Sunday, April 21, 2019

Higher education's biggest scandal

Seven Troubling Facts On American Higher Education You Probably Don't Know - Adam Andrzejewski, Forbes:

April 10, 2019 - "The recent cheating scandal in which wealthy and well-connected parents paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to illegally game admission at elite universities exposed a rigged system. However, the biggest scandal facing higher education today isn’t the illegal activity – it’s what’s entirely legal. It’s a system so expensive that the $1.7 trillion in student debt now exceeds America’s credit card debt and auto loan debt.

"Last week, our organization at OpenTheBooks.com released our oversight report on the U.S. Department of Education (ED). We found billions of taxpayer dollars wasted on outdated policies, misaligned priorities, and weak accounting controls....

""The top 25 universities with largest endowments (collectively $272 billion) reaped $7 billion in federal student aid. Rich schools are getting richer and taxpayers paid for it....

"26 percent of federal undergraduate student loans made in 2018 will enter default at some point. Considering that $100 billion in student loans were originated last year, it’s a billion-dollar boondoggle. A Brooking Institution study found that 28 percent of college students signed up for student loans don’t even realize that [they] must be paid back....

"The largest chain of beauty schools, Empire Beauty School, received more than $500 million in federal student subsidies between 2014 – 2017. Empire admits to charging up to $22,100 in tuition ... to cut hair, manicure nails, and do massage therapy. Gambling, bartending, golf, and seminaries [also] reaped huge federal subsidies....

"$1 billion in taxpayer subsidies flowed to the 50 worst performing junior colleges as ranked by WalletHub last year. The 10 worst junior colleges had an average graduation rate of 12 percent. Students aren’t graduating. Yet, they’re saddled with large debts....

"Who’s to blame? Recent polling released by Scott Rasmussen shows that a majority (51 percent) of respondents feel the federal government has too much influence over higher ed and only 21 percent believe the feds have too little influence.

"Since 1980, tuition has increased 6.5 times the rate of income growth and is currently outpacing increases in other cost areas like housing, food and health care. Student aid was supposed to make college affordable again, but is simply going to straight to education institutions that continue to increase tuition."

Read more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2019/04/10/seven-troubling-facts-on-american-higher-education-you-probably-dont-know/#5d4beaa73659
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Also read: Libertarian offers college education for $11K / year

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