It’s a bad day to be an ‘Indigenous Pottery And Ways Of Knowing’ major. Well, worse than usual.
The Department of Education (ED) announced April 21 that it would resume collections of defaulted federal student loans beginning May 5. The ED has not collected on defaulted loans for over five years, pausing collection in March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Biden administration never resumed recollection. Student debt currently amounts to a staggering $1.6 trillion, according to the ED.
“Fewer than four out of ten borrowers are in repayment,” says White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. “This is unstainable, unfair, and a huge liability for American taxpayers … why should Americans who didn’t go to college, or went to college and responsibly paid back their loans, pay for the student loans of other Americans?”
Almost 25% of the federal student loan portfolio could be in default in a few months, says the ED. “The government can and will collect defaulted federal student loan debt by withholding money from borrowers, tax refunds, federal pensions, and even their wages,” confirms Leavitt.
Why are so many people incapable or unwilling to pay back their loans? America’s paper of record nearly overwhelms one with answers.
“The reasons so many borrowers aren’t paying are complicated,” writes the New York Times. Most processes qualify as such, one suspects. The outlet admits a more robust explanation a few paragraphs later: “After such a long pause, many people are unable to incorporate a three-or four-figure monthly bill into their household budgets.”
It seems that people who take out loans and don’t repay them just aren’t good with money. Who woulda thunk?
Cue the waterworks.
Woman in Houston, Texas complains that her credit score just dropped 150 points and she now owes over $27,000 in student loans.
She says she shouldn’t be held responsible since she was 18 when she admittedly took the loan.
The excuses these freeloaders make are embarrassing. pic.twitter.com/ABBDWNCyNt
— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) April 23, 2025
College admissions should select for more conscientious individuals, given the psychological makeup of the stereotypical scholar. That the process doesn’t suggests the true nature of most “higher education”: diploma mills willing to take just about anyone’s money, if they’re so easily swindled.
There are at least one hundred colleges with an acceptance of 96% or higher as of 2023, according to U.S. News & World Report. Not every institution has such low walls. Harvard University maintains a selective admissions rate of just 3.5%, as of 2023-24. Twenty years ago, Harvard accepted 10.7% of applicants — a record low at the time.
What explains this stratification? There are two types of universities. One churns out diplomas. The other churns out “elites.” Both rely on credentialism.
A degree is a consumer good. It is more or less unrelated to an education, which one can obtain for considerably less cost with a library card and internet access. The universities know this — it’s why Stanford and Harvard feel comfortable posting entire lecture series for free on Youtube. Their primary purpose is accreditation. (RELATED: GOP Lawmakers Pitch Plans To Take On Ivy League Endowment Tax Breaks In ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ | The Daily Caller)
Accreditation becomes necessary when direct assessments of merit and competency are verboten. Universities like Princeton and Columbia are “test-optional,” allowing them to skirt pesky disparities between groups in standardized testing. At the federal level, “disparate impact” rules. An employment practice which produces disparities between a protected class and a non-protected class is illegal. This, regardless of the validity of the practice itself.
An escalating series of credentials thus becomes necessary to prove one’s competency. A master’s degree is the new bachelor’s degree is the new high school degree. For institutions captured by the left, this comes with the added bonus of ideological filtration. If you go about admitting smart and curious and creative kids into your college on that basis alone, some of them might disagree with you. Some of those dissenters might go on to be powerful and influential. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Universities Raked In Over $300,000,000 In Donations For DEI | The Daily Caller)
Even if one restricts the value proposition of a college degree to that of an investment towards a high-paying career, the universities are abysmal failures. The degree does not pay for itself, as clearly evidenced by the trillions in student loan debt.
At the undergraduate level, the universities are racing to prove themselves less than useless. They fail as trade schools, pumping out legions of mediocre alumni unable or unwilling to repay their debts. They fail as havens of rigorous academic work, pumping out legions of mediocre philosophers unable or unwilling to think. Their only service appears to be making money and indoctrinating young people into absurd and ruinous ideologies.
It’s high time the American people stop subsidizing failure. This means shifting the monetary burdens imposed by student loan debtors and the universities themselves away from taxpayers, and onto the responsible parties.
Follow Natalie Sandoval on X: @NatalieIrene03
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