A Call to Red Letter Christians

     Red Letter Christians are followers of Jesus who try to live out those words of Jesus which in many Bibles are highlighted with red letters. Among those red letters we read in Luke 4:18 that Jesus declared that He was ordained to announce “the acceptable year of our Lord.” Bible scholars explain that He was referring to the Year of Jubilee. In that year, as we read in Leviticus 25, all debts are to be cancelled. College and university students would welcome a Jubilee right now because so many of them are head over heels in debt resulting from student loans. In response, we Red Letter Christians are committed to doing everything possible to lift that burden which, in many instances, hinders students from pursuing their hoped-for goals for their lives.

     Consider that a married couple with two four-year degrees actually experiences a lifetime loss of nearly $208,000. The majority of the class of 2016 will move back in with their parents and will lack the means to buy homes, cars and other trappings of middle-class life. This will not only impact them but will have negative effects on the American economy. It is not surprising that many students default on student loans, and there are many economists who predict that this, in turn, will have the same effect as did the defaulting on house mortgages which brought on the devastating recession of 2008. The federal government is now in the hole for more than a trillion dollars over the failure to pay back student loans. The signs of the times are scary.

     The major culprits who will be responsible for such a possible crisis would not be the type of students in liberal arts colleges, such as Eastern, but those drop-out students from those mostly online “for-profit” universities like Phoenix University or the now infamous Trump University. A large percentage of these students will fail to complete their degree programs, and a significant proportion of them will leave their student debts behind. These for-profit universities need not worry about this since the U.S. government guaranteed those loans, so these schools and lending banks that support these loans lose nothing. It’s the American taxpayers who have to pick up the bill.

     While students at those for-profit universities make up only 12 percent of enrolled students in four-year programs, these students make up 44 percent of defaulted federally-funded student loans. Added to these realities is the painful result of those who do graduate: many will end up with degrees that prove worthless in the marketplace. That’s not surprising when we learn that only 17 percent of what the for-profit universities collect in tuition is spent on teaching, while 42 percent is spent on marketing their programs.

     This is a bipartisan rip-off. While the Oct. 13 edition of The New York Review of Books (from which I drew most of these facts and figures) takes a shot at Donald Trump’s university, it also takes a shot at former president Bill Clinton who, as Honorary Chancellor of the for-profit Laureate International Universities, received $17.6 million over five years. Then, when the stockholders of such schools get the dividends from their investments, it is easy to recognize that not much of the paid-up tuition is left for education.

     What can be done about all of this? In reality, much can be done, and the Red Letter Christians movement is going to mobilize to change things. That’s why you should sign up as a Red Letter Christian on our website, redletterchristians.org, so we’ll know how to get in touch with you and call you into action. Check out our blog to keep up with directives of what we can do together.

     Source: The New York Review of Books