The Biden Administration has approved $55.6 million dollars in debt relief for students who claimed that they were defrauded by three for-profit schools. These student loans were part of the $1.6 trillion of debt that gullible bipedal Americans have accrued for “education”. Be forewarned that I have zero sympathy for people who take out student loans and don’t want to pay them back.

Here is how USA Today reported the relief:

The Department of Education canceled an additional $55.6 million in student loan debt for 1,800 students who were victims of a for-profit college fraud, bringing the total amount of canceled student loan debt by the Biden administration to $1.5 billion.

And:

The latest loan cancellation is for students who attended Westwood College, Marinello Schools of Beauty and the Court Reporting Institute. This is the first time the department approved loan forgiveness to students who attended schools other than Corinthian Colleges, ITT Technical Institute and American Career Institute since 2017.

Now, $55.6 million is a crap ton of money. I was interested in the backstory for this boodle. I did an internet search for the Court Reporting Institute. I found an article at Student Defense, from 2019, about Christine Gold and the $63,000 in student loans that were forgiven for her:

The Court Reporting Institute (CRI) was a for-profit school that promised students it would prepare them for careers as court reporters. Many students filed complaints against CRI over the years. The school shut down in 2006 after the Washington State Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board determined it had engaged in unfair and deceptive business practices and pulled its license. Ms. Gold attended CRI from 2001 to 2005. Like many of her fellow classmates, she withdrew without a credential after realizing that the school had been misleading her and that she was not gaining valuable or marketable skills.

It took Christine four years and $63,000 in loans to figure out that she wasn’t getting anything for her money? Just for shits and giggles I checked the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Court Reporting. No degree is required. Some municipalities offer on the job training. The median salary for Court Reporters is $61,000. If you do choose to go to a community college for training, the programs cost about $27,000 and last two years. Caveat Emptor, Christine.

Government schools are busy teaching kids Critical Race Theory and scaring them about Climate Change. Parents are checked out, well up until this year. Kids are graduating from high school unable to read, write, add and subtract, or do due diligence (I laugh at “do due diligence” every time).

Speaking of due diligence, the Wall Street Journal had an article titled, “Graduates of Elite Master’s Programs Don’t Earn Enough to Pay Down Loans”. The opening paragraph:

Recent film program graduates of Columbia University who took out federal student loans had a median debt of $181,000.

Yet two years after earning their master’s degrees, half of the borrowers were making less than $30,000 a year.

The Columbia program offers the most extreme example of how elite universities in recent years have awarded thousands of master’s degrees that don’t provide graduates enough early career earnings to begin paying down their federal student loans, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Education Department data.

A little backstory here: I was offered the opportunity to study dance at Indiana University on a library scholarship. It was weird. The dance school was all out of dance scholarships, but I could get a Library Sciences scholarship and minor in dance. That idea didn’t rock my world, but I thought I might give it a shot. However, I went to the local library and pulled out the big fat Bureau of Labor Statistics book and looked up dancers’ salaries. Someone over the 13 years I studied ballet, tap, jazz, modern and other disciplines should have told me I would be poor. Not that that would have stopped me from dancing, but I would have considered other careers. I went to the University of Cincinnati and got a business degree. After I graduated and got a J-O-B, my employer (Procter & Gamble) paid for any courses I wanted to take. I waitressed in college and made good money. I graduated with no debt and could make my own way in life.

That’s called due diligence, folks. People should try it. It works.

More from the Journal article:

At New York University, graduates with a master’s degree in publishing borrowed a median $116,000 and had an annual median income of $42,000 two years after the program, the data on recent borrowers show. At Northwestern University, half of those who earned degrees in speech-language pathology borrowed $148,000 or more, and the graduates had a median income of $60,000 two years later. Graduates of the University of Southern California’s marriage and family counseling program borrowed a median $124,000 and half earned $50,000 or less over the same period.

I don’t see how Columbia University, NYU or Northwestern are any different than the for-profit schools that people say bilked them. But, in the end, it’s the buyer’s responsibility to do due diligence (giggle).

Last year, Tucker Carlson spoke to the founder of Praxis, Isaac Morehouse, about alternatives to college:

If you want to learn more about Praxis, you can read more here. The U.S. government has an apprenticeship finder site here. There are seven colleges that have tuition-free work programs, like College of the Ozarks and Berea College, which my paternal grandmother attended.

College is not for everyone. It you do decide to go to a University and take out student loans, please do due diligence (giggle). Make sure you can live and have a life and still pay back your loans.

I resent, with good reason, people who take out student loans and then whine and expect everyone else to pay them. Whether it’s at Columbia or some for-profit joint, your loans are your problem. Pay your own debt.

Featured Image: Mike Cohen/Flickr.com/cropped/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)