Senator Warren’s Student Debt Plan: The Worst Higher Education Proposal Ever Made

In the bidding war among progressive Democratic presidential aspirants to demonstrate their quasi-socialist bona fides, Elizabeth Warren is hard to top, the ne plus ultra of progressive chic, as her new proposal to wipe out most of the student loan debt in the U.S. demonstrates, to be largely financed by a wealth tax on affluent Americans.

This is probably the single worst higher education reform proposal I have seen in six decades of trolling American academic vineyards. It is mind-boggling in the potential harm it would pose to our nation. It is unfair to tens of millions of Americans who have faithfully repaid their student loans. Many with existing debt are living good lives, making minimal debt repayments, perhaps anticipating the successful enactment of a proposal such as Sen. Warren’s. It would create an enormous moral hazard problem, meaning future borrowers would simply not repay their debt. Sen. Warren’s response to that would probably be: we will make college free for all, except those deplorable Americans with high incomes (whose incomes are high precisely because they are highly productive members of society). One criticism of the Warren proposal is that some people with mid-sized incomes have fairly impressive amounts of wealth, and forgiving debt for them unfairly increases their already fairly sizable net worth.

At a time when highly progressive nations like Sweden are abandoning earlier efforts at wealth taxation, and consequently having higher rates of economic growth, Senator Warren wants to dampen the phenomenal American economic exceptionalism exhibited over the past two centuries by great entrepreneurs like Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, Sam Walton and Steve Jobs, who were motivated, at least in part, by the financial rewards of their hard work, exceptional ability to see future needs, and risk-taking. As I calculate it, her wealth tax would require both Warren Buffet and Bill Gates to pay about $200 million annually to the government—money that these individuals currently plan to use not to build large yachts or mansions, but rather after their deaths to serve society through their charitable giving. A decent case can be made that that money would be better used by private foundations serving human needs than by a highly bureaucratic governmental allocation of funds.

All of this flows from Senator Sanders’ free college proposal, on which I have previously written. We have too many, not too few, persons going to college. Two out of five full time students fail to graduate in six years. Of those who do graduate, the New York Federal Reserve tells us that another two out of five end up taking jobs traditionally filled by those with high school diplomas. Do the math: out of every 100 students who enter college, only about 60 graduate, and 40% of them, or 24, end up doing jobs for which a college diploma was clearly unnecessary. Put differently, only 36 out of every 100 kids who enter college both graduate and get relatively high-skilled jobs. Investing in college students is both risky and costly. I think we are over-invested, not under-invested, in college education.

There is more to the Warren proposal. She wants to give large amounts to historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Why? I suspect it has more to do with identity politics than sound resource allocation. Only about 12% of African-American college students today actually attend these schools, many of them have enrollments seriously in decline, and their average success rate as measured by such standard measures as graduation rates and post-attendance earnings are extremely modest. News reports say she wishes to give these schools, with well under 300,000 students enrolled, some $50 billion—over $167,000 per student.

For whatever it is worth (probably not much), I think this ever more unrealistic bidding war is doing two things. Within the Democratic Party, it is enhancing the prospects of candidates like Joe Biden (still unannounced but expected), Beto O’Rourke and Pete Buttigieg who are in the more traditionally liberal but not socialist Democratic tradition. Second, it is enhancing President Trump’s reelection odds by appearing too far out of the American political mainstream. But then again, I am an economist, and economists cannot even accurately predict economic performance, much less politics.

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Kim Kardashian Proves You Don’t Need Grad School

Kim Kardashian West has announced that she is becoming a lawyer without going to law school—and she’s really on to something.

Like Kardashian West, growing numbers of Millennials are launching into graduate studies. According to a Council of Economic Advisors report, Millennial graduate school enrollment in recent years has grown at a much faster rate (35%) than even college enrollment (15%).

Unfortunately, while graduate school can be the ticket to a new and more satisfying career, it comes with an enormous price tag. Credible, a loan financing company, reports that students accumulate $66,300 in debt on average when paying for an MBA, $72,800 when paying for a Master of Arts, and $145,500 when paying for law school.

Fortunately, there are other options. Here are a few to consider:

1) Law Reader Program

The American Bar Association predicts that within 10 years Millennials will have taken over American law firms. But according to Gallup, less than a quarter of recent law graduates (23%) said their law degree was worth the cost.

Kardashian West is using the Law Reader program to realize her legal aspirations without incurring the cost of law school, and anyone with a college degree and good moral standing in California, Virginia, Vermont, and Washington can follow her lead. Although program requirements vary by state, students generally pay a small fee to study legal subjects such as jurisprudence, professional responsibility and ethics, civil procedure, torts, contracts, criminal law, and constitutional law with a practicing attorney at a state-based law office. As long as students spend the requisite time and pass examinations at the conclusion of each course, they can take the bar exam and become attorneys in the state.

While most of us do not have the luxury of attorney friends who will fly to our homes to teach us the law—as Kardashian West does—we can still benefit from the lower cost and law office experience that reader programs offer.

2) Specialty Online Training Programs

Interested in a niche career? An online training program could be a better option than graduate school.

The Academy of Art University in San Francisco, a highly-respect art school, offers a Masters’ Degree in Animation & Visual Effects. The program includes required classes on drawing, modeling, storyboarding, rigging, history, and animation. The program costs approximately $37,541.

But online programs offer comparable, even superior opportunities, for less. Animation Mentor, for example, also trains animators. But instead of taking courses in modeling, storyboarding, rigging, and animation—which are distinct careers themselves—Animation Mentor students take only animation classes, giving them more time and opportunities to develop the skill sets and portfolio they need to succeed in animation-specific careers.

Like the Academy of Art University, Animation Mentor is led by industry professionals at top animation studios, and graduates secure jobs at top animation studios including Sony Interactive Entertainment, DreamWorks Animation, Disney Animation Studios, Blue Sky Studios, Pixar Animation Studios, and more. But unlike Academy of Art University’s Master’s program, Animation Mentor costs only $14,994.

While online programs like Animation Mentor may not be for everyone, the low cost and high quality it affords should encourage those looking for new career opportunities that don’t break the bank.

3) Apprenticeships

New paths to employment are also available through apprenticeships. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that plumbing, pipe fitting, and steamfitting jobs will increase by 16% between 2016-26.

Mike Taylor is apprenticing to become one of these plumbers. He graduated from college with $75,000 in debt and told CNN that he waited tables until he realized he couldn’t pay off his loans. Then he joined a 5-year apprentice program at Plumbers Local 1 in Queens, N.Y. Every two weeks Taylor spends one day in class and nine days at work, and is paid $28 per hour. After another year of training, he’ll be paid $42 per hour. Taylor made $117,000 during his first year of apprenticeship, which he said he spent paying down debt, buying a home, and preparing with his wife for their first child.

While construction jobs like Taylor’s have the most apprenticed workers, new apprenticeship programs in other areas are popping up across the country. The Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture recently launched the state’s first farming apprenticeship program, Norton Healthcare in Kentucky founded the first nursing apprenticeship program, and Techtonic, a software development company, launched the first software development apprenticeship program. These jobs offer respective, median annual salaries of $67,950, $71,730, and $105,590.

The immense costs of graduate school need not deter those in search of a fulfilling career. By identifying career goals and thinking creatively about paths to achieve them, we, like Kardashian West, can achieve career aspirations without sacrificing financial wellbeing.

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Pa. Muslim Schoolchildren: ‘Crush the Treacherous Ones,’ ‘Chop Off Their Heads,’ ‘Subject Them to External Torture’

On Saturday, a research organization released video of Muslim children calling for beheading, torture and martyrdom at a school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The video, including translation, shows Muslim children at the Muslim American Society Islamic Center singing and reading incendiary poetry at an event on April 22, 2019, MEMRI reports:

On April 22, 2019, the Muslim American Society Islamic Center in Philadelphia (MAS Philly) uploaded a video of an "Ummah Day" celebration to its Facebook page in which young children wearing Palestinian scarves sang: "Glorious steeds call us and lead us [to] the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The blood of martyrs protects us… Take us, oh ships, until we liberate our lands… until we reach our shores and crush the treacherous ones… Flow, oh rivers of martyrs!"

The video also shows a young girl reciting a poem advocating decapitation and torture:

“We will sacrifice our souls without hesitation. We will chop off their heads, and we will liberate the sorrowful and exalted Al-Aqsa Mosque. We will lead the army of Allah fulfilling His promise, and we will subject them to eternal torture."

On Sunday, the Muslim American Society issued a statement disavowing both the video and the content of the school’s event:

Our investigation revealed that the school that organized the event on April 17, 2019 is a separate entity renting space from MAS Philadelphia. The school board has informed us that it has taken immediate actions and dismissed the person in charge of the program. In addition, they will form a local commission to aid in sensitivity training and proper supervision for future programs.

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