Most Americans think of higher education as a rite of passage. You go to grade school then to high school and after high school you go off to a higher education place called a college or University. It would seem that higher education is a rite of passage. Just do you best in school and keep moving on up the ladder until you reach the institution of higher education and then you would have arrive.

Unfortunately, higher education is not all about you and your ladder to success. Public education is free but when you get to the rungs of higher education, then you are about to embark to a business.   The business deal is to pay back  and get an education on your trek to a higher education.

President Obama is offering a $2,500 tax credit to college enrollees  who volunteer their time to service as a part of the National Service Act named after Senator Edward Kennedy. The student does his part in community service and apply for the $2,500 educational tax credit. The particulars of what you have to do is contained in the National Service Act and should be reviewed by you to see if the tax credit for you. The use of tax credit indicates that Obama knows that higher education is not a rite of passage but really is a business deal and these institutions of higher education has to be repaid. During the 2008 campaign, Obama admitted by his wife Michelle and he had just paid off their college student loans. The book that Obama authored “The Audacity of Hope” was the revenue maker that made it possible for the Obama’s to pay off their student loans.

A further indication of higher education as being a business is the words student loans. Loans are associated with banks and everyone knows that banks are big business. Banks had a few bailouts as the major automobile dealers and was the subject of a Credit Card Bill of Rights to protect consumers against unscrupulous bank practices of increasing finance intrests charges astronomically because of a missed payment or unreasonable bank fees. Just as the banks were in need of a government bail out, the rites of passage to higher education needs a bail out from the students who apply for student loans of which the college provides the funds and then the repayment is slow, or not forthcoming.

You can see that higher education is big business with such economic terminology as tax credits and student loans. It is up to the students to keep these places of higher learning in business by paying back their student loans on time and as agreed the way you would pay back a bank loan. The student may think that it is a normal progression from high school and to college and in fact the progression is normal, what is not the case to not pay back the student loans that was issued in good faith to promote the normal progression to higher learning.

Private college are more expensive than public colleges or community college and must be paid back as well. The reason that the government has not had to bail out a college is because smart people know how to handle their business. These colleges receive millions of dollars in support from former alumni or philanthropists just wanting to help a college that maybe a daughter of son graduated. There are myriad reasons for these private donations and as college is a business, these contributors do get a tax write off for their contributions. So both sides of the pie wins, right?

Wrong, there are no winners if you do not do your part and pay back your student loan as a personal challenge to say that you supported the college by paying back a student loan that was needed to sustain the place of higher education. By paying back our student loan, you are doing you job to help another student to stay on the progression to higher education.