Swindling Children
Yale, a bastion of privilege with an endowment that exceeds $25 billion, has proudly announced that tuition for the coming school year will cost $55,500. If you want room and board you’ll have to cough up a total of $72,100. The price of education has soared to ridiculous levels because colleges can attract more students by raising their prices, and using the money to enhance prestige. Or maybe they just add another two hundred administrators … Parents, like Felicity Huffman, want to be able to tell their friends that their children go to the most-expensive schools.
There are proposals
on the table which pretend to help the disadvantaged by canceling only the
debts of those earning less than $100,000 a year. Of course, that’s a huge
incentive for a recent graduate to become a ski bum with a low income for a few
years, until his debt goes away.
Colleges will raise their fees (this has happened twice, in response to
expansion of federal tuition and lending programs), and students will be even
more eager to attend the most-expensive schools.
Still, you have to
applaud the chutzpah of trying to buy votes from young people with their own money. These generations are the ones that will be
responsible for the federal debt that results from debt forgiveness. It’s like using your credit card to pay off
your mortgage. The debt doesn’t actually
go away!