Colleges in America today face a stark choice: embrace reform or face extinction. National student debt stands at a staggering $1.2 trillion. Families are on the brink of defaulting on federal loans en masse. The cohesive college system is nearing a breaking point, and the consequences of inaction or flawed policy could prove catastrophic for families across the United States.
Since the crisis we face is imminent and real, wishful policy thinking is unlikely to suit its prevention or its repair. Progressive proposals for “free public university” and a “universal right to education” are simply enticing campaign goodies masquerading as good will, and as an informed populace we cannot allow ourselves to be deceived by them.
Unsurprisingly, this is the point at which the Right and Left diverge in their approaches to fixing higher education. The classic progressive prescription of solely utilizing more government will add fuel to the fire that government enabled to conflagrate in the first place (I will qualify this claim shortly), and unthinkingly relegates all policymaking to the binary choice of total government involvement or none at all. This is a false choice. And in defiance of it we must come up with better alternatives than what have been proposed, in the process reemphasizing individual hard work and private sector solutions which, combined, helped create the world’s most impressive middle class.
First and foremost, let’s get a picture of how our problem started. In the late 1970s, the federal government led an ambitious campaign to expand tuition aid to college students across the country. In response, universities began ratcheting up the prices of headline tuition, knowing that the federal government would nominally cover larger numbers of students with generous financial aid to match. Anticipating market growth for college-goers in response to the opening of the federal treasure chest for student and college-directed subsidies, universities began making college attractive to the average applicant, ultimately evolving the college experience into the extraneous and expensive behemoth that it is today. Universities began investing heavily in non-educational assets ranging from ostentatious recreational facilities to elaborate dorm buildings, amenities we students love about college but seldom need. In this context, government expansion of federal aid became the permissive cause of ballooning tuition prices and the consequent inability of students to afford them, as conservative education expert, Andrew Kelley of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has argued.
In order to reverse this trend in the long term, conservatives generally believe that we must: A) Make understanding the real cost of four-year colleges easier for prospective students; B) Match the federal benefits colleges and truly indigent students receive to the work they put into earning them; C) Privatize the framework of college loans in order to accord tuition prices with more accountable market forces, thus returning federal control of college debt back to the private sector; and D) Look for ways to streamline the predominant university model and innovatively educate students in the 21st century.
Presidential candidate and U.S. Senator, Marco Rubio (R-FL), has taken the mantle of Proposition A. Along with Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), Rubio has pushed for bipartisan acceptance of “The Student Right to Know Before You Go Act” in the Senate, which would require colleges to list, for example, the full cost of a four-year education, expected salary after education, and the average student graduation rate. By making the overly intricate cost-benefit analysis of college ROI simpler for the layperson, students would be able to engage in more informed and effective school choices.
Presidential candidate and Ohio Governor, John Kasich, has focused specifically on Proposition B. In his home state of Ohio, Governor Kasich was an early adopter of a government aid model that issues grants to colleges based on student performance and rate of graduation. A similar requirement model could be applied to federal subsidies for higher education, or simply replicated for use by each state individually without the involvement of the federal government whatsoever, as Kasich characteristically suggests. This method would require schools to keep up high standards or risk losing crucial government assistance.
When it comes to help for those students who truly need it, some conservative policy experts have asserted that aid recipients should repay government grants and loans through public service. This strategy would alleviate much of the spending burden placed on state and federal government as a result of generous aid, and would match benefits rendered by government to benefits received by students.
Income-sharing agreements, which a wide number of conservative policy experts have recommended, would reintegrate private firms into the federally dominated student loans industry. Currently, few private firms are incentivized to extend loans to college students because of low interest rates on student debt and a perceived risk of widespread student default. Backed by government loan guarantees, income-sharing agreements would allow corporations to provide secure loans and grants to students in return for a percentage of students’ future salaries, which would simultaneously wrest the assumption of aid responsibilities from government and more closely tie the financial help students get to the salaries they earn based on that help. This is all within the purview of Proposition C.
When it comes to Proposition D, there is far greater consensus across the aisle. Many agree that there is undue excess in what universities are teaching inside the classroom and offering outside it. Conservatives emphasize the possibility of reintroducing trade schools that teach students particular crafts, which would effectively eliminate much of the core and liberal arts curricula for students who opt for this route, thus streamlining costs for students who do not prioritize those curricula in the first place.
Secondly, education experts of all persuasions point to the use of online courses and internet-based education as ways to get around the traditionally inefficient costs of professors, classrooms, and physical learning institutions. The introduction of these innovative education models would force universities to compete against cheaper alternatives, cut excess costs, and thus operate more efficiently.
The landscape of the university system, from basic online education to trade schools and ultimately to full-fledged universities, should reflect the economic landscape of what families can in reality afford. Obviously exceptions should and must be made for meritorious student achievement, but our present system of students attending expensive four-year colleges they cannot afford is unsustainable, and the negative effects are reaching a critical juncture, as I have illustrated.
The fact that our generation casually believes government should handle higher education is an aberration and a symbol of how desensitized we as Americans have become to the control of our destinies. Simply because numerous of our Western allies have universalized higher education and “liberated” it from private interests does not mean that we must as well. Many of those countries are now being forced to reign in their outsized public expenditures, demonstrating the economic fact that our level of affluence is insufficient to bear the massive financial burdens presently assumed by government.
Our nation is exceptional because we have defined ourselves by the self-reliance of our citizens and the impassioned individuality inherent in our work ethic. Our policy making should reflect these distinguishing elements of our character, and our treatment of higher education, likewise, should be no different.