Zim:
"Step 1. End the federal student loan program....
"Step 2. If one owes student loan moneys - one still has to pay it back. However, if one can demonstrate that a 'prestigious university' enrolled them knowing that they could not do college level work - they get enrolled in a class action lawsuit against the universities and the universities can (and should) pay back the student loans.
Step 3. We have the Service Academies.
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Thanks for the response, Zim!
#1: I agree!
#2. I believe that EVERY OTHER FORM OF DEBT EXCEPT TAX FRAUD IS DISCHARGEABLE BY BANKRUPTCY. Why is Student Loan debt an exception?
Student loan debt, which has been turned into an exploit of naive children, was dischargeable debt, as well, until "The Clintons" and a good contingent of other purchasable politicians, from both parties, hustled through a change of the law around the year 2000.
This law absolutely should go. Make the lenders EAT their losses when they lend to children who who think they are getting "educated" in "black-studies", and "liberal arts".
As a side benefit it would put a hell of a lot of useless "teachers" teaching useless subjects on the unemployed rolls...or flipping burgers and Burger King. How about that? ;->
#3: I had to look up "Service Academies" to figure out what you wanted to expand. Now I know you are referring to the Military Academies, such as West Point.
At least in their current form they are nowhere near adequate to the task of dramatically expanding the number of Engineers, legitimate-Scientists, and highly-skilled technicians to rebuild this country, much less get us the level of technical leadership we could use as a country. To begin with, per the wikipedia article I read, they require candidates to be "nominated" by a high-rankng politicians or bureaucrat.
But the basic idea of full room and board education which needs to be repaid by public service I would support. It is, in fact, better than my initial suggestion. The only other thing I would want to see is that it doesn't have to be strictly "military" service you are signing up for.
Enlarged in that way it would dovetail well with something I previously suggested (I think here): allowing high school students to transition to 4-5 years of working IN the US government, with the ideal goal of DISPLACING effectively *ALL* "career" government bureaucrats. (Let's face it, every government in all of human history has quickly gotten infested with bureaucrats who mostly serve themselves. We don't need a one of them if we had smart kids out of high school taking their place in 5 year stints.
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