How Did We Get Into the (College) Debt Trap?

We took out a parents plus loan for $21,000.00 which was dispersed in 2011-2012. My daughter graduated (with a STEM degree) in 2016, we started paying it back in 2017 adding $50 to each payment.

As everyone knows, all federal loans went into forbearance mid-March 2020. At that time I increased, actually doubled our payments.

This is not an excuse, my wife took care of all the loan details but still I should have been more involved but since I had a student loan from my younger days I thought I knew everything. The government starts adding interest to the loans when they are dispersed so a student that starts paying back a loan 9 months after graduation has 5 years worth of interest added on to the loan right from the start.

Our $21,000 loan, which we will pay off by the end of this year, 4.6 years total and in half the amount normally given which is 10 years and with almost 2 years of no interest added has $11,000 worth of interest added. In other words our payback is $32,000 for a $21,000 loan and that with 2 years of no interest.

It is easy to see how a student with $60,000+ in student loans might never pay that back.

Generations of constitutionally low-information university administrators have unthinkingly "followed the money" by promoting the use of unconstitutional (imo), post-17th Amendment ratification stolen state revenues, revenues stolen by means of unconstitutional federal taxes, as politically correct federal tuition assistance for schools.

"10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.

Note that both President Thomas Jefferson, in a State of the Union address, also Justice Joseph Story, had both indicated that the states would first need to appropriately amend the Constitution before Congress could dictate policy, tax and win votes for career lawmakers (my words) by providing funding for INTRAstate schooling, something that the states have never done.

“The great mass of the articles on which impost is paid is foreign luxuries, purchased by those only who are rich enough to afford themselves the use of them. Their patriotism would certainly prefer its continuance and application to the great purposes of the public education, roads, rivers, canals, and such other objects of public improvement as it may be thought proper to add to the constitutional enumeration of federal powers [emphases added].” —Thomas Jefferson: 6th Annual Message, 1806." (The states have never amended the Constitution for new powers for Congress to do these things.)
"The power to regulate manufactures is no more confided to congress, than the power to interfere with the systems of education, the poor laws, or the road laws "of the states [emphases added]." —Justice Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution 2, 1833.
"From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added]." —United States v. Butler, 1936.

In other words, militia training aside, the states would be providing funding for government assistance for schools if everybody wasn't paying unconstitutional federal taxes.

Consider that Justice Louis Brandeis had reflected on 10th Amendment-protected state powers when he introduced his "laboratories of democracy" metaphor, a given state's social spending programs ultimately depending on what the legal majority voters of a given state want.

"[...] a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." —Justice Louis Brandeis, Laboratories of Democracy.

Insights welcome.

The ultimate remedy for unconstitutionally big, alleged election-stealing, Democratic Party-pirated federal and state governments oppressing everybody under their boots...

Consider that all the states can effectively “secede” from the unconstitutionally big federal government by doing the following.

Patriots need to primary federal and state elected officials who don't send voters email ASAP that clearly promises to do the following.

Federal and state lawmakers need to promise in their emails to introduce resolutions no later than 100 days after start of new legislative sessions that proposes an amendment to the Constitution to the states, the amendment limited to repealing the 16th and ill-conceived 17th Amendments.

Again, insights welcome.

For many disciplines, the 4-yr degree is just the entry ticket. You’d have to specialize with a Masters and/or PhD + certifications in order to get anywhere useful or remunerative.

If he’s sitting on his azz with an undergrad and expecting anything - yes, he’s just where he needs to be.

How did “we” get into it? Yeah, “we” is apt. “We” responsible folks get swept up in the aftermath of the stupids and the gimme-gimmes.

Is that supposed to be a hard question?

If the government guarantees college loans to “students” to “major” in gender studies, ethnic studies, women studies and all other crap study whose “graduates” don’t have a chance in hell to repay it, what else other than the current disaster would you expect.

On top of that, because the government is willing to pay any tuition amount, the colleges have raised their tuitions to the moon.

Am I close to the right answer?

Children like freebies