Why Aren’t Colleges Helping To Pay Off Student Loan Debt?
“Tuition prices have soared well beyond the inflation rate”
Instead of laying this all on taxpayers, why don’t the schools put some skin in this game?
Christopher Tremoglie writes at the Washington Examiner:
Student loan forgiveness is nice — nicer would be holding colleges accountable for the debt crisis
As a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, I have tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt. My parents were not the Kardashians, so I stand to benefit significantly from student loan forgiveness. Furthermore, I do not entirely subscribe to the right-wing thought that student loan forgiveness is bad. After all, if our government spends millions on gender studies programs in Pakistan, I’d rather see that go to student loan forgiveness here at home.
However, student loan forgiveness doesn’t address the root of the problem — colleges charging ridiculous tuition prices.
In the student loan debt crisis, colleges and universities have escaped the blame they deserve. These institutions charge gargantuan predatory prices with little justification, mostly just because students have access to the loan money.
Democratic senators such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders constantly lament the $1.6 trillion student debt crisis, but I cannot find any evidence that they have ever focused on the outsize role colleges played in creating it. They hold Wall Street to different political, financial, and moral standards than universities, which have arguably behaved in a far greedier way.
Tuition prices have soared well beyond the inflation rate — an especially noteworthy fact given the current state of affairs. Between 1978 and 2019, college tuition prices increased by a shocking 1,375% — four times the rate of inflation and eight times faster than wages since the 1980s.
Why is this? Has it suddenly become significantly more expensive to teach foreign languages? History? Science or math? And if so, why is it so much more?
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Comments
“Furthermore, I do not entirely subscribe to the right-wing thought that student loan forgiveness is bad.”
Of course you don’t, people love free stuff.
However, it is not a rational argument to say that because gummint wastes money on other things, you should get something valuable for nothing.
And if you were unable to gauge the costs and benefits of your overly expensive college education, perhaps asking the rest of us to be on the hook for your mistakes is unreasonable. You had other choices; you chose to opt for the loans you don’t want to repay.
Not to mention the fact that college expenses are wildly overpriced now BECAUSE the gummint has a monopoly in the loan market.
I have no doubt that Dems hope to force through student loan forgiveness in order to buy your votes, and I have no doubt they will be successful in that endeavor; you have already proved your foolishness.
No, college is overpriced because the loans exist at all. Who provides them and whether they can be discharged in bankruptcy is irrelevant.
Why aren’t colleges helping pay off student debt?
Why do fat chance and slim chance mean the same thing?
“Instead of laying this all on taxpayers, why don’t the schools put some skin in this game?”
You write this as if you expect them to volunteer to return their grift.
The taxpayers should not be made responsible for debt asked for, agreed to, and benefited from by someone else. That’s all “forgiveness” does: Transfer responsibility from the students to the taxpayers.
If you read the article you would know the benefit went to the university. The student only received the (passable) education, the U pocketed the cash
I thought the whole idea behind the “forgiveness” is to have the federal government pay off the amount instead of the student.
There are a number of logical alternatives:
1) Amend the bankruptcy law to make the student loan one of the debts discharged if the student goes through bankruptcy.
2) Make student loans income contingent.
3) Make the student loan forgiveness funded by a mixture of federal dollars and college dollars — particularly if the school is a for-profit institution.
0) stop making loans knowing they will not be repaid.
00: stop making loans. In my day, many got through college – with housing – on little more than the equal of today’s barista job, or hotel night clerk. A good college friend made his by being our dorm janitor. Work in trade for housing, books, meals, fees.
Um, because they don’t throw away their endowment money?
If there is any entity besides the student – and I’m not sure that there is – that should pay for these student loans it is the universities and colleges that benefited from them. Tax the tuition income of Universities at the corporate rate along with applying the capital gains taxes to their endowment and then means test the school loans debt against an earned income tax credit. Hell, even tier the rates for schools promoting ridiculous majors that have a “studies” in their names so that universities touting these worthless and divisive majors pay more.