"Stepped in Blood": The Student Loan Program is So Screwed Up That There Is No Solution Without Pain

I read Shakespeare's Macbeth as a high school student, and I still remember one line from that play:

I am in blood stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er.

I understood the line to mean that Macbeth had involved himself in so many murders that he might as well continue on the same bloody path as turn back.

That's America's situation with the disastrous federal student loan program. Forty-five million student debtors owe a total of $1.7 trillion in federal loans, and there is no way to undo the monstrous damage that has been done. 

Thousands of articles, books, news stories, and scholarly reports have been written about the student-loan catastrophe, but Eleni Schirmer summarized it very well in a recent New Yorker article.

Shirmer focused on elderly student-loan debtors, beginning her article by telling the tale of Mary Ann, who borrowed $29,000 to attend law school in the early 1980s. Today, she is 91 years old, and her debt has grown to $329,000.

As Schirmer explained, oppressive student debt is not only a problem for the young. One in five student borrowers is 50 years or older--about nine million Americans.

Hundreds of thousands of student debtors reach retirement age without paying off their debt. The federal government garnishes their social security checks if they default on their loans.

Millions of overburdened college borrowers have rolled their loans into income-driven repayment plans (IDRs) to lower their monthly payments. Theoretically, their debt is canceled if they successfully complete the terms of their IDR.

Unfortunately, only a handful of debtors have had their loans forgiven through IDRs. As Schirmer explained:

[O]wing to negligent bookkeeping, I.D.R's promise of cancelation has proved to be a mere mirage: as of 2021, more than four million borrowers could have accessed I.D.R. loan cancellation, but only a hundred and fifty-seven had ever received it.

As Shirmer relates, the federal student loan program is so screwed up, so burdened by bureaucracy, and so complicated that the government can't even tell us how much of the $1.7 trillion that is owed is principal on the debt and how much is accrued interest.

For years, the Department of Education has claimed that the federal government makes a profit on federal student loans. Over the last quarter of a century, DOE maintained, the feds created a tidy $114 billion on the program.

But the Government Accountability Office reported this week that DOE grossly miscalculated. In fact, the government lost about $197 billion--a $311 billion math error!

In fairness to the Biden administration, his Department of Education has brought significant relief to millions of distressed student borrowers--mainly by forgiving debt owed by students who claimed to have been defrauded by their colleges. And DOE has initiated several other minor reforms.

Unfortunately, the federal government can't tinker its way out of the student-loan mess. Real reform will be painful.

What, then, needs to be done?

• The feds have got to stop sending student-loan money to the for-profit colleges and shut down this sleazy industry.

• DOE urgently needs to terminate the Parent PLUS program, which has devastated hundreds of thousands of low-income and minority families.

• Congress must reform the Bankruptcy Code to allow distressed student debtors to discharge their loans in bankruptcy. 

Finally, the federal government must put some reasonable cap on the amount of money students can borrow for their college education and force the colleges to get their costs under control.

Sadly, none of these reforms will ever take place. Why? Because reining in the student-loan program would be too painful for various higher-education constituencies, who are happy with the status quo.

Much like Macbeth, the federal student loan program is so mired in corruption, incompetence, and venality that it can't be fixed.  Tragically, this program, designed to help Americans go to college and improve their lives, has destroyed the lives of millions.

Steeped in blood and no painless options

Air Travel is a Nightmare: Let's Travel Anyway

 The Wall Street Journal reported today that the worst two airports in the world for delayed flights are Toronto and Montreal.  I can confirm that Journal's findings are accurate. I was in both airports a few days ago, and the experience was a nightmare.

Due to flight delays, my wife and I spent an unscheduled night in a Toronto Airport hotel and an unplanned-for night in an airport hotel in Atlanta.  These delays cost us more than $600, and we weren't reimbursed.

In addition to airline hassles, we found that the cost for almost everything we bought in airports has increased dramatically. At the Montreal airport, two burgers, a beer, and a glass of wine cost us 80 Canadian dollars (not including a tip). The hotel room in Toronto--more than $300 a night.

Despite the hassles and the unanticipated expenses, I'm glad my wife and I visited Quebec and Nova Scotia last week. Why?

First, the Canadians are almost universally courteous and friendly, and it was a pleasure to interact with them. A cab driver warned us that the French-speaking people of Quebec would be rude if we didn't speak their language, but that was not true. We had a lovely visit to a charming city.

Second, Canadian food is delicious, especially the seafood. Nova Scotia's sparkling wines are the best I've ever tasted--much better than French champagnes or the sparkling wines of California.

I have always found international travel stimulating, and my recent trip to Canada was no exception. For example, I learned the Canadians have told the penny to bugger off. They simply don't use pennies. You get charged ten bucks if you buy something for $10.01. If you buy something for $9.99, you don't get change back from your ten.

How sensible! Why don't the Americans adopt the same policy?

I was also moved by the Canadians' public displays of patriotism and remembrance for those who died while performing their duties. At the Halifax wharf, I saw The Last Steps memorial, which includes an old-fashioned gangplank. A nearby sign said that 350,000 Canadian men and women embarked from Halifax for Europe to fight in World War II.

 Sixty thousand Canadian soldiers did not return, and those young people took their last steps in their native land in Halifax before walking the gangplank toward war.

Who could not be touched by this simple memorial?

Thus, despite the hassles, the unexpected expenses, and an occasional rude encounter (only in the airports), I was grateful for my visit to Canada, our cheerful, hearty, and gracious neighbor.

The Last Steps Memorial

It's Good to Be Shifty in a New Country: Young People Should Be Cautious About Going to College

 "It's good to be shifty in a new country," Huckleberry Finn observed in Mark Twain's most famous novel. 

What does it mean to be shifty? I think Twain meant that people should be cautious in a strange environment and suspicious about entrusting their safety and wellbeing to strangers--not to mention their pocketbooks.

You will be entering a new country if you enroll in college for the first time this fall, and it will behoove you to be shifty and cautious.  Higher education is in a tumultuous--even calamitous transition, and you don't want to get buried in the wreckage.

First, college enrollments are down, and the universities are scrambling to replace their lost revenues and lure more tuition-paying butts to sit in their lecture halls.  In fact, the small, non-profit schools discount tuition on average by more than 50 percent. That's how desperate the colleges are to snag new students.

In fact, many small non-profits are on the edge of closure and surviving almost solely on federal student-loan money. Religiously-affiliated colleges and schools with enrollments of less than 1,000 students are especially vulnerable. 

If you are wise, you will not enroll at a nonselective, nonprofit school unless you know how a degree from St. Nowhere College will help you get a job and pay off your student loans.

And for God's sake, don't attend a for-profit school owned by a hedge fund or trades on the stock exchange. The creeps who own these schools are focused on money--not your welfare. 

Second, college towns are becoming more dangerous, especially the big cities, where many prominent public universities are located. Violent crime--rape, robbery, and carjackings--is spiking upward in urban areas.

If you plan to live off campus, do some research. Find out which neighborhoods are safe and which are not. If you come to college with a car, keep your vehicle locked and be cautious if you park in an isolated parking lot. Be vigilant when pumping your own gas. 

Finally, don't take out more student loans than absolutely necessary. President Biden has done more than any previous president to ease the student-loan crisis, and his administration has introduced many good reforms.

Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to take out student loans based on the expectation that government won't make you pay them back. 

The Biden student-loan relief efforts are commendable, but the feds have done nothing to bring down the cost of going to college. Tuition rates are continuing to climb, and naive young people who borrow a hundred grand to get a humanities degree at an obscure private college may be committing economic suicide.

So remember Huck's advice and be shifty in a new country. When you get to college, you will soon find that many of the people who are making a good living in the higher-education racket are not looking out for your welfare. 

It's good to be shifty in a new country.

"Boiling with Bitterness": Anonymous student debtor writes angry Reddit post denouncing the Democrats

We have not been appeased, and we have not forgotten. The press ignores us to the doom of the DNC this November

Posted July 13, 2022, on Reddit

Like it or not, many of the millions of us feel so sufficiently betrayed and harmed by the Biden Administration and those who chose him over just about anyone else that we will in November invoke our one and only legal means of effectively punishing them.

We are boiling with bitterness, choking with frustration, and desperate to make our pain known. We can’t afford to send our kids to good schools because of the crushing debt; we can’t take out mortgages on houses because of the suffocating interest rates. Most of us are minorities and women who thought higher education would improve our lives; not a few of us were first-generation college graduates.

When the DNC chose our candidates for us, we weren’t thrilled with Biden at first, but he won our favor by promising to seriously address the student debt crisis. When he said he’d be open to forgiving fifty thousand dollars of debt for each of us, and when he promised to forgive at least ten thousand, we stood ourselves next to him.

But then after he’d banged us and became POTUS, he began to pretend we didn’t exist. Remember several months ago when that journalist asked him two questions, the first of which was about us, and he responded by pretending the first had never been asked, answered the second, and then fled the stage? That hurt.

We have a lot of anger and bitterness, and the only legal means of making sure the Biden Administration feels it is at the polls this November. What other option do we have?

And while we’re preparing to do the unthinkable by not voting this November, the press is doing the worst thing it could possibly do for the DNC: ignoring us. By ignoring us, our cries aren’t reaching the Oval Office.

The DNC will be punished at the voting booth for choosing Biden. The only way we’ll show up is if our needs are met. Our kids need to be able to go to good schools, and we need to be able to mortgage houses, things we’d be able to do if the Biden Administration didn’t treat us like some chick he’d banged just to get a job with her dad.

We’re angry, we’re poor, and we’re not gonna take it anymore.

*****

This Reddit essay is an eloquent expression of a student-loan debtor's frustration and bitterness at being saddled with college debt that can never be paid. Richard Fossey

Despair

Congratulations! You've been admitted to Nowhere State University--even though you didn't apply.

Surely you remember Woodie Allen's famous observation: “I'd never join a club that would allow a person like me to become a member.”

That's kind of like the situation with college admissions. Some schools are admitting new students even though they didn't apply!

A couple of companies have launched services that allow college shoppers to post their credentials online.  Colleges can view these credentials and admit students even though the potential student did not fill out an application for admission.

This development is just another sign that nonselective colleges are desperate--literally desperate--to round up enough tuition-paying students to pay their light bills. 

Traditionally, prestigious colleges have boasted that they are highly selective--often accepting only a tiny fraction of the people who apply. Harvard, for example, only admits five percent of the people who apply.

Obviously, a college that accepts new students who did not apply can make no claim to exclusivity. In fact, such a school is probably very close to an open-admission institution.

So if you get an embossed letter on fancy letterhead from a university you never heard of, be sure to open it.

It might be a missive from an admissions officer at Nowhere University, graciously informing you that you've been admitted to the 2022 entering class. 

Then you will know what Woodie Allen was talking about when he said he wouldn't want to join a club that would have him as a member.

 

Never join a club that would have you as a member.

Colleges Are Outsourcing Their Teaching Mission to For-Profit Companies. Is That A Good Thing?

Years ago, colleges employed people to perform auxiliary services. University employees staffed the campus bookstore, ran the student union, and performed janitorial services. 

Over time, however, universities began outsourcing almost all of their auxiliary services. Barnes & Noble now runs hundreds of college bookstores. National fast-food chains operate stores in countless student unions.

Recently, however, American colleges have gone beyond outsourcing their non-instructional activities. Now, the universities are outsourcing their core mission: teaching students.  

According to the Government Accountability Office (as reported in the Wall Street Journal), 550 colleges and universities are partnering with for-profit companies to design courses, recruit students, and manage instruction.

Academic Partnerships, one of the leading for-profit outfits,  contracts with universities all over the United States to manage graduate programs--for a hefty fee, of course.  Higher Education Inquirer estimates that AP collects about half the revenue from the courses and programs they manage.

2U, another for-profit online instruction provider, has a contract for services with the University of Oregon and gets 80 percent of the tuition for 2U-managed courses. That's a good deal for 2U's stockholders.

What the hell is going on? 

As the Wall Street Journal explained, colleges are losing revenue due to declining enrollments.  They aren't raising enough money to pay all their administrators and bureaucrats. Thus, hundreds of schools are investing heavily in online academic programs--especially graduate programs--to juice their revenues. 

Respected public universities like the University of North Carolina and the University of Oregon have turned to for-profit companies to design or revamp various graduate programs, recruit students, and oversee instruction.

Why don't the professors do those things?

I don't know. Perhaps the faculty don't have the skills necessary to recruit students, manage enrollment, or design academic programs for an online format.  Or maybe doing these things is just too fuckin' hard.

I have a professor friend whose dean ordered him to design and teach an online course for a master's degree program managed by Academic Partnerships. He was told the class would be conducted online over five weeks.  

My friend was a good soldier and taught the course as directed. He had over 600 online students!  When the class was completed, my friend told the dean he would never teach an online course that way again, even if it meant being fired.

As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, students are often unaware that they are taking a course managed by a profit-driven company, not the university. 

For example, the University of Texas at Arlington has a big-time financial relationship with Academic Partnerships, which manages graduate programs in nursing, education, business, and public health. Nevertheless, UTA's promotional materials do not disclose that Academic Partnerships manages these online graduate programs.

Students all over the United States are taking out loans to pay tuition bills at public universities in the naive belief that these schools are non-profit entities dedicated solely to the public good.  

Most of these students would be surprised to learn that a profit-making company is sucking up a good share of their tuition dollars to enrich their executives and investors.

My take on this? If a public university is so goddamn lazy or incompetent that it has to pay a private company to manage its academic programs, then that university should be closed. 

Maximus, Student Loan Debt, and the Poverty Industrial Complex by Dahn Shaulis of Higher Education Enquirer

 The Higher Education Inquirer is taking a close look at who's invested in Maximus, the enormous social welfare profiteer. Maximus has been servicing student loan defaulters for years and has now taken over Navient's federal student loan business, branding it Aidvantage. 

Since 1995, Maximus (MMS) has grown from $50 million in annual revenues to more than $4 billion in 2021. 

Maximus (MMS) Share Price 1995-2022

(Source: Seeking Alpha) 

With an army of more than 35,000 workers, Maximus' clients include 28 US agencies: the Internal Revenue Service, Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Bureau of the Census, Patent and Trademark Office, Federal Student Aid, Department of Defense and US Army, Department of Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, Medicare and Medicaid, Department of Labor, Office of Personnel Management, Securities and Exchange Commission and many more. 

As a contractor to Federal Student Aid (FSA), Maximus has more than 13 million student loans to service.  Its four contracts with the US Department of Education total almost $1 Billion.  

While CEO Bruce Caswell made more than $6 million in total compensation last year, Maximus' customer service representatives, the people who have to make the calls to the growing number of student loan defaulters, make less money than workers at Walmart. 

Maximus has recently posted federally contracted jobs on Indeed for $13.15 an hour in Texas and South Carolina, even though the federal minimum wage has been raised to $15 an hour. Wages for Maximus workers in other states are reportedly even lower, as little as $10 an hour in Kentucky and other states with regressive economies.   

Maximus' largest institutional investors include BlackRock, Vanguard Group, and State Street Corp--three financial behemoths.  BlackRock has $10 trillion in Assets Under Management (AUM), Vanguard Group has about $7 Trillion in Assets Under Management, and State Street has almost $4 Trillion in AUM. 

Bank of New York Mellon, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America each own 900,000 shares or more. 

Public retirement funds, including public school teachers retirement funds (see table below), are directly and indirectly invested in the Poverty Industrial Complex and the student loan mess through Maximus and other large corporations. 

Maximus and its executives have spent more than $10 million on federal lobbying and political contributions since 1998.  By 2020, Maximus had 14 lobbyists in DC and had contributed to the campaigns of Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump.

Maximus' strategic partners include AWS, Microsoft, Oracle, and Cisco.  

Social justice advocates have to wonder, how can the student loan system be fixed if the US establishment has a vested interest in the mess?  

 

Maximus (MMS) Top Institutional Investors 

List of Public Funds Directly Invested in Maximus

Alaska Department of Revenue 
California PERS
California State Teachers Retirement System
Colorado PERS
Florida Retirement System
Pennsylvania Public School Retirement System
Teachers Retirement System of Kentucky
Louisiana State Employees Retirement System
Ohio PERS 
New Mexico Educational Retirement Board
New York State Retirement System
New York State Teachers Retirement System
Ontario Teachers Retirement System
Oregon PERS
State of Tennessee Treasury
Teachers Retirement System of Texas
State of Wisconsin Investment Board