In writing my already seminal diatribe of a few days ago on student loans (KEEPING STUDENT LOAN RATES DOWN: PAYING FOR YOUR, AND YOUR NEIGHBOR’S, KID’S EDUCATION, 7/5/13 ), I listed a number of reasons why I am nearly reflexively opposed to borrowing to pay for college. However, as I thought about this issue over the Independence Day weekend, I came up with yet another reason to oppose the student loan cancer on our society, perhaps the most insidious aspect of our nation’s vast over dependence on borrowing to educate its children.
By making borrowing for college, and, as I put it on 7/5, making “signing up for ‘your loan’…as routine as signing up for classes,” we are teaching our students a lesson that is even more dangerous than some of the stuff their professors are forcing into their heads: we are teaching our kids that borrowing is the acceptable way to pay for things. There is no need to work and save for the things that you want; just go out and borrow the money, get whatever your heart desires, and worry about paying for it later…or find some way to stick someone else (taxpayers, creditors, etc.) with the bill.
Borrowing for whatever might strike our fancy is an acceptable way of conducting one’s financial affairs in a nation that has driven itself over the economic cliff due to its collective inability to delay gratification. But what is acceptable, especially in a society that has gone so far off the tracks as has ours, is not necessarily, indeed, rarely is, right.
No comments:
Post a Comment