Several days ago, I started reading this article by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-MA, that had to do with fixing the student loan system, since, according to him, it is “broken.”

I was so angry I couldn’t read beyond the first few paragraphs. Not only was what he said totally unrelated to what’s going on, but it was blatantly misleading. Unfortunately, most students, parents and others have fallen for Kennedy’s rhetoric, which entirely misses the point.

Kennedy: “College costs are expensive … that’s the fault of student lenders.”

To summarize his position, he starts out by saying that the student loan system is broken, then goes on to lament how college costs have skyrocketed.

Granted, college costs are exorbitant, with tuition increasing something like seven times the rate of inflation in the past decade, to the point that some parents pay more than $30,000 for one year of college.

But it is not the fault of student lenders that that is the case. Any freshman philosophy major (or anyone with half a brain) can easily see that.

Yet, hundreds of thousands have fallen for his platform and have rallied behind Kennedy in not only blaming student lenders, but penalizing them as a means of resolving the issue. An issue, I might add, that has absolutely nothing to do with lenders, other than these companies provide a valuable service: that of assisting students to pay for college, which has become so expensive that many can no longer afford it.