It is hard to lump college students, at least the full time students and taxpayers in the same category. Generally full time students are not taxpayers. At least not in the Federal system because if full time students are employed, the odds are their jobs are only part time and do not pay a great deal.
Yet in one fell swoop, Washington has managed to screw both groups.
What did Washington do?
They reached another agreement on guaranteed student loans.
For another year, the interest rate on Guaranteed Student Loans will remain at 3.4%. Before anyone jumps for joy about this, the idiot patrol led by Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi has managed to screw both taxpayers and college students even more.
One of the provisions of the Guaranteed Student Loan program was that the borrower had six months after leaving school before they had to start paying their loans back.
No more.
Now, payment begins immediately.
That might not have been quite so bad six years ago when the Republicans still controlled the government, unemployment was at 4.6% and 90% of college graduates had jobs. Today 50% of college graduates do not find jobs within a year of graduation.
The taxpayers were screwed again because the government guarantees these loans. If the student gets a job and makes his or her payments, the bank makes a profit. If they default, the government picks up the tab. For liberals, that means real Americans who still have jobs despite the Great Obama Depression, are stuck with the bill.
The only winners from the Guaranteed Student Loan programs are banks and colleges and universities.
College and Universities are flush with cash because of students with loans; they can afford to offer classes like, “The Whiteness of Barbie,” which is offered at Occidental College. The University of California at Berkeley offers a class on Pornography where students are exposed to all types of porn. The University of Michigan offers a class on “How to be gay.” If that class is filled, you can also take a class called, “Rednecks, Queers and Country Music.” I’m sure that one is going on everyone’s resume.
Other colleges offer courses in sex. Sex sells, especially for young men 18-21. They will do stupid things for anything that mentions sex.
Other colleges offer courses in Star Trek, UFO’s, Vampires, Ghosts, Harry Potter, or even on Lady Gaga.
All Guaranteed Student Loan programs do is keep colleges in the business of creating useless and unemployable majors and taking the student’s money faster than a liberal politician can raise taxes.
Now thanks to this new deal in Washington that further destroys the free market, more students will graduate college burdened by debt that they will have no reasonable hope of paying off.
While my sympathies are very limited for anyone dumb enough to get a degree in Women’s studies, or spending $150,000 to get a degree in Social Work. However, my sympathies are unlimited for the abused taxpayer.
Education is something we should strongly encourage. We need more Doctors, lawyers, engineers, computer scientists, business leaders, entrepreneurs and nurses.
What we do not need is the government screwing up things more than they are.
We need to do away with the guarantee in Guaranteed Student Loans.
If I go to the bank and ask for a business loan, the first questions that are going to be asked are what am I using the money for and how am I going to pay it back?
Those are the first questions that should be asked of any one applying for a student loan. But because those loans are guaranteed, those questions are never asked.
Student loans are still profitable and banks would still offer them if the guarantee were to be eliminated. The big losers would be the colleges and universities.
If banks had skin in the game, they would be much more interested in what that money is being used on. Business 101, yes. The Whiteness of Barbie, no. Russian 101, Da. How to be gay, nyet.
Student loans are a gravy train for the colleges and universities to give jobs to people who are little more than professional activists and to try and train another generation of professional activists.
Removing the guarantee from student loan programs will dry up the money for liberal academia and at the same time help the taxpayer.
That sounds like a winning plan to me.
Tags: crisis, debt, guaranteed, loan, student, universities
Permalink Reply by Nevadastu on I only disagree with you on one minor point Judson. We do not need more Lawyers. No offense.
Permalink Reply by Mike Meeks on What these kids are not told. Studend loans are placed on your credit reports, all 3 bureaus.
They get posted 30, 60, 90, 120, 150, 150, 150, month after month. One bad student loan
can put your credit scores under 600. You start out in the real world paying higher interest
rates and higher payments caused by these postings. There is a lot more money being
made by lenders.
Permalink Reply by Vern Shotwell on Part of the solution may be to Cancel College Majors That Don’t Pay, as China has done.
But China seems to be much more Capitalistic than we are now, in many ways.
A recent article showed certain Liberal Arts degrees yield lower employment rates than High School diplomas here in the States.
Permalink Reply by Bonita Hines on Did I not read on the last Student Loan Bill that if the loans weren't paid back in (6 or 10 years?) that the loan was forgiven on the balance of it? How many of today's college students with student loans would worry about paying them back? Guaranteeing that the taxpayer would be footing the bill.
Permalink Reply by Norma J. Sears on They file for bankrupcty, walk away and we're left with the bill.
Permalink Reply by Debrajoe Smith-Beatty on There is not one area of our lives that Obama has not screwed up.
Permalink Reply by Dr. Arthur W. Carpenter on I try to get the point across to my students that they better be taking college classes for an occupationally related degree. It is so right to be an engineer and a physicist teaching young adults who aspire to matriculate in an engineering, medical, or other professional field. Working on an Army base as I do, many of my students are intimately connected to the service as soldiers and family of soldiers. They have earned their educations, by God, they have earned their educations.
Permalink Reply by Vern Shotwell on Exactly so.
There remain "fun times" schools as well as degrees. But these are less likely to yield interesting, constructive and rewarding careers.
Permalink Reply by Sheri Lee on 
Permalink Reply by Nancy on Do you have a link to the info in your discussion please Judson--especially about the having only 6mos to payback--we have several nieces/nephews who have taken out loans and we would love to forward this info to them--thank you as always for keeping us up to speed.
Permalink Reply by Doug Nicholson on Take another look at the article, Nancy. It says students used to have 6 months before payments began on their loans. Under the new law, the interest rates remain low, but payments begin immediately upon graduation.
© 2013 Created by Judson Phillips.
