PUBLIC $ FOR PRIVATE COLLEGES!

     I felt obligated to take a little time to address this issue:
     Christine Armario submimitted an article to the AP reporting the fact that for-profit colleges could lose federal student aid unless they clean up their act.  It seems that in order to receive federal student aid for career-training programs, students of for-profit, nonprofit and public institutions must be able to meet the Education Department's "gainful employment" rule upon graduation, part of which is repaying the loan offered by the federal government. 
     The funny thing is (or not so funny if you've recently graduated and are unemployed) that, according to the article, 12% of all students in higher education attend for-profit schools, yet this very same 12% represents 46% of all student loan dollars in default!  An interesting number, wouldn't you say?  But this next number is even more interesting: students attending community colleges usually don't borrow money to enroll, while the average loan debt for an associate's degree at a for-profit college is $14,000.  Also, the Department of Education reports that for more than 25% of for-profit schools, 80% of their revenue consist of federal student aid! 
     Now, the assumption my untrained and advantagiously unstable mind makes while reading this is the fact that for-profit education is more expensive than public education.  Yet the numbers given by the Education Department seem to indicate that for-profit education is inferior to that of a public education. 
     A bloke by the name of Steve Gunderson, president and CEO of the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, which represents for-profit education, seems to be lamenting the potential loss of revenue if the federal government holds them to the task of supplying their students with an education that is actually useful and relevant.
     I've got one thing to say to my man Steve over his belly-aching:  Unregulated Free Market Capitalism, dude!  You want the free market?  Now you have it, Pal!  I'm so sick and tired of all the hard-sell propoganda surrounding the benefits of a free-market capitalistic system over unwieldly governmental programs!  It never ceases to amaze me how the free market, whether it's in business, manufacturing, banking, education, agriculture, etc., is always looking to the government for a hand up, a handout, a way out, a bailout or simply the elimination of compitition in order to survive!  I keep hearing conservative politicians, pundits and business leaders scream that what is needed is for the government to step aside and let "the market" do its thing.
     And what is "the market's" thing?  Simply put, the mechanics of profit.  And what better way to ensure that the mechanics of profit continue to function?  Exploitation!  And not only the exploitation of the consumer and the worker, but the exploitation of the government as well.  And the exploiting seems to be working very well, thanks to the jam-it-down-the-public's-throat style of misinformation and misdirection that only big money can buy, and a populace that finds more interest in the latest reality TV craze than using the vast resources that mass-media offers to find the reality behind what causes their shitty lives to become increasingly shittier.
     Anyway, I gotta go water my vegetables.  Bottom line: if you're out there championing capitalism, have the self-respect and decency not to ask the tax payers supporting your government to assist you accumulate more profit.  Then again, perhaps self-respect and decency are simply not found within the curricula of private education.......

e.j.g.w.