Vampires, Zombies And ‘Hooking Up’: 37 Examples Of Real College Courses That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe

You just can’t make this stuff up.  All over America we push our young people to get good grades so that they can get “a college education”, but then once they get through college many of our young people are completely unequipped to deal with the real world.  Personally, I spent eight years at public universities, and I can tell you that the quality of education that our college students are receiving is a complete joke.  Especially on the undergraduate level, almost all testing consists of either true/false, multiple choice or fill in the blank questions.  Students learn very few useful skills at our “institutions of higher learning”, and many of them leave school barely even able to function in society.

I am about to share with you a list of 37 of the most ridiculous courses that are currently being offered at major U.S. colleges and universities today.  This information comes from a brand new report that was just put out by Young America’s Foundation, and it is tempting to chuckle as you read through what they have compiled, but the truth is that what is happening to our system of higher learning is not a laughing matter.  The following is a short excerpt from the report…

As tuition rates increase and students face increasing levels of college-related debt, the value and quality of education plummets. Rather than churning out the next generation of American leaders, so-called “premiere” institutions graduate class after class of adults who are unable to tolerate opposing viewpoints.

Many of the courses listed in the following pages are comical in their titles and descriptions, but the situation unfolding on America’s campuses is hardly a laughing matter. Beyond the inane topics, these classes advance a liberal agenda, malign conservatives, and shut out ideological diversity.

Since 1995, Young America’s Foundation has released “Comedy and Tragedy” to document the intellectual abuse and flat-out indoctrination happening by way of the appalling curriculum at our country’s most (so-called) prestigious institutions of higher education.

For a long time I have been describing our colleges and universities as “indoctrination centers”, and most parents have absolutely no idea what is really going on at our “institutions of higher education”.  The following are 37 examples of real college courses that are almost too crazy to believe…

#1 MCL 135: Vampires: Evolution of a Sexy Monster (University of Kentucky)

#2 HIST 336: Saints, Witches, and Madwomen (University of Nebraska)

#3 WOMGEN 1225: Leaning In, Hooking Up (Harvard University)

#4 SOAN 261: Campus Sex in the Digital Age (Washington & Lee University)

#5 GSWS 434: The Politics of Ugly (University of Pennsylvania)

#6 AMS 398: FAT: The F-Word and the Public Body (Princeton University)

#7 GWS 462: Hip Hop Feminism (University of Illinois)

#8 GWS 255: Queer Lives, Queer Politics (University of Illinois)

#9 SOC 388: Marriage in the Age of Trump (Davidson College)

#10 HISTORY 330-0: Medieval Sexuality (Northwestern University)

#11 AI 318: Zombies: Modern Myths, Race, and Capitalism (DePaul University)

#12 SOCI 332: Alternative Genders (Texas A&M University)

#13 AMCULT 103: Drag in America (University of Michigan)

#14 AMCULT 334: Race, Gender, Sexuality and U.S. Culture in Video Games (University of Michigan)

#15 AMCULT 411: Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music (University of Michigan)

#16 WGS 255: Deconstructing the Diva (DePaul University)

#17 GLBT 3404: Transnational Sexualities (University of Minnesota)

#18 GSFS 0208: Unruly Bodies: Black Womanhood in Popular Culture(Middlebury College)

#19 MC 2002: Media, Sport and Culture: Amplifying the Sporting-Ism(Louisiana State University)

#20 THEO 025: The Bible and Horror (Georgetown University)

#21 SOAS 3500: Queerness in South Asian Literature and Cinema(University of Iowa)

#22 AADS 2204: Black Women and the Politics of Blackness and Beauty (Vanderbilt University)

#23 AFR 334: Radical Theories of Political Struggle: Anti-Black Racism and the Obama Administration (Williams College)

#24 COLT 0510F: Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, The Men and the Myths (Brown University)

#25 HIST 379: Queering Colonialism (Washington & Lee University)

#26 AMST 274: Rainbow Cowboys (and Girls): Gender, Race, Class, and Sexuality in Westerns (Wellesley College)

#27 AFA 4430: Black Lives Matter (University of Florida)

#28 RELI GU 4355: The African American Prophetic Political Tradition from David Walker to Barack Obama (Columbia University)

#29 RELG 032: Queering God: Feminist and Queer Theology(Swarthmore College)

#30 RELG 033: Queering the Bible (Swarthmore College)

#31 ENVS 042: Ecofeminism (Swarthmore College)

#32 FRSEMR 61D: Trying Socrates in the Age of Trump (Harvard University)

#33 GSWS 2219: Deconstructing Masculinities (Bowdoin College)

#34 GSFS 0325: American Misogyny (Middlebury College)

#35 BLSTU 3850: Gender, Hip Hop, and the Politics of Representation(University of Missouri)

#36 AAS 301: Black to the Future: Science, Fiction, and Society(Princeton University)

#37 SOC 105: Race, Religion, & Donald Trump (Davidson College)

As a bonus, let me share with you 20 more crazy college courses that have been previously offered at colleges and universities around the nation.

This list comes from one of my previous articles, and even though most of these courses are no longer being offered, they still serve as examples of how pathetic our system of “higher education” has truly become in recent years…

1. “What If Harry Potter Is Real?” (Appalachian State University) – This course will engage students with questions about the very nature of history. Who decides what history is? Who decides how it is used or mis-used? How does this use or misuse affect us? How can the historical imagination inform literature and fantasy? How can fantasy reshape how we look at history? The Harry Potter novels and films are fertile ground for exploring all of these deeper questions. By looking at the actual geography of the novels, real and imagined historical events portrayed in the novels, the reactions of scholars in all the social sciences to the novels, and the world-wide frenzy inspired by them, students will examine issues of race, class, gender, time, place, the uses of space and movement, the role of multiculturalism in history as well as how to read a novel and how to read scholarly essays to get the most out of them.

2. “God, Sex, Chocolate: Desire and the Spiritual Path” (UC San Diego) – Who shapes our desire? Who suffers for it? Do we control our desire or does desire control us? When we yield to desire, do we become more fully ourselves or must we deny it to find an authentic identity beneath? How have religious & philosophical approaches dealt with the problem of desire?

3. “GaGa for Gaga: Sex, Gender, and Identity” (The University Of Virginia) – In Graduate Arts & Sciences student Christa Romanosky’s ongoing ENWR 1510 class, “GaGa for Gaga: Sex, Gender, and Identity,” students analyze how the musician pushes social boundaries with her work. For this introductory course to argumentative essay writing, Romanosky chose the Lady Gaga theme to establish an engaging framework for critical analysis.

4. “Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame” (The University Of South Carolina) – Lady Gaga may not have much class but now there is a class on her. The University of South Carolina is offering a class called Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame.  Mathieu Deflem, the professor teaching the course describes it as aiming to “unravel some of the sociologically relevant dimensions of the fame of Lady Gaga with respect to her music, videos, fashion, and other artistic endeavours.”

5. “Philosophy And Star Trek” (Georgetown) – Star Trek is very philosophical. What better way, then, to learn philosophy, than to watch Star Trek, read philosophy, and hash it all out in class? That’s the plan. This course is basically an introduction to certain topics in metaphysics and epistemology philosophy, centered around major philosophical questions that come up again and again in Star Trek. In conjunction with watching Star Trek, we will read excerpts from the writings of great philosophers, extract key concepts and arguments and then analyze those arguments.

6. “Invented Languages: Klingon and Beyond” (The University Of Texas) – Why would anyone want to learn Klingon?

7. “The Science Of Superheroes” (UC Irvine) – Have you ever wondered if Superman could really bend steel bars? Would a “gamma ray” accident turn you into the Hulk? What is a “spidey-sense”? And just who did think of all these superheroes and their powers? In this seminar, we discuss the science (or lack of science) behind many of the most famous superheroes. Even more amazing, we will discuss what kind of superheroes might be imagined using our current scientific understanding.

8. “Learning From YouTube” (Pitzer College) – About 35 students meet in a classroom but work mostly online, where they view YouTube content and post their comments.  Class lessons also are posted and students are encouraged to post videos. One class member, for instance, posted a 1:36-minute video of himself juggling.

9. “Arguing with Judge Judy” (UC Berkeley) – TV “Judge” shows have become extremely popular in the last 3-5 years. A fascinating aspect of these shows from a rhetorical point of view is the number of arguments made by the litigants that are utterly illogical, or perversions of standard logic, and yet are used over and over again. For example, when asked “Did you hit the plaintiff?” respondents often say, “If I woulda hit him, he’d be dead!” This reply avoids answering “yes” or “no” by presenting a perverted form of the logical strategy called “a fortiori” argument [“from the stronger”] in Latin. The seminar will be concerned with identifying such apparently popular logical fallacies on “Judge Judy” and “The People’s Court” and discussing why such strategies are so widespread. It is NOT a course about law or “legal reasoning.” Students who are interested in logic, argument, TV, and American popular culture will probably be interested in this course. I emphasize that it is NOT about the application of law or the operations of the court system in general.

10. “Elvis As Anthology” (The University Of Iowa) – The class, “Elvis as Anthology,” focuses on Presley’s relationship to African American history, social change, and aesthetics. It focuses not just on Elvis, but on other artists who inspired him and whom he inspired.

11. “The Feminist Critique Of Christianity” (The University Of Pennsylvania) – An overview of the past decades of feminist scholarship about Christian and post-Christian historians and theologians who offer a feminist perspective on traditional Christian theology and practice. This course is a critical overview of this material, presented with a summary of Christian biblical studies, history and theology, and with a special interest in constructive attempts at creating a spiritual tradition with women’s experience at the center.

12. “Zombies In Popular Media” (Columbia College) – This course explores the history, significance, and representation of the zombie as a figure in horror and fantasy texts. Instruction follows an intense schedule, using critical theory and source media (literature, comics, and films) to spur discussion and exploration of the figure’s many incarnations. Daily assignments focus on reflection and commentary, while final projects foster thoughtful connections between student disciplines and the figure of the zombie.

13. “Far Side Entomology” (Oregon State) – For the last 20 years, a scientist at Oregon State University has used Gary Larson’s cartoons as a teaching tool. The result has been a generation of students learning — and laughing — about insects.

14. “Interrogating Gender: Centuries of Dramatic Cross-Dressing” (Swarthmore) – Do clothes make the man? Or the woman? Do men make better women? Or women better men? Is gender a costume we put on and take off? Are we really all always in drag? Does gender-bending lead to transcendence or chaos? These questions and their ramifications for liminalities of race, nationality and sexuality will be our focus in a course that examines dramatic works from The Bacchae to M. Butterfly.

15. “Oh, Look, a Chicken!” Embracing Distraction as a Way of Knowing (Belmont University) – Students must write papers using their personal research on the five senses. Entsminger reads aloud illustrated books The Simple People and Toby’s Toe to teach lessons about what to value by being alive. Students listen to music while doodling in class. Another project requires students to put themselves in situations where they will be distracted and write a reflection tracking how they got back to their original intent.

16. “The Textual Appeal of Tupac Shakur” (University of Washington) – The UW is not the first college with a class dedicated to Shakur — classes on the rapper have been offered at the University of California Berkeley and Harvard — but it is the first to relate Shakur’s work to literature.

17. “Cyberporn And Society” (State University of New York at Buffalo) – Undergraduates taking Cyberporn and Society at the State University of New York at Buffalo survey Internet porn sites.

18. “Sport For The Spectator” (The Ohio State University) – Develop an appreciation of sport as a spectacle, social event, recreational pursuit, business, and entertainment. Develop the ability to identify issues that affect the sport and spectator behavior.

19. “Getting Dressed” (Princeton) – Jenna Weissman Joselit looks over the roomful of freshmen in front of her and asks them to perform a warm-up exercise: Chart the major moments of your lives through clothes. “If you pop open your closet, can you recall your lives?” she posits on the first day of the freshman seminar “Getting Dressed.”

20. “How To Watch Television” (Montclair) – This course, open to both broadcasting majors and non-majors, is about analyzing television in the ways and to the extent to which it needs to be understood by its audience. The aim is for students to critically evaluate the role and impact of television in their lives as well as in the life of the culture. The means to achieve this aim is an approach that combines media theory and criticism with media education.

I have to admit that “Oh, Look, a Chicken!” is my all-time favorite.  I wish that had been offered at my university when I was an undergraduate.

But seriously – what in the world has happened to our system of education?

Our society is rotting and decaying in so many ways, and our colleges and universities are prime examples.  If we don’t get our act together, it is hard to see how our country is going to have any sort of a positive future.

The post Vampires, Zombies And ‘Hooking Up’: 37 Examples Of Real College Courses That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

It Takes Most Students Twice As Long As They Hoped To Pay Off Their Student Loans

About 70% of college students – equal to about 44 million Americans - owe a collective $1.4 trillion in student debt. And while the standard repayment plan for federal loans suggests that they should take no more than 10 years to pay back, in reality, it regularly takes twice that long.

“Research from Citizens Financial Group suggests that 60 percent of student debt borrowers expect to pay off their loans in their 40s. Data collected at the state level supports these findings. A study from the OneWisconsin Institute finds that it takes graduates of Wisconsin universities 19.7 years to pay off a bachelor"s degree and 23 years to pay off a graduate degree.”

Meanwhile, the Fed reports that there are 6.8 million student loan borrowers between the ages of 40 and 49 and that together, these graduates hold a collective $229.6 billion in debt. That means that Americans in their 40s with student loan debt each have an average balance of $33,765, according to CNBC.

Many predict that the long-lasting effects of student debt threaten US housing prices as fewer millennials will be able to afford a home, while also delaying retirement.

“The Federal Reserve Board of Washington, D.C. found that an increase in student debt has led to a decrease in home ownership, and a study from NerdWallet predicts that students who graduated from college in 2015 will have to delay retirement until the age of 75, in part because of the increasing burden of student debt.”

CNBC points out that students should plan out how long it will take for them to pay off their loans, but this is easier said than done: Today"s graduates face an uncertain job market, which is forcing more young Americans – members of the so-called millennial generation – to live with their parents for want of work.

Perhaps, more students should consider trade schools, which are cheaper and can often lead to steady career-track work. And as we reported last week, many manufacturing companies are recruiting heavily for well-paying management jobs that don’t require a college degree.

Collecting $1 Of Student Debt Costs American Taxpayers $38

Your government at work with your tax dollars.

Loan billions to brain dead teenagers so they can pretend to get smart in college. When they fail miserably due to the fact after twelve years of public school government indoctrination they can’t read, write or add, the government pays slimy collection agencies to get these unemployed dolts to pay up.

Not only has $600 billion of your tax dollars been pissed down the drain on loans to dumbasses, you now get to spend billions trying to collect the billions that will never be collected.

Clusterfuck is too kind of a word to use for this program Obama initiated to pump money into the economy and fake the true unemployment rate.

I bet you can’t wait until the government has full control of your healthcare.

While Congress originally approved the IDR plans in the 1990s and 2000s, Obama used executive actions, starting in 2010, to extend the most-generous terms to millions of borrowers which is precisely when loan volumes under the program started to skyrocket.

Congrats, taxpayers...you"ll soon have the privilege of repaying $137 billion worth of debt spent by entitled millennials on binge-drinking trips Cancun and drugs...life, after all, is just a little bit better when we spread the wealth around...

As Bloomberg"s Shahien Nasiripour reports, the federal government has, in recent years, paid debt collectors close to $1 billion annually to help distressed borrowers climb out of default and scrounge up regular monthly payments. New government figures suggest much of that money may have been wasted.

Nearly half of defaulted student-loan borrowers who worked with debt collectors to return to good standing on their loans defaulted again within three years, according to an analysis by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. For their work, debt collectors receive up to $1,710 in payment from the U.S. Department of Education each time a borrower makes good on soured debt through a process known as rehabilitation. They keep those funds even if borrowers subsequently default again, contracts show. The department has earmarked more than $4.2 billion for payments to its debt collectors since the start of the 2013 fiscal year, federal spending data show.

The findings, gleaned from the bureau’s analysis of about 600,000 borrower accounts, come as the Trump administration weighs a shakeup of the government’s student loan program. For years, defaults have mounted despite the improving U.S. economy and the money invested in collecting education debt. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos pledged earlier this year to “do a better job” than the Obama administration at managing the department’s loan contractors. Last week, DeVos suggested that the feds should “start afresh.”

Officials at the CFPB say the government should reexamine whether the loan program, and the lucrative contracts it bestows on private firms, is working for the millions of Americans struggling to repay their taxpayer-backed student debt.

“When student loan companies know that nearly half of their highest-risk customers will quickly fail, it’s time to fix the broken system that makes this possible,” said Seth Frotman, the consumer bureau’s top student-loan official.

Debt collectors aggressively angle for new business from the Education Department because the contracts are among the most lucrative in the industry. The government values the latest round at $2.8 billion.

The government often pays debt collectors nearly 40 times what they bring in, federal records show. Take the government’s rehabilitation program, which targets people who have defaulted on their debt—meaning they missed nine months of payments. If a borrower subsequently makes nine on-time monthly payments of as little as $5 during a 10-month period, their loans are returned to good standing and the default is supposed to be wiped from their credit reports. But the CFPB found that more than 40 percent of these borrowers defaulted again within three years.

Even when borrowers don’t default, debt collection efforts often yield little. Close to 80 percent of borrowers who rehabilitate their debt make the minimum $5 monthly payment, according to a 2015 estimate by the National Council of Higher Education Resources, a lobbying group that represents student debt collectors and servicers. That means the Education Department is paying its debt collectors up to $1,710 per borrower to collect around $45, regardless of whether the borrower continues to make her payments.

The arrangement means that debt collectors “have no ‘skin in the game,’” Frotman wrote in an October report.

The consumer bureau estimates that the vast majority of borrowers who rehabilitate their defaulted debt with $5 monthly payments are eligible for $0 payments after they exit default, under an income-based repayment plan. But about 90 percent of debtors who rehabilitated their debt failed to enroll in these programs, according to the CFPB’s analysis. All that’s needed to enroll is some paperwork that enables contracted loan servicers to confirm borrowers’ annual earnings, but experts inside and outside the government say they don’t know why this step isn’t completed, and distressed borrowers are left stuck in debt collectors’ sights. The Education Department, which rewards its loan servicers with more business if the loans they service remain in good standing, excludes rehabilitated loans when grading its servicers’ performance.

The consumer bureau says slipshod loan servicing—the business of counseling borrowers on their options and sending them monthly bills—is largely to blame. NCHER President James Bergeron said the feds need to simplify the various repayment plans they offer and “do a better job” helping previously defaulted borrowers get into repayment plans. Calls and emails to the Education Department weren’t returned.

“I don’t see how anyone wins from this system other than the collection industry,” said Adam S. Minsky, a Boston-based lawyer who represents student debtors.

Bill Introduced Allowing Cancellation Of Over $1 Trillion In Student Debt Through Bankruptcy

Courtesy of Sov Man"s Simon Black, here are several of the most bizarre legal anecdotes to take place in the US and around the globe over the past week, staring with a bill currently making its way through Congress, which is seeking to wipe out over $1 trillion in student loans.

* * *

A Convenient Way to Cancel a Trillion Dollars of Debt

What happened:

Bankruptcy is like the ultimate get out of jail free card. You just get to wipe the slate clean, and even though your credit score and ability to borrow might suffer, you are free from all your previous obligations. But student loans have long been exempted from being erased by bankruptcy.

If this bill passes Congress however, hundreds of billions of currently delinquent student loans, potentially as much as $1.4 trillion worth of student loan debt...

.... would be eligible to be wiped out by declaring bankruptcy.

As the number of those defaulting on their student loans grows, this provision could be widely used by those seeking to escape their college debt.

What this means:

The government has helped raise the costs of college and basically scam people into accepting their loans, so it is easy to be sympathetic towards those with student loans. But still, it is messed up to allow people to discharge debts they agreed to pay.

There might be a little piece in most of us that doesn’t mind seeing what we consider a predatory lender get screwed and be left with the bill.

But apart from the overall immorality of failing to pay your debts, since the government owns most of the student loans, it would basically be the taxpayers getting screwed over once again. What a surprise.

Basically if massive amounts of debt were erased, it would be another bubble bursting, which would send the U.S. into a fresh round of economic instability.

The economy would spiral downward in relation to how many people took advantage of their get out of jail free card.

* * *

Criminal Consequences for Filming on Private Property?

What happened:

If you sneak beer into a football stadium, you have explicitly broken a stadium rule. You might expect to be kicked off their private property for this transgression. But what if instead you got a year in prison?

That’s what an Idaho “Ag Gag” law did; made it illegal to take photographs or videos on private property without permission from the owner. It also made it illegal to gain access to private property through misrepresentation, for instance an undercover reporter seeking a job. Violation of the law was punishable by a year in prison and/ or $5,000 fine.

The law was drafted and sponsored by The Idaho Dairymen"s Association after a video came out showing horrible abuse of cows at a dairy in Hansen Idaho. The video was taken by an employee of Mercy for Animals conducting an undercover investigation.

The bill quickly passed the legislature and was signed by the governor, but was then struck down on the grounds that it violated free speech, and equal protection for employees who may be ensnared attempting to document unsafe working conditions.

The state appealed, and now the the courts will decide whether or not to reinstate the law.

What this means:

Private property owners surely have the right to kick someone off their land or seek civil damages for having their rules broken. But it is going entirely too far when the government is used as a henchman to enforce rules on private property that prohibit actions which are otherwise legal.

Rarely is a law passed in such an obvious effort to stifle the public’s ability to see what is happening behind the scenes in food production.

The government claims it regulates these industries, yet private organizations were the ones who brought the abuse of animals to light. But the government was more interested in supporting the dairy lobby than doing their job.

So how does the government solve the issue of the public taking regulation into their own hands? Make it illegal!

It is important to respect private property, but the government has no business enforcing criminal code for the violation of private rules.

If you don’t want people to film your property, then don’t allow them onto it in the first place. Or maybe just behave in a way that you aren’t afraid of the public seeing.

* * *

Can’t Find an Investor? Force the Taxpayers to Fund Your Startup!

What happened:

Nothing screams success-in-the-making like failing to fund your startup in the private sector, and having to beg the government for money. This is especially true as America is at the peak of the startup bubble, on the heels of easy money pouring countless millions into less than spectacular business ideas.

What does the government do when it sees a good bubble? Blow it bigger! How could something so enchanting ever burst?

The feds want to get in on startups, and start investing in entrepreneurs. After all, they are the ones who created the artificially low interest rates on lending by printing all this money ever since their last major financial bubble popped.

The government’s latest shenanigans is a bill in Congress that would spend tax dollars on startups and entrepreneurship, pouring grant money into “resources and services” for the “formation and early growth stages” of a company.

For the taxpayers, you will get all the exciting risk of investing, without any possible returns!

What this means:

As if there wasn’t enough money pouring into silly businesses without any real potential. At least those in the private sector lose their own money when they invest in stupid businesses, but now the taxpayers could be robbed to do the same. But if a startup can’t get funding in the private sector, it is probably for a good reason.

For the politicians, they can say that they created jobs… even if the jobs only last six months. That’s the thing about government; they highlight the initial benefits of their actions, and somehow forget to report back later on the lack of sustainability or unintended consequences of these genius ideas.

And even if the government could pick winning companies, that literally amounts to stealing your money and handing it out to private businesses.

But they can’t, and so the money they take from the taxpayers will more likely be misappropriated into the next Pets.com style failure.

* * *

You Are Liable For Your Employees’ Actions in Australia

What happened:

It would make sense if McDonalds was responsible for making sure their employees don’t sell drugs on their premises. But what if the fast food chain had to make sure their employees weren’t dealing drugs once they clocked out, and left McDonald"s property? That would be a pretty huge liability for McDonald"s, which would basically have to hire a full on internal investigations police force to make sure they weren’t blamed when one of their employees got caught pushing drugs.

Sounds ridiculous, yet many governments shift their policing responsibility to companies, and simply threaten them with fines if the business does not perform the government’s investigatory job for them.

Australia is doing just that, putting the burden of policing on companies, with new proposals to expand laws against foreign bribery in business. Under the proposals, companies would be responsible for preventing their employees from bribing foreign governments, even if the employee is not acting in official capacity, and even if there was no specific gain for the company.

So this means Australian companies will need to somehow prevent employees not only from acting illegally on behalf of the company, but also from conducting any illegal activity in their own personal lives that involves foreign governments.

What this means:

Basically this is a huge disincentive to doing business overseas if you own an Australian company. The new proposals create numerous costly liabilities and add substantial risk to international operations.

Under the proposals the company who employs the person accused of bribing a foreign official would be automatically held accountable. The rules specifically say that the employee does not have to be acting on behalf of the company, and could be ensnared for bribing for the sake of personal gain.

The safest bet would be for Australian companies to simply not operate internationally.  Of course that seems like suicide in a modern global market.

Perhaps the proposed regulations are Australia’s way of disincentivizing foreign trade and promoting nationalism. But they risk crippling their worldwide competitiveness the more they burden Australian companies with doing the government’s policing duties.

Visualizing The Stunning Truth About How Students Are Spending Loan Cash

Over the last 15 years the starting salary for recent college grads has declined about $4000. Unfortunately, as ValueWalk.com details, the amount of student loan debt most students are graduating with has skyrocketed. You can now expect to graduate into a worse job market and with more debt than just a decade ago, which is leading to a serious financial crisis- the average debt load upon graduation is $37,000, and many people can’t even make their minimum payments.

Nearly 60% of student borrowers have no idea when their student loans will be paid off. Over half of borrowers have no idea what their monthly payments will be when they graduate. When you combine these facts with declining wages and rising housing rates, many people will find they just can’t make ends meet.

There are a few things students can do before graduation to ensure they aren’t set up for failure. Find out what your total costs will be and only take out the amount you need- financing a pizza every Friday night for four years can easily turn an expense of $1800 into $2291 when you have to pay interest over time. Try to seek out alternative ways to cover at least a portion of your expenses- a work-study program or part-time job can be a big help!

Student loans can never be bankrupted, so it’s important to pay them off as quickly as possible. Make payments while you are still in school on order to minimize your debt load upon graduation, and once you graduate try to make additional principal payments whenever possible to help accelerate your payoff schedule. Stay on top of payments and set up automatic payments if necessary so you never miss a payment- penalties can keep you on the hook much longer than you need to be. Learn more about lightening the student loan burden from this infographic!

America’s Student Debt Problem Is Much Bigger Than Anybody Realized

Submitted by Shaun Bradley via TheAntiMedia.org,

The Department of Education recently released a memo admitting that repayment rates on student loans have been grossly exaggerated. Data from 99.8% of schools across the country has been manipulated to cover up growing problems with the $1.3 trillion in outstanding student loans. New calculations show that more than half of all borrowers from 1,000 different institutions have defaulted on or not paid back a single dollar of their loans over the last seven years.

This comes in stark contrast to previous claims and should call into question any statistics provided by government agencies. The American people haven’t fully grasped the long-term implications of loaning a trillion dollars to young people who have no credit or assets.

Increases in tuition seen over the past two decades have become a point of controversy and angst for those who don’t fully understand the contributing factors. Between 1995 and 2015, the average cost of a public, four-year university skyrocketed by well over 200%. Although federal student aid programs are often championed as a necessity, they have been instrumental in making higher education unaffordable. The opportunity to pay for college by working a part-time job evaporated as soon as huge sums of money were handed out to anyone with a pulse. Since students no longer pay their tuition upfront, colleges are able to raise prices in perpetuity, knowing the government will step in and make credit easier and easier to obtain. As an added bonus, outstanding student loans account for 45% of the government’s financial assets.

Subsidizing the lives of an entire generation has turned personal growth and advancement into a choice instead of a necessity. After all, why take risks or work your way up from the bottom when with just a signature, the life you’ve always wanted could be laid at your feet? It’s not hard to figure out why so many people are tempted to take advantage of the instant gratification that comes from student loans, but like everything else in life, they have a price. The same safety net that delays the anxiety of the future also ensures that monthly payments will be owed for decades to come. Procrastinating when faced with pivotal life decisions is an instinct that used to be overcome as a teenager, but today it is worn like a badge of honor well into adulthood.

The policies of intervention haven’t stopped at federal aid, and loan forgiveness is now being offered to those willing to work in the public sector or at a non-profit for ten years. This perverse incentive only serves to drive those desperately in debt further towards government dependence. Productive jobs are created when the needs of others are met in the free market, not by joining the ranks of the state for self-preservation.

The idea that success comes exclusively through attending a university has created a stigma against some of the most valuable occupations. The lack of real skill sets has lead to a shortage of welders, electricians, carpenters, and other trade workers. Instead of learning through experience with apprenticeships, many students have embraced four years of sleeping in, drinking heavily, and getting an increasingly useless degree. While there are many fields that require specialized training, the surge in popularity of degrees like sociology, anthropology, and communications clearly illustrate a disconnect between the needs of the economy and the skills of the incoming workforce.

The normalization of this system has blinded individuals to their own potential. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs and thinkers are those who have bypassed traditional education. Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, and hundreds of other innovators achieved greatness by breaking from predictable paths to knowledge. Instead, passion and experience were the foundations that gave them the confidence needed to make groundbreaking strides. What it means to learn and be educated is changing rapidly as technology develops, and it will eventually force the State to adapt with it.

Albert Einstein was able to spot the innate flaws in the education system even back in 1936, but it’s doubtful he could have fathomed how far things would go:

“I want to oppose the idea that the school has to teach directly that special knowledge and those accomplishments which one has to use later directly in life. The demands of life are much too manifold to let such a specialized training in school appear possible…The development of general ability for independent thinking and judgment should always be placed foremost.”

Those who do achieve their degrees often do so without developing important skills like critical thinking and individual discernment. The scariest part about this revelation is that almost 90% of outstanding private loans are co-signed by parents, making this an intergenerational problem. As the instability of pension funds, social security, and economic conditions continue, any additional burdens passed onto the baby boomers could have far-reaching ramifications. The vast distortions in information that this report exposes should motivate everyone to become an independent fact checker. The only way to reform this broken system is to shift the pursuit of knowledge towards the direction of each individual’s passion instead of creating more cogs for the machine.

America’s Problem with Student Loans Is Much Bigger Than Anybody Realized

February 1, 2017   |   Shaun Bradley

(ANTIMEDIA Op-Ed) The Department of Education recently released a memo admitting that repayment rates on student loans have been grossly exaggerated. Data from 99.8% of schools across the country has been manipulated to cover up growing problems with the $1.3 trillion in outstanding student loans. New calculations show that more than half of all borrowers from 1,000 different institutions have defaulted on or not paid back a single dollar of their loans over the last seven years.

This comes in stark contrast to previous claims and should call into question any statistics provided by government agencies. The American people haven’t fully grasped the long-term implications of loaning a trillion dollars to young people who have no credit or assets.

Increases in tuition seen over the past two decades have become a point of controversy and angst for those who don’t fully understand the contributing factors. Between 1995 and 2015, the average cost of a public, four-year university skyrocketed by well over 200%. Although federal student aid programs are often championed as a necessity, they have been instrumental in making higher education unaffordable. The opportunity to pay for college by working a part-time job evaporated as soon as huge sums of money were handed out to anyone with a pulse. Since students no longer pay their tuition upfront, colleges are able to raise prices in perpetuity, knowing the government will step in and make credit easier and easier to obtain. As an added bonus, outstanding student loans account for 45% of the government’s financial assets.

Subsidizing the lives of an entire generation has turned personal growth and advancement into a choice instead of a necessity. After all, why take risks or work your way up from the bottom when with just a signature, the life you’ve always wanted could be laid at your feet? It’s not hard to figure out why so many people are tempted to take advantage of the instant gratification that comes from student loans, but like everything else in life, they have a price. The same safety net that delays the anxiety of the future also ensures that monthly payments will be owed for decades to come. Procrastinating when faced with pivotal life decisions is an instinct that used to be overcome as a teenager, but today it is worn like a badge of honor well into adulthood.

The policies of intervention haven’t stopped at federal aid, and loan forgiveness is now being offered to those willing to work in the public sector or at a non-profit for ten years. This perverse incentive only serves to drive those desperately in debt further towards government dependence. Productive jobs are created when the needs of others are met in the free market, not by joining the ranks of the state for self-preservation.

The idea that success comes exclusively through attending a university has created a stigma against some of the most valuable occupations. The lack of real skill sets has lead to a shortage of welders, electricians, carpenters, and other trade workers. Instead of learning through experience with apprenticeships, many students have embraced four years of sleeping in, drinking heavily, and getting an increasingly useless degree. While there are many fields that require specialized training, the surge in popularity of degrees like sociology, anthropology, and communications clearly illustrate a disconnect between the needs of the economy and the skills of the incoming workforce.

The normalization of this system has blinded individuals to their own potential. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs and thinkers are those who have bypassed traditional education. Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, and hundreds of other innovators achieved greatness by breaking from predictable paths to knowledge. Instead, passion and experience were the foundations that gave them the confidence needed to make groundbreaking strides. What it means to learn and be educated is changing rapidly as technology develops, and it will eventually force the State to adapt with it.

Albert Einstein was able to spot the innate flaws in the education system even back in 1936, but it’s doubtful he could have fathomed how far things would go:

“I want to oppose the idea that the school has to teach directly that special knowledge and those accomplishments which one has to use later directly in life. The demands of life are much too manifold to let such a specialized training in school appear possible…The development of general ability for independent thinking and judgment should always be placed foremost.”

Those who do achieve their degrees often do so without developing important skills like critical thinking and individual discernment. The scariest part about this revelation is that almost 90% of outstanding private loans are co-signed by parents, making this an intergenerational problem. As the instability of pension funds, social security, and economic conditions continue, any additional burdens passed onto the baby boomers could have far-reaching ramifications. The vast distortions in information that this report exposes should motivate everyone to become an independent fact checker. The only way to reform this broken system is to shift the pursuit of knowledge towards the direction of each individual’s passion instead of creating more cogs for the machine.

---

This article (America’s Problem with Student Loans Is Much Bigger Than Anybody Realized) by Shaun Bradley is an opinion editorial (OP-ED). The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of Anti-Media. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Shaun Bradley and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article to edits@theantimedia.org.

US Government Caught Massively Fabricating Student Loan Default Data

Ever since 2012 we have warned that one of the biggest threats arising from the US student loan bubble - which is no longer disputed by anyone except perhaps members of the outgoing administration - is not that it is soaring at an unprecedented pace, that"s obvious for anyone with the latest loan total number over $1.4 trillion, rising at a pace of nearly $100 billion per year, but that the government - either on purpose or due to honest miscalculation - was not correctly accounting for the true extent of delinquencies and defaults. Today, we finally got confirmation that, as speculated, the US government was indeed fabricating student loan default data, making it appear far lower than it was in reality.

An the WSJ reported overnight "many more students have defaulted on or failed to pay back their college loans than the U.S. government previously believed."

The admission came last Friday, when the Education Department released a memo saying that it had overstated student loan repayment rates at most colleges and trade schools and provided updated numbers. This also means that the number of loan defaults in various cohorts is far greater than previously revealed.

A spokeswoman for the Education Department said that the problem resulted from a "technical programming error."

And so, the infamous "glitch" strikes again.

How bad was the data fabrication? When The Wall Street Journal analyzed the new numbers, the data revealed that the Department previously had inflated the repayment rates for 99.8% of all colleges and trade schools in the country. In other words, virtually every single number was made to appear better than it actually was. And people mock China for its own "fake data."

According to an analysis of the revised data, at more than 1,000 colleges and trade schools, or about a quarter of the total, at least half the students had defaulted or failed to pay down at least $1 on their debt within seven years. This is a stunning number and suggests that the student loan crisis is far greater than anyone had anticipated previously. It also means that the US taxpayer will be on the hook for hundreds of billions in government-funded loans once attention finally turns to who is expected to foot the bill for years of flawed lending practices.

As the WSJ adds, this isn’t the first time data problems have affected the Education Department: a recent government report criticized how the department tracks information including the budgetary implications of student loan forgiveness.  “This is a quality control issue with a Department of Education that has been facing criticism already for other data issues,” Robert Kelchen, an assistant professor of higher education at Seton Hall University.  The department “needs to be regularly audited so these issues can be discovered sooner.”

There is another interpretation: as we reported yesterday, when we revealed that a Chinese province admitted it had fabricated fiscal data for the period 2011-2014, the reason the data were made up "because officials wanted to advance their careers." One can imagine that the career pressure for those government workers who would report, and be held accountable, for revealing the true picture of America"s disastrous student loan bubble, would be likewise staggering.

* * *

Going back to the report findings, the student loan repayment rates were originally released in 2015 as part of the Obama administration’s College Scorecard, which followed an aborted attempt to rate colleges and tie federal funds to those ratings.

At the time, the Journal reported that at 347 colleges and vocational schools, more than half of students had defaulted or failed to pay down their debt within seven years. Those figures were based on students were supposed to start repaying loans in 2006 and 2007.  In September, the Department released data tracking students who should have begun repayment in 2007 and 2008, and that number rose to 477. But with the updated number released last week, that number grew to 1,029. Worse, no college saw its repayment rate improve under the revision, and some schools saw their seven-year repayment rates fall by as much as 29%.

The worst offender was the University of Memphis which had one of the largest drops in its repayment rate following the recalculation. Previously, the Department said that 67% of its students were repaying loans within seven years of entering the repayment period. That number fell to 47% after the recalculation.

The University was not happy. In a statement, the school said it “was not contacted by or made aware of the data changes” from the Education department.  “Given the magnitude of the numerical changes in the report released by the Department of Education, the University of Memphis will be challenging the accuracy of the newly adjusted data,” the statement said.

The far more dire implications, however, are for broader student loan market, because if the latest unfabricated data suggesting that loan delinquencies are rapidly rising toward 50% across most of America"s colleges, then the US is facing a default problem of staggering proportions. Recall that back in December 2014, The Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee forecast that in an aggressive scenario, as much as $3.3 trillion in student loans could be oustanding by 2024. Incidentally, that is the scenario that has captured the growth of student loans since it was presented.

Apply default rates of 40-50% to this number, and the bill to the US taxpayer for the next mass bailout starts taking shape.

College Student Earns 4.0 GPA, Then Drops Out: "You Are Being Scammed!"

Submitted by Lance Schuttler via TheMindUnleashed.com,

Billy Williams just finished his first college semester and did so with the all-impressive 4.0 GPA. Instead of celebrating his accomplishments with friends and family, he decided to drop out of college entirely.

Billy made a facebook post that is now going viral in which he explains his reasoning for dropping out:

“Now that I’ve finished my first semester I think it’s safe to say… FUCK COLLEGE. Now before all you of you go batshit crazy… I have a few points to make.

1. Yes I have dropped out after finishing my first semester (with a 4.0 GPA). And it’s one of the best choices I’ve ever made. Not because I am averse to learning, but actually the exact opposite.

2. YOU ARE BEING SCAMMED. You may not see it today or tomorrow, but you will see it some day. Heck you may have already seen it if you’ve been through college. You are being put thousands into debt to learn things you will never even use. Wasting 4 years of your life to be stuck at a paycheck that grows slower than the rate of inflation. Paying $200 for a $6 textbook. Being taught by teacher’s who have never done what they’re teaching. Average income has increased 5x over the last 40 years while cost of college has increased 18x. You’re spending thousands of dollars to learn information you won’t ever even use just to get a piece of paper. I once even had an engineer tell me “I learned more in my first 30 days working than in my 5 years of college.” What does that tell you about this system? There are about a million more ways you’re being scammed into this.. just watch the video i’m gonna comment if you want to see more.

3. Colleges are REQUIRING people to spend money taking gen. ed. courses to learn about the quadratic formula (and other shit they will never use) when they could be giving classes on MARRIAGE and HOW TO DO YOUR TAXES.

4. Gosh there are so many more reasons I could add, but just comment if you disagree or have reasons to add. I’d love to add to the discussion. TAG a friend in college, Tag your parents, share this if you agree, disagree. Let’s just talk about it. Heck post a picture of yourself flipping off something you think is unjust in our society.”

Billy is right too that the price of college continues to soar.

Ray Franke, a professor of Education at the University of Massachusetts, Boston said:

“If you look at the long-term trend of college tuition, it has been rising almost six percent above the rate of inflation. That’s brought immense pressure from the media and general public, asking whether college is still worth it.”

In 2015, Harvard’s annual tuition and fees (not including room and board) would cost a person $45,278, which is more than 17 times the 1971-72 cost. If annual increases of tuition had simply tracked the inflation rate since 1971, 2016’s tuition would be just $15,189.

According to CNBC, college enrollment peaked in 2011, and has been decreasing ever since. This is no doubt in part to a family’s ability to pay the tuition, room and board and other related expenses. For example, in order to pay for a year of college at Harvard today would take the median household income nearly one year of paychecks. Back in 1971, it would have taken about 13 weeks of paychecks per the household median income.

Today the student debt is over $1.26 trillion dollars with over 44 million Americans in debt from student loans. 2016’s graduates on average are over $36,000 dollars in debt, which is up 6% from just one year ago.  

What can be done to alleviate this situation? Why do banks get bailed out (2008 Lehman crisis) for cheating the world, while students must continue to pay a debt? Why is a private institution (The Federal Reserve) in charge of this nation’s money and finances? How will students continue to be able to go to college when the price continues to skyrocket as the federal minimum wage stays stuck at $7.25 an hour? At some point soon, the masses won’t take it anymore from the banking cartel. The education system is in for some major changes very soon.