Posted on 03/29/2024 6:08:53 AM PDT by Blood of Tyrants
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At the turn of the twentieth century, Saturday Evening Post editor and Yale dropout George Lorimer bitingly summed up academia when he said “colleges don’t make fools, they only develop them.” On the heels of yet another multibillion-dollar Biden administration college bailout, it seems we haven’t learned the lesson: colleges might not make fools, but they’re certainly trying to make fools of us.
The bailout projects come from a Biden campaign promise: “I will eliminate your student debt.” Half-slogan, half-bribe, this resonated with millions burdened by the unpayable debt brought on by liberal arts degrees that may barely be worth the paper they’re printed on.
[snip]
We should hold colleges accountable for the degrees they hand out and the loans they approve. Think of it as the academic world’s version of a store-return policy. If the government wants to allow students to discharge their debt, the debts should be paid out of the billions of dollars sitting in endowments. This isn’t merely about refunds; it’s a mechanism to hold universities accountable for the practical value of the education they provide. When courts found Trump University to be a scam, they demanded that Trump University refund the tuition to students. Why should this be different?
Those who demonstrate that their degrees haven’t led to reasonable employment would simply apply for a “refund” from their college or university. The student is then expunged from the records of degree-holders and the university must consider them a dropout.
This puts accountability on both parties. For universities, it creates accountability both financially and in reputation. As dropout rates climb for the degree mills offering hundreds of refunds, universities risk falling in the ever-important college rankings and, if the dropout rates really spike, they risk losing funding and accreditation. For graduates, this policy presents a stark choice: hold onto a degree that hasn’t paid off, or relinquish it for financial relief, forcing a reckoning with the true value of their educational choices.
They need to fund these student loans. Whether they forgive them or not later will then be entirely up to them.
bttt
Read the article. It addresses those issues. If too many former students give up their worthless degrees and the universities will be held more accountable.
Or DeSantis’ idea which was to make the colleges themselves co-signers so if the loans can’t be paid back from a women’s studies degree, the college is on the hook for them.
That’s just it. I’ve said it here before.
They don’t want the Universities to pay. Student loan forgiveness is effectively subsidies for overpriced higher education.
It is interfering with free market forces. Intentionally
Why is it the taxpayers are the only people getting scammed by Nikita Bidenskyyyyyyyyyy’s deadbeat student loan”forgiveness”? Why isn’t “academia” willing to put a little blood in the game? They’re the bastards that caused it. A college diploma these days should cost no more that 10 Sugar Pops box tops.
Just get Fed.gov out of the loan and education business completely
If a state wants to subsidize politically-favored universities, that’s their business and they can try to pay for it
The article addresses this issue. Read it.
When I went to college, the tuition was cheap but the courses were difficult and weeded out many students that had no business of being in college. Today, tuition is expensive and the courses today would have been middle school difficulty. Several courses like biochemistry and physics would start out with 100+ students and end up with <20 finishing.
Let the universities issue the loans and change the way repayment is made. Allow the former students to get out of the debt through bankruptcy. The University will take the hit for putting out worthless degrees and the students may mae better decisions.
Also, every new student should have to sit down with an advisor who will show them how much their chosen degree will cost and how much a person with that degree can expect to make.
Right; the whole student loan program is designed to subsidize academia at the taxpayers’ expense (so “forgiveness” is the natural next step).
Higher education became a bloated mess 50 years ago as “students” flooded in for draft deferments; the slow death of many schools is the result of that reduced demand taking its toll. Many schools expanded during the war because of so many “students” on the 10-year plan, and basically locked themselves into an unsustainable overhead.
I’ve been saying this for a long time. The loan fund should be fully underwritten by the universities/colleges that benefit. That way when the guy with the degree in “Bikini Inspector” can’t get a job to pay off the loan, the school or schools fund ends up with the defaulted loan. curriculum would change overnight.
Tax the endowments.
One of my golfing buddies sent that one to me.
Our nation is no longer capable of correcting itself. The irreversible slide is well under way.
Example - Art Curator/Museum Curator: Glassdoor says you can make ~$45k-$81k and the avg is $56k/yr. Senior Curators can make $90k/yr. Great, so an Art History Degree seems like a great idea! In fact, I should get a Masters in Art History to try and fast track to Senior Curator…..six years of school [in theory] and I’m looking at getting hired as a Curator. Put in a few years time and I could be looking at $90k+ a year. Sounds like a no brainer.
But, why is it after 6yrs of school, they only make $22k/yr as a barista and the only “art” they curate is the whipped cream doodles they make in the overpriced coffee they serve? Because it’s all a scam. The public school districts are incentivized to turn kids to higher education so they get more money from the state (lookie at how many of our illiterate brats went to college!).
The colleges are incentivized to have high graduation rates. Who wants to go to a school with high drop out/failure rates? In order to keep the process moving we’ll help steer kids into classes/programs we KNOW they can pass just by the students’ ability to fog a mirror. Fedgov wants the votes, so of course there’s easy credit programs and talk of bailouts etc. Some employers use it as a discriminating factor….can’t discriminate against anything else, but I can hire a debt slave that feels trapped, and like they NEED this job……after what else is a degree in YouTube studies good for?
I have considered that. The plan would be that your advisor must show you what people with the same degree are making in the real world for the first 10 years out of college.
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