In today’s Wall Street Journal, Jacob Sullum reviews The Student Loan Scam: The Most Oppressive Debt in U.S. History by Alan Michael Collinge and finds it to be rather hyperbolic.

The story of people who borrowed a lot to go to college in pursuit of degrees that aren’t worth much is very much like that of the unfortunate people who borrowed big to buy houses they couldn’t afford. All the more so when you factor in the government’s responsibility for the escalation of college costs and the fact that it has had a big hand in pushing student loans. Just as we’d be better off if the feds had never gotten involved in the housing market, we’d be better off if they had never gotten involved in college financing.

Collinge wants to replace student loans with government grants and subsidies to colleges and universities, but Sullum correctly observes that this approach “does not address the imbalance between cost and benefit; it just shifts the cost around.” Sounds exactly like Obamanomics.