Brenberg: Biden admin 'does not care' about economic outcome of college debt handout
Professor at King’s College Brian Brenberg slams the Biden college handout plan as political and says the administration does not know how this will affect working families
A college education should be an investment, but President Biden’s student debt handout is turning it into an entitlement that will corrode classrooms, wreck the workplace, and unjustly stick taxpayers with a bill they can’t afford.
Start with the costs. Biden’s plan to forgive up to $10,000 in college debt per borrower, and $20,000 for those who received Pell Grants, will overwhelmingly help the well-off. Consider that just slightly more than one in 10 Americans have a graduate degree, but those households account for 56% of all student debt. In other words, it’s the educational elite who are getting the biggest break here.
President Biden speaks on student loan debt at the White House, Aug. 24, 2022. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
And the price tag of all this relief – over $500 billion by some estimates – will amount to a burden of more than $2,000 per taxpayer, most of whom never had the benefit of a four-year degree. In other words, people who chose to forego college, learn on the job, and borrow to invest in tools and equipment instead of a diploma will be bailing out young lawyers, MBAs, and doctors whose lifetime earning potential is in the millions.
President Biden says he’s giving working- and middle-class families "breathing room," but what he’s really doing is shoving a big helping of someone else’s debt down their throats.
STUDENTS, TAXPAYERS DESERVE BETTER THAN BIDEN'S REVERSE ROBIN HOOD PLAN
The entitlement mentality he’s indulging is insatiable. If someone’s entitled to $10,000 of free money for college, why not more? Every student in America who is in college or preparing for it will demand the same deal or better. In fact, we’re already hearing complaints that $10,000 is too little, and many on the left are calling for $50,000 in loan forgiveness. What future college borrowers are learning is that it only takes a desperate politician and an election to get out of their financial commitments.
And that mentality will have dire consequences for the classroom and the workplace.
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The act of learning is, by definition, an act of investment. Speaking as a professor, a frustratingly large part of education is teaching students that effort – showing up and staying awake – does not equal results. Nothing is guaranteed. You must commit time, energy and resources to master something. If you're not prepared to sacrifice, you get nothing in return.
By passing the burden of student loans to taxpayers, what we’re teaching people is commitments don’t matter and sacrifices are for fools. We should be challenging young workers to look for a way up and way forward in their careers so that they can meet their own obligations and create more opportunity for others. Instead, the president is dangling in front of them a cheap way out.
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And the entitlement mentality we're breeding doesn't stop after school. If making someone else pay for your college degree is a "right," then it’s a short leap to say the job for which you got that degree is also your "right." It’s no coincidence that workers at some of America’s most prominent companies are now refusing to come into the office to work. Why go one mile, let alone the extra mile, for a job that somebody owes you anyway?
President Biden undoubtedly hopes student debt handouts give his party a bump in the midterm elections. But he’s recklessly buying votes at the cost of the moral imperative to keep commitments and honor agreements that makes education, economies and self-governing societies work.