This Problem is Your Problem is Our Problem

In 2005-2007, I imagine a lot of people had a caveat emptor that's-what-you-get attitude towards people who failed in their housing ventures. I imagine that upon hearing about someone overpaying for a "flipping" property and then failing to sell it, failing to make the monthly mortgage payments, etc., that there was a lot of shadenfreude, remarks about irrational greed ("You paid $300k for a house in the ghetto?"), and such. TV shows used to show the foibles - and often failures - of those trying to flip properties to take advantage of irrational home prices. Real estate exuberance, it seemed, was a public spectacle, like a boxing match. You could participate or not, but there wasn't a sense of connection between person x's failure and the failure of the economic system.

I bring this to mind after reviewing the comments on articles like this and this. It seems there are a lot of idiots in this country who view the fraudulent nature of higher education - law school in particular - as an individual problem, one we should welcome if our attitudes towards greedy lawyers is one of antipathy, one in which we should find head-slapping entertainment if our political views prefer robust, responsible individualism and abhor people exercising their legal rights or exposing flawed systems.

Regardless of where your politics swing, the problem of young people being sucked into the educational-student loan vortex is absolutely a nationwide problem, bigger than abortion, bigger than gun control, bigger than 95% of the issues that the vacuous ruffle their feathers over. It will likely come to rival the mortgage meltdown in impact on the economy. And one of the biggest culprits is higher's education's absolute rejection of transparency, refusal - in spite of its philosophical mission statements - to present an objectively-honest self portrait, and its warm embrace of shyster marketing techniques.

According to the Census Bureau, almost 70% of our high school graduates enroll in post-secondary education. Many more attend school later on in life. In any given year, there's about 3 million who graduate high school, so in excess of 2 million enter into post-secondary education. Around 20 million are in post-secondary education at any given time, with 4-year colleges taking double the number of students at 2-year schools.

The average annual tuition at a 4-year school (public and private both) is around 21,000. Three years ago, the average debt for undergraduates was in excess of $27,000 and around 2/3 of those at 4-year schools took out undergraduate loans.

Using some very crude math and ignoring attrition, we're talking about almost a million every single year taking on almost $30,000 in non-dischargable debt. And for what purpose? The vast majority wind up moving back home. Millions wind up working in jobs that require the skill-set of a 16-year-old.

While the $30,000 figure may seem modest: 1) it's increasing every year; 2) it's above what the federal government advises for a rational student loan debt load, given the employment prospects; 3) 80+% of the time it's a wasted expenditure.

And make no mistake: many of the people borrowing these loans are among the more sophisticated people in the society. The ones that "should" go to college, but have the audacity to come from lower- and middle-class backgrounds. Each one of those one million has to service that $30,000 debt (which becomes $40,000 over a 10-year repayment) instead of buying a car, spending money on entertainment, investing, or otherwise contributing to the economy. Instead, the debt is used to support the bloated and cost-inefficient university system now.

Even at such "minimal" debt levels, the student has a $350 a month handcuff placed on them. And if the student doesn't take the debt, someone else often winds up paying the deficiency. If mom and dad pay for your education, kids, it wasn't free. Absurdly high tuition is a serious economic problem precisely because it diverts resources away from productive uses of capital and towards non-productive ones (debt service and "research" by 3rd-tier anthropologists).

In ten years, there will be millions upon millions of our most education citizens who will be unable to purchase homes or new automobiles precisely because of the debilitating effect of student loans that were thrown on, in part, by a perpetuation of fraud. How can you not see the long-term systemic effect of this?

For law school students, the picture is about five times more dire. Most have undergraduate debt, and then are forced to expend between of $100,000 to 200,000 more to gain a law degree. If $350 a month is nothing to sneeze at, what is $1000 a month like? Because of the fraud of law school admissions departments, these students grossly overpaid for tuition. There are maybe 10% of law students who will achieve salaries capable of paying off these debt levels with ease. For the remainder - approximately 35,000 per year - the high debt will crush their finances and prevent them from having meaningful participation in the economic society.

Say what you will about law students, but 1) most are among the top 10% of the society in terms of intelligence and work ethic; and 2) most never would have gone to law school if they knew the reality of post-graduate employment. Do you think anyone really wants to desperately be a lawyer? Maybe like 15%, tops, have a Perry Mason boner.

The schools deliberately obfuscated the post-graduate employment situation for years. They induced - and still induce - people to pay high tuition amounts to support building projects, professor salaries, faculty retreats, swank soirées, and absurd marketing ventures. As a result of their huckster tactics, tens of thousands will see their discretionary income slashed to almost nothing.

As victimized consumers, graduates are using one of the few weapons in their arsenal that's useful against multimillion-dollar corporations. They're suing. This is one of the few ways to correct the Grand Systemic Flaw, and yet you fucking morons act like it's the students who have a problem. Fuck you; you're as blind as the mortgage lenders circa 2005. In your mania of "personal responsibility" and staring at the trees instead of the forest, you can't see the system imperiled right in front of you.

Education certainly has its normative values, and I'd be the last person to deny that there's a civic virtue in broad knowledge. But because of the high esteem education has, and its place in our democracy myth, the educational institutions have a responsibility not to abuse their station. Instead, they've pissed all over it in an orgy of unbridled greed, exorbitant consumption, and pretentious self-aggrandizement at the expense of tomorrow.

The "underwater" and fraudulently-incurred debts that will disable the next generation are not just the problems of the individual debt holders. They're our problem, all of us, and we should act now, not later. If you learned anything from the mortgage debacle, it should have been that individual problems can become systemic problems under the right conditions, when institutions have an incentive to act anti-socially, as schools have done.

My guess is that naive critics of lawsuits like these and those who robotically spout PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY every chance they get are not quite "educated" enough to understand such complex problems. The present is the past is the future. My problem is your problem is our problem. C'est la vie.