I’ve always considered myself a mainstream progressive in most regards. I think free trade is generally a good thing. I don’t have a fundamental dispute with our market-based economy. However, it does seem as if the profit motive is creeping into our daily lives a little more each day and usually not for the better. The unfolding story of the improprieties in the private student loan market is a case in point. When I was a law student, I benefited greatly from the federal Direct Loans program. But restrictions on the amount of federal loans that an individual can take out force many students, like my sister, to turn to the private market. And because the private market is largely unregulated and because they are the source of last resort funding for many students, these banks can charge interest rates that will keep these students in debt for most of their working lives. When my sister graduates, she will have the kind of debt load that once could be only be acquired when buying a house.
A college degree is the most reliable guarantor of higher earning power and a life safely out of poverty. We should be encouraging every kid with the desire and the potential to continue their education. Instead, we expose them to the cold machinations of a banking industry that most definitely does not have their interests at heart. The federal government cannot do everything, but I trust it more than Citibank to provide students with loans that have reasonable rates and repayment schedules. We should be able to agree that corporations shouldn’t be able to make a buck off the educational aspirations of our citizens.
The reason this has happened is soley the responsibility of the Bush Administration. His egrecious cutbacks of PAL Grants and other student aid and the republican congress so willin g to turn all of these transactions over to private industry has placed our young americans in a very precarious situation in regards to their debt. And now we hear about kickbacks that were facilitated by greed and poor national and public policy. This is unfortunate but predictable when Bush and the Republican Congress decided that the Federal Government should take a very minor role in providing advanced aducation assistance to our young people who seek higher education. This is just another example of an incompetent Republican President and Republican Administration who has no regard for oridnary people, but rather is more concerned about privitizing anything and everything to further their political agenda.