Rogue Executive Actions
Biden is already bending to the wishes of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders to want to forgive student loans.
On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Biden ‘Considering’ Forgiving $50,000 in Student Loan Debt via Executive Action.
Schumer held a press conference alongside Democratic Congressmen-elect Ritchie Torres, Mondaire Jones and Jamaal Bowman of New York, during which the group announced they have “come to the conclusion” that Biden can “forgive $50,000 of debt the first day he becomes president.”
“You don’t need Congress, all you need is the flick of a pen and President-elect Biden — then President Biden — can make this happen,” Schumer said.
Asked if Biden will have the executive authority to forgive the debt, the New York Senator said the president-elect is researching that and “I believe when he does his research, he will find that he does.”
Huge Moral Hazard
I discussed the moral hazard of student loan cancellation in Another Good Reason for No Student Loan Bailout
Debt discharge is a huge moral hazard that encourages more overpaying for useless degrees.
It will do nothing to address the cost of higher education.
We need more competition, more accredited schools, more alternatives, and less public union graft.
Forgiving debt fosters less competition and more graft and does nothing to fix any fundamental issues.
Six-Point Solution
- End collective bargaining of all public unions. That is the source of numerous problems.
- Cut coaches and administrator salaries
- Cut pensions
- Add competition via more alternative education programs. The teachers’ unions fight this idea, and it’s certainly not for the kids.
- Pass national bankruptcy reform. Let cities, municipalities, and local government bodies go bankrupt. That is the first step needed for pension reform. Some states, including Illinois, do not allow municipal bankruptcies.
- Modify the bankruptcy reform act of 2005 to include a means test based on employment and job salaries to allow some students to discharge debt in bankruptcies.
Do it For the Kids
The pension crisis, bankruptcy reform, escalating administrator and coach salaries, and collective bargaining all need to be fixed. Until they are, bailouts are nothing but a big moral hazard.
Do something for the kids instead of the teachers, administrators, and pension funds.
Related Articles
- Illinois Is Ground Zero for the Pension Crisis
- Illinois is Insolvent: State Requests a Pension Bailout From Congress
- Democrats, Here’s Your Chance to Get Rid of Bad Police
Article number 3 discusses the role of public unions in this mess. Even Franklin D. Roosevelt understood the inherent problems and massive conflicts of interest in public unions.
A good first step to fixing the education problem would be to end collective bargaining of public unions, bankruptcy reform, and pension reform.
How about doing something for the kids instead of the teachers, unions, administrators, and pension fund operators?
Mish
Years ago I worked in one of the largest welfare offices in the country. A very wise man ran the agency. I was totally ignorant intern assigned to him for one year. He pointed out that in a country of millions we are trying to design a system that works for all and will hopefully help a few. He pointed to the one youth who would gain so much from a guitar. But in our system either everyone gets a guitar or none. And so none and we of course fail to reach that one child. And thus with education. The current system fails so many, but is designed for the masses or so we hope.
How about reducing the cost of schooling by going to a good state school instead of the private out of state big name? One’s being indeed exceptional (aptitude plus hard work) should open the doors to graduate schools of high reputation (many times accompanied by scholarship), but aiming for the high quality undergraduate program that you can not afford, before proving yourself (if it does not come with a scholarship) is a gambler’s attitude.
I fail to see the connection between public unions bargaining power and the cost of education, a lot of which is delivered by provate colleges. If anything else, this proves that private is not always better.
So much rigidity for student loans, but much less Indignation for corporate and wall st bailouts that overshadow student loans bailouts.
Let’s be practical. While it is true that too many people go to college with no intention of really learning anything, it is absurd that the cost of education in the US is so astronomical. If you let all these students default, it will create another massive poverty problem that will have to be dealt with anyway.
So while the moral case against student loans bailouts may sound reasonable, pragmatism must prevail.
My two cents:
Remove all government funding of tuition, including grants and loans.
Require that loans be paid back with 10% of gross income until loan is paid off or until death. Thus, there is no allowance for bankruptcy, but lenders can be assured that people cannot just avoid paying (unless of course they work under the table, which is already an issue to some degree with respect to income taxes and wage garnishments).
For people who are already indebted with student loans, they can have a grandfather clause where they pay at their current rate or they can pay at the new rate of 10% gross income.
Mish,
What are you thoughts on clawbacks? IIRC Yale School of Drama has one of the worst default rates. It’s fantastically expensive and almost no one earns enough to pay back their loans. In that case, when the student defaults, that tuition is clawed back from Yale.
Schools need skin in the game just as much as students and lenders. They should be on the hook for offering programs that offer no realistic way of paying back their cost.
Disagree about a means test for calculating how much student debt could be discharged in bankruptcy. There is nothing sacred about student debt. Lenders never should’ve been granted the ability to make non-dischargeable, non-collateralized loans to 18-year-olds. This fiasco was easily predicted (yes, I said at the time and ever since). There never would’ve been this student loan bubble without the 2005 bankruptcy bill. That bill once again legalized usury. Those who claim “well I paid off my loan” also very likely had the option of having it discharged if they went through the bankruptcy process, which is no small thing. The rules have since been changed.
I think it would be great if everyone making comments here would add a line at the bottom of each of their statements concerning how much of their wealth was inherited. It would also be great to talk about how much influence their parents had on the schools they chose. Basically, how much impact did your parents have on your decisions at that point in your life? What financial contributions did your parents make to your college educations? I don’t want to hear from the one self-sufficient person, and please don’t call me names. Just discuss…
I’m the one self-sufficient person, so I’m going to abstain. lol.
My husband and I both paid the bulk of our college – BA and MA. It was possible because tuition was affordable. He went to NYU for grad school and we would charge the tuition on our credit card and pay it off by the time the next semester rolled around. We both worked. By the time my daughter got to grad school, tuition was so high that it was fantasy she could ever pay it off. Mish says cut salaries of Admin and coaches. Is that really why higher ed costs have so exceeded any resemblance to the cost of living? Or are they building fancy buildings they really do not need?
Ending derivatives would go a long way towards resetting the economy back to repricing of all things based on supply amd.demand. We have had a casino economy since derivatives took off in a big way in 80s and 90s.
Stop printing money and it will essentially fix itself. Will take a little might even have to have a dollar reset. using a quote from another site.
THE BANKS MUST BE RESTRAINED, AND THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM REFORMED, WITH BALANCE RESTORED TO THE ECONOMY, BEFORE THERE CAN BE ANY SUSTAINABLE RECOVERY.
I agree that for at least the last 15-17 years the cost has grown unfairly fast. If Biden goes ahead and “forgives” Student Loan debt, then there is only ONE fair way to do it in my opinion. I’d be ok with taking all the people who recently graduated (or about to) and shaving off 1/3 of their debt, INCLUDING giving a tax or cash credit those who had it but already paid it down. Heck, we’d also have to find a way to give credits for those who worked their way through or somehow saved up to go. Then I’d make a sliding forgiveness/credit scale going back 15 or 17 years and where the 2020 debtors get the 33% cut and the 2003 debtors get 1% or zero. But then what happens to next year’s graduates, and the next?
What about the parent who paid for the college costs. I say use your plan with a sliding scale and give everyone who went to college the past 10 or 15 years a sliding scale credit. Not just those who took out loans. Assume 10k divided by the typical 4 years. If someone only went two years they get 5k. If they went 4 years they get 10k.
What about the kids who are about to start? Shouldn’t they receive a $50K discount for their 4 years?
Good question. The issue right now is debt forgiveness. So they have not debt yet to forgive. I guess we need to leave that for the next president. 😉
That is another issue that needs to be discussed though. Future college costs.
The way to solve the pension crisis is for the states, cities, and counties who are in trouble to put an income tax on the pension. A flat 10% thatgoes back into the pension fund might do it.
A Bankruptcy judge needs to impose a retirement cap of 150K, maybe even 125K. There’s no reason that taxpayers should support these insane retirements, regardless of their “rank”. Believe it or not, this is a huge issue in California as many, many public service folks hit those numbers. I bet in Illinois and New York too.
A guaranteed $100K yearly pension is comparable to having $10 million earning 1% per annum at the bank. Anybody sock that away working in the private sector?
While we are at it lets get rid of public sector unions, best way to make the police more manageable.
Agree if public sector unions are the problem – not sure I agree with that – but then include the police in that as well
So if your parents are rich you get access to great schools but bit if your parents are poor. This is how a class structure permeates society
My solution would undoubtedly lower the cost of education.
Yours, bailouts, would raise it.
Bill & Melinda Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Jack and Soros to the rescue! All of the Lear Jet, Limousine and Lawn Sign Liberals! The Universities with $1,000,000,000+ endowments.
As an employer, do I want to hire an U of Alabama graduate who has been to every football game, partied afterwards, and has a C average; or a graduate who is physically fit, intellectually curious, with an A average?
Perhaps it is time to rethink college sports.
Apparently if you’re a typical employer you want a tall kid who can play golf.
I beg to differ with Mish’s six-point plan for student loans, and economic problems in general.
Only one change is required to fix problems of student loans, unqualified/unmotivated students going to college, low high-school standards, low quality degrees, poor/lazy faculty, administrative waste, etc. Keep in mind that after 30 years as a professor, I have seen all of the above, and all are getting worse.
The university system must be accountable for its failures. The solution: each university receiving student loan funds must guarantee repayment of those loans.
Offer low quality degrees, hire low quality faculty, accept low quality students, have low standards for graduation–graduates will not get/keep jobs. The university is soon bankrupted by repaying loans.
Its simple…. Stop the government backed student loan program and then you will see tuition go down over time. Also the biggest reason student loans aren’t able to be included in bankruptcy is because the tax payer is on the hook. Anytime the government is involved it doesn’t help. Who gives a teenager a 200k dollar loan with no income, easy someone that co-signer is the us government……
We all know it has happened, but to this degree?
Articles like that one piss me off…it’s completely dishonest socialist hogwash. Full of lies.
The biggest lie is that the real rich are that large a group. The “one percent”, viewed without even considering the lower 99%, still has people in it who are relatively poor compared to the real rich…..the Bezos’s, Musks, Rockefellers…….the so-called “four hundred families” who own most of America’s intergenerational wealthy
If we’re going to assign blame….give it to them…..and the venture capitalists, corporate CEO’s, hedge fund managers, bond kings and scions of industry who actually have some power in this game….you’re talking about the 0.01%. So 90% of the “1%” are not even in that group of super wealthy.
And journalists always talk about people with high earned income being rich……the truth is that isn’t NECESSARILY even so. If you make a half million a year and have no investments…then you aren’t rich…..you’re just a well paid working stiff.
Here’s a clue. The real rich might work and have high earned income….but they don’t HAVE to work at all.
And this idea that there is some plot…..to steal from the poor and give to the rich…..is just class warfare. It doesn’t work that way. Money accrues to people who invest….and some people are born with a grubstake and have a whole lifetime of investments managed by trusted advisers who know how to make money.
Most of us start off with nothing, or next to nothing.
For those of us who start out a the bottom and somehow do some things right……carefully save (first you HAVE to save, all investments are born out of savings if you aren’t born with money)…and then invest in various vehicles…..(which is to say take risks with your own money) and then end up with a lot of money, after trial and error and making mistakes…maybe even going bankrupt one or more times and having to start from scratch….(it isn’t uncommon)…..
If somebody like that makes it even near the “1%”…it isn’t because they ripped anybody off…..it’s because they were determined and smart, and maybe a little lucky too.
And articles like that one…that clearly give the impression that money is a zero sum games where every winner is because some poor deserving person at the bottom got take for a ride…….are pure bullshit.
That is not how it works.
A lot of these wealthy families didn’t get there by saving, but through conquest/exploitation and quite often breaking the law. The Bushes are a good example, bank-rolling the Nazi’s (and almost being shut down for it). Weren’t the Kennedy’s smugglers originally?
I agree with much of what you say, but the solution isn’t that everybody should save and get rich themselves, the solution is to change the way the playing field is often tilted and not very flat here and there … Change can come about without revolution. It’s always a matter of the incentives in play.
Ah, yes…colonialism and the extractive economic system whereby the international bankers collude with greedy politicians in lesser developed countries to deprive indigenous peoples of their birthright….I have heard of this evil.
I’m just not nearly as convinced as you are that change is likely…..or that if change does come, that it will result in a more fair and just and verdant world.
I’m in the tax donkey class. Whatever wonderful strides are made, people like me always foot the bill for it.
In this country, there are really two groups of people…the ones who get a check….and the ones who write the checks. People who get a check think of taxes as some big amorphous pile of money that has to be divided properly.
People who write checks regard taxes as their money that they struggle to hang on to….and they stare in dismay as their hard earned money mostly goes to waste, as various groups of insiders and politicians decide how to spend it.
Most of us look up the food chain and see an elite class above us that derives their income from tax protected investments and pays relatively little tax….and we look below us and see about half the population paying no net tax.
And every time we see somebody on sone forum talking about how change can come, our bunghole puckers and we reflexively reach for our wallet to try to protect it.
I actually have nothing agaisnt entrepreneurs in product development. This is why I would tax income from stock trades and hedge funds at 50%. The money would magically start being invested back in the real economy. The tax system doesnt value job creation.
I have nothing against entrepreneurs either. They add tremendous value.
However, once they become accidental billionaires, they have the means to make sure their enormous wealth gets protected, and it is completely logical to assume they will do that…way before they get involved in whatever philanthropy they decide to embrace in their old age.
My real disgust at the socialist journalist class….is that they are tools…creating this narrative that the working classes are noble and that people with money are all greed heads who are ripping them off.
I think most of us who have some intelligence and knowledge understand that tremendous wealth inequality is not the best thing…for anybody.
But here in the trenches where I am, I see people like AOC getting traction with the angry underclass…and I know damn good and well that whatever wonderful changes that kind of politician brings about will be more a the expense of people like me than people like say, Bill Gates.
Or Bill Gross, or Ray Dalio…or any of the hundreds of lesser known Wall Street denizens who get a special deal that’s been bought and paid for by big money.
If students feel wronged, they should figure out how or why and then sue, not just expect someone to come along offering to write off their debt for their vote, because that is one way politics becomes corrupted, and so a country itself.
Asymmetric playing field.
Those ‘wronged’ students probably should not have been in college in the first place. Students should learn about doing due diligence and how to think critically while in high school.
So politics wasn’t corrupted before student debt came along ? Who do you think corrupted politics for so much student debt to exist ?
For sure much debt is predatory, but moral hazard doesn’t just start after college and all contracts were voluntary. So to put it another way, those who are for public funding/forgiveness of that debt, they are saying to those who did not take the highflyer pre-paid option but instead chose to go out and work, they are saying but in much more unfriendly terms to them “losers”. They are saying “we were so privileged to get funding, and we are so privileged as to afterwards just write off its cost”. Some say that with the excuse that it was unfair to be privileged, as if there was no choice or as if they were more important than that. Access to higher education is not a right, no-one owes it to another, it is a pursuit taken by vocation or for reward, and neither of those exempts a person from whatever responsibilities they sign up to along the way.
I concur. ‘Privilege’ is not the issue. It takes above average intelligence and a great deal of work to succeed in higher education, and in jobs upon graduation. I dare say only 10% of the population have what it takes.
Education is expensive because the university system has become bloated, and higher education is a status symbol.
Maybe everyone should have the right to go to a specific college for free but you have to earn it. If you get the best grade and SAT score you get to go to Harvard. If you do not, no matter how much money your parents donate….you do not get to go.
I don’t argue that, and I am aware of how demanding success in higher education and graduate workplace is. However to someone who works for their living from the get go , the phrase “we were so privileged to get funding, and we are so privileged as to afterwards just write off its cost” is just that – funding and not the access to higher education. That is to say that many who access this funding (I’m also aware that some work at the same time) do not have the burden of supporting themselves for several years. They might study hard, or be partying but either way they are privileged to be in that circumstance while another simply spends that time at work, often without respite if he or she is to simply survive. That privilege has a later cost which is repayment of the funding, and so if that repayment is waived there is then a double privilege, no matter if the student was dedicated or not.
I’m more familiar with the UK system, and there there is a similar trend. Previously, say to the eighties, university was very exclusive and reputable, based on merit for access, and some of the top universities are still like that today. I’m all for access to education however a lot of it is just sold to students as an avenue, and no more than an avenue… just better than some other avenues.
I don’t think any lender would give an unsecured multiples of 10k loan to an unemployed student ! So really this is government subsidy with hooks attached. A university is not going to turn itself into a financial institution by taking responsibility for the debt either. Therefore at base is the question of how much government subsidy higher education receives and in what format. In some countries in europe for example higher education is still free, but places are more limited and entry standards therefore higher. If government wants to lend to all who want to access higher education so that they can do so, well the borrower is liable ultimately and the effect of this flow of money is what we have in terms of bloated inefficiency. Either system has its reason , but I just don’t see an alternative of universities taking responsibility, I don’t see government as a good lender, and to top it off to blanket erase existing debt would be very corrupt. I also don’t think having graduates saddled with debt is a good thing.
I think the solution is simply to treat student loans as any other loans and allow them to be discharged in bankruptcy, with equal terms.
Part of the issue is how hard it is to discharge student loans in bankruptcy in the first place, on much more stringent terms.
But then it would make much more sense for every single student to discharge it upon graduation. Better to stat building new credit than pay off an onerous loan for 20 years.
No. A lot of loans would not be made if there was more risk (no government guarantee). If everybody was not spending borrowed money, they would be more judicious about how it is spent, and institutions would be forced to concentrate on their core business at cost. Less expenses would diminish the dependency on so much borrowing. And bankruptcy can be onerous enough to make it something else than burning your notes.
Agree. More risk and no collateral would probably mean that many student loans would see the same interest rate as credit cards.
Meanwhile in “Warp Speed” today….
Some major problems are already emerging in the initial rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine, and the federal government is not providing any good answers.
The early warning signs:
At least eleven states are reporting cuts in their initial allocations of doses.
One governor is reporting that the total number of doses projected to be available nationwide has been cut by four million monthly.
The vaccine maker reports it is not having production problems and says it has doses in warehouses, but is awaiting direction from the federal government on where to send them.
The combination of no production problems plus doses sitting in warehouses suggests some issue with the federal government’s oversight of the distribution of the vaccine.
Governor Jay Inslee
@GovInslee
.@CDCgov has informed us that WA’s vaccine allocation will be cut by 40 percent next week — and that all states are seeing similar cuts.
This is disruptive and frustrating. We need accurate, predictable numbers to plan and ensure on-the-ground success.
No explanation was given.
12:53 PM · Dec 17, 2020
TALLAHASSEE — Florida’s largest hospital system said it was on track to immunize nearly 20,000 health care workers against COVID-19 as Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday announced a delay in hundreds of thousands of doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
Florida began receiving its share of the coronavirus vaccine on Monday, and the state was expected to get about 450,000 doses produced by Pfizer over the next two weeks. But production issues could prevent them from being delivered.
“We were supposed to get for next week 205,000 Pfizer and then the next week 247,000. Those next two weeks shipments of Pfizer are on hold right now,” DeSantis said Tuesday at a news conference in West Palm Beach. “We don’t know whether we will get any or not. And we’re just going to have to wait.”
As if Trump, Biden or whatever administration would be making the drug. This entire year of covid hysteria and fed pumping is one big nut job. Half the population don’t want the vaccine the other half let them take it. Obviously no one learned anything from “the weapons of mass destruction”. Who knows I’m not saying I know but I know when things don’t seem right, feels just like the entire 2001 experience. If you think whoever is in that paid for office gives 2 cents about you you are mistaken. Said the same every year and whats changed no matter who was in office.
What about preventing the bank or issuer from selling off the loans to other parties. They have to keep it on their balance sheets. Additionally oblige them to administer the loans themselves.
What about making the university responsible for NOT doing its job?
Selling debts is a ridiculous thing. Can you imagine borrowing $100 bucks from somebody you know when you are in a tight spot, and then being confronted by a total stranger who wants $200, because has has bought the debt and gone to considerable expense, so he says.
The solution already exists. The GI Bill. And after paying off that degree, those people will have work experience to make to make them employable in the private sector.
MISH has posted charts showing delinquency and default rates for various categories of debt. If I remember correctly, credit card default rates were about 2% and student debt was over 10%. So student loans could be declined based on certain risk factors (high school graduation rank, alignment of college degree with aptitude, choice of college).
Good quality college programs consider rank, alignment with aptitude etc. They also have standards for graduation, develop curricula, hire good faculty, etc. I suspect such colleges do not have too many problems with students not paying their loans.
My counterpoints:
I would add:
Drop all interest of current debt to 0. Why is anyone paying %8 for debt guaranty by the Federal Government?
No loans for private school education (only state)
Do you want good teachers or bad teachers at the undergraduate/graduate level? What brings the best faculty to a college? What keeps them there?
Some ideas that might work:
Football funds its own budget, including the coaches. In division one it funds other low revenue sports as well. The coaches are a distraction… not the problem.
Nick saban has a $9m salary. That’s $230 per undergrad. However, the football program still makes a profit of $48m. So without football tuition would need to increase by $1,200. I don’t understand the problem.
It’s not quite that simple.
My nephew plays for Alabama…and my brother, who is in the oil business, never really needed a scholarship for his kid….hell..he’d pay good money for the kid to play Alabama football, on top of paying for tuition, if he had to.
I think only 10 to 15 college athletic departments make a profit. Most of the other actually need the education side to subsidize the programs an they add fees which raises the tuition. I know a few years ago the University of Kansas built a rowing facility for $6 million and sold a bond and added something like $50 to every students tuition for several years to make the bond payments. Afterall….rowing does not bring in any revenue.
Swarthmore eliminated varsity sports and the scholarships attached many years ago. Their donors and alumni were more interested in being known for academics rather than athletics. I think many schools would like to do the same but dare not.
They should just make student loans interest free or very low interest. They could sell them in some sort of bundles to the Fed, like mortgages. Then people have to pay them back, but they don’t accrue interest over time. Voila, no moral hazard because they have to be paid back, but people don’t end up paying back multiples of what they borrowed in interest and penalties.
What is the FV calc on the money? I borrow $100 today, pay it back in 20 yrs, what is that in NPV, $38?
Add a COL adjustment and you’ve got a much more realistic concept.
No kidding. With interest rates so low….the loans should be no more than 2% or 3%.
They should allow people to refinance student loans at artificially low rates like every other industry.
How can people not be able to pay back their debts? There are jobs available to everyone provided they have a good work ethic and good work history. I think the problem has as much to do with laziness than poor decision making. I suspect if we brought back debtors prison, that would go a long way in making a lot of student debt current.
Jobs available for everyone … yeah right. No problems, just a lot of lousy people.
Bring back debtors prison … how enlightened, took 4000 years to get beyond them.
By the way, when there were debtors prisons, only debtors and political prisoners were kept in jail. Punishment for crimes was always money and physical punishment. Prisons were repurposed to rehabilitate people, make them reflect on their crimes and become better people … the theory hasn’t worked out so well.
Thank you. Unfortunately We’re not on the same page. I think free market breaks down whe you have lenders throwing money at 17 year olds that lack the discipline and maturity to price out an education. I agree on point #6. I’d literally void the reform act which was no reform. Bankruptcy judges should be allowe to void or renegotiate debt. I’m fine with trade schools but there’s a lot of fraud in for-profit education.
You’ve hit on a huge topic here, predatory lending. There was a huge sense of grift ongoing with the easy student loans. What’s the synergy? Higher tuition hikes for the universities. Lenders and institutions win. Borrowers who just need that shingle and ‘Don’t know any better” get hosed. That is a preable to a socialistic program type of solution, but I don’t favor cleaning up the back end despite my wife potentially dropping four zeroes from her loan figure (on an education she directly put to work and continues to do 15 yrs later) if Biden strokes it away.
We need to clean up the front end. Think back to how we cleaned up – at least for a spell – some of the subprime lending for home buyers. That’s the angle I think. Is there a just and equitable solution for that debt nut? Probably not.
Make 120 payments and your balance is vaporized. Good loan forgiveness program, already in existence. More should use this.
Why talk about this after the election? The ones coming in are all against what you are proposing. Illinois will get bailed out because they played ball. Same for the public unions and so forth. Charted schools which offer choice by the way are on the teachers union hit list and the coming administration will oblige. It’s too late to influence the election.
Why talk about this now?
I comment on the news – That’s why.
It is in the news now.
I do not make news up, but sometimes I have an idea of my own to present, not triggered by anything.
I’m not so sure the dems are going to bail out Illinois. They’ll win Illinois no matter what and they likely have better things to do with the FEDs money.
I don’t want to speak for@Doug78 but I think his point is that these 6 points stand less of a chance of coming to pass with the incoming administration than they did with the current one.
It’s like discussing which conservative judge Biden will nominate when an opening comes up.
Allowing student athletes to negotiate contracts for playing would help divert revenue streams away from the university coffers to their rightful owners (the student athlete) resulting in the shrinking of university administration bloat.
I agree that students should be able to bargain for themselves
Curious why you think students should be allowed to bargain when in the same post you say teachers shouldn’t be allowed to bargain?
I’m curious why you think students should be allowed to bargain but not teachers?
Mish is fine with individual teacher bargaining (it’s essentially what everyone who isn’t a union member does when they negotiate their individual salary). He’s just not OK with collective bargaining which prevents any other possible avenue for schools to hire teachers (they must hire union only, they can’t hire an individual who might do same job for less).
I might be wrong, but I’ve never been aware of public unions at universities or collective bargaining agreements. Most staff have little security and are hired at whim, often on salaries that prove you must be an idealist.
Read what FDR had to say.
It’s right here.
Mish, good thing you are out of reach to pay for Coach Lovie Smith’s salary for the 2 years remaining on his contract after he was axed this week.
No one forces the student athlete to do anything they don’t want to do. They’re free to be a normal student without a scholarship. Like almost all the other students.
No one forces kids to be athletes, but they are not free to bargain for themselves. They should be, and if this gets to the Supreme Court, I am confident they will be.
I agree with Kidhorn. They are already getting paid (haven’t we just been talking about Student Loans look at the salary they are getting tax free) Besides I do not go to games to see an individual player. It does not matter who is playin I am attending (college)!
Let these great athletes form their own league….what a minute there is one already just go join it and forget about college. Leave us alone!
Athletic programs shouldn’t be funded through ordinary students tuition….which it is….most colleges have a student services fee that goes 100% to athletics.
College coaches (due to alumni pressures) are paid crazy money…and college athletics is a business that makes nearly 20 billion dollars a year in revenue.
Calling a scholarship “pay” is a joke, when that kind of money is being made.
The relative importance people place on Sports itself is a travesty. But there’s no solving that problem…except maybe allowing more racial/identity politics to get injected into the mix.
I think it’s time to just eliminate athletic scholarships entirely, and more sports to a profession, rather than part of the education system. Club sports can stay, though.