“College has become so expensive because of all the money Obama and the Left have been throwing at it.”
While a lot of this started before Obama came into the picture, in 2010 the he signed a law removing commercial banks as lenders and substituted federal government as the originator of federally guaranteed student loans. Interestingly, at the time of the law passage, total outstanding college loan debt exceeded consumer credit card debt.
Most colleges would not be able to maintain the high tuition rates of tuition and room/board pricing without all the financial aid given to students - Pell grants, student loans, etc etc. You are right, by making money so easy to come by to fund higher education, it has helped drive up the cost of education.
The current higher education model has started to be impacted negatively. I wonder aloud how universities, with their collective intelligence, don’t openly show (if there is any recognition of the problem) any concern on how the level of federal funding threatens their future viability and sustainability, their independence and academic freedom. Then again, being run mostly by leftists, I am not surprised.
Community College is affordable, and not as infiltrated by Marxist professors. Plus those in lower income levels do get Pell Grants, etc; and more conservatives send their families there....a better education for less money.
One thing that would immediately bring down higher education costs would be to make student load debt dischargeable in bankruptcy, just like credit card debt.
As it stands there is a strong incentive to lend money to any prospective student, regardless of how useless their course of study is because there is no way to get out from under that debt. If student loans were as risky as other forms of credit there would be an incentive to only lend to those who were likely to repay, and a lot of the money that’s sloshing around the system would vanish.
Of course the Left doesn’t care about incentives any more than they care about results. The solution to distortions caused by government intervention is always more government intervention.