Today's Education Problems

In Romney’s August 30, 2012 convention speech he said the second step to his creating 12 million new jobs was: “We’ll give our fellow citizens the skills they need for the jobs of today and the careers of tomorrow, when it comes to the school your child will attend every parent should have a choice and every child should have a chance”. On August 29 Paul Ryan said “College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters, wondering when they can move out and get going with life”. This comment stemmed from the Census Bureau reporting 5.9 million 25–34 year old college graduates (85%) have moved in with their parents, up 25% in 4 years.

On October 19, 2011 ABC reported the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRB of NY) said outstanding student loan debt is at $1 trillion; a College Board survey found that tuition at public colleges and universities went up an average of 8% since last year while private institutions rose 4.5%; the cost of college had risen 900% in the last 30 years; statistics show 80,000 bartenders and 17% of baggage porters and bellhops have degrees. In May 2012 the FRB of NY said more than 6 million people over 50 were still paying off their student loans; there’s a total $36 billion outstanding student loans and some people are paying $600 a month in interest only on their loans. On July 21 it’s reported the President is reconsidering student loan debt in bankruptcy cases-as a study published by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau suggested Congress allow student loan debt to be discharged. Bloomberg Businessweek reported the student loan market grew by $15 billion between 2001 and 2008 and many loans were underwritten with “lax” standards; more than 5% of all private student loans, worth more than $8.1 billion, were in default.

On September 5 former President Clinton said - after a decade of which exploding education costs has increased the dropout rate so much that the percentage of our young people with 4 year degrees has gone down so much that we have dropped to 16^th in the world in the percentage of young people with college degrees. He also said - there are over 3 million jobs open and unfilled in America mostly because the people who apply for them don’t yet have the required skills to do them. So, even as we get Americans new jobs we have to prepare more Americans for the new jobs that are actually going to be created.

It should be obvious that the problem started in the 1980s (Reagan). But just like the deficit issue (Reagan more than doubling it and Bush adding almost $5 trillion to it) the Republicans want you to think Obama created the problem.