You know Hillary Clinton is worried that she could lose the Millennial vote because she just proposed handing them $350 billion of taxpayer money.
Hillary claims she wants to do to higher education what President Obama wanted to do to health care: increase access, improve quality and lower costs.
By now, nearly everyone knows that Obamacare has achieved just the opposite of what Obama promised the Affordable Care Act would do, and we can expect the same from Clinton education "reset." Maybe she should call it the Affordable College Act, just to highlight the similarities.
Hillary claims she wants to do to higher education what President Obama wanted to do to health care: increase access, improve quality and lower costs.
By now, nearly everyone knows that Obamacare has achieved just the opposite of what Obama promised the Affordable Care Act would do, and we can expect the same from Clinton education "reset." Maybe she should call it the Affordable College Act, just to highlight the similarities.
It’s not like the federal government hasn't been spending a lot on higher education. The figure above shows that federal tax expenditures on higher education rose from about $2.5 billion a year for most of the 1990s, eventually exceeding $35 billion in 2012, though it has declined in the last few years.
But it isn't just federal grants for education. This second figure (above) shows federally sponsored lending, which began spiking in 1994 from a little more than $20 billion a year, and peaking at about $110 billion. And that doesn’t even include state spending.
All of that government spending seems to have made higher education even more expensive. According to the National Association of State Budget Officers: "In fiscal 2011, state expenditures for higher education purposes totaled $170.4 billion, 10.1 percent of total state spending, down from 13.0 percent in 1998. Despite increased state spending and federal initiatives to make higher education more affordable, tuition and fees at many four-year public institutions continue a rapid rise." [Emphasis added]
If throwing more federal money--and state money, for that matter--at higher education had been able to lower the cost, we might have seen some evidence of it. But as the state budget officers point out, that option has been tried and apparently failed.
Of course, Hillary will claim she will be able to do it where others have failed, just as Obama claimed he would be able to make health care more affordable where others had failed.
Our prescription is much simpler: Get the federal government out of the business of funding higher education--with the exception of providing tuition support for veterans. That approach won't buy Hillary any votes, but it would dramatically reduce the cost of college, making it much more accessible to lower-income Americans, which is supposed to be the goal.