Posted on 04/24/2009 1:38:20 PM PDT by Justaham
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Friday renewed his call for the government to stop backing private loans to college students and replace them with direct financial aid to young people. Obama said the surest test for success in the challenging economy is a college degree or other training, yet access to higher education continues to shrink as costs rise.
To reverse that, the president repeated his campaign proposal that would eliminate the Federal Family Education Loan program that costs taxpayers $15 million each day.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Sounds peachy keen. But how are those students going to pay back the loans when the job market has dried up?
And to receive these loans, you must participate in the Obama Youth Corps.
Ve give you zexy armbands and boots, ja!
I’d suggest that 0be cut the wages of all publicly supported schools of higher education (That would be all but Hillsdale College) administrators and professors immediately. Issue no Federal Funds to any of them. Either through direct grants, research contracts or student support.
Sounds peachy keen. But how are those students going to pay back the loans when the job market has dried up?
::::::::::
Move to Australia, or some other NON-COMMUNIST country.
The list, ping
Do they all get a KdF Wagen too?
The real question that has to be asked and addressed here is why the cost of college has soared.
25 years ago, the tuition at the U. of Pittsburgh was $1024, the minimum wage was $2. An industrious undergrad could earn his tuition money during the summer- even if he had a low paying job if he worked 500 hours total.
Today the tuition is $13000, the same kid would have to be earning $26/hour to pay it off with a summer job.
Furthermore, repeal Pell and SEOG grants. Repeal the bankruptcy code protections for private student loans. Repeal the various education credits and deductions, as well as tax breaks for educational expenses, whether paid for by private organizations, the Federal Government, or individuals and households.
The cost of attendance for U.S. colleges and universities is increasing seemingly without bound largely due to the Federal Government's continued propping up of demand for a college degree, via "need-based" grants and scholarships and various federally-guaranteed loan programs. Furthermore, such artificial manipulation of the education market eases the stress upon K-12 educators to properly educate their own students with the knowledge and skills requisite for active participation in the U.S. economy and civic society.
More than that, if you factor in taxes and cost of living, e.g., transportation, food, etc.
Of course, if that kid were making $54,080 in the first place, before benefits, why bother going to college at all?
That doesn't mean he understood it though. His proposal doesn't exactly make a lot of sense. For one thing, the only clear proposal is to ELIMINATE THE SUBSIDY ~ I believe that's the payment made to private lenders to manage the loan portfolios.
Eventually the loans have to be managed ~ whether by government bureaucrats, union shop stewards or bankers. If it costs $48 billion (over time) to do that now, it's still going to cost a comparable amount, and probably a lot more, when management of loan portfolios is handed over to union shop stewards and AFSCME organizational reps, to say nothing of the portion passed on to ACORN.
Just checking to see if the student had served his time in the Obama Youth League camp will cost even more.
Subsidies and government loans.
Stop all federal loan programs for colleges and the prices will drop when people stop going.
Why does he have to F^(k with everything?
Frankly, the K-12 people just don't care.
Since K-12 is largely funded by property taxes at the local, county, and state level, then perhaps the citizens of individual counties and states should either start holding their local public school systems accountable or defunding them outright at the ballot box.
Affirmative action doesn't hurt either.
Control the schools and you control the future (and also rewrite past history).
A big part of the artificial propping up of demand for college degrees is the fact that satisfactory “progress toward a degree”, as defined by the college itself, is required for all the federal and state loan programs. So if you need to take some courses in accounting or chemistry, you can’t get financial aid without signing up for a “degree” that you don’t actually need, and taking the silly distribution requirements, many of which are simply jobs programs for professors and lecturers of useless subjects. Even worse, while most schools have an admission category for part-time, non-degree-seeking students, as far as serious courses go, this option often exists only on paper, even for those paying full tab out-of-pocket, because the non-degree students aren’t allowed to register until after all the degree students have registered, by which time the courses that are worth anything are generally full. Taxpayers, including those who are paying out of pocket for their own or their children’s college educations, are being forced to subsidize a huge array of professors teaching useless junk, and students are being forced to waste their time on useless courses.
If President Obama REALLY wanted to save money on education, he’d start with an executive order prohibiting the requirement of any degree for any government job — only requirements should be specific courses OR EXAMS SHOWING EQUIVALENT KNOWLEDGE that the employing agency can show are directly and concretely related to the work that the employee will be required to perform. Then make colleges which discriminate against part-time and/or non-degree students in course registration ineligible for any government-subsidized loan programs. Then watch how fast the course offerings in junk like “Peace Studies” and “Sculpture” and “Lesbian Themes in 19th Century French Poetry” dry up, and how fast the number of sections of courses in physical sciences, accounting, allied health professions, engineering, etc, expand.
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