I am getting a lot of questions regarding my opinion of Senator Elizabeth Warren’s proposals on forgiving student loans and making college free.

Eliminating Student Loan Debt

I believe that the nation’s student loan crisis originates with entitled teenagers and financially illiterate parents. Public policy shouldn’t reward bad behavior.
However, let’s set that concern aside.
Warren doesn’t understand the issue.
Her proposal is means tested, and phases out at a household income of $250,000. (This provides a tremendous incentive to commit fraud. Does anybody remember Operation Varsity Blues?)
For example, the Federal government would forgive up to $50,000 in student loan debt for people in households earning less than $100,000 per year, and $30,000 in loans for households making $160,000.
Huh? We need to start redistributing income to households making six figures and headed up by college grads? These aren’t the folks in trouble.
There is a significant “underemployment” problem.
For example, there is a Government Accounting Office study that shows twenty-two percent of recent college graduates are only making $12-$16 per hour. (It would be interesting to find out how many of these former students are still living with their parents versus have been able to form households.)
If the “bleeding heart” Progressives are feeling the need to emulate Santa, that’s the cohort on which they should be focused.

Free Four-Year College For All

We can’t ignore how the country got into this student loan muddle.
Here’s Warren’s position on free college,
“Like K-12 education, college is a basic need that should be available for free to everyone who wants to go.”
This is exactly the kind of thinking that got us in the mess that she’s trying to fix with the student loan bailout.

I have some shocking news for Senator Warren. Not everyone is “book smart” enough to do meaningful college level work.
Forty-five percent of high school graduates are going on to college today. Probably half of them don’t have the “academic firepower” to graduate with a marketable major–hence the underemployment problem. (Forty percent of the students matriculating, drop out. Twenty-six percent graduate, but end up underemployed.)
Look at Florida’s Bright Futures scholarship program. They have this right. In order to score free tuition, the students must meet a number of requirements, one of them is to be reasonably “book smart,” with a minimum SAT of 1290.
Warren’s proposals are incredibly ignorant and, if adopted, will bollix up post-secondary education even more.