Look at what Associated Press reported recently about Barack Obama and college costs:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Wooing young voters, President Barack Obama is on a blitz to keep the cost of college loans from soaring for millions of students, taking his message to three states strategically important to his re-election bid. By taking on student debt, Obama is speaking to middle-class America and targeting an enormous burden that threatens the economic recovery.
So this president thinks that college costs are too high?
Welcome to the club, sir…
And who controls our colleges and universities lock, stock and barrel with a few very rare exceptions? The oil companies? Mitt Romney? Conservatives? The Tea Party?
No, these schools are controlled with an iron hand by Obama’s left-wing academic friends who are enjoying high lifestyles. The slacker schedules of today’s college professors are notorious. And these schools’ outrageous tuition costs show who the true bandits are in a very serious situation for tens of millions of young Americans.
Over the last 35 years since the baby-boomers have taken over higher education the cost of college has risen three times faster than the rate of inflation. Yet there is no media outrage. Because this giant rip-off is being perpetrated by the greedy left.
There even was one single congressional investigation in the 1990s that actually found illegal collusion in the Ivy League over tuitions. But nothing happened. Because the media and the Democrat party were covering for their allies in the universities. Tuitions have continued soaring.
Meanwhile Congress has held more than a dozen investigations into the oil companies over the last 30 years, certain that they would find illegal collusion and price fixing every time. But never have they found it. Ever.
Here is one example about the reason for high college costs from the website of Republican US senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts about his opponent in the November election, Democrat Elizabeth Warren:
BOSTON – As Elizabeth Warren spends the week discussing student loans and the financial burden that high college tuition costs place on young Americans, she should first look at factors that drive high tuition rates, such as the exorbitant salaries and compensation packages that many professors and administrators receive.
In 2009, Warren reportedly earned more than $349,375 for her work at Harvard University Law School. Tuition at Harvard College is $37,576 per student. Warren’s salary alone, not including benefits and perks, would cover the tuition of more than nine full-time students for one year. With a Harvard Law School tuition bill of $47,600, Warren’s salary could fund more than seven law students for one year.
Now Obama is feigning shock and horror at these outrageous college costs which we conservatives have been talking about for decades.
Wouldn’t you say that Warren’s salary is pretty high?
Gee, there’s a big part of your problem right there. And 95% of these professors are far-left Democrats. Which you would expect. Because the Democrats/Media Left are covering up for them. If these professors were conservatives the media would be doing stories every day about these outrageous costs.
These costs have spiraled out of control because when the Democrats saw their university cronies raising tuitions rapidly for many years back in the 1980s and 1990s they responded with two tiers of government action rather than addressing the core problem of colleges charging too much and spending too much.
*The first response was for the government to issue subsidies, loans, grants and scholarships to millions of students. This funneled taxpayer money to the universities and softened the blow of these costs. This has let the lefties in academia off the hook and shifted the fiscal burden to the taxpayer.
*The second response was that the Democrats have made many college costs tax deductible. This sounds great doesn’t it? But there is a huge catch. Because the costs simply are being pushed off on the taxpayers.
Both responses are classic socialism. They both actually made the problem worse by failing to address the core issue.
AP reported:
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has estimated about 15 percent of Americans, or 37 million people, have outstanding student loan debt. The banks put the total at $870 billion, though other estimates have reached $1 trillion. About two-thirds of student loan debt is held by people under 30.
Wow. And all these millions of students are supposed to support Obama when they have these huge debts imposed by Obama’s university cronies and now have no jobs because of the Obama economy?
This is how socialism works, friends. Millions of students could never believe that this whole charade is being perpetrated by their own professors. Because they see their professors as so ‘cool’ and liberal.
AP also reported:
(Politicians) are now on record for freezing the current interest rates on a popular federal loan for poorer and middle-class students. The issue is looming because the rate will double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on July 1 without intervention by Congress, an expiration date chosen in 2007 when a Democratic Congress voted to chop the rate in half.
*This is the third leg of the Democrat ‘solution’. Congress orders a lower interest rate by government fiat rather than going to the original problem – the greed of the academic left.
Many of these colleges are tremendously wealthy. Harvard has an endowment (investment asset account) of $32 BILLION. Tuition alone at many top colleges today is more than $40,000 per year at places like Williams College in Massachusetts. And the school year now has shrunk to only about 7 months. So that’s $6,000 a month for tuition.
Uhhh, sorry, but that is called ‘gouging’… big time. And if oil companies did that there would be media armageddon.
Williams College, with only 2,000 students and a campus that is less than one square mile, has an endowment of $1.5 BILLION.
And don’t think that much of this tuition money is not being funneled right into each college’s endowment, like their own Swiss bank account that is piling up hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars.
You may have noticed that student debt was something that was mentioned over and over in the brief existence of the Wall Street ‘occupiers’. Yet they said nothing to protest all this wealth accumulation in academia.
Because the ‘occupiers’ are on the political left along with Harvard and the other colleges. And so they will never, ever complain about Harvard’s wealth or about Williams College’s outrageous tuitions. Or any tuitions.
Meanwhile the parents of America are being bankrupted. It is an absolute outrage.
And the person who is being called the ‘mother’ of the ‘occupy’ movement is… Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Harvard Law School professor and Democrat US Senate candidate.
Look at what else AP reported:
Obama, previewing the message he will give at all three colleges, said over the weekend that allowing the interest rates to double this summer would hurt more than 7 million students. The White House said it would cost students $1,000, based on the average amount borrowed a year ($4,200) and the average time it takes to pay the loan (12 years).
"That would be a tremendous blow," Obama said. "And it's completely preventable."
No, the “tremendous blow” comes from the universities. And then as the costs spiraled out of control the Democrats gave us smoke and mirrors through government action that only exacerbated the problem.
AP also reported:
Obama carried voters between the ages of 18-29 by a margin of about 2-to-1 in 2008, but many recent college graduates have faced high levels of unemployment. That raises concerns for the president about whether they will vote and volunteer for him in such large numbers again.
So are the young people finally starting to see the mirage of socialism?
Let’s hope so. Indeed they may finally be awakening to a system that is unraveling before our eyes. And it has taken many years of unraveling to get to this point. We conservatives have warned about this for decades on every front from taxation to college costs to home-ownership for ‘poor’ people.
But expect the radicals in the colleges to propagandize the students about college costs just like they have done about everything.
They will find a way to tell their students that these high costs are the fault of George Bush. Or the oil companies. Or Mitt Romney. Or the Tea Party. Or Rush Limbaugh.
And millions of students will actually believe it.