The Personal Website of Mark W. Dawson

Canceling Student Debt

There is no doubt that the current student debt is crushing to both students and parents. Not only is it crushing financially but crushing psychologically. Upon graduation, students cannot obtain employment that can relieve them of this debt in short order, and they must alter or postpone their life decisions, such as residency or creating a family, to pay off this debt. Many are moving back in with their parents, thereby stunting their growth as an individual. The parents may also take on financial responsibility to support them and sometimes to help them pay off the student debt. And these student debts are rising as the costs of higher education rises.

So why is the financial cost of higher education continuing to rise? Unfortunately, we have only ourselves to blame. A College or University is the provider of a service, the service of providing an education that will be useful and helpful to a student in their future endeavors. But we do not judge a College or University based on this goal, but we judge them based on the student's grades, their diploma, and the prestige of a College or University, and not the educational content and value of a College or University. To judge them on the educational content and value, we should insist that Colleges and Universities track the progress of their students after they graduate and for them to provide us this information to determine the educational content and value of their service. Then we will be better able to determine the efficiencies and effectiveness of the student's education and make wiser decisions. This will allow the students and parents to make a better determination of if their monies are being spent wisely. Of course, standards would have to be developed to properly track the progress of students after they graduate, but I am confident that there are sufficiently intelligent people at a College or University that can do this. And these standards would have to be uniformly applied to all Colleges and Universities to be a useful evaluation by parents and students.

And as Colleges and Universities are service providers, we are not choosing them on how cost-effective or efficiently they are providing their services. We would never think to hire a service in our other walks of life without assuring that our monies are being well spent, but we seem to do this regarding a College or University education. And the College or University has no incentive to be effective or efficient or to inform us of their efficiency and effectiveness. They continue to receive public funding, and to raise their educational fees, regardless of their effectiveness or efficiencies, because no one holds them accountable. If the monies keep on rolling in, they will keep on doing what they are doing, regardless of effectiveness or efficiencies. They will keep on spending monies on newer, larger, and better facilities, raising the administrator’s or professor's salaries, or building facilities that are glamorous and attractive to new students, professors, or administrators. And the costs keep going up and up, and the monies keep on rolling in and in. And much of these monies come from parents in tuition or fee increases and from the taxpayers in the form of increased subsidies, tuition aid, or grants. And we all know that the more government spends on something, the costlier it becomes.

The only way that we can begin to make Colleges and Universities accountable is for a full public audit of how their monies are being spent and separating out the monies being spent for student education, student activities, facilities, and instructional salaries and wages directly spent on students, from all the other expenses that a College or University incurs. And as the taxpayers are funding Colleges and Universities, the taxpayers have the right to a full public audit of how their monies are being spent. If a College or University does not wish to provide this auditing or tracking of a graduate’s progress in society, then the taxpayer has every right to withhold public funding for a College or University.

The Progressives/Leftist response to this student debt is to propose canceling all or part of the student debt or providing more financial aid to Colleges and Universities. If they cancel the student loan debt, they are thereby shifting the financial responsibility for student loan debt to the taxpayers, the student loan lenders, or the Colleges and Universities to cancel this debt. And we should all be aware that in government:

“If you tax something you are going to get less of it, and if you spend something you are going to get more of it."
 - Walter E. Williams

If we continue to increase public funding of Colleges and Universities, they will continue to spend more and more, many times, for the non-educational purposes of their students. Some Colleges and Universities have large endowment funds, which we should require they wisely expend before we increase public funding to those Colleges and Universities with large endowment funds.

And many Democrat leaders are receptive to this idea of taxing and spending to relieve student loan debt.

Paying off student debts does not solve the problem of the increasing costs for a College or University education. And, indeed, it brings up the question of where canceling student loan debt will end, and when does it start? There is also the question if this is fair to the parents and students who have already paid of their student debt? If we cancel the current student loans, is it fair to the students and parents who previously sacrificed to pay off their student loans, and should we reimburse them for the student loan debt they previously incurred? If we cancel the current student loan debt, will we cancel future student loan debts, or perhaps make Higher Education an entitlement? This begs the question of entitlements in America, as I have written in my article, “Entitlements”.

If the government is responsible for student loans, then the question is, how much are they responsible for? It also raises the question that if the government pays for education, can the government in the future control education costs? This is analogous to Medicare, where the government sets the rate for reimbursement, and the doctors and hospitals must accept this rate and compensate for this loss by increasing the rates for non-Medicare patients. Will Colleges and Universities accept the government rate for tuition reimbursement, and will they increase the rates for others that do not receive government reimbursements for student loans?

These are all questions of morality and responsibility. The morality of taking taxpayer monies to give to someone else is capsulized by the following quote:

“You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it. No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.”
- Abraham Lincoln

With the canceling of student loan debt, the taxpayers work and toil, and the recipients eat it. No amount of justification that it for the greater good negates that you are taking monies from one person to give to another person. Utilizing the greater good reasoning leads to the slippery slope of justifying any spending the government determines is for the greater good. Just because there is a government between the person who gives the money and the person who receives the money does not justify the taking, for taxes are for the purpose of funding the common good of its citizens, not for the greater good of its citizens. The government can only tax for the common good that is necessary and proper for the functioning of government and not for some nebulous greater good. And no good can be achieved by taxing the monies of a person unless it is for the common good.

The question of responsibility is that the students and parents knew they were undertaking this student loan debt before they entered the College or University. Relieving student loan debt is relieving them of their self-imposed responsibility, thereby creating generations of persons who can make unwise decisions and then do not suffer the consequences of their unwise decisions.

What the Progressives/Leftist, and the Democrat leadership, are doing is pandering for votes of those that receive the student loan debt relief. For, of course, if someone relieves you of a debt, then you are more receptive to supporting them. But the Progressives/Leftists, and the Democrats, are doing this at the expense of taxpayers whom they hope will not remember the increased taxes and spending and not vote against them in an election. They also make it possible for persons to believe that their future student loan debt will be forgiven, thus fostering unwise decisions and irresponsibility.

The American people need to resist the urge to tax and spend for this greater good and require that students and parents take responsibility for their own decisions. To not do so is to slide down the slippery slope to Socialism.