09-06-2022, 04:08 PM
(09-06-2022, 02:42 PM)sbarrera Wrote: We were recently driving through central PA, which is mountainous and rural. Lost of signs supporting Doug Mastriano, the MAGA candidate for governor. Then we stopped for a visit at Bucknell University, a small liberal arts college in a little town called Lewisburg. Signs for Mastriano's opponent, Democrat Josh Shapiro, started showing up. But it was also evident how much more money was being invested in this town than in the surrounding countryside. I mean, it was really nice there, but once you left the University area, everything was run down and decaying. It made sense of the MAGA support visible in the countryside.A standing saying about the state of PA is that there’s Philadelphia on the east, Pittsburgh on the west, and Alabama in the middle.
All of this is just to get to my point, which is that inflation of higher education costs is responsible both for the wealth discrepancy which I noticed on this road trip, and the pile up of student debt, some of which is being "forgiven," or rather covered by taxpayers. It occurred to me that all we're doing with student loan forgiveness is helping to subsidize fancy Universities like Bucknell.
That being said, I support the plan because it helps the borrowers who have struggled to make their degrees pay off. But obviously it's just going to sustain the problem of higher education price inflation.