In this week’s Pope Center Clarion Call, I write about Andrew Gillen’s recent paper for the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. In that paper, he argues that federal student aid for the most part is skimmed off by college officials for spending designed to increase school prestige. I think his case is sound. College administrators love to spend — as Derek Bok once wrote, they’re like gambling addicts and exiled royalty in that there is never enough money — and they know that increasing federal subsidies make it possible for them to extract much of that money for the “arms race.”