Just like government sponsored enterprises (GSE's) made housing more expensive, they are making college tuition more expensive.<p>Left out of the article are probably biggest recipients of the newfound largesse are University administrative employees whose employment "jumped 60 percent from 1993 to 2009, 10 times the growth rate for tenured faculty"[1] In my opinion they are not just overemployed but overpaid.<p>Also left out are the billion dollar endowments that can generation over a billion in annual gains - all untaxed because the schools are "non-profits."<p>It's strange that these points are left out. Also strange is the bias in the article, where Republicans are at fault for everything and it's just the poor old Democrats left standing up for students when the reality is that student loan debt took off under Obama [2]<p>This is a serious, bipartisan issue. It's a classic case of special interests, wall street, and politicians colluding to rip off Americans. This article is biased and does a poor job identifying root causes for the crisis. Still, it's a subject worth discussing.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-11-21/the-troubling-dean-to-professor-ratio" rel="nofollow">http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-11-21/the-troubl...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://static.cdn-seekingalpha.com/uploads/2014/10/15/1278591-14133988994203806-Thomas-Hughes.png" rel="nofollow">http://static.cdn-seekingalpha.com/uploads/2014/10/15/127859...</a>
Students aren't the only casualties. Universities used to be (a while ago) places for enlightenment, learning for the sake of enhancing one's life, not just for teaching skills. Now they are almost exclusively for vocational training, and bettering the self, debating ideas, pushing discourse forward - it's all by the wayside except for the highest-level institutions.<p>Where does discourse go when academia becomes a business?
There's a fallacy here that I wish more reporters covered on the student loan crisis. Why did this student go to such an expensive school if all she wanted to do was join the Marshal Service? I feel like we do a disservice to the debate when we don't point out the mistakes students make in not only a) taking on massive amounts of debt, but also b) in their own poor decisions in choosing where to go to school, what to study, and not finishing.