LIZ PEEK: Trump is starving the machine that creates America's socialist revolutionaries
Socialism is metastasizing like a cancer throughout our country. Though collectivism will inevitably fail, because it always does, it is already causing significant damage to our nation’s political and social fabric. It must be stopped.
It is not enough to defeat Socialism at the ballot box. The factories producing this infection — the far-left faculties of our colleges and universities — must be starved of taxpayer money. Thankfully, the Trump White House has taken measures to start that process.
As of July 1, the Department of Education implemented new limits on student loans. Instead of letting young people pile up unlimited amounts of debt in pursuit of a degree of questionable value, the government has now capped what students and their parents can borrow to finance (primarily) graduate programs.
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Why does this matter? Because the young people who have rallied to the TikTok "vibe" campaigns of politicians like New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani are disproportionately white liberals with college and graduate degrees who are up to their eyeballs in student debt. Many are angry that their advanced degree in poetry or social work hasn’t paid off; they can’t afford to repay their student loans, start a family or buy a house. They feel cheated, they’re angry, and they want to tax the "wealthy" to underwrite their poor choices.
We can sympathize with them. Our government has handed out an unending torrent of money to finance college education for decades, driving up the cost of schooling and total student debt, which now stands at $1.9 trillion, up from $520 billion in 2006. Just like too much money spewed by the Biden administration into the Covid-constrained economy sparked decades-high inflation, too much money pouring into our higher ed institutions over the past fifty years has driven college costs through the roof.
According to research from the Education Data Initiative, "The average annual cost of college tuition, public and private, is more than 32 times what it was in the 1963-64 academic year." Taking inflation into account, "college tuition has increased 229.8% over the same time frame.
Even as taxpayers provided a gusher of financing, no one monitored where the money was going — or the value of graduate degrees. This has led to bad choices, with young people and their parents investing in programs that leave students struggling to make ends meet.
Over many decades, as students started drowning in debt, administrations and Congress wrestled with how to lighten the loan burden. Most of the fixes involved lowering interest costs or loan forgiveness (Joe Biden, overturned by the Supreme Court) or reducing loan balances for those entering certain careers like teaching (George W. Bush) or capping payments relative to income (Obama.)
The Trump administration is the first to put a choke hold on the total dollars that can be borrowed. Now, the total that students may borrow to fund a graduate degree is $20,500 per year or $100,000 in total and $50,000 per year or $200,000 max for professional programs like medical school. The White House has also capped the Parent Plus program, under which families can borrow to finance undergraduate or graduate degrees for their children, at $20,000 per dependent student per year and a total limit of $65,000 per child.
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Limiting graduate school debt is important because borrowing by graduate students is gobbling up an increasing share of student loans; almost half of all new federal loans made in the 2021-2022 academic year went to graduate students.
Researchers have found that raising the loan dollars available to graduate students failed to increase attendance by minorities, which was one of the goals. Moreover, it turns out that schools basically "captured" the increase in funds by raising tuition.
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This is not shocking. When the federal government gets involved, it usually creates more problems than it solves. Bottom line: the tsunami of taxpayer-funded higher ed dollars has led to more kids owing more money and earning more degrees that are effectively worthless.
Socialism will not fix the problem. Cynical politicians like Mamdani will pretend that taxing the rich can lower the cost of housing, childcare and groceries for his angry, overeducated, white liberal followers. But it’s not true. Unhappily, despite their advanced degrees, his followers remain gullible, and ignorant about the history of such failed promises.
Limiting the amount of money available for grad students will help control the spiraling debt (and grievances) of those seeking useless degrees. While borrowings for undergraduates average less than $30,000, graduate students on average owe $103,000. They claim they are victims of a rotten system, and they are correct. But it’s not that the wealthy are not paying their fair share; the top ten percent pays more than the bottom 90% combined, as the U.S. has the most progressive tax system in the developed world.
They are victims of an absurd education system in which taxpayers fund worthless degrees and reward schools for driving up costs. No wonder they’re angry; no wonder they fall for charlatans like Zohran Mamdani.