Biden Cancels Student Loan Debt

 

Joe Biden has unilaterally announced $300 million dollars in student loan forgiveness.

This is a bad idea. It takes from the poor and gives to the rich. Those who could not afford university in the first place must now pay for those who could. Shop hands and factory workers are subsidizing doctors and lawyers.

Further, we have too many people going to university. We need more skilled trades. Sending so many people to university simply unnecessarily raises the qualifications expected for white collar jobs. 

And more and more of what is taught at university now is useless. I do not mean the humanities, as such, not the proverbial degree in Ebnglish lit, which is of immense social value, but I do mean the social sciences, gender and cultural studies, which are purely political indoctrination, and then pop culture courses on things like the history of rap music, Armenians in film, or the like. Pop culture is worth studying, but in such courses, by trying to be contemporary, the students start out knowing more than the teacher. So they are a waste of time in the university setting. 

Many technical or scientific courses present the same problem, and are generally better suited to a technical college. When technology or science is moving fast, by the time one has finished a four-year degree, what one learned in years one and two is probably obsolete. Worse—your professor must have spent nine years or more getting a Ph.D. By then he is so out of touch that almost everything he knows is wrong.

The better approach is to snag two foundation years, then keep learning on the job. If necessary, night courses online.

With so many going to university who are not really suited to university and the life of the scholar, much taught in university could be, should be, and previously was taught in high school. Now there is almost always, for example, a first year remedial writing course.

On top of this, whenever the government puts more money into tuition or higher education subsidies, the universities have the temptation to simply raise their fees. If the average middle class family could afford $5,000, and the government will give them $5,000 for university, why not hike the fees to $10,000? The cost of tuition has been rising for years at an indefensible rate, far more than the rate of inflation. The money ends up not helping kids or families, but in the pockets of an army of university bureaucrats.

This may be exactly what is intended: this is the Democratic Party’s base. But a better plan, if this is not graft, would be a system of vouchers for two years at either university or technical college, along with carefully audited state schools that would provide education for no more than the vouchers pay.