Educational Frost

Perhaps the best investment the government ever made was the World War II GI Bill. It wasn’t intended that way, but 15-million returning GIs, plus probably an equal number of laid-off defense workers looking for jobs at the same time would not prove politically pleasant. The obvious solution was reward the GIs.

The WWII GI Bill differed from subsequent GI Bills because it paid the cost of school, plus books, etc., plus living expenses. In other words, one could go to Harvard on the GI Bill. Later GI Bills paid a flat rate increased only by how many tax dependents one had. These bills worked well for GIs attending community colleges at night, while having a fulltime day job. They worked less well for regular college, and not at all for Ivy League costs.

Attention came to the WWII GI Bill when news reported someone calculating its cost vs. the increased revenues enjoyed by the government, especially when those increases were projected until the anticipated retirement dates of those veterans. Perhaps the press popularity sprang from the government doing something right for once, even if it was inadvertent. It spurred an interest in financing more students, thus increasing anticipated future revenues.

Unfortunately, that would have cost the government money, so they substituted student loans instead. Nice. Students could get their education, repay the loans, plus pay the increase in revenues. All the government needed to do was guarantee private lenders the return of their investment.

A number of students soon discovered that some degrees did not pay a good return on their investment of borrowed funds, so they sought shelter from bankruptcy. The government retaliated by placing student loans on par with owing money to the IRS and judgments for wrongful death. They were no longer absolved in bankruptcy.

So, a student who, for example, attends a one-year culinary school for $40,000, but cannot find a job paying her more than $7 per hour on graduation, gets hounded day and night by creditors.

Basically, the members of society least able to make informed decisions are at the mercy of the most sophisticated, unprincipled marketing, enforced by government sanction. Seems the government has kicked over the seed corn and gone directly to cannibalizing the children—ah, for their benefit, of course.