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1/ I have just read the BC Budget and the new policy on student loan interest and holy crap what a terrible, awful waste of money. Truly appalling. Buckle up and I will explain why.
2/ Generally speaking, eliminating student loan interest is a bad idea. It makes no difference to access, and better alternative uses of $are plentiful. The only thing going for it is that at least there is a need test so it;s not as regressive as a tuition freeze/cut.
3/ The BC budget is allocating $31M/year going forward to eliminate loan interest. But it is also spending $225 million on a one-time write down of debt on outstanding loans because this policy applies to every outstanding BC loan. Including ppl who graduated years ago.
4/ So, $318M on this policy over this 3-year framework. Much of which (my guess would around 50% ) is going to ex-students. many of whom are comfortably ensconced in middle-class jobs, who don;t need the $ and for whom there is certainly no concivable access rationale.
5/ Just for comparison, I recently sketched out how much it would cost for BC to match every dollar of the federal low and middle-income student grant. Answer $110M a year, or $330M over three years.
6/ So, basically, for the same price as this crappy student loan interest program, all of which benefits ex-students and has squat in terms of access impact, BC could have had a robust set of grants which would have a big access impact and be redistributive into the bargain.
7/ And student groups *applauded* this. Because reasons (you'd have to ask them, but crissakes, guys, this is bad).
8/ A few weeks ago, I remarked that modern Conservative parties don;t care about markets so much as they care about short-term gimmickry that puts a few extra $ in taxpayers pockets. Replace "conservative" with NDP" and "markets" with "sensible policy" and that's BC for you.
