Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) knows how to make higher education more affordable. Just don’t listen to anything she has said in the past few years.
Warren is now a big advocate for canceling student loan debt, a Band-Aid solution that doesn’t fix the root problem. Giving $10,000 or $50,000 to the Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduates who, like Warren, live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, doesn’t make college more affordable. It’s a wealth transfer from the working class to the professional class.
Yet, if we look at what Warren was saying about the cost of higher education in 2004, she offered pragmatic solutions to keep the cost of public colleges from spiraling further out of control. Warren didn’t suggest larger government subsidies for these institutions at the taxpayers’ expense. In her book The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke, Warren and her daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, advocated public colleges cutting bloat and not raising prices on students.
Warren and her daughter wanted tuition freezes that would gradually lower the cost of a degree to something more affordable. And they weren’t attached to raising taxes or legalizing any new vices, such as gambling or marijuana, to cover the cost. Warren and Tyagi warned against more tax revenue funding the proposed multiyear tuition freeze because it would incentivize more fiscally irresponsible behavior. And they argued that leaders of higher education facilities can always find a way to justify spending increases — even when they’re unnecessary.
“Their leaders are true believers in the research and scholarly missions of their schools, and their desire for excellence — however it is measured among universities — is genuine,” Warren and Tyagi wrote. “It is no wonder that they can always justify their rising costs and why they need every penny that comes their way — and more.”
“There can always be more research, more athletic fields, more books for the library,” they continued. “To be sure, the issues are complex, and a spending freeze might force some universities to make some very tough choices. In the long run, however, it would refocus public universities on their mission — providing an education for all qualified members of the public, not just those who can come up with ten or twenty thousand dollars per year.”
This is the framework in which the discussion of affordable higher education should exist.
Both parties should come together to combat bloat in higher education to make the system more affordable for the average person. With bloated athletic budgets, unnecessary administrative staff, and other inefficiencies in spending costing students billions per year, problems exist that need addressing.
Pragmatic solutions exist. Cutting nonrevenue sports or at least moving down divisions offers ways to save money on athletics, as do reasonable administrative staffing ratios set statewide. And state schools can offer three-year bachelor’s degrees, as many European colleges do; the key there is to cut classes that have nothing to do with the degree.
The primary focus of Warren’s book was liberalizing bankruptcy law. Making it impossible to discharge private student loan debt via bankruptcy made the student debt problem worse, so reversing course could help. Also, states should stop revoking work licenses when people default on student loan debt. Taking away people’s ability to work makes it harder for them to pay their debt. Warren deserves credit because she has sponsored legislation with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) outlawing the practice.
Warren is aware of many of the problems contributing to the rising cost of higher education. It would be great if she used her seat in the U.S. Senate and massive platform to try doing something practical about it. Repeating platitudes that rile up progressives while accomplishing nothing only makes this problem worse.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts.
