Will Work for Tuition

I noticed in the Indianapolis Star yesterday the Chicago Defender Editor, Roland Martin, was bemoaning the reduction in growth of spending for college education by the federal government. He cites the usual suspects, spending for the Iraq war and rebuilding and the evil tax cuts for the rich as the primary culprits. Bottom line, his concern seems to be that we're not spending enough and need to be spending more and anyone that says otherwise shouldn't even be in government. His focus also seems to be that the one that should be doing more spending is the federal government.

Now for the disclaimer. I received a Pell grant, a very modest one, to help me get through college. The rest of it, I paid for by working my way through school. I think it's a great thing that that money has been there to help so many people get through school. I also think it's hurt us more than any one thing by raising the cost of tuition out of the reach of families in the middle, the ones those like Martin claim to champion. In my case, my family was dirt poor. I mean dirt poor. That's how I even qualified, that and my great grades got me in. Had my parents not been disabled, I wouldn't have gotten even that money. I also was willing to pay back any loan I might get. How many loans in the history of federally-backed funding have gone into default and required the US government to bail out? I'd hazard a guess the number is rather large. The biggest bilkers seem to be those who benefit the most, law and medical students. Amusing, I know.

Take these things into consideration. The federal government has to pay more each year for two reasons, massive amounts of loan defaults, and rising tuition costs. The loan defaults I just addressed. The tuition raises have been covered very well by much smarter men than I economically. To sum up the argument, though, schools have no need to remain competitive when subsidized by the federal government. They can raise rates as needed to fund new projects or new administrative initiatives, secure that they will still have the same or more students wanting in because the Fed is filling their trough with an endless supply of cash for those students. So, you've taken the need for the schools to financially compete with each other, or at least have manageable tuition rates. The end result has been that students from the lower end of the economic spectrum have benefitted massively, while students at the upper end still go as they always have because their parents can afford it.

Those who suffer are the beleaguered middle class, the very group such programs were meant to help. But because the Fed cannot manage such a massive welfare program at the cost of us taxpayers without squeezing us for more money, they've restricted who can get aid and how much so that if you or your parents make even a scratch above bleak and utter poverty, you are ineligible. Thus parents at this level must mortgage the family home or worse sacrifice their retirement to educate their child. The solution that both sides seem to push is "MORE MONEY IS NEEDED". Are you kidding me? This leads to us becoming more dependent on government and more beholden to them all in one master stroke. I'd say it was genius if I thought someone meant to do it, and I do. It's a matter of those who had power and those who've sought to take it away from them. I'm assuming you, gentle reader, are smart enough to figure which is which.

Mr. Martin is typical of that establishment or blinded by them. He sees the solution as socking it to "the rich", which means those making slightly more than nothing and failing to address the realities of our modern world. All these little problems, like welfare, college aid, and social security, exist in a vacuum to their proponents. They argue as if nothing else in the world exists or matters than that one little issue until the next pet issue comes into play. These people should be seen for what they are, naive at best or first-rate hucksters shilling for the powers-that-be (and I don't mean the current President) to squeeze more out of our already thread-bare pockets.

What's the answer? Less money to education? That may be too late, given the damage that's been done. But more money most certainly is not the answer. Only in the fantasy of the left is a reduction in growth of a monster seen as a cut, though, and if we can't even slow down the growth of such welfare monsters without these sort of fights, we're as good as doomed.