A Modest Proposal: Make Universities Pay for Student Debt Forgiveness

PJ Media ^ | 10/25/2020 | David Solway

[SeekAndFind]

It is no secret that the student debt burden in America, now estimated at a cumulative $1.64 trillion, is one of the greatest scandals of a scandal-debauched age. According to Forbes, it is now the second-highest consumer debt category, higher than both credit card and auto loan debt, and behind only mortgage debt. It represents a crisis of national proportions.

Notwithstanding the rosy assumptions we sometimes come across, refinancing is merely a stopgap measure that only marginally relieves the pressure blighting the lives of graduates. Student loan forgiveness, a more dramatic attempt to deal with the problem, comes in several forms, the most popular of which are Public Service Loan Forgiveness and Teacher Loan Forgiveness. These desultory programs are clearly insufficient to address the magnitude of the predicament in which approximately 45 million graduates find themselves encumbered by oppressive university loans and shadowed by the specter of default. By the same token, such provisions come into effect only after 120 qualifying payments and bristling with qualifying conditions.

The Trump administration has proposed an alternative measure. According to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, “The administration feels that incentivizing one type of work and one type of job over another is not called for. And we have a demand in our over 7 million jobs going unfilled today, and favoring one type of pursuit over another type of pursuit philosophically doesn’t line up with where we are.” The proposed solution is “a single income-driven repayment (IDR) plan,” involving “affordable monthly payments based on… income,” with the balance to be forgiven after 15 years of repayment. While a distinct improvement on current practice, this solution does not go far enough.

[SeekAndFind]

Here are the salient facts. Annual tuition fees and assorted costs at the most prestigious colleges and universities range from $70,326 to $75,003. Many students who have paid such prohibitive fees and ancillary expenses for the privilege of graduating into a competitive and remorseless world now find themselves with degrees that may be worth little in the marketplace, stranding them with debt that may never be repaid. How a degree in Gender Studies or Sociology or Critical Race Studies will enable them to make their way in the world and honor their obligations is obviously moot. Others have found paying jobs but are saddled throughout their earning years with crippling liabilities.

At the same time, many of these universities—and in particular the major players in the academic arena—are awash in funds, thanks to federal and state funding for both public and private (for profit) institutions, including the recent upsurge in Pell Grants, amounting to hundreds of billion dollars. Add to this largesse significant alumni donations. Additionally, universities like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Georgetown—among others—profit from hundreds of millions in foreign funding in the form of gifts and contracts flowing mainly from China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. These endowments remain “massively underreported.” The universities are floating on a sea of funds, both disclosed and undisclosed.

[Truthoverpower]

I’ll chime in as a engineer here

If you want to learn all you need is a book

Teachers can be useful

With the Internet, you can find critical documents more easily than you ever could’ve by traveling around to different libraries

The library is a very very great thing

Higher education should be free , but this just means kids sitting in a room by themselves reading books. You just need to provide study rooms - library’s are great for this

For the most part we can just do away with professors , and their political opinions.

[UnwashedPeasant]

Colleges should pay for scamming people into worthless degrees and burdening society with brainwashed thugs.

A school should not be rewarded equally for producing an engineer and for producing an Antifa militant.

[UnwashedPeasant]

For the rip-off price of college, you could hire the best professors for private tutoring, while skipping the core indoctrination classes.

[freedumb2003]

Yep, all that free federal $ floating around, upping tuition was an easy way to feed the need for greed.

The whole postsecondary indoctrination system needs to be overhauled. It looks like COVID may deliver that to us. If you are a Pepperdine or a Harvard and attendance is no longer allowed on campus, what are you offering?

I assure you, a virtual college experience is no experience at all.

[LegendHasIt]

Here is a more modest proposal:

Make people pay back the money they borrowed.

Let the individual borrowers sue the school if they can prove that they were somehow coerced into borrowing money for a degree that is worthless in the real world.

[stanne]

Colleges are financed by the government. You make them pay the government gets charged.

That’s all

Obama did this.

[PAR35]

My suggestion was to tax university endowments to pay down interest on the student debt. 10% per year.

[vpintheak]

Great idea! But leftists would fight it tooth and nail. It is a huge source of indoctrination and money laundering to leftists around the nation and world. They won’t like anyone threatening to take away that gravy train.

[dwilkins]

This isn’t the worst idea to fix the current problem. But, going forward I suggest that the government get out of the student loan business altogether. The primary problem is public backing of the loans. If private banks or institutions had to back the loans they would be restricted in more rational ways.

Here’s my plan: Student loans would be issued by the schools directly. Students would be able to default on the loans without penalty, but this would result in the school revoking all of the credit hours paid for by the loan. The schools would be encouraged to give loans to students who were smart enough to actually finish their degrees in fields that actually produce something useful. If the students get conned into a worthless degree field they would have wasted their time but it wouldn’t weigh them down for the rest of their lives. It’s a pretty simple system.

[jcon40]

The people clamoring for the Gov to provide free college are the same ones denouncing capitalism which would provide the jobs they seek.

[preacher]

l8r

[qwerty1234]

There is no student debt ‘crisis’, the average student graduates with $25K in debt last time I checked, if after 4 years of college you have not improved yourself enough to pay off $25K in a couple of years, then not my problem.

If you were dumb enough to go into $250K debt for that PhD in French Literature, also not my problem.

Pick a good major, goto a state or school or community college, and study hard. It’s not that difficult.

[jrestrepo]

Also as an engineer, I agree. However, I started school about 2 years too early. My first 2 years were very mediocre, then one day I realized that I would have to graduate and get a job. My grades greatly improved.

[ETCM]

Ideally, not only make them PAY for it, make them ADMINISTRATE it.

Unfortunately, buried in the affordable care act (you have to pass it to find out what’s in it) was language that effectively killed private student loans. Now, FEDZILLA is the bank, and holds almost all of the debt. Forcing the schools to pay would be almost impossible. You could pass laws making it easier for students to sue schools, but I doubt that would be very effective.

[BuffaloJack]

The problem is Credential Creep, i.e., more and more employers requiring advanced degrees for workers who won’t actually be using their advanced degrees, but instead will be doing technician work. This opens the door for H1Bs to take jobs from Americans and for universities and colleges to ramp up their tuition and fees, because they know the students can get loans that they don’t need to pay back until they’re out of college.

[fella]

Most institutions of higher learning have huge tax-free endowments they could tap into.

Not to mention their professional sports organizations.

[roadcat]

If you want to learn all you need is a book

Teachers can be useful

With the Internet, you can find critical documents more easily than you ever could’ve by traveling around to different libraries

The library is a very very great thing

Good information. I was an I.T. engineer before retiring, found 3 of the 4 useful. The 1st one is important, find the books. The 2nd one is important, having teachers telling you which books to get and how to find them. The 3rd one wasn't around for me until late in the field. The 4th (actual libraries) I used to a great degree.

College wasn't very useful (worked while attending, no loans). Getting your foot in the door and self-teaching by studying manuals is better.

[Starcitizen]

76% of American STEM graduates are unemployed or underemployed working at Starbucks and Walmart, while H1Bs, OPTs and assorted other mainly Indian and Communist Chinese visa holders get all the jobs.

If anyone was lied to, it was these students.

These are not the “Studies” degrees derided here.

Forgiveness should share with these folks. And... while independent learning from a book is fine, that book doesn’t grant a thing called a degree.

[Starcitizen]

Wrong. No degree means that filthy Indian scum with a mere 1 day training certificate can come over and take even more American jobs. That’s why degree requirements were increased (and NASSCOM, the Indian IT trade group sued the Trump Administration over this

Indian degrees need to be checked for American accreditation. Something the USCIS is not doing.