Why the Obama administration launched its REPAYE plan: It had no choice

Late last year, the Obama administration's Department of Education launched its eighth student-loan repayment program, labeling it REPAYE.  Very similar to a previous Obama initiative titled PAYE, the REPAYE program allows college-loan borrowers to pay off their student loans over 20 years. The chief new feature of REPAYE is broader eligibility. Nearly every student-loan debtor will qualify to participate in the REPAY program.

Under both PAYE and REPAYE, college-loan debtors make monthly payments based on their income, not the amount they borrowed. Payment rates are established annually, based on the borrower's reported income for the previous year, with payments calculated to equal10 percent of the borrower's discretionary income.

In many ways, REPAYE is a good deal for overburdened student-loan debtors. Monthly payments will be lower than the standard 10-year repayment plan; and payments will be allowed to fluctuate as borrowers' income goes up or down. People who are unemployed or who live at the poverty level won't be required to make any payments at all.

All in all, the Obama administration's latest student-loan program is incredibly generous. In fact, most debtors on the REPAYE plan will be making monthly payments so low that they won't cover accruing interest on their loans. In other words, at the end of the 20-year repayment program, most debtors will still have large balances on their loans, which will be forgiven.  The forgiven amount will be absorbed by taxpayers.

Why did the Obama administration launch REPAYE, which could reasonably criticized as fiscally irresponsible? I will tell you why: it had no choice.

For years, the government has permitted overburdened student-loan debtors to enroll in economic hardship deferment programs and other forbearance plans that allowed borrowers to temporarily skip their monthly student-loan payments. Colleges encouraged this practice as a way to keep their short-term  student-loan default rates down--particularly the for-profit colleges, which needed to keep their default rates below 30 percent in order to continue receiving federal student-aid money.

For some people on these plans, however, the forbearances weren't temporary--they stretched out for years while interest accrued on their original debt. Thus for virtually everyone in a forbearance or deferment program, their loan balances were getting larger with each passing month due to accruing interest.

This phenomenon was documented in a recent Brookings Institution report written by Looney and Yanelis. These scholars found that loan balances were going up, not down, two years into the repayment period for more than half of student-loan borrowers in repayment.

In fact, for millions of people who have had their student loans in nonpayment status for any considerable period of time, it has become virtually impossible to to pay back their loans. This state of affairs drove many debtors into default, which caused their balances to grow even larger due to the penalties and fees that got tacked on to their debt.

President Obama and Arne Duncan could see that there were only two ways out of this morass. Either people must be allowed to file for bankruptcy to discharge their college-loan debt or their loans have to be refinanced to make the monthly payments lower. Since bankruptcy reform is politically impossible, Obama and Duncan chose to launch PAYE and REPAYE.

But there are enormous problems with the Obama administration's fix. First, most people entering PAYE and REPAYE are not enrolling immediately after graduating from college. Most struggle for a few years to make payments under the standard 10-year plan and then enter REPAYE because they can't service their loans. For these people, enrolling in a 20-year repayment plan extends their repayment period out over their entire working lives.

Butler v. Educational Credit Management Corporation, decided earlier this year, illustrates this problem. Beverly Butler struggled for almost 20 years to make payments on loans she took out to get her college degree, which she obtained in 1995. Eventually, she enrolled in a 25-year repayment plan that stretches out her loan repayment period until 2037--42 years after she graduated from college!

And of course the other big problem with PAYE and REPAYE is that most people in these programs are not paying back their loans at all; they are making token payments that don't cover accruing interest. In essence, these programs are designed to disguise the fact that for all practical purposes, people in long-term repayment programs have defaulted on their loans.

This is no small matter. Almost 5 million people are in income-based repayment plans now; and the Department of Education wants to enroll 2 million more by the end of next year. Without question, REPAYE is going to be the default option for most student-loan debtors in the years to come, which is what the Brookings Institution and other higher-education industry insiders want to happen.

In reality, the Obama administration has imposed a tax on most people who borrow money to attend college;  REPAYE participants will be obligated to pay a percentage of their incomes for a majority of their working lives in return for the privilege of going to college.

How ironic. Barack Obama, self-proclaimed friend of the disadvantaged, has established a huge sharecropper program for college goers. Ultimately of course, all Obama did was buy time for the college industry. In the long run, REPAYE can't sustain the status quo. At some time in the not too distant future, higher education as we now know it will collapse.

And the first cards to fall in this house of cards will be the for-profit colleges and the small private liberal arts colleges. Be patient. You don't have long to wait.

Enrollment at four-year for-profit colleges declined 9.3 percent from last year, and the University of Phoenix's enrollment has declined by half from its peak years. The private liberal arts colleges are behaving like a Texas fireworks stand (Buy One, Get One Free!!), discounting tuition for first-time freshman by 48 percent.

The end is near.

 References

Erin E. Arvedlund. A new way, REPAYE, to get out of college debt. Philadelphia Inquirer, March 29, 2016. http://articles.philly.com/2016-03-29/business/71877131_1_income-based-repayment-plan-loan-debt-standard-repayment-plan.

Adam Looney & Constantine Yannelis, A crisis in student loans? How changes in the characteristics of borrowers and in the institutions they attended contributed to rising default rates. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution (2015). Accessible at: http://www.brookings.edu/about/projects/bpea/papers/2015/looney-yannelis-student-loan-defaults

Rick Seltzer. Discount rates rise yet again at private colleges and universities. Inside Higher Ed, May 16, 2016. Accessible at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/05/16/discount-rates-rise-yet-again-private-colleges-and-universities.

Kelly Woodhouse. (2015, November 25). Discount Much? Inside Higher Ed. Accessible at: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/11/25/what-it-might-mean-when-colleges-discount-rate-tops-60-percent?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=389f6fe14e-DNU20151125&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-389f6fe14e-198565653

Enrollments slide, particularly for older students. Inside Higher Ed, May 24, 2016. Accessible at https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/05/24/enrollments-slide-particularly-older-students?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=74ec3a191d-DNU20160524&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-74ec3a191d-198564813

A liberal arts degree is not worth much: Don't borrow a lot of money to pay for one

Christ. Seven years of college down the drain. Might as well join the f-cking Peace Corps."

Bluto (played by John Belushi)

Animal House

Americans cling to the touchingly pathetic belief that a college degree will improve their lives. And it is true that people who graduate from college make more money over their lifetimes than people who only have high school diplomas.

But in many instances, a college degree represents nothing more than an individual's dogged tenacity and willingness to sit through four years of meaningless classes--traits that make college graduates adaptable to the sterility and boredom of the American workplace.

That's not always true, of course. I feel quite sure that people who get degrees in engineering, journalism, and the health professions often learn valuable skills.  

But a degree in the liberal arts or the social sciences is highly overrated as a ticket to a good job. Reflecting back more than 40 years from my time at Oklahoma State University ("the Princeton of the Prairies"), I realize I learned more about how to make my way in the world from delivering newspapers as a 12-year-old for the Anadarko Daily News than I did from any of my college courses.

And I received much more vocational guidance from my father than from any college professor. Not that my father gave a damn about what I would do for a living when I left home. But after holding down several hundred bull calves while he castrated them with his Schrade pocket knife, I came to the firm conviction that I would never make it as a cattleman.

At one time, going to college was a relatively harmless activity. Rattling around a campus for four (or five, or six) years didn't do young people much harm other than delay their entrance into remunerative employment. And no question about it--studying for exams improves people's short-term memory.

But things have changed. Today, making the wrong choices about going to college can lead to a lifetime of economic hardship, at least for people who borrow too much money to pay for their college education.

What can go wrong about obtaining a liberal arts education, you might ask?  Here are some mistakes that many people make:

1) Getting a liberal arts degree from a for-profit college. By and large, for-profit colleges are more expensive than public schools; so if you attend a for-profit college you will probably borrow more money than if you attended a public institution. And the for-profits have high default rates. According to a Brookings Institution report, almost half of the people in  a recent cohort who borrowed to attend a for-profit school defaulted on their loans within five years. Thus, attending a for-profit college increases the risk of default.

So if you want to get a degree in sociology, history, literature, or women's studies, you should probably get it at a public university--even a mediocre one--rather than pursue a liberal arts degree at a for-profit institution.

2) Paying the sticker price to attend a prestigious private college.  Private colleges are more expensive than public colleges, but they are now discounting their tuition drastically. In fact, the average institutional discount rate at private colleges was 48.6 percent for first-time freshmen in 2015-2016. And the discount rate for all students attending private schools was 42.5 percent.

So don't pay the sticker price to attend a fancy private college. Keep in mind that many private schools are scrambling to keep their enrollments up, and they need you more than you need them.

3) Doubling down by going to graduate school without a clear idea how a graduate degree will improve your earning potential. About 40 percent of all outstanding student-loan debt was acquired by people who went to graduate school. Graduate education in some fields has become outrageously expensive--especially for law degrees and MBAs. But graduate degrees in the liberal arts are also pricey.

There was a time when graduate school was a reasonable default option for people with no clear vocational goal. Graduate school was a respectful place for people to park themselves while they decided what they wanted to do with their lives. And opportunity costs were relatively low because tuition was often low--particularly at public colleges.

But the game has changed. Individuals who borrow money to get a liberal arts education and then borrow more money to go to graduate school are playing Russian Roulette with their financial futures; and they're playing with three bullets in their revolvers. Don't go to graduate school unless you have a clear idea about how a graduate degree will lead to a job that pays well enough to make the investment worthwhile.

Beware: A liberal arts degree is no sure path to a middle-class lifestyle

In sum, a liberal arts degree provides no sure path to making a living, and borrowing a lot of money to get a liberal arts education can lead to financial disaster. It is a fine thing to know a little Shakespeare and to be able to identify the causes of Thirty Years' War; and it's nice to talk literature with the swells. But if you leave college with a hundred grand in student loans, you will find that the liberal arts degree you acquired didn't enhance your life; in fact, it might have destroyed it.

"Seven years of college down the drain . . . ."

References

Rick Seltzer. Discount rates rise yet again at private colleges and universities. Inside Higher Ed, May 16, 2016. Accessible at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/05/16/discount-rates-rise-yet-again-private-colleges-and-universities

Froma Harrop insinuates that Bernie Sanders is a racist: Is Froma pimping for Hillary?

The media elite are furious that Bernie Sanders won't go away and that he continues to win primary elections. And some journalists have resorted to making wild accusations about Sanders and his campaign.

Froma Harrop's piece, which appeared last week, is particularly nasty. Appearing under a headline entitled "Bernie Sanders and Racism Lite,' Harrop insinuated that Bernie's campaign is associated with racism. She even accused "Sanders' white posses" of "invading campaign events of other presidential contenders, including Donald Trump rallies. But Harrop cited no evidence to support such a charge.

The liberal media can't have it both ways. Most liberal commentators argue that Trump's rallies are disrupted because Trump incites violence by his message and tone. But now Harrop suggests that it is those nasty Bernie supporters who are causing all the ruckus.

She also cynically interpreted Bernie's observation that his rallies were largely peaceful even when held in "high crime areas."  According to Harrop, "high crime areas" is a veiled reference to African American neighborhoods.

Harrop admits--as she must--that Bernie has a "staunch civil rights record." Indeed, Bernie was arrested in 1963 for participating in a civil rights protest against segregated schools in Chicago; and he was active in the Congress On Race Equality (CORE) during the 1960s. Does Hillary have a comparable civil rights record? No, she does not.

Perhaps the most ridiculous part of Harrop's hatchet job on Bernie was her insinuation that he moved to Vermont, which she described as "the whitest state in the nation," for racist reasons. Vermont, Harrop confides, "had become a safe haven for liberals leaving--the word then was 'fleeing'--the cities."

What a pile of horse manure! A great many states have low minority populations--Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Vermont, Maine. Is Harrop suggesting that people who move to those states are a bunch of racists? If that's true, then pack me to a re-education camp because I lived in Alaska for nine years during the 1980s.

In my view, Harrop is one of a band of panting puppies eager to assist Hillary Clinton clinch the Democratic presidential nomination by denigrating Bernie Sanders--the only genuinely decent candidate left in the race. Cokie and Steve Roberts performed a similar service for Hillary in an op ed essay as did Frank Bruni of the New York Times, who suggested that Bernie was a sore loser because he didn't drop out of the race for president.

But it is the liberal media elites who are the sore losers. And what they have lost is the public's respect for their journalistic integrity. And that's why millions of Americans have decided to think for themselves during this election cycle instead of allowing CNN, the New York Times, and journalistic lap dogs like Froma Harrop to do their thinking for them.

I hate to break the news to you, Froma, but a lot of Americans find Hillary totally unacceptable as a president; and insinuating that Bernie is a racist is not the way to persuade Americans to change their minds.

Who is that guy?

References

Frank Bruni. The Cult of Sore Losers. New York Times, April 26, 2016. Accessible at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/27/opinion/the-cult-of-sore-losers.html?_r=0

Froma Harrop. Bernie Sanders and Racism Lite. Seattle Times, May 19, 2016. Accessible at http://www.seattletimes.com/author/froma-harrop/

Tim Murphy. Here's What Bernie Sanders Actually Did In the Civil Rights Movement. Mother Jones, February 11, 2016. Accessible at http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2016/02/bernie-sanders-core-university-chicago

The Department of Education almost always fights bankruptcy relief for distressed college-loan borrowers--even when it pointless to do so: You'll never get out of this world alive.

I'll never get out of this world alive.

Hank Williams

Last July, Lynn Mahaffie, Deputy Secretary of Education, issued an insincere letter regarding the Department of Education's position concerning bankruptcy relief for college-loan debtors.

In that letter, Mahaffie outlined when DOE would not oppose bankruptcy relief for student-loan borrowers. She listed eleven factors to consider when determining when DOE would agree to permit a bankrupt debtor to discharge student loans in a bankruptcy court. Besides, Mahadffie said the Department would not oppose a bankruptcy discharge if it would not make economic sense to fight a student-loan borrower's petition for relief.

But in fact, Mahaffie wasn't telling the truth. Bankruptcy court opinions decided after Mahaffie wrote her letter show that DOE opposes bankruptcy relief for almost everyone--even when it is evident a debtor will never repay his or her college loans.

Let's review Kelly v. U.S. Department of Education, decided less than two months ago. Cynthia Kelly, a woman in her sixties, filed for bankruptcy in August 2014. At the time of her filing, Kelly had accumulated $160,000 in college-loan debt; and she had had no steady employment for almost 10 years. In fact, she was receiving nearly $200 a month from the local Department of Social Services in food assistance.

Before filing, Kelly was approved for an "Income-Contingent Repayment Plan" (ICRP) that reduced her monthly student-loan payment obligation to zero because her income was so low. Based on her employment history, it seems highly unlikely that Kelly will ever be required to pay a single penny on her student loans under her ICRP because she will probably live at the poverty level for the rest of her life.

Nevertheless, the Department of Education opposed Kelly's bankruptcy application to discharge her student loans, and Judge David Warren, a North Carolina bankruptcy judge, refused to release her from the debt. In the judge's view, Kelly failed the second prong of the Brunner "undue hardship" test because she could not show "additional circumstances" that precluded her from paying back her loans in the future.

Indeed, Judge Warren was totally unsympathetic to Ms. Kelly's situation.  The judge pointed out that Kelly had taken out student loans over a period of 40 years and had paid almost none of it back (less than $2,300).  Moreover, she had left a secure job with a pharmaceutical company in 2004 to do community service work and had never had steady employment since that time. Although Kelly argued that she had made diligent efforts to find remunerative work, Judge Warren ruled that there was no evidence that she had ever "pounded the payment" to find a job.

Judge Warren pointed out that Kelly appeared to be in good health and was well educated, having both a bachelor's degree, a master's degree, and a doctorate. He seemed offended by the fact that a highly educated person was getting food assistance.  Kelly's "lack of desire and motivation is an insult to those similarly situated," the judge observed, "especially to those lacking the gift of an education." In the judge's opinion, this insult was further compounded "by [Kelly's] complacent acceptance of welfare . . . "

I fully agree with Judge Warren that Kelly is not an attractive candidate for bankruptcy relief.  As the judge pointed out, Kelly took out student loans for nearly 40 years to obtain a lot of post-secondary education. Yet, she chose to live a "voluntary lifestyle" of community service rather than make reasonable efforts to maximize her income.

But let's face it. Ms. Kelly (or Dr. Kelly) will never pay off $160,000 in student loans. Her ICRP requires her to pay nothing due to her poverty-level income. It is totally unrealistic to believe that a woman in her sixties who hasn't held a steady job in ten years will obtain a well-paying job in today's economy.

Moreover, the colleges and universities that took Ms. Kelly's tuition money over a forty-year period bear a good deal of the blame for the situation Kelly is in now. According to Judge Warren, Kelly enrolled at multiple institutions, including Stone School, University of New Haven, Southern New Hampshire University, Spelman College, Drew University, South New Hampshire University, University of Mount Olive, and Shaw University.

Perhaps Kelly is not deserving of bankruptcy relief, but denying her that relief will not get the taxpayers' money back. The Department of Education would be more honest with taxpayers if it allowed people in Kelly's position to shed their debt in a bankruptcy court and then took steps to prevent colleges all over the United States from enrolling students in programs that will never pay off financially.

But that will never happen because the colleges can't survive without federal student-aid money, including money they get from admitting students to programs that have no economic benefit for the people who complete them.

References

Kelly v. U.S. Department of Education, 548 B.R. 99 (Bankr. E.D.N.C. 2016).

Lynn Mahaffie, Undue Hardship Discharge of Title IV Loans in Bankruptcy Adversary Proceedings. CL ID: GEN 15-13, July 7, 2015.

The Department of Education almost always fights bankruptcy relief for distressed college-loan borrowers--even when it pointless to do so: You'll never get out of this world alive.

I'll never get out of this world alive.

Hank Williams

Last July, Lynn Mahaffie, Deputy Secretary of Education, issued an insincere letter regarding the Department of Education's position concerning bankruptcy relief for college-loan debtors.

In that letter, Mahaffie outlined when DOE would not oppose bankruptcy relief for student-loan borrowers. She listed eleven factors to consider when determining when DOE would agree to permit a bankrupt debtor to discharge student loans in a bankruptcy court. Mahadffie said the Department would not oppose a bankruptcy discharge if it would not make economic sense to fight a student-loan borrower's petition for relief.

But in fact, Mahaffie wasn't telling the truth. Bankruptcy court opinions decided after Mahaffie wrote her letter show that DOE opposes bankruptcy relief for almost everyone--even when it is apparent a debtor will never repay his or her college loans.

Let's review Kelly v. U.S. Department of Education, decided less than two months ago. Cynthia Kelly, a woman in her sixties, filed for bankruptcy in August 2014. At the time of her filing, Kelly had accumulated $160,000 in college-loan debt; and she had had no steady employment for almost 10 years. In fact, she was receiving nearly $200 a month from the local Department of Social Services in food assistance.

Before filing, Kelly was approved for an "Income-Contingent Repayment Plan" (ICRP) that reduced her monthly student-loan payment obligation to zero because her income was so low. Based on her employment history, it seems highly unlikely that Kelly will ever be required to pay a single penny on her student loans under her ICRP because she will probably live at the poverty level for the rest of her life.

Nevertheless, the Department of Education opposed Kelly's bankruptcy application to discharge her student loans, and Judge David Warren, a North Carolina bankruptcy judge, refused to release her from the debt. In the judge's view, Kelly failed the second prong of the Brunner "undue hardship" test because she could not show "additional circumstances" that precluded her from paying back her loans in the future.

Indeed, Judge Warren was totally unsympathetic to Ms. Kelly's situation.  The judge pointed out that Kelly had taken out student loans over a period of 40 years and had paid almost none of it back (less than $2,300).  Moreover, she had left a secure job with a pharmaceutical company in 2004 to do community service work and had never had steady employment since that time. Although Kelly argued that she had made diligent efforts to find remunerative work, Judge Warren ruled that there was no evidence that she had ever "pounded the payment" to find a job.

Judge Warren pointed out that Kelly appeared to be in good health and was well educated, having a bachelor's degree, a master's degree, and a doctorate. He seemed offended by the fact that a highly educated person was getting food assistance.  Kelly's "lack of desire and motivation is an insult to those similarly situated," the judge observed, "especially to those lacking the gift of an education." In the judge's opinion, this insult was further compounded "by [Kelly's] complacent acceptance of welfare . . . "

I fully agree with Judge Warren that Kelly is not an attractive candidate for bankruptcy relief.  As the judge pointed out, Kelly took out student loans for nearly 40 years to obtain a lot of post-secondary education. Yet, she chose to live a "voluntary lifestyle" of community service rather than make reasonable efforts to maximize her income.

But let's face it. Ms. Kelly (or Dr. Kelly) will never pay off $160,000 in student loans. Her ICRP requires her to pay nothing due to her poverty-level income. It is totally unrealistic to believe that a woman in her sixties who hasn't held a steady job in ten years will obtain a well-paying job in today's economy.

Moreover, the colleges and universities that took Ms. Kelly's tuition money over a forty-year period bear a good deal of the blame for the situation Kelly is in now. According to Judge Warren, Kelly enrolled at multiple institutions, including Stone School, University of New Haven, Southern New Hampshire University, Spelman College, Drew University, South New Hampshire University, University of Mount Olive, and Shaw University.

Perhaps Kelly is not deserving of bankruptcy relief, but denying her that relief will not get the taxpayers' money back. The Department of Education would be more honest with taxpayers if it allowed people in Kelly's position to shed their debt in a bankruptcy court and then took steps to prevent colleges all over the United States from enrolling students in programs that will never pay off financially.

But that will never happen because the colleges can't survive without federal student-aid money, including money they get from admitting students to programs that have no economic benefit for the people who complete them.

References

Kelly v. U.S. Department of Education, 548 B.R. 99 (Bankr. E.D.N.C. 2016).

Lynn Mahaffie, Undue Hardship Discharge of Title IV Loans in Bankruptcy Adversary Proceedings. CL ID: GEN 15-13, July 7, 2015.

Educational Credit Management Corporation v. Acosta-Conniff; A lifetime of Indebtedness is the future for most college borrowers

James Howard Kunstler wrote one of his best essays recently about America's opioid epidemic., and he began his essay with this observation:

 While the news waves groan with stories about "America's Opioid Epidemic," you may discern that there is little effort to actually understand what's behind it, namely the fact that life in the United States has become unspeakably depressing, empty, and purposeless for a large class of citizens.

Kunstler went on to describe life in small town and rural America: the empty store fronts, abandoned houses, neglected fields, and "the parasitical national chain stores like tumors at the edge of every town."

Kunstler also commented about people's physical appearance in backwater America: "prematurely old, fattened and sickened by bad food made to look and taste irresistible to con those sick in despair." And he also described how many people living in the forgotten America spend their time: "trash television, addictive computer games, and their own family melodramas concocted to give some narrative meaning to lives otherwise bereft of event or effort."

There are no jobs in flyover America. No wonder opioid addiction has become epidemic in the old American heartland. No wonder death rates are going up for working-class white Americans--spiked by suicide, alcohol and drug addiction.

I myself come from the desperate heartland Kunstler described. Anadarko, Oklahoma, county seat of Caddo County, made the news awhile back due to four youth suicides in quick succession--all accomplished with guns. Caddo County, shaped liked the state of Utah, can easily be spotted on the New York Times map showing where drug deaths are highest in the United States. Appalachia, Oklahoma, the Rio Grande Valley, and yes--Caddo County have the nation's highest death rates caused by drugs.

Why? Kunstler puts his finger on it: "These are the people who have suffered their economic and social roles in life to be stolen from them. They do not work at things that matter.They have no prospect for a better life . . . ."

Now here is the point I wish to make. These Americans, who now live in despair, once hoped for a better life. There was a spark of buoyancy and optimism in these people when they were young. They believed then--and were incessantly encouraged to believe--that education would improve their economic situation. If they just got a degree from an overpriced, dodgy for-profit college or a technical certificate from a mediocre trade school, or maybe just a bachelor's degree from the obscure liberal arts college down the road--they would spring into the middle class.

Postsecondary education, these pathetic fools believed, would deliver them into ranch-style homes, perhaps with a swimming pool in the backyard; into better automobiles, into intact and healthy families that would put their children into good schools.

And so these suckers took out student loans to pay for bogus educational experiences, often not knowing the interest rate on the money they borrowed or the payment terms. Without realizing it, they signed covenants not to sue--covenants written in type so small and expressed in language so obscure they did not realize they were signing away their right to sue for fraud even as they were being defrauded.

And a great many people who embarked on these quixotic educational adventures did not finish the educational programs they started, or they finished them and found the degrees or certificates they acquired did not lead to good jobs. So they stopped paying on their loans and were put into default.

And then the loan collectors arrived--reptilian agencies like Educational Credit Management Corporation or Navient Services.  The debt collectors added interest and penalties to the amount the poor saps borrowed, and all of a sudden, they owed twice what they borrowed, or maybe three times what they borrowed. Or maybe even four times what they borrowed.

Does this scenario--repeated millions of time across America over the last 25 years--drive people to despair? Does it drive them to drug addiction, to alcoholism, to suicide?

Of course not. And even if it does, who the hell cares?

References

James Howard Kunstler. The National Blues. Clusterfuck Nation, April 28, 2017.

Sarah Kaplan.'It has brought us to our knees': Small Okla. town reeling from suicide epidemic. Washington Post, January 25, 2016.

Natalie Kitroeff. Loan Monitor Is Accused of Ruthless Tactics on Student Debt. New York Times, January 1, 2014.

Gina Kolata and Sarah Cohen. Drug Overdoses Propel Rise in Mortality Rates of Young Whites. New York Times, January 16, 2016.

Susan Dynarski, Brookings Institution, and the U.S. Housing Market: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury and President Emeritus of Harvard, has expressed concern about growing student-loan indebtedness, which he linked to a slowdown in home ownership in the United States. Joe Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winner in economics, and the Federal Reserve Bank in New York have also expressed the view that growing levels of college-loan debt is hurting the housing market.

But Susan Dynarski, writing for the Brookings Institution, says this is nonsense. Crunching the data from the Federal Reserve System in a different way than the Federal Reserve Bank, she came to this conclusion: education levels, not student-loan indebtedness, explain the difference in home-ownership rates among Americans. In a nutshell, here are Dynarski's conclusions:

Those who borrow for college do have a slower start to homeownership than those who went to college debt-free. . . . But by the time people are in their thirties, when the typical borrower would have finished paying off her student loans, the home ownship rates of the two college-educated groups are statistically indistinguishable. The striking, large gap is between the college-educated and those who stopped with high school.

I have two observations to make about Dynarski's paper for the Brookings Institution.  First, if Dynarski disagrees with Larry Summers, Joe Stiglitz and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, I"m inclined to be persuaded by these eminences rather than Dynarski.

Second, speaking purely as a layperson with no expertise in economics, Dynarski's arguments simply defy common sense. How can she say that rising levels of student-loan indebtedness has no impact on home ownership given what we know about the massive hardship that millions of college-loan borrowers are suffering?

As the New York Times noted several months ago, 10 million people have either defaulted on their student loans or are in delinquency. Can anyone say this group of people have not been shut out of the housing market?

Another 5 million people have been shoved into long-term income-based repayment plans that stretch out for 20 years or more; and the Obama administration hopes to increase that figure by another 2 million people by the end of 2017. Can anyone argue that having a 20-year financial obligation hanging around one's neck has no impact on the ability to buy a home?

Susan Dynarski and the Brookings Institution have published numerous papers that basically contend  that the student-loan program is under control. Like those cops at a murder scene in a 1950s detective movie, they constantly mutter, "Move along, folks; nothing to see here; move along."

But everyone from Joe the Plumber to Larry Summers knows the federal college-loan program is out of control, with millions of people unable to make their loan payments. In my view, the Brookings Institution and many of its researchers are nothing more than shills for the higher education industry, which desperately needs large infusions of federal cash to keep the doors open.

Like all of higher education's apologists, Dynarski repeats the old bromide that people who graduate from college make more money than people who only hold a high school diploma. Of course that is true. But this platitude doesn't excuse higher education for running up tuition costs at twice the rate of inflation. It doesn't justify the behavior of the for-profit universities, which charge far too much for substandard programs and have shockingly high student-loan default rates.

In my opinion, policy makers and the public in general should discount almost everything the Brookings Institution says about the student-loan crisis, which by and large the Brookings people don't even acknowledge.  We should listen to the Vermont House of Representatives, which adopted a resolution a few days ago calling on Congress to lift restrictions on bankruptcy for student-loan debtors. After all, the small-town legislators in the Green Mountain State live in the real world, which is not the world that Susan Dynarski and her Brookings colleagues live in.

References

Micahel Bielawski. Vermont House asks Congress to let student-loan borrowers file for bankruptcy. VermongtWatchdog.org, May 3, 2016.  Accessible at http://watchdog.org/264079/legislature-requests-student-debt-relief-bankruptcy/

Editorial, "Why Student Debtors Go Unrescued." New York Times, October 7, 2015, A 26. Accessible at: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/07/opinion/why-student-debtors-go-unrescued.html

Susan Dynarski. The dividing line between haves and have-nots in home ownership; Education, not student debt. Brookings Institution, May3, 2016. Accessible at http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2016/05/03-dividing-line-between-haves-have-nots-home-ownership-education-not-student-debt-dynarski