Friday, August 30, 2013
Move Over, Obamacare. Here Comes Obamaschool
The president gave a speech on August 22 in Buffalo outlining his proposal to “reform” the student loan program. He acknowledged that the program has some problems, but assured the audience they are easily fixed. Just take the principles behind Obamacare and apply them to education. The president personally “guaranteed” that his proposals would make college more affordable.
Here’s the plan. The government will rate colleges based on fees (the lower the better) and graduation rates (the higher the better) and student success in finding a job. Then student loan funds will be allocated to schools according to the rating. Students will also be guided to the best-rated schools via government web sites. And schools will get more funding if they set up demonstration projects to reduce costs. This will all encourage more “competition” among schools. Yes, you heard that right: more government control of colleges will increase market “competition.”
We don’t have a 2,000 page bill in Congress yet, but it’s all quite familiar: government will take even tighter control of higher education just as it has taken even tighter control of medicine, and use Obamacare as its operating manual. Of course, Obamacare not only rated medical insurance policies; it mandated what would be in them at what prices, which in effect put government in charge of defining what healthcare is. Presumably, the government rating of schools will in due course also lead to mandates and the government defining what higher education is. Obamacare also set up government sites where people would be steered to buy government approved policies, and set up demonstration projects, even though the history of government-inspired healthcare demonstration projects has been dismal.
There is a lot more in common between Obamacare and Obamaschool than these superficial characteristics. Obamacare came into being because of a crisis in medical care. As usual, that crisis had been caused by earlier government interventions in medicine, especially price controls. At present, Medicare price controls about 7,500 medical procedures. Because payment varies by location and practitioner (e.g., doctors employed by hospitals get paid more than other doctors), it has been estimated that Medicare price-controls six billion medical transactions at any one time. As government has come to dominate medicine and price-control it, prices have inevitably risen at a rate that threatens to bankrupt the economy. Obamacare has doubled down on the price controls, mandating allowed price increases under Medicare and installing a price control board. All of this will no doubt lead to the kind of legislation recently passed in Massachusetts where any “material” change in a medical practice, in either prices or services, must be approved by the state.
Obamaschool is coming into being for similar reasons. In this case, the government set up a student loan program which was ostensibly designed to subsidize students. But whenever government subsidizes demand without increasing supply, prices inevitably rise, and this was no exception.
As President Obama pointed out, “Over the past three decades, the average tuition [and fees] at a public four-year college has gone up by more than 250 percent. 250 percent. Now a typical family’s income has gone up 16 percent. That’s a big gap.” Yes it is.
In reality, both the 250 percent and the pitiful 16 percent have been caused by government policies, especially price manipulations and controls. The 250 percent increase in fees (mitigated somewhat by increases in student aid) has specifically been driven by government’s mistake in flooding schools with student loan money. That money did not help students; it enabled schools to keep raising fees. What students mostly got out of the loan program was an early initiation into massive debt. If leaving school with heavy debts is not exactly slavery, it certainly represents some kind of indentured servitude.
Full article: http://mises.org/dai … re-Comes-Obamaschool
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