Competition from Cooperatives Might Make Student Loans Unnecessary

   The notion of doing away with student loans has come up in the Doug Owens / Mia Love race. I will take a position neither of them took.
   Let's do do away with student loans . . .  but only if we can find a way to continue to ensure our youth an education.
   If you put money on the table, someone is going to snap it up. In this case, if you provide loans to students, colleges are going to snatch up that money. However much you put on the table will be the amount swept off the table. And, have you ever heard of the law of supply and demand? If enough money is available -- if enough money is placed on the table -- prices will rise.
   I'm sure there are other reasons our tuition rates have risen in the past few decades, but, yes, this is probably one. Now, we've reached a point where a higher education is out of reach for many youth . . . unless they get a student loan. They have to go in debt for a good part of their lives to get an education. Is that wise of us, as a society, to set it up so students are in debt for decades and decades? Is it wise that we set it up so the first thing they learn to do upon leaving home is to go into debt? It's a ritual of society now: As you embark on life on your own, acquire a debt you might never pay off -- and do it in the name of doing the responsible thing, going to college and obtaining an education.
   If colleges and universities want our business, they must find a way to lower tuition. If they won't, we must find another way of educating our youth.
   Classes attached to the work site, the companies educating their employees? That's a thought, but I'm not sure it's a good one. It's only a good one if the work sites decide, on their own, to educate their employees. Government should not mandate this.
   Volunteer-based community education? People could volunteer to teach topics, and youth (as well as others) could take whatever classes they wanted, for no more money than it takes to rent the hall where the class is held. Or, you could pay the teachers. If you have 20 students, and you have six one-hour classes and you are paying your teachers $20 an hour, that's only $6 a day per student. You will probably have more than 20 students, and teachers will probably teach more than just one one-hour class a day, but the cost for paying them remains $6 a day per student.
   Call it cooperative higher education (CHE) and make it a movement, and reclaim our right to a reasonably priced education.
   The key is going to be finding inexpensive halls to rent. Perhaps this will prevent one-site cooperatives. They might need to rent a recreation center at a housing development for one class, and an available room at city hall for another. Their classes might be scattered, but the program will still work. Maybe you design your cooperative so you do, indeed, keep all the classes at one site, renting a work place and holding the classes just in the evening after the company's workers have all gone home.
   Leave the universities open. Remember the law of supply and demand? Remember what competition can do to an economy? Imagine, if you will, how this will re-infuse free-market competition into our education system and wonder if it will not affect tuition charges. Once colleges and universities see that the cooperatives are able to do it while charging the students only for the room rental and $6 a day to pay the instructors, they probably will find a way to lower their tuition rates.