By Alan J. Yeck, Founder
At the end of the article he wrote last year, Daniel M. Johnson, What Will It Take to Solve the Student Loan Crisis? responded to the question about whether there is a solution to the student loan scam with “Maybe.” While his piece was focused on the cost of education, which is completely valid and must also be addressed, it is but one part of a solution. “But one thing has become increasingly clear: solutions to the high cost of higher education and the student loan crisis will not come from the higher education establishment.” I completely agree with Daniel on this point. Higher education administration has not focused on reducing costs in any meaningful way for decades. It does so when it’s forced to and it’s never about serving the students, which is why the expenses continue to rise and passed on to the students and their families. Containing costs at the institutions are one aspect of the student loan crisis but all roads lead to Washington D.C. We are in this mess because of legislation they passed, and continue to support, that generates money back to their own campaigns through Super PACs. Lasting solutions are there but it means our elected officials, House and Senate, will have to do the ethically, right thing. I want to believe that still exists in Congress but I am hard pressed to give an example. Blue and Red are equally dirty and corrupt. Joe DiMaggio has been gone for a long, long time.
Restore full bankruptcy rights to student loan borrowers
There was never a valid reason to criminalize student loans. When it was first enacted in the early 1970s, there was less than a 1% default rate, and it was out of concern for what Congress thought of as expensive degrees, specifically law and medical – that the lawyers and doctors wouldn’t pay back their loans. At that time the law was that student loans couldn’t be included in bankruptcy until 5 years after graduation. Over the next few decades, in combination with the increasing availability of federal loans and the explosion of the for-profit institutions, Congress continued to “tweak” the rules as the money flow also increased into their own pockets. Finally in 2005 only those who qualify under an ambiguous “undue hardship” which is determined by each and every individual court could student loans be included in bankruptcy (you have a better shot at winning the lottery than a judge with a backbone dismissing your student loan). Once that right was removed, the cost of education skyrocketed which in turn brought out the corporate shit-eating-dogs known as ‘loan servicers’ (Navient, et al).
Solving the student loan debt crisis isn’t like working on global warming, it really isn’t rocket science. A few hundred people that were elected to take care of the people can do it very quickly – a lasting solution can put in place in 2021 but they would have to stop taking the money. Well, hell…now that I think of it, I guess I’m going to stop and get a lottery ticket on the way home. You should too.
#altraged #studentloandebt #corruption #bankruptcy #buisness #innovation #elections2020 #highered #leadership
https://hbr.org/2019/09/what-will-it-take-to-solve-the-student-loan-crisis
AltRaged 