Gary Varvel for June 03, 2022

If your degree does not have enough value for you to pay it off, it certainly doesn’t have enough value for me to pay.

Poor tax-payer, bad enough that he had to cover for the one percenters tax breaks, now students as well. Be grateful you are not on this side of the fence though, our Justin is giving our indigenous the farm.. lock stock and barrel.

The problem with this one is that the kid with $70,000 in student debt isn’t going to be in a limousine, they’re going to be on a bicycle at best..

The rich benefit from the caste system that keeps college out of the reach of all but those who are already well off. They can pay wages that require two or three jobs per household just to keep food on the table, while they keep the majority of the GNP produced by the people who are living that way. And, they are assured that future generations will remain in that situation, since tuition isn’t an option, and paying off tuition debt requires their standard of living continue to be much inferior to what it would have been without it. When I decided to become a teacher, in the late 1960’s, my first quarter’s tuition at Southern Illinois University was $79, and we rented any books we needed for $20. Anyone could go to college with just a part time job to pay for it, and without piling up a lifetime of debt.

So I assume you have a homeless family living with you, and you’ve taken on a student loan or two. Or are you going to play Ebenezer Scrooge and tell us your taxes are enough? The tuition is NOT free in Sweden or anywhere else, unless the teachers teach for free and the schools run on no money at all, including maintenance people working there. And don’t forget, the guy on the street doesn’t have to have what it takes, that wouldn’t be fair. No, looks to me as if he works and pays taxes like most of us. And instead of holding his hand out, he obviously works with them. Nothing is free.

Rather odd costuming for a multi-billionaire.

Here’s an idea!! Why not make our 1-12 education worth more than the paper diploma they hand you? When I graduated in 1960, a high school diploma was enough for most jobs, unless you wanted to be a teacher or a doctor or something along those lines, and even then, you could pick up a lot of courses at a Junior College.

As a university graduate and possessor of an advanced degree in the 1970s, I was able to do this without needing any loans because the tuition cost was reasonable compared to the cost of living.Higher education raised its rates when loans became available. Now the price ( not the value) of education is astronomical. Instead of making everyone pay, let the Universities dip into their deep endowments if the are truly interested in educating.

Wow, talk about pushing a load of hogwash.

I don’t understand how/why a person with a student loan would be pictured in a limousine. People take out student loans because they are not in the limousine class.

I went to college. I took out loans. I watched the University charge me the same “lab fee” for my English class as my Organic Chemistry lab to get my Chemical Engineering degree. And as the University built a new basketball stadium while my tuition went up. It wasn’t a private University- it was State. I don’t hold it against students that they have excessive loans. I hold it against the Universities for taking advantage. I want the students to come out of this better than I did and I don’t expect any refund. I like it when the “I got mine- F YOU!” crowd is unhappy.

And

I

Vote

The usual stinky republican lies.

Yep. They’re going to pile the debts of the elite down on the working class.

That’s the plan.

Gary Varvel stokes the flames of class warfare.

The problem with making college education essentially free is that people will treat it, not as a chance to become well educated, but they’ll simply treat it like another year of high school. (Where graduates are being turned out who still can’t read and write or do math.) Put off responsibilities for a few more years while someone else pays the bills. Who wouldn’t want that?

That’s the conservative mindset: always worried that someone else is getting something from the government. They act like the only thing anyone ever receives is a break on their student loans. What about all of the things YOU receive from your government? I guess they don’t count?

There is an alarming shortage of doctors and other medical professionals. Top notch schools are cranking out people with financial degrees because “that’s where the money is”. People manage to disregard the damage the “greed is good” crowd has done – hostile take-overs and leveraged buy outs killing long term companies like Toys R Us and Sears, mergers limited the number of companies making formula, “too big to fail” banks became even bigger after bailout and local media has been almost eliminated.

I don’t like the idea of my taxes paying off somebody else’s debt – especially if they did something stupid to create the situation, such as going to an expensive private college instead of good ole State U, and majored in medieval women’s lit or something that has little to no job prospects that would allow that person to afford their loan payments. So, why would somebody loan a person $70k when it’s obvious they’re a bad risk? Because that’s what the federal government did when they got into the student loan biz. Now we have a degree bubble, much in the way we had a housing bubble 15 years ago because the federal government forced sub-prime loans on the market. So, seeing the government is a major contributor to the student loan crisis, it almost makes sense that they fix it. But that’s bailing out the government for their part in the problem, which is substantial, and the government doesn’t have any money that they didn’t take from others (us). It also gives a free pass to the colleges and universities that have taken advantage of the easy money thrown at students by jacking up tuition. They’re not lending the money so they have no risk. Sounds unfair, doesn’t it? My wife and I covered over $500k in sending 3 kids through college. I really don’t want to pay for somebody else’s kids educational debt.

Yeah wow, all college students are rich in out of touch with reality right wing fantasy land.

Welfare Queens revisited, lazy, no good, strapping young bucks taking advantage of public assistance. The right never gets tired of this schtick.

For those of us who paid off our student loans, will/can we get reimbursed or some sort of tax credit?

Varvel misses the point, once again. The people who are about to have their debt forgiven are people who were blatantly defrauded and who are struggling to make ends meet, not people lazing around in the back of stretch limos. They’re more likely to be the guy working on the construction site, quite honestly, since the Corinthian College degrees turned out to be worthless.

The right wing attitude toward making college free is totally focused on making sure no one is getting something for nothing. The fact that it is beneficial to the society as a whole is either totally lost on them, or considered irrelevant.

Hey, how about doing this to home loans?

Student making minimum wage in a limo. Nice touch.