George Leef’s latest Martin Center column focuses on the debate surrounding forgiveness of federal college student loans.
Once again, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has kicked the hornet’s nest, this time by changing the rules for deciding if a student will be relieved of his or her obligation to repay federal college loans.
The way our higher education finance system works, the federal government makes it easy for students to borrow money for college, no matter how academically weak and disengaged they might be. Many schools have been created to cash in on that money by providing educational programs (mostly with a vocational focus) for people who think they need some postsecondary education to land a good job.
All those schools need to do is become accredited by one of the accrediting agencies recognized by the Department of Education. That isn’t very difficult and, once accredited, the schools don’t have to worry much about their standards. Neither the accreditors nor the government scrutinizes them to ensure that students aren’t wasting their time and taxpayer money.
This system proved to be tempting for school officials who want to bring in as much revenue as possible by enrolling very marginal students with promises of good careers after they graduate. Whether the students were really apt to benefit or the programs were of high quality didn’t particularly matter. If they couldn’t find work and pay off their loans, it wasn’t their problem.
