Neal McCluskey, associate director of Cato’s Center for Educational Freedom, and author of Feds In The Classroom: How Big Government Corrupts, Cripples, and Compromises American Education, as well as of the recent white paper: How Much Ivory Does This Tower Need? What We Spend on, and Get from, Higher Education – joined Inside Academia to explain why federal financial aid has served to distort price signals and thereby skyrocket the cost of college tuition over many years.
Key Take-Aways
- 1:10 Tuition goes up BECAUSE of Federal Student Aid (1 min, 30 sec)
- 3:05 Tuition still goes up even when state appropriations are coming in (1 min, 40 sec)
- 5:20 Why should the government profit off of students? (2 min)
- 8:10 A so-called public good? But at what cost? (2 min, 40 sec)
- 11:30 Subsidies and the loss of useful price signals (2 min, 20 sec)
- 14:40 Why not loan forgiveness if the government caused prices to increase? (3 min)
- 18:20 To the K-12 level: go to college or you’re wortheless (3 min, 10 sec)