One law could fix it all: Financial Institutions can no longer charge interest, penalties or fees on student loans. Want to watch education costs come WAY down? Simply remove the access to EZ cash and let the "free market" take over,
The Education-Finance Industrial Complex has now created a new normal whereby the cost of $30,000 or $40,000 per year for college is "just the way it is". A bitter pill that nearly everyone swallows. The pill gets taken down because no parent denies their child every opportunity. And that's the price tag.
These kinds of costs are obviously not competitive to nearly all of us. There would be no market at all for these "educational services" but for the massive profiteering on the finance side.
Its quite the cozy relationship. Da Banks and Da Skoolz. Gangstaz. 4eva 2getha. Schools jack up the prices generating generations of new customers for the banks. The banks for their part do not treat education loans at all like "regular" loans. This one is automatic. You want it? You got it! Its the Godzilla of the super-sub-prime mind set.
Of course, the banks don't need to do a traditional risk assessment because of all the deals they have struck in DC. We, the taxpayers, have eliminated the risk to banks. No risks, means endless loans. Endless loans mean an artificial market. Artificial markets means no incentive to keeps costs down and every incentive to charge whatever the banks are willing to lend. And on (or up) it goes. The lenders have no ceiling and so the educators have no ceiling. Pretty easy math.
How does government eliminate risk to banks? Education loans are not disposable in bankruptcy. Wages are garnished. Social Security checks are garnished. Grandparents who co-signed a loan are now on the hook.
There is plenty more to tell. How the Education-Finance Industrial Complex has a darker cousin who is the muscle in the family operation. These are the collection agencies who add 18% to the principle just to get started. This is loan sharking. Offering "credit" to people who cannot get it elsewhere and collecting the vig with unsavory tactics. I dont know what's worse a broken leg or a garnished social security check. I might go for the leg. In the long run it would be cheaper.
So there is the fix: Eliminate the fixed market.
Up next: The Education-Finance Industrial Complex now generates both the kind of enormous profits and liberty ending debt loads that will spark the strikes of the new-worker/pre-worker generation. So many are already not paying. All they need is to not pay TOGETHER.