The University of California, Irvine, this month said it will reduce tuition for its MBA program by $30,000 to $99,000. “The Merage Flex MBA’s new tuition falls below the federal loan cap of $100,000, removing a critical financial barrier for working professionals across Southern California and beyond,” the university said. It boasted that its “MBA is priced within reach of government loan limits—making a world-class degree not just aspirational, but truly attainable.”
You have to love how the university spins virtue out of necessity. The GOP tax bill last year capped the aggregate federal debt that graduate students can take out at $100,000, and $200,000 for professional degrees like law and medicine. Previously, grad students could borrow an unlimited amount.
As a result, many grads took out mortgage-sized debts to pursue pricy degrees, many of which don’t pay off in future income. The Education Department this month said New York University offers a “master’s degree in film and video studies where students who take on federal loans leave with $168,000 in debt on average but earn just $47,000.”
Struggling borrowers would then enroll in the Obama and Biden loan forgiveness plan in which the feds wrote off one-third of debt. Graduate programs became cash cows for universities, which raised prices to take advantage of the open spigot of federal loans.