The Hightower Report: Turning College Students Into Free Market Chattel

Let's take another trip deep into the Magic Kingdom of LaissezFairyland and prostrate ourselves before the infallible and inscrutable force known as the free market.

While this awesome deity cannot be seen, the high priests of free market fundamentalism insist that we mere mortals must simply have faith that its mysterious workings are always in our best interest. Yeah, sure, Your Holiness – we saw how well that worked out for us wandering pilgrims after you true believers deregulated Wall Street, which then crashed on our streets.

So, crashees, you might want to gird yourselves, because free market purists intend for us to have another ungodly religious encounter with their omnipotent deity. Looking at America's trillion-dollar student debt crisis, these spiritualists had a burning bush revelation: The crisis can be healed by letting the magic market (aka Wall Street) lay its hands on the funding of college education. Get the government out of the student loan business, they preach, and let global speculators invest directly in students by covering their tuitions. In other words, turn students into just another Wall Street commodity to be purchased by the wealthy.

But venture capitalists expect fat returns on their investments, so what do they get back for covering some kid's tuition? A chunk of the kid's future, that's what. After graduation, students' incomes would be attached by the financiers. And, since free market doctrine dictates that investors should always seek to maximize their returns, they would have a direct interest (and maybe even a legal right) in making their investees pursue careers that make the most money for them.

The first thing to know about the free market is that it's not free, and turning Wall Street loose on college students turns them into chattel, effectively indentured to investors.

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For more information on Jim Hightower's work – and to subscribe to his award-winning monthly newsletter, "The Hightower Lowdown" – visit www.jimhightower.com. You can hear his radio commentaries on KOOP Radio 91.7FM, weekdays at 10:58am and 12:58pm.