Colleges suing students?

Wow, alright, I am drowning in a pile of unfinished blog drafts over here. I have a total of 14 unfinished posts  in my queue just from the last week, so I'm just gonna go ahead and post a few of them, rapid-fire style, just to get some of this stuff out there. You might get a little less of my ranting and raving in these posts than you'd usually expect, but maybe that's a good thing. And hey, it's better than another link dump, right?

First up, I'll consider this post to be an update on the burgeoning student loan crisis about which I've written numerous times. Per Bloomberg,

Needy U.S. borrowers are defaulting on almost $1 billion in federal student loans earmarked for the poor, leaving schools such as Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania with little choice except to sue their graduates. 

The record defaults on federal Perkins loans may jeopardize the prospects of current students since they are part of a revolving fund that colleges give to students who show extraordinary financial hardship. 

Yale, Penn and George Washington University have all sued former students over nonpayment, court records show. While no one tracks the number of lawsuits, students defaulted on $964 million in Perkins loans in the year ended June 2011, 20 percent more than five years earlier, government data show. Unlike most student loans -- distributed and collected by the federal government -- Perkins loans are administered by colleges, which use repayment money to lend to other poor students. 

The increase in the amount of defaulted loans among poor students comes as President Barack Obama says he wants to expand access to college for working-class families and increase funding for the Perkins program. Under his proposal, the pot for Perkins loans would increase to $8.5 billion from about $1 billion. The Education Department would service the loans instead of colleges.

Oh, this is gonna be fun... leave it to Yale, right? As is mentioned later in the article, student loan debt has soared in the last several years (total debt outstanding now exceeds $1 trillion, more than our nation's aggregate credit card debt), as tuition costs have gone nowhere but up in a world flush with government-guaranteed debt.

As Karl Denninger writes (okay, rants),

Let's cut the crap -- colleges market themselves to young men and women on the premise that their educational services will provide you a means to get a better job than you would otherwise obtain.  That's the entire purpose of a career-focused education and the only justification for the outrageous tuition charges they assess. 

Well, as it turns out if you fail to benefit from the alleged "education" that these people sold you, and in the process you borrowed money using Perkins loans, the college is very likely to come after you, including in court! 

Oh, and lest you think they'll just sue to the principal and accrued interest, nope. 

As I've pointed out to a number of High Schoolers contemplating going to college and taking out loans, there are statutory penalties that apply if you default.  In the case of Perkins loans these amount to an additional 30% of the principal, increasing to 40% on a second collection attempt and another 40% on top of that if they sue. 

That basically doubles the amount you owe. 

Of course colleges don't talk about this before you matriculate.  After all, "education" as offered in these edifices is only partial, and the representations, both expressed and implied are many -- but the warranties few.

Yikes. The implications of the student loan crisis could well be far-reaching, and it's a dynamic that we'll need to keep our eye on over the next few years, because a lot of these institutions are proving to be ruthless when it comes time to collect payment.

In the meantime, I'm hoping we see some guts from the students who are being sued—let's see a countersuit from the unemployed (or underemployed) college graduates against their colleges and universities, alleging fraudulent marketing and failure to deliver on the promises made. The suits may have little merit, but I think it's the lender's (and not the borrower's) responsibility to determine the creditworthiness of the borrower. If they made bad loans to bad students, they should be forced to pay the price. That's how loans are supposed to work, period.

[Bloomberg]
[Market Ticker]

Another Yale update (and a mea culpa)

Sigh... it serves me right for praising a Yalie, really. I should've known I'd come away from this situation with egg on my face.

Back in November, I discussed the Patrick Witt/Rhodes Scholarship story on two separate occasions (here and here), praising Witt for prioritizing his commitment to his team and school over his personal ambitions for the Rhodes Scholarship. I also had some harsh words for the Rhodes committee, whom I depicted as rigid and detached from the original mission of their foundation's benefactor.

Yesterday, the New York Times revealed that it was Witt who was more deserving of scorn, for being (at best) duplicitous in his dealings with the media. As a result, I (and many others in the assorted national media) have come away scrambling for cover this morning.

On Nov. 13, Patrick J. Witt, Yale University’s star quarterback, announced that he had withdrawn his Rhodes scholarship application and would instead play against Harvard six days later, at the very time of the required Rhodes interview. His apparent choice of team fealty over individual honor capped weeks of admiring national attention on this accomplished student and his quandary. 

But Witt was no longer a contender for the Rhodes, a rare honor reserved for those who excel in academics, activities and character. Several days earlier, according to people involved on both sides of the process, the Rhodes Trust had learned through unofficial channels that a fellow student had accused Witt of sexual assault. The Rhodes Trust informed Yale and Witt that his candidacy was suspended unless the university decided to re-endorse it.

Witt’s accuser has not gone to the police, nor filed what Yale considers a formal complaint. The New York Times has not spoken with her and does not know her name.

Witt, who is 22, is no longer enrolled at Yale. He completed his class work last semester, is working on his senior essay and has been training in California in preparation for a possible N.F.L. career, according to the Yale athletics Web site. Witt did not respond to messages left over several days on his cellphone, his Yale e-mail and his Facebook page.

To be clear, I don't mean to imply that Witt is guilty of the sexual assault charge, or that his Rhodes application deserved to be suspended (I've learned my lesson in this case as far as jumping to conclusions is concerned). But suspended it was, and Witt deserves a wag of the finger for allowing the media to praise him for a choice that was ultimately not a choice, after all.

This revelation is just the latest Rhodes-related disaster to come out of New Haven in recent months, following the resignation of Yale's head coach Tom Williams for his own Rhodes Scholarship misrepresentations. I don't know what's going on down at Yale, but it's at the very least a bit odd. What Yale knew and didn't know (and what the Rhodes committee did and didn't know) is difficult to discern at this point, because both institutions are swearing confidentiality on the matters at hand.

But both Witt and Yale could have saved themselves quite a bit of negative attention here if they had just been candid about things from the beginning. Instead, both player and institution are deservedly being portrayed as incompetent and duplicitous, a situation that easily could have been avoided.

As for me, I think I'll just stick with my gut going forward, and criticize Yale and all Yalies by default. It's way more fun that way, anyway. And now I can be happy about Harvard's blowout victory over Witt and the Yalies without reservation--not that I really had any reservations to begin with.

[New York Times]

Yale update

My friends down in New Haven tried to sneak this one past me by reporting it on a Friday afternoon (standard P.R. practice), but I caught it eventually. In keeping with my tradition of trying to update past topics on the blog, I'll do so here.

You may remember my post in the immediate aftermath of the tragic fatal accident at this year's Harvard-Yale tailgate, in which I shared my opinion that the Yale administration would most likely ban kegs and U-Hauls as a means of "doing something", even though such a policy would be unlikely to help the overall situation, as it has not at Harvard. I wrote then:

I think that the memory of the deceased woman deserves better than this kind of kneejerk reaction, just as I think that the memory of the 9/11 victims deserves better than the disaster that is the TSA. I do think that we need to examine just why it is that college students seem so intent on drinking to excess, and blaming the venue (Lot D) or the method (U-Hauls full of kegs) doesn't do anything to address the issue at the heart of the matter. 

A woman is dead, and it is a tragedy. But we will only compound that tragedy if we use her memory as an excuse to Do Something Stupid. We may all look at this case and assume that "U-Haul full of kegs" was the problem, and that we need to eliminate U-Hauls full of kegs. But would the tragedy here--or the inherent risks  involved, or the response to the tragedy--have been any different if these women had been hit by a Chevy Suburban full of bottom shelf vodka? What if it had been a Ford Taurus full of hot dog buns? The media treatment would certainly be different, even though it's easy to argue that the tragedy at its core is no different. 

I was hopeful that Yale would take this opportunity to initiate a comprehensive review of campus life and tailgating in particular, but of course, no such luck.

Yale University has tightened its policy on tailgating after a Massachusetts woman was killed and two others injured when a U-Haul truck drove through a tailgating area at the Harvard-Yale football game in November. 

Yale will no longer permit kegs at university athletic events or functions, according to the revised policies released Thursday. The school said the policy is consistent with practices at many other universities, including Princeton and Harvard. 

Yale also said oversized vehicles, such as box trucks or large commercial vehicles, will not be allowed in university lots at athletic events unless driven by a preapproved authorized vendor. Student tailgating will end at kickoff, and all students and guests will be required to leave the student tailgating area.

Ultimately, this is a predictable, safe, and completely disappointing response from Yale. The result will undoubtedly be quite similar to the result at Harvard--students will drink just as much, but they will do it in private residences far away from the security staff and police presence that exists at the tailgating areas. If they do come to the tailgating area, they'll come armed with flasks full of cheap liquor, instead of kegs.

Is that safer? No, of course not. The risks to student safety will remain (and perhaps even be amplified), they will just be shifted elsewhere, farther from the public eye. I'm not surprised by Yale's response in the least, but I am disappointed. They had a chance to make bold moves, and so far it seems that they've squandered that opportunity.

[WTNH]

About what happened on Saturday

I didn't bother to hide my excitement here in the leadup to last weekend's Harvard-Yale game in New Haven. Harvard's bid for a perfect Ivy League season--in combination with the Patrick Witt saga--made for one of the more intriguing storylines in recent years, and I was disappointed that I couldn't be there like I am for most Games.

But as my friends were preparing for their tailgates outside Yale Bowl, piling into Lot D as they do in every odd-numbered year, things took an unexpected and tragic turn, one that would turn Harvard's blowout victory into a mere footnote.

A driver of a U-Haul truck carrying beer kegs through a tailgating area before the Yale-Harvard game Saturday suddenly accelerated, fatally striking a 30-year-old Massachusetts woman and injuring two other women, police said.

It's not clear why the driver sped up, New Haven Police spokesman David Hartman said. The truck then crashed into other U-Haul vans in the lot, an open playing field used for pre-game tailgating parties before Yale home games in New Haven. 

Needless to say, when this news first broke on ESPN's College GameDay, my heart leapt up into my throat. The accident took place at the entrance to the aforementioned Lot D, and things struck just a little bit close to home. I tailgate in that lot regularly, and I've even driven a U-Haul truck into it on multiple occasions in the past. When The Game is in New Haven, Lot D becomes a home away from home for me.

Not surprisingly, no word about the identity of the deceased woman was immediately forthcoming, and I was therefore left to worry and hope that none of my close friends were involved. Given how many people I know who fit the "30-year-old Massachusetts woman" description--and who would have been tailgating in that lot--it was a pretty unsettling afternoon, to say the least.

I was relieved to learn that I knew none of the victims (I use that word loosely, as I don't intend to indicate or assume that a crime was committed), and I then shifted my thinking to wondering what the aftermath of the incident might look like. And that, ultimately, is the focus of this post.

It seems inevitable that there will be some sort of policy response from the Yale athletic department, in the form of tailgating restrictions at future Games. There is always pressure on administration officials to "Do Something" in the aftermath of a great tragedy, even if that "Something" would have done little or nothing to prevent the original incident.

The battle lines were very quickly drawn in this story, even before any meaningful details of the matter had been determined. Nearly every article (including the NY Times story cited above) took great pains to mention that the U-Haul truck was "full of kegs", strongly implying that it was a relevant detail in the accident.

Despite the fact that the driver of the truck passed a field sobriety test, and that there are some indications that an equipment malfunction may be to blame, public opinion had already been shaped to the point that the victim's mother--still grieving and trying to sort out the facts--knew only that her daughter had been "hit by a U-Haul full of alcohol". Facts be damned, the Cliff Notes for this tragedy had already been written.

As we try to sort through this incident, one element that won't change is that "U-Haul full of kegs" will have been determined to be the cause of death, and this will be assumed to be relevant. Harvard has already banned both kegs and U-Hauls at its tailgates, and Yale seems almost certain to follow its lead. The lingering question is, will it matter?

Harvard first banned kegs at its tailgates in 2000, while I was a student there. The primary argument that I remember at the time--when keg bans were very much in vogue at Boston-area colleges--was that kegs were a "symbol of binge drinking", and that eliminating them would temper binge drinking. I called bullshit then, and I'm calling bullshit now. If you want a real "symbol of binge drinking", I'll show you a 9-dollar handle of bottom-shelf vodka. Popov was always a favorite; Aristocrat was a winner, too.

The irony of kegs--an irony lost on most administrators--is that while they may indeed have looked like a symbol of binge drinking, they were in fact the administration's best friend. Beer, with its high water content and low alcohol content, is in fact the alcoholic beverage least likely to directly result in alcohol poisoning. The administration should have been doing all they could to encourage the drinking of beer, and to discourage the drinking of cheap wine and rot-gut liquor.

Unsurprisingly to those who knew better, the keg ban was a disaster. In the first year of the keg ban (2002), alcohol poisoning cases skyrocketed, leading to calls from student newspapers to reverse the ban entirely for the next home Game. Some accommodations were indeed made, but not enough to turn back the clock entirely. From what I have learned and witnessed at recent Games in Cambridge, less drinking is happening on-site, and now much more drinking is happening off-site, away from the watchful eyes of Harvard and Boston Police.

Is this outcome safer, or better, for anyone? Almost certainly, it is not. Ironically, the safest outcome for all involved is for these students to drink tons of beer in the immediate presence of dozens of uniformed officers--drinking bottom shelf liquor, or drinking where nobody is watching, is dramatically less safe. But the one thing such a policy does accomplish is a decrease in the likelihood of a "Harvard student dies at tailgate" headline in the newspaper, one like we saw this weekend. Note that it does not dramatically increase the likelihood of a tragic incident--it only changes who gets the blame if and when it occurs.

Ultimately, I am confident (in a pessimistic way) that Yale will end up pursuing some sort of counterproductive policy in the near future, in the name of "Doing Something". Tragically, "Doing Something" very often means "making the problem worse" or "creating a new problem". That's how we ended up with the TSA in this country, radiating and/or groping all of us as we try to board airplanes. Are the airplanes--or U.S. citizens--any safer as a result? Who cares? We "Did Something", and that's our job as administrators--results be damned.

I think that the memory of the deceased woman deserves better than this kind of kneejerk reaction, just as I think that the memory of the 9/11 victims deserves better than the disaster that is the TSA. I do think that we need to examine just why it is that college students seem so intent on drinking to excess, and blaming the venue (Lot D) or the method (U-Hauls full of kegs) doesn't do anything to address the issue at the heart of the matter.

A woman is dead, and it is a tragedy. But we will only compound that tragedy if we use her memory as an excuse to Do Something Stupid. We may all look at this case and assume that "U-Haul full of kegs" was the problem, and that we need to eliminate U-Hauls full of kegs. But would the tragedy here--or the inherent risks involved, or the response to the tragedy--have been any different if these women had been hit by a Chevy Suburban full of bottom shelf vodka? What if it had been a Ford Taurus full of hot dog buns? The media treatment would certainly be different, even though it's easy to argue that the tragedy at its core is no different.

Here's hoping that sanity prevails here, and that we can all in fact learn something and make real progress, rather than spinning our wheels for the benefit of newspaper headlines. Unfortunately, history indicates that the "Do Something" outcome is infinitely more likely. Sad.

[NY Times]

More well-deserved praise of Patrick Witt

I first wrote about Yale quarterback Patrick Witt's tough decision to withdraw from the Rhodes Scholarship process earlier this week, and now Deadspin has taken on the issue and heaped praise on Witt (at the expense of the Rhodes committee).

Yale quarterback Patrick Witt withdrew his application for a Rhodes Scholarship this week, after the Rhodes committee informed him that he would have to skip the Harvard-Yale game to attend his scholarship interview. ESPN.com quoted the American Secretary for the Rhodes Trust, Elliot F. Gerson as saying, "We have candidates every year miss games for the interview."

And so here we have yet another parable about sports and academics and the degeneration of priorities—but not Witt's. Witt did the right thing, or the best thing he could do, when confronted with intransigent prigs and weasels.

Gerson, in speaking with ESPN, emphasized that the Rhodes is an "academic award," not—"despite some popular perception of it"—an award for scholar-athletes. This is doublespeak, at best...

Gee, where did that popular perception come from, that sports is integral to being a Rhodes Scholar?... Here's what [scholarship benefactor Cecil Rhodes' will] had to say:

My desire being that the students who shall be elected to the Scholarships shall not be merely bookworms I direct that in the election of a student to a Scholarship regard shall be had to

(i.) his literary and scholastic attainments

(ii.) his fondness of and success in manly outdoor sports such as cricket football and the like

(iii.) his qualities of manhood truth courage devotion to duty sympathy for the protection of the weak kindliness unselfishness and fellowship

and

(iv.) his exhibition during school days of moral force of character and of instincts to lead and to take an interest in his schoolmates for those latter attributes will be likely in after-life to guide him to esteem the performance of public duty as his highest aim.

... But set aside Cecil Rhodes's specific, strong endorsement of "manly outdoor sports." Times do change. (Rhodes also wanted to create a secret society to unify the world under an all-powerful British Empire.) What about the other criteria the American Rhodes Trust says it wants? "Devotion to duty." "Unselfishness." "Instincts to lead."

The Rhodes Trust says that Witt should have ditched his responsibilities as the starting quarterback, abandoned his teammates in their biggest game of the year, and flown off to pursue an individual reward. This would have demonstrated that he had the proper character to be a Rhodes Scholar.

Amen. As hard as it is for me to praise a Yalie (and as much as I'd like to see Witt lose tomorrow), he undoubtedly made the only choice that he could have given his commitments and responsibilities as a teammate. The Rhodes committee deserves at least some of the scorn that it is receiving for its intransigence--and as I previously noted in my original post, if the committee has any true commitment to its founder's cause, it will remember and reward Witt's decision in the future.

It's rare these days to see a person actually stand up for his principles and sacrifice his personal goals for those of a team (particularly when the team is technically playing for nothing but pride), and I think that deserves to be praised. Sometimes the tough decisions are the most important ones to get right, even when the right decision may force us to make sacrifices in the short run. Over the long term, Witt's loyalty will be rewarded--even if it's not the Rhodes committee that rewards it.

[Deadspin]