(pic by Robin Hutton)

Of the billions of dollars that are placed in the retirement accounts of federal employees and in social security, the government should commit 50% TO EDUCATIONAL LOANS.

There should be no financial institution or college involved in the selection of the loan.  Payments should be issued to qualified schools directly.

The IRS collects taxes; the Social Security Administration issues retirement checks; the INS processes passport and citizen requests; and Federal Stafford loans help pay for college.  These are all examples of large volume transactions exceeding hundreds of thousands of dollars.  This provides the proof of the capacity of the federal government to run a student loan system.  There will be no enticements to use any particular service, no revenue sharing, and everyone qualifies who is an US citizen. The mission should be to have the best rates for students in need of loans for education.  The US government could provide a loan forgiveness incentive for students to go into needy fields of study and/or to serve in geographic locations where there are shortages of credentialed people.  The US government can add a loan forgiveness program as well as blend in the other training programs already supported by the government.  One government agency to be the center of supporting higher education for all individuals who seek to learn and improve the likelihood of advancements in quality of life and economic impact.

Rates should be tied to the treasury bonds as fixed in order to have similar expectation of return.  These education loans will then create a return for social security and the retirement funds not dependent fully on future taxes or revenues.  If the success of the program provides adequate return it may be possible to increase the amount made for loans to more than 50%.  However, the federal budget has to stop using the social security money for other purposes.  The money will only run out because it is not getting a return, it is being used for the current base federal budget.

Let’s get serious about higher education and invest in our future.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 12:01 am and is filed under Human Resources, Consulting, Employee's benefits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.