Conservatives won't discuss the student loan debacle. Why not? Democrats created the mess. Never let a Democrat mess go to waste.
Outstanding student loan debt is at $1.6 trillion, which used to be a lot of money until the Federal Reserve decided that the stock market must be saved at all or any cost. These are signature loans from young people who have no collateral. No sane person would make such loans. Naturally, the federal government encouraged it.
The federal government encouraged it because colleges are great lobbyists. They have alumni roaming the halls of Congress. They can offer teaching jobs. They can publish your books.
Democrats and RINOs love colleges.
Colleges meanwhile are little bureaucratic beehives.
Harvard at 385 years is the oldest college in America. It has 13,000 employees in 10 unions.
2,400 are on faculty.
While it claims it needs its $41 billion endowment fund to keep its doors open, the endowment keeps growing. The joke is Harvard's endowment fund is a hedge fund with a college attached to it.
If tuition ($52,000) and other student fees cover only 22% of your expenses, and less than 20% of your staff are faculty members, maybe you should reduce spending.
Student loans helped fatten colleges up. Colleges are sitting on $637.7 billion in endowment assets.
Surely, some of that money could be used to forgive the student loans that helped keep 13,000 people on staff when only 2,400 of them are faculty.
Socialists say soak the rich. Socialists just happen to run the colleges. Conservatives should point out that colleges are rich. 100 colleges have endowments worth $1 billion or more.
Soak them.
It's not that this will ever happen, of course. But by raising the issue, conservatives are putting Democrats, RINOs, and the college industry on the defense.
And if it does happen, that's cool too. Hardware stores pay taxes. Pet shops pay taxes. For-profit colleges pay taxes. Why not Harvard?
If the government took it all, it wouldn't last a week in DC., if that long.
ReplyDeleteWhy not, indeed?
ReplyDeleteHarvard at 385 years is the oldest college in America. It has 13,000 employees in 10 unions.
Thought that was the University of Pennsylvania.
Penn is a mere 281
DeleteHarvard could offer a full-ride scholarship to every undergraduate and not even feel it. Long past time to go after these bums.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, the reason GOP won't do it is because THEY want their children or grandchildren to go to Harvard. (Or Yale, or Stanford....) They know there will be zero chance of that if they go after the Ivies. So the latter just keep on keeping on.
Here’s a better idea: make the Universities responsible for the debt. Students default Universities pay. Then tax them and put a 50% tax on foreign students for the current debt. Side benefit is fewer social justice “warriors” and school administrators.
ReplyDeleteIsn't that what happened to some private schools. "Take the money and run"????
DeleteIf they held the colleges responsible for the debt, it would see the closure of grievance studies departments virtually overnight.
DeleteIf they held the colleges responsible for the debt, it would see the closure of grievance studies departments virtually overnight.
DeleteIt seems to me that the students that borrowed that much money for college really didn't have the smarts to graduate college with a decent degree. Otherwise, thy would have landed a good job and pay the loans back and not be in debt for them.
ReplyDeleteIn the 1980s when I worked in PA the local newspaper printed all the names of those in our county who were behind or had not paid their student loans. Their profession was printed and most, if not all, were upper income professionals: doctor, lawyers, etc. I dropped out of college and had paid off my loans working as a nuclear reactor operator based on my navy reactor operator experience.
DeleteBig D, if I nominated you to lead the RNC….ahhh, never mind.
ReplyDeleteEverything the government subsidizes becomes more expensive for the end user.
ReplyDeleteHarvard is no different, except that they were already too expensive. Now that they too have adopted wokeism, they are hardly worth the money.
I better question is, how is it that these sorts of things are never pointed out? I mean it's a pretty big deal when a college is making huge amounts of money, and spending very little. It operates more like an investment fund than a business.
It's actually worse than that - Jack Welch made GE very profitable by actually running a hedge fund inside GE... but at least GE was a real company and they paid taxes as one.
DeleteHahvahd is running a hedge fund inside a university, but a university is a non-profit organization, so they don't get taxed like a real business does - even though they run a hedge fund.
I'll heist the phrase from the left - it's time that Hahvahd and all those other hedge-funds-inside-a-university PAID THEIR FAIR SHARE!
Another thing about Welch. When he ran the company, GE still actually made things. Now, with the exception of generators and turbine engines, they are making their money by licensing the use of their name to whatever company wants to pay the fees. "GE" on a product usually translates two ways: "inferior", and "Made in China".
Deleteall of the elites are going to be pissed when the calls for 'equity' reach the hallowed halls of higher education. Think about it - what could be more equitable than all the Ivy League schools only taking BIPOCs as students. that would be the ultimate equity play. All the millionaire's kids would need to go to junior college or worse (gasp!), a state school.
ReplyDeleteWrong.
ReplyDeleteREAL solution to existing student loan debt:
Allow all lower and middle class citizens the option of refinancing their existing debt with the federal government at a 2% interest rate.
I could go on and on about why THIS is the real solution to the existing issue, but it's pretty obvious, right?
Kill the federal student loan program and make the colleges and universities make the loans. Also make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy. That make the colleges and universities rethink about offering degrees that won't payback the cost of achieving it.
ReplyDeleteForce that $1.6T back onto the colleges and universities. They sold the degrees, they should take the risk that loans won't be paid back. And, it will retire $1.6T in federal debt.
Student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy was nixed many years ago. Pretty much the only ones with large student loans were those becoming physicians or lawyers. Then they would declare bankruptcy and toddle on.
DeleteWhen I started Univ of Texas in the early '70s, tuition was only around five bucks a semester hour. Fees and books added several hundred to that, of course.
This is an interesting chart:
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_320.asp
"Student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy was nixed many years ago. Pretty much the only ones with large student loans were those becoming physicians or lawyers. Then they would declare bankruptcy and toddle on."
DeleteInteresting history, thank you.
The earlier suggestion that student debt be guaranteed by the institutions of higher learning instead of the feds sounds about right to me. I also favor placing higher education under the consumer protection laws. This second most expensive purchase made in someone's lifetime gets less protection than a can of dog food. If colleges are going to promise a bright future to students who fork over the tuition and stick to their studies, they should be held gravely to their word.
ReplyDeleteBut but my Gender Studies!!
DeleteGender studies is what used to happen at the frat house on Saturday night. (sorry. I'll let myself out.)
DeleteColleges promising promise bright futures is part of the problem, naive kids with bad career counseling is the other part.
DeleteThe federal gubmint stuck its big fat nose in to student loans and started guaranteeing them in 1965. Like everything else the gubmint gets involved in, both the cost of higher education and student debt have sky rocketed since.
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