The election of President Joe Biden has brought new attention to and emphasis on the plight of secondary school students experiencing unexpected difficulties paying off their student loans. The President has extended the moratorium on student loans because of the COVID pandemic. One hoped-for option is for the government to forgive the debt entirely. The Secretary of Education actually issued an order to this effect. While this obviously seems like a good idea to the debtors, it may well be a bad solution to an ugly problem. Forgiving the debt for the students doesn't make it go away, it just shifts it to the federal taxpayer, who is already in debt by more than $222,000 each as it is. The student's debt would thus be spread out among those who went to work instead of going to school. That does not seem fair! Besides, they are hopefully going to become taxpayers after (if!) they graduate, (or after they flunk out), so they will bear part of this burden in either case. It's obviously something they feel they can do without.

Fortunately, in my opinion, the United States Supreme Court ruled, in Biden v. Nebraska, that the Secretary of Education does not have authority under the "Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003" to establish such a student loan forgiveness program. The students borrowed the money with the understanding that they would pay it back. They haven't done that (yet)! A deal is a deal! Case closed!

On the other hand, one matter at issue was the outstanding debt of student's loans that were tied to the income of the borrowers. The borrowers were promised a definite termination date in exchange for a specified percentage of their gross income every month for the intervening period. The lenders bet that the students would make enough money to pay the debt in the time allotted. Some won, some lost! Payment on the loans was temporarily suspended during the COVID epidemic, but the Secretary, as well as the borrowers, is still bound by the terms of the agreement. If the payments have been made as agreed and the termination date has been reached, any remaining debt is required to be forgiven. A deal is a deal, after all!

I am second to none in my belief in the value of education. I attended private schools from first grade through graduate school because my family and I wanted me to get the very best education available. I considered this such a good idea that I extended the same opportunity to my own children. Unfortunately though, none of them chose to take advantage of that opportunity after high school. One of them, as an act of rebellion, absolutely refused to attend private middle and high school, He also ultimately decided not to graduate, surly a bad idea. I cannot help but think that part of this decision involved the failure of the school system he chose to challenge him with a love of learning. They also treated him like a pariah for my refusal to agree "vonuntarily" to agree to forfeit his 4th Amendment rights in their ill-advised (and most certainly unconstitutional) attempt to stamp out perceived drug abuse.

Another one of my children took full advantage of the opportunities that were available to her and received a bachelor of science, a master of science, and a scholarship for her doctorate of philosophy in physics, without a single penny of student loan. I like to think I helped a little with that, but I didn't have to pay any tuition for her, either.!

Having said all that, I believe that the responsibility for education begins with the parents, extends to society, and ends with the individual. There seems to be violent disagreement today regarding who has the responsibility in this regard or, indeed, what precisely it is. My position is that the parents, or at least the family, have the responsibility to prepare the child for formal education, which begins in first grade.

Kindergarten is a transition period from learning at home to learning in school. A child should not graduate from kindergarten and enter the formal educational system unless he (or she, of course) knows a language well enough to understand and comply with directions, and is sufficiently familiar with the cultural environment well enough not to act like an obvious alien. He should be able to work and play tolerably well with his peers, comply with generally accepted social norms, wear clothing appropriately, and use the toilet, among possibly other skills necessary for formal education. Unfortunately, there are adults in the United States who have not achieved this level of civilization. Many of them are in the ugly environment of prison as a result! They still need to learn things taught in kindergarten, which should probably be a rehabilitative goal of the correctional system. Additional formal education for them may be a waste of time and resources. You can't fix stupid!

One of the things they should have learned is that a civilized person keeps his promises. Another is that borrowed things should be returned, and if they are lost or broken, they should be replaced or the owner should be otherwise compensated. A promise is a promise; belief otherwise indicates a lack of personal honor, and is frequently the source of untold misery!

I think that it is a good idea that public education should be free, available and mandatory for all residents of the US up to the point that an individual is able to contribute to his society. This probably should be accomplished by the time he is legally recognized as an adult. Citizen taxpayers have a vested interest in educating all their neighbors to become responsible, productive adults. It is certainly a bad idea for a democratic society to expect to survive with uneducated, irresponsible and dishonorable citizens, as recent ugly national events involving such individuals have so clearly demonstrated!

This does not mean that government should run the schools. My experiences as a student and an educator have convinced me that public schools have become much too political in the US, to the detriment of their student victims and society as a whole. I believe that the schools should be privately run, regulated by the state, inspected at least once during the school year, and required to meet state and federal standards. If they do not, I believe they should be ineligible to receive taxpayer funds after the school year in which they fail.

I am not convinced that taxpayers should pay for schools or their staffing and administration directly. Instead, students should be provided with educational vouchers that allow their parents to send the children to schools they freely choose. The good schools would get more money and the poor schools would get less. Wealthy parents could, if they wish, privately endow schools that provide additional or better services to their student children. This would provide an evolutionary incentive for all the schools to provide increasingly better quality education, and eliminate those that fall short. Think of it as evolution in action!

I would be in favor of a comprehensive test at the end of every fourth year of formal education (fourth, eighth, and twelfth grades, as well as graduate, postgraduate and possibly postdoctorate university levels) the passage of which would allow the student to go on to the next level of public, voucher-supported schooling. A student's family should be required to pay the additional expenses of a student repeating one or more years to allow him to pass the triennial exam. Once the student passed that exam, he could receive expense vouchers to continue his education

Failure of the exam, or expulsion from school, should, in my view, require the student to be manditorily apprenticed to work in a trade for which he can be found suited until legal adulthood. I believe that it is a function of government to find jobs for children unable, for one reason or another, to fulfill the requirements of a public school curriculum. People of limited mental capacity are human beings just like everyone else, and have an intrinsic civil right, to be provided with the skills necessary to survive as adults in an increasingly competitive world if at all possible. Supervised manual labor, such as crop harvesting, is a postitive, necessary contribution to the needs of society and a sourch of honorable livelihood to people who are capable only of that kind of occupation!

I have lived temporarily in countries where skilled artisans begin learning their trade when they are small children. They are making a good living, often as responsible parents, when their more intellectually gifted contemporaries are graduating from high school. It is a violation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States to deny them their basic equality as citizens simply because the formal educational system is not geared to their unique talents and abilities.

Development necessary for successful adulthood, whether it be formal education or training in manual, work-related skills, should be mandatory for juvenile students up to the twelfth year. The student would then be eligible for legal recognition as an adult after graduation or demonstration of appropriate commercial skills. Basically, if one doesn't or can't learn in school, he ought to go to work until he is old enough to make his own decisions. During that time, if he doesn't like working, he can take the educational test again and go back to school for another four years unless he is expelled, in which case he goes back to work!

After successful completion of the mandatory education or work training period, at about age 17 or 18, I believe the individual should be eligible for full, adult citizenship, even if he is an undocumented alien to begin with. This would painlessly solve the current "DACA problem." Eligibility to vote would be finally fulfilled by a period of successful public service, possibly as a civil servant, government contract employee, firefighter or police officer, member of the military or other uniformed service. This service could be structured to allow an individual to continue his education while fulfilling this citizenship requirement. Society benefits by encouraging its voting citizens to become more educated as an avenue to reaching their full potential and demonstrate their dedication to their country. The public service provision would be voluntary, though. If you don't join or complete it honorably, you remain forever disenfranchised.

I disagree with those who claim that this requirement would discriminate against those who are unable, for one reason or another to serve their city, state or country. If one can choose a candidate and mark a ballot, society can find something productive for him to contribute in return for that privilege. Otherwise, the objection is moot.

My experience as a college level instructor has convinced me that the current system of government student loans and educational (Pell) grants has proven to be a bad idea, however well intentioned. It is much too easy for a student to delude himself into thinking that going to school now will make him rich enough in the future to pay back money he borrowed in the past. The more the student needs the loan, the less this belief is likely to be true. In effect, the taxpayers now con the students into borrowing more money than they can ever reasonably expect to be able comfortably to pay back, with no equivalent risk to themselves. In home loans, it's called "predatory lending," and it's often illegal! This puts the taxpayers in the situation of subsidizing failure and ruining otherwise productive lives. The hope or potential for eventual forgiveness of student loans makes this situation worse.

In my first year at Loyola University in New Orlenas, one of the instructors informed us that Loyola's plan was to graduate 3/4 of the incoming freshman class. "Look around you," he said, "one of those sitting next to you probably won't graduate. Don't let it be you!" He was right; 74% of my freshman year class graduated. Who knows why the other 26% did not? Maybe they weren't smart enough or sufficiently motivated. My roommate flunked out because he partied instead of studying, as he did in high school. Who should pay their student loans? Why should it be somebody else; they were the ones who failed!

I read somewhere that a large precentage of first year Harvard Law School students obtain student loans based upon their admittedly exemplary past grades. In many cases, these are due in large part to the the average achievement level in their undergraduate schools being unusually low. They take on massive student loan debt without realizing the competitive nature of Harvard, without any reasonable expectation of graduating. They are now Harvard dropouts doing work like pickup truck driving and automotive mechanics that cannot hope to pay off their loans - ever! Who benefits from that?

Such a situation also shields the student from consequences of betrayal of trust. One-third of the students in my mandatory class in computer science at a local junior college used to come into class, put their heads down on the desk, and sleep. Taxpayers were paying them to "go to school full time," and the school required only that they be "present one class out of three." Nobody required them even to try to learn anything, and most of them were dumb as a bag of rocks anyway! I refused to dilute the quality of my instruction to the other students to waste time playing babysitter to professional failures. They were allowed by the administration to miss a maximum of two classes in a row, with no other requirement. Most of them were there to play varsity football anyway! They had no intention of learning or graduating!

I adhered to the letter of the policy written in the catalog. If a student missed three classes in a row, I dropped him from the class roster - period. That applied even if one or more of the absences was because the student was away for a game. The coaches begged and pleaded for me to "reconsider," but I just referred them to the catalog, "Three strikes and you're out!"

My students' grades were based solely on the bases of their exams and the operation of their computer programs. If they flunked, they flunked. Even the dean of students wanted me to give them "makeup work" or "another chance." I pointed out that I was doing exactly what the catalog specified. In our final discussion, I told her, "Look, you're the dean of students. If you want me to do something different, revise the catalog!"

She didn't renew my contract for the following year! It was probably best! I consider it immoral to subsidize failure. If somebody is good enough at football even if he can't read, he can pay a lawyer part of his income to enable him to play professionally.

Another downside of forgiveness of student loans is that the taxpayers might be required to pay for educational programs of doubtful (or absolutely no) value to society as a whole, even if the student manages to graduate! My feeling is that if a student wants to major in "black" or "women's studies," he ought to get some black or female philanthropist to pay for it; not taxpayers. I nominate, as a possible source of such funds, that individual named for a firearm who runs around in public with a multimillion dollar diamond stuck in his head, He is reportedly a high school dropout who became enormously wealthy doing other things more suited to his abilities. He can probably afford to subsidize a few students to study what he does.

A much better plan, in my opinion, is a work/study program in which the student provides a valuable, recognized service to society (the taxpayers) in return for his education. Wouldn't he be better off right now if, during his college days, the government had found a student a part time job that paid for his college so that he graduated debt-free? The US military does this now, with exceptionally good results, and not all of their members are recognized scholars. The service member often learns valuable additional skills that he missed growing up that are much more valuable than whatever his student loan would have paid for. I did!

My eldest daughter joined the Air Force (where she met her future husband) as an obstetrics technician. The Air Force provided all of her training and stationed her in England for two years, taking care of pregnant Air Force personnel and their dependents and seeing the world. Part of what they paid her was free tuition for a certain time after discharge as veteran's educational benefits. She took advantage of this by attending nursing school, and now is a registered nurse. She said she didn't learn a thing in nursing school; everything she knows about nursing she learned in the Air Force!

My family physician received all her medical school training in the Air Force. She was paid as an Air Force officer while she was doing that, and graduated with the rank of captain, a substantial contribution to time required for paid retirement, a MD degree, and not one penny of student loan debt. I begged a overachiever friend of mine to do the same thing, but she went to an exclusive medical school instead and wound up with a ton of student loan debt. Had she joined the military, she could have gone to the exclusive school for post doctorate work using veteran's benefits, and it still wouldn't have cost her anything.

If taxpayers really feel that some students' loan debts should be forgiven, I would be in favor of the government finding each one a good job that uses their academic skills, one benefit of which would be reduction over time of the student loan. Then everybody wins; the taxpayer gets his money back, the employer gets a well-trained employee, and the student gets a job that interests him, takes advantage of his education, and eventually forgives his student loan!

Even if the job does not interest the defaulted borrower, a mandatory job would provide valuable experience in what it means to function as an adult without a decent education. As mentioned, one of my children chose to seek his fortune without graduating from high school. One of the first things he did after understanding his employment potential at that time was to go back to high school and graduate, as he should have done in the first place. He then went on to get a bachelor's degree and a master's degree on his own. He is still angry with me about that, but he has no idea how proud I am of him!

Norm Augustine, United States Under Secretary of the Army from 1975 to 1977, chairman and CEO of the Lockheed Martin Corporation, and chairman of the Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans Committee, once said that his first job, before getting his B.S.E. and M.S.E. from Princeton University, was applying hot roofing tar on buildings. He learned three things from that experience: that it takes an awful lot of tar to cover one roof, that there are a lot of good people who make their living doing that, and that he didn't want to be one of them!

Of course, another option for people who don't have money for college is to have wealthy relatives or friends who think they're worth what the education costs! Wealthy families are often those in which the parents appreciate education to begin with, and provide an environment that can be expected to produce successful, educated, productive children who don't need student loans or to rely on the taxpayers. I see that as a good thing!

Recent campus so-called "demonstrations" lead me to believe that, whatever the situation has been in the past, today's students have far too much time on their hands. If they have time for rioting and getting arrested, they have time to go to work. Parhaps it might be possible for those who have defaulted on their student loans to find a way to get back on the financial track through useful mandatory employment as CARE, Peace Corps or other aid workers, possibly in Gaza, along our southern border, or cleaning trash out of the environment.

See 2023 Student Loan Debt Statistics here.

Feel free to comment, criticize or disagree.

John Lindorfer