Higher education — because it is largely government-funded — has become an overpriced, failing proposition, full of left-leaning political cronies. And bloated colleges with tenured professors who seek to indoctrinate, rather than educate, diminish our country.
Higher education fraud is built on student loan debt. Since any 18-year-old who can fog a mirror can now get a Sallie Mae loan, our nation has more student loan debt than credit card debt ($1.2 trillion, with 7 million debtors in default). Parents’ basements are full of millennials with tons of debt, and employers in a weak job market are unwilling to hire knuckleheads. If free market economics’ tenets were applied to education, kids would not be tenants in their parents’ basements.
When you graduate from many colleges, it just means your check cleared. If you get into an Ivy League school these days, it generally means your parents — or affirmative action — got you in. Trump saw something missing in this racket of a government-funded education system: he wasn’t getting a cut. He tried to get into the business, doing a better job at it than most universities for a lower price. The students — including the lead plaintiff in the politically motivated case against his Trump University — gave him positive reviews.
Partisan prosecutors in NYC blast Trump University as a scam. Say what you will, but a degree from Trump U is worth more than a Gender Studies degree from Wellesley.
The media don’t tell you how the Clintons, smelling money, shook down the “higher education” system.
The Daily Caller — and a few other organizations still willing to practice journalism — offered a detailed report on how Bill Clinton was paid $16.5 million from a shell company that runs for-profit colleges. Hillary Clinton’s State Department funneled 55 million tax dollars to the Laureate Education Inc. founder’s non-profit in return. Aside from the obvious — Why is our State Department giving money to a college shell company “non-profit” that paid the Clintons millions? — where’s the media on this?
In 2015, Slick Willie abruptly resigned as “honorary chancellor” when the report came out. The con was up.
The Clinton scam was for a for-profit college, Laureate Education’s Walden University. According to Forbes, Walden was the biggest beneficiary of student loan borrowing in 2014, at $756 million. All of this is detailed in Peter Schweizer’s book “Clinton Cash.”
The game is easy. Like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae’s government-backed loans, which caused the great recession and the housing meltdown, easy federal money fuels the disaster. You just get regulators — government cronies — to approve your school. The feds then feed loan money to any stoner whom the college can talk into enrolling. There is no accountability as to your outcome. You keep the money, and the student and government — i.e., taxpayers — take the loan risk.
Laureate’s Walden schools have also been sued for dishonest practices. Trump’s “swing and a miss,” by a private sector businessman with his own money, had better intentions. Walden funneled money to Bill Clinton via the nefarious WJC LLC bank account so it would be hidden.
Laureate has been “ensnared in controversy all over the globe,” says Eric Owens, The Daily Caller’s education editor. The $16.5 million paid to Bill Clinton on the side was for him to legitimize the school and to get the State Department to fund it.
He got his money’s worth; the company has been valued at $3.8 billion. In a Senate investigation of Laureate, the Miami Herald noted that “more than half of Laureate’s online Walden University revenue went to marketing and profit.”
For most colleges, especially Laureate’s Walden University, the school mascot should be a virtual pigeon.
Ron Hart, a libertarian op-ed humorist and award-winning author, is a frequent guest on CNN. Contact him at Ron@RonaldHart.com or tweet@RonaldHart.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: HART: