America’s university system is broken, and no, I’m not talking about the college football playoff. College tuition is too expensive and leftist indoctrination is too prevalent on campuses across the country.
Just last week, the presidents of three of the most prestigious Ivy League institutions in American couldn’t condemn the anti-Semitic calls for genocide seen at their universities. While firing those leaders would be a good start, it won’t solve the systemic problem. There needs to be real reform.
The other major issue is the rising cost of tuition.
According to U.S. News and World Report, the out-of-state tuition and fees at public National Universities have risen about 38% in the last 20 years when adjusted for inflation, and the in-state tuition and fees at public National Universities have grown about 56% in the last 20 years when adjusted for inflation.
So not only are too many students being trained in Marxist ideology, but they’re having to go into massive debt to do so. This is not how higher education should work in this country.
Believe it or not, there is a way to help solve both of these problems in our colleges, and one of the Republican presidential candidates brought up a great idea at the last debate in Tuscaloosa.
“Now I don’t support having a truck driver having to pay a student loan for someone that got a degree in gender studies. That is wrong. We should not have taxpayers do that,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said on the debate stage. “What I’m going to do though is get to the root cause of the problem. These student loans will be backed by the universities because they should have an incentive to produce gainful employment for these people.”
I don't support having a truck driver having to pay a student loan for someone that got a degree in gender studies. That is wrong.
When I’m President, these student loans are going to be backed by the universities because they need to have an incentive to produce gainful… pic.twitter.com/j8Mf1mcTW5
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) December 7, 2023
The DeSantis plan is exactly what’s needed. Instead of tuition being backed and subsidized by the federal government, they would be backed by the universities. This will add some market accountability to the schools themselves. Currently there is no real incentive for them to lower costs because the institutions realize that they’ll be bailed out by the government. That perverse incentive structure needs to change.
DeSantis also addressed how this will help rid the colleges of leftist indoctrination.
“They should not be indulging in ideological studies,” DeSantis continued. “They should be focusing on things that work.”
DeSantis’ market based reforms will force them to change their ways or lose money. When these universities start losing income because they don’t offer real programs that help students find well paying jobs after college, they’ll start focusing on the right things or lose out to the competition.
The Florida governor also discussed his record on the issue in Florida and our leaders in Alabama should follow his lead.
“[W]e’re going to take some of this money and we’re going to move it to actually vocational training,” he explained. “In Florida we doubled apprenticeships. We have more truck drivers. These are in demand skills. Don’t let anybody tell you that the only way you can be successful is through a four year brick and Ivy degree. That’s one way you can be. It’s not the only way, and we’re going to fix that problem in the United States of America.”
In 2010, President Obama signed the 2010 was the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, which not only hurt our healthcare system, but ruined our university system by replacing federally backed bank loans with direct government lending. The result has been these institutions wasting money on lavish campuses, bloated staffs, and more courses that don’t prepare young people for the real world.
If we want to fix our colleges and universities, the DeSantis plan is one way to do it.
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on Twitter @Yaffee
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