Amy P sent me a link to an interesting post by Joanne Jacobs. Jacobs first links to an item at the Chronicle by Isaac Sweeney. Sweeney says that professors shouldn't tell students that their goals are unreachable, because the student doesn't have good grades or because there are few jobs in that profession.

The commenters disagreed. They said that students have incredibly unrealistic expectations of their future salaries. Some students think that they will make $100,000 as a starting salary after getting a 2 year degree. Many thought that they were going to become doctors, when the professor knew that they weren't even going to pass that class. 

Unrealistic expectations must be contributing to sky rocketing student loan debt. I think we need more goal squashing.