Posted on 05/14/2014 9:16:21 PM PDT by PoloSec
The federal government violates its own student loan rules and wastes hundreds of millions of dollars to subsidize perpetually failing black colleges, including the alma mater of pop star Michael Jackson’s criminally-convicted doctor, a Judicial Watch investigation has found.
The institutions are known as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) and JW’s probe has uncovered documents that show American taxpayers are being forced to fund them even when their accreditation has been stripped, they have dismal graduation rates and rank among the nation’s worst medical schools. For instance, Meharry Medical College (where the late Jackson’s physician, Conrad Murray, got his degree) is renowned for producing an alarming number of inept doctors along with third-world institutions like Manila Central University in the Philippines and the Autonomous University of Guadalajara in Mexico, according to records obtained by JW.
Yet the government continues giving it—and other troubled black colleges—large sums of money in the form of low-interest “loans” that are usually defaulted. This is done through the Historically Black College and University Capital Financing Program and it’s proven to be a massive boondoggle. Obtained from a variety of government sources—including the U.S. Treasury and the Department of Education—the files accessed by JW show that the scandalous investment is not only fleecing taxpayers, it’s also breaking rules created by the Obama administration under a 2010 measure that replaced student loans by private lenders with direct loans by the U.S. government.
Once its own money was in the game, the government decided that student loan lending rules were too loose and default rates were too high. In October 2011, the Department of Education quietly changed underwriting criteria for the transactions, known as PLUS student loans. Those criteria are still pretty low (“prospective borrowers can’t have any current accounts more than 90 days delinquent, or any foreclosures, bankruptcies, tax liens, wage garnishments or defaults within the past five years. But the department doesn’t look at prospective borrowers’ incomes or their current debt load, meaning that poor borrowers with little or no credit history can be approved”), but still resulted in a 10% increase in the denial rate.
Historically black colleges and universities were most adversely impacted by the new credit standards and HBCU officials as well as African American community leaders lobbied the Education Department to change the standards. Education Secretary Arne Duncan apologized about the unintended effect on black colleges but publicly maintained that “our department is required to carry out the law as it was designed to protect parents and taxpayers against unaffordable loans.” Duncan did admit that that the process could have been handled better and that internal and external communications were “poor,” according to a mainstream newspaper.
Behind the scenes his agency quickly circumvented those “laws to protect parents and taxpayers.” In fact, Duncan sent a letter to the Congressional Black Caucus regarding the impact that the new loan rules were having on HBCUs stating that the Department had “used [its] authority to consider ‘extenuating circumstances’ as a method to provide immediate relief for many students, which allowed previous PLUS loan recipients and applicants whose adverse credit determinations were based on a ‘de minimis’ amount of debt to obtain a loan through the reconsideration process.”
The agency has used the accommodation to provide near-blanket approvals for PLUS loan applications from previous recipients, according to the records obtained by JW. This academic year, about a third of the applicants from historically black colleges denied this year were eligible to appeal. Of those, 38 percent, or just over 8,000 applicants, filed for reconsideration. Virtually all of them—98.5 percent—were then approved for a PLUS loan, the records show.
So why does the government continue pouring enormous sums of money into these failing institutions that often can’t even keep their accreditation? The only explanation JW could find among the droves of government records is the Obama administration’s determination of “the importance of HBCUs as a national resource.”
One of the reasons HBCUs still exsists today is because they provide a ‘nurturing environment’ that white schools don’t. I think that’s BS...I had one student tell me half-jokingly that he should have gone to a white school then he could have used the race card if they treated him bad. It was like a 3rd world dictatorship every administrator out for their own piece of the pie.
Funding black racism dressed up as separate and equal education is politically correct.
The federal government would never provide federally guaranteed public loans to Historically White Colleges And Universities.
On Uncle Sam’s Higher Education Animal Farm, some animals are more equal than others.
Neighbor of mine has a coworker who got his degree decades ago from a HBCU. His one goal in life was to make sure his kids never had to go there. He put them all through name big schools.
Truth is the new pornography.
Howard University receives a $200 million appropriation from Congress ever year and it’s still financially and organizationally troubled.
“But I would love to know, how do you justify these colleges when blacks are not being discriminated against in attending any other college of their choice.”
They are past that; they are given seats in “regular” colleges for which they aren’t even qualified.
Black colleges can’t disappear now because they are the only schools where poorly-educated black students can be comfortable and “play college student”. When I was in a state school too many of them were very obviously behind their non-black peers; this caused low morale and high drop-out rates. Black colleges can maintain the facade that they are prepared for the twenty first century, especially when employers are forced to hire them for jobs for which they aren’t qualified.
Bookmark.
Yet we dutifully do as we are told. We vote every couple years, comfortable in the fantasy that we still live in a constitutional republic.
“Either they assimilate with the rest of us, and become responsible for their own destiny, stand up on their own two feet and do for themselves, or they will continue to lag behind the rest of us, by choice.”
A large number of them have already made the choice. The problem is that it is financially unmanageable, as an increasing number of poor non-blacks play the same game and jump on the bandwagon. “Black colleges” and affirmative action quotas are irrelevant when large swathes of the population have opted to breed bastards for income rather than do something productive/worthwhile.
Black students who are well suited for second-tier private schools are accepted in Ivy League universities under affirmative action policies. Black students who would do well in state schools are accepted in second-tier private schools. Black students who are well suited for HRBCs aren't enrolling there because they are getting accepted in top state schools. Etc., etc.
The end result is that many of these HRBCs are filled with students who wouldn't even have been considered solid 8th-grade students a couple of generations ago.
I thought segregation was over????
Oh, that is right. You can still segregate if you are nigra and want to.
Now if you are the white boogey man you cannot segregate into white schools, white neighborhoods, white churches, white clubs, white organizations, etc.
But you be a nigra and you can have all the single race clubs you want......
I think I am getting the handle on being whitey and getting more pissed.
We are joining South Africa and Rhodesia once vibrant countries, who were destroyed from within by lib/commie socialists.
IRS said to make $13B in improper refunds
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3155948/posts
One simple solution: have the college co-sign the loan. If the student comes out of the school unable to get a job which would allow him to pay off the loan, the college has to give back the tuition money.
The last sentence of your statement sums it up perfectly.
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Thanks PoloSec.
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