By Andrew J. Coulson
The editor of The Nation thinks college should be given away for free. She’s probably right, but perhaps not in the sense she intends. So many college degrees today are intrinsically worthless that it should really not be possible to find people willing to pay for them. As I wrote in a recent New York [...]
Why College Should Be Given Away for Free is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
Over the weekend, President Obama urged Congress to prevent a pending interest rate hike on student loans. While he argued that failure to keep interest rates low would be a “tremendous blow” to students, he failed to note that federal overreach into the industry is largely to blame in the first place. The Obama Administration’s overreach into the student loan industry has been wide-sweeping. In what The Wall Street Journal deemed “that other government takeover,” a provision buried deep in Obamacare effectively nationalized the student loan industry by ending government … More
By Neal McCluskey
Like most political discussions, the student aid debate is driven far more by sentiment than reasoned analysis. If we used the latter, we’d be demanding big aid cuts for the sake of students and taxpayers alike. As I testified to a Senate panel earlier this week, the evidence is powerful that there is massive overconsumption [...]
Stop Ignoring Higher Ed Reality is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
Yesterday, Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) spoke at The Heritage Foundation as part of National School Choice Week and to mark the release of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) Report Card on American Education. The report ranks America’s K-12 schools in terms of performance and progress over the past year, as well as reforms and education policies. Senator DeMint says that in seeking to improve education, policymakers could take some lessons from the free market — a system that has served America well: “We were the only country that was … More
Guess how many top-tier universities offer a course on Lady Gaga? Four! The University of Virginia, the University of South Carolina, Wake Forest University, and Arizona State University all now offer semester-long explorations of Lady Gaga’s apparently profound influence—since 2007—on music, fashion, and the LGBT lifestyle. Yet none of these universities requires students to take a course in U.S. history before graduation. Professors and faculty at top-ranked institutions are giving preference to frivolous classes at the expense of true education. In a new study by the National Association of Scholars, … More
