The Biden administration has been in place since spring Student loan debt canceled for certain groups of students. One such group was Graduates from the ITT Technical Institute, a school accused of misleading students about career prospects, earning potential, and credit transferability. Before that were Disabled Borrowers, and before that were graduates of Corinthian College – a so-called profit-oriented College also accused of misleading students.
But these “targeted aid measures“Treat symptoms while neglecting the disease.
Any action on student loan issuance should only be taken after a real discussion more dramatic reform of higher education, including its finances.
Cases of graduates with disabilities or graduates from ITT and other “profitable” colleges are mostly distractions, and the schools themselves serve as scapegoats for sins that many institutions, such as law schools, commit. Dedicating airtime to these limited cases creates the illusion that irresponsible schools and cases of hardship caused by student loans are few and far between. Casual watchers may think that the regular higher education system is largely healthy.
The opposite is of course the case –most Universities are not only irresponsible, they are predatory; and cases of hardship are the rule, not the exception.
American student loan debt is now over, according to the Department of Education $ 1.7 trillion, that’s $ 739 billion more than the country’s outstanding credit card debt. That burden is borne by more than 40 million Americans, most of whom are not disabled and have attended respectable, accredited institutions rather than for-profit colleges or other seemingly seedy businesses.
On average, they graduated with $ 30,000 to $ 40,000 in student debt (though graduates owe much more). That is more than twice as much as was supported by graduates 20 years ago. the The cost of college has increased by more each year twice as high as the rate of inflation and faster than any other economic sector.
Since these loans are amortized with interest, the actual amount repaid is often more than twice the original balance outstanding – and sometimes even much more if fees are charged for deferral or deferral and then the interest charged during that time to the rector.
While income varies by area, the majority of graduates can only modest salaries. The salary level for college graduates is stagnating, confirming that tuition fees do not match the actual market value of a degree. Most of these graduates will use their student loans for most of their professionals lives; this obligation becomes impede or delay home ownership, family formation and any real wealth accumulation. While sources often report that around 15 percent of all student loan borrowers default on payments at some point, this figure is now viewed as dramatic understatement.
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In the meantime, the schools that got the money – but not the debt – will move on to spend and expand, especially on DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) bureaucracies. These administrators enjoy handsome salaries and growing numbers and power on campus. Many use this influence to press open anti-Americanism and neo-racist agitprop under the guise of tolerance, non-discrimination, security and equality.
With soaring tuition fees, middle-class Americans are literally funding the salaries of their opposition today cold civil war– in fact, they are pledging their own future for it.
To top it off, after spending so much time and money on degrees, those same graduates don’t even get quality education (with the exception of certain STEM degrees). Through a variety of indicators, Graduates know less than their predecessors in world history, American history, American citizenship and finance, and other subjects. you also have lower skill levels in reading, writing and critical thinking.
Indeed, many surveys show that college students NS knowledge during their academic years.
Given this situation, a moratorium on funding for higher education would be appropriate – to allow for a scrutiny of declining quality and rising costs of the college before another crop of indebted, low-skilled graduates is produced.
But instead, the Biden government continues to throw crumbs at those fixated on the symptoms, not the disease.
Two proverbs come to mind: “If something can’t go on forever, it won’t”; and, “If you owe the bank a little money, you own the bank; if you owe the bank a lot, you own the bank.”
If officials keep kicking that can, America’s young people could wake up to the power of their numbers and take matters into their own hands.
Let’s hope they target the real villains in this story: the politicians who said “everyone should go to college” seduced children into debt and created a system that enriches schools but impoverishes young people; and the institutions that filled their pockets, unleashed their politics, and instilled ideology rather than education to students.
Teresa Manning is Director of Policy at National Association of Scholars and Vice President of the Virginia Association of Scholars. She is also the author of Dear colleague: The armament of Title IX.
The views expressed in this article are one’s own.
