Editor’s Note: This series is adapted from the new paper Higher Education Subsidization: Why and How Should We Subsidize Higher Education? Part 1 explored the justifications and rationales that have been used to subsidize higher education. Part 2 explored subsidy design considerations. Part 3 explored federal subsidies. This fourth and final part explores state subsidies. […]
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Editor’s Note: This series is adapted from the new paper, Higher Education Subsidization: Why and How Should We Subsidize Higher Education? Part 1 explored the justifications and rationales that have been used to subsidize higher education. This part explores subsidy design considerations. There have been seven main justifications for subsidizing higher education: Promoting favored religions, […]
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Editor’s Note: This series is adapted from the new paper Higher Education Subsidization: Why and How Should We Subsidize Higher Education? Part 1 explores the justifications and rationales that have been used to subsidize higher education. Higher education has long been subsidized by the government in America, but the reasons used to justify subsidization have […]
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Yesterday Time Magazine published articles by President Obama and Governor Romney on their higher education policies. Both paint a rosy view of a college degree but offer few specifics on how to best facilitate it. Obama speaks highly of his college days, acknowledging that “Michelle and I are who we are only because of the […]
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When President Obama talked about unaffordable college tuition, he failed to point out that federal subsidies are responsible for much of the unaffordability. In his State of the Union message, he said, “If you can’t stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down.” However, since tuition is dependent on […]
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Middlebury College is expected to announce a plan to hold the annual rise of tuition to one percentage point above the inflation rate. This announcement will likely be greeted with praise. But why? Costs may be held down in comparison with other colleges, but the bedrock assumption here is a familiar one: tuition must go […]
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Why do our for-profit colleges seem so disappointing? Why are they plagued by high levels of student debt, high loan-default percentages, dismal graduation rates, and third-rate reputations that lead some employers to reject their graduates automatically? Sure, back in the old days there were plenty of commercial schools whose sole raison d’etre was apparently to […]
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Shortly after his inauguration in January President Obama announced a proposal to get rid of a 44-year-old program known as the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program. In the FFEL system, the federal government guarantees loans to students from private banks and similar institutions under a variety of programs (the best known is the so-called […]
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As a regent of the University of California (UC), I voted against “fee” increases proposed by the administration as often as I voted for them, but with each vote I realized that UC was slowly moving toward the day when basic decisions would have to be made about how the university is financed, who can […]
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President Obama’s call for an increase in college graduation rates and the establishment of a $2.5 billion college completion fund begins to address a vexing issue for those of us employed in higher education, namely, how do we make the United States more economically competitive in a world that demands a well-trained, college-educated workforce? The […]
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Like Caesar’s Gaul, President Obama’s plan for higher education is divided into three parts: 1) Every American should have postsecondary educational training, and within a few years we should again lead the world in the proportion of young graduates with bachelor’s degrees; 2) Federal financial assistance to pay for college should become an entitlement like […]
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