The Great Student Loan Heist

[kathyet]

The Great Student Loan Heist

Jordan Candler · Nov. 2, 2016

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Another week, another instance of the Obama administration — more specifically the Department of Education — circumventing Congress to enact an agenda. The latest example pertains to higher education and the rules surrounding the repaying of student loans. National Review’s Preston Cooper summarizes the problem:

This week, the Obama administration issued a finalized regulation that will allow the Department of Education (DOE) to cancel the debt of students who claim that their colleges have made a “substantial misrepresentation,” such as false or misleading statistics on promotional materials. The DOE can then recover any forgiven balance from the colleges themselves — a major, possibly fatal, financial burden for institutions.

Cooper calls this “another installment in a long saga of government officials using student-aid programs to wield influence over American higher education. Whoever writes the checks makes the rule, and the DOE uses its power to advance an agenda far beyond merely ensuring that taxpayers' money is put to good use.” An example of how things could go haywire:

For instance, Arizona Law School advertises that its graduates' unemployment rate is 2.8 percent. As my Manhattan Institute colleague Max Eden pointed out in US News & World Report in August, the share of Arizona Law graduates without jobs — when you include those not looking for work — is actually 9.7 percent. Reasonable people would conclude that Arizona Law is nonetheless well within its rights to advertise the 2.8 percent figure, since by definition unemployed people must be looking for work. But the Department of Education could easily cite this “misrepresentation” as an excuse to punish Arizona Law and cancel the debt of students. Further, in deciding which “misrepresentation” claims pass muster, the DOE opens the door to selective enforcement and raises the specter of witch hunts against colleges that fall out of political favor.

As we’ve previously written, the larger problem is guaranteed access to federal money for education, which puts taxpayers on the hook. Guaranteed access means every education entity public or private is going to do whatever’s necessary to get a slice of the pie. Nowhere does the Constitution enumerate such a federal power or individual right to the fruits of someone else’s labor. Americans now owe $1.3 trillion in student debt, of which $1 trillion is held by the federal government. The DOE’s latest power play will inevitably lead to even broader centralization.

https://patriotpost.us/posts/45698

[charles royer]

Colleges can have & did make promise to the effect that if after a certain amount of time you didn't find work in you're field some all or part of you're student loan would be waived. These schools are flush with cash from federal money to sports revenue.Some have even payed exorbitant fees for the clinton crime cartell to speak.
Bottom line is the government needs to get the hell out of education .

[jack ludwig]

No the government needs to get more into education in the way of regulation. We need to make laws that require colleges to only accept students who are academically qualify for college. Today anyone can attend college even if you do not have any of the skills to do the work. The college is only interested in collecting your money. They could care less if you complete a single course or learn a single thing. Higher education is a money scheme nothing more. 

[kevin kiernan]

That is why you get government money out of it. Student loans have to be paid back.. Once we start making things again there will be many more jobs for skilled workers with out higher education

[kevin kiernan]

College education is way over rated

[JV]

Nearly 64 percent of jobs don’t require college education, but wait — there’s more

Degree holders earn more than high school diploma counterparts

Should everyone go to college?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that only about one-third of all jobs require education beyond high school. That statistic — coupled with the growing mountain of student loan debt now totaling a whopping $1.2 trillion — has prompted the cost and need of a college education to become a major issue in American politics.

Bernie Sanders proposed “free” college for everyone and Hillary Clinton supports increasedsubsidies for more people. Donald Trump espouses “love” for the “the poorly educated.”

His campaign co-chair and policy director, Sam Clovis, told Inside Higher Ed that schools should have “skin in the game” and that borrowing should be discouraged for certain majors and concentrations.

“If you are going to study 16th-century French art, more power to you. I support the arts. But you are not going to get a job… If you get into the esoteric aspects of a particular art field, you have to know that those are the circumstances.”

At least one image circulated online agrees with Clovis.

The meme states that less than one in five jobs in the labor market requires a four-year degree. Its creatorstates on Facebook that the message aims to illustrate that there are not as many jobs available requiring degrees as there are people going into debt to obtain degrees, noting four million degrees are given out every year, but the job market does not have positions corresponding to the degrees they possess.

But according to the U.S. Census, about one third of Americans have bachelor’s degrees — and the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that only about one-third of all jobs require education beyond high school.

Moreover, the bureau predicts that the biggest growth in the next decade will be in the number of jobs that require a bachelor’s degree or more.

According to the Pew Research Center, the disparity in earning potential between high-school graduates and college graduates has never been bigger, refuting another portion of the meme that claims “My parents did better with a high school diploma than I do with a four-year degree.”

On average, Pew finds, college grads earn $17,500 more than high school grads and “The pay gap was significantly smaller in previous generations.” Those with college degrees are more likely to be employed full-time and less likely to be unemployed.

The same report breaks down the data further. A 55-year-old parent of a college-graduate today would have graduated high school at age 18 in 1979. Without any additional education, their median income would have been just over $32,299 per year. Their children, receiving a bachelor’s degree this month, can expect a median income of $45,500 in constant dollars. In other words, a college grad today can expect to earn 40 percent more than their high-school grad parents.

MORE: Student loan debt hits $1.27 trillion, grows $3,055 every second

read more

http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/27812/

[jack ludwig]

people who think they are educated are over rated. A college education can never be over rated only the person can.

[jack ludwig]

good luck finding skilled workers in America.

[kevin kiernan]

It should be in high school were you learn a trade or two. This is why education needs to change.I learned welding in high school . By the time I was 21 I was a state certified welder in Newburgh NY working at Steel Style welding on submerging docks for subs. If you want skilled workers in our society then offer programs in our grade schools.

[Rhodes]

First you have to get government out of education.
It just does not work.

Like making medical providers abide by the rules ALL other businesses abide nothing will work.

But people keep looking for a savior so they don't have to do the hard things.

[Thomas Vincent Coffey]

Hmm................here we go again, about the vital importance of degrees, from the usual suspects. Put simply, it is a credential and another modern neurosis. So let's reflect a moment.

Organized culture/society, in contrast to nomadic tribal existence, commenced around 3500 BC w/the development of Cities such as Sumer of the Mesopotamian Fertile Crescent; almost 6000 years ago.

Over time, the genius of antiquity reached its apogee in Greece and Rome; breeding the likes of Pericles, Aristotle, Euclid, Plato, Cicero, Julius Caesar, Virgil among thousands of the wisest who walked the earth. And they managed their astonishing achievements w/o a degree, oblivious to how deprived they were, the poor things! How sad!

An example. The massive Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis was designed by Phidias, its architect/engineer. Yet arguably the necessary component in its construction were the stone masons who carved and erected the white marble, w/nary a degree among all of them.

The degree, little more than a 150 year old fad, some 2% of the time since Sumer, is an appropriate credential for the modern era; whose calling card is preening and strutting w/undisguised contempt for the wisdom of the past w/o which mankind would still be inhabiting caves.

The media/political assholery that infests DC is predictably enamored of degrees as it's their ticket of admittance into the Establishment.

That ordinary citizens have bought into this degree bullshit answers the question of: why the quality of our leadership is far beneath abysmal. Case in point is Bush who credentialed at Yale and Harvard. Remember him???

Nations get the governance they deserve because of the fallacies they hold dear, despite the record of history.

[jack ludwig]

engineering disciplines were not necessary back then to build a successful structure. Even in my father's time was formal education necessary to have the crafts to build many things. With only a 8th grade education my father could build any building structure he choose to, or a boat or an automobile from scratch to which he did, successfully I might add. However, in today's times most things of value do require a skill that demands some form of formal education to acquire those skills in a reasonable amount of time. Finding skilled workers to just do repetitives mundane tasks is very difficult today not because they can't learn but because they have no interest to learn or willing to do it correctly and consistently.