Universities should support students, too

We’re missing the Goliath in the student loan discussion: colleges and universities.

Yes, the opportunity for our young citizens is an important motive for this program (“Tens of thousands in Hawaii will benefit from federal student loan forgiveness plan,” Star-Advertiser, Aug. 25). And, as the Star-Advertiser asserted, society and the economy benefit from an educated citizenry (“Debt relief helps not just students,” Star- Advertiser, Our View, Aug. 28).

But the most direct beneficiaries are the colleges and universities that have raised their tuition at double the pace of inflation and grown their diversity and administrative staffs far more quickly than their academics.

Because these institutions are the financial beneficiaries of this program, they should bear the risk for student repayment. If these schools are confident that their programs bestow earning capacity sufficient to repay student loans (an expectation of almost all attending college), they should be willing to provide that guarantee.

On the other hand, students undertaking programs that have limited potential for providing a living wage should be funded from schools’ endowment funds.

Robert Maynard

Kailua

Lower interest rate for student loans

It seems to me that if politicians really want to help students with the cost of higher education, they should charge a lower interest rate for student loans. The profit institutions make on the loans should be a minimum.

If banks are paying only a fraction of a percent interest on savings, why can’t they charge only 1% or 2% interest for student loans? It doesn’t make sense to charge a higher rate and then end up forgiving many of the loans. Tie the rate to a little more than what is being paid out on savings.

Phil Alencastre

St. Louis Heights

DeJoy’s action will hurt postal service

​A recent news flash on the internet described Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s latest plan to further ruin the U.S. Postal Service. He intends to consolidate local post offices, causing letter carriers to drive farther to pick up mail for delivery before returning to their regular route.

This is the person who was an overly huge donor to Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency in 2016. He knows nothing about the Postal Service, only how to fatten his own wallet.

Joan Huber

Diamond Head

City parking program makes little sense

I was shocked to read that the city’s 8,000 public parking spaces don’t earn enough money for their own maintenance — and that ticket fees just go to the state to be spent however the Legislature feels fit (“City considering increasing Oahu parking costs,” Star-Advertiser, Aug. 24).

How does the city rationalize a business model in which it loses almost 50% of its investment every year? And apparently the proposed solution is to just double the cost to park. Yeah, that oughta do it!

Would it be less shocking to propose that the city do away with paid street parking and save the taxpayers money? While my own City Council member Esther Kia‘aina believes the city could just park police in Lanikai to “get really rich,” imagine the waste of time, police skills and community needs amid increases in crimes and traffic accidents across the island. That’s not a good use of resources.

I envision a new mayoral race proposition to repurpose millions of lost parking dollars ($4 million every year) to fund the police, while making street parking free for all. Now that could actually be a move toward paradise.

Mark Ayers

Kailua

Getting vaccinated will help everyone

About 400 Americans are dying every day from COVID-19. That is almost 150,000 deaths a year, making it in contention for the third-leading cause of death in the U.S. behind heart disease and cancer.

Let’s not become numb to these mostly preventable deaths. Ironically, we have the tools at hand to prevent these deaths, if we only use them and all keep current on our vaccines. Please don’t tune out the tragedy of these mostly preventable 400 deaths a day.

We would all be outraged if a passenger jet was crashing every day and killing that many people. Let’s all focus on what we can do to prevent these deaths — getting vaccinated. This will be crucial as we head into fall and have the new booster shots available to us.

We can get to zero COVID-19 deaths.

Carol Santiago

Mililani

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