Lately there has been some discussion about the U.S. Congress passing legislation that makes it easier for individuals to discharge student loans they can’t pay. On behalf of all the for-profit colleges in the country, let us assure all prospective college students that this is not a good idea.
Currently getting a student loan is easier than getting pregnant – assuming you are trying to get pregnant. If you are trying to avoid pregnancy, yet not using condoms or other forms of birth control, then getting a student loan is harder than getting pregnant. We seemed to have digressed.
The point is this. Student loans are like STDs. They are everywhere, and they are pretty easy to get. That’s because lenders don’t have to do any due diligence. They do not need to worry about whether you may not be able to pay the loan back. That’s because it is ridiculously hard to discharge student loans. They are like ex-spouses. You always have to pay them, and they never go away. They will attend your funeral and dance on your grave.
If you’re a lender or a college, that’s great. But it is great for a student, too – especially if that student wants to major in Celtic Clog Dancing or the Mythology of the Icelandic Yule Lads. If lenders need to start doing due diligence and if they need to worry about whether the student can get a job to pay the loan back, students may not be able to get loans for those majors. And that simply isn’t fair to colleges – especially for-profit ones that really rely on the student loan industry to make gobs of money.
So lobby your congress member to vote against any legislation that makes it easier to discharge student loans. You can trust us on this, because we really care. About our shareholders, that is. We really care about our shareholders.
Titmouse Beak, President of Pungent Sound Community Bank
Treacherous Gulp, Esquire – Counsel for Pungent Sound Technical College of Technology
Pungent Sound Journal of Pulp Poetry 