Will: Subprime College Education

Taxpayers, students and their families are "paying rapidly rising prices for something of declining quality," writes George Will, and the government-induced bubble, built around a 440 percent increase in tuition and fees over 30 years, is about to pop.

In his "The Higher Education Bubble," [University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Harlan] Reynolds writes that this bubble exists for the same reasons the housing bubble did. The government decided that too few people owned homes/went to college, so government money was poured into subsidized and sometimes subprime mortgages/student loans, with the predictable result that housing prices/college tuitions soared and many borrowers went bust. 

Will cites examples of declining quality:

• Since 1961, the time students spend reading, writing and otherwise studying has fallen from 24 hours a week to about 15 — enough for a degree often desired only as an expensive signifier of rudimentary qualities (e.g., the ability to follow instructions).
• UC San Diego (UCSD), while eliminating master’s programs in electrical and computer engineering and comparative literature, and eliminating courses in French, German, Spanish and English literature, added a diversity requirement for graduation to cultivate “a student’s understanding of her or his identity.”
• UCSD lost three cancer researchers to Rice University, which offered them 40 percent pay increases. But UCSD found money to create a vice chancellorship for equity, diversity and inclusion. 

Read his full article.