Let's say you went to a corrupt for-profit college that engaged in fraudulent recruiting practices, spent more on advertising than education, and was eventually shut down by the government for noncompliance with requests for data on graduation rates and job placements. You might feel just a little ripped off, mightn't you? Well, you are clearly What's Wrong With America Today, because according to Fox's Neil Cavuto and friends, you're a whiny victim taker who takes no responsibility for their actions.
Fifteen former students of the now-defunct Corinthian College, a wonderful little student loan scam masquerading as a vocational school that we reported on in July, have gone on a debt strike to try to convince the federal government to forgive their student loans.
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If the college was bad enough to be shut down by the feds, then maybe, they reason, the money they were bilked out of should be written off. Corinthian, which operated schools under several different names, is facing over 200 lawsuits for its deceptive recruiting and lending practices. Even so, Cavuto and company worked themselves into a fine Corinthian lather over these whiny little titty babies thinking that just because they thought they were investing in an education, they should be let off the hook for falling for a scam:
Irresponsible millennials! False sense of entitlement! Takers! Elizabeth Warren supporters! What a sad pass we've come to in U.S. America where people feel they can just walk away from their obligations. Who do they think they are, some kind of multinational corporation dropping its pension plan to improve its profits?
Co-host Dagen McDowell was just disgusted by the whole sorry spectacle of people irresponsibly wasting money on education, exclaiming, "Why does anybody think it’s a good idea to take out $200,000 in debt and then go study poetry?" What a bunch of maroons and effete useless pinheads!
Not that anyone at any of Corinthian's scam-schools would have been studying poetry anyway, considering they were allegedly vocational training schools -- dental hygienists, accounting, computers and the like. They were also incredibly poor training programs that took tons of student loans and provided near-useless training. The main thing is, no way should anyone think that blowing a lot of money on some useless artsy fartsy classes in poetry will get you ahead int he world, If you want to be a success in life, you should major in something practical like Dagen McDowell did: Art History. As "Because Finance Is Boring" gleefully points out, here's a tidbit from Ms. McDowell's IMDB entry:
And as luck would have it, they point out, a four-year degree in art history from Wake Forest would cost roughly $188,480 today. In tuition alone. But hey, if it prepares you to slag on people who are on the verge of bankruptcy for trying to improve themselves (and failing -- let's remember to point out that they are failures) at a school that turned out to be a scam, then McDowell's degree has paid for itself. She's certainly an artist, all right. In the timeless medium of bullshit.
[Because Finance Is Boring / Newsweek / WSJ / Image by John McNamee, piecomic.com. Used by permission.]
