Paul Ryan Guest Editorial

Paul Ryan wrote a guest editorial in the Wisconsin State Journal today about college debt since this is graduation day at the UW.  He says that the reason that college tuition has gone up so fast is because of the easy money that can be gotten from the federal loan program.  Aside from the sheer irony of this coming from a man whose college education was paid for by the taxpayer (working students included) this is crazy.  Doesn't the congressman think that if the State of Wisconsin reduces funding of the UW by more than $100 million dollars, tuition would increase?  Apparently not, according to Paul Ryan they are increasing tuition because they can.  The theory goes that if college becomes unaffordable the students will just borrow from the federal government.  This is nonsense.  The schools are passing along the reductions in revenues from State and Federal sources.  The schools could offset this by going to corporations and suggest that they place more research with them instead of hiring people (could be a problem for graduating students).  The schools could also offset this by reducing salaries and benefits.  This is certainly something that the Republican party is for.  They believe that unless you are a wealthy conservative you should be thankful to have a job.  If you are a public employee that feel that you should be working for free.  What a concept.  If this continues public education in this country will be destroyed which will make for a lot of ditch diggers but not too many engineers and scientists.  Now we just need to get rid of the minimum wage and create a bunch of menial jobs.  I fail to see how this will allow the country to compete in the 21st century.  The United States became a great nation because of the affordability of college education.  We are going to witness a decline into a society that operates much like an aristocracy with a privileged class and a serf class .