Student Loan Payback Program Implemented

Our entire educational system is a complete disaster and nobody is providing any real solutions. It reminds me of the Napster days and how out of touch the recording industry was with their ancient ways of thinking about music. They didn't know what to do or how to handle what was going on. They wanted to attack their customer base instead of providing a platform for their music distribution system to thrive. Well, eventually they evolved and provided that platform and there is still a vestige of that industry today. It would have happened faster except that the music industry was composed of monopolistic cartels who controlled the lobbyists in D.C. along with the government agency the FCC who helped secure their monopoly. A more competitive marketplace would have assured a much faster and efficient transition.

Unfortunately, government takes a lot longer to evolve. Let's face it, if government acted more like a private industry, even a relatively monopolistic one, even it would have legalized cannabis back in the 70s. Look at where we are at today, Obama has raided three times as many dispensaries in his 4 years as Bush did in his 8 years. In his college years, Obama had a group of friends known as the "Choom Gang", as in they smoked A LOT of pot together. I think that tells us more about how our government really works than what kind of person President Obama is, unfortunately.

The first question we should ask is how long do we REALLY want to provide free education for? Years ago progressive opined about opportunities for learning, yet today a person can take Ivy League level courses for free over the internet. A person has access to far more information and can teach themselves quite a bit more than what can be picked up at, say, a community college and arguably many Universities or Grad programs. That doesn't mean these institutions have no purpose, but the answer to furthering our evolutionary progression might not be in building more of these expensive institutions to hold an every increasing number of people. Sure, we need places where smart people can get together and do research, but is the answer to our problems sticking everybody in a research institution for four years of their adult life?

The student loan industry was concocted by the banking cartel, legalized by congress and inflated by a society that believed every child should go to college. It is responsible for university tuitions increasing each and every year. If there were no loans, students wouldn't be able to afford the rising tuition so the colleges wouldn't be able to raise tuition. The colleges can only raise tuition because the student loans are able to be taken out, backed by the taxpayer. Now some students are coming out of college with upwards of $100k-$200k in student loan debt and with poor job prospects.

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If we got rid of government backed student loans, the cost of education would be reduced drastically. Students with no financial help would again be able to afford to go to college, working over the summer and maybe part time during school. They could graduate debt free.

If we got rid of government backed student loans, then the other benefit is that we could allow students who are in over their head in debt to declare bankruptcy and clear their debt. Right now they aren't allowed to do that and young people are forced into every increasing times of servitude to pay back their loans.

I think that we need to re-think our educational system and create one that is more dynamic and flexible to meet individual student's needs and interests. With today's technology that is something that is certainly achievable. It is important to be well rounded, but the other extreme is that students lose interest and waste time learning about things they have no interest in. I think students should have more control over their educational environment and have better choices. A top-down educational structure mandated by the Federal Government will never achieve this flexibility and instead has been shown to be regimented, boring and drags students everywhere down.

Education should either be controlled locally or by groups of individuals, voluntarily over communications media such as the internet and should not be mandated by the Federal Government. Get the federal government OUT of education, completely. If you don't want either George Bush controlling your child's education OR Obama controlling your child's education then you should agree with me on this one.

All Napster did was put the indie music store on life support and strengthen corporate control; all the while encouraging theft from musicians.

If the State of California was able to sustain tuition-free higher education in the years before the Reagan governorship, even during the Depression of the 1930s, why should we not re-implement this policy now?. Elimination of the bloated military budget, closing the bases that now circle the world, and termination of the wars that have compromised our reputation would free up all the tax funding needed to restore not only higher (and all) education, but also health services, social security, and much-needed public works projects.

How about a little common sense in addressing this and all issues?

Uh...what the education industry refuses to acknowledge is that no learning actually occurs in today's college/university setting. Today's campuses are tomorrow's museums and housing developments, for (as mentioned above) you can learn anything you need/want to know online, you can read anything in any curriculum on your Kindle, and paying tuition for the privilege of sitting in some drafty brick building and listening to some T.A. drone on from a syllabus is no longer economically sustainable, productive, or remotely interesting. Aside from the social aspects (party on!), campus life is really quite pointless. Rah-rah.

Actually can't learn anything you want or need to know online. For starters you probably don't know what to look for, nor how to ascertain it's veracity. Secondly most people who care agree it's good to have at least one more set of eyes, preferably someone more learned and experienced in the field to look over your paper, or project ect. because online that ain't quite the same experience as a real one.
I've really known only one autodidact in my life and even he took classes. Most people who espouse the academia is dead argument have no real interest in alternate ideas or quality of their own work, much less actual facts. It's all just party on and facts and good writing be damned.
Maybe no learning goes in in your hungover head dear, don't discount the experience of other's.
If you apply yourself and study the material, that TA drone might become interesting.