Talk about biting the hand that feeds it-or at least defends it!
President Obama has rightly concluded that, like health care, a college degree costs too much.
And again like health care, he completely fails to understand that one of the driving factors behind the high cost is hundreds of billions of government dollars flooding the system.
The president wants to cut part of a $3 billion federal student aid program controlled by college administrators if those colleges and universities don't lower tuition fees. But he leaves in place most of the $140 billion in federal student aid-not to mention other federal and state subsidies.
Doesn't Obama know that college professors spend much of their class time-all three or six hours a week of it!-defending his tax-increase proposals and redistributionist policies? Why, only Hollywood does more to defend Obamanomics.
According to the Associated Press, education leaders are beginning to "worry about the threat of government overreach." That's rich coming from academics, many of whom spend much of their lives encouraging government overreach in every other sector of the economy.
The truth is that colleges and universities are in dire need a wake-up call-and they don't like it one little bit. When members of the University of Texas Board of Regents started asking questions last year about how to measure academic research and performance, they got tremendous pushback.
University critics claim the president just doesn't understand the economics of college. Having seen his foray into health care reform, I'm sure they're right. What will keep the colleges from just raising other fees, like housing, to offset the tuition losses?
But it's those same college professors who have been defending the man and his policies for the past three years. Now maybe the educators will learn some lessons.