how we. How we fix the financing of higher ed rest on this. Like, but how do we keep it special? Like, how do we keep it American?

[Robin]

Yeah. And how do we keep. I mean, it's one of the businesses best. Best exports we have. Right. I mean, people come from all over the world to go to school here because of this system.

[Katherine]

What's crazy is that if you're a student from abroad in America, we basically count all of your spending as an export.

[Robin]

If you're a student, I'm. Wait, wait. We count all of your spending? Yeah, right. Exactly.

[Katherine]

Yeah. Like, you spend tuition. Yeah, yeah. So you. You come from England, you come to the US you pay full freight tuition. You go to the University of Wisconsin. Go Bucky. Right. All of that counts as an export.

[Robin]

Right. It's as if we have exported that education. Exported, Bought by a foreigner.

[Katherine]

Yeah. That little piece of education that you bought is technically counted on our trade balance as an export, which is why education services is one of the biggest trade surpluses we have. Because technically, we export so much education, even though I'm still right here. So that's confusing.

[Robin]

It is confusing, but it's also. I mean, it's also soft political power, goodwill around the world.

[Katherine]

Oh, yeah. And people. People love coming here.

[Robin]

Yeah.

[Katherine]

You know, they don't make movies about college in France. Okay. Like, not the way they'll make it about America. Like, the American college experience is like, that's crazy. I want that. Yeah. I mean, you want to preserve something. So, like. So I went to UT Austin. Go Longhorns. Yeah.

[Robin]

I did not. But I would say Texas.

[Katherine]

I would say Texas. Texas. And then you're supposed to say, yeehaw.

[Robin]

Okay. You want to practice that?

[Katherine]

No, I. I just. I feel like you're not into it. Like, it's. It's got to stay special, Robin. I know. It's a chant that millions of people.

[Robin]

Yee haw. With my Ohio accent probably wouldn't.

[Katherine]

But my undergraduate program had a degree. It was an honors program. And for whatever brilliant reason, they decided to name this honors program Plan two. And that is the name of the major, and it's.

[Robin]

You have a BA in plan two.

[Katherine]

I have a BA In Plan two. And yeah, I mean, obviously people make. That sounds a little rush.

[Robin]

That sounds like a little Soviet.

[Katherine]

I know, doesn't it? The joke was like, I don't have a major, but I plan to. Uh huh. Uh huh. It's good. There's cleverness there. But the major itself is like, I can't even say what it was. It's basically humanities. Like the whole idea was that you got access to really small discussion classes where I took biology, I took math, I took physics, I took languages, I took a Russian lit discussion class. So none of them added up to a major. So they were like, well, we just have to call it Plan 2 because like these people basically studied nothing and everything.

[Robin]

A little of everything.

[Katherine]

Yeah, a little of everything. I remember joking that like, which is.

[Robin]

What a liberal arts education essentially is. And it's a way to get that at a big university.

[Katherine]

Yes, it's a truly liberal arts majorless occupation. We used to joke like, I'm studying to be good at dinner parties, like, or Jeopardy. That was another one we used to joke around of like, wow, pre Jeopardy major. This is the pre. I'm in pre Jeopardy or pre Trivial Pursuit. But I had this like incredibly broad education during which I picked like five different careers. And then afterwards I took an econ stat class that was a requirement in order to take a government class that I really wanted to take on public policy. And so I had to take the econ stat class. And the econ stat class was taught by an economics professor. And it was like the pre econometrics class. And this professor was like, what are you going to do with your life? And I was like, I think I'm going to study international relations and get some master's degrees. And he was like, stop. You need to be an economist. And I was like, that sounds tough. I'm probably not going to do that, but you're hilarious. And then like three years later I was like, so can you write me a letter for an Econ PhD? And also can you kind of gloss over the fact that I haven't taken math in eight years? And also I don't understand economics. Okay, thanks. He wrote me what I assume is an amazing letter because I actually got into a PhD program and I was the only person in my program that did not have a math undergraduate degree or math undergraduate minor. It was like math physics. And I'm like, well, what I learned from my Russian lit junior seminar on the master and Margarita is that actually Russian lit might not prepare you for econometric theory. So, you know, but like, that was my journey.

[Robin]

Yeah, everybody's got their journey.

[Katherine]

And if you plan too much, people don't get to have a journey. And you're never going to Plan as well as people plan for themselves.

[Robin]

Yeah, I mean I just think of college as just being exactly that experience that you're talking about where in an ideal world, and again, this is not the experience that everybody has. A lot of people go to local colleges, community colleges. They, you know, they are commuter students, they don't have to live in the dorm, but you, you're exposed to, you know, people who, who have ideas about their career. My, my freshman roommate was a biomedical engineering major and we were like, in so many ways we came from small towns in the midwest, but I was like, I don't even know what biomedical engineering is also.

[Katherine]

How'd you pick it at 18? Like where'd that come from?

[Robin]

Exactly.

[Katherine]

Like I think this is the part, maybe this is the risk and less so Knightian uncertainty, but like this is the risk that like the beauty and risk of higher education in the US is that the federal government has this like find yourself system that is, you know, to a degree unregulated, to a, to a degree unplanned with the notion that if you sent a lot of bright people to a place and got them together, you know, they are going to arrive at a human capital investment that's better than anything you could come up with and that is a risk. And if you wanted college to be less risky, you would make it centrally planned.

[Robin]

Right.

[Katherine]

You would make us Germany, you would make us Argentina. You would take away, you know, 15%.

[Robin]

Of graduates are going to have to be engineers.

[Katherine]

Yeah, you would have like we need this many engineers and this many people in stem and we need, or this.

[Robin]

Many people are going to be doctors pre med.

[Katherine]

Yeah. And this many pre law. And you would apportion out degrees based on what you saw as necessary staffing requirements for occupations and you could ruin all this magic and have less risk to the college degree. And I think my, like this whole thing that goes back to higher ed financing is that the government benefits so much from the amount of risk that they put into this investment. They get it back. They don't get it back for every student, but they get it back. And so if it doesn't work out for some students, like what do you want to do? Like do you either want to ruin what it means to have college in America or are you going to possibly admit that maybe like, like you didn't take the right step here. Like you, you didn't regulate the people charging this money and let them get away with highway robbery and non transparent pricing and like preying on 18 year olds who don't know how to borrow. Like, this is what the government gets out of. It is like us like reminiscing about like our really dumb degrees. And here we are like very successful people because we went to college. Like, this is what they get. So this like investment in return in risk, it all comes back to like, can the government be better? And does being better, can you do it in a way that like preserves what make colleges great? And I think the answer is an obvious yes. Like, there is no reason why our college experience, you know, needed to have $55,000 a year tuition. Yeah, absolutely not. There's no reason why we couldn't have our college experience if the government said, and by the way, if you graduate, like 20% of people unemployed after five years, like, we won't give you money anymore. Like, I, I don't. I think you could still preserve so much of what makes universities great. Maybe lose like nice gyms, lose dorms, climbing walls, lose dorms that are nicer than my first four apartments. You could lose a lot of these high end amenities and still have college. I remember I was at GW in D.C. this is like 15 years ago, visiting a friend and a group of us like went up to her dorm while she got something and then like we were going down to dinner, I think, and one of the guys who came up with me was like, man, this is crazy. You go to college and your standard of living goes up.

[Robin]

Yeah.

[Katherine]

And that's what college is today. So I think there's a way to like keep the magic.

[Robin]

It's funny, it's like, it's like you're not a starving student anymore. You're like, you're starving after you graduate, but when you're in school, you know, at some places you're getting organic food and made by, you know, hired chefs or whatever. You know, not everywhere obviously, but.

[Katherine]

Oh God. I go back to UT Austin's campus and I'm just like, I'm sorry, what the fuck? Like what? I'm like, truly? Truly what? What the hell? So I, I, yeah, I guess I could talk about this for a long time. I know you could about athletics, but I, this, this to me is there are like steps to how much you want to remake higher ed financing. You could do the, just, let's be tighter on schools and how they spend their money and how they charge students and make sure they're decent schools and make sure they're transparent about, yeah, transparent, fixed pricing. You don't get to charge kids difference amount of money too Bad. That's something I think colleges would like. We can't survive unless we can charge students difference amount of money. And I would be like, honestly, my pulse hasn't even gone up. I don't care at all. You charge sticker price and that's what you charge everyone. Almost every other business in the country has to charge one price. And yet here we are with a thriving economy and you people are the only ones that are sinking ship. So you know what? No. You have to charge everyone the same amount of money. You'll be fine. But yeah, you could. So the first I think is like, you know, step one, let's add a lot more oversight in regulation for people who accept federal loans and I would say federal grants. Step two would be to have a more kind of like radical higher ed realignment with something like income share agreements. Like you could truly remake the way it's financed. What's funny is that the only versions we have now are private versions, but there are lots of proposals to basically run higher ed, like Social Security that you get before you pay for. Instead of schools running an income share agreement, states would. And if you go to any public institution in the state, you pay back like 3% of your earnings and it goes into a fund. And that fund is what funds higher education. Oh, so it's all.

[Robin]

These are just proposals in certain states.

[Katherine]

Yeah. So I know there's a think tank in Washington state and like 15 years ago, they were testifying in front of their state legislature saying you just need to move to an income to a. They didn't call it income share, but they called it a social insurance model. And the thing about the social insurance model is that it would fund all public education, like two year, four year community college. And it all goes in and in theory would fund like their med schools, their law schools. And this is actually my favorite proposal.

[Robin]

It's really interesting from a state that has no income tax.

[Katherine]

Yeah. Isn't it? Well, you would. Yeah. Everybody collects payroll taxes, so you just. They collect unemployment insurance. So they'd figure it out.

[Robin]

And they're. And they, they're doing. Actually they are doing the kind of similar thing in. For long term care insurance in Washington state.

[Katherine]

Yeah, I think Washington state would. I wouldn't be surprised if they, if this does happen, they would be one of the first movers. I think Vermont looked at it too, because there's this whole thing we haven't talked about this entire time, which is that so much of the debt comes from med school and like a really clean Way to help with student debt issues is just, you need to make med school free. And I do think doctors are more important than a lot of other professions. And we should. In med school, should probably be free in nursing school to a certain degree. But I mean, one thing that drives cost in our healthcare system is that, you know, you have doctors that come out with a half a million $700,000.

[Robin]

Yeah.

[Katherine]

Oh, yeah. They come out with half a million dollars in debt. And so they're like, well, I need to make $700,000 a year because, like, look at my debt payments. And you definitely scare people off from going to med school because the debt is so high. So probably med school should be free. I feel very like. And it's okay if lawyers have to Pay or if MBAs have to pay, or if PhDs like me have to pay. I don't really care. We are coming up on some pretty severe doctor shortages. The OB stat that you mentioned is. Is terrifying of the lack of OB care in most counties in the country. So, like.

[Robin]

Nope. And family doctors, general practitioners, you know, they can't make enough money. So they're not. Doctors aren't going into those. Those fields at all. Even though they're probably in some ways the most satisfying and the most important.

[Katherine]

But, like, why would I be an ER doctor or a family practitioner or an ob? Because I can't make as much money. No.

[Robin]

As a dermatologist.

[Katherine]

Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah.

[Robin]

You.

[Katherine]

Yeah. Know, that's like kind of a little sidebar of like. By the way, there's graduate student loan. It's a whole different thing. And med students should be free. And other than that, like. But there's like, I. There's definitely a different conversation to be at about. Or applying this conversation to community college, I think is not as hard as applying this conversation to graduate school because those are the biggest drivers of, like, the overall student loan portfolio is just how much certain graduate programs cost.

[Robin]

Yeah, I did it. This never made sense to me that all of those things are essentially lumped in together. I mean, just even reading these current proposals about trying to set caps, like setting a cap for somebody's undergraduate degree versus their professional degree that's going to take them seven years to finish. Just seems. It just seems ludicrous to be even thinking about them in the same universe.

[Katherine]

Yeah. It really should be a different portfolio and a different policy, But I think the economic argument behind it is the same. The government does have skin in the game. They benefit from who is going to school and how it's structured and what that means for our economy and our workforce. And so they, they need to do a better job of assessing the risk. And I think that I'm bringing this in at the end, but I think med school is like a. It's a very different risk to not have people go to med school. And so I think if you, if you took this type of what does the government get out of it and what does the government contribute to the risk from it, you would come up with like a pretty tailored solution for each kind of major type of college in college. Lending of like two to four year trade school undergraduates and then the types of graduates. Degrees.

[Robin]

Yeah, just go fix it. No problem.

[Katherine]

Okay.

[Robin]

All right.

[Katherine]

Well, that's it. That is yet another thing we fixed here on Optimist Economy. We just fixed higher education. It's all done now. And that was like, what a. What a Thursday. Do you want to just sit and talk about college for another couple hours? Okay, let's move on to executive orders.

[Robin]

Executive orders. First of all, you guys have been sending us executive orders. They're great.

[Katherine]

They're amazing.

[Robin]

We got an executive order from Erin B. In Salt Lake City, Utah. Her executive order is that all consumer electronics need to be serviceable. If my TV or hair dryer or vacuum breaks, I should be able to try to repair it before having to.

[Katherine]

Replace it it indoors.

[Robin]

That is thumbs up for me.

[Katherine]

That is 100 indoors.

[Robin]

Speaking of Salt Lake City, my personal executive order this week is that food in airports should not cost more than the same food if that restaurant is in the same city. And I discovered this actually at the Salt Lake City airport. I was flying through there last year and had actually strangely affordable meal in an. In a restaurant. And I was sitting at the bar next to somebody and she explained to me that in Salt Lake City they had a regulation for the concessionaires at the airport that was a limit on how much they could charge. That would be different from their local restaurant if they wanted a concession. And then I found this story from the newspaper in Salt Lake City saying that the head of the Salt Lake City airport had actually brought that from Portland's airport, where I have never eaten a meal. But anyway, I think that should be universal. You know, gouging people for crappy sandwiches in airports should be a thing of the past.

[Katherine]

Also endorse excellent. Unless there's weird wage effects that come from that, in which case I'd have to rethink it. So. So it's a conditional endorse that I like to Pay less, but conditional on. I do want to make sure workers are paid more. So. Okay. My executive order is downright silly, but I've decided that we need to have a Dolly Parton Day.

[Robin]

We do.

[Katherine]

You would Bring America Together is the greatest celebrity the US has ever had, Will ever have. No one will ever touch her. I just think that she might be one of the greatest living Americans. And we need a day. Not a holiday. Like, not MLK Day. Like, not like, we get it. Like, it's not a day off. Like, she wouldn't want that. You know, she wouldn't want that. She's humble. I just. I want there to be a drag book day, a drag book rainbow day that we celebrate. Kind of like Halloween, where we still go to school, you still go to work, but, like, it is a day. And, like, we do a lot of crazy stuff.

[Robin]

Like St. Patrick's Day.

[Katherine]

Yeah, kind of. Yeah. But like, bigger. Because she deserves. She deserves bigger. I just. She's such an American icon. So my executive order is Dolly Parton Day.

[Robin]

I like it. We like to close our show with our spiritual sponsors. These are the things that are keeping us going this week. Katherine, what's your spiritual sponsor?

[Katherine]

My spiritual sponsor is good Halloween costumes. Like, high concept, well executed, makes everybody happy. Halloween costumes. In part, this came from a letter we got from a listener who, in response to my spiritual sponsor being Abby Wambach's head or goal at the 2011 World cup, told us that she dressed up as Abby or she was Megan Rapinoe, and a friend was Abby.

[Robin]

I think it was her was Megan.

[Katherine]

Rapinoe, and she was Abby. And they went to a party dressed as Abby and Megan. And then occasionally they would just, like, jump into each other's arms to celebrate the goal. And my comment to Robin was, this is the stuff of lesbian legend. And I realized it just hits the sweet spot for me of how much I love good Halloween costumes. And so that is. My spiritual sponsor is thinking about, like, just the best Halloween costumes when they're well executed, when they make you laugh stuff, when I'm just like, yeah, man, this is awesome.

[Robin]

That is great. Yeah, I. I am a big admirer of that and completely incapable of pulling it off. The 1980s were keeping me going this week. So rock of the 80s, if you're from LA, which I'm not, but I, you know, I've lived here a long time. KROQ was. Is the alternative rock station, and they have a second high def radio station on the air here in LA that you can listen to for free has no ads on it, called rock of the 80s. And it is like when you need a hit of the Pretenders or Squeeze the Eurythmics, it is the best. And I took, like, a total detour when a freeway ramp was closed, total detour around the San Gabriel Valley because I was just going to listen to rock of the 80s.

[Katherine]

That's amazing.

[Robin]

So good.

[Katherine]

Well, I love of rock of the 80s. I'm very happy about this. And I wish that we had, like, the rights to some of this music, so we could. Our outro could just be like, the Eurythmics or something.

[Robin]

I was thinking. Yes, I was thinking. Yeah, it should be the Arrhythmics or the strains from Rio at the beginning. The Duran Duran song.

[Katherine]

Oh, yeah. You know, something really Ordinary World. Ordinary World from Duran Duran, I think would be just the first, like, no, I'm not gonna do it. Sorry, I can't sing a tune or hit a note to save my life. So I was about to hum, but then, like, for paus posterity pulled on back, I think. That's it.

[Robin]

That's it. So we want to thank, as always.

[Katherine]

Our producer, Sophie, and our video engineer and producer, Andy.