One of the greatest myths of our times is that government subsidies are needed to make things (such as medical care, housing, or education) “affordable.” What such subsidies do is to encourage those who provide the services to increase their charges, since their customers have more to spend thanks to our generous government.
In this IBD editorial, we find out how much government college subsidies cost — for every dollar of supposed benefit to students, tuition goes up 93 cents. My Pope Center colleague Jane Shaw is quoted in the piece, helping to connect the dots.
The federal government should never have gotten into the business of college financing. As a result of having done so, we now have a bloated, prodigiously costly, and yet woefully ineffective higher education system.
