You can't argue that universities charge more because they are able to, which is common sense, and also argue that we tried the free market (whatever that means) and it was part of the problem. E-gads, what a mess.
People today have roughly the same amount of money as they did 30 years ago. The cost of college education in terms of the amount of money people directly and immediately pay has not changed. It's not like we all became millionaires. What's happened is that we switched from grants to loans, which was supposed to allocate more risk on the student and banks, then we made sure that anybody that wanted a loan could get one, so there was no immediate penalty for making a bad choice.
We took a trade with tremendous uncertain future returns -- which degree I should get -- made sure everybody could get whatever they wanted, then pushed any pain far out into the future. Then we piled on by making the entire scheme immune from bankruptcy, taking out any risk that creditors might face! It's like we just kept the grants, but forced the student to pay for his own grant in terms of future debt. It's a incredibly terrible job of policy, no doubt, but the free market has nothing to do with it. If anything, it's a nice little experiment on how screwed up you can make a market before some kind of feedback mechanism kicks in. We took the purchaser out of the mix, then we took the lenders out. The only thing left is the political system, which seems wedded to the policies that led us here in the first place. Continuing down this road of idiocy, next up we should try to take the political system itself out of the mix. Perhaps we could have a constitutional "right" to an university education?
I will agree with the author that colleges charge more simply because they can. That's the way selling stuff works. You charge more until you start selling less. I will also agree that reporters (and some essayists) have great difficulty actually looking at the problem honestly.
This is the tragedy of our times, this indentured servitude we are placing on the next generation. Somebody is going to have to be a grown-up here and tell people what they don't want to hear: it is not in society's interests to guarantee the funding of little Junior's degree in underwater basket weaving. I don't see that person or party on the horizon, but here's hoping they show up soon.
You can't argue that universities charge more because they are able to, which is common sense, and also argue that we tried the free market (whatever that means) and it was part of the problem. E-gads, what a mess.
People today have roughly the same amount of money as they did 30 years ago. The cost of college education in terms of the amount of money people directly and immediately pay has not changed. It's not like we all became millionaires. What's happened is that we switched from grants to loans, which was supposed to allocate more risk on the student and banks, then we made sure that anybody that wanted a loan could get one, so there was no immediate penalty for making a bad choice.
We took a trade with tremendous uncertain future returns -- which degree I should get -- made sure everybody could get whatever they wanted, then pushed any pain far out into the future. Then we piled on by making the entire scheme immune from bankruptcy, taking out any risk that creditors might face! It's like we just kept the grants, but forced the student to pay for his own grant in terms of future debt. It's a incredibly terrible job of policy, no doubt, but the free market has nothing to do with it. If anything, it's a nice little experiment on how screwed up you can make a market before some kind of feedback mechanism kicks in. We took the purchaser out of the mix, then we took the lenders out. The only thing left is the political system, which seems wedded to the policies that led us here in the first place. Continuing down this road of idiocy, next up we should try to take the political system itself out of the mix. Perhaps we could have a constitutional "right" to an university education?
I will agree with the author that colleges charge more simply because they can. That's the way selling stuff works. You charge more until you start selling less. I will also agree that reporters (and some essayists) have great difficulty actually looking at the problem honestly.
This is the tragedy of our times, this indentured servitude we are placing on the next generation. Somebody is going to have to be a grown-up here and tell people what they don't want to hear: it is not in society's interests to guarantee the funding of little Junior's degree in underwater basket weaving. I don't see that person or party on the horizon, but here's hoping they show up soon.