> I haven’t seen any evidence that they did any such thing.
If you pull your head out of its current location, you might see what everyone else sees - an industrialized scam preying on the young.
We used to consider “the young” adults.
Great summary on that last. We are turning our young into indentured servants. I do see quite a bit of awareness on this by younger folks over at r/The_Donald, FWIW.
That, sir, is an outstanding description.
I have seven kids, and I went to college and medical school (long ago)/
So far, I have three kids with bachelor's degrees and a college junior, with zero loan debt. My Dad paid for college, I paid for medical school, zero debt. I'm sure college will become "free" right after I write the last check for kid #7.
I say that only to show that I have no personal reason to gripe about the system or to favor loan forgiveness.
But you're right - the scope and nature of the "student loan" scam, once you've bumped into it (four times, so far!) is disgusting.
Most of the objections here are pragmatic, and wrong. Degrees aren't "worthless" - I was an English major, and I learned more about human nature and people in danger than I ever did in medical school. My three graduates all have liberal arts degrees, all are employed (not at Starbucks), and all are better people than they were in high school because of their educations.
There are students for whom post high school education IS worthless, and they shouldn't be going to college.
But they have to, because businesses can't IQ test applicants (Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424 (1971)), and from then until about five years ago, the ability to get a bachelor's degree was a reasonable replacement (except of course for cost and the wasted four years).
What has happened now, of course, is that this replacement for IQ testing has lost its value, because now anyone can go, basically for free (except those pesky loans), grading and failing to confer degrees is "racist", and the cost is skyrocketing far beyond the dollar value, while the personal improvement value is falling, because 1) everybody goes and 2) the intellectual challenge is being eliminated, again, because colleges "can't discriminate" - when discrimination (smart and future oriented vs. stupid and lazy) is their entire purpose.
Of course, the indoctrination is terrible - but it's worst at the high end, and the Ivies + Stanford and Duke are training for the ruling class, which is a whole OTHER subject - if Johnny and Jane want to run the government or make a fortune FACILITATING the government as lawyers and lobbyists, becoming indoctrinated in leftism is the price of entry, and in dollar terms, is MORE than worth it. Of course, it's also social carcinoma - but that isn't the main problem with the loan system.