Student debt “fix” is making it worse

The Biden Admin wants to fix college student debt by making it worse.

The underlying cause of student debt is related to massive increase in the cost of education and transferring the debt to the federal government. Over the recent decade taxpayers have sent trillions of dollars to universities and colleges who in turn have increased tuition and education expenses at double the inflation rate.

The second failure is the federal government will loan a student more money than they can ever repay using the degree they are earning.

The solution is simple. Congress should require that new student loans starting in the fall of 2023 should be funded through each college and universities endowment funds. The dynamic of this operation would be for colleges and universities to deal with burgeoning debt and stop authorizing more debt than a student can reasonable pay back. The principle is just like how home mortgages work where the amount of debt is limited to what can reasonably be repaid.

A second step would be to sever the tie between university research funds that are associated with the continuing increase in the cost of education. Universities and colleges must begin to operate like a business in that expenses must be held in check by revenue rather than flooding the systems with free money funded by taxpayers.

Gary Ellis

Cedar Rapids