Why Is College So Expensive?
The left in this country is fixated on eliminating student loans. According to at least one member of congress, you're not anti-racist unless you're anti-student loans. The Biden administration wants to do massive debt forgiveness, ignoring people like me and many of you who were responsible and paid back our loans.
During the 2020 Presidential campaign, Elizabeth Warren was confronted by a man whose child paid off their loans by working hard and being responsible. His question was why were their tax dollars going to go to bail out someone who couldn't do the right thing and pay the loans they signed up for?
There’s a larger issue at play here that no one wants to discuss: The cost of college tuition. Maybe the college tuition is the real racist here. Young black people now from low-income families are getting into colleges that are bleeding them for all they're worth. How is that not racist?
Harvard, for instance, has a $40 billion endowment that grew by over $1 billion in 2019. Despite this, there’s no accountability in the increasing cost of tuition that drastically outpaces inflation.
My thinking is that at some point there will be a massive collapse in the number of colleges in this country. The number of colleges simply exceeds the demand for colleges. Colleges rachet up their costs and their tuition knowing that you can go get a subsidized student loan covered by the federal government that you do not have to pay a penny on the entire time you're in school. These students that do this have no concept of the real cost until they graduate and are stuck with a massive bill.
When Rick Perry was the governor of Texas, he campaigned on a $10,000 a year college degree and the university system in Texas went bat poop crazy. The university system in Texas has been fighting it ever since. The system ultimately have tried to make it the Texas Affordable Baccalaureate program, which the Texas higher education system treats as something less than a Bachelor of Arts degree. Florida, likewise, tried after Perry’s lead and the university system there too has fought it.
There is no reason that a basic college degree that remotely teaches you to think critically should cost you $60,000, $70,000, or $80,000 a year like it does at many private schools. This is not a phenomenon that is unique to private universities as public schools are increasingly becoming more outrageous as well.
If we're going to have a discussion about college tuition inflation, we're not having a real discussion until we get to the student loan market. The solution is not to bail out students, the solution is to ban student loans. If we got rid of student loan programs, you would see a remarkable collapse in college tuition in this country.
Getting rid of the student loan industry would force colleges and universities to scale back to reality. Everyone in higher-ed would be outraged and claim many schools would go out of business. Would that happen? Yes and good riddance. The fewer academic incubators for ignorance, the better. But we don't want to have that conversation.
Specifically, the Biden administration doesn't want to have that conversation. The left doesn't either. Why? Because academics are their constituent base. Essentially, the student loan industry props up a large and almost universally consolidating base of Democratic voters called professors.
If you keep the student loan industry going, and then you bail out the students, the money continues to flow to the academic intuitions that provide you a reliable pool of elite, white voters for the Democratic Party. They don't want to meaningfully deal with student loans or the rising cost of tuition. Instead, they would rather have the American taxpayers bail out the people who got loans for degrees in professional victimology and can't pay them back.
Why not foster responsibility instead of fostering government bailouts for people who can't pay it back? There are risks in life. The government shouldn't bail you out from those risks, including the risk of a loan you cannot pay back.
I had this very conversation with some friends just last week. A few quick points:
* FREE = WORTHLESS. If college degrees, many of which already over-saturate the market, become free, then the value of that "higher education" goes in the toilet. They become the new high school diploma, which then mandates a masters or PhD in order to elevate one's self above the masses.
* COLLEGE DEGREE = HIGHER SALARY. Let's not kid ourselves here, elevating one's self above the masses is THE REASON why people attend college. A good college combined with a good degree and good grades equates to higher earning power, regardless of race or gender.
* SKILLED TRADE SCHOOLS. Because so many are focused on a college education, the skilled trades are sorely hurting. Good welders, plumbers, electricians, etc. can earn a VERY good living, yet that job market is highly under-served (just ask Mike Rowe). This lightbulb will eventually come on for many young people and parents considering college.
* INDEBTED FOR INDOCTRINATION. I hope that the pendulum will swing the other direction as parents begin asking themselves just WHY they or their child should support an institution (college) that so radically defiles the ideals upon which this country was built.
Standing ovation for keeping this question alive.