They can’t sell your degree, it’s valueless to them.
What if they could? It’s a piece of paper, that people pay a lot of money for. (This would create an incentive for universities to have attendees that don’t later have their degrees get repossessed.)
The paper is not the degree. It is a certificate of having the degree. The degree is the fact of having had the degree conferred. This is an objective historical fact that cannot be repossessed, short of 1984 with its memory holes and workers keeping records updated to agree with currently decreed official truth (that is, official lies). Even if the university is obliged to rescind the conferral, that merely adds another historical fact to the record. If an employer regards the recission as a penalty for defaulting on a student loan, they are free to take that as evidence of the student’s financial standing but disregard it as evidence against their academic record.
No, it’s a piece of paper, which people get for free after paying for a lot of classes, books, living arrangements, etc. for a few years. That piece of paper may be the reason people give for paying so much for these things, but they’re confused—some classmates won’t get the paper, and will pay just as much. And if the bank DID sell repo’d degrees, or the school sold the paper without the classes, the perceived value of the paper would drop to zero pretty quickly.
What if they could? It’s a piece of paper, that people pay a lot of money for. (This would create an incentive for universities to have attendees that don’t later have their degrees get repossessed.)
The paper is not the degree. It is a certificate of having the degree. The degree is the fact of having had the degree conferred. This is an objective historical fact that cannot be repossessed, short of 1984 with its memory holes and workers keeping records updated to agree with currently decreed official truth (that is, official lies). Even if the university is obliged to rescind the conferral, that merely adds another historical fact to the record. If an employer regards the recission as a penalty for defaulting on a student loan, they are free to take that as evidence of the student’s financial standing but disregard it as evidence against their academic record.
No, it’s a piece of paper, which people get for free after paying for a lot of classes, books, living arrangements, etc. for a few years. That piece of paper may be the reason people give for paying so much for these things, but they’re confused—some classmates won’t get the paper, and will pay just as much. And if the bank DID sell repo’d degrees, or the school sold the paper without the classes, the perceived value of the paper would drop to zero pretty quickly.