During a Never Back Down town hall on Saturday in Cedar Rapids, Ron DeSantis said he had a plan to target “ineffective programs” at universities.
DeSantis, delivering familiar remarks blasting Joe Biden administration proposals to discharge certain student loans, said students were “sold a bill of goods” by universities that steered them into programs without economic utility.
“We’re going to make the universities responsible for backing the student loans and guess what will happen? They’re not going to want to do zombie studies if the student isn’t going to be able to be gainfully employed and then they’re going to get stuck with the loan.”
“So you’re going to see big changes as a result of that. We need to stop subsidizing ineffective programs at these universities and we need to get this right,” DeSantis said. “And I think that that’s going to make a big, big difference.”
The concept plays into remarks the Governor made when rolling out his “Declaration of Economic Independence” in New Hampshire earlier this week, where he maligned a “broken university system” that leads graduates to be “deep in debt” with uncertain job prospects.
Addressing the student loan crisis, DeSantis said he had “sympathy” for students “sold a bill of goods” by universities that increased “administrative bloat.” He said in New Hampshire that universities should be responsible for non-performing degrees, adding that he now believes student loans should be “dischargeable in bankruptcy.”
President Biden pushed to make those loans non-dischargeable early in the 2000s as a Senator, but DeSantis did not mention that then.
DeSantis did not revisit the proposal to make student loans eligible to be wiped out in bankruptcy in Iowa, however, yet another seeming example of how the 2024 candidate tailors pitches to different audiences.
The post Ron DeSantis plans to target ‘ineffective programs’ at universities by putting them on the hook for student loans appeared first on Florida Politics – Campaigns & Elections. Lobbying & Government..