Blog Mirror: Tom Purcell: The AOC’s of student loan debt

Georgetown University, 1969.

Tom Purcell: The AOC’s of student loan debt

Purcell here is, excuse the pun, right on the money.

To add to what he's noted, the entire student loan system is grounded in a view of college that has more to do with the 1940s through the 1970s, than it does with any era after that.  The system is operating to destroy the affordability of a college education and is warping universities themselves by taking the element of competition out of college choices.

Purcell notes the insanity of letting somebody who is not even old enough to vote apply for a loan.  Add to that, however, that universities continue to put out propaganda that was more or less true in the 1960s, i.e., any college degree gives you an advantage, while also failing to note the degree programs that existed when that mantra was true were more traditional in nature than they are now.  

The entire system has decayed at every level, and the cheap Federal money is part of the reason why. The ultimate cruelty of it is that people end up with debt that they either can't service or which ties them to jobs that they really had no concept of, in terms of their actual nature, when they signed up.  Indeed, recently we've seen a fair number of articles about young lawyers who are locked into jobs attempting to service massive debt and feeling stuck. Well, they are stuck. They have to keep the high paying jobs as they have to service debt, and they'll be doing that well into their 30s, or even early 40s, by which time their careers are set, and their character impacted.

Truth be known, contrary to the Bernie Sanders "let's make it all free as money doesn't really exist" worldview, the best thing that could be done would be to would be to eliminate student loans entirely except for fields of national need.  That's it.  Do we need engineers and have a shortage?  Okay, have loans for that.  Lawyers?  You have to be kidding.  We'll still have them, but those it would be those who pursued it on their own dime and at their own risk.

If all this seems rather radical, it has precedents.  Programs that come in to boost the economy don't continue to serve their original purpose for all time and eternity. We no longer give away land to railroads, for example, to encourage them to build. We repealed the Homestead Acts. These bills and the student loan program, all served a vital interest when they were created, but the later ceased to.

The student loan program, in its current form, needs to go, or needs to be heavily modified for the world in which it currently exists.