powered by cable. >> washington journal continues. host: we are back to talk about student loan debt forgiveness. we are joined by jared bass, of the center of american progress, senior vice president for education there, and preston cooper is a senior fellow at the

foundation for research on equal opportunity. gentlemen, welcome to both of you. tell us a bit about the foundation for research on equal opportunities. guest: it's a nonprofit nonpartisan think tank focused on using market-based solutions to lower the cost-of-living for everyday americans. host: in the center for american progress? guest: we are a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on building things like inclusive economy, tackling racial injustice, climate change, and of course, education. host: here is the article from nbc news, "biden announces new plans for student debt relief for millions. -- millions." this is the second attempt, so what's different this time? guest: the plan this time, plan b, focuses on categories of borrowers unlike the broad-based options the president first

pursued and announced in 2022. or at least that was proposed. this time, you know, the first group of borrowers centers on those who have been paying interest or have been paying more than what they took out because of interest on their loans. people who have been paying for 25 years or more. providing forgiveness for them. looking at folks who have been in low financial value programs, opportunities there, and another group of borrowers providing forgiveness, if they qualify under other plans. the fed group is looking at hardship. we are seeing a more targeted approach as we look at the new initiative for debt cancellation. the first time they use the heroes act, for international emergencies. this time they are doing under the higher education act of 1965. host: preston, do you see this

as different from what was rejected by the supreme court and the reasons it was rejected? guest: it's a different legal strategy but at its core, i don't think it is fundamentally different. at its core, it's illegal, the president doesn't have the ability to forgive student loans by executive fiat. and even the narrative that it is more targeted, the actual plan is not very well targeted. this economic hardship category would essentially be a black box for the secretary of education to forgive whatever student loans he wants to forgive. there are no real parameters around what constitutes a hardship. this could end up being just as expensive and costly as the loan forgiveness plan that was struck down by the supreme court. host: you mentioned the big focus would be on accrued interest. give us a sense of how many people would be impacted by that. and the borrowers who have been

paying for years but haven't made a dent in their principal. guest: the administration released numbers this week, we don't have all the estimates that are out there. i don't want to misquote, but i think it is around 20 million or so that would fall into that category, that group of people who have taken out loans and actually owe more than what they originally took out because of interest. i know that the plan as of a hole under all four categories would help about 30 million borrowers, but i think it's around 20 million, that first group. the administration has different numbers out there for that. host: you could be paying back for years and just never get to principal? guest: yes. even under some plans, if you are paying less, making payments but it's less than what would cover principal and interest, you are paying the interest and that's compounded on the loan. then you end up paying back more

than what you took out. that's just the structure of the loan program, they charge interest right now. fixed interest rate right now about 5.5% for unsubsidized student loans that people are taking out, the interest is for the life of the loan. host: it varies widely, depending on the type of degrees -- this is from nerd wallet -- this is the average debt for the type of degree. bachelors degree, average of 29,000. other ones, say for instance, law school, 132. dental school, nearly $300,000 in debt. preston, you have written an article called student loan cancellation enters the crystal ball era. what does that mean? guest: referring to the hardship authority the secretary of education is claiming in order

to forgive student loans. essentially, this is a black box, a crystal ball. the secretary of education looks at a bunch of different factors, they don't exactly say which factors. they give themselves wide authority to use different factors to basically assess whether a borrower is in hardship and they say well, if the borrower is in hardship, we have the authority to forgive the loans in full, current and future borrowers, and there are no rules around what constitutes a hardship and what kinds of students are experiencing severe difficulty paying back their loans and what just seems like a hardship. what is the secretary of education just calling hardship for the purposes of doing mass loan forgiveness again because they were denied the first time? host: we will open our phone lines. this is how they are split up this time. if you have student loan debt currently, call us on (202) 748-8000.

if you have already paid off your student loans, (202) 748-8001. everybody else can call us on (202) 748-8002. you can also text us at (202) 748-8003. we are on facebook and on x. preston, we touched on this a little bit, but what are the legal challenges that you think this might face? guest: it's the same kind of issue, a major questions issue. using it as a rule that will costs hundreds of billions of dollars, that's not the authority that congress gives away like that. he needs to be explicitly authorized through congress and signed by the president. none of that happens here. for the exact same reason that the supreme court struck down the original plan, which would have caused about $400 billion,

i expect the courts will find the new plan is legal simply because the secretary of education does not have the authority to forgive this volume of student loans without congressional say so. host: what do you think of that, jared? guest: i disagree. the authority being used at this time is under hga, paragraph a, subsection a, dealing with waiver, compromise, and release of student loans. it's a pretty broad authority. he's using the same regulatory authority he has used for other repayment plans. if you think about the pay as you earn plan, which came out under president obama, successful, the legality was not challenged, those plans still exist and that's the savings -- same authority being used here for cancellation. there is also a congressional opportunity for cancellation already built in, right now, through teacher loan forgiveness, ps lf, you name it, the forgiveness exists and has

been approved already. this was a law or written by congress that provided this authority to the secretary and the secretary is exercising that authority through the plan, through the alternative. host: do we know about how much this will costs if the loans are forgiven? guest: not right now, that will come out with the final details, there will be a section described in the process around what the plan costs. host: mark is up first from jefferson, colorado. caller: how you doing? ok, i firmly believe -- this is my opinion, my opinion only, as you talk about student loans back and back-and-forth, back-and-forth, nobody mentions the g.i. bill. i put myself in college on the g.i. bill, as my brothers did, as my father did, as my grandfather did. i have never met a veteran with a student loan.

in fact why, for the life of me i do not understand that you don't push this issue. five to six years of your life, you get a college degree. now at the same time that this all happens, we are listening to people paying interest for 20 and 25 years, as one of your speakers has said. how many people have a mortgage? how many have a new car, boat, or rv instead of paying off their student loan? they are playing and buying toys. you can drive an older car. you don't need an rv. you can rent one. why? why doesn't anybody talk about this? why doesn't anyone express this? let's take the conversation a bit further than -- i'm sorry i can't pay my student moan. how many of these folks have turned around and quit college?

you listed the categories. doctors, phd's, lawyers, it costs money to educate yourself. those are folks who make way more money than the average person in the populace. let's talk about this, they make all kinds of money. when you quit paying on your student loan, maybe you ought to be drafted for four years and we will waive your loan in exchange for four years to six years of service. host: all right, let's get an answer. jared? guest: i believe that there are service members who do have student loans. i don't think it's as common in the student populace.

i want to thank veterans for their service, but it isn't the only avenue or opportunity when it comes to education. there are people within the population who won't have that opportunity under the g.i. bill. it's great that they have those, but for those who can, we need to make sure we have a functioning student loan system that works for everyone. the gentleman talked about org edges and things like that, you can't live on your student loan and your education. it's different, fundamentally different. i support having doctors and lawyers and such, i believe we need them, but those are expensive degrees. particular, there might be a payoff 20 years later, but upfront costs, we are seeing a

decline in real challenges when it comes to the profession, given the high-cost. host: what do you think?

another way for debt forgiveness. we can put these students, they can pay off their loans, maybe four years of giving back. something like that. where they are getting the necessary skills, but we are giving back to them the amount of money that we are going to pay off in that loan. there is another way.

my name is lehr way and i'm running as a republican and i hope to be written in come november. host: all right, good luck with that. go ahead, jared. guest: i wish you luck in his race. the first piece of this is yes, student loans are expensive. it's not just people coming from those backgrounds. the amount of debt that people carry has risen. $3500 in 1990 to like he thousand 22. i would also say that this is not the only strategy when it comes to addressing the problem of student loans, starting the obama administration it was another impact cost-saving measure, keeping costs down and providing affordable actions for

people. also, there are a bunch of proposals that the president unleashed or unveiled in the last month. one is the reducing college costs fund, $12 billion to look at how we actually keep costs down while providing these other opportunities through cancellation to better the system as a whole. it's a multipronged approach. host: chris is in manassas, virginia, and has student loan debt. caller: my issue is twofold. i have tried over the past year multiple times, 30 times, probably, to call, and i have waited half an hour, 45 minutes, i can never get through to the loan holder, servicer, whatever you call them. that is in addition to emails. no response from any emails for ever -- for a year.

i'm almost 65. my wife became a paraplegic. i'm supposed to prep her for getting ready for retirement and i have $40,000 in student loan debt and i can't even talk to them about maybe getting a more appropriate amount, consider we all if i for wong -- long-term medicaid, no significant assets, they take half of everything and anything. if we were to sell the house to downgrade to something smaller and use the equity as something to live off of in addition to retirement, i would, they would take half the equity in the house. i don't know, it's a grip -- broken system and i cannot even communicate with the loan servicer. i'm trying to prep for retirement. host: what kind of degree do you have? guest: it's a bachelors in geographic information systems and global mapping. host: and you are getting ready

to retire? guest: i would love to. i went to school in 2010 for this degree, graduated with honors in 2012. i hit a wall of age discrimination. i got nothing. all my history was in blue-collar work, repairing aircraft, now i fix commercial kitchen equipment. the employer is not the problem. my income is not the problem. it's just that the debt, my wife's disability, etc., has loaded me at a time when i'm looking at retiring, age wise. host: all right, preston? guest: it's an important issue, the problem around administering the student loan program and it turns out the federal government is not good at running the loan program. when people try to get in touch with servicers, to get their

payments started up again, they can be on hold for two or three hours, they could call 30 times, as chris said. those are the issues that we need to address here. i wish the department would devote more time to doing the hard work of cleaning up student aid administration, making the program simpler to navigate, making sure people can get in touch with servicers to get in touch with the right repayment plan. they are in stand putting their ener into the student loan forgiveness plan, something that will give them favorable headlines, maybe help them get through an election, but it's not the hard work of making sure the program functions and i'm worried that in chasing these high profile loan cancellations, the department of education has neglected the hard work of governing. guest: i believe that the administration is trying to improve the student loan system as a whole, from obama to trump,

biden, we have done just that, a service platform to change the system and a promise from congress, it has been flat funded for a while, some of that is due to cancellations, but there are real investments that they have been asking for from congress to say that look, we have all acknowledged there have been problems here, but we really need congress to be investing in the administration loan programs in the belief that we have that the office of federal student aid can do so. host: eric, new jersey, good morning. caller: i just wanted to point out that we should be operating under a sense of fairness. i think that biden is potentially alienating at least half of a dozen groups with this nonsense of pandering in order to get votes by forgiving student loans.

let me explain very briefly. if you had people that saved up for their children's education and didn't go on those vacations, i wish biden would tell me eric, guess what, we will replenish your 401(k) that you had to dip into two pay for your kid's education. there are students who didn't go to better colleges on account of the loan situation. other students who stayed home and commuted and didn't live in dorms. you have all these groups. now all of a sudden there is a forgiveness program for a very select group of people and it basically, it pokes people in the eye that have made life decisions and sacrifices only to be betrayed like this. host: what do you think about the idea that it's fundamentally unfair to the people who made sacrifices? guest: i don't think it's

unfair. we have public policy set up to benefit certain categories of people, and that's ok, as long as there is a rationale to help in advance those interests. the opportunities provided to others when debt was not as high, 1990 and beyond, you could pay back a student loan because the original principal was so low. it's not the case anymore. some of that has changed because of the fundamental rising costs. the student loans may not be like those of years past. i don't think that people should have to sacrifice and soldier on, when we had to have the opportunity to soldier on, taking a look at that to see that we need to make some changes here, it shouldn't be that difficult to access the opportunities in the american dream. host: he mentioned rising costs.

it's going up way past the cost-of-living increases. others are saying that college isn't worth it anymore, i'm not going to get the economic benefit of what i am going to have to put in. what you think about that in the impact of that long term? guest: rising college costs are absolutely an important issue we need to be discussing, but i'm worried that student loan forgiveness doesn't address the issue of underlying rising college costs. the issue is that they feel like they can because they feel they will be subsidized by the federal government and colleges are not holding up their bargain in the terms of using the value they expect from a higher education. a lot of students will end up with a degree that doesn't have a lot of labor market value. we should say to colleges that if you need to continue

participating in these federal grant programs, getting these federal loan dollars, you have to start showing value, keep costs down, it degrees if you have labor market elements. if we forgive loans without holding colleges accountable for what they are producing, we are just kicking the can down the road and be back here five years from now. host: jared? guest: i think we should hold counted out -- colleges accountable, i agree on that. how we do that, there might be disagreement, but we need to make sure that colleges have skin in the game when it comes to this. it shouldn't just be the federal government's problem. we need participation guest: guest: from colleges. -- participation from colleges. host: moses, lake elmo. good morning. caller: the president and the executive branch does not print money. they have no authority to pay anything at all. it has to go through the purse,

which is congress. second, democrats always complain about price gouging. it's price gouging on these educational so-called institutions charging so much for people to go to school. maybe they should look at that. the democratic party has solidified the notion that they do not represent the working man. i never went to college. i don't expect anybody to pay for my bill. somehow, you want to bribe people and pay them off to get your vote? thank you very much. host: jared? guest: higher education is not the only option. pursuing other options like apprenticeships and career oriented programming for individuals to be able to do that, there's workforce innovation opportunity act reauthorization. our organization looks at

workforce opportunities to see what is the right way and i understand that there are alternatives and other policies folks are advancing to help people in the general men's situation. host: mary lou, new jersey. hi. caller: good morning. first of all, i want to say i'm very pleased to see you have both points of view on this. i wish we could have more of this on "washington journal." regarding the student loan issue, two things bother me. first of all, i'm going to echo what a lot of previous callers have said. they need to investigate the costs of college and why the costs are so exorbitant. when you think about what some of these colleges are teaching our students, that is another issue. as far as college loan payback,

i paid my back for 10 years as a hardship. i had to do without. we have another problem in this country in the area of responsibility. when you take out a loan for whatever, college, car, house, you are signing an agreement that you will be responsible to pay back the loan. now, to expect people who have already paid loans or already had loans, either because they chose not to go to college and couldn't afford it to pay these debts is totally responsible. i agree with many previous callers. i think that joe biden is using this as nothing more than an election ploy. it's not going to work. we need responsibility in this country. the way he is going along with this is not fostering positive ideas. thank you. host: the idea of responsibility? guest: response ability is

important. there is a responsibility, i would say, on the part of the government, for programs that work. when that doesn't work in private apartments, you get your money back. if you get a defective product, you can take it back. here people are saying we have had bad experiences, it's a broken system, we have to wait for hours to speak to a servicer in order to get help, that's a system that isn't working and they should get their money back. guest: i agree that in a lot of cases, higher education is not necessarily working out the student and it is a defective product, but we can't put all of the responsibility on the taxpayer. colleges have to chip in to make students whole when the product they get, the degree, is not worth what they thought it would be in the labor markets. i think getting in the game earlier has to be a part of the conversation when we talk about longer -- loan forgiveness. guest: i agree. host: let's talk to david in

detroit, who has student loan debt. caller: i've been on the phone for 10 minutes. i'm a caller that calls in every 30 days, so i'm going to insist that i have no more than two minutes, because this is a topic that is in or mislead sensitive to me. i do have student loans. by the way, i was a veteran. the fellow that called in talking about veterans shouldn't have student loans, check your veteran status. not all veterans receive a student loan, that's one. it depends on what time you went in. i went in in 78, got out in 82. that made me a veteran of good status, out with an honorable discharge. i did not have the g.i. bill. i have always coffee veterans educational assistance program. i had to put in money and they matched it. that was my experience.

i had to take out student loans. in between there, in my working career, i had a divorce. in that divorce, i had a lapse of employment. i ended up owing money for child support. when you over child support in the--owe for child support in the state of michigan, you are a felon. the felony blindsided me. therefore, i do have student loans. i don't know if i'm going to be able to pay them back. i'm 64 years old and i don't have any assets. i'm not trying to say, you know, feel sorry for me, but i hate it when white people call in with their privilege because you had an opportunity, you might have

had an opportunity to amass assets and use a g ideal -- g.i. bill when there were black men unable to use it after world war ii because of their ethnicity. take that and please comment on that. thank you. host: preston? guest: i think one thing the gentleman referred to is the fact that he was not necessarily able to get the jobs he was hoping for with the education that he had completed. he had some specific circumstances, but that is a problem that affects a lot of folks. there was a report from a month ago showing 52% of college graduates are underemployed, not working in a job that is traditionally requiring of a college degree. they often pay a salary penalty for that. i worry that by kind of you know, encouraging more people to accrue as many degrees as possible, to get masters degrees and advanced degrees, we end up

in a situation where there are not necessarily enough jobs that require a graduate degree. people end up with a loan they cannot pay off. i don't think the solution is loan forgiveness. the issues is the whole higher education system has people getting degrees that aren't worth anything. host: columbia, pennsylvania, good morning. caller: yes. i have a quick question for both guys right here. what do you do when -- i only took out to go to a music school for television production in south beach, miami. i took out 4005 hundred dollars in 1990 to go to this school. -- $4500 to go to the school in 1990. they have been taking my income

tax since i was 21 years old. i have not been able to buy a car, house, even to this day get married, ok, because of the interest. now, they take my income tax, right? they take my income tax every time i file, right? how come my income tax, right, hasn't covered the interest in 30 years? 30 years. the interest from my income tax, right? the payments from my income tax have not cover the interest on my student loan, which the premium was only $4000. yeah, by the way, the school filed for bankruptcy after a year of being open. i only went for four months. imagine, i went to school for four months in 1990, right? it's 2024. i went to school for four months

, right? i borrowed $4000. it's 2024 and i/o $39,000 and they have been taking my income tax since i was 21. host: you owe 35 -- $39,000 because of interest? caller: and this is while they take my income tax. i have bad credit. i have had bad credit since i was about 23. you understand what i'm saying mark bad credit my whole life. i can't get married. me and my fiancé, we have been engaged for 14 years. host: let's hear from both. jared? guest: let's highlight some of the problems that we have any student loan program, the penalties are severe. if the gentleman held steve -- student loans, they garnish your wages, they take your income tax. they will continue to do that. that is what is written into the law. all of these things are a

choice. it doesn't have to be that way. we can change how we provide these loans, change the system. look at grants, we have grant programs. the situation was set up and we need to do more to keep institutions accountable. it's outrageous that a school could be let off the hook for allowing a person to go through this experience, file for bankruptcy, but that person is not allowed to file for bankruptcy in most cases. i think the government is working on that now. we really need to do a better job of making sure that the system that we have in place works for borrowers as well as taxpayers, institutions. guest: i agree on this one. i think that when people default on their student loans, the penalties associated with it are overwhelmingly punitive, completely unnecessary. we did a report a few years back

where we found that the penalties can be up to 25% of each payment. pete -- people are paying all this money towards penalties and there are no -- there is no way to pray the -- pay the principal and a $4000 loan can turn into a $40,000 loan over the course of 30 years. i don't think that that means we need to do mass loan forgiveness, though. [laughter] host: fred nessa has -- vanessa has student loan debt in virginia. hi, vanessa. guest: i have 8000 -- caller: i have a thousand dollars on the loan i took in 1995, because at my job they said i had to go back to school and i went back and got my bachelors degree. my loan was sold to about five different companies back and forth, whole bunch of this and that.

you couldn't get in contact with anybody. for all the people calling in, calling people deadbeats, i believe that a lot of people took out those loans and got them forgiven, so why can we not use that money towards the people that have student loans who actually profited from the loans? the loan that i had should have been covered by public health. however, that fell through and i don't know what is going on with that, so i am still paying mine. thank you. host: what about this argument that people got ppp loans during covid, they were well-off and people helped them. guest: that was made for a purpose, people shut down businesses -- government shut down businesses during covid saying you cannot operate. we will cut off your source of revenue, but we will give you a source of revenue to retain

staff. you don't need to lay people off or for low people. that is what ppp was designed for. it was always designed to be given as a forgivable loan and if you didn't meet the terms, the government could clawback the money. that was authorized by congress, unlike this loan forgiveness plan. ppp was a program that was always designed to be grant money disguised as a loan for administrative purposes. in retrospect, a lot of people think that ppp was not necessarily a great idea. not a great program. i don't think we want to repeat it. host: different situations? guest: there are different servicers, but at least for federal loans, you can have them transfer it.

we have people who went into the pandemic with one servicer, came out like another servicer they had never worked with before it had to go through like a whole new process, which caused some problems. especially as we had the servicers drop out. in the same way that your debt can be bought and sold, there are other lenders there to collect on it. you don't have a choice of the lender or servicer when it comes to student loans, you are assigned one. it comes down to who is servicing your loan in the system. host: can in palm bay, florida, having paid off as loans. guest: they were paid off due to a class action lawsuit. the school that i went to, i went to school for a criminal

justice degree, two degree. i owed about $80,000 for the two-year degree, due to not paying because of not being able to find a job. like that. they were actually not accredited. they lie to people and said they were accredited. i could not get my four year degree, which is what i had tried to do, because everything i put into that college would not transfer to a normal community college. therefore, i quit paying on it, got a different job in a different field, and after about 20 years of not paying on it, i owed about $80,000, like i said, but because the school lied and said that they were accredited when they were not, corinthian college, so anyone who went to everest, fmu in florida, anyone who went to anything associated with corinthian college, there is a class action lawsuit where

all of your loans get forgiven. so, that was that class action lawsuit. also, i wish you would call it loan transfer, it's loan forgiveness -- -- not loan forgiveness. guest: i think this goes to the point of holding institutions accountable, which we both talked about. horrible experience with corinthian colleges. we have seen the collapse of other bad actors in the space. we need to do a better job of holding them accountable. when it comes to actually providing forgiveness, the only problem is the program is being challenged and there is a injunction to prevent it from operating. -- operating the weight it is supposed to operate. -- the way it is supposed to

operate. there are real hardships, real harm the people suffered. host: harry, georgia, good morning. caller: i'll make this a quick story. i wt the college of university of new mexico. it was $240 a semester for a full class load. i went for three years. paid for it. my dad paid for it, actually. here's the thing, if you go to college and you have to borrow $150,000, then you get out of college, you go to congress for $15,000 a month and you can pay it off in about 10 months, you know?

that's the real racket after all [no audio] host: eating up. we got your initial point. then? caller: i'm an engineer for the federal government. my wife and i have paid off our loans. the conversation has been lacking in regards to the debt increasing so much. we are fortunate and privileged, but i have plenty of friends who have accrued the same amount of student debt as me who cannot afford a home. i could not afford a home here. i had to move out of the area and i could not afford a home on a government salary with my wife working full-time with a degree. what would you say to the folks who are able to make it out of

this, you know, largely exploitive system and still are not able to participate in this large capitalist market that benefits folks who were able to go to college but are not able to participate and enjoy the benefits that come with the degree? host: i want to ask you about what they caller said previously , which was that if you cannot afford to pay off alone, don't sign for it, don't take it to begin with, do something else. caller: to that point, if you want to live the american dream at this current juncture, an option available to you from a young age is to attend higher education. i took that option and was able to do it through the financial

metric and i was successful in that, but it is not the case like that, and again i'm a research engineer at a government and situation, and i'm still not able to afford it. my father is an english teacher. he won't be able to retire, despite being loan free, largely a problem of labor market value. is it an issue of labor market college value or how much we are paying for this institution? host: let's get a response. guest: the issue the caller raised on the costs of housing is critical. i live in d.c., too, my partner and i are trying to save for a house, i'm in the same boat. i think that when we talk about how to address the costs of housing, we need to remember 87 percent of american adults don't

have student loans and are trying to afford a home, too. we can address the costs of housing through deregulation and make it easier to build houses and apartment buildings. driving down the costs of mortgage. it's tempting to try to do a bank shot, but doing it to the student loan program is not the best way to fix this problem. host: winston-salem, good morning. caller: good morning. when president biden during the debate, that was one of the debates, to help us. $10,000, he wasn't supposed to pay off anybody's loans. that got mixed up when the republicans stuck they face into it and it went to the congress.

it never was to pay off nobody's loan. it was dependent -- pay $10,000 towards the loan. he's not doing that for a vote. he got his debate when he was running for president. they need to get that straight and do their research before they get out there to talk so badly about what president biden is doing. he's trying to help people with me. i'm like the woman with the loan, but i got two kids with loans and had to cosign for them. not only that, they take they tax money and they also was taken money out they paycheck. guest: this is a good point. it's not something that was done in secret, it is something the president has talked about for a long time on the campaign trail and in the first years of his administration, when he came out with the first option, 10 to $20,000 in first cases.

now july, they announced they were going to try again, over they had a public hearing and had been negotiating public. the other important point is it's not about pundits or what people say, it's really for borrowers. it's a meaningful program. people may not like it, that's ok, but if it helps the borrowers like the one who just called in, that's meaningful action. host: john, louisiana. caller: a little history lesson, i graduated, attended purdue university with brian lamb and my freshman year, ok, room and board was $750.

tuition at purdue university was about 145 dollars per semester for two semesters, and you could get your books for 20 bucks. so, for about $1000 you could go to purdue university for a year. i graduated from purdue and did not have a student loan, because i didn't need it. now i don't know what it costs. host: what did you study? just curious. caller: i got a degree in industrial management. i was going to be a shop foreman in a factory. i went into rotc and spent the next 28 years as an air force pilot and tacked on another 17 years as a delta airlines pilot. host: all right. well, we talked about how the costs of -- those days are definitely over. it's not going to costs $145 a

semester. guest: purdue university is still a good example of how colleges can keep costs down. mitch daniels kept costs frozen for 10 years and it had an impact. there was a share of graduates who were borrowing that plummeted over that time. purdue really proves them wrong, it is a choice to raise costs and some follow costs down and doing a good job of that and they show it's not true. host: brainerd, minnesota, good morning. caller: good morning. these colleges, they need to be audited. if you look at a basketball game , look at the people, it's full of people. the play the other day, $413 of

the average just to get in the door. where did all that money go? the college professors, they could make as much or more as the president of the united states. american greed has taken over. every college needs to be audited. we are talking sports every week , and the players get nothing. host: jared? guest: colleges are audited, they have to be to participate in the federal student loan program, but taking his point, understanding the class of defendant where they say this is what we are charging you, this is the number, this is where your money is going, we don't have a lot of insight into how those taxpayer dollars are being

used. there is a new thing that happened a few years ago where the secretary, the used to be a b wherea the federal government could not ask questions, but now they are askingn essence and doing some regulating on that. i hope the federal government does that and understands now better how taxpayer dollars are being used when it comes to college campuses. people talk about it being an arms race now, these apartment buildings getting these students, that's not really the purpose of higher education. it's about education, educating people. lazy rivers, golf simulators, those are great, not knocking it, but need to make sure there are instructional materials. holding people accountable and understanding how they are using the funding for more transparency there, i think it

is something that we agree on, bringing the costs down. host: all right. that's jared bass and preston cooper.