College costs are the real problem

Published 7:38 pm Thursday, January 22, 2015

1. How to get money for college: Fill out a FAFSA at Super Saturday
2. Obama to clamp down on federal student loan servicers

Intentions aside, President Barack Obama’s efforts to help students pay for college are missing the point. The bigger problem is how much college costs, rather than how students will pay for it.

Making two years of community college free, for example, is a nice gesture. But it does nothing to address the skyrocketing tuition and fees that overburden students, saddle graduates and weaken our nation’s economy.

As A. Barton Hinkle writes for Reason magazine, the gesture could do more harm than good. College costs have risen far faster than inflation, he points out.

“The public-policy prescription for this trend has been to throw more money at the problem, in the form of student aid,” he writes. “This is lunacy. It does nothing but encourage colleges and universities to charge even more, secure in the knowledge that student aid will rise to keep up.”

The logic is clear.

“The massive infusion of money through student aid and other avenues carries with it no incentive to control costs or seek out efficiencies,” Hinkle explains. “Little wonder, then, that most colleges and universities squander their resources. For example: Between 1989 and 2010, the share of full-time faculty members who reported spending at least nine hours per week in the classroom fell from 60 percent to 44 percent. (Not 40 hours a week, or even 20 — nine.)”

Because college costs have risen so high, so quickly, Hinkle points out, even middle class families need massive help in paying for it.

“Student loan debt exceeds $1 trillion,” he notes. “Many institutions now offer scholarships and grants not only for low-income applicants but also for middle-class and even upper-middle-class families. Harvard has a program for families making up to $150,000. So does California — the Middle Class Scholarship Program — which pays for as much as 40 percent of the cost of attending a public university for families making that much.”

We should note that Obama’s proposal to make community college free isn’t something that will actually benefit the poor — Pell Grants and other financial aid already easily pay for a full ride at two-year schools for students with financial needs.

The proposal would, in fact, benefit middle- and upper-income families, who don’t have the same need.

The proposal won’t help keep costs down, precisely because it doesn’t hold colleges accountable.

“Trying to address spiraling college costs by increasing student aid is like trying to put out a fire by dousing it with gasoline,” Hinkle says. “The way to cut the cost of college is to cut college spending — by making colleges trim their administrative fat, require more work from their personnel and close those offices and departments — including a majority of money-sucking athletic programs — that do not pull their own weight.”

Want to see what real reform in college costs looks like? Take a look at Texas’ “$10,000 degree.” Responding to a challenge from then-Gov. Rick Perry, 12 Texas colleges now offer a bachelor’s degree for $10,000. Other states are now following suit.

Bringing college costs down is the way to truly help students.