Mitt Romney has just released his plan for educating America's young people, and it's wholly consistent with his overall philosophy: Allow money to dominate politics, and everything will work out great. Except that, when it comes to policies on college education, we tried that approach under George W. Bush, and it was a disaster for students and taxpayers.
Specifically, Romney attacks -- and pledges to undo -- two critical reforms implemented by the Obama administration: (1) reforming student loans and (2) holding for-profit colleges accountable for waste, fraud, and abuse.
In the recent bad old days, the big firms dominating the student loan business -- Sallie Mae, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, etc. -- got paid as if they were lenders, when in fact they were merely loan servicers; it was us taxpayers who actually took the risk of students defaulting on loans. These banks then used our money to hire lobbyists to protect their billions in unwarranted profits. The Obama administration stood up to them, and Congress, with nowhere left to cut spending, finally ended this absurd giveaway. There's absolutely no logical reason to restore this massive waste of taxpayer money. You would only do it if a central principle of your presidency was to hand out gifts to special interests who helped you get elected. Unfortunately it looks like Romney might want to be just that kind of president. JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo employees are ranked Nos. 3, 6, and 10 among the top 2012 Romney donors.
Then there's the issue of the for-profit college sector, whose multiple bad actors have been caught in the fact of defrauding our veterans and low-income students with deceptive recruiting practices, and defrauding government with phony reporting. For-profit colleges have grown rapidly and now account for about 12 percent of students, but their financial footprint is even bigger: With high prices, high dropout rates, and poor job placement, they account for 25 percent of federal financial aid -- more than $30 billion a year -- and 45 percent of student loan defaults.
Romney takes direct aim at the Obama administration's "gainful employment" rule -- an effort to channel federal student aid to college programs that actually help students learn and get jobs, rather than to programs that leave students deep in debt and ruin their lives. Many of the biggest schools get 90 percent or more of their revenue from taxpayer funds. They devoted a big chunk of that money to a lobbying and public relations campaign that succeeded in watering down -- but not eliminating -- the new Obama rule. But that's not good enough for Mitt Romney.
Why? One possibility is that the for-profit college owners are his friends and business associates. On the campaign trail, Romney has pointed to a for-profit college, Florida's Full Sail University, as an innovative, cost-effective leader in higher education. Never mind that Full Sail has sky-high prices and, at best, a mixed record when it comes to helping students. Romney did not inform voters that his campaign and Super PAC have received nearly $100,000 from Full Sail CEO Bill Heavener and from C. Kevin Landry, chairman of TA Associates, the private equity firm that owns Full Sail.
Nor did Romney tell voters about the private equity fund Solamere Capital, which is run by Mitt's son Tagg Romney and Spencer Zwick, who also serves as the top fundraiser on the Romney campaign staff. Solamere was launched with a $10 million investment from Mitt and Ann Romney, and Mitt also has provided strategic advice. Solamere Capital offered its clients a stake in TA Associates, which owns not just Full Sail but a number of for-profit schools, including troubled Vatterott Colleges, marked by exploitative recruiting practices and high student loan defaults.
That's not all. The political action committee of the Apollo Group, owner of the largest for-profit education business, the University of Phoenix, has contributed the maximum $5,000 to Romney's campaign, the company's only contribution to a 2012 presidential candidate. Goldman Sachs, the No. 1 source of contributions to Romney, owns 41 percent of EDMC, one of the largest for-profit college businesses, currently being sued by the Justice Department and investigated by state attorneys general for fraud.
When a candidate endorses his donors' businesses, without even telling you they are donors (and business associates), there is legitimate concern that those donors might receive favorable treatment after the candidate is elected.
But give Mitt Romney credit: Now he has told us flat-out that, when it comes to higher education policy, he will favor the business interests of his donors -- at the expense of students and taxpayers -- when he's elected. Voters will have to decide what to do with that information.
The original version of this article appeared on Republic Report.
Follow David_Halperin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/david4america
David_Halperin: House GOP Effort to Please Subprime College Donors Completely Backfires
The problem is every business needs to maximize profits. The do that by charging as much as possible and providing as little as they can in return. It's good business for the owners, but not for the consumers.
http://johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
Trends in the Republican penchant for "privitization" clearly do NOT have the interests of our younger generation in mind.
The destruction of our younger generation, by means of the kind of "business" practiced by "Mitt", is a grave threat both to the strategic viability and to the very future of our great country.
In education, we have a variety of BIG "business" educational "services", loan organizations some of whose interest profiteering contracts would embarrass any self respecting Mafia loan shark and other things which Obama is TRYING to reform.
Clearly the interference of corporatistas and special interests in our government, economics and even now our educational spheres, raises grave doubts about any supposed benefits which this perversion of our representative government poses.
Industry exportings, job outsourcings, crazy H1B visas policies at the expense of American students while the red carpet is laid out for foreign graduate students? ALL THIS MUST BE STOPPED. Voting AGAINST "MITT", even if the alternative is not the perfect choice, is the FIRST STEP in clearly letting THEM know our answer to their plans...... NO!
Cmon now! A policy that simply transfers money from one venue to another is nothing but the latest Republican plan to put that money on the road and out of public scrutiny where it can be easily hijacked by them, their relatives, and their pay-to-play friends. We can't save education simply by changing the building where it's provided. We need to 'get the politics' out of education, let the educators educate, and insure that every child in America proceeds along a path that will unite and benefit the country. That's what civilization is all about! It's not just about the Republican drive for wealth, segregation, and social division.
Mitt says he cut expences while Governor.
He did what Repubs have been doing all over the country. He cut funding significantly to state Universities. In just 4 years tuition increased over 60%. So tax payers did not perhaps get a tax increase, but the government also provided less, and of course those going to college and their parents got a huge tax increase in reality.
Repubs have been doing this all over the country, thus the huge increases in tuition costs.
Smoke and Mirrors of Mitt Cuts.
NOW these so called cuts... are at the urging also of our now Private for Profit schools whose lobbyist have been funneling money to Repubs to cut public educational spending so they can compete with their expensive almost worthless degrees...
Same nonsense with the more expensive For Profit prison industry, that for example with 51% of arrests being POT related… of course will never be for de-criminalization and lobby against it.
Society tried all of this during Medieval times and it didn't work out too well for the majority of people. In fact, once the serfs had nothing left to give, the 1% had no choice but to feed on each other. It is a small minded, short sighted, failed approach to human progress.
They don't say let them die, they just remove their hope, their water, their oxygen, their food, and their mobility, and then say LOOK!, they failed because they're unworthy! They never mention what we should do with the bodies or how much it will cost us to collect and dispose of them.
All wealth is achieved on the back of generations of society as a whole. Wealth is not an indicator of worthiness, or a ticket to generations of wealth preservation at the expense of society as a whole. It is a lucky break that should be accepted with a commitment to reseed the fields from which it came.
The Republicans and their Democratic apologists and sympathizers use the common sense truth that efficient government, smaller rather than larger is the best. But they then proceed to pollute that noble idea with an incredible array of self serving special rules, tax breaks and loopholes while stacking the deck against the rest of us with a simple formula - applied everywhere - in health care, in education, in private business, and in foreign policy. That formula is "heads we win, tails YOU lose" !
The full perfidy of neo-con globalism, the importance of social programs and public education and the dire necessity of massive reforms taking away the special rules and two tiered tax system of the 1%ers are urgently needed to be discussed.
This means a re-affirmation and a completion of the American Revolution - a second Bill of Rights with affirmations and protections for the rest of us. AND, the realization of what happens if this vital new chapter in continuing the former dynamism of America is not written.
See the wartime address of Franklin D. Roosevelt (Roosevelt? YES, ROOSEVELT), the video footage of which was rediscovered by Michael Moore in 2008 while working on his documentary "Capitalism, A Love Story", at these links for details:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EZ5bx9AyI4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Bill_of_Rights
Obama 2012!!