Fixing The College Tuition Crisis

By Earl P. Holt III

Millennials with large and outstanding student loan debts are easily seduced by the rhetoric of socialists promising to “forgive” their loan balances. In many cases, these young people have been badly deceived: They’ve paid staggering sums for a truly worthless education, and many are beginning to recognize it.

On the other hand, the America’s taxpayers are “on the hook” for about $100 Billion every year in defaulted federal-guaranteed student loans. Apparently, anyone with a pulse is eligible for such a loan: This is true, no matter how poor their S.A.T. scores or high school academic records may have been.

A possible solution addressing both the problem of crippling student loan debt — AND its burden on U.S. taxpayers — might be found in the following compromise: Forgive a fraction of each student loan balance in good standing, in return for much stricter standards applied to ALL future federally-guaranteed student loan borrowings.

Those wishing to reform the federal student loan program would instantly build a powerful consensus among both taxpayers and a significant portion of the more responsible Millennials, at least those who are eligible to have part of their student loan balances forgiven.

Cleaning out the Augean Stables of American education will take a great deal of sustained and courageous effort, but awarding all federally- guaranteed student loans and Pell Grants exclusively on the basis of merit would jump-start the process.

Limiting federally-guaranteed student loans ONLY to those who score 1200 or higher on their S.A.T.s. would cull all the stupid, lazy, useless and black flotsam from so-called “higher education.” It would also force many colleges and universities to reform themselves and their curricula in order to compete for a student body possessing both the aptitude and desire to learn.

Pell Grants SHOULD be targeted to those who study the natural sciences, applied sciences and mathematics. Those majoring in Black Studies, Queer Studies, Feminist Studies, and Latino Studies would no longer compete against our brightest math and science students for Pell Grants or Guaranteed Student Loans, as they do now.

Students who slept through 12 years of schooling would no longer be permitted to waste Trillions of taxpayer dollars — and four more years “finding themselves” -– while going through the charade and indoctrination that is now laughably called a “college education”: Instead, they would be quickly introduced to the realities of the world of work.

For example, practically every one of the so-called “Historically Black Colleges” has a Student Loan default rate close to 100%. That’s because these so-called “institutions of higher learning” recruit illiterate and retarded black ghetto “youth,” then sign them up for federally guaranteed student loans, and receive their tuition payments for their efforts.

Many of these ghetto “scholars” never set foot on the campus where they are enrolled, and are about as committed to repaying their student loans as they are to practicing sexual abstinence.

Funds could still be made available for prospective students wishing to attend “trade schools,” but these should also be distributed on the basis of merit –- using some objective criteria — to ensure that these funds are not squandered, as college tuition has clearly been for decades.

Parents with students attending college would benefit from seeing a dramatic decline in tuition rates across the board. That’s because the enormous demand for a college education would be significantly diminished, since far fewer dollars would be “chasing” each college admission. Schools would be forced to compete for the better students, instead of the current situation in which marginal students are allowed to bid-up college tuition costs to unprecedented levels for everyone else.

This would mean far less discretionary revenue for all universities to squander, so many would be forced to jettison the dead-weight on their faculties, such as queer, feminist, black or Latino “scholars” with no scholarship, or clergy with no piety

The Departments catering to Black Studies, Minority Studies, “Queer” Studies, “Feminist” Studies and “Latino” Studies would be decimated, and rightly so! Departments of Sociology, Social Work, Philosophy and Physical Education would also take a significant and much-needed and much-deserved “hit.“

Taxpayers would also experience enormous benefits by being relieved of the obligation to honor amounts approaching $100 Billion in defaulted student loans each year. Moreover, those students attending an “institution of higher learning” would be brighter, far more serious, more deserving and presumably more grateful as a result of such reforms.