Posted on 11/18/2016 10:34:25 AM PST by Kaslin
For those of you who are unaware, America is facing a student loan disaster. The facts are frightening. Student debt is now in excess of $1.2 trillion. Yes, TRILLION. To put that in perspective, student debt is more than the total of all of America’s credit card debt.
Now comes the really bad news.
Twenty-five percent of those with student debt are in delinquency or default…that is, right now American taxpayers are on the hook for $300 billion, or approximately $1000 for every man, woman and child in this country.
Yes, you, your spouse and your 4-year-old child who has yet to start pre-school are each saddled with $1000 in student debt.
But wait, it’s much worse. The New York Fed reports that of those who are paying their student loans, fully 71% are only paying interest… potentially leaving the taxpayers on the hook for the other $600 billion in principal. That means your 4-year-old child already owes $3000 in student debt even before starting pre-school. If this doesn’t frighten you, it should.
Well, I have the solution. Read on.
Liberal politicians have complained that “for-profit” educational institutions that are not delivering the education and jobs they have promised should be required to pay back the tuition and fees to the students they have failed. This is one time I agree with them.
But why doesn’t this apply to EVERY educational institution?
Is there any difference between “Joe’s Auto Body Repair Institute” or “Mary’s Hairstyling College” failing to adequately train its students so they can get a job…versus Harvard University failing to adequately train its students so they can get a job…versus a public university failing its students?
When any of these institutions take a student’s money, they are entering into an implied contract to educate that student to be better positioned to survive in the “real world” and be able to repay what it costs to get that education.
So, my solution…
Every educational institution, whether it be Joe’s or Mary’s or Harvard or Ohio State, is ultimately on the hook to repay a portion of the student loan, if the student is unable to.
One could easily argue the college should be on the hook for the entire loan. But let’s be fair and reasonable. The college should certainly be responsible for half of that loan, while the student should take personal responsibility for the other half. The student needs skin in the game too- to force them to get out of their parents’ basement and fight for a job. No one gets a “free ride.”
There is nothing better than a market-based solution to get positive results. These universities are not forced to take a student’s money, but if they choose to do so, this solution will rightly make them responsible and motivate them to adequately educate/train their students and assist them in getting jobs upon graduation.
Remember much of this money comes from loans provided by the federal government. Why should colleges get to take this “easy money” from the government, then let students stiff the taxpayers? Taxpayers are the ones whose tax money made the loan possible in the first place. They should be protected from losses by the colleges accepting these loans.
This solution would mean forcing colleges of all kinds to tailor their curriculum to “real world needs and demands.” At colleges from Colorado State to Harvard this would undoubtedly mean being truly helpful to their entering students by, for example, directing more of them to science and computer majors, than art history or “ethnic studies” majors.
This would not only benefit the students, but benefit America and the economy as a whole, as they would be training and educating students with skills that would actually help America grow and thrive. It would mean each college would have to create a truly robust job placement department, focused on real world needs and demands.
Think how totally depressing it must be for a bright, motivated young person to spend four or more years pursuing a degree that their ivory-towered instructors and so-called “guidance counselors” encouraged them to pursue, only to graduate with $100,000 or more in debt and find there are no jobs for what they have studied.
Is it any wonder one out of twelve college students have not only considered, but actually made a suicide plan?
Eliminating this terrible outcome for so many young people is perhaps just as important a reason to enact the market-based solution I’ve proposed, as saving America’s taxpayers from this exploding student loan disaster.
It’s time our higher educational institutions, controlled by corrupt progressive elites, are forced to focus on results, what is best for their students, and what is good for America, rather than simply continuing to feather their own cushy lifetime jobs and lifestyle- all provided by easy-to-get government loans that students aren’t paying back.
Oh and this would have one more real-world result: Professors who teach one or two courses a week and publish one book a year that no one reads (except their adoring mother) would no longer make $200,000 a year (let alone the $400,000 Senator Elizabeth Warren made at Harvard Law School). Colleges would have to do the same thing every small business owner does- live within their means, cut non-performing employees, lower salaries and reduce pensions.
Result?
*Tuitions would go down dramatically.
*Parents of students would have more money for retirement, instead of working until they die to pay off their kid’s student loan.
*Taxpayers would be off the hook for billions.
*Colleges would join the real world and make sure their customers (i.e. students) get their money's worth. Maybe the Harvards of the world would have to dip into their $15 billion endowment funds to pay back taxpayers, on behalf of their customers (students).
Everyone wins.
This is the simple, commonsense way we solve the impending student loan disaster. Brought to you by a successful small businessman, not a government bureaucrat.
Who forced them to take out the loan? Most people don’t belong in college.
Perhaps Mr Root would like a job in the Trump
Administration ??
What a fool I am. I have 4 kids in or graduated from college and post graduate school. I payed everything myself.
Now I get to pay for everyone else too?
There should be no federally-backed student loans for such liberal arts Majors as sociology, English and anything ending with the word studies.
students become enslaved and universities become training grounds for our political opposition.
you can kill two birds with one stone with this simple move.
Obama did not so much as bat an eyelash while openly declaring war upon Coal.
we, too, should be as bold.
We should not be funding liberal arts majors.
Look at the snowflakes majoring in gender studies. That is a result of our student loan policy
“Here’s How We Solve Impending Student Loan Disaster”
Garnish Obama and ilk’s wages.
We need to sue all colleges that gave out useless degrees to those student stuckers.
Right now, pretty much anything other than in STEM is a useless degree. It is long past time to remove the funding source of all those boxtop degree “professors” who couldn’t make 1940 grade school teaching standards.
Here’s some so-called “common sense” . . . don’t do anything. Let those who borrowed $100,000 to laze about for 4 or 5 years pursuing an uneconomic major, simply have the debt hound them until it is paid or they die.
The additional ideas this article sets out, are fine, but the existing debt now incurred must remain the obligation of the debtors.
Step 1 - end government guaranteed student loans
Step 2 - Allow student loans to be cleared by bankruptcies.
Student loans are a wealth redistribution scheme designed to take money from the middle (and lower) class and give it to the elite.
Claw back the money from the $hit hole “institutions of higher learning” that got it in the first place. Couple that with the requirement for deep discounts on tuition for the upcoming people. Almost all of these crap holes get Fed Funds, just threaten to cut all of it off, then watch what happens. If we don’t “fix” higher education, then all that Trump accomplishes may end up in the long run being for naught.
While this is true, it is also true that every college and university has an office dedicated to assist students to take out loans to purchase the crap education they are selling.
Schools have a great deal of moral hazard in the current system and no skin in the game. This proposal would give them some.
The author is correct in assuming that schools would change their behavior if they suddenly found themselves on the hook for half a trillion dollars in unpaid student loans.
As defined by who, exactly, and what about those schools that were responsible and held costs down?
There is nothing better than a market-based solution to get positive results.
It's pretty clear that Mr. Root doesn't understand the concepts he's talking about.
Defund the Left. Make colleges buy back all the loans at face value, and all new loans cosigned by the college.
Enrollment would plummet, as half of all colleges would be bankrupt, and the remainder would start looking at their students as a business, not as empty minds to be indoctrinated.
Don’t blame me, I went to work instead. Invested. Still don’t have 100k to spend on wall art (diploma), but I’m debt free and doing fine, keeping my mitts out of other people’s pockets.
If I didn’t know better, I would think Root has lost his mind.
I don’t see how any of his “results” would ever be true.
What a racket this is. First of all putting people in debt for their whole lives .....then making them useless and on the dole because they cannot get a job. Also teaching them commie education.
The additional ideas this article sets out, are fine, but the existing debt now incurred must remain the obligation of the debtors.
At least there was attempt to actually attend college.
Much of the student loan money goes to people attending fake beauty schools or trade schools.
The loan money is just a scam where the money is used not for school but to obtain “free money” that there is no intent to pay back.
Don’t be fooled. All colleges are for profit institutions. They may not have stock holders but they do have Presidents and football coaches making millions a year. And many of the professors are taking home big checks as well, not to mention the very well paid staff in charge of the endowment.
Colleges are big business. Whether they are state run or private, they have huge cashflow and huge cash reserves plus they sit on very expensive land which they rarely pay taxes for.
After sending 4 kids to college and paying for everything I can tell you, the most expensive colleges are not the best. They are just the most expensive. A course in calculus is the same at Harvard or Northern Illinois. Your kid is going to learn to drink beer at either just as well.
I do agree that the US should not be the one to guarantee student debt. It should be the schools themselves.
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