Starting with his 2012 State of the Union Address, President Obama has properly taken aim at high college costs. But when it comes to policy implementation, his administration is not taking the measures that are essential for true reform.
The latest salvo from the White House is an executive order extending income-based caps on loan repayment to millions of new borrowers. According to Inside Higher Ed, the order allows “all federal loan borrowers, regardless of when they borrowed, to cap their monthly loan payments at 10 percent of their discretionary income and to have any remaining loan debt forgiven after 20 years.”
This will undeniably provide relief to many struggling under the burden student loan debt. But, as the editors here at NRO note, “The open-ended nature of many federal subsidies for higher-ed borrowing is a big contributor to college costs in the first place.” Making it easier for students to take on debt will assuredly fuel higher education’s voracious appetite for tuition revenue (the administration itself does not yet know the how much expanding the loan program will cost), but will do little to address the underlying cause of the student debt crisis—the unconscionable, ever growing cost of a college education.
Transparent, accessible measures of college quality, outcomes, and cost are the only solution to that problem. If the federal government wants to help, it could start by breaking the college accreditation cartel, which has for decades provided an illusion of higher education quality control, while increasing, rather than controlling, higher education operating costs. The Higher Education Opportunity Act is up for renewal this year, and it is an opportunity for urgently needed reform. The president can lay the groundwork for Congress to replace this broken system with the information that empowers consumer choice. Ultimately, it is students, parents, and state taxpayers who will have to hold colleges accountable directly. It’s long past time for schools to pare back bloated administrations, cut outsized presidential salaries, make more and better teaching a priority, and end unnecessary building sprees.
Higher ed doesn’t need a Band-Aid—it needs surgery. It’s time to tackle the root of the problem.