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
You know a politician is looking for applause when he speaks in front of a crowd of college students and says he’s there to help them pay back their student loans. After all, who doesn’t like the prospect of free money? But as the saying (sort of) goes, beware of politicians bearing gifts. That’s especially true this week as President Barack Obama travels the country warning students that their student loan interest rates are set to double and that he has the answer to all their problems. Guess what? He … More
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
Despite the fact that the “cost of basic knowledge is cheaper than ever before,” the cost of attending college continues to skyrocket. In large part, dramatic increases in college tuition are the result of ever-growing federal higher education subsidies, which have allowed universities to raise prices while incentivizing students to take on more loan debt. But the college price bubble could soon be on the verge of busting, thanks to budding innovations and entrepreneurs in the higher education market. Udemy and Udacity are two new and innovative online learning platforms … More
Speaking on Friday at the University of Michigan, President Obama declared, “I want this to be a big, bold, generous country where everybody gets a fair shot, everybody is doing their fair share, everybody is playing by the same set of rules. That’s the America I know. That’s the American I want to keep. That’s the future within our reach.” How did the President propose to achieve his goal? The wrong kind of federal intervention into higher education with the goal of bringing down the cost of attending college. The … More
Once upon a time, those who favored racial and ethnic preferences in college admissions at least admitted that their goal was to help certain minority applicants who they argued were underrepresented due to a legacy of discrimination and other social ills. This is an appealing and well-meaning goal, even if such government preferences tended to reward a subset of minority students who were not disadvantaged and harm other students who were less well off—and raised a host of other moral and constitutional problems. When the Supreme Court ruled squarely, in … More
