By Professor Doom
There is much I
love about working in higher education…and much I do not. I’ve mentioned things
I don’t love about higher education “a time or two” in this blog, but one of
the worst things is how my industry creates victims. When I first tried to get
my book published, I tried to convince publishers that there were serious,
grievous problems in higher education, but I could never convince the
gatekeepers of our book industry of the many, many, victims being created by
the student loan scam which has warped so much of higher education.
The student loan
scam has been creating these victims for years, and some are, at last, finally
recovering from the hideous injury inflicted upon them by student loans. One
has recovered enough to talk about it:
The victims of the
student loan scam are complaining about what’s been done to them. I think the
complaints are often quite justified, but some folks are tired of hearing of
pain-in-the-ass kids complaining. The author of the above has a good reply to
that:
You know
what's really a pain in the ass? Practically owing my first born (and their
first born) to Sallie Mae for my student loans.
Education
has been completely warped now. Allow me to list a quote from one of the great
minds of humanity, Isaac Newton:
If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of
giants.
Newton’s genius did not come trivially. To stand on the shoulders of a
giant, you have to climb, climb up the path of knowledge of those who have come
before. It’s not easy, and education, real education, is not an easy thing.
That’s what education used to be: very difficult, requiring years of study and
effort by the student. It terms of money, it was cheap, even our most
prestigious schools, a few generations ago, charged very little tuition
(assuming you studied hard enough to pass the entrance exams).
The student loan scam has changed all
that. Now, “education” is now ridiculously expensive, and coursework has been
defined down to nothing, in many classes. The student loan warped higher
education from “much work, little money” to “little work, much money.”
Now, many graduates stumble out of college
after 6 years, with no ability to pay back a huge loan. The millennial explains
how miserable this situation is:
(1) Pay it off
(2) Pay on it for 25 years consistently then have it forgiven
(3) Work for peanuts for 10 years and have it forgiven
(4) Die
Don’t get me
wrong, “pay it off” is what should happen, but the loans are far too high, and
jobs you can get with the typical “no work required” degree are out of
proportion to the loan.
No, We Can't Work A Job And Pay It Off While In
School
Back when higher
education was cheap (1950
Harvard tuition, for example, was $650, at a time when making $40 a week
was quite achievable—minimum wage was $1 an hour), a summer full time job,
combined with some work during classes and some parental support, was enough to
pay for tuition at a top tier school.
All the money
flowing in from the student loan scam has driven tuition prices
stratospherically—milk would
be over $15 a gallon if it rose in price like tuition has. You can work
full time while in school, yes, but you can’t make enough money to cover
tuition that way, not at many schools, at least. The median year's pay barely covers average tuition today.
We
Honestly Didn't Feel Like We Had A Choice
The whole mythology
of higher education is part of why there are so many victims created by
this industry. These poor kids come out of high school thinking “college is
what I must do next,” and unscrupulous college administrators (I’m not just
talking about for-profits here) sign up these kids for crushing lifelong debt.
An 18 year old cannot go into a casino and
place a $5 bet on a hand of Blackjack. It’s the law, and it’s enforced. Casinos
are punished if they take advantage of a kid that way.
But, that same 18
year old, after the casino kicks him out, can walk over to a college and put
himself into $20,000 of debt, in exchange for completely useless coursework of
no value in any form. Neither the college nor the administrator who does this
to the kid will be punished in any way…
Again, yes, I think
millennials have some legitimate complaints about how they’ve been victimized
by the higher education industry.
The millennial is
right, we should not be heaping scorn on the victims of the student loan scam.
On the other hand, on the schools, and Poo Bahs that run the schools, the scorn
and derision should be very, very, high indeed.
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