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Notes -
Supreme Court strikes down Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan:
The amusing thing here to me is that we got two major SCOTUS rulings in two days that are, on the face of it, not directly related to each other in any obvious way (besides the fact that they both deal with the university system). One could conceivably support one ruling and oppose the other. The types of legal arguments used in both cases are certainly different. And yet we all know that the degree of correlation among the two issues is very high. If you support one of the rulings, you're very likely to support the other, and vice versa.
The question for the floor is: why the high degree of correlation? Is there an underlying principle at work here that explains both positions (opposition to AA plus opposition to debt relief) that doesn't just reduce to bare economic or racial interest? The group identity angle is obvious. AA tends to benefit blacks and Hispanics at the expense of whites and Asians. Student debt relief benefits the poorer half of the social ladder at the expense of the richer half of the social ladder. Whites and Asians tend to be richer than blacks and Hispanics. So, given a choice of "do you want a better chance of your kids getting into college, and do you also not want your tax dollars going to people who couldn't pay off their student loans", people would understandably answer "yes" to both - assuming you’re in the appropriate group and that is indeed the bargain that’s being offered to you. But perhaps that's uncharitable. Which is why I'm asking for alternative models.
Sure - enthusiasm for merit, markets, and personal responsibility. I think it's entirely consistent to think that university admissions should be governed primarily by actual merit without respect to racial constituency or other patronage, while also thinking that people should pay for the debts they incurred. To the extent that the debts are unmanageable, that seems like a problem caused by policies that are (again) about patronage for universities, funneling government subsidies and questionable loans into them. My modest proposal is that private universities should be free to admit who they want, but should no longer benefit from any government subsidies and be required to backstop student loans as the actual guarantor. My wager is that any concerns with program quality and admissions would sort themselves out in short order.
Perhaps even more consistently, I just actually think that's the law. The 14th Amendment and CRA seem pretty clear and explicit about not allowing government racial preferences outside of a few narrow areas subject to strict scrutiny. Likewise, I don't buy the claim that declaring an "emergency" allows the executive branch to do literally anything it likes with student loans.
On the other hand if college is based on merit it shouldn't be expensive. Pay to play isn't a great way to select the best. Colleges could very will be more like monasteries where people go to live a simple life in order to focus on higher pursuits. Certain degrees may require expensive equipment, but most degrees should be low cost. A simple dorm to live in, some food and access to great intellectuals could be provided for far less than 50k per year. If anything, a spartan lifestyle would be more in tune with the ideals of a college.
College isn't expensive for people of merit with low incomes. Here, check out Harvard's financial aid calculator. For a quick example, I punched in a household income of $75K with $200K in savings/investments, which should line up with a typical American household decently. The total cost for tuition and room and board is $83K per year... but Harvard covers $80K of it! The student is only on the hook for $3500 per year and they can even cover that with on campus term-work. That's a pretty damned good deal!
Lots of state universities offer scholarships for top percentiles from all in-state high schools in order to improve their diversity and provide opportunity for kids that aren't coming from the best backgrounds. Despite my aversion to the naked racial preferences exercised in some admissions offices, I actually think this kind of program is great, as it gathers up the best from each area, affording a good chance in life to kids from ghettos and farms. If you wind up at UT-Austin after coming out of a rough neighborhood in Houston or Nowheresville, West Texas, that's a pretty good way to go.
So, yeah, I agree, but we actually already do that.
Texas also has a program to allow community college students to finish in demand majors at commuter schools at community college prices, iirc. I’ve spoken to people who’ve done it for nursing and my sister applied but didn’t get in for teaching. Both had substantial strings attached(my sister would have had to agree to teach at a ghetto school for 3 years, and those nurses had to work at a rural hospital for a certain period of time) and difficult admissions requirements.
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