Amid the worst campus chaos in decades, Joe Biden is announcing more student debt cancellations. 

All I can say is: read the room, Biden. Your poll numbers are in the toilet, and you are doubling down on policies that piss people off. Of all the times to whinge about how students got a raw deal, this is probably not the most propitious. 

The latest tranche of debt cancellation at least has a plausible, if not convincing, rationale. The students in question allegedly were defrauded by inflated claims of job placement (which also occurs regularly at colleges and universities).

The Biden administration will forgive $6.1 billion in debt held by 317,000 former students of the defunct for-profit chain the Art Institutes, marking one of the Education Department’s largest group discharges of federal student loans. https://t.co/N4RDIpEy8i

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 1, 2024

“Far too many for-profit institutions prey upon students, especially first-generation college students, selling them impossible guarantees and flashy brochures,” U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said on a call with reporters. “Investing in a college degree or career certificates should pay off, but too many students and families were ripped off. That’s unacceptable.”

Cardona thanked the attorneys general offices of Iowa, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania — which conducted investigations and brought lawsuits against the Art Institutes and EDMC — for providing evidence that cleared the way for the loan discharges.

Before it went out of business, EDMC was once one of the largest for-profit college chains in the country, with more than 150,000 students studying fields such as culinary arts, health sciences and education at 106 locations in 32 states and Canada. It owned the Art Institutes, Argosy University, South University and Brown Mackie College, but sinking enrollment led the company to sell off or close many campuses.

“Investing in a college degree or career certificates should pay off, but too many students and families were ripped off. That’s unacceptable.” Yeah, and the Administration keeps paying off the loans--illegally--of millions of students from prestigious universities, proving that these "investments" were a bad deal. For profit, not-for-profit--who cares? If you can't pay the loans it was by definition a terrible investment. 

If the Art Institutes was a fraud, wouldn't Harvard, Penn, Columbia, and all those other schools be frauds, too?

There's a lot to criticize about the campus protests, but the real outrage is that the Democrats' entire economic platform is an upward transfer of wealth from hard-working working-class Americans into the bank accounts of people paying $90,000 a year to LARP in midriff kafiyas. https://t.co/mZQeFrlY6d

— Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) May 1, 2024

But honestly, does it matter? After all, you could say something similar about every student loan that people apparently can't pay. Every single one of those students was assured that if they took loan out it would be a good investment--often told this by the schools themselves and by the government officials who kept and keep telling students that a college education is a ticket to a better life. 

How'd that work out? Not so well, apparently. 

"Student debt forgiveness punishes ordinary Americans and cash-strapped graduates by letting greedy universities off the hook"

My latest @Telegraph article https://t.co/VscxjP3uaB

— Adam B. Coleman, The Black Zoolander (@wrong_speak) April 30, 2024

Adam Coleman has a piece in The Telegraph explaining why student loan forgiveness is a horrible idea, and he is absolutely correct. You should follow Adam if you are on Twitter, by the way. Good stuff. 

The costly write-off isn’t just unfair, it’s ineffective. Forgiving college debt is like putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound, letting wealthy universities off the hook and passing yet another cost onto the already overstretched taxpaying American. 

There is no point in forgiving massive amounts of debt if we’re unwilling to reform the student loan infrastructure, starting with public universities, because in due time what was forgiven will return with a vengeance. Dollar inflation doesn’t come close to explaining why college tuition costs are 430 per cent higher in 2024 versus 1990. 

The federal government doesn’t want to change the system of near guaranteed loans for anyone who wants a higher education, and the colleges love the guaranteed money coming from our government no matter how many tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars they charge an 18-year-old who is seeking a more prosperous future.

Biden is cheating the American taxpayers, increasing subsidies to academic institutions that teach the worst kind of ideology, defrauding students with false promises of future prosperity, and not even maintain basic safety on their campuses. These colleges and universities have become hotbeds of toxic ideology and hate, undermining our society as a whole. 

This violent, lawless, and hateful campus chaos is on Joe Biden. pic.twitter.com/rh9dntZVIj

— GOP (@GOP) May 1, 2024

And Biden is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into propping all this up. Instead, the government should end student loan programs (I had student loans and paid them off) and encourage students saddled with debt to sue the universities. Make them pay if they defrauded students, and make the deadbeats with the resources to pay for the loans pay up. 

Biden’s illegal, student loan bailouts now total at least $870 billion, according to new report. Schools get a free ride to keep raising tuition for lousy, radical education as taxpayers foot the bill. Govt/education cabal draining parents and taxpayers. https://t.co/trsW0OWCFp

— David Asman (@DavidAsmanfox) April 30, 2024

Including the Biden Administration’s new student debt cancellation plan, we estimate all recent student debt cancellation policies will cost a combined $870 billion to $1.4 trillion. That’s more than all federal spending on higher education over the nation’s entire history. The vast majority of this debt cancellation was put in place through executive actions under President Biden.

$620 billion of debt cancellation has already been implemented, including $275 billion from President Biden’s new Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) program known as SAVE, $195 billion from cancelling interest as part of nearly 41 months of repayment pauses since March of 2020, and roughly $150 billion from a variety of more targeted actions such as discharging debt for those who attended closing schools and making it easier to cancel debt under existing loan forgiveness programs. The President’s newest debt cancellation scheme could cost an additional $250 to $750 billion based on our preliminary estimates.

I used to teach at a college, and while I think that higher education has an important role, it is not just a waste but positively harmful for most students. We should encourage businesses to drop the college requirement for most jobs because it isn't necessary or helpful. 

Journalist Anthony Cabassa - pinned up against the wall, equipment stolen. @UCLA , some nice “intellectuals” you got there. So young, yet so criminals. They want freedom of speech, but blocking the access for the press.
Interesting …
🎥 by @camhigby pic.twitter.com/CA6pUbOWmK

— miha schwartzenberg (@mihaschw) May 1, 2024

If people come out of K-12 schools unprepared to think, read, write properly, and do basic math, that has nothing to do with a need for college. It is another example of government failure. We spend trillions on public education, and it keeps getting worse. You know why--they are, for the most part, toxic, too. 

We see the results. Students who commit violent acts, harass Jewish students, protest in support of a terrorist organization, and demand that it all be catered. 

Reporter grills Columbia student after she demands the university help feed protestors occupying Hamilton Hall:

"It seems like you're saying, 'we want to be revolutionaries, we want to take over this building, now would you please bring us some food'." pic.twitter.com/vNczSAM4T1

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) April 30, 2024

When you have lost Chris Cuomo...

@ChrisCuomo ‘s reaction and answer - priceless ! 🎯
“You wanna break the law and then get …catering.”😂

🎥 @NewsNation pic.twitter.com/fuyGaIXCGr

— miha schwartzenberg (@mihaschw) May 1, 2024

Biden is subsidizing this, and I can't wait for the American public to shout "Hell no!" this November.