Increasing Pain from the Anti-Education Trump Administration – Student Loans

Increasing Pain from the Anti-Education Trump Administration – Student Loans

Is higher education “hire education”? The United States accelerated in the 20th century and, until the recent spate of Trump attacks on some of the world’s most preeminent research universities, into the 21st century. The post-WWII GI bill and the post-Sputnik (1957) reemphasis on STEM at all educational levels leap-frogged the United States to become the home of most of the finest universities, the super-job creators (to be contrasted with the perpetual failure of supply-side tax cuts that always promised solid jobs but never delivered) and the primary staircase to upward mobility.

But as Trump’s prioritization of big corporations and the mega-wealthy – in tax and regulatory policies – upward mobility died, post-secondary education became increasingly unaffordable and universally respected top US institutions of higher learning were sliced and diced in a politicized culture war. Government STEM/medical research was decimated in a flood of distracting false narratives (fighting “woke elites” and, that trait that defined the United States for centuries, diversity); brilliant international students were pushed aside. As the United States slammed that door on opportunity through higher education, China, Canada, France led a whole host of nations welcome that future brain trust to their shores.

Additional factors pushed higher education farther into unpopular unaffordability. There is no question that the current configuration of the federal government, the only real pocket deep enough to fund research and education at a job-creating level, has elected to confiscate the curriculum-setting prerogative of universities and to weaponize education-into-correct-thinking political/cultural values.

With learning relevant skillsets available online, the lure of places where the best and the brightest can aggregate, has faded with each effort to replace educational validity with political control. Not only is the Department of Education purposely being shut down, leaving underfunded states to find ways to impose pseudo-educational objectives into overcrowded classrooms led by school boards with religious and cultural mandates from ultra-conservatives with little appreciation of the real world of STEM learning… but the federal deficit is sucking up the limited debt market, kicking interest rates up for anyone seeking a loan. Particularly students.

As Trump mandates loyalty to him and his policies, as a condition imposed increasingly on… er… everybody, Collin Binkley, writing for the July 15th Associated Press, explores the withdrawal of federal money from educational support: “President Trump is reshaping a student loan cancellation program into what some fear will become a tool for political retribution, taking aim at organizations that serve immigrants and transgender youth.

“The Education Department is preparing an overhaul of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program that would strip the benefit from organizations involved in ‘illegal activities’ and allow the U.S. Education secretary to decide which should lose eligibility. A draft proposal released by the department includes definitions of illegal activity that center on immigration, terrorism and transgender issues.

“Several advocates invited to weigh in on the draft proposal raised concerns it would give the department subjective authority to decide if an organization is engaged in anything illegal — a power that could be used to remove hospital systems or state governments from the program… ‘That’s definitely an indicator for me that this is politically motivated and perhaps will be used as a tool for political punishment,’ said Betsy Mayotte, president of the Institute of Student Loan Advisors and one of the advocates asked to review the policy as part of a rulemaking process.”

Writing for the July 13th Wall Street Journal, Dalvin Brown and Oyin Adedoyin, dig deeper, as the federal government has now reversed a six decade trend of supporting federal student financing: “The federal government is retreating from its central role in financing higher education… President Trump’s big tax-and-spending law includes new restrictions on how much students can borrow and how they repay. The provisions begin to reverse the government’s near takeover of the $1.7 trillion student lending market over the past six decades.

“As a result, families are reassessing the costs and risks of college. Many are likely to turn to private lenders, which typically charge higher interest rates and require creditworthy cosigners. Those lenders recently accounted for some 8% of outstanding loans, according to data from Enterval Analytics.

“In particular, as many as half of graduate-student borrowers may take private loans to cover funding gaps, according to Jordan Matsudaira, director of the Postsecondary Education & Economics Research Center at American University, and former chief economist at the Education Department… Republican lawmakers say they want to reduce taxpayer risk from the ballooning federal student-loan portfolio while forcing colleges to curb their prices… Higher education observers and borrowers worry the changes will price out middle-class families and reduce access to careers that require expensive graduate training.”

With unqualified idealogues throughout Trump’s cabinet and subcabinet appointees, we are also watching the evaporation of the kind of federal research funding that literally made America great. The big winner in all of this is, of course, China (and their little brother Putin), eager to step in to absorb the kind of students that used to fund American preeminence in finance, technology, medicine and the new world of AI supercomputing. Trump is doing the opposite of his “greatness” meme.

Ignoring fossil fuel generated disasters… as a “climate change hoax”… doesn’t make the harm go away. Dissuading bright students from getting that higher education does not make even the rich folks richer… because living and building companies in the education impaired US economy forces them to leave the United States and focus their investment capital to where the increasingly complex STEM values are moving. Soon, we may face a China too far ahead of us for us to complete… isolated without even our former allied support.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I sure hope that US voters wake up to the Trump-imposed death spiral that is crushing our greatness.