Discussion for article #233660
In my mind, the best solution would be free federal colleges, both 2 year and 4 year.
An attainable goal would be zero interest rate loans, with payments capped at 5%-10% of the person’s income if they are over the poverty line.
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It feels dirty to get something I might ultimately benefit from for free—even slightly un-American. We like to value everything by putting a price on it.
Isn’t this the ingrained doctrine of Capitalist America? Everything has a price and only through work can we reach salvation? Nothing is free and the jobless are lazy bums. I think it’s time we break with this dogma.
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The obvious answer is Marco Rubio’s proposal for indentured servitude that he calls the “Student Investment Plan”
Moreover, with respect to the sentiment that it feels dirty to get something from which I might benefit for free, I would remind the author of that nugget of wisdom that people are employed under the presumption that they return more to the enterprise than they consume, and manifold. So, in due proportion, who exactly is getting something for free?
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It occurs to me that all to which these people aspire is to be but a cog in someone else’s machine, and these short-sighted greedy bastards begrudge them even that.
The United States underwrites the risk of student loans with banks who then charge above-market-rates, making profit from virtually no risk on a public service that should be subsidized instead of profited from.
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Eliminate private lenders and loan directly from the US Government to students at the rate of long-term government interest, currently less than 4%. Freeze rates at the loan rate, and drop rates (re-finance) if treasury rates fall.
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Establish “Studicare”, a Medicare-like department that can evaluate college programs and give subsidies to low-income students for college. The department would establish the fair price for a degree or credits, and mandate that a college accept the fair price regardless of what it demands for tuition. And only to credited degree programs, not worthless for-profit degree factories.
It’s time we stopped the greed monsters from hijacking the education system for profit, and return it to its purpose in this country as a means to education, most often for young people starting out.
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I have a simpler reason why a debt strike is not the answer. Just like a labor striker has to endure being fired, blacklisted and possibly arrested, a debt striker has to endure the garnishments, judgments, repossessions, restricted credit, higher insurance rates, etc. Are even 1000 people willing to do it on purpose?
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Great piece. It seems obvious to me that loans made to cover education expenses at pkaces like Citadel, which later collapse, should be immediately forgiven.
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I get tired of pointing it out, but in Europe education through the college level is free in most countries. Germany even advertised this year that students from other countries could attend their universities for free. All you have to do is qualify, which doesn’t mean a 4.0 average, you just have to pass entrance exams.
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Profit-making schools of higher education will squeeze out costs until the product is worthless. It is an area, like health care, where free enterprise doesn’t work.
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Education for profit. Heath care for profit. War for profit. American exceptionalism on display.
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Eliminate “Diploma (or Not) Day Lending”
A credit strike would be a great tactic for a more mature movement. Millions of Americans stopping payments on their credit cards to protest the parasitism of the financial industry would have a real effect.
We’d have to get over our Stockholm syndrome first.
Of course it’s not the answer, the same way the Homestead Steel Strike of 1893 wasn’t the answer for ameliorating the dangerous and ill-paid working conditions of steelworkers. That doesn’t mean it was a mistake, or even that it wasn’t effective in advancing their cause. And yes, these people are putting themselves at risk in a similar way, but how else is anyone going to put a face on the problem and humanizing its costs? There are so many policies that we know would help, it’s not like that’s the problem, the problem is galvanizing the issue so that there is political force behind those policies.