Controlling the cost of college

By Bruce Walker

 

Democrats running for president are promising free college and promising forgiveness of student loans and all sorts of other silly things.  Like all the Left's absurd giveaway programs, the student loan program is an example of creating problems rather than solving problems. 

Does anyone even remember why the federal government felt it important to help students with the costs of college?  The National Defense Education Act of 1958 was a direct response to Sputnik and the perceived advantage the Soviet Union had developed over America in science and technology. 

This was absurd.  The Soviet Union routinely turned out huge numbers of physicists, engineers, mathematicians, and other "hard science" graduates, but it was always quality, not quantity, that mattered.  So by 1969, America was landing on the Moon, and the Soviet Union was hopelessly behind.  There is no reason to believe that student loans made any difference at all.

Indeed, by 1964, the Left removed those limiting words in the National Defense Education Act that made it clear that the purpose of this program was to help us keep up with the Soviets in science and technology.  Those familiar organs of leftism, like the National Education Association, supported these changes.

The consequence of the federal government guaranteeing student loans at below market interest rates was predictable.  Tens of millions of Americans who would not otherwise have gone to college did so using student loans, dramatically and artificially increasing demand.

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Controlling the cost of college