A Fast Eddie commentary:
According to yesterday’s WSJ at least half of US states have schools that have stopped naming valedictorians. I wonder how many of those schools have also dropped performance evaluations and merit based pay for teachers.
But Washington-Lee High School in Arlington,VA had 178 valedictorians, or one in three graduates (even though the school is named for two racist war mongers and scoundrels). Anyone want to bet all the teachers there are rated as High Achievers paid at the maximum of their pay range?
Meanwhile there is growing evidence that USA “academic excellence” isn’t limited to high schools. The National Center of Education Statistics reported last week that 27% of federal college loan recipients had defaulted on student loans. Fifty-two percent of the students attending for-profit schools defaulted on their loan, compared to 17% who attended a four-year public institution and 26% at community college. On average, 12 years after loans were granted, those who earned undergraduate certificates owed $3,700, students getting associate degrees owed $11,700 and the tab for those earning bachelor degrees or higher was $13,800. The Associated Press article reporting the outcome of the study carried the headline “Study: For-profits blamed for many student debt defaults.”
Just think of how much federal government administrative expense could be saved if the US were to adopt the Bernie Sanders plan of free tuition for all. Better yet, why not simply give a few thousand bucks directly to every high school graduate and let them do with it what the hell the want?
And, finally, against this background of student defaults, we should not forget that the federal government took over the student loan program. The pretext being that private lenders were making ‘big profits’ from such loans and if the government took it over the ‘profits’ could be used to pay for Obamacare.
Apparently the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is the only one who bought that notion and now, not only are there no ‘profits’ but costs due to defaults are soaring!
Says a lot about the “non-partisan” CBO’s expertise in projecting costs and returns on government programs. And as far as truth in anything issued from the Obama administration, no further proof of deceit was needed.
(One thing I think deserves reminding folks is that the student loan program was taken over by the federal government as a means to pay for Obamacare using the “profits” the private sector was reaping from the loans…at least the CBO bought that Obama claim. As we know, and you point out in this, the student loans are costing taxpayers vast amounts of $.)
Fast Eddie from Michigan
