On Saturday, The Wall Street Journal ran a good article by Henry Bienen (president emeritus of Northwestern and an affiliate of for-profit Rasmussen College). I sent in this letter to the editor:

Two cheers for Henry Bienen’s article “In Defense of For-Profit Colleges” (July 23). In its never-ending search for scapegoats when its meddling produces bad results, the political class has singled out for-profit higher education for attack, much as it blamed the financial industry for the housing bubble. For-profit colleges are under attack as the default rate on federal student loans rises, but as Mr. Bienen points out, there are for-profits with good records with regard to student education and job placement. Conversely, there are public universities that are scarcely better than the worst of the proprietary schools when it comes to luring in feeble students, promising them a great future, and giving them degrees whether or not they have learned anything useful. I’d have given Mr. Bienen three cheers if he had put his finger on the source of the problem — federal subsidies. Non-profit colleges have just as insatiable an appetite for money as do the for-profits. The availability of easy federal loans and grants that follow students who are spending little of their own money in the present gives them a strong incentive for enrolling many young people who are academically disengaged. Many of those who graduate wind up in low-skill, low-paying jobs that the typical high school student could do. The more we try to give everyone a “college education,” the more we water down our standards and cause employers to ratchet up their requirements for educational credentials. If our illustrious politicians manage to hamstring the for-profit colleges, the problem of defaults by poor and clueless students won’t go away, but there will be fewer options available for serious students. Instead, the politicians should rethink the policy of postsecondary education for all through federal “help.”