Did your college diploma open the door to your career?  Hopefully so.  But too often today, diplomas are more like a driver’s license.  You have to have one, but it is no promise that it will deliver you a luxury automobile!!!!

President Obama to the rescue!   “Pay as you Earn?”  What’s the incentive to be true to your promise and pay off a student loan, if you know you can just drag it out for 20-25 years and wait for it to be FORGIVEN??????????????

The President is deceiving our youth to get their votes.  Telling an entire generation of

hopeful students that they don’t “need” to pay back government student loans, is a perfectly corrupt message from a leader nursing a collapsing economy.   This plan simply puts more debt on the shoulders of graduates LATER.   Here’s what the President announced today he will offer to voting-age youth:

Beginning next year, an existing loan program that allows borrowers to base their monthly payments on a percentage of their income will be enhanced. Under the current “Income-Based Repayment” program, borrowers can limit their payments to 15 percent of their income, with the ability to have the balance of the loan forgiven after 25 years. Under the new program, the cap will drop to ten percent, forgivable after 20 years.

Another program will offer new options for consolidating student loans. The federal government began making loans directly to students last year, rather than guaranteeing loans by private lenders as was the

Swimming In Student Debt

case in the past. That has left nearly six million borrowers with both the old guaranteed loans and the new direct loans. Under the new plan, those borrowers will be able to combine the loans into a single loan with a lower interest rate.

The President was scheduled to tout the plan Wednesday in Denver. It is part of a package of measures unveiled this week aimed at helping the ailing economy without having to gain approval from the Republican-led Congress.

 

It’s so wonderful that President Obama has finally discovered what’s sinking the economy!  It’s STUDENT LOANS!

Here’s the plain truth:  We don’t need the U.S. government to be a sugar daddy to college students.  We need universities to offer degrees that have MEANING.  The last 30 years has produced a plethora of English diplomas, Political Science diplomas, Sociology majors, Psych degrees, Exercise Science and general communications undergraduate degrees to name a few. Too many of these graduates work at Verizon Wireless!

Diplomas are not cheap!  Students come out of our gardens of higher education owing $20,000 or $30,000 or even $70,000 in debts, and too often with degrees of convenience that are not marketable.    Do you know the least preferred pathway in college today?  Engineering!  Why?  Students are sick of math by the time they get to college.   Meanwhile, America is starved for good math teachers.  The USA no longer specializes in a skilled labor force.  Machinists, electrical apprentices, telecommunications assistants, plumbers, aircraft mechanics, or a hundred other crafts, are harder to find and even fewer are well-trained.    In the name of “access to college for all”  we have erased funding for auto shops, cooking classes, woodworking, metal crafts, plastics, and in the process, discouraged craftsmen and service careers.

What we also need in the 21st century are 4-year Bachelor degrees students can earn for $10,000, like the University of Texas is now offering.  A basic degree which broadens a student’s exposure to higher education, but also guarantees they depart with a SKILL set.  In the 21st Century is our constant professor.  Kids can have any question answered in minutes.  We no longer need to view our universities as the only haven for higher learning and great literature, personal philosophies and historical debate.  All of these things are online and in blogs every single night!  In every country!   College is expensive, and becoming too expensive.  In California, college has shot up 20% this year.  Elsewhere in the country?  Ten Percent.

Perhaps students and their parents deserve to demand a bit more for their higher education dollar.  Taxpayers should insist that the

President of the United States not give free rides to anyone in the U.S.   Kids need to feel like they have an education they EARNED.  Foreign nationals with student visas need to pay their own way and not ask Americans to bankroll them.  Illegal aliens need to earn the right to go to college too, just like everyone in America’s family trees have done for two hundred years.

The message for college students in 2011 and 2012?  There is no free lunch in America.  Unless Barack Obama is personally paying.

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Filed under: Economy, Education, Featured, Politics, Sonja Eddings Brown by Sonja Eddings Brown, Oct 26, 2011