Not a week goes by when we don’t read yet another article that describes the student loan morass. This week, an article in The Wall Street Journal draws attention to the subject.
I understand that college presidents and faculty will say, as quoted a couple of times in the article, that this is all about student lives and economic well-being, but there is this pesky little issue that keeps raising its head — thousands of students fail to repay their federal loans on time, and somebody will have to make up the difference. Of course, that’s the taxpayers.
To bring this into sharper focus, the article states that there are 108 four-year colleges at which over half of the graduates have not repaid even $1 of their student loans after three years.
For an even more granular view, consider the case of one Anthony Johns, who defaulted on $40,000 of undergraduate student loans because he could not find a job using his English degree. What’s such a person to do? Naturally, borrow an additional $30,000 to finance his first year of law school.
The fact is that the government is quite willing to loan a total of $56,000 for undergraduate tuition, and even more for graduate school, with none of the credit-worthiness assessment that any private lender would prudently make.
I know that many of these delinquencies are connected with students from poorer backgrounds, and I understand that we are trying to lift everybody up through education. But the bill has to be paid by somebody. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton suggest that all public higher education should be “free” — that is, financed by the government (i.e., you and me). It would then be just a short step to funding private college and university tuition. In fact, I think Sanders and Clinton may be behind the curve — it’s already happening.