To Fix Student Debt, We Must Destroy Its Source: Abolish the Federal Student Loan System Entirely.

The Federalist ^ | 09/07/2022 | Frank DeVito

[SeekAndFind]

Much has been said about President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive $10,000 to $20,000 of student loan debt. The income cap (individuals making over $125,000 per year will not be included in the plan) does little to limit the massive spending the government will incur in wiping out this debt. This is an irresponsible policy; it doesn’t accomplish anything long-term. If colleges will continue to charge exorbitant tuition rates and the federal government will continue to loan young people exorbitant amounts of money to pay those tuition rates, we will inevitably end up in the same place later.

To really fix the problem, Republicans must muster up the courage to abolish the federal student loan system entirely.

Why are we using federal tax dollars to subsidize young people going to overpriced schools, where they are not only being propagandized but often are not graduating with real, useful workforce skills?

If conservatives aren’t ready to propose that the federal student loan system should be abolished totally and immediately, an incremental approach could be to cap federal tuition loans to a certain dollar amount, say $10,000 per student per year. This would at least start making people think more carefully about why it is worth paying such high tuition, if the federal government will not cover the cost and attending these institutions will saddle them with high-interest private loans. If the federal government keeps loaning the money to pay exorbitant tuition rates, students have no incentive to stop paying those rates and schools have no incentive to control their tuition costs and their spending.

Discourage Needless Credentialing

Besides the structural fix, conservatives ought to engage on the grassroots level. Young people should be encouraged to think about trade school or practical professional training (nursing, cooking school, etc.) rather than assume they must head right to a four-year school without a career plan. Additionally, we should encourage eliminating unnecessary credentialing wherever possible. There has been a movement away from requiring unnecessary credentials in the world of policy and government, such as getting a law degree for the purpose of going into politics.

I’ve talked to and mentored young people who are undergraduates and want to get into the world of government, politics, and policy. They all seem to consider law school but don’t actually want to practice law. I do my best to dissuade them and you should too. We need to mentor young people to find better ways to create career paths without spending unnecessary time and money on school credentials that are increasingly useless, if not harmful.

Cultural Crisis

Basically, we have a cultural crisis. Young people finish high school with no sense of where they want to go, so they go to college. The federal government loans them tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars to go there. They graduate and realize that they either still don’t know what they want to do, or don’t have useful credentials to do it. And now they have enormous amounts of student debt. So where do they head next with their debt and lack of certitude about the future? To graduate school. Don’t worry, the federal government loans them the money for those exorbitant tuition payments too. And if the right president is in office, maybe those loans will be forgiven. If you look at it this way, it is madness.

We have both a cultural problem with the way our young people think about their future and a structural problem with the federal student loan system. The cultural change may take many years of teaching young people to look at education, credentials, and careers differently. But the structural problem should be addressed boldly, as soon as Republicans take back control of Washington, D.C. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin showed that fighting the cultural battle on education can be a winning issue for Republicans, and the battle for higher education is critical. Conservatives need to identify and campaign on substantial educational reforms. Part of this should be the end of the toxic federal student loan system that allows irresponsibly high tuition rates to be put on the backs of our young people.

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Frank DeVito is an attorney and a current fellow in the Napa Legal Good Counselor Project. His work has previously been published in The Federalist, The American Conservative, the Quinnipiac Law Review, the Penn State Online Law Review, and the Washington Examiner. He lives in eastern Pennsylvania with his wife and three young children.

[Hodar]

As long as colleges are propped up by tax dollars, and there is an unlimited number of students dumb enough to pay more for a degree, than the degree is worth - there is no need to be either competitive, ethical or moral

[Smokin' Joe]

Student loans should be underwritten by the institutions the students will be attending. The foreseeable change is that Students would be loaned money the institutions expect to recoup, which would mean an increase in marketable skill sets and a decrease in useless degrees. Otherwise, the probability of the University being repaid would be much lower.

With the decrease in Majors which produce unemployable graduates, the departments which produce them would become less desirable to maintain as a matter of the business end of the University system, and hopefully, the amount of Socialist programming would decrease as well as the employed faculty.

It is only the buffer that Federal Loans provide that creates insulation from the realities of the marketplace that permits such nonsense, including the insulation from the realities of a Capitalist economy.

[for-q-clinton]

Make colleges responsible for the loans.

[algore]

Some right and some wrong here.

I think probably there should be some small program for federal student loans based on some kind of service, or commitment to such. it should be limited to that.

If Private student loans were dischargeable in Bankruptcy the rest of the problem would have already taken care of itself.

[Sacajaweau]

Let it go back to the banks where it belongs.

[olivia3boys]

Student loans used to be dischargeable in bk. At first they only had to wait 5 years after leaving school—then 7. What’s to prevent 100% of all student loan borrowers from simply filing for bk at age 21? They’ll get their good credit back by age 28. It’s theft of taxpayer funds and is not the solution.

[lizma2]

I was in grad school when the GSL went into effect.

Every year after, tuition doubled.

Graduated $20,000 in debt from school. Now it’s over $200,000.

[MinorityRepublican]

We should tell high school students that they will not receive federal loans. You will see tuition rate drop everywhere. Some universities will be forced to close. But you have to cut off the fat.

[kearnyirish2]

Here in NJ there was a news story within a week of the “forgiveness” that all 4-year schools were increasing tuition costs; at some point, enough people will realize this isn’t to help students - it is to openly subsidize schools with taxpayer money.

[kearnyirish2]

Colleges have been in trouble since the draft ended in the 1970s; the student loan program helped young people attend college to avoid the draft/Vietnam War, and when the draft ended those “fake students” dried up. Schools that had expanded to deal with the draft windfall faced a reckoning, so the program continued to lend money to students even if the degrees peddled were worthless (and the loans therefore couldn’t be managed by the borrowers). Foreign students made up part of the shortfall, but COVID put an end to that for a time.

Higher education in the US is becoming the same farce as public elementary and high schools, with the same meaningless inflated grades, wasteful spending, and uneducated graduates.

[maddog55]

Abolish all liberal brainwashed in institutions...not just schools.

[A Cyrenian]

Why is it I can't get a 2 million dollar loan for a $200,000 house?

But you can get as much money as you want for a student loan?

Someone has a racket going.

[Wuli]

No. Abolish the dep of ed, and lower taxes by the same amount the dep of ed was costing. The states really do not need the fed dep of ed.

[CodeToad]

The blame is not with the student loan program as it is run but by its mere existence. Colleges charge whatever students can come up with.

[algore]

I suppose you might advocate against the discharge of credit card debts too

Seriously think about what has happened since undischargeable student loans were given out like candy on Halloween

[lizma2]

“it is to openly subsidize schools with taxpayer money.”

Yep. It’s a scam on our dime.