I remember how it was -- JR
The Dems’ Student Loan Forgiveness Scheme
Desperate to avoid a midterm shellacking, Democrats may resort to bailing out irresponsible borrowers.
Americans like to rally around their president during times of global uncertainty. But they’re not rallying around Joe Biden. His approval ratings are terrible, and Democrats are now getting desperate to salvage as many votes as they can before November’s midterm elections.
One scheme they’re floating is a further extension of the student loan freeze, currently set to expire on May 1. They want students to be able to kick the can down the road at least until after they’ve voted Democrat. Like our energy dependence, though, the federal loan debacle could have been avoided.
As we wrote last year, “The plan to erase student debt is yet another example of the government riding in on a white horse and promising to save us from a crisis government created in the first place.”
The Wall Street Journal editorial board goes further, writing: “Here we go again. The March 2020 Cares Act provided a temporary pause on loan payments and interest accrual through September 2020. Presidents Trump and Biden used emergency executive power to extend the forbearance, which has cost taxpayers about $5 billion a month. Borrowers have saved on average $400 a month. Most haven’t needed the relief.”
So far, the extensions have cost taxpayers at least $100 billion.
The editors add that there’s more going on behind the scenes, including an effort pitched by Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren to allow some students to cancel as much as $50,000 in loan debt.
Not surprisingly, there’s no mention of the students who’ve done the right thing and made good on their loans over the years without whining for help. It’s doubtful that they’ll ever be reimbursed, but students who never had any intention of paying off their loans might well be rewarded.
Warren’s proposal is actually timid compared to another idea being mentioned by former Secretary of Education John King, who wants the federal government to cancel the entire $1.7 trillion owed by current and former American college students. To put this into perspective, total federal spending in 2021 was $6.8 trillion.
Of course, this is all about politics. As Politico reports, “Advocates in close touch with the White House are impatient, arguing that even if Biden ultimately moves forward with another payment suspension by the May expiration date, it’s becoming increasingly tough for them to inspire restive young voters to match their record 2020 or 2018 turnout levels.”
The Department of Education isn’t waiting until that May 1 expiration date, announcing recently that a select group of 100,000 borrowers will have $6.2 billion in student loans canceled. The catch is that borrowers need to qualify for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, among other requirements.
And there’s another group that can’t be pleased by all this talk of loan forgiveness: private loan borrowers. You see, in the real world outside the Beltway, lending banks tend to want their money back, and there’s little Elizabeth Warren or Joe Biden can do about it. Unfortunately, a significant number of borrowers hold both federal and private loans.
“Private student loans are held by private banks,” columnist Sydney Lake writes, “and there’s no real incentive or reason for those companies to cancel out those loans. They’d be losing out on that money and all the interest they expect to make on those loans over the next several years. Plus, the federal government can’t force banks to forgive private student loans.”
The government shouldn’t allow colleges to hand out thousands of dollars of loans to students far beyond the cost of books and tuition, or to students who couldn’t qualify for a private loan in the first place. And let’s not forget that the beneficiaries of any student loan forgiveness scheme aren’t likely to be poorer students or people of color. Instead, they’ll be well-to-do liberal elites.
The Democrats have been pledging to wipe out student loan debt for years, but they’ve never pulled it off. And even with all the power now in their hands, it’s unlikely to happen this year either.
Maybe, when Republicans take Congress in January 2023, they’ll put an end to all this nonsense about debt forgiveness. And maybe they’ll fix the problem that caused this mess in the first place.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/87178-the-dems-student-loan-forgiveness-scheme-2022-03-25
************************************************Is Federal COVID Aid Setting Schools Up to Fail?
America’s K-12 schools have been among the biggest winners of COVID relief funds since March 2020. But wasteful spending decisions by administrators are setting public school districts up for big failures when the COVID relief money spigot gets shut off in two years.
RealClearInvestigation‘s Steve Miller explains how today’s bad spending decisions by public school bureaucrats will lead to bad outcomes for teachers and students:
As school districts across the country grapple with declining enrollments induced by the pandemic, many are engaged in spending sprees like those of the past leading to widespread layoffs and budget cuts when federal money ran out.
Bolstered by $190 billion in pandemic relief funding from Washington, the nation’s public schools are hiring new teachers and staff, raising salaries, and sweetening benefit packages. Some are buying new vehicles. Others are building theaters and sports facilities.
Using such temporary support for new staff and projects with long-term costs is setting the table for perilous “fiscal cliffs” after COVID funding expires in 2024, some education budget analysts say. And that’s on top of doubts about whether money to battle the pandemic is being properly spent in the first place.
Schools’ Spending a Study in Waste
Miller lists several examples of wasteful spending by bureaucrats at several school districts across the U.S., including:
McAllen, Texas’ Independent School District’s $4 million expenditure for expanding an urban bird sanctuary in the city.
North Carolina’s Moore County Schools, which burned through $25 million in its COVID relief funds, used them to buy gym lockers and build two running tracks.
Iowa’s Creston Community School District’s use of $231,000 in COVID relief funds to upgrade their sports stadium bleachers to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Other school districts are hiring teachers and staff or are buying vehicles and other assets that have short lives and high costs, even though their enrollments are falling. While they can afford them now with their COVID relief “stimmy” checks, a harsh economic reality will set in when those funds go away.
Lessons from the Past
That harsh reality is easily predictable because it has happened before. Miller relates the history of what happened after a temporary Obama-era funding program for schools went away just six short years ago:
Recent history makes some of the new wave of spending hard to defend, and its dire consequences foreseeable. In a report meant to provide guidance for future grants, the Department of Education Inspector General examined how 22 districts spent money from 2009’s $107 billion Recovery Act and Education Jobs program, enacted in the wake of the 2008 recession.
Much like today, the money was spent on hiring more staff, professional development, salaries, technology, and facilities. Half the districts used at least some of the money to add employees or expand services, aware that they were unable to pay for them once the money ran out.
Layoffs predictably began in 2016 and swept the education sector, disproportionately affecting schools in lower income areas. “Tears and disbelief” was how the Baltimore Sun described the impact of layoffs, while progressives continued to criticize state education funding as unequal and unfair.
A similar fate awaits bureaucrats wasting today’s COVID school bailout money. These education professionals should have learned more about their need for sustainable spending policies from their previous failures. But I somehow doubt they’ve ever given themselves an “F” when grading their own fiscal performance.
https://blog.independent.org/2022/03/18/is-federal-covid-aid-setting-schools-up-to-fail/?omhide=true
*********************************************Australia: Elite universities boost their share of international students
The Group of Eight research-intensive universities have boosted their share of international students during the past year of the Covid pandemic.
New data from the Go8 shows its universities enrolled nearly half (48 per cent) of international students in January this year compared with 41 per cent in January last year. The figures indicate that students are more wedded to what they perceive as the more prestigious degrees at Go8 universities, compared with the generally lower-cost courses at other universities.
The Go8 universities also enrol a higher proportion of Chinese students – who have proved more willing to continue studying during the pandemic – than other universities, either online or at study centres set up in Chinese cities. In January this year the Go8 market share of Chinese students enrolled in higher education courses in Australia rose to 75 per cent, compared with 69 per cent in January last year.
Overall, the number of Chinese students studying in Go8 universities is still lower than a year ago. In January this year the figure was 65,663, compared with 70,760 in January last year.
But even in the Indian market, where students look for lower-fee courses and the research-intensive universities attract a far smaller segment of the market, the Go8 still improved its share of students over the past year. In January this year the Go8 had a 17 per cent slice of the Indian market, compared with 14 per cent in January last year.
Again this was achieved despite a drop in the number of students from India enrolled in Go8 universities. In January this year the figure was 4083, compared with 6130 in January last year.
The Go8 data gives a fuller picture of the latest international student statistics released by the federal Education Department, which shows 201,052 international students were enrolled in higher education in January this year, 23 per cent less than in January last year.
In all education sectors (including vocational, schools and English language tuition), there were 364,643 international students in January, down 21 per cent on January last year.
The worst hit sector is English language tuition where 8,187 international students were enrolled in January this year, 52 per cent less than in January last year.
Because English language tuition relies on students spending a relatively short time in Australia for courses of up to six months, it was quickly devastated by the Covid border closures. This year’s enrolments are 83 per cent less than two years ago
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