Richard K Vedder, Columnist

Stop Subsidizing Colleges’ 100-Year Debt Binge

October 30, 2013 at 5:35 PM UTC

Richard Vedder, an economist, directs the Center for College Affordability and Productivity and teaches at Ohio University. He is an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

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The Barack Obama administration and Congress purport to care about the rising costs of college. Yet the government’s policies are only fueling the higher-education arms race.

I have written before on how the expansion of federal student-loan programs has encouraged colleges to simply raise their costs. Students are left to pile up more debt while colleges indulge in their Edifice Complex -- building luxury dorms and gyms and stadiums (all “sustainable,” of course) at the expense of poorer students. There is another, related government subsidy that also has perverse effects and needs reform: the tax-exempt debt binge by universities.