Going to college has become problematic for many as they have to find a way to pay for it and it seems the price keeps going up. Many students can’t afford to go to college and many others end up graduating with a heap of debt before they ever get their first job. Everyone agrees that the high price of college is a bad thing and it is a problem but what do we do about it? How can we make it affordable so that more students can afford to go without ending up in debt up to their eyeballs?

President Obama thinks the government is the answer to that problem as well as to any and all problems. If you buy into his stated belief that the government can be more efficient in creating lower interest loans than companies in the private sector, you have to take your thinking a step further. What he is really proposing is that the United States government become responsible for deciding who goes to college. Back to school grants and everything else related to student loans will be decided by someone in Washington.

The free market doesn’t always work perfectly but it is the best thing we have and it has worked to keep America the strongest and richest country in the world for over 230 years. What he is proposing with his Obama student government loans plan is that the government is better suited to give out loans than the free market and capitalism.

If his government student loans plan goes through, politicians, bureaucrats and state agencies will be the ones deciding who and who it gives loans to. What this means is that THE GOVERNMENT WILL BE DECIDING WHO GETS TO GO TO COLLEGE! Is that what you want? Do you love and trust the government that much? If your child gets turned down for a student loan you will have no where else to turn. Bureaucrats will be deciding which minorities get in and which ones don’t. It is a total take over and another piece closer to a slave state run by the government.

Now that Barack Obama is President and he has been in office 100 days, what has he done for students and all the young people that voted for him? Has he given us any Obama grants? How about any back to school grants? The big question with Obama student loans is whether companies and the government should be allowed to profit from them or whether we should lend money to students at a very low rate and give them the opportunity to get a reasonably priced education. After all, the youth of America are our future and shouldn’t we do everything we can to see that they get educated?

The student loan battle seems to be one that is being waged between private lenders and the government. President Obama has a student loan plan that will end private student lending  and make them all go through the federal government. This is no different that anything else he is doing which is to try to get the goverment to take over something that has been in private industry. But is he right this time?

Some of the student loans from private lenders like Sallie Mae have been at higher rates than the federal government could offer. These private companies make a profit and that is one of the possible problems with having private lenders be allowed to offer student loans. They also agressively try to collect on these loans which puts tremendous pressure on our college age kids who, through no fault of their own, might have trouble repaying them because of the economy.

Under Obama student grants, there would be no private loans where they could charge the students whatever rate they wanted. The loans would all be at a lower rate regulated by the US government. Many people will reject this proposal by saying that the government never does anything better than the private sector. Usually they are right but this might be one of the times when they are wrong. If we want our youth to be able to afford an education, which obviously benefits all of us, we need to figure out how to make college more affordable. Lowering the interest rates through Obama student loans would be one way of doing that.