The big catch phrase for those fighting to keep subsidized student loan interest rates at 3.4 percent is “don’t double my rate.” That’s because the rate is set to increase from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on July 1. But if President Obama’s Rose Garden pep rally today is any indication, the phrase should be more like “don’t raise my rate at all.”

The POTUS attacked recently passed legislation in the House–which tracks pretty closely with his own proposal–because, he said, it doesn’t do enough to keep loan rates low. Really? The Smarter Solution for Students Act–which, by the way, is hardly all that smart–would set interest rates for subsidized loans at the 10-year Treasury note plus 2.5 percent. Today, that rate is 2.3 percent. Adding 2.5 to it is 4.8 percent, absolutely not a doubling of 3.4.

Of course, T-bill rates could, and likely will, rise, but the main point is supposed to be to make student loan rates track with normal interest rates rather than have politicians set them arbitrarily. That was certainly the case over the last few years, when student loan rates didn’t plummet along with overall rates. But it seems a tracked rate isn’t really what students and colleges want: they want super-cheap–preferably free–loans, which makes sense (for them). Like normal people, they want money at as little cost to themselves as possible. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, that is what many vote-seeking politicians want to give them, despite the powerful evidence that aid mainly lets colleges raise their prices at breakneck speeds, fuels demand for frills, and abets serious noncompletion. In other words, it likely does more harm than good.

All of this is why Washington should get out of student aid entirely. But for that to happen, regular people will have to make their catch-phrase, “Don’t give them loans at all.”

Last month, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – a rogue creation of Dodd-Frank – released the first annual report from its private student loan “ombudsman.” And boy, does the report illustrate how far off the rails government has gotten.

Start with the focus: private student loans. These and for-profit colleges have gotten huge, damning attention from Washington – and much of the higher ed commentariat – over the last few years. But even if they were true devil’s spawn, private loans are absolutely not the main problems in higher ed.

Even at their very brief peak in 2007-08, private student loans constituted only 12.5 percent of total student aid. In 2011-12 they were just 2.6 percent. The vast majority of funds have always come from other sources, first and foremost the federal government. Yes, it is primarily “aid” from Washington that lets colleges raise their prices with impunity, and enables students to take on substantial debt for often less-than-substantial studies.

Government, not private lending, is the Lex Luthor here. But to be fair, private lending is the CFPB’s bailiwick, so you can’t blame the agency for putting out the report. You can sure as heck, though, blame politicians for creating a bureau whose job seems simply to be pointing fingers at private companies.

You can also blame the CFPB for the content of its report, which is simply a summary of complaints the bureau has received from disgruntled borrowers. Fairly early on it even states that “the report does not attempt to present a statistically significant picture of issues faced by borrowers” (as if its findings are empirical at all). Unfortunately, it goes on to say that the report “can help to illustrate where there is a mismatch between borrower expectations and actual service delivered.”

Actually, no it can’t. At least not reliably. All it can tell you is what people complained to the CFPB about. It can’t tell you if the complaints had bases in fact. It can’t tell you if complaint-lodgers were really just motivated by a desire not to pay. And it can’t tell you what the lenders’ sides of the stories are.

Okay, it probably could do the last thing, but it seems the ombudsman chose not to. There is not an ounce of response from any lender to the anecdotes that essentially are this report. In other words, the report seems to be doing exactly what the bureau’s opponents feared CFPB would do: functioning as an unaccountable propaganda machine against private companies. And don’t be surprised to hear this report invoked repeatedly by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) and other profit-haranguers as damning proof that private student lenders are out of control.

Sadly, the prominent role of government in student lending is ignored even when it is obvious from data on private lending. As one table shows, 46 percent of complaints received were about loans connected to Sallie Mae, and 12 percent about loans from American Education Services, an offshoot of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA).

Sallie Mae, of course, is the student-loan cousin of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the federal creations at the heart of bad mortgage lending. And PHEAA? “Created in 1963 by the Pennsylvania General Assembly, PHEAA has evolved into one of the nation’s leading student aid organizations.”

Yup, more than half of the complaints about ostensibly private lending were really about government-created lenders. But don’t expect to find even a footnote in the report hinting that government might be the real problem.

It’s hard not to conclude that the major goal of the CFPB is to bash private companies, and in so doing justify more and more government control of the economy. If that’s the case, and if this report is any indication, then the CFPB is doing its job. Too bad that job serves the public so poorly.

Cross-posted from SeeThruEdu.com

Listen to the media and you might think every American is scared silly about paying for college, and  public aid is stretched micron thin to help just the neediest of students. A new report analyzing what and how Americans paid for higher education last year, however, puts the lie to that image.

How America Pays for College: 2012, from Sallie Mae and Ipsos Public Affairs, offers an interesting breakdown of who pays what and how for college, and furnishes some welcome contextual data. I’m not sure there is a unifying message in the numbers – other than people seem to be economizing a bit since the 2009-10 academic year – but some of the potential lessons are striking.

The first lesson is don’t believe that government aid is just for the poor. Families making $100,000 or more used federal loans, tax-incentivized savings programs, and federal, state, and school-based grants – which do not include scholarships – to cover 27 percent of their total cost of attendance.

Next, don’t get caught up in the overblown controversy over private student loans. It’s a diversion from the much bigger impact of government aid. Only 1 percent of the total cost of attendance last year was covered by private loans, versus 4 percent by federal Parent PLUS loans, 13 percent by other federal loans, 1 percent by federal work-study, and 16 percent by federal, state, or school-based grants. And don’t forget: much of the cost of public institutions is borne by taxpayers before the tuition bills even go out.

Perhaps most interesting, it appears that even though the sticker price of college has risen at astronomical rates, most people aren’t sufficiently concerned that they plan ahead for how they’ll pay. 50 percent of respondents either “somewhat” or “strongly” disagreed with the statement that “before my child/I enrolled, our family created a plan for paying for all years of college.” Only 39 percent somewhat or strongly agreed with the statement.

What does this tell us? Potentially many things, but one might be that many people assume someone, no matter what, will ensure that they or their child will be able to go to college. Unfortunately, that “someone” often ends up being the American taxpayer.