Friday, August 23, 2013

Assuming Parental or Personal Responsibility . . .

Yesterday Congressman Hanna posted this on his Facebook Timeline:
Today I am announcing my support for bipartisan legislation which would require private and public universities and colleges to increase transparency about the costs of higher education so that families can make more informed decisions.

The Truth in Tuition Act would specify that every college provide each student admitted with a multi-year tuition and fee schedule, or a single-year tuition and fee schedule with a multi-year estimate of net costs. . . .
Mr. Hanna bemoans the skyrocketing cost of higher education . . . and then offers as a solution government-forced "accurate information" from each as a solution.

First, Mr. Hanna's proposal is maddening. We borrow 40 cents out of every federal dollar spent and now he proposes spending more money (because someone has to define and enforce these requirements)  to achieve a result that individual students and their parents can achieve by simply doing their homework and making proper inquiries.  In addition, there have long been publications that provide most of this information.

Second, his proposal does nothing to contain costs.  And perhaps it should not.

The entire federal system of grants and student loans that was intended to make higher education "more affordable" has had the opposite effect by providing a ready pot of money for educational institutions to tap into . . . encouraging them to raise raise tuition, fees and their own costs of labor for instructors and fixed costs for fancy digs.

Now we have thousands of graduates about half of whom cannot find a job requiring their degree that are in debt up to their ears that they are  unable to pay off.

More government involvement is not the way to go.  It will only muck things up more than it already is.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It has all been said before "Hanna sold us all a bill of goods ". He is once again proving who and what he really is: A BIG GOVERNMENT PROGRESSIVE !

Silence Dogood said...

Parents doing homework to select an college? that was a funny one.

Dave said...

Perhaps the simplest and most accurate reason for college tuition spiraling upward is the Feds refusal to limit the max on student loans. It keeps going up so the colleges keep raising their price. Here's an interesting article in Forbes that reasons if the true number of loan defaults were made public, the Feds would have to stop raising the max and the tuition tornado would lose its momentum.
http://tinyurl.com/75r5p58

Anonymous said...

Hanna must be desparate for something to do. If this is the best he can do legislatively, he is one sick puppy. This is so typically liberal; assume people are so stupid that government must tell and show them what they are paying for. We should fire him for proposing pap on our nickle.