June 8^th

Mona Charen is now an expert on financing higher education. Her expertise is certified by her invitation to attend a panel organized by “The Ethics and Public Policy Center” and “The Bradley Foundation.” As both of these are right wing organizations perhaps Mona’s right wing columns made up for her lack of background in higher education policy. She does not say she participated in the proceedings, only that she attended them; whatever the case she now pontificates about higher education.

The issue is funding; the federal student loan program has created massive debt. True enough but the result of this program, and other programs, is an enormous surge in college degrees. In 1995 24.7 percent of Americans had a bachelor’s degree; in 2013 this had jumped to 32.5 percent. Mona’s right wing folks must not have mentioned that result, possibly because it doesn’t fit their agenda.

There has also been an enormous increase in master’s degrees; from 2000 to 2012 there has been a 62 percent jump in the awarding of these degrees. In 2012 Georgetown University awarded 1871 bachelor’s degrees and 2838 master’s degrees. In eight year their Master’s degree awards rose 83 percent; their bachelor degree awards increased 12 percent. This is largely the result of the student loan programs.

There are other awards available too but interestingly Mona doesn’t even mention Pell Grants. These are grants, not loans, so they needn’t be paid back at all. Pell grant amounts go up to just below six thousand dollars a year and are available to the poorest students. Senator Claiborne Pell who started this effort was a Democrat so quite naturally his name is not to be mentioned by Mona or the American Enterprise’s Andrew P. Kelly who happily excoriates Democrats for providing loans to “those who don’t need them” and for battling to stop the government from raising the interest rates on these loans; needy students are not Kelly’s concern. Kelly makes no suggestions about increasing the amount and number of Pell grants.

A huge for-profit college, Corinthian College, just went under. Loans taken out by students hoodwinked by misleading recruitment practices used by Corinthian are likely to be forgiven.  Mr. Kelly will be quite unhappy about that turn of events. Other giant for-profit colleges are in similar trouble; Kaplan college revenues had fallen 93 percent and the Washington Post which controls it had counted on this entity to pull it through rough financial times. Attempts to regulate the fraudulent practices of these for-profit colleges were opposed by intense lobbying efforts. Both sides of the aisle were recruited to support these frauds and vote down any meaningful regulation. The students borrowed money from the government to pay the exorbitant tuition, then that money was used to lobby Congress to keep the schools from any meaningful regulation so the schools could keep right on fleecing the students and subsequently the government.

Not much about these frauds in Mona’s column today; after all these are called “for-profit” colleges; how can any right wing person criticize that?