The Student Loan Bubble Is Not What Jefferson Had In Mind

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – The largest bubble right now, the bubble that is about to burst and is bursting right now is the student loan bubble.  There are almost $1 trillion worth of outstanding student loans right now.  All that money was guaranteed by you and me, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer, and was transferred into where?  It came from the federal government and transferred into the coffers of the same universities we’re talking about.  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  The largest bubble right now, the bubble that is about to burst and is bursting right now is the student loan bubble.  There are almost $1 trillion worth of outstanding student loans right now.  All that money was guaranteed by you and me, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer, and was transferred into where?  It came from the federal government and transferred into the coffers of the same universities we’re talking about.  Now kids find out afterwards: Wish I hadn’t taken out this stupid student loan.  Too late.  You went to the school.  Now you’ve got to pay your loan back.  It is quite a wicked system.  I don’t think that anyone intended for this to happen.  We can certainly say that it should begin to phase out.  That’s not going to happen.  We can’t cut little Jr. Johnny and Jr. Susie off their publicly-funded gravy train.  They want to go to the University of Alabama and meet AJ McCarron and his girlfriend.  You don’t want to go to school?  They got a school there, too, but that’s not why I’m going.  I want to appear on Real Football Girlfriends of Alabama, the new reality TV show.  Here’s what Jefferson wrote about public funding of universities:

[reading]

The school of technical philosophy will differ essentially in its functions from the other professional schools. The others instituted to ramify and dilate the particular sciences taught in the schools of the second grade on a general scale only. The technical school is to abridge those which were taught there too much in extenso for the limited wants of the artificer or practical man. These artificers must be grouped together, according to the particular branch of science in which they need elementary and practical instruction; and a special lecture or lectures should be prepared for each group. And these lectures should be given in the evening, so as not to interrupt the labors of the day. The school, particularly, should be maintained wholly at the public expense, on the same principles with that of the ward schools. Through the whole of the collegiate course, at the hours of recreation on certain days, all the students should be taught the manual exercise; military evolutions and manoeuvers should be under a standing organization as a military corps, and with proper officers to train and command them.

[end reading]

Mike:  So the entire school ought to be publicly supported as if it were a ward school.  He covered the ward schools in the first part of his letter.  I just find this fascinating that Jefferson was such a proponent of public funding of education.  This is a September 7, 1814 letter to Peter Carr.

[reading]

Dear Sir, — On the subject of the academy or college proposed to be established in our neighborhood, I promised the trustees that I would prepare for them a plan, adapted, in the first instance, to our slender funds, but susceptible of being enlarged, either by their own growth or by accession from other quarters.

I have long entertained the hope that this, our native State, [Mike: He’s talking about Virginia.] would take up the subject of education, and make an establishment, either with or without incorporation into that of William and Mary, where every branch of science, deemed useful at this day, should be taught in its highest degree. With this view, I have lost no occasion of making myself acquainted with the organization of the best seminaries in other countries, and with the opinions of the most enlightened individuals, on the subject of the sciences worthy of a place in such an institution. In order to prepare what I have promised our trustees, I have lately revised these several plans with attention; and I am struck with the diversity of arrangement observable in them — no two alike: Yet, I have no doubt that these several arrangements have been the subject of mature reflection, by wise and learned men, who, contemplating local circumstances, have adapted them to the conditions of the section of society for which they have been framed. [Mike: Then he goes on to say he won’t be able to make the meetings and there are some minutiae in there.]

In the first place, we must ascertain with precision the object of our institution, by taking a survey of the general field of science, and marking out the portion we mean to occupy at first, and the ultimate extension of our views beyond that, should we be enabled to render it, in the end, as comprehensive as we would wish. [Mike: Then he covers elementary schools.]

It is highly interesting to our country, and it is the duty of its functionaries, to provide that every citizen in it should receive an education proportioned to the condition and pursuits of his life. The mass of our citizens may be divided into two classes — the laboring and the learned. [Mike: Try that today, Tommy.] The laboring will need the first grade of education to qualify them for their pursuits and duties; the learned will need it as a foundation for further acquirements. A plan was formerly proposed to the legislature of this State for laying off every county into hundreds of wards of five or six miles square, within each of which should be a school for the education of the children of the ward, wherein they should receive three years’ instruction gratis, in reading, writing, arithmetic as far as fractions, the roots and ratios, and geography. The Legislature at one time tried an ineffectual expedient for introducing this plan, which having failed, it is hoped they will some day resume it in a more promising form.

[end reading]

Mike:  If he could see today what that has wrought, I do not believe that he would be as animated and excited over it as he was when they were formulating it as a prospect.

End Mike Church Show Transcript