28 Comments

What does it say about the higher education system (and the system overall) that they are not only willing to rip off the students with outrageous costs, but also knowingly give them a substandard product...?

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It tells me many things, primarily that they don’t care about the future.

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Oh, they care, but not in the way that one would 'normally' assume that meant. I believe that they care that their 'product', the students' be able to be as pliable and manipulable sa possible, be being as uninformed as possible. It is so much easier to indoctrinate when there is no opposing information to be eradicated/overcome. This has been something that has been being pushed for over 50 years now, although it really began to pick up steam in the 90s.

For some time, I didn't blame teachers, per se, but more and more of them are actively in support of teaching less and less, and pushing more and more of their personal agendas, which often skew hard left. The total bureaucratization of the system has also helped to destroy it, as generally results any time/place that happens...

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A high-cost sub-standard product which primarily focuses on political correctness, social justice, indoctrination of liberalism leading to fascism, anti-American globalism, all resulting in sheer incompetence in the basics of education so you can be self-sufficient and personally responsible. It's taught the younger generation to be self-serving, selfish and entitled.

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I would only make one small correction: It has 'helped teach' the younger generation to be self-serving, selfish, and entitled. It isn't just at school that all this is learned; it is at home as well. Parents have failed their children, and it's more than just a few, or here and there. As a generation, the boomers failed their children, who failed theirs even more, and so on, and so on. Kids aren't much different now than they have ever been; it's parents who have changed...

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I'm generally someone who's big on personal responsibility. However, I do think that the student loan crisis is unique. I just now paid off my student loan this past spring. I'm 38 years old. Had I not had a few big chunks of money coming my way, that could have potentially been many more years struggling to get rid of that thing. What is different about the student loan crisis is that these kids are signing on to loans without any guidance from their parents and no one advocating for them. I was trying to be responsible and lived in the dorms for three out of my four years in college until I realized that it would be cheaper for me to rent than to live in the dorms. They are concrete boxes and they cost as much or more than up at apartment. The entire system truly is predatory because these kids have no concept of how much money they will actually make when they graduate and they have no concept of how much money that they will need to make for all of their various expenses.

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Parents have, by and large, failed their children in increasing amounts since at least the 60s. There has been an burgeoning reliance on 'giving' rather than teaching, due in part from affluence and the ability to do so, and part from spending less and less time with our kids, and then overindulging to soothe the parental conscience, ignoring what the repercussion(s) might be. Many kids are basically financial illiterates going into college, and even after graduating. It isn't the responsibility of teachers to teach basic life skills; they are supposed to educate, not literally train. That is the responsibility of parents, but it is one that seems to be studiously avoided, whether consciously or not.

However, regardless of how kids have been let down by their parents in this regard (and many others), it doesn't speak to the lack of quality of the education being sold for exorbitant prices; student debt bondage is a spinoff of the problem, not a cause.

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This is an issue on which my husband and I argued two decades ago and now I see that he was right, unfortunately he is no longer here in this world so he can tell me I told you that the government is only indebting our young people.🙏❤🇺🇸👍🏻

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This is very well thought out and written. My viewpoint prior to this article has now changed a great deal. Thanks Technofog. I have always enjoyed your Twitter posts prior to The Great Purge - I am one of the ones who have been purged. Thanks again. I am sharing with family and friends. God bless and may He bless you in abundance.

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Well said.

Tucker Carlson had a monologue a while back where he addressed the same subject. Drew a pretty clear line between enslaving an entire generation of young people with mountains of student loan debt and their willingness to embrace socialism.

https://rumble.com/vdzs3l-tucker-carlson-student-loan-debt-turning-young-people-to-socialism-the-wash.html

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Awesome article!!!

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I've read Techno Fog for a couple of years via Margot Cleveland of the Federalist and admired his work. So, I'm pleased to be commenting on his blog.

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Great article and I have a new perspective along with my own cynical view of higher education. I'm a product of working-class parents who saved every penny for their children can have a good future, and to be raised in a good home.

Have you seen this Lara Logan piece on our colleges? It's truly shocking!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=XzdCiA1pO6U&feature=youtu.be

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I cannot think of one system in our country that is not “captured” by greed. Greed is the root of all evil. Greed is a profound menace in our democratic republic. This kind of greed will end our existence if we don’t awaken to it. Changing this one area will take a movement- but we can figure out a way to expose it to each other. That is how it will end. Another great awakening will do it!

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Brilliant! Thank you for sharing.

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I am a poster child for predatory lending. If I’m lucky I will pay off my loans in an amount four times what I borrowed. There is an interesting New York bankruptcy case against Navient, attempting to force the student loan giant into involuntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

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Many parents had been educated from private and public colleges or universities. Their tuitions were inflated then and to them it was the norm. They were aware of the insensitivity of Universities’ administrations and regents. Most Universities did not do anything to make tuition fees affordable to the masses. So many families incurred educational debts and some are still paying for them. I agree, a lot of the Universities’ Administrators and their Regents are way too overpaid. Your researched based study how universities siphoned and take advantage of the youngs to be educated in their institutions are unbelievable and unfortunate. Many professors are not conservatives, but liberals whose agenda are to corrupt graduates’ mind into believing that Socialism is the only way of life. Thank you for writing these issues that concern all families today.

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A big part of caring for those who come after is teaching them at an early age to live within their means. I agree that college tuitions are over-inflated, but that’s no excuse for my young adult child to become a debtor. My daughter is getting just as good an education in her chosen field of journalism at the state university as she would at a private college three times the cost. By earning some scholarships, working a regular job during the school year (on top of full-time studies), and working 2 jobs over the summers, she is able to pay off her college balance every semester. She is also able to avoid the scam fees of residence hall living by renting an apartment with roommates off-campus. She will have zero debt when she graduates because she has resisted taking loans. The work required to pay-as-you-go through college is no small thing, but the financial freedom a young person can have upon graduation is more than worth it.

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Prospectively, personal responsibility & the marketplace will help address the problem. The current college product is worth far less than the price tag -- and the unsustainable will stop.

As for current debt student debt holders, they need relief. But taxpayers aren't a politically feasible option. Look to those fattened endowments to drive the workout. When cigarettes were definitively revealed as a health hazard, Phillip Morris, et. al., paid the piper. The Yale's of the world will follow. Incredible that many on the left don't see the coming mash-up.

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The same universities who yearly increase the price of their overpriced substandard product obtain visas for full paying foreign students with a guaranteed work visa after graduation which leads to full citizenship. This means that they also facilitate the competition for American jobs against the American graduates on a permanent basis. They use their funds to lobby for this immigration to the gov. This is surely a breach of faith Which should nullify those debts.

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I don't mean to demean real learning at colleges and universities, but as presently constituted, they (colleges and universities) are mostly a farce. Parents and children spend so much to have the children become indoctrinated into leftist thinking.

Rebekah, the commenter, should not be paying off her loans at the age of 38. That's the length allocated for paying off a home. When I went to college, starting in 1980, it was expensive but not exorbitant. It's the same with MLB, the NFL and the NBA. We need to stop sending all our money to institutions and people who despise us.

I believe that federal grants and loans played a key role in the hyperinflation that tuition increases experienced. Everyone is being told that you need to go to college. It's not for everyone.

We need to bring back manufacturing to the United States. That is a whole other topic. Don't get me started on that..................

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