Screwing College Kids Has Bipartisan Support

by Patrick Appel

Matt Taibbi tackles the college loan industry and the political machinations that enable it:

Democrats – who, incidentally, receive at least twice as much money from the education lobby as Republicans – like to see the raging river of free-flowing student loans as a triumph of educational access. Any suggestion that saddling befuddled youngsters with tens of thousands of dollars in school debts is somehow harmful or counterproductive to society is often swiftly shot down by politicians or industry insiders as an anti-student position. The idea that limitless government credit might be at least enabling high education costs tends to be derisively described as the “Bennett hypothesis,” since right-wing moralist and notorious gambler/dick/hypocrite Bill Bennett once touted the same idea. …

Conservatives, meanwhile, with their usual “Fuck everybody who complains about anything unless it’s us” mentality, tend to portray the student-loan “problem” as a bunch of spoiled, irresponsible losers who are simply whining about having to pay back money they borrowed with their eyes wide open. When Yale and Penn recently began suing students who were defaulting on their federal Perkins loans, a Cato Institute analyst named Neal McCluskey pretty much summed up the conservative take. “You could take a job at Subway or wherever to pay the bills,” he said. “It seems like basic responsibility to me.”

Paul Campos recommends the article:

The most interesting revelation in this important and disturbing piece is that, by its own estimates, the government ends up collecting close to or even more than the original principal balance on student loans that default.

(Chart from Mother Jones)