26 August—Forgiving college loans is nothing but a shameless and shameful ploy to pander to voters who would likely support Democratic candidates in this year’s midterm election anyway but could just as well not bother to vote or even vote Republican if they don’t get laid.

The forgiven $10,000—$20,000 if the lucky students also had Pell grants, which don’t have to be repaid anyway—is really another means of wealth transfer, in good part favoring vocal minorities as usual. And still it’s not good enough for the malcontents who want it all, want it now, and want it stolen from the people they envy.

College loans have been a sick joke for a least a half century, especially private loans. While, contrary to common belief, they can in fact be discharged through bankruptcy, it’s much more difficult than dumping other unsecured debt.

The nation’s colleges and universities certainly are to be blamed for the need for excessive and abusive financial aid. Why does college education cost so much? Average tuition at private colleges is close to $40,000, almost $60,000 at Middlebury and the Ivy League; close to $11,000 at state colleges for state residents, $16,000 at the always overpriced University of Connecticut. Med school is more expensive, law school costs even more, and business school is out the window, with Harvard charging almost $75,000. Of course, you go to big-name schools primarily to open the right doors.

(Prep schools are even worse, mind you, most at around $60,000 a year for boarders, Forman School in Litchfield at over $80,000. But you go to the right prep simply to get into the right college. Public schools can plunder taxpayers’ pockets, too, but even though taxpayers collectively are a bottomless pocket, public school administrators do tend to try harder.)

Colleges and universities are notoriously mismanaged. The University of Connecticut is a prime example. Once celebrated as a party school (if nothing else), it’s now only a drain on students’, parents’, and taxpayers’ resources because of monumentally incompetent administration and predictably counterproductive political interference.

UConn, for one, has too many overpaid and underutilized—as well, of course, as incompetent—administrators relative to students and teachers. So what else is new? It would be easy to say that teaching and research staff are also overpaid, but except in incredibly ludicrous cases like two former incompetent UConn presidents who are now tenured professors, both guaranteed to be paid as much as the highest faculty member outside of UConn Health, where salaries and benefits can go into the millions. Also disgusting.

What kind of morons agreed to those contracts? Politically connected morons, that’s what kind. But then there are the real academic heroes and superstars of the nation’s universities, the athletic coaches. Just the other day, the University of Alabama, a public institution—a distinguished academic powerhouse—announced that Nick Saban, its football coach, had signed an eight-year contract for $93.6 million. What else is there to say?