Why did college get more expensive and become a worse product?
Because in 2008 we(?) told the nation that everyone should go to a 4 year university and if you didn’t you were going to be a loser.
So universities looked at that and said well shit if the Fed is gonna back 100% of the loan and we are on the hook for nothing, let’s get as many art history majors as we possibly can and jack tuition through the roof which we can use to fund building projects or just dump into our PE-managed endowments and watch the money stack up.
There was a time when if the president of UW or Oregon wanted a new building on campus he had to dial for dollars. They still do that but now they use tuition funding to erect their favorite projects, and they can because there is an endless stream of willing participants on the other side, all propped up by the state and federal governments with their billions and trillions of dollars in debt, respectively.
We don’t know how to fix a leaky sink or hang a door these days but we sure as fuck can rip a caramel macchiato with those women’s studies degrees. The most predictable outcome in the history of the world were those now-28 year old baristas and uber drivers demanding that their debt be forgiven. If we’d done that how do you think universities would have e responded with tuition adjustments?
I can fucking promise you they would t have gone down, “Mildred”….
How about special federal grants for US Citizens and a massive tax on student visas, while we’re at it. How about a cap on tuition as a percentage of the institution’s per capita endowment? How about state/federal matching for critical skills degrees and apprenticeships? How rules governing how tuition dollars are spent within public universities?
Let the privates do what they want but I don’t really want my tax money being spent on monuments to college admins, via tuition loans or direct tax funding. That money should land with the professors and the students, just like it SHOULD at the K-12 level.
