How government programs drive up college tuitions
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited in tuition-cost threads for the argument that easy government-backed loans enable high prices.
What it is
Peter Schiff, during his 2010 Senate campaign, argues that government loan programs and subsidies push college tuition up.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2010 to 2018.
What Hacker News said
Recommends josh33 · 2010-11 · on “'Malemployment' on the Rise”
Agreed. Here's a solid video on the topic where Peter Schiff explains why college tuition is so high: [this video]
Recommends anonymoushn · 2011-02 · on “Why Does College Cost So Much?”
I suspect that Peter Schiff is closer to the mark. [this video] His hypothesis is that increasing the capacity of students to pay (to almost arbitrarily high levels) by providing government guarantees of student loans allows allows schools to charge ridiculously high tuition. To some extent, this is correct, and there is no reason for the people involved not to want to increase tuitions. For the school, higher tuition will mean the school can improve itself and become more attractive to students. For the lenders, higher tuition means more loans returning 5% or more for which the government assumes all the risk. It isn't entirely accurate to say "the government assumes all the risk" either. Studen
Recommends mixmastamyk · 2018-09 · on “Why Is College in America So Expensive?”
When you subsidize industries they no longer attempt to contain costs. Unintuitively, instead of getting cheaper they get more expensive. There's an interesting video by Peter Schiff on the subject: [this video]