The man who wants to do selective bombing in Syria for dubious reasons with high risk consequences shows the down side of having a community organizer as commander-in-chief.
Flawed logic shows up everywhere when a leader with that flaw tries to solve big problems.
His solution to high tuition is a two-pronged approach. He controls the $150 billion in grants the Feds dole out to colleges and universities. He suggests a merit system to allocate the grant money based on graduation rates and grades. He would then have student loan repayments tied to income. The more a graduate makes the faster the loan must be repaid.
This is how a left-wing community organizer approaches all problems.
Here’s how a business executive(retired) would address this issue.
First, eliminate the entire $150 billion in federal grants. Force the universities to cut all the bloat they have created with all this extra free cash. Lay off layers of useless administrators, make professors return to the classrooms, and cut activities that the new budget won’t accommodate.
Next, put the measurement Obama wants to apply to grants on student loans. If the student doesn’t maintain a certain grade point and isn’t on a path to graduate in a reasonable time frame, the loan is pulled. No more loan.
This will result in fewer students and fewer universities competing for those smaller numbers of students. Price becomes a competitive factor.
Universities may need to dip into those trillion-dollar endowment funds to offset your missing tax dollars. Some universities that refuse to get lean will go away.
Here’s two examples. Mitch Daniels, the former Indiana governor who balanced the state budget, is running Purdue and cutting costs dramatically, just as he did as governor. Janet Napolitano, the former governor of Arizona and Director of Homeland Security, will take over the University of California System. She almost bankrupted the state of Arizona. She was incompetent as Director of Homeland Security. Why let her run the University of California System? In my opinion so she can syphon off maximum grant dollars with her contacts in Washington DC. Which system will be cutting tuition in the next five years, and which will be increasing? Purdue will be cheaper and UC schools will increase tuition.
The business of educating students for jobs and careers will become a business. Well- run institutions will prosper and the inefficient will fail, just like in the real world. Students who go there to learn, take courses that lead to a well-paying job and maintain grades will get a loan to help them get the degree to do that. They won’t be punished for their success as Obama would do.
Others will get loan funds cut off and go to trade schools, the military, or enter the job market. Just as they do now but without the billions in student loans they have now. Extra billions from those two years they stayed after they stopped getting acceptable grades or stopped going to classes.
There aren’t enough jobs that require a degree in this country to support the number of students pursuing degrees.
We need fewer students, fewer universities to serve fewer students, more competition between fewer universities for fewer students, more efficient universities, and zero tax dollars poring into the system causing all the problems.
It’s Econ 101 which Obama skipped for Soc 101. Not Social Studies, like I took, but Marxist studies in his case.
