There is some valid logic behind the criticism of President Biden’s college loan forgiveness plan. It seems unfair that people who paid for their own college will have to pay taxes to help pay off those loans, now that they are not guaranteed by the Federal Government. It also seems unfair that taxpayers who never went to college will have to subsidize those loans with their tax dollars. And of course, those who took out loans and paid them off in full after graduation will also have to contribute to pay off the loans of those who didn’t.

It might be more just if those who profited from the college loan program got to share more of this responsibility. For decades now, we have systematically indoctrinated the nation’s youth that their future prosperity depends on their getting that degree, when we all know that job success has nothing to do with what you learned in college, but the fact you went at all. The sheepskin is just a badge of social class acceptability, or perhaps a partial guarantee that you have more literacy than a high school diploma, since that is obviously worthless these days. Having a degree is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition to get a decent job. WHAT you got your degree is in is irrelevant; especially when you consider the lunatic disciplines that are being taught now at the university level, particularly in the Business Administration, Management and Marketing Departments of our universities. (Fashion Journalism? Sports Law? Give me a fucking break).

So who lobbied for these programs, and then aggressively marketed them. Who actually profited from these college loans? First, it was the banks and lending institutions that provided the financing. Clearly, once the loans became government-guaranteed, it simply gave them a license to steal. The institutions of higher learning certainly profited. More money meant higher enrollments, higher tuitions, and now that colleges and universities are being starved of government funding, it replaced that revenue stream. But by far the super villain in this movie is that wonderfully oxymoronic institution, the For-Profit University. You know who I mean, they advertise on daytime TV, they have sprouted up like mushrooms, making outlandish and unrealistic promises as they aggressively market their dubious product to precisely those segments of society most desperate for it and least equipped to evaluate its value. Imagine that. A “University” founded to take advantage of a naive consumer with a blank check from Uncle Sam in his pocket! There is a special place in Hell reserved for these carrion eaters.