In today’s Pope Center commentary, my colleague Jenna Ashley Robinson takes a critical look at a recent Education Sector paper that says too many students are drowning in debt and proposes tossing them a life saver in the form of further subsidies. She opposes that palliative, and so do I.

Students are not really “drowning” in debt, of course. If they have a high ratio of debt payment to income, that compels some unpleasant choices, but that’s life. Just like government bailouts for businesses and homeowners, a policy of increasing subsidies for college attendance when the market is giving a clear signal that we have oversold college degrees gets in the way of people receiving and acting upon valuable information. That isn’t just students, but schools as well. Nothing would be so effective in getting college presidents to find ways to give students more education for less money than if enrollments started dropping.