But these “targeted relief efforts” treat symptoms while neglecting the disease.
Any action on student loan forgiveness should only take place after a real discussion of more dramatic reform of higher education, including its finances.
Cases of graduates with disabilities, or graduates of ITT and other “for profit” colleges are mostly diversions, and the schools themselves serve as scapegoats for sins that many institutions, such as law schools, commit. Devoting airtime to these limited cases creates the illusion that irresponsible schools and cases of student loan-caused hardship are few and far between. Casual observers might think that the regular higher education system is, for the most part, healthy.
Of course, the opposite is true—most institutions of higher education are not only irresponsible but predatory; and hardship cases are the norm, not the exception.
According to the Department of Education, American student loan debt is now over $1.7 trillion, which is $739 billion more than the country’s outstanding credit card debt. This burden is carried by more than 40 million Americans, most of whom are not disabled and attended respectable, accredited institutions, rather than for-profit colleges or other seemingly shady operations.
On average, they graduated with $30,000 to $40,000 of student debt (though graduate degree holders owe much more). That is more than double the amount shouldered by graduates just 20 years ago. The cost of college has increased at an annual rate of more than twice the rate of inflation and faster than any other economic sector.
Since these loans are amortized with interest, the actual amount paid back is often more than double the original outstanding balance—and sometimes much more than that, if fees are charged for deferments or forbearances and if interest charged during those times is then added to the principal.
While income varies by field, the majority of graduates can expect only modest salaries. Compensation levels for college graduates have stagnated, which confirms that tuition is wildly out of sync with the real market value of a degree. Most of these graduates will be paying off their student loans for most of their professional lives; this obligation will prevent or delay home ownership, family formation and any real wealth building. While sources often report that approximately 15 percent of all student loan borrowers are in default at any given time, that figure is now viewed as a dramatic understatement.
Meanwhile, the schools that got the money—but not the debt—will continue to spend it and expand, especially on DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) bureaucracies. These administrators enjoy handsome salaries and growing numbers and power on campus. Many use that influence to push overt anti-Americanism and neo-racist agitprop under the guise of tolerance, non-discrimination, safety and equality.
Through ever-increasing college tuition payments, middle-class Americans are literally financing their opposition’s salaries in today’s cold civil war—in fact, they’re mortgaging their own futures for it.
To top it all off, these same graduates, after spending so much time and money on degrees, do not even get a quality education (with the possible exception of certain STEM degrees). By a variety of indicators, recent college graduates know less than their predecessors in world history, American history, American civics and finance, among other subjects. They also have lower skill levels in reading, writing and critical thinking.
In fact, many surveys show that college students lose knowledge during their undergraduate years.
Given this situation, a moratorium on financing higher ed—to allow some pointed scrutiny of the declining quality and increasing cost of college, before yet another crop of debt-ridden, marginally qualified graduates is produced—would be in order.
But instead, the Biden administration continues to throw crumbs to those fixated on the symptoms, not the sickness.
Two adages come to mind: “if something can’t go on forever, it won’t”; and, “if you owe the bank a little money, the bank owns you; if you owe the bank a lot of money, you own the bank.”
If public officials continue to kick this can down the road, America’s young people may wake up to the power of their numbers and take matters into their own hands.
Let’s hope that they target the real villains in this story: the politicians who said “everyone should go to college,” seduced kids into debt and created a system that enriches schools but impoverishes young people; and the institutions that lined their pockets, unleashed their politicos and gave students ideology instead of education.
Teresa Manning is the Director of Policy at the National Association of Scholars and Vice President of the Virginia Association of Scholars. She is also the author of Dear Colleague: The Weaponization of Title IX.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
