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January 2, 2010

Easy Money For College Can Mess You Up, Man

Katherine Mangu-Ward

When the government subsidizes something, we wind up with more of it. When it subsidizes something heavily--and combines that subsidy with an aggressive campaign encouraging consumption of that thing from the presidential bully pulpit--we wind up with a lot more of it.

Oceans of federal money gush into higher education every day, and every administration promises more to come. That gush obscures the real demand for educated workers. The result is lots of cashiers and waitresses with B.A.s, and lots of people with student loan debt that's tough for them to repay. For most students, the federal subsides geared toward nudging them to consume more education actually result in the acquisition of more education debt.

On the corporate side (and the non-profit side, for that matter) the subsidy encourages institutions to shape their practices around grabbing as much of that "free" money as possible. As critics of for-profit education never fail to note:

Posted by Jim Zellmer at January 2, 2010 2:02 AM
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