Student loan forgiveness stiffs taxpayers
The pockets of America’s taxpayers are being picked again, but this time more than the government is to blame.
As the Wall Street Journal reported on Jan. 21, thousands of individuals with federal student loans are flooding the government with requests to have their loans forgiven, claiming they were deceived by false promises of a wellpaying career once they finished their studies.
They’re using an obscure federal law from 1994 that had been applied only in three instances prior to last year. It’s a flawed, vague law that isn’t even specific enough about proof needed to prove that a school committed fraud.
Student activists discovered the existence of the law last year, and in the past six months, more than 7,500 borrowers owing $164 million have come forward to try to have their student debt expunged.
What should be maddening to any right-thinking taxpayer is that the U.S. Department of Education already has agreed to cancel nearly $28 million of debt for 1,300 former students of Corinthian Colleges, a forprofit chain that liquidated in bankruptcy last year.
Meanwhile, almost all of those applying for forgiveness under the nearly 22-year old measure attended for-profit schools; about 75 percent of them attended Corinthian owned institutions.
According to the Journal, the student-activist group Debt Collective, claiming that the number of borrowers who have been defrauded by colleges probably is in the millions, wants the Education Department to cancel loans for entire classes of students, instead of individually.
Department officials have said that the eventual forgiveness total could be in the billions of dollars — a fiscal atrocity.
Whatever happened to gratitude, responsibility, individual pride, self-respect and motivation? The government and taxpayers shouldn’t have to shoulder the higher-education financial burdens of individuals who possessed the intelligence and talents to qualify for college admission but failed to understand that virtually no one’s outcome ever can be guaranteed “going in.”
It can be asked how many of those seeking student loan forgiveness never have had the motivation to travel far and wide in this country to find the job that they seek. Thousands of people from foreign lands come to America each year to seek opportunity.
Meanwhile, many older Americans can attest to having had to seek jobs away from where they lived for decades because of circumstances such as a plant closing or a coal mine shutdown. The personal pride and self-respect of those individuals caused many of them to abhor the fact that it even was necessary for them to accept unemployment benefits temporarily.
On the basis of the loan-forgiveness attempt in progress, should parents who are shouldering parent-plus loans for sons and daughters who have been unable to find work or, worse, squandered their college opportunities, now cry for loan forgiveness too — from whatever the loan source, state or federal?
“Let the buyer beware” is an old principle. Regarding the student-loan individuals in question, “let the student beware” is a principle that obviously continues to be ignored.
Instead of gratitude for having been approved for a federal student loan and the opportunities that loan will continue to make possible for their lives, the individuals in question now are crying “promise broken” rather than accepting responsibility for their college debt in a mature way.
It’s a disgrace.
Thousands of individuals with federal student loans are flooding the government with requests to have their loans forgiven, claiming theywere deceived by false promises of a well-paying career once they finished their studies.