Student Loan Programs Guaranteed Dollars - Student Degrees Were Guaranteed

Student Loan Programs Guaranteed Dollars - Student Degrees Were Guaranteed


“..when one had to flunk them, an entire apparatus was in place at the university to see that they in fact did not flunk.”


By Dell Hill

Although my families financial situation precluded me from attending college, it was said by my high school teachers and counselors that I was “college material”.  There were some in my high school graduating class who were clearly not.  And with good reason.  It’s not necessarily because they weren’t intelligent; some of them certainly were.  Some simply didn’t want to go to college; they wanted to go straight into a family business, or the military, or some popular vocation and even a liberal arts degree to them was not worth the time or effort.  The decision not to go on to post-secondary education paid off handsomely for several of them.  (the late Steve Jobs name immediately springs to mind.  He not only didn’t go to college, he quit high school before graduation)

I’m speaking of the early 1960s - several years before Pell grants, Stafford Loans and other federally subsidized student loan programs came into being.  Had they been available in 1963, I suspect I would have opted in.  I had my heart set on a career in radio/TV broadcasting and a college degree, it was said, would propel me directly into a high-paying broadcast position.

With the onset of student loan programs, thousands of high school grads elected to further their education, only to find they were not made of the “right stuff” for highly advanced schooling.  But, somehow, many of them walked the stage and received a college degree.

That’s where this report begins.

This is a snippet from the latest blog posting by Victor Davis Hanson, writing at PJ Media.  If you’ve ever wondered how in the world some our nation’s leaders - or simply rank and file citizens - sport a college sheepskin on their living room wall, read the entire post.

“I noticed about 1990 that some students in my classes at CSU were both clearly illiterate and yet beneficiaries of lots of federal cash, loans, and university support to ensure their graduation.  And when one had to flunk them, an entire apparatus was in place at the university to see that they in fact did not flunk. Just as coaches steered jocks to the right courses, so too counselors did the same with those poorly prepared but on fat federal grants and loans.  By the millennium, faculty were conscious that the university was a sort of farm and the students the paying crop that had to be cultivated if it were to make it all the way to harvest and sale — and thus pay for the farmers’ livelihood.

How could a Ponzi scheme of such magnitude go on this long?

Lots of reasons.  The university was deeply embedded with a faux-morality and a supposed disdain for lucre.  “College” or “university” was sort of like “green” — an ethical veneer for almost anything imaginable without audit or examination (Whether a Joe Paterno-like exemption or something akin to Climategate or the local CSU campus where the student body president recently boasted that he was an illegal alien and dared authorities to act — to near unanimous support from the university.)  Since World War II, a college degree was rightly seen as the key to middle class upward mobility.  That belief was enshrined, and so we forgot to ask whether everyone was suited for college, or whether the college educated per se were always more important to the economy than the self-, union-, or trade-schooled welder, concrete finisher, or electrician.”

Again, read the entire piece by clicking right here and learn how easy federal money caused our colleges and universities to “adjust” students curriculum to insure they stayed in school and - more importantly - those tuition dollars kept rolling in.

Note Of Clarification From Dell:  I earned nine college credits from Champlain College Evening Division by successfully completing the course of study in Criminal Law I and Criminal Law II.  I did not attend college in the usual and customary fashion.  In 1963, I was accepted at Emerson College to pursue my education in broadcasting, but came up $75 short of obtaining the first semester tuition and had to withdraw.