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The Rich Are Discrediting Universities to Control Interaction and Knowledge
By the way, new U.S federal student loans will charge interest while you’re still in school
Today, Jaime Hoerricks published a long essay called “The Clearing: Why They’re Dismantling Education — and What Comes Next” on Substack. I recommend that you read it, and I’d like to share part of what I notice in it.
U.S. federal student loans have long deferred charging interest while the person remains in school. Now, however, for any new federal student loan taken out after 1 July 2026, interest can be charged immediately. The regime did this with “with no public debate, no hearings, no town halls. No headlines, no viral explainers.” They just stuck it in the budget bill that Trump signed earlier this month.
To veterans of World War II, the GI Bill promised benefits, but these benefits were often withheld from Black veterans: “another bait-and-switch, another system designed to uphold whiteness while masking itself as opportunity.” Hoerricks also explains that, while tuition-free public college had once been common, Nixon- and Reagan-era politicians began to find ways to make students work to pay for college. This “was a disciplinary move” given that “campuses had become sites of organised dissent.”
