This started as a comment in a below post, but it evolved into a post of its own. And since it’s on a topic I’m keeping a weather eye on, I’m glad to promote it. Because we’ve GOT to watch this mess.
—-
Adam,
It’s not that I don’t appreciate having you get up in my grill about the righteousness of Student Loans and how they buy virtue (a topic for another time).
It’s just that I think you miss my point.
I’m not against the Federal Student Loan program. Used properly it enriches the entire populace, and since it is largely a guarantee program with the actual money coming from banks it doesn’t ruffle as many of my libertarian feathers as you might think. I’m against the way this particular series of ads makes it appear as though it is free money straight from Your Loving Daddy Barack Obama.
You have to spend a fair amount of time on FB to have seen this whole series of ads. There is actually one that says “Pell Grants are Free Money!” Others promise that you can use your Student Loan on living expenses.
I’ve written before about how the Student Loan program is going to be the next debt bubble if we’re not careful. And this is more of the same.
What’s even worse to me about this ad–and yes, Dolphin, I KNOW the Obama team is NOT behind it–is that it portrays Obama as some sort of quasi-Robin Hood folk hero. And by extension, the Federal Government.
The more I spend in the trenches the more aware I am of a severe entitlement mentality in the generations behind mine. Coupling that mentality with ads like this is a recipe for an enslaved populace in the future.
The Federal Government is NOT remotely like a bank. These ads, at best, subtly change the thinking of people to liken the Govt. to an institution that creates revenue. Banks and businesses create revenue. The Government merely collects and redistributes it.
You can wave the flag for student loans all you like. But I promise you, we need to be very vigilant about the future of the Student Loan. Because in 5 years Student Loans will be what subprime mortgages are now–a stinking term that brings pain and bitterness.
Just Another Pretty Farce 
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t love taking out loans. I listened to Dave Ramsey for too many years to not understand the evil of debt. It seemed to me, and clearly I missed the point, that you were criticizing Obama for stealing from hardworking Americans and giving out this free money like he was Robin Hood. I actually do agree with you that the ads themselves are despicable.
I also agree about the need to be vigilant about student loans. I have taught several classes for a very large for-profit university (the one with a stadium sponsorship deal), and while I love teaching there, I’m conflicted about it because I’ve seen some overselling of student loans and such to their students. I paid off my undergraduate loans, and later went and got student loans for grad school, and I still wonder sometimes if that was the best thing to do. Having said that, though, government spending on post-secondary education, through grants and loan guarantees, has given access to a great deal of the population to educations they wouldn’t have been able to afford otherwise. And I would argue that having such an educated populace has aided the U.S. becoming an economic superpower. But that’s probably way off topic.
And honestly, I have projected onto you some of the attitudes of several of my more conservative friends, who have argued that the government shouldn’t be involved in education in the first place, but should confine itself to building roads and preserving the common defense, and little else. It’s unfair of me to assume that this is the same argument.
So, in summary, you’re right. I did miss your point.
evden eve nakliyat,evden eve taşımaçilik
[…] on that note, may I just point out that I’ve been squawking about the Student Loan Bubble years before all these fine experts got around to it?? […]