After making ample use of the Pope Center for Higher Education’s database of research, I contributed this column to the American Spectator. The thesis: A college degree isn’t what it used to be.
Once again, the Occupy movement has it wrong when it rages about student-loan debt. Who, more likely than not, gave you that loan for a degree in — as one reader put it — “Marxist lesbian minority studies”? Furthermore, who promised you a good job and secure future with that degree? In both instances, the government and higher education establishment.
It’s a shame that hordes of Generation Y are amassing unsustainable amounts of debt (think six figures) for a degree with an increasingly low economic value:
These factors suggest that the economic cost of a degree is swiftly outpacing its economic benefit in the real world. Even so, the federal government continues to bolster the industry with subsidies. The most recent example is President Obama’s initiative to put taxpayers on the hook for students’ college debt. It’s akin to governmental policies that paved the way for homeowners to secure mortgages they couldn’t afford to begin with.
Obama’s plan creates yet another moral hazard. If students know that part of their student loans will be forgiven, there is less incentive to keep costs down. Once more, it transfers obligation from those who act irresponsibly to those who act responsibly.
