Ron Paul Wants To Abolish Federal Student Loans

[Galraedia]

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/10/23/ron-paul-wants-to-abolish-federal-student-loans/

I knew Ron Paul was a wackado.

[Lint Head]

1. How did he pay for his medical degree?

[Warpy]

2. His daddy bought it for him

That's how things were done when he was a lad, when the New Deal was in place and people got paid enough to live on, to invest, to save.

He's just too out of touch to realize that's not the case now and hasn't been since the 1970s.

[HowHasItComeToThis]

21. SOB

[Bill McBlueState]

3. it's consistent with the rest of his positions

That's why people like Ron Paul.

[Capitalocracy]

4. Great guy.

What a visionary. :puke:

[beyurslf]

5. I like Ron Paul for being honest and consistent in what he believes--

even if his beliefs stink to high heaven. Of course, when you have no chance of being president, you can say whatever you like.

[undeterred]

32. He doesn't belong in Congress.

[JVS]

6. I do too. The availability of student loans has hurt students by causing tuition rates to skyrocket

There has to be a better way to help students pay for college than simply inviting them to dig themselves a monstrous hole of debt.

[RKP5637]

12. I've read that other places too. As students get more help, the cost of

education goes up. There needs to be a better way, I agree. You know, it's like when women really joined the workforce, then costs started to double. That's the problem in this country, we always take a step forward and three backward because of outrageous greed. I'm so F'en tired of it. I guess I'm in the mad as hell camp. I'm so tired of all of the BS in this country. It just never lets up.

[potone]

16. The reason for that is largely the cost of health care benefits.

That, and the proliferation of administrative positions and the outrageous increase in administrator' salaries. The increase does not reflect a proportionate increase in faculty salaries, which in many institutions (especially state ones) are not keeping pace with cost of living increases. In addition, many departments, especially in the humanities, are under threat because they are not seen as money-makers.

[RKP5637]

18. Quite true! Thanks for your reply and the additional information!

:)

[JVS]

28. Don't forget that at state schools there has been slashing of the funds that used to be provided...

by the state governments and to replace that money the universities are encouraged to bring in more out of state students who pay rates comparable to students at private universities.

[JVS]

25. It's taking the easy way as far as the federal government is concerned.

Look at it like this, you could actually have a program that gives assistance to students, or you can let the students put themselves in debt (i.e. spend their own future earnings).

To provide tuition assistance would actually cost the government money. To guarantee the loan only costs the government money if the student dies or defaults with debt, and they've pretty much made defaulting illegal.

So the government has an easy burden on that.

Then there is the matter of distribution of places at schools. If a school has 5,000 openings and 8,000 applicants remaining after some applicants have decided to go to better schools, then the way it used to be decided is price. The 3,000 students least able to afford it wouldn't go (unless they had won something). But now we have student loans. This really doesn't change all that much though because the rich can and do take loans just as easily as the poor. So instead of having 8,000 students with an average of $9,000/ year that they can afford, everyone can take $20k in loans and the average they can afford is $29,000/year. It's still the poorest students who can't afford to go, unless they happen to be both poor and ready to take an even bigger risk by going even deeper in debt. Meanwhile the university pockets the increase in money spent. At the very least they could decrease the inflationary effect by making access to the loans need based.

Then on the other hand you have departments attempting to get federal funding for various research projects. Why not have the government insist that in order to get such and such funding, you must meet certain affordability guidelines for your students, or that for a particular project there must be X academic scholarships made available?

[RKP5637]

31. What you've said makes a lot of sense to me! What I often see in the US is

no feedback loop for cost containment and control, for example, health care. Health care costs spiral, yet we appear to only be interested in meeting the spiring costs than cost containment. IMO education falls into a similar category. Many come up with good ideas, but IMO real change does not occur, things are just band-aided.

[JVS]

33. You're right. The cost control is the weak link in this system.

Basically, the student and his/her family is the cost control, but they really can't be trusted to do an adequate job. Look at the kids. They've been told to work hard so they can go to college for years. They've just finished the process of applying to various colleges, maybe even been rejected from a few. Then comes the letter that says they've been accepted. If it's a good school their parents are proud and they feel fortunate to have the opportunity to pay the money and go. Even if it's not such a great school, their parents are relieved and they feel even more lucky to have been accepted somewhere. Suddenly, they're the ones who are expected to take a look at the numbers and decide if they can afford it or not. And in addition at the age of 18, likely before they've even had a credit card and when they're still too young to drink, they're supposed to determine if they can afford it by taking on long-term debt.

It makes me happy that I got a letter in October of my senior year saying that I had a full ride at the state school. It made things so much simpler compared to my friends who were going through such drama.

[RKP5637]

36. Yep, I was lucky to go to a state school and it was a damn good one, and over the years

is one of the leading schools in the US. And, it was at a fraction of the cost of other schools. Where I live now the local community college is superb and provides students with an excellent education. IMO affordable education should be one of the top priorities in this country. Without a well rounded educated populace we really have no future. Well, there will be a future, but then again I never cared for the film Idiocracy. To me it is too indicative of where we are headed.

[pnwmom]

17. The problem is that college costs naturally go up faster than inflation.

Why? Because they are heavily related to the costs of salaries, and the number of professors. Other industries benefit from steadily increasing output through mechanization. To do the same thing in an academic setting would mean greatly increasing some class sizes while eliminating other classes and majors entirely -- but there is a limit to how much we can increase "efficiency" in education without lowering the quality of the education.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

29. Faculty salaries are a smaller part of the staffing costs than people might realize.

I work in higher ed (3 decades/community college) and have seen staff expand while full time faculty numbers and the class sizes they teach have stayed about the same. This even while technology has helped greatly with increasing the efficiency of things like registration, admission, records, payroll, etc. It seems like all the tech would allow us to cut jobs at least through attrition, shifting unneeded bodies to different departments as some tasks became more automated but it never seems to be the case. Part of it is the increase in reporting and accountability, part extra hand-holding, servicing government programs, mandates, and grants, supporting the technology itself, it goes on and on and on.

[digonswine]

24. Is that really why ed costs have increased?

I know there are many more opportunities from private colleges that qualify for student loans and yet provide an inferior type of degree. Let's be serious--If an employer sees that you graduated from UW-Madison(my state) or from Concordia--I don't think these are given the same weight.

[JVS]

27. Tuition is always about making as much money as possible for the school.

With state schools, it's a bit different because there are political pressures to keep things generally affordable, but even there tuition income is especially prized because the money is what's known as "fungible", meaning that it can be spent on any type expense the university has, while nearly every other type of funding is given with a purpose. For example, an NEH or NSF grant is intended to pay the expenses of a particular project and the salaries of those involved in it, a donation by Monsanto is for building a new building for bio-engineering, etc. Tuition money is very important when it comes time to do things like fix sidewalks, mow the lawns, repair older facilities, etc (the unglamorous tasks needed to keep the place running).


This is why even schools with massive endowments tend to have the similar tuition rates. The rate gives the university its petty cash and it also serves to limit the number of incoming students. They raise it to the point that some will decide not to come, which with loans is a way higher point than without.

[jowsybart]

35. I also agree--college should be free, but fewer people should attend

and no loans.

That is how it is in western europe.

[FarLeftFist]

7. Oh yeah, THAT'LL show us! Only the RICH shall receive higher education!

What an idiot.

[mopinko]

8. ron paul is against government. period. even tho

he are one.

[izquierdista]

9. Now I could agree with that

No loans, because higher education should be FREE!

[JVS]

11. +1

[RKP5637]

14. Exactly!!! n/t

[Fantastic Anarchist]

22. Exactly what I was thinking. n/t

[musette_sf]

10. His alleged "theory" that he's trotting out to the baggers

is that "If there were no federal student loans, college would be affordable"

:wtf:

sorta like the "criminalizing birth control will result in fewer abortions" meme that makes about as much sense, as in, NONE.

REALITY is that R Paul is just doing his duty for the 1% to make sure that no one can attend college except the Richie Riches. He doesn't believe that "more affordable" bullshit any more than I do.

[jakeXT]

13. Reminds me of the housing bubble

The unfeigned were whipped up into a frenzy of get-rich-quick housing speculation fervor from 2002 to 2006. The object was to drive demand for billions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities sales, to generate fees for Wall Street firms.
http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthread.php/showthread.php?p=211858#poststop

[dkf]

19. Yup this is the college bubble.

Kids are being whipped up to take on loans beyond their means.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

15. Does he have an alternative? Or does he simply not give a damn? nt

[dkf]

20. If no one can afford it the prices should come down.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

26. I don't believe that capitalist myth any longer. Seems to me in the past...

we were force-fed this idea, and it turned out that people are still not able to afford medical healthcare, and it sure as hell hasn't dropped in price.

[Shagbark Hickory]

23. He really should move to Somalia. n/t

[mwooldri]

30. Seems legit. nt

[quaker bill]

34. I do too

But I would just make them grants.