empty vessel said:
He was mocking people who are unhappy with the way we finance higher education in the US. That ridicule was rooted in his own ignorance about how the system worked until very recently (and which still robs people paying off student loans today), because he did not understand that financial institutions provided no actual services with respect to financing his higher education. He was under the misimpression that the financial institution from which he received a loan provided him some kind of service, when, in fact, it was the public that provided the service. The financial institution's only role was to receive interest on a loan that the public made. If one understands that, one would understand why somebody would be mad that they had to pay money to a financial institution without receiving anything in return as a condition for obtaining a college degree. Moreover, if he is "not mad" that he had to pay money to a financial institution for no services in order to obtain his own degree, he is a fool.
He wasn't mocking, just speaking the truth, and I suspect what is held by most Americans as well. The free university/post-secondary argument is fairly old and isn't going to fly.
And it is true that financial institutions need the government as the guarantor to lend to students, because if these protests show us anything, its that students are high risk debtors. But as I previously noted, this undermines the 'debtor class' argument being advanced by yourself and by others as a bogeyman. There is no conspiracy theory here, just a policy reality that creates students who exit post-secondary with debt.
Instead of insinuating a grand conspiracy to subjugate young people from lenders who would not lend on their own accord, it would be better to talk about restructuring expectations of post-secondary and creating a climate where young people can get hired.
Tuition subsidies on a structural level, so that public university and non profit universities get government support for research, have placement for art students, and connect students with jobs in work-training co-op experiences would be much better than simply subsidizing tuition to some low level because it only further inflates the cost of education as institutions adjust their cost structure to account for guaranteed cash from students.
He doesn't get to pretend as if he's the one being verbally knocked around in here given that he came in mocking people who are unhappy about having been required to be exploited in order to access higher education.
Exploited in what sense. They chose to borrow the money.
Its not very convincing to people who have no interest in improving things. I don't really care about those people. They're unreachable and unnecessary. Access to higher education is an important issue that many people care very much about, especially those in the bottom half for whom cost is a primary obstacle to higher education. Calling people "spoiled brats" for calling for better access to higher education that isn't mediated by financial institutions is obscene.
Better 'access' to education is one of those vague policy points people can broadly agree on, but the devil is in the details.
From the left, it usually means cheaper university tuition and subsidies. Since policy tend to work in a sliding scale rather than in an absolutist sense, saying that government should provide no base susidies is incorrect and not good policy. Government should funnel money into lowering cost of education so that students ideally pay only for the cost of their program, rather than things like overhead and all the fixed costs necessary to attract professors and researchers to the university.
Where there is disagreement is the blanket idea that university should be free, or that it is a right. It really isn't and there are smarter ways to direct the high school population to other careers, trades, technical colleges, than to move them all through universities.
