Your Say: Degrees minus the big debt

To address the soaring cost of higher education, some Texas universities have developed plans for degrees that cost $10,000 in tuition for all four years.

Comments from Facebook:

We're in a higher education bubble (soon to burst), fueled by the massive increase in student loan money. Young people are going to live lives of debt impoverishment if they can't pay off these non-dischargable (remaining after bankruptcy) loans. The $10,000 degree and/or online low-cost courses can break this debt enslavement, finally bursting the insanely overpriced higher education bubble.

Ed Sodaro

For years I have been advocating fully online public state university systems to keep the costs of a college degree down. Keep one or two brick-and-mortar universities per state for the hard sciences, with labs and research facilities.

Steve Mozena

Perhaps it is time for state universities to look at how they serve their students. They could stop requiring students to take traditional core courses, which reduce the number of classes that students can take related to their majors.

Phil Bowman

Stop the government from conning would-be students into mortgaging their lives with student loans. If more students couldn't afford these schools, then the schools would finally figure out how to provide a less costly education.

Karrie Shroyer

Letter to the editor:

I would like to rebut the claim that "granting more credit for previous experience at work, or in the military, risks the dumbing down of degrees" ("Editorial: $10k college degrees are on to something," USATODAY.com, Dec. 2). The U.S. military is the finest in the world. It is preposterous to think that the training, experience and instruction that mold these individuals do not equate to life in colleges and universities.

The American Council on Education has a comprehensive methodology that colleges and universities are encouraged to use when awarding credit for military experiences.

The seemingly innocuous comment, coming at the end of your editorial, fosters a negative stereotype of a generation of veterans who are bettering themselves through education. These veterans are anything but "dumbing down" the classroom; they are enriching it.

Michael Dakduk; Executive director, Student Veterans of America

Washington, D.C.