Imagine That

In this admittedly old news, Slate explores the recent occurrences of law students suing schools or citing them in bankruptcy lawsuits. The students argue that these schools knew there were few to no jobs available for students post graduation yet continued to encourage prospective students to apply. The schools then loaned such students large sums of money. The argument, then, is if schools advanced these loans knowing full well students would default on them, then they acted in bad faith and students should not have to repay loans.

If that sounds like the subprime mortgage crisis that plunged the US into a recession, it’s because it is pretty much like it. It also sounds like the SSNIT (Social Security and National Insurance Trust) loan scheme in Ghana. After all, the government does know the job market is bad, to put it mildly. The universities are fully aware they offer a lot of theoretical discipline and very little employable skill. Yet, they continue to exist.

And each year, thousands of graduates default on SSNIT loans that saw them through college leaving their guarantors, ordinary Ghanaians roped into the scheme, bearing the loss of retirement income among other things. And it’s easy for SSNIT to do this because the government of Ghana is the main employer and can deduct income from the cheques of guarantors.

Should the SSNIT loan scheme be shelved, university admission rates decreased and the building of new universities stopped then? I think not. Universities are in the education business. They offer an asset from which a consumer can generate income over a period of time. They, however, do not guarantee such a stream of income. They cannot, for instance, commit crimes to generate caseloads for more lawyers. I’m being facetious but the point is the onus is on the consumer to understand what such an education is worth to him and what he could possibly expect from it.

In Ghana, it is a simple case of looking around and knowing your only hope of getting a job in the first place is with a college degree. One goes to college then to make herself competitive for the next available job, not to ensure employment. But since neither your parents nor you can afford the cost of such a degree, the guaranteed SSNIT loan becomes an act of humanity from government and guarantors. Without them, the student would just find another way of paying for school or stay at home and not have that educational asset at all, for better or worse.

Who to blame, then? I vote government. Why does it exist if not to ensure prosperity of the nation? In as far as the public sector has lacked in additional job creation and has failed to create a conducive environment for private sector job growth, I blame the government. My question, therefore, is, “can we sue the government?” Come to think of it, this could make those law school loans worth it.

Prime

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This is the way I choose, the destiny I pursue
To help the unfit and the fit
To treat each according to his need
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