One of the ways to cut the big-spending binge engaged in by the federal government is to terminate the racket of college loans. It's counterproductive, discriminatory and a bad investment for both taxpayers and students. Posted on 06/12/2012 5:40:43 AM PDT by Kaslin
One of the ways to cut the big-spending binge engaged in by the federal government is to terminate the racket of college loans. It's counterproductive, discriminatory and a bad investment for both taxpayers and students.
College-loan debt has soared to nearly a trillion dollars, more than credit-card debt or auto-loan debt. Financial commentators are beginning to compare college-loan debt to the housing bubble that nearly brought down the banking system in 2008.
However, it's not the banks that will be the big losers if the bubble bursts. It's the taxpayers, because the government is now on the hook for the majority of student loans.
Even worse is the burden on students. The debt requires students to keep paying for a product that lacks its advertised value either in education or employment opportunities. College education has been dumbed down to enroll more and more taxpayer-subsidized students, even if they take only remedial (aka high school) courses.
College-loan debt is a powerful deterrent to marriage and to getting on with life. Students cannot discharge the debt in bankruptcy, can't get a job that justifies the loan and may have had a lousy education.
For years we've heard the propaganda line that everyone should go to college and that a college degree will improve your status in life and standard of living. Not any more. In Obamaland, 53.6 percent of young college graduates are jobless or working jobs that do not require a college degree and don't pay enough to retire the debt.
Making college loans more generous and easier to get does not make college more affordable. The easy availability of loans encourages colleges to raise tuition rates faster than inflation in order to rake in more taxpayer money, while discriminating against those thrifty enough to pay their own way.
The entire structure of college loans is discriminatory. It forces people who don't want or are not able to go to college or who work to pay their own way, to contribute taxes to support those who go to college at other people's expense, often at pricey elite colleges.
College loans seem to be based on the same pie-in-the-sky fiction that going into debt to buy a house you can't afford is a good investment and will make you a worthier citizen. That's another expensive lie told to gullible people by bankers and bureaucrats who should have known what they were doing.
Then there's the problem, as reported by the Washington Post, that nearly 30 percent of students with student loans drop out of college with debt but no degree. Of those who remain in college, the majority take five or six years, thus significantly increasing their debt.
This wastes some of what should be the most productive years of an American's life. When I went to college, carrying a full load of classes, I worked a 48-hour week to pay my own way, and I can't figure out what today's college students do with their non-study time.
Why do spokesmen of both political parties keep urging us to import more and more foreign college students and falsely tell us they are "the best and the brightest"? And why do we let jobs subsidized by U.S. taxpayers go to foreigners?
In 2010, Obama gave $300 million of his stimulus money to two Michigan plants to build electric car batteries. It turned out that the plants are owned by Koreans who outfitted their factories with Korean equipment and supplies and hired Korean workers.
Another major problem for students is that, having incurred all that indebtedness, most colleges today are a hostile environment for conservatives and Christians. A new report by the National Association of Scholars called "A Crisis of Competence: The Corrupting Effect of Political Activism in the University of California," explains that college graduates are alarmingly ignorant about history, literature and constitutional government because many professors have replaced real teaching with political indoctrination.
Another cause of higher tuition rates is paying high-salaried professors to teach worthless subjects that might justify one lecture but are not worth the price of a semester course. Let's hear demands that wealthy colleges use their extraordinary endowments to pay off college loans and thereby make restitution for teaching left-wing propaganda masquerading as education.
Obama is not doing you a favor when he gives you a college loan. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that college loans are part of Obama's policy to make as many as possible dependent on government, as well as to deceive us by keeping young people out of the unemployment statistics and in the totals of those attending college.
It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that college loans are part of Obama’s policy to make as many as possible dependent on government....
^^^
C’mon, Phyllis, you are leaving out yet another goal, i.e., to predicate a bail-out that will damage the economy even more.
The Democrats have here created the political equivalent of “In Case of Fire, Break Glass”.
Their ace in the hole is that they can propose to forgive the outstanding debt burdens at any time their backs are really up against it and they are in danger of losing their power.
I expect to hear the sound of breaking glass by October.
AMEN!!!! BIG COLLEGE!!!! What a Racuet!!
My son the doctor got out with $200000 in student loans, all were deferred but one to Bank of America for $80,000.
All BOA had to do was to contact him before default and get him to sign a form to defer it til he gets out of residency.
They let it go and sold his low interest student loan to a New York Collection Agency that tacked $21,000 on to the loan and are making him pay $900 a month at 21% interest.
Crime?
Except for the credential. The diploma is important to one's employment prospects. Yes, it doesn't at all affect how good one does one's job; but in the current climate, it's an absolute requirement for many positions to avoid getting your resume tossed immediately into the trash can.
Add this step:
Forgive the outstanding debt on the student loans by charging it off to the taxpayers.
Bingo!
But students are now becoming aware of what they signed up
for....it is starting to trickle down....
So schools will be cheaper when they get rid of dramatic
writing, cinema, gender studies programs and other
super-niche programs, and lump only a few of
those classes into broader categories, thereby getting rid
of many subperforming professors, and they won’t attract
the binge drinking, netsurfing,perhaps STD carrying, depressed
students.
I don’t know if it’s important but I have been told by someone
(this person has very good inside information) that the main medications
dispensed at their school health care facility are birth
control pills, and antidepressants. Can you imagine trying to
learn something worrying about side effects of BCP’s or
being depressed? Or both?
bcp I totally understand
antidepressants is interesting
I have heard that Adderall (not an a/d but a stimulant) is known as the "breakfast of champions" on campus
Our salary schedule is online if you take the time to look around for it. At the two schools I'm working in, adjuncts start at $32.50 and $40. Full-time instructors start at $50,000 at the community colleges in the area. Of course, "full-time" is a relative term ... apparently somewhere between 25 and 30 teaching hours per week plus however many office hours they put in, minus all the time off.
Adjuncts generally have no benefits package, but the full-time staff has the same package as that offered to the public school faculty and staff.
I consider the pay adequate as long as I can get enough hours each semester. Perhaps others would consider it too high or too low. I'm earning 1/5 of what I earned the last year I worked for the telecom company, if that will help you determine my actual worth in the market.
Obama Breaks Down Student Loan Overhaul
He will also talk about the provision’s less controversial expansion of Pell Grants, as well as supporting historically black and minority institutions and caps on student loan repayments.
According to the White House, “New borrowers who assume loans after July 1, 2014, will be able to cap their student loan repayments at 10 percent of their discretionary income and, if they keep up with their payments over time, will have the balance forgiven after 20 years.”
http://whitehouse.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/03/30/obama-breaks-down-student-loan-overhaul/
So basically, you need to make sure you buy or rent a living space expensive enough to maximize your non-discretionary spending, so you make the absolute minimum student loan payments for 20 years. Then the debt disappears!
Or more acurately, your debt gets paid by other Americans, which is “free money”!
Those of us who pay off our loans and debts sure look like chumps.
“These investments complement President Obama’s broader agenda for higher education and will help us reach his goal of America having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020.”
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/10326-higher-ed.pdf
(no mention given to QUALITY)
“Public service workers such as teachers, nurses, and those in military service will see any remaining debt forgiven after just 10 years.”
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Politics/health-care-obama-signs-student-loan-overhaul-legislation/story?id=10239569&page=2
One thing you should explore is the amount of power the government exerts over those in debt to the feds on student loans. First, the debt can not be bankrupted. No matter what, you are stuck with that loan until you pay it off OR 20 years (whichever comes first) with the interest continuing to accrue.
Second, if you do default on the loan, you are no longer eligible for a number of federal programs nor can you collect a tax refund. Or any money the government may legitimately owe you.
Third, if you choose certain career paths, the government will pay off some or all of your student loan. Of course, most of these careers otherwise cannot attract quality applicants and if you drop out of the program, you still owe the loan.
Fourth, and I believe this is the real reason for the federalization of student loans, the majority of those who never graduate college take out student loans. And statistics say they tend to make less than those who graduate. However, they have to pay off that loan regardless. Therefore, since the interest generated on the loan goes to the government, they end up paying a stealth tax to the government without the feds ever having to pass a bill.
Think about that for a minute. A family of three earning $25k pays something along $500 in income tax. But a family with two average student loans ($23,000 each) at the normal 6% = $2,500 in interest to the government. Of course, that number goes down as the balance on the loan decreases, but in the years you are earning the least, the government collects the maximum amount of interest. In the later years, when the interest collected goes down, your income is very likely to increase, therefore increasing the income taxes collected.
It’s a way to collect more money for the government from the lower classes without actually passing a bill to tax them. Heck, for that matter, most folks view it as a benefit from the government when it’s actually a direct tax on the poor.
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