Posted on 07/17/2019 6:58:33 AM PDT by Kaslin
In the lead-up to the 2020 elections, we’ve heard several proposals offering free college tuition for all, and loan forgiveness for those still carrying debt.
While proponents call these proposals “investments in our future,” the reality is they would be a suffocating financial burden on every taxpayer, but especially on middle- and lower-income citizens. There’s an inherent unfairness to forcing many working-class Americans who couldn’t afford to go to college themselves to pay off the loans of those who could.
Requiring a family making $50,000 a year to pay off the college debts of doctors, lawyers, engineers, and even some members of Congress who make $174,000 a year is unconscionable. Moreover, how fair is it for those who did go to college and worked hard to pay off their loans to then be forced to pay off everyone else’s?
What would the American people be paying for with all this “investment”? As a former university dean, someone who has been involved in education policy for decades, and as a parent and grandparent, I’ve seen firsthand everything from the decline in educational quality to the toll of massive college debt on students and their families.
American colleges and universities are failing in one of their most basic missions: to equip students with the tools they need for a career. Many students graduate ill-prepared to earn a living and pay off the enormous debt they accumulated getting their degrees. Forty percent of those who start college don’t even finish within six years.
Despite these systemic issues, colleges continue to raise tuition. Because federal loan money is handed out with little scrutiny as to the student’s ability to pay it back, colleges have had free rein to raise prices at rates often double the inflation rate.
Flush with all that money, their first spending priority often isn’t the classroom but the bureaucracy. From 1987 to 2012, America’s higher education system added more than half a million administrators, doubling the number of administrators relative to the number of faculty.
With federal loans accounting for much of the $1.6 trillion in outstanding student loan debt and more than a million people defaulting on their loans each year, taxpayers are already picking up much of the tab for this broken system. “Free” college tuition would only make things worse, creating an inflationary spiral: As more taxpayer dollars were funneled to schools with even less discretion than exists today, schools would keep raising costs.
So, what’s a real solution to student debt?
Rather than throw more money at the problem, the surest way to stop the sharp rise in both college tuition and student debt would be to get the federal government out of the student loan business. That would cut off the open spigot of money that has allowed colleges to increase costs virtually without limit.
Restoring private lending would require both the lenders and the borrowers to be more responsible with loan amounts and would cause colleges to rein in costs to create more affordable choices for students. Private lending would also limit taxpayers’ exposure to billions of dollars in loan defaults.
One emerging lending solution is income-share agreements (ISAs), where students obtain financing through the schools themselves and pay it back based on a fixed percentage of their income after graduation. That means when their income is lower, their monthly loan payments are, too. As their income grows, their payments go up proportionally.
ISAs aren’t a blanket solution for every student, but they are one new innovation. They allow students to see — before they take on debt or choose a major — what types of careers will allow them to pay off their loans quicker and what kind of future they are investing in for themselves. They also incentivize colleges to ensure their students graduate and enter careers that enable them to pay off their debt.
Cost-saving and more transparent solutions like these can be a win for both students and taxpayers. Moreover, getting the government out of the student loan business rather than deeper into it would also eliminate much of the politics in higher education. Wouldn’t that be a good thing for everyone?
Second, colleges have to realize they can't be everything to everyone. Not all majors need to be offered.
Third, require "professors" to actually teach and not pawn it off to a grad student.
Table 2. Married Filing Joint Taxable Income Tax Brackets and Rates, 2019
Rate Taxable Income Bracket Tax Owed
10% bracket:
$0 to $18,650 10% of taxable income
15% bracket:
$18,650 to $75,900 $1,865 plus 15% of the excess over $18,650
Using the std deduction of $25K, taxes on $50K - $25K = $25K are: 10% on first 18.6K = $1860 +
15% of $6.4K = $1,000. Total taxes = 2,860 - child tax credits of $500/kid. Lets say 2 kids. then total taxes owed is around $2,000. An effective tax rate of 2/50 = 4%.
A ‘free’ college education is worth exactly what it cost...
Stop talking sense. You shall get the College Elite Establishment riled up, and they will pen nasty letters to various highly regarded publications read by about
0.002% of the entire population of the United States, and they will engage in Professional Two-Minute Hates against the great unwashed Wal-Mart crowd.
Solution to student debt problem:
1) Cap borrowing for college at $10,000.
2) Cap borrowing for attending degree mills, nail & hair colleges, etc. at $0.00.
3) Tax university professor and staff income over $100,000 per year at 100%.
4) Require a personal finance course for high school graduation.
The article doesn’t even mention that many (most?) of the degrees earned with borrowed money aren’t worth the sheepskin they used to be printed on. Why the hell should any taxpayer be forced to pay for someone’s useless degree in “Gender Studies” or “Queer Studies”?
Even worse, we would essentially be paying our enemies to destroy us. The only things that people who earn these worthless trash degrees can do is teach it to other impressionable skulls full of mush or become a “community organizer” to the same end.
Just wait until somebody with such a trash degree gets elected to Congress. We ain’t seen nothin’ yet on stupidity in Congress.
STOP pushing the stupid notion that everybody needs a college degree and channel 3/4 of the prospective students to useful trade and vocational programs.
Stay out of college (with reasonable exceptions). Just say no.
A salmon that can’t swim upstream is not a good salmon.
You don’t have a healthy society if everyone can just ride the current, especially our young people.
Fourth, purge the diversity bureaucracy. It adds $100K political officers to the admin roster and results in mandatory diversity lectures for everyone regularly.
Deans List: Hiring Spree Fattens College Bureaucracy—And Tuition
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323316804578161490716042814
The College Bureaucracy That Never Shrinks
Like most other prestigious universities, Georgetown is forever expanding its costly and corrosive diversity initiatives.
https://www.city-journal.org/diversity-bureauracies-georgetown-univ
Colleges will raise prices as soon as college is “free” and costing taxpayers more and more while the college admins rake in the money.
It's another way to funnel more money through the teacher's union to the dnc.
IMHO the crucial issue starts, yes, with understanding personal finance.
But to me the crying need is for people graduating high school to have a vision of what a “job” is. A job is a contribution to, and participation in, society. Note well, I said “society,” not government. Those are two different things:
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins.The requirements for the ability to contribute to society have varied historically, and presumably will in the future. For example, it’s gotten hard to make a living in manual labor. Any time you start out, you have low skills because you have no experience. As you gain experience, you become specialized; your experience is much more applicable to the field in which you work than to any other. So the fundamental problem you have starting out is to select well from the perspective of what will be needed/valued in the future.Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness;Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one . . .the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices.
The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions.
The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest . . . — Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)
I can define the problem, all right - I just don’t see how to solve it in the general case. I would have done well to have better even in my own personal case.
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