Education in America Has Become a Snare and a Racket: Part I

By Rich Kozlovich

On October 29, 2018 this article appeared on the CNBC website discussing former students who took out student loans and then decided they didn’t want to repay them.

The first one is a guy name Chad Haag, and you have to watch the video at the beginning of the article to understand what a loser this guy is.

"He moved to a jungle in India to escape his giant student debt — and he's not alone” “Chad Haag considered living in a cave to escape his student debt. He had a friend doing it. But after some plotting, he settled on what he considered a less risky plan. This year, he relocated to a jungle in India. "I've put America behind me."……. “He moved to a jungle in India to escape his giant student debt”.

The article goes on to say:

“Chadd Haag said he left the United States to escape his student debt. Now he lives in India. The philosophy major concedes that his student loan balance of around $20,000 isn't as large as the burden shouldered by many other borrowers, but he said his difficultly finding a college-level job in the U.S. has made that debt oppressive nonetheless. "If you're not making a living wage," Haag said, "$20,000 in debt is devastating."

Twenty thousand dollars in debt is devastating? Ya gotta be kiddin me! Does this snowflake have any idea what the debt load is for many married Americans with children, a home and a car? It’s a lot more than twenty thousand dollars, and a large number of them have more than one job.

The article continues:

“He struggled to come up with the $300 a month he owed. The first work he found after he graduated from the University of Northern Colorado in 2011 — when the recession's effects were still palpable — was on-again, off-again hours at a factory, unloading trucks and constructing toy rockets on an assembly line."

He claims he worked all these jobs but after taxes he only cleared $1700 a month. After his $300 payment to his student loan that would leave him $1400 a month. But he lived with his mother! How much did she charge him to live there?  According to him he “couldn't make the math work in America”!  So what does he do he goes after his master’s degree!

And what’s his degree in? Philosophy! Really? A Masters degree in philosophy and he couldn’t find a job! Imagine that!

So now he living in a third world country where the bathroom is often a hole in the floor but he has "a higher standard of living in a Third World country than I would in America, because of my student loans."

But you just can’t walk into India and get a job, it requires a work visa and those are temporary. So you have to have special skills, but even then, it’s still Indians first there. So he married an Indian woman. Wow! So that’s what philosophy teaches! I wonder how long that will last when she finally figures out this guys a loser.

But he's not alone:

Chad Albright attended Millersville University, in Pennsylvania, where he studied communications and history. He graduated as the Great Recession was beginning in December 2007, and couldn't find anyone to hire him in his chosen field..... he had $30,000 in student loans "There was anger," Albright said. "I couldn't believe I couldn't find a job in America."........."I feel that college ruined my life," "I’m much happier in Ukraine,”

Katrina Williams student loan debt "ballooned to well over $100,000." “I try not to think about America,” Williams said. “It’s heartbreaking.” "Williams had a friend who had moved to Japan, and the idea of leaving the United States grew on her. In 2015, she moved to Chiba, Japan, also to teach English to students. "I love my work," she said. Her job sponsors her visa."   "She has her own apartment now and doesn't have to work seven days a week anymore. However, Williams whine:  "I wish I could come back to America and not be scared." 

She reminds me of all those guys who fled to Canada during the Vietnam war, built their careers and then cried and whined when Carter was President, "I'm sorry, forgive me, I want to come home",  so Carter pardoned them. 

I served, but I didn't blame them for running away.  After all it's their life!  But once they made that decison they should have had to live with it. 

The article points out:

"Outstanding student debt in the U.S. has tripled over the last decade and is projected to swell to $2 trillion by 2022. Average debt at graduation is currently around $30,000, up from an inflation-adjusted $16,000 in the early 1990s. Meanwhile, salaries for new bachelor degree recipients, also accounting for inflation, have remained almost flat over the last few decades." 

"Half of student loan borrowers haven't paid even $1 toward their debt's principal five years into repayment, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Forty percent of student loan borrowers are expected to default by 2023, according to the Brookings Institution."

While the cost of education has skyrocketed the wages remained flat. Why? Because the cost has gone way beyond inflation or the normal rise in prices.  Student loans is part of the problem.  These universities have become scam artists beyond compare, and the government knows it!

But I wonder:  Did they not know when they were taking out those loans the day would come when they had to pay them back?  While I can feel a very small degree of sympathy to these people I have to ask:  Instead of all these temporary jobs they claim they were doing,  why didn't they get a real job that could earn them the money they needed? 

Bread men are the people who deliver bread to restaurants, institutions and grocery stores all over America.  They all make over $50,000 a year, and in some states a whole lot more, and believe it or not, it's really hard work so bread companies are always looking for good people.  Exterminators are in the same situation.  In most areas of the country they all make over $40,000 a year, and they're always looking for good people.  But they couldn't find those jobs! Why?

There were about 300 million people living in the United States then, and a huge number of them were immigrants who came here to get a better life, and they will get it.  I'm not going to bleed all over myself for these delusional self absorbed snowflake whiners.  But I don't blame them as much as I blame the leftist loons who promoted all this, and who now want to make that debt disappear by making the American people pay for it, leaving them with educations that will potentially reap rewards not available to the people who would have to pay their debt. 

Part II will be in tomorrow's edition.